CALIFORNIA

The following are prepared remarks of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to a joint session of the state's assembly in Trenton regarding the fiscal year 2012 budget on Feburary 22, 2012.

Pension funds and shareholder groups will back the proposal for a succession plan at Apple’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

A housing trade association is examining the possibility that the data it releases underestimated the collapse of the housing industry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

A school turns to Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to curb habitual skipping of classes by students.

Students seeking to enroll in basic foreign language courses at the University of California Berkeley will have 30 additional offerings to choose from in academic year 2011-12, thanks to an infusion of over half a million dollars in foreign language education.

China must find new ways to defuse unrest, the domestic security chief said, underscoring Beijing's anxiety about control after police quashed calls for gatherings inspired by uprisings in the Middle East.

A new NASA satellite -- Glory -- will collect data on the properties and distribution of aerosols in Earth's atmosphere and on solar irradiance for the long-term record of Earth's climate. The launch of NASA's Glory spacecraft aboard an Orbital Sciences Taurus XL rocket is scheduled for February 23.

Sony Computer Entertainment America won a preliminary injunction against a hacker who publicized a method for allowing Playstation 3 consoles to install non-Sony operating systems. But others might still tinker with their machines.

Apple Inc. is expected to release a new cheaper version of the iPhone during 2011 to deal with growing smartphone competition.

Canada based rare earth mineral company Rare Element Resources is planning to open a strip mine inside a national forest in northeast Wyoming, the Associated Press reported.

Jobs's appearance comes a day after dubious reports on the Apple's CEO's health.

Walt Disney hosted multiple business sessions on Thursday with Street analysts at the Disneyland complex in Anaheim, California and tackled a myriad of strategic issues facing both the company and the media sector in general, at its 2011 Investor conference.

Intel Corp Chief Executive Paul Otellini will be named to a panel of experts advising President Barack Obama on jobs, the White House said on Friday. Otellini will join the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, created in January to focus on lifting hiring and promoting growth.

The NTIA released a map that shows broadband access across the United States. Despite growth, the digital divide is still very much in place.

Reports have surfaced that President Barack Obama is meeting with several tech executives including Apple's Steve Jobs and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

New York City will have to lay off more than 4,000 public school teachers even though its revenue has leaped about $2 billion since forecasts made last November, a mayoral aide said on Wednesday. New York City has around 75,000 teachers but the headcount must be reduced because Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to cut state aid by $2.1 billion, the aide said.

Manu Sporny, founder and CEO of Virginia-based Digital Bazaar, became the first person in the world to release his own genetic data as an open source project.

New York City's bank tax collections ran 48 percent above a year-ago, one of several taxes whose encouraging performance might give Mayor Michael Bloomberg some extra cash to spend in next year's budget.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued a former CEO and two former CFOs of failed mortgage lender IndyMac Bankcorp, accusing them of securities fraud.

The governor of California Jerry Brown has ordered statewide hiring freeze in order cut government costs, just after abandoned a legal effort to reduce government workers' salaries, as part of a wider plan to cut $363 million from the state bureaucracy.

California Governor Jerry Brown ordered a hiring freeze on Tuesday across the state's government to help cut costs in the face of a budget gap of at least $25 billion. The budget deficit of the nation's most populous state is closely tracked in financial markets. California is the biggest issuer of U.S. municipal debt, and is of concern in Washington