Funding cuts could hamper forecasting, meteorologists and federal officials say
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 22nd, 2011 4:35 am by HL
Funding cuts could hamper forecasting, meteorologists and federal officials say
In this year of extreme weather and a contentious budget climate, federal officials are warning Congress that funding cuts and program delays will create a gap in weather satellite coverage starting in about 2016. That’s when a key polar-orbiting satellite is expected to exceed its design lifetime, with no ready replacement.
The gap could last as long as a year or more, depending on final funding levels, the condition of other satellites and additional variables, officials say. The key question is what effect it will have on weather forecasts.
Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington, was crucial to the movement
It was around this point in August 1963, in the sweltering days before the March on Washington, that Eleanor Holmes Norton was waiting for someone to say something really nasty about her boss.
She was a march volunteer. The boss was Bayard Rustin, the march’s chief organizer and the man widely viewed as the only civil rights activist capable of pulling off a protest of such unprecedented scale.
And he was gay. Openly gay. That year again? 1963.
Economy still straining Social Security disability program
Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.
Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs — in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs — and can’t find new ones.
The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants — many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.
A founding father of American Islam struggles to put raids behind him
Iqbal Unus delayed the start of his open house by an hour, hoping more candidates would show up to hear about the country’s first accredited training program for Muslim clergy. But by 7:30 p.m., just three new people were picking at plates of chicken and rice in the library of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Northern Virginia.
If Unus, 67, was discouraged, he didn’t show it. Instead, he launched into his sales pitch for replacing imported imams with American-trained spiritual leaders.