Your customized headlines for Tue, Apr 3, 2012

State and federal officials who recently completed a $25 billion settlement with five of the nation's largest banks over shoddy foreclosure practices have begun discussing how to apply some of the terms of that deal to a wider array of financial firms.

A subsidiary of Bethesda-based RLJ Cos. has inked an agreement to roll up video distribution companies Image Entertainment and Acorn Media Group to create RLJ Entertainment, a new public company based in Los Angeles.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed Rep. Paul Ryan's 2013 budget proposal. The plan's pleased author didn't mince words. "We are bearing witness to history this week," Ryan said. But my thoughts kept returning to something Ryan said five months ago.

Manufacturing bolstered the nation's economic recovery in March, according to data released Monday, with companies reporting strong gains in production and employment.

The upbeat report fueled hopes that car sales would continue to climb when automakers reveal their monthly results on Tuesday. A strong manufacturing sector also supports economists' predictions that the number of jobs created in March would remain above the critical 200,000 mark. Those numbers are slated to be released Friday.

— "Newt Gingrich does not eat sandwiches; he fundamentally transforms them."

— Ikea is getting into the urban planning business.

— A mall built in Dongguan, China, in 2005 is twice as big as the Mall of America — and totally empty.

President Obama, today:

I think the American people understand, and I think the justices should understand, that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care. So there's not only a economic element to this, and a legal element to this, but there's a human element to this. And I hope that's not forgotten in this political debate.

In Monday's New York Times, Ross Douthat explains the devious reasoning behind the Democrats' adoption of the individual mandate: "It protected the Democratic bill on two fronts at once: buying off some of the most influential interest groups even as it hid the true cost of universal coverage."