NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Credit card reforms up for Senate vote

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - May. 19 (News Report) - Unable to stop the tide of foreclosures and job losses, lawmakers are hoping to give voters at least some breathing room in the economic downturn by banning arbitrary rate hikes and excessive fees charged by credit card companies.

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Nuclear power inches back into energy spotlight

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Paul Davidson - Mar. 30 (News Report) - Utilities are poised to build a new generation of nuclear plants 30 years after the Three Mile Island accident, whose anniversary was Saturday, halted new reactor applications. The momentum is being driven by growing public acceptance of relatively clean nuclear energy to combat global warming.

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Study links children's lead levels, SAT scores

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Greg Toppo - Feb. 03 (News Report) - Could a decades-long drop in the concentration of lead in children's blood help explain rising SAT scores? A Virginia economist who pored over years of national data says there's an "incredibly strong" correlation, which adds to a growing body of research on lead's harmful effects. The findings, to be published this winter in the journal Environmental Research, suggest that from 1953 to 2003, the fall and rise of the average SAT math and verbal score has tracked the rise and fall of blood lead levels so closely that half of the change in scores over 50 years, and possibly more, probably is the result of lead, says economist Rick Nevin.

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Consumers cut credit payments, struggle to pay bills

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Kathy Chu - Jan. 29 (News Report) - Consumers are dramatically scaling back how much of their credit card balances they pay each month. Data released this month show that the credit card payment rate — the percentage of outstanding card debt paid — fell by 2.5 percentage points to 16.1%. The drop in November, the latest month available, is among the largest on record, according to CardTrak.com, a credit card research firm.

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1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Greg Toppo - Jan. 09 (News Report) - A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book or to understand a medication's side effects listed on a pill bottle.

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Obama's aides outline priorities

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Lauren Victoria Burke - Nov. 10 (News Report) - In a series of interviews Sunday, Emanuel and Obama transition team chief John Podesta said the president-elect has a set of priorities on which he wants quick action.

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Voting equipment changes could get messy on Nov. 4

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Richard Wolf - Oct. 29 (News Report) - "We know that on Nov. 4, voting systems will fail somewhere," says Lawrence Norden, director of voting technology at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. "There is no perfect system. All of these systems have problems."

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Homeless numbers 'alarming'

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Wendy Koch - Oct. 21 (News Report) - More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

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Governments' building projects shore up economy

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Dennis Cauchon - Aug. 20 (News Report) - Construction spending by federal, state and local governments has reached record levels, lifting the economy and employing some blue-collar workers despite a collapse in home building.

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NBC coverage gives a narrow view of China

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Robert Bianco - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - Many journalists in China, including USA TODAY's Christine Brennan, have written about the sterile atmosphere on the Olympic Green in the first week caused by the Chinese government's aggressive security measures. That's something a viewer would have known only by omission. Gone were the Sydney pans of happy crowds, replaced by tight shots designed to hide their absence.

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Iraqi elections official fears fair vote in jeopardy

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Charles Levinson, Ali A. Nabhan - Aug. 15 (News Report) - Iraqi security forces loyal to the Shiite-led government are raiding voter registration centers and taking other steps to discourage participation in upcoming elections, says the head of Iraq's voting regulatory agency.

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Environmentalists, businesses reach compromise

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Dennis Cauchon - Jul. 30 (News Report) - Governmental inaction is prompting environmental groups and big business to cut unprecedented deals to promote energy exploration and other development in return for major conservation initiatives.

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Economic pain: 'Payback' for debt-fueled growth?

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By David J. Lynch - Jul. 17 (Special Report) - For nearly a decade, consumers grew accustomed to the idea of ever-rising home prices. Housing-related prosperity boosted consumption, as consumers tapped home-equity loans for cash to pay for everything from new cars to college for the kids. As the boom roared on, regulators stood on the sidelines, convinced that the magic of the market would sort out any problems. "It seemed too good to be true, and it was. Absolutely (today) is payback," says [economist Kenneth Rogoff], former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

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Illegal immigrants face threat of no college

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Mary Beth Marklein - Jul. 07 (News Report) - Some states are making it harder for illegal immigrants to attend college by denying in-state tuition benefits or banning undocumented students. In the past two years, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma have refused in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the USA illegally with their parents but grew up and went to school in the state. That represents a reversal from earlier this decade, when 10 states passed laws allowing in-state rates for such students.

