Union official steps aside amid inquiry

LOS ANGELES - The executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union has stepped aside while under investigation for allegations that she paid thousands of dollars in union funds to a former boyfriend, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Annelle Grajeda is the third major SEIU official to be placed on leave in recent months amid allegations of misspending. Grajeda told the newspaper she was "very confident" she would be exonerated. (AP)

BALTIMORE - The NAACP's national board of directors has approved a three-year contract for new president Ben Jealous, the youngest leader in the civil rights organization's history. The board voted, 35 to 2, with one abstention, to approve the contract Saturday. Chairman Julian Bond said the two dissenting votes were protesting procedure, not Jealous. The contract takes effect Sept. 15. Jealous, 35, who was elected in May, will attend his first board meeting as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Baltimore on Oct. 18. (AP)

CHICAGO - Americans are changing the game plan for retirement, with millions laboring right past the traditional retirement age and working into their late 60s and beyond. While the average retirement age remains 63, that standard may soon be going the way of the gold watch - a trend expected to accelerate as baby boomers close in on retirement without sufficient savings. Twenty-nine percent of American people in their late 60s were working in 2006, up from 18 percent in 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 6 million workers last year were 65 or older, the bureau said. (AP)