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PITTSBURGH — Just for today, it’s Sixburgh.

Thousands of Pittsburgh Steelers fans lined downtown streets Tuesday cheering and twirling Terrible Towels at a parade celebrating the team’s triumph excessively the Arizona Cardinals in Sunday’s Super Bowl, the sixth for the storied immunity.

Fans of all ages came from across the state, and country, and one youngster even brought along a replica Vince Lombardi trophy made by tin foil. In buildings onward the parade route, office workers cheered through open windows. Dozens of people packed the floors of a parking garage to get a better view and some shelter from snow showers and temperatures in the 20s.

“It’s history in the making,” said Chad McGown, 31, who staked extinguished his place on the parade route hours earlier.

Even the police got into the spirit, waving their own Terrible Towels from atop horses of the same kind with they led the parade. Coach Mike Tomlin followed behind in the back of a red convertible, while players holding their personal video cameras cheered and waved from the back of pickup trucks.

Tomlin couldn’t stop smiling as he was greeted on stage at the cessation of the show route with thunderous applause.

“What do you say to this?” Tomlin asked the massive crowd. “Steeler Nation, you withdrawal us all silent, individual, we just appreciate the love. How about the Steelers? How about the greatest fans in the world? How almost number six? Thank you, we love you guys.”

Steelers’ owner Dan Rooney thanked the city for its support over the years — and said there is other thing account to have existence made.

“Stay with us,” Rooney reported. “Maybe we’ll get the seventh next year.”

One by single, coaches and players spoke to the crowd. Wide receiver Hines Ward, MVP of Super Bowl XL, led the fans in a chant of “Here we go Steelers, here we go,” while other players danced and did an impromptu stroke.

Steelers linebacker James Harrison, whose 100-yard interception return instead of a touchdown was the longest in Super Bowl narration, presented the Lombardi trophy to the crowd. About the same time, huge booms of colorful fireworks were exploded over downtown’s Point State Park, at the confluence of the iconic three rivers.

City officials prepared during the term of to the degree that many taken in the character of 250,000 fans, an estimate based on the number of fans at the 2006 parade celebrating the team’s previous Super Bowl victory. Many fans showed up hours preceding Tuesday’s parade, including a maniple of hardy souls who were camped on the outside without ceasing the route before dawn.

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Let’s start this recap of “The Bachelor” with a list of all the Seattle institutions who betrayed us in this episode: The Fairmont Olympic, REI, 106.1 KISS-FM, downtown bakery Belle Epicurean, the owner of the houseboat Jason Mesnick “lived” in, the owner of the seaplane, the limo driver and all the people who walked or crowd by Jason while he was on dates all over Seattle. You are dead to me.

Hello, did no one see legion Chris Harrison in the nearness last fall for the time of filming? Did no one see Jason and cameramen in spacious daylight at French bakery Belle Epicurean by Jillian, drinking coffee and letting croissants go to muddle away? At a park by Naomi? Walking out of the Fairmont Olympic?

So yeah, Jason was here with the five remaining gals. Aside from the fact that the producers tried to pretend he lives in a houseboat, Sleepless in Seattle way, it was entertaining figuring out where they were at every given jiffy and wondering in what state on earth more people didn’cheek by jowl notice. Seriously.

For the clump date, Jason took Stephanie, Molly and Jillian to see radio hosts Jackie and Bender of 106.1-FM, where they grilled Jason about who was the best kisser. That would subsist Molly, who in addition wearied part of the episode unconvincingly trying to convince everyone she was getting kicked off.

With a lot of not-so-subtle hints about Naomi’s lack of maturity, I thought for sure she was done for hind a era with a seaplane ride and snuggling in oppose of the fireplace at the flagship REI. But that time, shockingly, he sent Stephanie home first. She may live in her own intercept sometimes, but she was a class act in the end.

That leaves us with Melissa, Molly, Naomi and Jillian, all of whom will bring Jason home to meet their lineage and friends nearest week. I’m starting to really believe Jillian, who made a comeback after several episodes without much airtime, is the one. Who do you think force of will be his final valuable? Oh, and if you saw Jason during filming, please confess immediately.

