Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain has approved the sale of the sweet cake business formerly operated by Hostess Brands, clearing the way for Twinkies and other brands to return to shelves.

Working families, retirees and their allies are rallying Tuesday at 10 a.m. in St. Louis to call on Patriot Coal to live up to its obligations to pay retiree health care costs. The company filed bankruptcy and is asking to abandon paying health care costs to retirees, most of whom worked for Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, which created Patriot. Mine Workers (UMWA) has charged that Patriot was designed to fail so that the former parent companies could avoid commitments they made to their former workers.

JPMorgan Chase lost more than $6 billion on a bad bet known as the “London whale” trades and then tried to conceal its losses from regulators, investors and the public, according to a report released last night and hearings held today by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

When media reports surfaced in April of last year that a JPMorgan Chase trader had “amassed positions so large that he’s driving price moves in the $10 trillion market,” JPMorgan Chase executives quickly responded by holding a call with investors and analysts.

As previously reported, the Mine Workers (UMWA) union has been saying that Patriot Coal was specifically designed to fail so that former parent company Peabody Energy Corp. could eliminate health care costs associated with former workers in their mines. Patriot was originally spun off of Peabody and was started with much of Peabody's obligations to its retired workers, but very little of Peabody's assets. UMWA argued that Patriot was using bankruptcy to get out of living up to those obligations. Now Patriot filed a motion with the bankruptcy court to create a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) to replace the existing retiree health care system. According to UMWA, the VEBA would cover only a fraction of the obligations owed to retired workers and their families.

Earl and Anne Favre are working with Occupy Chattanooga to save their home from Freddie Mac, a corporation sponsored by you and me. You can support them by signing on to their petition here.

This concerns the end of my life as I know it. I was happy and fairly financially secure. Then Katrina happened on Aug. 29, 2005. I lost everything except the clothes on my back, the sandals on my feet and my three dogs, with whom I spent six hours on a roof waiting to be rescued.

Fix the Debt is the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades, an ambitious attempt to convince the country that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner and that urgent action is needed. Its strategy is pure Astroturf: assemble power players in business and government under an activist banner, then take the message outside the Beltway and give it the appearance of grassroots activism by manufacturing an emergency to infuse a sense of imminent crisis.

You can find commercials, products and meetings sponsored by Weight Watchers all across American popular culture and the program can inspire strong devotion from its participants and employees. Helping people lose weight and become more healthy is a laudable goal that many people dedicate their lives to. But Weight Watchers is the target of numerous complaints that it underpays its employees and fails to pay them for many of the hours they work.

Wall Street wrecked the economy and banks are still refusing to work with people who are trying to stay in their homes. The Campaign for a Fair Settlement, along with other partners, is calling on President Obama over the next 100 days to champion an agenda that would:

1. Hold bankers accountable for their crimes.

2. Keep people in their homes by resetting their mortgages.

Sign the petition here. 

This week, the HR Policy Association’s so-called “Center on Executive Compensation” criticized a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for suggesting companies should consider voluntarily disclosing CEO-to-worker pay ratios. The HR Policy Association represents human resource executives of more than 325 of the largest U.S. corporations, and would prefer to keep secret the pay disparity between their bosses—the CEOs—and their employees.

The former president of a Massey Energy subsidiary, who also served for 20 years in top positions throughout Massey, implicated former Massey CEO Donald Blankenship in a long-term scheme to hide mine safety violations from federal inspectors.