Your customized headlines for Fri, Mar 23, 2012

Apple's new iPad was supposed to usher in a new era of watching movies and television shows on the go. The "Retina Display" screen was so stunning, better than a high-definition TV, that some analysts wondered aloud whether owners would finally cut the cord to expensive cable services.

RIPLEY, Okla. — President Obama called Thursday for new and faster construction of the nation's petroleum pipelines, delivering a message of reassurance here in deep-red Oklahoma that the oil industry has a key role in his energy plan.

"Green" jobs accounted for 2.4 percent of the nation's total employment in 2010, the Labor Department reported Thursday in its first-ever survey of green goods and services jobs.

According to the report, which gave a snapshot of the role that environmental consciousness plays in the U.S. economy, the United States had 3.1 million green jobs in 2010, the vast majority of them in the private sector. The public sector listed 860,000 green jobs, the report said.

The Senate approved legislation Thursday formally banning lawmakers and all senior federal workers from making financial trades based on information gleaned from their oversight work.

The law, which President Obama has said he will sign, will explicitly forbid lawmakers and senior administration officials from using private knowledge for personal profit. The STOCK Act — which stands for Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge — is a scaled- back version of what was originally approved in the Senate, but will increase transparency into lawmakers' and other officials' finances.

A federal court on Thursday ordered the FDA to follow through on a 35-year-old proposal that would have banned the use of certain antibiotics in animal feed because the agency was concerned that these drugs were overused in livestock and helped develop drug-resistant bacteria that can infect people.

A combination of cheap financing, popular new models and rising consumer confidence is stoking pent-up demand and drawing customers back to the nation's auto showrooms.

New-vehicle sales have surged at the start of 2012, outpacing forecasts and putting the nation's automobile industry on track for its best year since 2007.

The deadline for the White House to nominate a candidate to lead the World Bank is 6 p.m. Friday. The White House will choose someone. And that someone will be an American.

At first glance, this seems absurd. The World Bank exists to serve developing nations. All of its operations take place in developing nations. And so you might think it would make sense to name someone from a developing nation to lead the institution. That's certainly how at least some developing nations feel.

— Can stimulus pay for itself?

— The economics of "The Hunger Games."

— Neat media map of what outlets are popular where, based on Twitter shares. The Onion's readership seems to be concentrated in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Think this recovery has been bad? Two economists believe that demographic changes "imply that future recessions will be deeper, and will have slower recoveries, than historically has been the case. In other words, jobless recoveries will be the norm." The main reason is because of declining labor force participation by American men, linked to aging baby-boomers and other changes in the age distribution of workers, Harvard's James Stock and Princeton's Mark Watson explain in a new paper released by Brookings:

Over at Atlantic Cities, Eric Jaffe has a terrific post sifting through decades of research on why people seem to walk so much faster in some cities than others. The best hypothesis to date? Residents of wealthier cities seem to value their time more dearly: