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Among the memorials to Nelson Mandela put up across India is a billboard in Tamil Nadu that features a photo of actor Morgan Freeman, not the iconic anti-apartheid hero from South Africa who died earlier this month.

The businessman who paid for the sign says it will be replaced with one that has the right image.

Perhaps the billboard's designer got confused because Freeman portrayed Mandela in the 2009 movie Invictus.

As you might expect, a photo of the botched billboard has been whipping around Twitter.

Freeman has inadvertently been part of such a mix-up before. At President Obama's inauguration back in January, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos got famously confused. He thought basketball great Bill Russell was the actor.

Back in ye olden days — say, a decade ago — many holiday shoppers worried about using credit cards to buy gifts online. They feared their information would end up in the hands of computer hackers.

Turns out, walking into a store and swiping a credit card can be plenty risky too.

"There aren't good statistics measuring which one is a greater risk," said Greg Brown, chief technology officer for McAfee, a computer security company. But either option — shopping in real life or online — can let bad guys into your wallet, as Target shoppers learned Thursday.

If you shop through a shady website, "your risk goes up, just as it would if you bought merchandise off the back of a truck," Brown said. "You have to be diligent" about who sees your credit card, he said.

But that's what was so disturbing about the revelation that Target, with nearly 1,800 U.S. stores, suffered a huge theft. The company said that between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, information from 40 million card accounts may have been stolen. The data loss involved customers' names, credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates and three-digit security codes imprinted on the cards. Target said it's working with law enforcement and financial institutions, and has "identified and resolved the issue."

The theft involved cards used to make purchases inside the stores, where lights twinkle and Christmas carols play, not through the company's website.

That freaks out many customers who thought they could make themselves safe, just by refraining from flashing cash or throwing card information out on the Internet.

"I don't carry cash with me because I'm a senior citizen," said Betty Singletary-Flythe, who was at a Target store in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. To shop, she likes to pull out her plastic in person.

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Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Thursday for his third visit this year to the hard-line Stalinist country, saying he will train the country's national basketball team and see his "friend," leader Kim Jong Un.

Rodman's visit comes just a week after Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed for treason. The demise of Jang, a top government official, appears to have been part of an internal purge and has largely ended speculation that the youngish Kim, who became the country's supreme leader after his father's death two years ago, might usher in a kinder, gentler era.

Speaking in Beijing en route to Pyongyang, Rodman said he was "very proud" to call Kim his friend.

"[He] hasn't done anything to put a damper or to say negative things about my country," the ex-NBA player said.

Rodman said he hoped his trip would "open doors for America."

The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Publicity materials for the event indicate that Rodman plans to bring 'NBA stars' to play against the North Koreans, though no names of any participating players have been announced."

Time and again, business leaders say the one thing they want out of Washington is more certainty.

But rarely do they get their wish.

In recent years, business owners have found themselves wondering whether their government would default on its debts, shut down national parks, change tax rules, cancel supplier contracts, confirm key leaders at federal agencies or hike interest rates.

Finally on Wednesday, they saw policymakers take two big steps toward a more certain future.

First, the Federal Reserve said it would start to modestly taper its bond-buying stimulus. The changes will start in January — so now you know.

The second move came hours later when the Senate voted 64-36 to complete the first bipartisan budget agreement in years. The $1.01 trillion budget deal resolves many questions about automatic spending cuts and deficit-reduction plans.

That marked "a really big step forward," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities.

Congress "lowered uncertainty about fiscal policy and the Fed lowered uncertainty about monetary policy," he said. As a result, "2014 will probably be a better year" for the economy, he added.

Putting a specific dollar figure on the cost of uncertainty isn't easy. But Silvia says there's no question businesses are less likely to hire when they don't know what is coming out of Washington.

"A lot of companies have government contracts," he noted. If they can't predict what's happening with spending cuts or shutdown threats, they can't hire. And all business leaders wonder: "Are you going to change the tax rules? What is the cost of financing? You can never get rid of all uncertainty, but you can reduce it," he said.

Apparently, investors agreed that greater certainty would be a good thing. They sent stock prices soaring, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising nearly 300 points on Wednesday.

Randall Stephenson, the chief executive officer of AT&T and chairman-elect of Business Roundtable, issued a statement saying Congress' approval of the budget should serve as a foundation for more compromises.

"Our leaders can build upon this agreement by moving forward with comprehensive tax reform, lifting the debt ceiling, reforming immigration and passing updated Trade Promotion Authority legislation to advance U.S. trade agreements," he said.

Business Leaders Decry The Economic Cost Of Uncertainty