Your customized headlines for Tue, Apr 24, 2012

The Justice Department has been conducting a criminal probe of Wal-Mart for allegations of systematic bribery in Mexico, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The investigation was launched in December after Wal-Mart met voluntarily with Justice Department officials, revealing it was looking into whether its Wal-Mart de Mexico unit had bribed foreign officials to gain business. Wal-Mart said this weekend that it has also met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The allegations were brought to light by the New York Times on Saturday.

President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney battled for the attention of young voters on Monday in hopes of capturing the enthusiasm they displayed four years ago that helped shape the arc of the presidential election.

At the start of the year, the Federal Reserve was a dour pessimist-- even though a range of economic indicators were starting to suggest that the nation's recovery was finally gaining enough momentum to sustain itself.

Surging energy prices and a slower-than-expected economic recovery have worsened the financial outlook for Social Security compared with last year, while the picture for Medicare remains grim but essentially unchanged, according to annual forecasts released by the government Monday.

A backlash against proposed austerity measures upended the government of the Netherlands on Monday, highlighting the growing peril facing efforts across Europe to tame the region's financial crisis.

The collapse of Prime Minister Mark Rutte's governing coalition came after the populist Freedom Party, led by euro opponent Geert Wilders, abandoned negotiations over ways to meet deficit targets. National elections are now expected to be held in June.

"To see what's in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle," George Orwell wrote. But the problem for those of us paying attention to the 2012 election is rather the opposite: To ignore what keeps being thrust in front of one's face requires its own sort of struggle.

— The Food and Drug Administration now spends as much money monitoring already approved drugs as it does scrutinizing new ones.

— Sen. Tom Harkin's crusade to kill the dollar bill.

— A 9-year-old boy who created a makeshift arcade out of cardboard boxes.

The Medicare trustees' report had the potential to be ugly. The economic downturn has cut into the payroll tax revenue that finances hospital insurance. At the same time, Medicare was absorbing more enrollees as baby boomers aged into the program.

In the last five years, the United States has been shipping more and more refined diesel and gasoline abroad — in 2011, fuel was our top export. But domestic gas prices are also high. That's led some to wonder if we could lower prices by limiting fuel exports. Less for them, more for us. Right?