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Police have arrested two dozen protesters for trespassing during a demonstration against Bank of America’s foreclosure practices at the banking giant’s offices in downtown Boston.

The Boston Herald reports ( http://bit.ly/ohHrLa) that the event was an act of civil disobedience that the organizers intended to send the message that the lender’s practices were unfair.

“They wanted to be arrested, and we obliged,” Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told the newspaper Payday advance.

Organizers say about 3,000 people joined the protest.

Bank of America spokesman T.J. Crawford dismissed the demonstration as a publicity stunt.

There was no mention of Bank of America’s planned debit card fees, which recently have generated headlines and frustrated customers nationwide.

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Missouri’s community colleges have received a federal grant to train unemployed workers for health care jobs.

Officials say MoHealthWINS, fueled by a $20 million federal grant, will educate 4,600 people through the state’s 12 community colleges and Linn State Technical College. The program was announced Monday by Gov. Jay Nixon, who said it would specifically target unemployed adults seeking new careers.

The funding is provided through a grant program offered by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Among the jobs that would be targeted are certified nursing aide, licensed practical nurse, phlebotomist, pharmacy technician and medical lab technician.

Nixon supported the grant proposal, saying it would offer the state another way to boost its percentage of residents with college degrees unsecured personal loans. Following a similar national goal, Nixon is hoping to push the percentage of state residents with a degree to 60 percent from 37 percent by 2020.

It is unclear how the money will be divided among the various schools.

In the grant proposal, St. Louis Community College said it would use the money to support career counselors and boot camps.

St. Charles Community College said it would train students to work as technicians in several areas, including radiological, medical lab and hearing aid specialization.

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China’s premier says Beijing is ready to help Europe face its financial crisis but called on other governments to tackle debt problems.

Premier Wen Jiabao said Wednesday that China is ready to increase investments in Europe and he called for closer global economic cooperation. He was speaking at a business conference in the eastern city of Dalian.

Wen called on Europe, the United States and other nations to “put their own house in order,” tackle debt problems and protect foreign investors _ a reference to Beijing’s large holdings of U cash advance loan no fax.S. and other government debt.

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Humana says its second-quarter profit rose by 35 percent as the health insurer reported enrollment gains in its Medicare plans.

The Louisville-based company on Monday raised its earnings forecast for the year to a range of $7.50 to $7.60 per share, up from $6.70 to $6.90 per share.

Humana also reported growth in its health and well-being services segment from its acquisition of health care company Concentra Inc.

For the three months ended June 30, Humana earned $460.3 million, or $2 cash till payday advance.71 per share. That compares to nearly $340.1 million, or $2 per share, last year. Revenue in the just-ended quarter totaled $9.28 billion.

Adjusted income was $2.50 per share.

The performance beat Wall Street forecasts. Analysts polled by FactSet predicted earnings per share of $2.05 on $9.28 billion in revenue.

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A lengthy, blistering heat wave that is blanketing the eastern half of the United States is putting significant stress on the nation’s power grid as homeowners and businesses crank up their air conditioners.

Utilities say they’re ready for high power demand and widespread electricity shortages or outages are unlikely. Lines and equipment are not fully taxed and there is more generating and transmission capacity available than usual because of the weak economy. Also, not many major storms are in the forecast, meaning fewer downed power lines.

The heat wave began a week ago in the Plains states and is expected to spread east through the weekend. It is lasting longer than most heat waves and is spread over an unusually wide area, according to Travis Hartman, the Energy Weather Manager at MDA Earthstat, which proves forecasts for utilities and other weather-dependent businesses.

Hartman predicts 90- to 100-degree weather from Chicago to Boston from Wednesday through the weekend. The Midwest is expected to see peak heat on Thursday while thermometers in eastern states will top out on Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia may break a 1957 record of 100 degrees on Friday, while Washington, D.C., is expected to reach 103, tying a record from 1926.

Texas and the southern Plains states will extend a long streak of hot weather. On Wednesday Oklahoma was expected to suffer its 30th day of triple-digit temperatures this year.

Nationwide, Thursday and Friday will be hotter than any time since 1950, says Hartman. “It’s going to mean elevated power demand for an extended period of time for a lot of people,” he says.

