NEW YORK TIMES: … The homes, often decrepit and infested with vermin, overflow with bunk beds and people. Exits are blocked and fire escapes nonexistent. The homes are considered illegal because they violate building codes on overcrowding. Many have become drug dens, where people seem almost as likely to die of overdoses as they are […]
Month: May 2015
Extraction tax still likely despite posturing, noise
Wolf went from political unknown to Democratic frontrunner to governor-elect by campaigning on a pledge to tax drillers and spend the money on schools…
O’Malley’s long-shot bid gets complicated start
POLITICO: Martin O’Malley’s presidential bid has always been a long-shot, but the odds looked even longer Saturday as he officially kicked off his campaign from Federal Hill Park. The run-up to his launch here could hardly have been worse, complicated in recent weeks by unrest in the city where he served as mayor and the […]
Aided by the Sea, Israel Overcomes an Old Foe: Drought
A major national effort to desalinate Mediterranean seawater and to recycle wastewater has provided the country with enough water for all its needs, even during severe droughts. More than 50 percent of the water for Israeli households, agriculture and industry is now artificially produced…
Senate Commitee Clears Way for Medical Marijuana for Veterans
“While we won five votes in a row on the House floor last year, this is the first time we’ve ever won a vote on a positive marijuana reform measure in the Senate,” said Tom Angell, director of Marijuana Majority. “And with polls showing that a growing majority of voters supports ending prohibition, it’s safe to say it won’t be the last”
Pentagon Chief Blasts Beijing’s South China Sea Moves
NEWSMAX: China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea is out of step with international rules, and turning underwater land into airfields won’t expand its sovereignty, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told an international security conference Saturday, stepping up America’s condemnation of the communist giant as Beijing officials sat in the audience. Carter told the room […]
California’s Snowpack Is Now Zero Percent of Normal
SLATE: At least some measurable snowpack in the Sierra mountains usually lasts all summer. But this year, its early demise means that runoff from the mountains—which usually makes up the bulk of surface water for farms and cities during the long summer dry season—will be essentially non-existent. To be clear: there’s still a bit of […]
US economy contracts in first quarter
FINANCIAL TIMES: The US economy contracted in the first three months of this year, according to a second official estimate released on Friday. The commerce department said the economy shrank 0.7 per cent on an annualised basis in the first quarter. That is much weaker than the 0.2 per cent growth the first estimate showed. […]
Bernie Sanders’s Message Resonates With a Certain Age Group: His Own
NEW YORK TIMES: …At a campaign rally in Vermont on Tuesday and at three events in New Hampshire, including a town hall-style gathering in Portsmouth that drew roughly 600 people, older voters made up a sizable minority of the crowds. Their visibility has been striking because Mr. Sanders’s unabashedly progressive message, calling for a “political […]
Judge issues an order disqualifying the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office
SLATE: Prosecutorial and police misconduct are often dismissed as just a few bad apples doing a few bad apple-ish things. But what happens when it’s entrenched and systemic and goes unchecked for years? That looks to be the case in Orange County, California, where the situation got so completely out of hand this spring that […]
How to break free from monogamy without destroying marriage
WASHINGTON POST COLUMN: That’s not wrong, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. In the caveman days, humans teamed up in non-exclusive pairs to protect their children. Later, as people learned to plant crops and settle in one place, marriage became a way for men to guarantee kids, […]
Fewer immigrants are entering the U.S. illegally, and that’s changed the border security debate
WASHINGTON POST: … A key — but largely overlooked — sign of these ebbing flows is the changing makeup of the undocumented population. Until recent years, illegal immigrants tended to be young men streaming across the Southern border in pursuit of work. But demographic data show that the typical illegal immigrant now is much more […]
H.I.V. Treatment Should Start at Diagnosis, U.S. Health Officials Say
Exchanges in Reading, Lancaster and Harrisburg help to identify those with HIV. Their efforts not only help save client lives but also diminishes the secondary spread of AIDS through sexual contact. Exchanges in Reading, Lancaster and Harrisburg help to identify those with HIV. Their efforts not only help save client lives but also diminishes the secondary spread of AIDS through sexual contact.
F.C.C. Chief Seeks Broadband Plan to Aid the Poor
NEW YORK TIMES: For 30 years, the federal government has helped millions of low-income Americans pay their phone bills, saying that telephone service is critical to summoning medical help, seeking work and, ultimately, climbing out of poverty. Now, the nation’s top communications regulator will propose offering those same people subsidized access to broadband Internet. On […]