US reporter held by Venezuelan authorities

A Miami Herald journalist was being held for a second night by Venezuelan authorities after he was detained by security forces while reporting on the country's economic crisis.Jim Wyss, the newspaper's Andean bureau chief, was detained Thursday by the National Guard in San Cristobal, a western city near the border with Colombia that is the center of a vibrant black market by Venezuelans seeking to circumvent rigid currency controls. The Herald said in a story on its website that Venezuelan journalists reported seeing him in custody but were barred from approaching him."We are very concerned alligator shear," the Herald's Executive Editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez Marques said in a statement. "There doesn't seem to be any basis for his detention and we're trying to figure out what's going on."

Authorities haven't provided any information about Wyss's detention, his whereabouts or whether he is facing charges. Nor did President Nicolas Maduro mention the case during a four-hour televised speech Friday night.The Inter American Press Association, in joining the Herald's call for the reporter's immediate release, said in a statement that he had been transferred Friday to Caracas and was being held in solitary confinement.Wyss, who is based in Bogota and has made many trips to Venezuela, traveled to San Cristobal to report on next month's municipal elections,alligator shear which are taking place amid an economic crisis marked by 54 percent inflation and shortages of staples such as milk and toilet paper.

Maduro blames hoarding and speculation by the private sector, and accuses right-wing agitators and the U.S. government of waging an "economic war" to destabilize his government. However, economists say that only scrapping the decade-old controls imposed by the late Hugo Chavez can curb a sharp slide in the currency's value on the black market.Journalists have encountered harassment before while reporting on the crisis. Last week, three reporters for Caracas newspaper Diario 2001 were detained, and one allegedly beaten by police,skin analyzer after witnessing a group of frenzied shoppers break through a barricade to receive a government-provided Christmas food basket.

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Richie Incognito's off-field troubles often fueled by alcohol

As more details of his past behavior emerge, there is growing evidence that many of the decisions that wrecked Incognito's reputation, and possibly his career, were made while impaired.The most notorious example: The profanity-laced and racially charged voicemail he left on Jonathan Martin's phone. The message has become Exhibit A in the case that Incognito, at the very least, emotionally abused his teammate."I don't think it was a secret that Richie liked to go out and have a good time," Dolphins offensive tackle Tyson Clabo said. "And I'm sure that we've all gone out alligator shear and had a few too many and called somebody and don't even remember what we said on the voicemail."Now, the sum of his poor decisions ― which allegedly includes groping a woman with a golf club at a team outing ― has put Incognito and the Dolphins squarely in the crosshairs.

Martin has hired powerhouse attorney David Cornwell, who late Thursday accused Dolphins players of "harassment that went far beyond the traditional locker room hazing." Plus, there's the NFL investigation, which threatens to expose the team's dirtiest secrets.Special counsel Ted Wells will meet with Martin in Los Angeles late next week, ESPN first reported Friday. Those plans appear to be tentative, however, as a league source said nothing has been made official yet.Wells will include Martin's testimony in his final report on alleged locker room misconduct,alligator shear which will be made public. There is no timeline for how long the inquiry will take.

The sad irony for the Dolphins is that they weren't exactly sold on bringing Incognito back to the team this year, and most didn't see a future for him here beyond the current season.During offseason planning, they considered parting ways with Incognito but ultimately decided they didn't have enough talent to make the move. His contract expires after this season, and even before this scandal the Dolphins were not inclined to bring him back.Perhaps they had grown tired of his antics, which, according to the National Football Post,skin analyzer included holding offensive line meetings at a strip club. Citing multiple sources, the story claimed Incognito would fine players who didn't show.Incognito, who flew to Los Angeles on Friday, according to WPLG-Channel 10, apparently enjoyed spending his downtime out on the town. It's where some of his most notorious moments as a Dolphin have occurred.

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Records spanning a quarter-century of meetings

Records spanning a quarter-century of meetings of the Fed's Washington-based Board of Governors show a pattern of increasing unanimity among the members, who number seven when there are no vacant seats. Bloomberg News obtained the files from the Fed under a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2011.For Yellen, President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as Fed chairman, a cohesive board would be an asset her predecessors didn't always command. It will take some work to ensure the pattern continues,alligator shear said Nathan Sheets, formerly the top economist in the Fed's international finance division."The momentum for having the governors support the chairman is enormous," said Sheets, who is now global head of international economics at Citigroup Inc. in New York. "But any chairman has to nurture that and maintain the relationships."