To meet demand, utilities are firing up special power plants used only a few days a year, delaying scheduled maintenance in order to keep all equipment on line and testing heat-sensitive switches and other equipment with high-tech devices like thermographers that can gauge temperatures to one-tenth of a degree.

“These are the days everyone wants to have their ACs on, their computers going while they watch TV,” says Jon Jipping, Chief Operating Officer of ITC Holdings Corp., a transmission grid operator that owns grids in Iowa, Michigan and four other Midwest states. “These are the days we get ready for.”

Peak demand for most utilities usually happens on a late weekday afternoon in mid-summer. That’s when businesses are still open but people return home, turn on their air conditioners, lights and televisions and they start cooking dinner.

Problems can arise when the grid comes under maximum strain. Equipment can’t cool off, and it can’t handle as much power as usual. Lines, transformers and switches are working at full capacity and can be overwhelmed by power surges that can result from a blown piece of equipment or downed power line payday lenders.

Even drops in power demand can be perilous. When a thunderstorm drenches a big, hot city, there is a quick drop in power demand because suddenly millions of air conditioners don’t have to work so hard. When power flow changes rapidly, either because of a surge or a sudden dropoff, devices meant to prevent equipment failures could trip, cutting power to customers.

Peak summer demand can be nearly double the demand of a typical day in a mild month like April or October. The PJM Interconnection, which operates the transmission grid in parts of 13 mid-Atlantic states, hit a record peak demand of 146,082 megawatts Tuesday. That compares to a typical April peak load of 78,000 megawatts.

Utilities and grid operators have to plan for the summer peak year-round. For them, a summer heat wave is like Black Friday for a big box retailer. Customers are clamoring for service, and it is time to sell the most power at the highest rates of the year.

Power generators have fleets of small power plants that can be turned on and off relatively easily to meet demand. They are inefficient and expensive, and therefore push the wholesale price of power sharply higher. Peak summer wholesale prices can be triple the price of power during a mild-weather month.

By the end of May each year, utility emergency procedures must be finalized, equipment must be repaired and power plants prepared. Jim Meister, vice president of operations support for Exelon Nuclear, which owns 10 nuclear plants, says each plant undergoes an average of 100 maintenance activities a year to get ready for summer.

When a heat wave is predicted, alert levels are raised that slow and then stop all non-essential maintenance on the grid. Fuel is delivered to plants that may need to fire up and workers are put at the ready.

A long heat wave like this week’s can put even more stress than normal on the system. When heat waves are short, some people will put up with a sweaty day or two. But when a heat wave lasts, many people make their homes colder than normal and run air conditioners constantly.

Also, air conditioners have to work harder because the persistent heat deeply warms walls and other infrastructure, making it harder to cool rooms.

“As you get into the heat wave, the load builds even if the temperature stays the same,” says Mike Bryson, the Executive Director for systems operations at PJM.

Jonathan Fahey can be reached at www.facebook.com/Fahey.Jonathan

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The head of the Royal Navy warned Monday that the British fleet off Libya will be unable to maintain its scale of operations without cutbacks elsewhere if the mission drags on until the end of the year.

Adm. Mark Stanhope said in a briefing that he was comfortable with NATO’s decision to extend the Libya operation to the end of September. Beyond that, he said, the government would need to make “challenging decisions.”

“If we do it longer than six months we will have to reprioritize forces,” he said.

Meanwhile, a senior NATO official said that if the alliance’s intervention in Libya’s civil war continues, the issue of resources will become “critical.”

Gen. Stephane Abrial, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told reporters during a NATO conference in Serbia that “at this stage the forces engaged do have the means necessary to conduct the operation.”

But he noted that “if the operation were to last long, of course, the resource issue will become critical.”

“If additional resources are needed, this of course will need a political decision,” he said.

The comments come amid concerns about mounting costs for the Libya campaign _ and its lack of a clear endgame. Britain has a destroyer, a minehunter, an assault ship with four Apache jets, and a submarine engaged off the coast of Libya.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered an unusual public rebuke to the United States’ European allies, saying NATO’s shaky operations in Libya exposed the alliance’s shortcomings and opened the “real possibility of collective military irrelevance.” Gates called on members to look at new ways of raising combat capabilities in procurement, training and logistics.

