Tag Archives: virginia

Obama’s Challenge: Containing the AIG Bonus Outrage

The White House scrambled on Monday to get ahead of the latest outrage stemming from the bailout of failed corporate behemoth American International Group : $165 million in bonus pay for executives in one part of the firm, which is now 80% controlled by American taxpayers. President Barack Obama took to the podium in the East Room to tag AIG by name, calling its financial predicament a product of “recklessness and greed.” The President said he has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to “block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole,” adding, “This isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents

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Massacre Raises Issue of Gun Control in Europe

Europeans might once have viewed massacres at educational institutions as a uniquely American scourge, but they no longer have that luxury: Friday found Germany still mourning the 16 victims of Wednesday’s carnage in Winnenden, while Scotland marked the 13th anniversary of Europe’s first mass school shooting, the bloodbath at Dunblane in which 16 grade-school students and their teacher were mowed down by a lone gunman. Clearly, Europe has a problem to which there’s no simple solution. “When you compare us to countries with enormous gun ownership like the U.S., it’s obvious we’re less vulnerable to gun violence,” says Christophe Soullez, chief of France’s National Observatory on Delinquency

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Love on the Fly: Volunteer Vacations

If you’ve had your fill of moonlit beach walks and peach-colored drinks, try something altogether different. I recently spoke with several couples whose idea of a passionate vacation involved less hand-holding and more giving a hand: they spent their vacation time volunteering. Jamie Cann and his wife, Mary, returned recently from a trip to Tanzania.

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Biden announces $1.3 billion for Amtrak

Vice President Joe Biden continued the administration’s rollout of the recently passed economic stimulus package Friday, highlighting $1.3 billion in federal funding for Amtrak. The money for the rail service, which carried almost 29 million passengers in the previous fiscal year, will go primarily to infrastructure repair and improvement. The $787 billion stimulus plan includes a total of $8 billion for improvements in rail service, a crucial investment to help ease traffic in the congested northeast corridor running from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, Biden argued.

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Major deadly attacks at schools

A shooting rampage by a 17-year-old former student that has left at least 10 dead at a school in Winnenden, Germany is the latest in a series of attacks in education institutions. Here some of the major incidents. September 23, 2008: Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences, Kauhajoki, Finland.

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