NEW YORK – All the bills are paid and the price of the most expensive self-financed bid for office in U.S. history — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign for a third term — totals $109.2 million.

The billionaire mayor, who outspent his Democratic opponent by more than 11 times, filed a final spending report Thursday with the state Board of Elections, showing $866,250 in expenses since the last filing in January.

Those costs were leftover bills and expenses associated with shutting down the 2009 campaign, said deputy mayor Howard Wolfson, who was Bloomberg’s campaign spokesman before he joined the administration.

The payments included staff wages, consultant costs, rental car bills, office utilities and accountants’ fees. Wolfson did not respond to a question about why some expenses were paid as late as last month.

Bloomberg, a former CEO who founded the financial information company that bears his name, has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $18 billion. He is ranked as the wealthiest person in New York City and the 23rd richest in the world.

Read the whole hot breaking news

DURANGO, Colo. – The fireworks display in the city of Durango will go on thanks to embattled oil giant BP.

The company stepped forward to pay for the annual July Fourth display back in December, five months before the start of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The display typically costs $15,000, and city officials were poised to cancel it because of a budget crunch. But representatives of BP’s office in southwestern Colorado surprised the council by announcing the company would pick up the tab.

Company spokesman Curtis Thomas said the company knows how important the celebration is to the community and didn’t want it to be lost. He said BP hasn’t asked for any advertising in exchange for its donation.

BP America drills for natural gas in Colorado. It was fined $5.2 million this week for allegedly submitting false reports about energy production on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation near Durango.

The U.S. Department of Interior said the company at times reported erroneous royalty rates, or listed gas coming from the wrong wells.

Read the whole hot breaking news

ATLANTA – How much money would it take to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?

Many employers are betting they can find your price. At least a third of U.S. companies offer financial incentives, or are planning to introduce them, to get their employees to lose weight or get healthier in other ways.

“There’s been an explosion of interest in this,” said Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives.

Take OhioHealth, a hospital chain whose workforce is mostly overweight. The company last year embarked on a program that paid employees to wear pedometers and get paid for walking. The more they walk, the more they win — up to $500 a year.

Anecdotal success stories are everywhere. Half of the 9,000 employees at the chain’s five main hospitals signed up, more than $377,000 in rewards have already been paid out, and many workers tell of weight loss and a sudden need for slimmer clothes.

But does will this kind of effort really put a permanent dent in American’s seemingly intractable obesity problem? Not likely.

Read the whole hot breaking news