The Obama administration is expected to announce a plan to cut the federal corporate tax from 35 percent (that's the second highest rate in the world) down to 28 percent. The consumer sentiment figure is a measure of how consumers are feeling about the economy and it's put together by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan. The nation's most populous state, California, had a brush with fiscal calamity this month, and lawmakers had to scramble recently to close a $5 billion budget shortfall.

How has Michigan rebounded from the days of the auto bailout, bringing its unemployment down from 14 to 9 percent?

In Australia, conservationists are making the case that koalas are a threatened species. Government regulators aren't so sure.

Listen to an extended conversation with Ford CEO Alan Mulally, where he discusses whether consumers will want larger or smaller cars 20 years from now and the importance of emerging markets like China to the carmaker.