Your customized headlines for Sat, Apr 28, 2012

Americans have ratcheted up their spending on cars, clothes and furniture, new figures show, and their fortitude at the cash register is energizing the recovery.

The economy grew by 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department reported Friday, largely thanks to more consumer spending.

Spain's unemployment rate spiked to nearly 25 percent in the first months of the year, the government reported Friday, highlighting the risks facing Europe's fifth largest economy as officials struggle to avoid the need for a massive international bailout.

The largest U.S. banks are accusing the Federal Reserve of attempting to misuse its new regulatory powers to shrink financial giants under the misguided belief that "big is bad."

Lobbying groups representing the big banks are pushing back against a set of proposed rules that the Fed issued in December to more closely scrutinize the firms and rein in their risk-taking after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Quick quiz: Which country is the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the United States and China?

The answer, at least in recent years, has been Indonesia. That's surprising. It's not the world's third-largest economy. It's not an industrial powerhouse. But Indonesia has been clearing its vast rain forests of late, releasing huge stores of carbon into the air. One culprit has been the country's fast-growing production of palm oil, an edible vegetable oil that's increasingly being harvested to make biodiesel fuel for cars and trucks in Europe.

Ignoring a veto threat, the House approved a Republican-backed plan Friday to keep subsidized student-loan interest rates lower for another year by paying for the extension with roughly $6 billion from a preventive-care fund established by President Obama's health-care overhaul law.

Spain's unemployment rate spiked to nearly 25 percent in the first months of the year, the government reported Friday, highlighting the risks facing Europe's fifth largest economy as officials struggle to avoid the need for a massive international bailout.

NEW YORK — Occupy Wall Street has moved. Its new address: 60 Wall Street.

There, inside a soaring public atrium, dreadlocked teens trade shoulder massages near the evening meditation circle. A young man holds up a sign: "You're a Federal Reserve $lave." The dinnertime crowd buzzes over free plates of rice and beans while listening to an improvised, profanity-laden operetta about the evils of agro-giant Monsanto. But amid the din, there's a small group holding a quieter, and far wonkier, conversation.

- A sedated bear falls out of a tree on the Colorado University campus, a photograph only rivaled by this video of a similar incident in Minnesota.

- "A second customer in less than a year has collapsed at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas (yes, that's its real name)."

If anyone can claim to know how best to implement Obamacare, it might be Kate Bicego.

Bicego isn't affiliated with any university or government agency. She isn't a household name in health policy. She works in a nondescript cubicle in downtown Boston, on the 10th floor of a nondescript office building.