Free Republic

WASHINGTON - In his first State of the Union address to a Democratic-controlled Congress, President Bush is calling for Americans to slash gasoline consumption by up to 20 percent by 2017. Bush envisions the goal being achieved primarily through a sharp escalation in the amount of ethanol and other alternative fuels that the federal government mandates must be produced. The rest of the fuel use reduction is to come from raising fuel economy standards for passenger cars, Joel Kaplan, White House deputy chief of staff, told reporters in a briefing before Bush's Tuesday night speech to a joint session of...

Enrollment drops, teachers leave, but administrators stay. That's the story at most of the 25 school districts with declining enrollment in the Sacramento region, according to a Bee analysis of state education data. Just eight of those districts reported to the state that they had cut administrators between the school years 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, even though the districts lost about 5,000 students during that period. Five of the 25 districts added administrators. And although most of those districts aren't cutting administrator positions, they are employing fewer teachers. Twenty-two of the 25 districts have fewer teachers today than they did five...

North is said to cut back phone use June 08, 2005 -- North Korea is aggressively asserting greater control over domestic and international communications, apparently out of fear the United States could launch a preemptive military strike on the country, two sources with close connections to North Korea have suggested. Starting in April, the sources said Pyongyang blocked 90 percent of its international phone lines to hinder leaks of information to the outside world. Before April, the North operated 970 international phone lines, but the sources said a direct order came from the North's leader, Kim Jong-il, to cut the...