The nation’s car dealers have a new worry: they’re running out of vehicles. As the “cash-for-clunkers” program reaches its next chapter, and consumers pour into showrooms, some dealers say their stock of new cars — especially for fuel-efficient smaller models — is waning. At Larry Miller Honda in Boise, Idaho, about two-thirds of the car lot is empty. The dealership is nearly out of 2009 models — something that usually doesn’t happen until the late fall.

Using better-than-expected jobs numbers to press his top domestic priority, President Barack Obama is arguing that overhauling the health care system is essential to the country’s economic well-being.

A luxury resort in San Diego is offering rooms for $19 a night — if you don’t mind sleeping in a tent. The Rancho Bernardo Inn boasts three pools, a spa and golf course. It typically charges more than $200 a room.

The outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours was traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia — but the collateral damage that left millions around the world tweetless showed just how much havoc an isolated cyberdispute can cause. “It told us how quickly many people really took Twitter into their hearts,” Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said Friday.

They were waiting down at Gibson Chevrolet in South Holland for a couple of 5-gallon cans of sodium silicate — liquid glass, they call it — to poison and kill the clunkers when the latest condemned car pulled up. The 1999 Ford Explorer with 140,000 miles was still sturdy. It had some body damage, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

Hartmarx, the 125-year-old Chicago-based manufacturer of men’s suits that outfits President Obama, was sold Friday to London-based Emerisque Brands and will be headed by Ajay Khaitan, Emerisque’s founder, who has been instrumental in turning around brands such as Eveready and Lee Cooper.

Freddie Mac escaped the second fiscal quarter without asking the government for any new financial aid, but still expects to need more federal help in the future. The government-controlled mortgage finance company on Friday posted a quarterly loss of $374 million, or 11 cents a share, including $1.1 billion in dividends paid to the government.

Two vacant retail spaces in the Loop are coming alive despite the recession and gloomy jobs data.

Doris Derby traveled to the Mississippi Delta, planning to spend the summer of 1963 teaching the illiterate to read. She stayed nearly 10 years.

NEW YORK — Sleep is a rare commodity for Juan Cortez. Between nights spent clearing tables at a Manhattan nightclub and days running food to customers in a Bronx restaurant, the 42-year-old Peruvian immigrant worries more about finding time for shuteye than job security.