MasterCard International announced on June 17 that up to 40 million credit-card accounts had become exposed to fraud after computer hackers stole account information from a credit-card payment processor. MasterCard accounts made up 13.9 million of those exposed, while Visa accounts made up about 20 million. American Express cards and Discover cards may also have been exposed, as have cardholders as far away as Japan and Hong Kong.

With one vote, members of Congress could help alleviate extreme poverty in Central America, open up export markets for U.S. companies, and perhaps even reduce illegal immigration to the United States.

That would be the likely outcome of passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a trade deal that the Bush administration negotiated with Costa Rica, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

What's hotter than summer in the Southwest, more coveted than Red Sox tickets in Boston, and more popular than Bill Gates in Seattle?

The answer is a typical house in each of those markets. A slew of recent studies show that the U.S. housing market is not just hot but on fire. So much so that some experts are calling it a wildfire and warning that people might get burned.