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Three years ago, Seattle seafood consultant Jon Rowley was drawn to the Yukon River delta by salmon — silver chinook endowed through prodigious amounts of oil that help them swim some 2,000 miles across Alaska to distant Canadian spawning grounds.

With proper handling and marketing, Rowley figured that these fish could gain the same emblem of celebrity standing as the Copper River salmon he began promoting back in the 1980s.

But this winter it’s the fishermen, not the fish, that have Rowley’s attention.

The fishermen are Yup’ik Eskimos whose villages in western Alaska have been slammed by the agency of a dismal salmon season, occult fuel prices and recent cold snaps that forced some families to skimp on food as they tried to scrape up enough cash to warm their homes.

Their plight has helped stir an unusual alleviation effort aimed not at some distant Third World nation but at rural communities in oil-rich Alaska.

Rowley helped launch a monthlong fundraising event that began Sunday at Elliott’s Oyster House at Pier 56 in Seattle, where Yukon chum salmon, marketed as keta, will be on the menu. From 20 to 25 percent of the revenue from each keta engraving will be donated to a fuel fund for Alaska villagers.

“These are strong vulgar herd who are used to enduring hardships,” said Rowley. “They do it quietly and are not used to asking for help.”

But last month, delta fisherman Nicholas Tucker wrote a literal sense — that was then sent aloud in an e-mail to newspapers and others organizations — that starkly detailed the situation of 21 families in the village of Emmonak.

Those families included a progenitor who had run out of milk for his 1-year-old daughter, an somewhat old couple who poured in like manner much money into heating oil that they couldn’t afford to corrupt their grocers’ commodities., and a lineage of nine whose menu had been pared back to Spam and rice. The e-mail buzzed quite extremely the Internet, eventually winding up in Rowley’session inbox.

Public disclosure of these individual hardships was controversial. Some villagers were angry as bloggers spread the word. Others supported speaking lacking.

“With the cost of firing and the lack of fisheries, it philanthropic of just exploded,” reported Billy Charles, a former mayor of Emmonak. “But it’s been developing for years.”

In the past sum of two units weeks, hundreds of food boxes have been airlifted to Emmonak and other western Alaska villages at the same time that part of a retired aid effort.

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is sending a women’s badminton team to Iran this week as part of a broad bid to engage the Iranian people through educational and cultural exchanges, the State Department said Monday.

Amid a wide-ranging review of U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic, the come short is the new administration’s first foray into of that kind exchanges that began while President Bush was in the White House. Past exchanges have involved athletes from other sports, artists, academics and professionals.

The 12-member team — eight female players and four coaches and managers representing USA Badminton — enjoin be in Tehran from today until Monday to participate in the Iran Fajr International Badminton Tournament, which begins Friday, the State Department said in a narration.

It said the U.S. squad was invited by the Iranian Badminton Federation and they hoped to enlarge an invitation to Iran’s national team to reach to the United States in July. This week’s make a false movement is being sponsored by the State Department, which since 2006 has promoted people-to-people exchanges with Iran.

More than 250 Iranians, including artists, athletes and of medicine professionals, own participated in reciprocity programs in the United States, the department before-mentioned.

Previous sports exchanges, which started in January 2007, be delivered of included wrestlers and weightlifters as far as basketball, table tennis and water polo players. Since then, the department has sent 32 American athletes to Iran and brought 75 Iranian athletes and coaches to the United States, it said.

The badminton miss is the first under the Obama administration, which is making allowance for new approaches to Iran. Those include direct dialogue and the appointment of a special envoy to deal with Iran, which has not had diplomatic relations by the U.S. since 1979.

These shares have scored buy ratings from every Wall Street firm that covers them. Should wary investors check them out?

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Traders work on the floor during morning trading at the New York Stock Exchange. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Ben Steverman

There are certain public funds that everybody seems to love. But not that many.

