NewsTrust - Most Trusted Stories: News

Seniors skeptical of health overhaul

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Kyung M. Song - Nov. 17 (Special Report) - For seniors opposed to an overhaul, much of the fear stems from well-publicized news reports of massive Medicare cuts over a decade. The House bill calls for nearly $500 billion in spending cuts that are designed to keep Medicare solvent longer by reducing fraud, waste and excessive spending. Half the cuts would be to what experts call excessive payments to home-health, skilled-nursing and other institutional health providers.

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Report: More Americans going hungry

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Amy Goldstein - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

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Toxic munitions 'may be cause' of baby deaths and deformities in Fallujah

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By David Randall - Nov. 16 (News Report) - Evidence was growing this weekend that babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah – scene in 2004 of one of the few set-piece battles of the invasion – are exhibiting high rates of mortality and birth defects.

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Google Computes News Quality

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

InformationWeek - By Thomas Claburn - Nov. 16 (News Report) - A recently filed patent application suggests that Google is taking steps to promote news produced by major media companies on Google News. Whenever a newspaper dies, Google turns up on the list of suspects. The evidence of Google's involvement tends to be sketchy. A close examination of the crime scene typically points to a different villain -- the classified revenue killer known as Craigslist, parasitic news sites that siphon potential visitors, declining subscription and ad revenue, management that can't adapt, or the hyper-competition created by the Internet's ability to collapse distance and divert attention. But Google nonetheless has been forced to defend itself. In May, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet that Google is the hand that feeds media companies, channeling over one billion clicks every month to online publishers through Google Search and Google News. She suggested that Wikipedia, with its constantly updated articles, might offer a better model for journalism in the Internet age than a series of separate articles. And she proposed that online publishers might be failing their readers by presenting them with Web pages that lack engaging social features.

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Chamber’s Donohue Keeps Cash Coming After PG&E, Apple Defect

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bloomberg - By Mark Drajem, Daniel Whitten - Nov. 17 (News Report) - Apple Inc. and three other members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce quit over its opposition to climate-change legislation. President Barack Obama denounced the group for “spending millions” to kill a planned consumer financial-protection agency. Tom Donohue, the 71-year-old president of the nation’s largest business-lobbying organization, responded by doing what critics and admirers alike say he does best: using a fight to raise money in support of the Chamber’s agenda.

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Is It Time for Malpractice Reform?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Joanne Kenen - Nov. 20 (News Analysis) - Year after year, Republicans try to pass legislation that would limit medical malpractice awards. Fix the tort system, they argue, and we fix rising health-care costs. And year after year, Democrats resist placing arbitrary caps on awards to people who may have suffered from an egregious medical error. The fight plays out like a predictable old Western -- good guys versus bad guys. Depending on your politics, the villain is either the greedy doctor or the greedy trial lawyer.

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As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Dexter Filkins - Nov. 22 (News Report) - “We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized themselves,” Col. Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help. Afghan and American officials say they plan to use the militias as tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or the police if things get out of hand.

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NAM Speaks Softly on Climate -- Does It Carry a Big Stick?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Joel Kirkland - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The biggest U.S. manufacturers' alliance has gone from being a ferocious critic of global warming legislation to being a quiet observer in recent months, even as debate about Senate climate legislation increasingly focuses on global trade issues and jobs.

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Environmental groups debate new tack in climate-change fight

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By David A. Fahrenthold - Nov. 16 (News Report) - A curious debate has broken out among American environmental groups, as the Senate balkily starts to focus on the threat of climate change. Is this really the time to talk about the threat of climate change?

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Chevron's lobby campaign backfires

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Kenneth P. Vogel - Nov. 16 (News Report) - Facing the possibility of a $27 billion pollution judgment against it in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron launched an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign to try to prevent the judgment as well as reverse a deeply damaging story line. Chevron’s tactics — ranging from quietly trying to wield U.S. trade policy to compel Ecuador’s government to squelch the case, to producing a pseudo-news report casting the company as the victim of a corrupt Ecuadorean political system — were designed to win powerful allies in Congress and the Obama administration as well as to shape public opinion and calm shareholders.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce Split Over Donohue’s Climate Policy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By John M. Broder - Nov. 19 (Special Report) - BACK in the 1990s when Thomas J. Donohue was president of the American Trucking Associations, a subordinate raised a question at a staff meeting. Some of the association’s members, the aide said, wondered whether it was really necessary for the group’s president to fly on a private jet.

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High stakes in Appalachia as greens battle Big Coal

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Toronto Star - By Mitch Potter - Nov. 17 (News Report) - The plan was painfully simple: save a mountain, turn a country, cool the Earth. And for the longest time, it seemed to be working here on Coal River Mountain, ground zero in the American debate over climate change.

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Senate to Put Off Climate Bill Until Spring

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Ian Talley - Nov. 18 (News Report) - Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big climate-change bill until spring, in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.

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Fed Beaten: Bill To Audit Federal Reserve Passes Key Hurdle

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By The Huffington Post News Team - Nov. 20 (News Report) - In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an...

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Advocacy Groups May Reshape Message During Holidays

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Katharine Q. Seeleye - Nov. 22 (News Analysis) - The Senate debate on health care, set to begin the week after Thanksgiving, is now on course to collide with the holiday season. One question for advocacy groups on all sides will be whether to keep up their barrage of pointed commercials, even as chestnuts roast and stockings are hung.

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The $100 Million Health Care Vote?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ABC News - By Jonathan Karl - Nov. 20 (News Report) - The health care bill includes a $100 million section for increasing medicaid subsidies to the state of Louisiana. The Note, authored by ABC News' Rick Klein, covers politics, the White House, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, and all latest political campaigning for the 2012 presidential race. Washington's first and most influential tipsheet, The

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Nidal Hasan Emails Could Indicate Fort Hood Shooting Was A Terrorist Plot

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess, Anne Gearan - Nov. 21 (Breaking News) - WASHINGTON – The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the alleged Fort Hood gunman and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

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In Senate, coal fuels climate deals

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Lisa Lerer - Nov. 17 (News Report) - Forget the debate over green jobs, wind farms and solar power. In the Senate, all deals on climate change run through coal country. Black gold has maintained a tight hold over the climate bill — despite a damaging lobbying scandal this summer, growing public health concerns and a destructive toxic coal ash spill that smothered 300 acres in eastern Tennessee last December.

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Obama Aims to Allay Auto Lobby Concern on Korea Trade

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bloomberg - By Edwin Chen, Julianna Goldman - Nov. 21 (News Report) - President Barack Obama said he is committed to pushing through a free trade agreement with South Korea that has been stalled by the U.S. auto lobby and unions, who argue it doesn’t do enough to open up Korean markets. Obama’s joint press conference in Seoul today with South Korean counterpart Lee Myung Bak was a last chance on his four- nation Asia trip to show he opposes protectionism. The accord has been held up in Congress, where lawmakers are demanding wider access for Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Lee said today he is willing to reopen talks on the auto industry.

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Green groups split on Danish idea

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Eamon Javers - Nov. 17 (News Report) - U.S. environmental groups are split over how to respond to the Obama administration’s decision to go along with a Danish proposal not to push for a binding global climate agreement at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen next month. The global environmental group Greenpeace blasted the move, calling it a sop to President Barack Obama’s political vulnerability. “Danish Prime Minister [Lars Lokke] Rasmussen has become complicit in a U.S. so-called deal which would put Obama’s political difficulties ahead of the survival of the world’s most vulnerable countries,” said Kaisa Kosonen, climate policy adviser for Greenpeace International.

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