Environment
High Court Case Tests Power Plants' Water Rules
Tuesday 02 December 2008 | The US Supreme Court hears an important environmental case Tuesday, testing whether utilities must use the best technology available to minimize harm to the nation's waterways. At issue is the physical impact on fish and the financial impact on companies. The nation's 550 power plants use water - lots of water in some instances - that comes from lakes and rivers. Each day, more than 214 billion gallons of water is sucked into power plants across the country. That's tens of trillions of gallons each year. The water cools the steam used in the electric generating process. And all the fish and aquatic organisms in the water are killed in the process. »Labor
Federal Workers Unions Want "Burrowers" Lists
Sunday 30 November 2008 | Two powerful employee organizations are pressing the Bush administration to prove that in its final weeks, political aides are not improperly winning career government jobs at the expense of more qualified workers. Leaders of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, and the Senior Executives Association, the group representing federal executives, said they want the government to release lists of political appointees who have been hired for career jobs and show whether agencies sought competition for the positions. »Women's Issues
Activists Expect Clinton to Propel Women's Rights
Tuesday 02 December 2008 | It was a startling speech coming from a first lady - indeed, Hillary Rodham Clinton's 1995 speech at the United Nations Conference for Women in Beijing is credited as a watershed moment. "It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls," the first lady told the international gathering. "... It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small." »Health
Economy Could Add to Medicare Woes
Tuesday 02 December 2008 | Federal health officials estimate that the struggling economy will speed up by one to three years the exhaustion of the Medicare trust fund covering hospital and nursing home care. Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare programs warned last March that the trust fund for Medicare Part A would become insolvent in 2019. But the chief actuary for Medicare said yesterday that the economy will probably generate less revenue through payroll taxes than the trustees had projected. Once the trust fund is exhausted, the federal government will continue to pay for hospital care and other services, but it initially would only have enough money coming in to cover 78 percent of estimated costs. »Voter Rights