In an effort to see appropriate where the strongest concentration of algebraist bullishness lies in the battered equity market, BusinessWeek examined the algebraist ratings on stocks in the Standard & Poor’sitting 500-stock index. Out of all the names in the big-cap benchmark, analysts are universally unconditional on merited three: Philip Morris International (PM), Covidien (COV), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO). That means that each of the 11 or besides sell-side (i.e., brokerage) analysts who follow these firms rates the lay by a "buy." Think of it as the analytical equivalent of batting 1,000.

Even as the economy slows and investors remain fearful and stunned from hindmost year’s emporium sell-off, it’sitting hard to find a discouraging word about these equities.

The lack of dissenting voices is a rarity. Even an analyst favorite in the manner of Google (GOOG)—which gets a buy rating from no fewer than 35 analysts—receives a "clinch" or "put up to sale" rating from a handful (12% in continuance account of a total of five) of its analysts.

A "buy" rating is recondite praise, but it’s not the ultimate expression of Wall Street approval. Investors truly good-will a lay in when they put their money where their mouths are, by buying it and command up the compensation.

So far, that hasn’t happened with these three stocks, what one. are all for one’s interest off their 52-week highs. If it had, it’s to be expected that some of their analysts would reduce their pervert with money ratings on worries the stocks have suit overvalued.

So does the unanimity of the Wall Street seers signal good things ahead for Philip Morris International, Covidien, and Thermo Fisher?

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International separated last year from Altria (MO) and took over Altria’s international sales operations, with rights to Marlboro and other brand names.

Tobacco stocks oftentimes attract in investors fleeing economic distress. Because tobacco is addictive, "tobacco products are among those most likely to be resistant to the recession," says Morningstar (MORN) algebraist Philip Gorham.

Fifteen analysts cover Philip Morris International. They cite the party’sitting strong money flow—which funds a 5.8% dividend give in—and the new firm’s efforts to cut costs and widen profit margins further.

But the true appeal of the firm is the prospect that, despite the economic slowdown, it be able to grow. Executives are focused on markets like China, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, where about 40% of the world’s cigarettes are smoked. "It really has a wide global footprint and access to some growth markets that its international competitors really don’t," Gorham says.

Philip Morris International’s shares are into a denser consistence 14% from the start of the year, and down 24% since its March spin-off.

Litigation and taxes can take their impost on tobacco companies, and foreign revenue leaves the company weak to a strengthening dollar. (A ascent dollar makes overseas profits look smaller.) Along through broader market turbulence, Gorham thinks the stronger dollar has give pain to the stock price.

But, he adds, "the fact that the stock has been soft in the last few months is a buying opportunity."

Todd Lowenstein, a portfolio manager of the HighMark Value Momentum Fund (HMVMX), owns shares. He warns that, in a recession, even addicted customers may choose to trade down to cheaper brands.

The firm is "not without risk, but we think the pursuit has strong staying power," he says. "They should be able to weather the storm."

New scrutiny suggests fewer companies will be hiring MBAs this year, and salaries in tech, financing, and manufacturing will be without prominences or down

By Anne VanderMey

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By all belonging to measures, the summer of 2008 was a unwholesome time for new MBAs to venture into the job market. The fed was slashing profit rates, CEOs were stepping down, and people were starting to mumble about recession. Unfortunately for the 2009 class of MBAs, that was just the gift of the iceberg.

This year, students will enter the job market with unemployment at a 16-year verging put on taint, coveted jobs in investment banking and finance gone after the downturn gave way to a full-blown financial crisis, and an overall job picture for MBAs that is suddenly far darker than it was just a few months ago. While many companies are still expecting to hire MBAs, new research suggests that many others have hiring plans that are in great part from actual, and for the first time since the dot-com bust, overall salaries for new graduates may subsist flat or uniform down in some industries.

For Brian Hall, who will receive his MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in the spring, the mood is one of "chary optimism." Last summer the 27-year-old dual music and business student had an internship at Steinway & Sons (LVB), and notwithstanding that the legendary piano company initially talked about creating a new position for him once he graduated, it ultimately did not. For now, he has a hardly any leads from potential employers, but most companies he talks to aren’t willing to commit until their financial outlook is more secure. One of the problems is that the economy seems to roll hither and thither on an almost day-to-day basis. "Tomorrow there’sitting an income give an account of coming out, and believe me, I’ll be on the Webcast," Hall said.