Britain is carrying out steep spending cuts intended to cut the country’s budget deficit. The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and its Harrier jump jets were scrapped _ a decision that has made it more difficult for Britain to operate in the Libyan mission.

Had the Ark Royal remained in place, the Harrier jets could have been deployed in 20 minutes, rather than the 90 minutes taken to send Tornado and Typhoon aircraft from a base in Italy.

But Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Britain had shown it had the resources to play its part in the NATO operation.

Fox said in a statement that Britain’s leading role in the Libya operation showed it remained a “leading military power.”

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Mexico central bank Governor Agustin Carstens will be presented as a candidate for managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the Finance Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.

The process to choose a new leader at the IMF should be “open, transparent and based on merit,” the ministry said. Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero will present Carstens’ candidacy, the statement said. The government will likely nominate Carstens tomorrow, said Ricardo Ochoa, head of international affairs at the ministry, in a phone interview.

With Carsten’s nomination, Mexico joined Australia, China and other nations in calling for the new managing director of the lender to be chosen because of merit and not the convention that the position should go only to Europeans. Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said May 22 the position shouldn’t be “limited” to any one nation or continent.

The Washington-based fund plans to complete its search for a managing director by June 30 to replace Dominque Strauss-Kahn who was indicted May 19 in New York on charges including attempted rape. Carstens served as deputy managing director of the fund from 2003 to 2006.

Carstens became central bank governor in January 2010 after Guillermo Ortiz stepped down. Carstens, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, served as finance minister starting in 2006, where he led the nation’s response to the global financial crisis. Mexico was the first nation to request a flexible credit line from the IMF, a mechanism to help support economies seeking strong macroeconomic policies.

Voting Power

Mexico leads a group of eight countries with 117,045 votes, or 4.66 percent of the total IMF voting power, according to the multilateral lender’s website faxless pay day loans. The group is the seventh largest, measured by voting power, behind the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the U.K. and 10 nations led by Belgium.

Carstens, a Chicago Cubs baseball fan, led Mexico’s response to the global financial crisis as finance minister since 2006. As chief economist for the central bank from 1994 to 1999, he co-wrote a paper in which he pushed for market participants to have broader access to central bank data. Under Carstens, the central bank published the minutes of policy meetings for the first time this year.

Flexible Credit

The IMF renewed and boosted Mexico’s flexible credit line to $72 billion in January, replacing the one-year $48 billion facility. Mexico first sought the line in 2009 to bolster confidence in the economy, which contracted the most since 1995 that year. Colombia and Poland were the only other two nations to enter similar agreements with the IMF, which the lender said were reserved for nations with strong economic policies.

The economy grew 5.5 percent last year, the fastest growth in 10 years, and may expand as much as 5 percent this year, Carstens said on May 11. Policy makers boosted their forecast for growth this year without changing their forecast for inflation of 3 percent to 4 percent. Annual inflation slowed to 3.36 in April, near the 5-year low set in March and half that of Brazil. The central bank has a target of 3 percent inflation.

Mexico has been buying as much as $600 million dollars monthly through dollar options since March 2010, boosting foreign reserves rose to a record $125.8 billion this year, according to the central bank.

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Nuclear officials say repairs to monitoring equipment have revealed greater than expected damage at one of Japan’s troubled reactors that could delay a resolution to the crisis.

They said Thursday the findings indicate it is likely that partially melted fuel rods inside Unit 1 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had fallen to the bottom of pressure vessel and possibly into the larger containment vessel soon after the March 11 quake and tsunami.

Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency officials say that there was no danger that the chunks of fuel were still hot or that they could melt through the concrete base of the reactor.

They also said the water level in the unit’s core was much lower than previously thought, although temperatures remained far below dangerous levels.

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The first foreign leader to tour Japan’s tsunami-ravaged coast, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressed shock and sorrow at the devastation and visited evacuees at a shelter Saturday, giving toy koalas and kangaroos to excited children.