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Obama faces online backlash for centrist views

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Kathy Kiely, Martha T. Moore - Jul. 03 (News Report) - Those centrist positions may help woo swing voters, but they infuriated some of Obama's core supporters. Nearly 12,000 of them have formed an online group on Obama's presidential campaign website, urging him to vote against the domestic wiretapping bill.

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Price of Power: McCain accepts ex-Swift Boaters' donations

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Fredreka Schouten - Jul. 01 (News Report) - Republican John McCain, who four years ago condemned independent ads challenging Democrat John Kerry's military record, has accepted nearly $70,000 for his presidential campaign from the top donors of the group behind the attack ads and their relatives, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

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What's new: Problems ahead for McCain?

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:09:50 -0700

USA Today - By Mark Memmott, Jill Lawrence - Jun. 09 (News Analysis) - After the long Democratic nomination battle, there's some refocusing this morning on Republican John McCain's campaign, and problems that may lie ahead. Politico looks at McCain's stinging attacks on Barack Obama -- and concludes it is a dangerous strategy -- in a piece called The unhappy warrior. The New York Times headlines its story McCain Extends His Outreach, but Evangelicals Are Still Wary. The Los Angeles Times examines that and other problems in John McCain's Ohio Disconnect. And Tom Edsall dissects McCain campaign assertions about the state of play at The Huffington Post in GOP Insiders Worry About McCain's Chances.

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McCain says he won't run from Bush in campaign

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By David Jackson - Jun. 06 (News Report) - Republican John McCain said he won't try to "separate" himself from a weakened President Bush or his unpopular handling of the war in Iraq to try to win the general election against Barack Obama, who has made opposition to the war a focus of the Democratic campaign.

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McCain challenges Obama to town hall-style debates

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:46:58 -0700

USA Today - By David Jackson - Jun. 04 (News Report) - John McCain kicked off the latest phase of the presidential race Wednesday by challenging Sen. Barack Obama to a series of town hall-type debates.

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Gas prices rattle Americans

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Judy Keen, Paul Overberg - May. 09 (News Report) - Record high gas prices are prompting Americans to drive less for the first time in nearly three decades, squeezing family budgets and causing major shifts in driving habits, federal data and a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll show.

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Conservationists make most of real estate crisis

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Haya El Nasser - May. 09 (News Report) - Plummeting real estate values and demand for new housing are hammering developers but helping conservationists, enabling land trusts to buy thousands of acres that were slated for development and preserve them as open space.

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McCain denounces protectionism

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By David Jackson - Apr. 23 (News Report) - As he stood outside a shuttered steel-fabrication plant here Tuesday, Republican John McCain said "education and training" and not "the siren song of protectionism" would help revive economically troubled areas such as Ohio's Mahoning Valley.

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Government authority is crossing a line

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Raul Reyes - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Last week, Eloisa Tamez, 73, lost the latest round in her ongoing fight with the U.S. government. A judge ordered her to let Washington survey her land near Brownsville, Texas. It lies in the path of a proposed border fence. Now, Tamez, heir to an original Spanish land grant dating to the 1700s, fears that her property will be seized with good reason.

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FAA officials gave Southwest a pass on safety checks

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Alan Levin - Mar. 10 (News Report) - FAA officials overseeing Southwest Airlines ignored safety violations, leaked sensitive data to the carrier and tried to intimidate two inspectors to head off investigations, according to previously undisclosed allegations by the inspectors.

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Clinton, Obama banter reaches fever pitch

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Jill Lawrence - Feb. 27 (News Report) - Aggressive cuts and thrusts over Iraq, health care and campaign tactics dominated the 20th and possibly final Democratic debate Tuesday as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama angled for advantage a week before a crucial set of primaries.

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