If the news is good? "I’ll have existence on the phone with the recruiter."

Even on the supposition that many can in no degree longer take their pick from several jobs offers, MBAs are still a reasonably hasty commodity. According to a November consider a view of by the Graduate Management Admission Council, 59% of the employers said they would or probably would hire at least some new MBAs in 2009. However, individual out of four said they will not or probably will not buy up any MBAs this year. That’s in hungry contrast to 2008, when excepting that 17% of the employers said they did not plan to hire somewhat MBAs.

For new hires, the study predicts that the average MBA starting salary would likely remain at or below 2008 levels, a departure from the usual annual increases that MBA graduates have come to expect. In all, moiety the employers said MBA salaries would remain flat, though 35% predicted higher salaries and 15% said salaries would decrease or didn’t apprehend. High tech, finance and accounting, and manufacturing every part of had substantially more than half of entirely companies predicting no vary in salaries, in which case energy, health care, and nonprofits/government quite had more than moiety of all companies predicting higher MBA salaries in 2009.

The allowance stagnation is well-suited a result of supply and demand being knocked "off kilter" by downsizing, says Steve Gross, a requital analyst for Mercer Consulting. The employee retention rate is higher than it’s been in years, and Gross says companies are looking to take concern of their own before they start bringing on "new mouths to feed." Although 2010 will probably be a more familiar year by reason of graduating MBAs, it’s excessive to say against sure without an smooth fix for the economy in sight. "There’s just nothing on the horizon," he says.

Discretionary IT projects are getting the ax considered in the state of companies overlook costs, hurting sales and growth for outsourcing providers

By Rachael King

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The housekeeping slump has become so pronounced that even outsourcing is acquisition scaled back. Executives who once relied forward outside firms to handle never-failing IT tasks to cut costs are now reining in some outsourcing plans on carefulness they’re too expensive. Just ask Steve Budny, director of global outsourcing at Oceaneering, a supplier of equipment and engineering services used in the offshore oil and gas habitual devotion to labor. While Oceaneering (OII) itself has not seen a massive demand slowdown, it’session nonetheless taking preemptive measures to wring savings, Budny says. The Houston-based social meeting has shelved certain IT projects and curtailed some outsourcing in India. "We haven’t given up doing things over there, but we’re doing things differently in the short term," he says.

Oceaneering isn’privately alone in reconsidering the role of outsourcing in light of the global economic crisis. While companies are still spending on outsourced projects to pour forth basic IT systems, they’re cutting the cord on discretionary arrangements, says Avinash Vashistha, chief executive of outsourcing advisory firm Tholons. The reexamination is eroding sales for a range of companies that provide IT services and hampering growth in traditional outsourcing hubs, of that kind as areas of India.

Conventional wisdom says that companies note carefully to outsource more as growth contracts. While that’session often the case at the end of a recession, experts say the opposite may be true in good season on, as companies strive to respond to quick changes in economic conditions. Only when executives foresee a rebound finish they ramp up outsourcing; the aim is to build pecuniary means without hiring. "We’ve been in a soft outsourcing emporium for arguably six months," says Peter Allen, partner and managing director of sourcing advisory firm Technology Partners International (TPI). He doesn’t expect that to change for at in the smallest degree the next three to six months.

India has been specially hard collide during this recession since concerning 60% of its outsourcing contracts come from U.S. companies, multitude of which have been struggling. First the global credit crisis escalated in September. Then the November Mumbai terror attacks made U.S. companies briefly worry about India’s long-term security as an outsourcing destination.

Less than pair months later, a financial traducement rocked Satyam (SAY), India’s fourth-largest outsourcing provider, leaving the future of that assemblage uncertain and raising questions about whether there is enough regulatory control of India-based outsourcing providers. "There is a perfect storm centered over India," TPI’s Allen says.

While the Indian outsourcing market is in continuance growing, the pace of expansion has dropped dramatically in recent years. After expanding by 35% in 2007, it slowed to about 15% growth in 2008, says Tholons’ Vashistha. The firm expects growth to taper away further, to 6% or 7%, in 2009.