Walking through a fishing village where hundreds of people are dead and missing, she said Minamisanriku looked as if it had been “bombed into oblivion.”

Mayor Jin Sato showed her the red skeleton of the disaster management building where he was standing when the mammoth wave ripped off its shell March 11. Exterior stairwells were ripped from the walls. A small shrine of flowers had been created on a mound of rubble.

“It’s a scene of incredible tragedy and incredible sorrow,” Gillard said on the last day of a four-day trip here.

More than 27,000 people are dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands are living in shelters after an estimated 90,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.

Recovery efforts have been complicated by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where the tsunami wiped out power and cooling systems. Workers have struggled to stop radiation leaks, and the utility says bringing the plant fully under control may take all year.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that 30 workers at the plant had exceeded the former limit of radiation exposure. That limit, 100 millisieverts a year, was raised amid the crisis to 250 millisieverts. None of the workers had yet reached that limit, the company said.

Leaks from the plant reactors have stabilized somewhat since the early days of the crisis, but some interior spaces in the quake- and tsunami-damaged buildings still have such high radiation levels the workers are not able to enter them no faxing 1 hour payday loans.

A few hundred workers have toiled in rotating shifts at the plant since the disaster started, most of them middle-age men employed by TEPCO or affiliated companies. TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said managers have been instructed to closely watch employees who are nearing radiation limits; measures that might be taken include moving workers from the riskiest tasks, such as clearing radioactive debris, to jobs indoors, such as clerical duties.

Workers in the U.S. nuclear industry are allowed an upper limit of 50 millisieverts per year. A typical individual might absorb 6 millisieverts a year from natural and manmade sources such as X-rays.

Radiation specialists say cumulative doses of 500 millisieverts have been shown to raise risks of future cancers. Evidence is less clear on smaller amounts, but in theory, any increased radiation exposure raises cancer risks.

Radiation sickness, which develops from acute exposure, sets in at 1,000 millisieverts. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting and hair loss.

The workers also face health problems due to fatigue and stress of working in the harsh environment, a doctor who spoke to them said this week. He said the workers have insomnia, dehydration and high blood pressure and are at risk of developing depression or heart trouble.

Meanwhile, Japan’s railway company announced that bullet train service from Tokyo to the Sendai, the biggest city in the quake zone, would resume on Monday. Parts of the route had been restored earlier, but Monday is the first day the route is fully operational.

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If you’re an active Bell home phone customer and you live in an urban area, you’re entitled to get a $67.41 rebate cheque. Eligible customers were notified last November.

 I’ve heard from a half dozen people who asked about the Bell rebates. One man called to tell me that only half his friends opened their letters. The other half threw them out, dreading to get yet another frenzied sales pitch.

A young blogger came close to recycling the envelope unopened, showing a widespread aversion to Ma Bell’s high-pressure marketing tactics.

Sheila, a retiree, wondered if the cheque was legitimate. "By cashing it, will I have engaged in the law of contract and have to buy some package? I am suspicious at how they have linked it with other ‘offers.’ But at the same time I can’t afford to throw money away."

In an earlier campaign, Bell tried to get customers to trade off their $67.41 rebate for a $100 saving on a service, subject to a two-year contract. I wrote about it here.

Spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis said the envelope was Bell branded and had a message, "Important Account Information" clearly written on the front of it, above the name and address window low fee pay day loans. If you have misplaced your cheque, you should call 310-Bell, she advises.

I’m not eligible, alas, even though I overpaid Bell during the period in question. I switched to another provider before the deadline of Aug. 31, 2010.

Meanwhile, those who became Bell customers last year — say Aug. 1, 2010 — are getting rebates even if they weren’t responsible for contributing the excess funds.

If you don’t like the system, complain to the regulator. The CRTC ordered refunds to customers of Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Telus and MTS, whose money went into a reserve account.

I always cringe when people tell me they throw out letters from companies they deal with before reading them. You can’t assume something is junk mail without making sure what it contains.

And in this case, you could be foregoing enough money to treat yourself to a nice meal or buy a new pair of shoes. The Bell tolls for you, so make sure to answer the call.

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