The documents provide a window into the culture of the board of governors, where Yellen will take the gavel early next year if she is confirmed by the Senate. Under former Chairman Paul Volcker and early in the tenure of his successor, Alan Greenspan, dissent at the board was common. Eventually Greenspan brought the other governors into line.Dissents that averaged 21 a year in the 1986-1993 period dwindled to five annually in 1994-1997,alligator shear then to zero for a decade. Dissents reappeared as the financial crisis heated up in 2008, when there was one, and in 2009, with four. There were none again in 2010, the last year for which the Fed provided records of board meetings.

The Fed's board of governors holds hundreds of votes every year, pertaining to everything from regulations, to bank mergers, to internal budgets and staff salary and benefits. The body is distinct from the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel that makes monetary policy decisions, which includes the Fed's 12 regional presidents as well as the governors.Since June 2011, every meeting of the FOMC, whose votes are public record,skin analyzer has included at least one dissent from a regional president. No governor has cast a negative vote on an FOMC decision since September 2005, when Mark Olson sought a pause in rate increases after Hurricane Katrina.The records also show where Yellen might encounter challenges. Among the rare instances of disagreement among governors in recent years, the record reveals previously unreported dissents from Daniel Tarullo.

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Fannie Mae sues nine banks over Libor losses

America's biggest mortgage company Fannie Mae is suing nine of the world's biggest banks over losses relating to the Libor scandal.Libor refers to the London interbank offered rate,alligator shear which is an interest rate used by many banks, mortgage lenders, and others to set the price of borrowing on trillions of dollars of financial contracts.Several banks have indicated that they colluded to set the rate artificially low, which could have deprived lenders like Fannie Mae of higher profits.The lender is seeking more than $800m in damages.The nine banks being sued by Fannie Mae are Barclays, RBS, Rabobank, UBS, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase.

Workers faced with forfeiting unused money in their flexible spending accounts for healthcare expenses may be getting some relief under a new federal rule.The U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service changed the use-it-or-lose-it rule for flexible spending arrangements,alligator shear or FSAs, to allow account holders to carry over as much as $500 from one year to the next without penalty.Many workers have been reluctant to put money into the plans for fear of losing whatever they don't use, resulting in long-standing complaints about how the pretax FSAs work.Typically, they must estimate before the year starts how much they might spend on healthcare, and employers regularly deduct money from their paychecks before taxes. Any amount left over at the end of the year would go back to the employers.

With less risk of such forfeitures now, experts predicted that more workers, particularly lower- and moderate-income employees, would take advantage of the deductions for everyday medical expenses, such as co-pays,skin analyzer over-the-counter drugs and other items not normally covered by health insurance."We are always looking for ways to provide added flexibility and common-sense solutions to how people pay for their healthcare," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Thursday.Treasury officials began taking public comments on the change last year, and they said the response was overwhelmingly in favor of giving workers more leeway.

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The Air Line Pilots Association and Association

The Air Line Pilots Association and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA also criticized the policy of relying on passenger compliance in low-visibility situations. Veda Shook,alligator shear head of the flight attendants union, said she was concerned that during low-visibility landings, a heightened-risk scenario, it would be difficult to get fliers to turn off their devices after they become accustomed to having them turned on.Ms. Shook said attendants are also displeased with the FAA's decision to allow fliers to hold smaller devices during takeoffs and landings. "We have concerns that in some kind of emergency, those devices would be whipping through the cabin and causing injury," she said.

The pilots union said, "We urge passengers to realize the potential seriousness of using a device at a time when any crew member―pilot or flight attendant―has advised them that it is unsafe to do so."Under the previous blanket ban on devices, attendants knew any activated device violated the rules. Under the new system, devices can be turned on but they must be in airplane mode―a difficult discrepancy to distinguish from the aisle, Ms. Shook said. The FAA said on its website that it expects attendants to inform passengers of the rules alligator shear, but that it knows "flight attendants cannot know when a device is ON and in airplane mode or not." An FAA spokeswoman said there is minimal safety concern from devices with cell connections switched on.

Device makers pushed for the new policy, and Amazon tested an airplane full of its Kindle e-readers to show that there were no interference issues. Amazon reiterated Thursday that the new policy is "a big win for customers."Not all fliers are enthusiastic about using their devices throughout flights, though. For some, flying is a rare respite from the constancy of electronic communication. In the federal advisory committee's report,skin analyzer a survey showed that 34% of business travelers said being able to use electronic devices is very important―but the same percentage said it isn't at all important.

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