The Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant is facing a slew of similar suits around the country.

Wal-Mart settled a Colorado case for $50 million and is appealing a $172 million award handed down last year by a California jury.

The company declined to comment because of the pending deliberations over damages.

"Because the jury is still in deliberations, it would not be appropriate to comment on this matter until a decision is reached," Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Donovan also declined comment.

The jury deliberated on the verdict for several hours over two days, after a five-week trial. Jurors found that Wal-Mart acted in bad faith but rejected claims that the company denied workers meal breaks.

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer, earned $10 billion in 2004.

The Pennsylvania case involves labor practices at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores between March 1998 and May 1, 2006.

Lead plaintiff Dolores Hummel, who worked at a Sam's Club in Reading from 1992-2002, charged in her suit that she had to work through breaks and after quitting time to meet work demands in the bakery. She said she worked eight to 12 unpaid hours a month, on average, to meet work demands.

"One of Wal-Mart's undisclosed secrets for its profitability is its creation and implementation of a system that encourages off-the-clock work for its hourly employees ..." Hummel said in her suit, which was filed in 2002.

The plaintiffs used electronic evidence, such as systems that show when employees are signed on to cash registers and other machines, to help win class certification during several days of hearings last year.

Wal-Mart had a corporate policy that gives hourly employees in Pennsylvania one paid 15-minute break during a shift of at least three hours and two such breaks, plus an unpaid 30-minute meal break, on a shift of at least six hours.

The Fed said that reports from around the country "indicated widespread cooling" in housing markets with financial institutions finding that mortgage lending activity had tapered off. That decline in lending was being offset to some extent by an increase in lending for commercial projects in several districts, the Fed said.

The latest snapshot of the economy, based on reports from the Fed's regional banks, will be used when central bankers next meet on Oct. 24-25 to consider what to do with interest rates.

It is widely expected that the Fed will for a third straight meeting leave rates unchanged, preferring to wait and see if the economic slowdown brought on by previous rate hikes will be enough to keep inflation under control.

Minutes released on Wednesday of the Fed's deliberations in September found that Fed officials remained concerned about inflation. Those worries were seen as a signal that the Fed will not soon start cutting interest rates, something that financial markets had grown hopeful might occur given the spreading economic slowdown.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that housing was going through a "substantial correction" that he estimated would trim economic growth by a full percentage point in the second half of the year.

The economy grew by just 2.6 percent in the second quarter, less than half the pace of the first three months of the year, as it was battered by soaring gasoline prices, rising interest rates and the cooling housing market.

Many economists believe growth has slowed even further in the last half of the year. But recent declines in gasoline and other energy prices are expected to help bolster consumer spending in the final three months of the year and keep the economy from tumbling into a full-blown recession.

In the latest "beige book," named for the color of its cover, two Fed districts - Dallas and Philadelphia - reported that growth cooled further in the period from mid-September to early October. But other districts reported that growth had firmed in recent weeks.

A number of districts found consumer spending - critical because it accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity _ was rising at a more rapid pace even though several districts continued to note sluggish auto and home sales.

Philadelphia, Atlanta and Minneapolis reported solid back-to-school sales, New York said that sales of upscale items had picked up while clothing sales were stronger in Boston, Cleveland and the San Francisco districts.

The Fed said that manufacturing activity was holding up well with eight of the 12 districts reporting an increase in factory output. Tourism was described as strong, especially in the New York and Kansas City areas.

Farm conditions improved, the Fed reported, as rainfall brought relief to drought-stricken parts of the country.

The Fed described labor markets as "taut" especially for certain skilled workers but said that wage growth remained "generally modest." Overall inflation was also reported under control with energy prices moderating and "few signs of increased price pressures in recent weeks."

Increases in raw materials prices were noted by Philadelphia, Richmond and Atlanta while Minneapolis said that the price of building materials had increased. New York reported that prices for hotel rooms and theater tickets were up sharply from a year ago.

The network will stay on the air while it resolves issues with its creditors, Horn said. In addition to Franken, the network also features shows from liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes and syndicates shows from Jerry Springer and Portland, Ore.-based talk show host Thom Hartmann.

Horn declined to name the creditor with which talks had reached a logjam. The company will operate in the interim with funding from its current investor group.

Air America also said Friday it had named Scott Elberg as its new CEO. Elberg, a former general manager of the radio station WLIB in New York, has been with the network since May of last year.

The filing and executive shuffle marked the latest turbulence at the liberal talk radio network, which went on the air two years ago. This April, Danny Goldberg stepped down as CEO and was replaced by an interim chief executive from a management consulting firm.

"Nobody likes filing for bankruptcy," Elberg said in a statement. "However, this move will enable us to concentrate on informing and entertaining our audience during the coming months."

Air America has struggled financially since its inception. According to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the company lost $9.1 million in 2004, $19.6 million in 2005 and $13.1 million so far in 2006.

Air America also disclosed in the court documents that two directors departed in the last two months, Douglas Kreeger and Tom Embrescia. Gary Krantz also departed as president in June, and executive vice president Tom Athans and chief operating officer Carl Ginsburg both left in July.

It also has major research, software, hardware and computer services operations in India which make it that nation's sixth largest technology-related employer.

The addition of its global procurement office to Shenzhen where it has 1,850 employees and has operated for over a decade, is aimed at reshaping the company's supply base in the region, IBM said.