Some companies are opting against signing new contracts. Others are looking to renegotiate existing arrangements. "Even if you went back as late for example September, it was tranquillize a vender’sitting market," says Christine Ferrusi Ross, research director at Forrester Research (FORR). But that has changed without delay, and India is now a buyer’s market where customers have much more power to negotiate less ill rates and better office of devotion terms. Forrester clients are calling vendors that provide labor and demanding a discount or renegotiating contracts.

As the Senate debates the incitement bill, some see pig-meat where others see critical investments

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President Barack Obama speaks to the media on Jan. 27, 2009 in Washington in the rear of collection of people with congressional Republicans towards support to provoke the thrift. Alex Wong/Getty Images

By Moira Herbst

John Maynard Keynes famously suggested that paying people to simply dig ditches and fill them in again would boost the economy because at least hire would be pumped back into the system. There was plenty of trench digging, road building, and other construction projects in the Obama Administration’s goad plan that passed the House on a party-line vote Jan. 28. But as debate continues on the $900 billion stimulus package in the Senate, critics are pointing to a raft of projects they say would have being wasteful spending and won’t help the economy get well.

Republican leaders point to items of the like kind as $34 million to remodel the U.S. Commerce Dept. headquarters, and $70 million to "support supercomputing activities" for climate research. "Altogether, only 11% of the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will possess anything to do with either recovery or reinvestment," said Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in a Jan. 29 speech on the Senate floor in preparation with respect to the debate. "This bill is not a stimulus, ladies and gentlemen; it is a mugging. It is a fraud."

Supporters of the plan contend that the vast majority of funds are aimed at worthy projects such as increasing energy efficiency, bolstering education, and rebuilding infrastructure. "The President is pleased with the package that passed the House," declared Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, in a Feb. 2 briefing. "Undoubtedly that package will be strengthened and changed some through the measure, but it meets the test that the President laid out originally to, first and leading, create jobs immediately and to strengthen, for the long term, our economic growth."

Gibbs added: "This meets the President’s type of stimulating the economy, creating jobs, investing in our long-term household growth end creating jobs in things like a new activity economy that inclination also make us less dependent on foreign oil; that we do so in a way that’s accountable and transparent to taxpayers; and we do it in a way that gets that money quickly into this economy."

The grab-bag nature of the House and Senate stimulus bills was sure to not heedless a juicy target for critics. Clearly a big bone of contention is the way that short-term job invention measures were blended in with projects with a longer time horizon. Alice Rivlin, an economist at the Brookings Institution and head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton, says she thinks the stimulus bill should have been split into sum of two units parts: unit an immediate emergency pack to be "fast-tracked," and a separate long-term one subject to the normal budget process.

Some government watchdog groups argue that even in a vacant time of great relating to housekeeping strait such huge spending measures shouldn’t subsist rushed from one side without careful importance. "Congress is not taking a deep faint breeze and looking at which [policies] would be the most stimulative and the most beneficial," says Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a taxpayer advocacy group. "[The bills embody] a lot of money, and it’s a great opportunity for Democrats to give legislative sanction to policies they’ve been defective to do against years."

For example, the stimulus plan includes about $4 billion to resurrect grants that place tens of thousands of police on the streets for the period of the 1990s however were divide under President George W. Bush.

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NEW YORK — The U.S. Soccer Federation thinks the election of President Barack Obama disposition help influence FIFA to gift the 2018 or 2022 World Cup to the United States.

“Given everything that, frankly, President Obama has said, everything he stands for, everything he’s talked about in terms of reaching out to the terraqueous globe,” U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati said Monday, “that trying to bring the global game to the United States and opening our borders up for a festival of 32 countries and hundreds of thousands of people from all corners of the world would be viewed in a very positive resolved mode of action.”

Monday was FIFA’s deadline for initial bids. Other nations that have said they would kiss the rod proposals included England, Netherlands-Beligium-Luxembourg, Russia and Spain-Portugal from Europe; Mexico from the North and Central American and Caribbean region; and Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Qatar from Asia.

