Published: Feb 23, 2012
After 20 years of delay and litigation by polluters, the Obama administration approved in December one of the most important rules in the history of the Clean Air Act. It will require power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants by more than 90 percent in the next five years and is expected to prevent as many as 11,000
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
Federal prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against Gary May, a superintendent of the West Virginia coal mine where an explosion left 29 dead in 2010, continuing an emotional case that has been closely watched by the mining industry and the families of the dead miners. Mr. May is the third mine supervisor to be charged in the disaster, the worst
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
IN THE NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan We heard the whine of a bomber overhead, and the families I was interviewing suddenly scrambled to their feet. Like starving people everywhere, they had seemed listless, their bodies conserving every ounce of energy to stay alive. “We’ve had nothing to eat but leaves from trees,” one young mother,
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
The 20th Republican debate! I have now spent more time watching the Republican presidential candidates on television than two seasons of “Downton Abbey.” Perhaps it would be easier if Newt Gingrich wore a tuxedo. Also, I am pretty sure the folks at Downton Abbey never spent an episode arguing about earmarks. Republicans, why are we
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
Seattle LAST week, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that teachers’ individual performance assessments could be made public. I have no opinion on the ruling as a matter of law, but as a harbinger of education policy in the United States, it is a big mistake. I am a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness, and my
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
As everyone knows, the world has been “flattening” for the past three decades. This has opened the door for dozens of nations and billions of people to enter the global economy. What many do not realize is that this era is coming to an end. Not that global integration is over, or even slowing down. Far from it. But the developing world
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
A state judge’s decision this week supporting the rights of individual towns to determine whether to allow hydraulic fracturing has added a new wrinkle to the fight over the natural gas drilling process in New York. Parties on all sides are trying to figure out what the ruling will mean, but a consensus emerged on Wednesday that there will be
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
The weary sameness of life at sea has taken its toll on the crew members of the S.S. Glencairn. Even drunk, desperate and quarrelsome, these sullen salts rarely raise or otherwise vary their voices. They sound pretty much the same whether they’re anguished or angry or excited or on their deathbeds. The monotony of a sailor’s lot has
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
MILAN THE reaction of a taxi driver to the requested destination was fairly typical of the response among older residents of this city to Excelsior, a 40,000-square-foot concept store that opened here last September. In the former site of a movie theater, Jean Nouvel has designed, at a cost of several million dollars, a fashion fantasyland that
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Published: Feb 23, 2012
MATTHEW COOPER was living on Tums, Pepto-Bismol and Zantac and experiencing such a bad case of irritable bowel syndrome , he’d frequently have to abandon his wife and friends at restaurants midmeal. He had leg cramps , insomnia and chronic cases of fatigue and acid reflux . And then a friend turned him on to enzymes. “Within a week,
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