Last December, I found myself in a conference room on the top floor of a high-rise in a major eastern city, waiting to be interviewed for a scholarship. While I waited nervously, I skimmed through a book containing the biographies of past winners. The biographies were listed chronologically.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama will inherit two wars and the worst economic conditions in three generations when he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. Ironically, that challenge might be a blessing for the president-elect — unemployment is so high and consumer confidence so low that even modest improvements will let him claim progress.

Obama also brings extraordinary assets to the task.

The president-elect enjoys high approval ratings, well-regarded Cabinet appointees and a smooth running transition operation that grew almost seamlessly from his successful campaign team. Fellow Democrats will hold solid House and Senate majorities to help move his agenda through Congress.

Last October, when the Cornell University Programming Board brought Steven Colbert to Cornell, his entrance was anything but subtle. First he roused thousands of students at 9 a.m. to buy tickets online. Then he sold 3,000 tickets in 15 minutes, selling out his scheduled performance in record time. To top it off, he performed an additional show to quell the desire of eager Cornell audience members. Attracting a crowd of about 10,000 over 2007’s First Year Family Weekend, CUPB, to say the least, started the year with a bang.

We are less than three weeks away from Elec­tion Day. In the longest presidential campaign in Amer­ican history, 15 primary candidates became two presidential hopefuls: Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. At this point in time, a typical campaign analyst would presume both platforms would have been well articulated, challenged, and disseminated in the presidential debates. But this is not a typical campaign, and that does not seem to be the case. In the midst of bemused moderators and citizens it is important to ask, what have we learned from Obama and McCain in the debates?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy could suffer a massive hangover from the government's efforts to rescue the financial system in the form of a soaring debt burden. But the alternatives look infinitely worse.

The $700 billion the administration is seeking from Congress as the upper bounds of what it will need to take a mountain of bad loans off the books of financial firms is certainly an eye-popping figure.

To get the funds to buy up the bad mortgage loans that have threatened to bring the financial system to its knees, the government will have to borrow. And that borrowing will come at a time when the federal budget deficit is already soaring.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits shot up by the largest amount since early February, a far bigger increase than had been expected.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for jobless benefits hit 337,000 last week, an increase of 28,000 from the previous week. That was the biggest one-week surge since jobless claims jumped 42,000 the week of Feb. 10.

The increase was four times larger than the gain of 6,000 that economists had been expecting and could be a sign that the labor market is starting to weaken under the impact of a severe downturn in housing and the credit crisis that jolted financial markets in August.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Americans Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson won the Nobel prize in economics on Monday for developing a theory that helps explain situations in which markets work and others in which they don't.

The three researchers "laid the foundations of mechanism design theory," which plays a central role in contemporary economics and political science, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The academy said their research helped explain decision-making procedures involved in economic transactions including, for example, what insurance policies will provide the best coverage without inviting misuse.