• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration wants to trademark the term "GI Bill" in an effort to shield veterans and military families being swindled or misled by schools that target their federal education benefits.
• President Barack Obama is signing a wide-ranging order on Friday that partially addresses growing complaints about fraudulent marketing and recruiting practices aimed at military families eligible for federal education loans under the GI Bill.
• The president and first lady Michelle Obama were expected to talk to troops at the Fort Stewart Army post in Georgia, where Obama will sign an executive order mandating several new education protections for military service members.
• There is little the federal government can do to shut down diploma mills, but the new protections would make it harder for post-secondary and technical schools to misrepresent themselves to military students.
• The main target of the White House action is for-profit colleges and universities that market heavily to military families because of the easy availability of federal loan money under the GI Bill.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy probably grew more slowly at the start of the year than at the end of last year. But it's expected to grow faster for all of 2012 than in 2011.
• The government on Friday will make its first estimate of growth for the January-March quarter. The consensus forecast is that gross domestic product -- the output of all goods and services, from cars to electricity to manicures -- grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate, according to a survey of economists by FactSet.
• That would be slower than the 3 percent GDP growth in the final three months of 2011. Much of the growth in the October-December quarter was due to businesses aggressively restocking their supplies. The pace of restocking is expected to have declined last quarter.

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