DEW: SC businesses to likely see tax decrease

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's unemployment agency may pay $150 million less in benefits this year by clamping down on who qualifies, officials said Tuesday.

Employers' tax rates for unemployment insurance should go down for 2013, not up as believed by a senator highly critical of the agency, said Laura Robinson, assistant director of the Department of Employment and Workforce.

The agency is on track to pay as little as $300 million in benefits this year to jobless workers, compared to roughly $450 million last year, according to the agency.

The drop comes despite the state's stubbornly high jobless rate, which was 9.6 percent in July. The rate dipped to a four-year-low of 8.8 percent in April before rising again for three consecutive months.

Number of U.S. poor holds steady but earnings gap grows

(Reuters) - The poverty rate in the United States stabilized in 2011 for the first time in three years even as incomes fell and inequality grew, according to government figures.

NYC Mom Charging Parents $350 To Let Kids Play in Unsupervised Park

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Parents in New York are raising their eyebrows at the latest after-school activity offered for their children: unsupervised play time in Central Park for $350.

Lenore Skenazy, a former journalist who has championed the "free play" movement, cheekily launched the after-school program to try and encourage parents to let their children to play without structure or supervision.

"I'm always trying to figure out ways to get kids back outside playing with each other," the mother of two told ABC News. "It's a great thing that has sort of evaporated from the American landscape."

"And New York City is used to paying money for things so that's the money thing," she added.

J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador to Libya, dies at 52

Ben Curtis/AP - U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens spoke to local journalists on April 11, 2011, at the Tibesty Hotel in Benghazi, where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders.

J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador killed Tuesday in an attack in Benghazi, Libya, hitched a ride into that country last year by sea — the only way in with a civil war in progress.

“There weren’t any flights, so we came in by a Greek cargo ship,” Mr. Stevens told reporters not long afterward, recalling his arrival in Benghazi as the top U.S. envoy to Libya’s rebel movement.