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Getaway

Director: Courtney Solomon

Genre: Action, Crime

Running Time: 90 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense action, violence and mayhem throughout, some rude gestures, and language

With: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight, Paul Freeman

The White House says President Obama will issue two new executive orders on guns — one to curb the import of military surplus weapons and another that closes a loophole allowing some felons to get around background checks.

The two actions — to be announced by Vice President Joe Biden at the swearing-in of Todd Jones, the new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — will join 23 others that the president has issued in an effort to reduce gun violence.

They are part of a set of recommendations from the vice president unveiled in January.

"Even as Congress fails to act on common-sense proposals, like expanding criminal background checks and making gun trafficking a federal crime, the President and Vice President remain committed to using all the tools in their power to make progress toward reducing gun violence," the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the statement, "felons, domestic abusers, and others prohibited from having guns" can skirt background checks by registering the weapon as a trust or corporation.

"The proposed rule requires individuals associated with trusts or corporations that acquire these types of weapons to undergo background checks, just as these individuals would if the weapons were registered to them individually," the statement says.

The second would halt a practice of special approvals to import U.S.-made military weapons from other countries. The White House says since 2005, the government has authorized the re-importation of more than 250,000 such firearms.

The new policy would "deny requests to bring military-grade firearms back into the United States to private entities, with only a few exceptions such as for museums," the statement says.

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. issued a deeper explanation for the technical problems that halted trading for three hours last week.

As Reuters and Bloomberg explain it, Nasdaq's systems were overwhelmed when ARCA, the all-electronic exchange owned by the NYSE, deluged it with data. The vast amount of data exposed a "latent flaw" in the Nasdaq system that "receives all traffic on quotes and orders for stocks on the exchange."

Bloomberg adds:

"Today's report amplifies previous public statements by Nasdaq about what led it to freeze trading in about 3,300 stocks both on its own platform and others where equities change hands in America. The disruption underscored how quickly the integrity of the U.S. market, which has a value of about $20 trillion, can be subverted as orders to buy and sell shares are matched on more than 50 exchanges and alternative electronic venues.

"'Any piece of software, even if it's run for 100 percent for 10 years, there's still flaws in it.,' Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld said in an interview with Bloomberg News. 'Whatever you have, it's a question of what unique set of circumstances happen to reveal that.'"

There's no question that dealing with mortgages, car payments and other bills takes up time and energy. But having a tight budget may also zap our ability to think clearly, scientists report Thursday in the journal Science.

In a series of clever experiments involving farmers in India and shoppers in New Jersey, scientists found that people are worse at solving puzzles — similar to those on the IQ test — when they're first reminded of money problems.

"Financial constraints capture a lot of your attention," says Eldar Shafir, a psychologist at Princeton University, who helped lead the study. "Then there's less bandwidth left to solve problems. Your cognitive ability starts to slow down, just like a computer."

And the effect is big. After a quick reminder about money issues, people's performance on the puzzles drops down by at least a quarter — or approximately the same mental hit a person takes after staying up all night.

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