The health care situation is suffocating small Utah County companies, lobbyists told local residents on Tuesday.

Among the 40 percent of small businesses offering employees health insurance, 79 percent seriously struggle to do so, according to a Salt Lake Tribune survey.

Amid escalating coverage costs, many Utahns are turning to public programs like Medicaid and rejecting promising job offers for fear of getting cut off.

One lobbyist described a man denied private health insurance after an injurious car accident.  He now closely monitors his income levels to ensure his family maintains Medicaid qualification standards.

“This is a family that could conceivably make enough money to buy private insurance, but they consciously choose to stay in the public program,” said Lincoln Nehring, Medicaid policy director.  “It’s the only way that they can get the care they need.”   

ROME — The director of a U.N. food agency questioned Wednesday how world powers could commit so much money to fighting the financial crisis and not to feeding the 1 billion hungry.

The three-day summit at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome ended with little new headway in efforts for a new strategy to help farmers in poor countries produce enough to feed their people.

The director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization said the summit "didn't go as far" as he had hoped.

"If it has been possible to mobilize trillions of dollars" to stimulate the global economy to combat the financial crisis, the world should be able to come up with resources to solve its hunger problem, Jacques Diouf added at a final news conference.

MOSCOW — A Russian icebreaker carrying over 100 tourists, scientists and journalists on a cruise around Antarctica was struggling to free itself from sea ice but was not in any danger, a shipping company said Tuesday.

The Captain Khlebnikov icebreaker is about 5 miles from clear water near Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea, German Kuzin of the Fareastern Shipping Company told Russia's Vesti 24 television. He said neither the ship nor the passengers faced any risks.

The ship was trying to move slowly through the ice but the winds were too light to break up the ice pack, he said. An Argentine official said the ice would delay the ship's return by three to six days.

"The icebreaker is trying to move and is waiting for more favorable winds," Kuzin said. "After the winds get stronger, the ice grip will weaken ... and it will break free."

PRAGUE — Thousands marched through the Czech capital Tuesday in commemoration of a student protest 20 years ago that grew into the human tidal wave sweeping away the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Today, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are European Union and NATO members. While the world recession has left its mark, their economies are among the strongest of the continent's former communist nations, and their democracies among the most resilient. Pragmatic Czechs in particular have moved into the European mainstream, with most citizens spending little time on any normal day looking back on their Velvet Revolution.

But Tuesday was no normal day for the several thousand Czechs gathered to relive the hours that led to their nation's democratic triumph.

By RACHEL CALL

What doesn’t Google do these days? What started as a search engine has multiplied into email, calendaring, blogging, maps and news, to name a few, and now add to that list flu shots.

Google has launched a flu shot finder where you can enter your address and it will list locations in your vicinity that have swine flu and seasonal flu shots. In a time when most people are wary of catching swine flu, this service is extremely helpful. Google also operates a trend page for the swine flu where you can see which continents have the most cases of swine flu.

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The Colorado parents who reported their 6-year-old son floated away aboard a helium balloon will plead guilty to some charges so that the family can stay together, the attorney for the boy's father said Thursday.

Richard Heene will plead guilty in the alleged Oct. 15 hoax to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, his attorney David Lane said. Mayumi Heene _ a Japanese citizen who could have been deported if convicted of more serious charges _ will plead guilty to false reporting to authorities, a misdemeanor, he said.

The Larimer County district attorney's office announced the criminal charges against the Heenes on Thursday. Spokeswoman Linda Jensen said the office would not discuss whether a plea agreement had been reached.

As the recession hopefully nears its end, one group has emerged as the champions of recovery — small businesses.

“It’s SMBs (small/medium businesses) that create new markets and push large firms and companies,” said Caleb Manscill, vice president of marketing at Search Clicks. “It’s SMB attitude that pushes our economy into deeper financial prosperity.”

According to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship, companies younger than five years old created almost two-thirds of the new jobs in 2007.

“If the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to the entrepreneurs to lead the way,” said Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation.

Manscill cited the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which suggests big companies are too established to innovate and create.