America's Least Sane Cities

Amazon looks to rom-com, Barry White sales

(NEWSER) - Seeking a romantic getaway this Valentine’s Day? Love is in the air (and perhaps the water supply) in Amazon ’s 20 most romantic cities in America. The firm compiled the list with an eye on key sales data: romance novels, rom-coms, and, of course, Barry White albums. The winners:

1. Alexandria, Va. (for the second year in a row)
2. Knoxville
3. Orlando
4. Miami

Salt Lake City's still tops, but Texas boasts work aplenty, Forbes reports

(NEWSER) - Where to get that new job this year? The Lone Star State is boasting work aplenty, but Salt Lake City—still high on tech jobs—takes the top spot. Forbes lists its top10 job-growth towns:

1. Salt Lake City, Utah
2. Wichita, Kan.
3. Austin, Texas
4. Atlanta, Ga.
5. Fort Worth, Texas

(NEWSER) - With Americans flocking to undergo plastic surgery —11 million went under the knife in 2006—Forbes crunched the numbers to determine the most nipped, tucked, enlarged, and liposucked cities. And while shoo-ins like LA do appear, top billing went to... Salt Lake City?

1. Salt Lake City
2. San Francisco

Medicaid, state jobs, infrastructure hit

(NEWSER) - The final three months of 2011 saw states, cities, and school districts making their biggest spending cuts in a decade, USA Today reports. Spending dropped 1.6% from the same period the year before, plummeting by $26 billion. The result: States are seeing their smallest shortfalls in years, and in some cases they're even seeing surpluses. The cuts' biggest targets were Medicaid; public-sector jobs, which were cut by 3.4% since August 2008; and infrastructure spending, which dropped 4% in 2010 and 2011. More»

But Manhattan Institute report finds that racial inequality persists

(NEWSER) - As America prepares to celebrate Black History Month, revelations both encouraging and discouraging from the Manhattan Institute: A report released yesterday finds that the segregation of blacks in America's cities has hit its lowest point since 1910, thanks in part to the rise of black suburbanization, changes in the law, and improved access to credit. "All-white neighborhoods are effectively extinct," wrote the think-tank fellows behind the report, which reviewed every census between 1890 and 2010. "A half-century ago, one-fifth of America’s urban neighborhoods had exactly zero black residents. Today, African-American residents can be found in 199 out of every 200 neighborhoods nationwide. The remaining neighborhoods are mostly in remote rural areas or in cities with very little black population." More»