The firm that revolutionized office work with electronic typewriters and then personal computers works with 3,000 suppliers across Asia that account for about 30 percent of the 40 billion dollars IBM spends on annual procurement.

"The demand for software and services skills -- across Asia and worldwide -- is growing," said the group's global procurement chief John Paterson.

"To meet the demand, it will require developing relationships with new partners and suppliers and working with existing ones to help them build skills, processes and management practices to compete globally in the services market."

IBM, once a leading hardware maker, struggled to transform itself over the past decade into a software producer but now earns about half of its revenues from outsourcing and IT consulting.

In May last year, it sold its personal computer unit to Chinese group Lenovo for 1.75 billion dollars, leaving the US company focused on business mainframes and consultancy services.

Paterson said it illustrated a shift underway at IBM from a multinational corporation to a new model -- a globally integrated enterprise.

"In a globally integrated enterprise, for the first time, a company's worldwide capability can be located wherever in the world it makes the most sense, based on the imperatives of economics, expertise and open environments," he said.

There is another factor also at work. Mortgages are part of a debt structure upon which millions of people rely simply in order to live. The number of people withdrawing equity from their homes has grown by 30 percent since 2003. According to the RBA, about $6 billion a year of this borrowing is funding consumer spending. Paul Gordon of financial advisers IPAC commented: "A lot of people put their credit card debt into the mortgage-and it just soaks it up. In reality you are creating an unbelievably large, long-term debt."

Yet credit card debt is also continuing to rise, and this is starting to impact on borrowers' ability to repay their mortgages. In January, consumers held a record 12.6 million credit cards, up almost a million from a year earlier, with an average debt of $2,656 a card.

Some 46 percent of 18-25 year olds now have a credit card and, in 2003, Financial Counsellors of NSW reported that more than half the 18-24 year-olds it interviewed had debts of more than $14,000, while a quarter had more than $20,000. Some of this has been incurred under federal government's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP). Under these schemes, students and graduates owe the government more than $13 billion, and the figure is set to reach $18.8 billion by 2008-2009. The average HECS\HELP debt is approximately $10,500.

In one form or another, huge debts have become an inescapable fact of life for wide layers of the population. Deutsche Bank Australia's chief economist Tony Meer warned: "Debt levels keep on rising and the risk level in the whole system just keeps going up. It's got to be a worry."

Many people are stretched to their financial limits and beyond. In the June quarter, for example, households paid out an all-time high of 21 percent of after-tax income on regular financial bills such as mortgage payments, insurance premiums, council rates and rent. IPAC's Paul Gordon commented: "Three quarters of the population are spending more than they earn ... they are going from week to week, month to month and surviving."

Factors such as loss of employment, higher interest rates or increased living costs can have dire social consequences and thousands of households have already faced economic ruin. According to recent figures provided by the New South Wales Supreme Court, in the 12 months to March 2006 repossessions by financial institutions climbed to 4,837, more than double the level three years ago. In Victoria, this figure increased by 52 percent in the six months to June, compared with the same period last year.

Rising interest rates and falling house prices are opening up new dangers for over-extended borrowers. Rates have risen seven times since 2002, and twice this year already. On a loan of $300,000, homebuyers now pay around $150 a month more than a year and a half ago. A recent survey found that 36 percent of 2,065 respondents would see their capacity to pay back their mortgage significantly impeded if interest rates rose another percentage point.

Any fall in property prices means that, if people come under financial pressure, they cannot sell their homes without suffering huge losses or going bankrupt. The global property boom was particularly strong in Australia. According to a report by the OECD, at one stage Australia had the highest prices relative to rental levels, the third-highest prices relative to incomes, and the fourth-highest levels of household debt relative to incomes.

Since the peak of the boom in 2003-04, prices have fallen by an average 10 percent, with some working class areas affected far more severely, particularly in western Sydney. For example, a one-bedroom unit in Cabramatta, purchased for $262,500 in 2003, recently sold for $95,000-about a third-at a repossession auction. In August, a house at St. Clair sold for $260,000, a loss of 42 percent on the 2003 purchase price of $450,000.

Financial Counsellors Association of NSW vice president David Bell warned: "There's a fundamental difference now-house values have dropped and people simply can't sell their home."

The various federal and state political leaders have responded with crude attempts at political point-scoring. NSW Premier Morris Iemma remarked: "These are the terrible consequences of [Prime Minister] John Howard's interest rate policies." NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam blamed the "high-cost, high tax, high regulation regime" in NSW, without offering any alternative policies that would make life more affordable.

Federal opposition leader Kim Beazley said interest rates had risen due to Howard's "broken promises," which had led to "bottlenecks in the economy". Beazley nominated "a lamentable collapse in training in relation to trade skills ... and lack of national leadership on infrastructure issues." For his part, Howard simply declared as "false" any connection between interest rates and the soaring debt burden, implying that debt had risen only because of higher house prices.

Taken collectively, these empty phrases only serve to underscore the fact that neither Labor nor Liberal, at state or federal level, can formulate any genuine response to the potentially explosive financial and social problem of massive household debt and home repossessions.

The financial stress now being experienced is particularly politically significant. A key plank of Howard's 2004 election win was a scare campaign about higher interest rates under Labor. Until recently, higher house prices continued to create an illusion of wealth for homeowners. Now, with ever-rising interest rates, the financial threat to mortgagees, coupled with growing levels of household debt more widely, threaten to puncture the Howard government's officially-cultivated image as a steward of prosperity.