IT’S THE ONE ISSUE that just won’t go away. During the campaign, everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich took credit for passing a major welfare-reform bill. Now, with the election behind them, that much touted piece of legislation turns out to be just another round in the never-ending political and ideological battle over how to help the poorest of the poor, the 12.8 million Americans who–until recently–could count on a federal guarantee of financial assistance....
Preseason games mean something to the guys who are playing in them, and the people who work at the arena, and the media that covers day-to-day events of the teams that are involved, and some of the people in the stands. For me — whose job consists in no small part of stuff like this — they mean nothing. I must create my own meaning. Life is what you make of it!...
With the Bush administration committed to reviving the nation’s nuclear industry, people in Moberly and all across the country will be getting a crash course in nuclear safety–a hot-button issue from the ’70s whose time is coming again. There’s plenty to be said in favor of nuclear energy: it’s often cheaper than oil, cleaner than coal and it’s arguably safer than it used to be. “If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in March, “then you ought to build nuclear power plants....
This book won’t tell you how to make origami dinner napkins, or how to be like Martha. “There’re a lot of guides to tell you how to do things perfectly,” says Rowley. “We think perfection is overrated. The key is to be creative and be yourself.” Mixing practical advice (e.g., always send thank-you notes) with sassy suggestions (actually, send a thank-you balloon with what a blowout! scrawled across it in Magic Marker), “Swell” taps straight into the Zeitgeist that put “Sex and the City” at the top of the ratings and turned last year’s best-seller list into a female-bonding session for Bridget Jones and her pals....
The key here lies in putting forward ideas that McConnell can embrace as being in his own interest. During the next four years, the Senate will look to hold the Biden administration accountable, and many Republican Senate committee chairs will be looking to score points off the Biden administration. Thus, come January 20th, when Joe Biden is inaugurated, Senate Republicans will not have much incentive to plug the holes that the Trump administration drove through, but they have plenty of incentive to put in place ways to make the executive branch more responsive to the will of Congress, and to make Senate oversight in particular more penetrating....
The 1992 novel by Robert James Waller had already turned the loamy farm town into an international lovers’ lane. Now with the 10-hanky movie starring Streep and Eastwood (who also directed) that opened around the country, the pilgrimages may reach orgiastic proportions. Winterset (population: 4,500) is doing its best to cope. The no-nonsense folk of Madison County have bunkered down for another onslaught of hopeless romantics in spite of themselves....
Shapiro, who draws under the name of Zapiro, doesn’t only direct his barbs at his home country. No fan of George W. Bush, he has drawn some bitter cartoons ridiculing the U.S. president. One of his drawings shows U.N. weapons inspectors carrying Bush out of the White House. The caption: “Tell Mr. Annan we found another empty warhead.” Others have been even harsher, with scatological depictions of surgeons searching for the presidential brain....
Feminist leaders are standing by their man, just as the Kennedy women have always done. They separate private and public morality, and cite Kennedy’s record on everything from civil rights to child care. “The behavior that really counts is on the floor of the Senate,” says Gabrielle Lange, acting press secretary for the National Organization for Women. Kennedy has never strayed from the feminist agenda. Yet to call his private life a separate matter is to hide behind an outdated gentlemen’s code....
Marshall Scholars for the Kigali Public Library has joined local Rwandans and the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga with the hope of opening the library by the end of 2004–10 years after the country’s catastrophic genocide. Nearly all of the 2002 class has participated in the project by fund-raising, making donations or helping publicize the group’s efforts. Eleven have spent the last few weeks in Rwanda, meeting with President Paul Kagame, discussing the 1994 tragedy with survivors and hauling rocks and wooden beams to help build the library itself....
Soft tissue almost never survives fossilization, but that wasn’t the only surprise. Based on 3-D images from the scans, the 650-pound plant-eater’s heart may have more in common with yours than with a crocodile’s. Modern reptiles are sluggish; their three-chambered hearts let blood flow back to the body before picking up energy-giving oxygen from the lungs. Birds and mammals–and, it seems, Thescelosaurus –have a more efficient four-chamber design, which delivers oxygen-rich blood to the muscles and provides the energy to make us warm-blooded so we don’t have to bask in the sun to get moving in the morning....
Meanwhile, NEWSWEEK has learned the CIA recently reported that counterdrug and crop-substitution programs in Andean nations have had little effect. After four years and hundreds of millions spent, the CIA says the Bolivian coca crop is down “slightly.” Peru’s is up 9 percent, with a larger increase projected for 1994. Drugwar boosters in the Pentagon insist the plan disrupts dealers and should continue.
Not that either side needs a reminder of who’s who. The Chunxiao gas fields in the center of the East China Sea–where Beijing is hunting for energy in waters hard against the boundary line of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claimed by Japan–are a long way from the back rooms of Tokyo. But there’s no question that events in this lonely corner of the ocean will be much on the mind of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prospective prime minister, as he settles into his new job over the next few weeks....
Rodriguez withdrew his suit against Dr. Christopher Ahmad “for the sole purpose of having no legal distractions” as the third baseman anticipates returning to play after the season-long suspension he’s serving this year, attorney Alan S. Ripka said. “He wants to focus on being the best baseball player he can be, the best Yankee he can be, and wants nothing to distract him from those goals,” the attorney said....
But are people really taking A-Rod serious? Probably not. You know what would help? If Frank Caliendo read the letter as Morgan Freeman. MORE: Stop analyzing A-Rod’s handwriting | Pablo Sandoval is big | Cubs’ Billy goat Oh, he already did? Let’s watch. Caliendo read the beautifully scribed letter on “Mike & Mike,” where he pulled out impressive imitations of Freeman along with Jon Gruden and Chris Berman. Morgan Freeman makes everything better....
All in a day’s work for the lab in Ashland, Ore., that in just a year has gained a reputation as the Scotland Yard for animals. Poachers often go free because of the difficulty in proving the origin of a few feathers, say, or even a freezer full of steaks, so the lab is developing scientific identifcation procedures that stand up in court. Among them is an electron-microscope technique to differentiate fossil mammoth ivory–which is legal–from forbidden (and almost identical) elephant ivory....
The first bomb exploded Tuesday in Tiburon, Calif., when it was opened by Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco. The blast tore off several of Epstein’s fingers from his right hand and broke his arm. In New Haven, Conn., two days later, another package blew up in the face of Yale computer scientist David Gelernter. With blood gushing from severe wounds to his right hand and chest, Gelernter staggered to the university clinic a block away....