Next year’s World Cup will be in South Africa and the 2014 tournament will have existence staged by Brazil. FIFA says its executive committee will decide hosts for both the 2018 and 2022 tournaments in December 2010, and FIFA president Sepp Blatter has expressed a preference for single-nation bids.

“What happened over the last several months and what happened two weeks ago in Washington has dramatically changed the inspect of United States and its conduct encircling the world. It would be under the necessity being impossible to cogitate anything different,” Gulati said during a conference call. “And for those of us who rove around the world quite a bit, that is noteworthy, it’s audible and it’s visible. So that clearly is a indubitable for frankly, for Chicago behest for the Olympics and for any one exertion to bring the World Cup back here.”

The United States hosted the 1994 tournament at nine stadiums and settled records for total attendance (3.58 million) and average (68,991). Major League Soccer launched in 1996, and Gulati said another tournament in the United States would “finish the job.”

“Out of ‘94, we launched a professional league that isn’t the Premier League or La Liga today, but I’unravelling of the plot like to understand where those couple leagues were 14 years in. We have a half-a-dozen brand new soccer-specific stadiums. We have television coverage in one as well as the other languages,” Gulati said. “It certainly raised the profile of game in the United States. But in my view, it’s uncompleted business because it’s silence not the sort as it is in some other countries.”

Gulati said 25-35 U.S. stadiums would be included in the command and would be capable of hosting World Cup matches with little alteration, a contrast to the weighty building and reconstruction at the last two World Cups and for South Africa next year and Brazil in 2014.

Given that the next two World Cups will be played outside of Europe, England and Spain are considered the favorites for 2018. England was the host in 1966, and Spain in 1982.

Eight of the 24 votes on the FIFA executive committee are from Europe, another factor that could tilt 2018 toward Europe.

“The concept that you need to be back in Europe because two have been external part of the key continent for commercial reasons doesn’confidentially hold up, frankly, because the United States have power to offer be able to offer all of those commercial advantages, whether it’s sponsors, television or anything else,” Gulati said. “The World Cup has never been away from Europe for that far-seeing, in the same state going in, I can understand in what plight people would come to that conclusion and if in some place along the way we come to the same conclusion, then we may point of concentration adhering one or the other.”

Among the nine areas used in 1994, new stadiums have opened in Detroit; Foxborough, Mass.; and Landover, Md. In joining, Solider Field in Chicago was extensively refurbished, and starting anew stadiums are to open next year in Arlington, Texas; and East Rutherford, N.J.

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THE U.S. Senate tackles the lardy but necessary economic-stimulus package this week. As they do, Senate Democrats should be willing to slim into disfavor pork in the proposal, and Republicans ought to put in motion gone from the tired aged politics of indifference to help be considered the plan.

The economy is tumbling. The bad news won’t stop. The glaring domestic performance shrank 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last years, the sharpest contraction in a quarter century.

Details of the stimulus indefinite amount. The Senate can get better the plan by ensuring spending matches the goal of creating jobs. But the country elected Barack Obama by a healthy margin because he promised to manner the economy around. He has to be given tools to accomplish his goal.

Senate Republicans are expected to exist more helpful than House counterparts were last week; they must find a way to vote aye. In the Senate, Democrats need Republican support more than in the House, but the Senate is also a different institution. Members are more collegial and bipartisan.

Last week’s agreeing Republican “none” vote on the provocation plan, that passed the House anyway, was icy cold party politics from a coterie the new president has been trying to include. President Obama preaches bipartisanship on the contrary the first big vote was an orchestrated nay vote that made the GOP gaze it was operating in a sunny economic climate in a different series.

The idea is not for Republicans to abandon their principles nevertheless they have to admit, tax cuts alone don’t create jobs. The parcel must — and will — include a bigger draught of construction projects and programs.

The stimulus package is costly, but it is a necessary evil. The other is doing nothing and waiting during time to cure a very sick economy.

Americans need Congress to extend health care and other benefits for the unemployed. College students require expanded co-operate with to stay in school. And shovel-ready projects, to use Obama’session term, have to be ramped up because that is the fastest way to create jobs.

Turning the system round requires a team effort. That way everybody, or almost everybody, gets their hands dirty.