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0 Comments | USA TODAY, July, 2009 | by Kathy Chu

Despite massive government efforts to bolster the credit market, banks are pulling back severely on card lending.

In the first four months of the year — the latest data — banks issued 9.8 million new credit cards, a 38% drop from the same time last year, according to Equifax credit bureau data. Low-risk borrowers can still get credit, but they’re getting less than before. The average limit on a new card, after rising during the recession, has slipped 3% this year to $4,594.

That’s discouraging for those who want to see banks pumping liquidity into the economy. “The credit engine needs a tuneup,” says Jim Powers, an Equifax assistant vice president.

While it’s not surprising that banks are pulling back on unsecured loans as card defaults and…

Shape, May, 2009

Rosacea is on the rise in women of color. “But because the most obvious symptom is persistent redness across the nose and cheeks, it’s often overlooked in dark-skinned patients or misdiagnosed as lupus, which is marked by a red, butterfly-shaped rash in the center of the face,” says Valerie Callender, M.D., a dermatologist in Mitchellville, Maryland.

“Unlike lupus, though, rosacea also comes with inflammation, which causes pigment changes in deeper skin tones.” Catching these fluctuations can help doctors make a proper diagnosis. To camouflage ruddiness, smooth on Nicole Paxson Zerene Pudding SPF 29 ($39; nicolepaxson.com).

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Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Jul 28, 2009 by Tomari Quinn

By Tim Hrenchir

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten will have a vote next month when the city’s governing body adopts a 2010 budget.

Bunten learned Monday that the office of city attorney Jackie Williams had reached that conclusion, he told city council members at an evening meeting of their budget committee of the whole.

Bunten, Topeka’s mayor since 2005, previously had no vote on the budget under the city council-manager form of government that took effect the month he took office.

But after a district judge ruled in February that the council lacked the power it had been exercising to override a mayoral veto, Topekans voted April 7 to approve a charter ordinance that restored the council’s override power. The measure also gave the mayor, who already had a vote on charter ordinances, the right to vote on any legislation state law defines as requiring a majority vote of the “governing body.”

Bunten expressed frustration last Friday that the city attorney’s office hadn’t given him an answer as to whether he consequently had a vote or a veto on the 2010 budget. But he said he had learned Monday that Williams concluded the mayor has a vote — but not a veto — when the 10-person governing body adopts a budget by majority vote on Aug. 18.

Bunten and council members at Monday’s meeting discussed city manager Norton’s Bonaparte’s proposed 2010 budget, which in its current form would increase the city’s property tax mill levy by 1.85 mills.

The governing body voted last week to set a ceiling that would allow for both the city and the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority to raise their levies next year by 1.85 mills