10 things you need to know today: February 2, 2013

Scott Brown opts out, Iran's space-monkey stunt may be a hoax, and more in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion

Scott Brown doesn't want John Kerry's old job.
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1. ECONOMY ADDS 157,000 JOBS

U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The gains, a hair shy of what economists expected, was enough to signal continued slow improvement of the employment picture but not enough to keep the unemployment rate from inching higher, to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent the month before, as more unemployed Americas went back out to hunt for work. Encouragingly, government data also showed that the economy added 150,000 more jobs than first estimated in the final quarter of 2012 — and 335,000 more over the whole year. That brought 2012's job growth to 2.2 million. [New York Times]

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Samantha Rollins

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.