Each week we take a look at business news from around the state.  KUNM’s Elaine Baumgartel spoke with Megan Kamerick, Senior Reporter with the New Mexico Business Weekly. 

A year ahead of the 2012 presidential election both Democrats and Republicans are competing for Hispanic votes. In states like Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona the Hispanic vote could tip the scale in favor of one party over the other. Yesterday White House officials went to Las Cruces to hold a community summit aimed at Hispanics.  From the Fronteras Changing America Desk, Monica Ortiz Uribe reports many voters in that area are still undecided.

Tony La Russa, who just managed the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series title, announced this morning that he's retiring after 33 seasons.

The major problems after the weekend's surprising snowstorm in the Northeast relate to a couple of million customers who are without power.

But one of the other stories we can relate to is about the passengers who were stranded on the ground Saturday in jets that landed at Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Conn.

During the fighting last spring in Benghazi, Libya, between forces loyal to then-dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the opposition, there was a fire at one of the city's banks.

The blaze was blamed on the fighting.

Now, as the BBC and other news outlets are reporting, there's word that "more than 7,000 priceless coins and other precious artifacts were taken" in what's now thought to have been a robbery planned by thieves who took advantage of the chaos in the city to hit the bank.

It should have been another good weekend for Herman Cain. It wasn't.

As NPR and just about every other news outlet report about the milestone that United Nations experts estimate the world passed today — a population of 7 billion people — there's this from the BBC:

Italy needs the backing of Europe's bailout fund. But Italy's a huge economy — much, much bigger than Greece, Portugal, and Ireland combined. And the Europeans don't want to put enough money into their bailout fund to back Italy.

So they're getting creative.

The rest of Europe is likely offer investors insurance that will pay back the first 20 percent of any losses on new Italian bonds.