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President Barack Obama's inauguration next week is set to be the most expensive ever, predicted to reach over $150m (£102m). This dwarfs the $42.3m spent on George Bush's inauguration in 2005 and the $33m spent on Bill Clinton's in 1993. Part of the spending includes emergency funding announced by the White House on Tuesday to help with the soaring costs. Most of this new federal funding will be to deal with the huge influx of people, estimated 1.5 million to 2 million. A White House statement said that President Bush "declared an emergency exists in the District of Columbia". If...

Some CNBC contributor (Dr. J and Kevin-somebody) has provided inside info that congress may consider a time-specific tax holiday for payroll taxes to stimulate the economy.

I want you to be there with me on Election Night when the results come in. We're planning a big event that will include tens of thousands of supporters in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. We're saving some of the best seats in the house for 5 people who have given to the campaign before -- and who decide to make a donation one last time before Sunday at midnight. If you're selected, you can bring a guest, and we'll fly you in and put you up in a hotel for the night. You'll go backstage at the big event...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - They may be a small minority in corporate boardrooms, but women directors typically earn more than men, a new U.S. study has found. Female directors in corporate America earned median compensation of $120,000, based on the most recently available pay data, compared with $104,375 for male board members, research group The Corporate Library said in its annual director pay report on Wednesday. At the same time, the study said, women in corporate boardrooms are outnumbered eight to one. "This makes being a director one of the few jobs in the U.S. economy where the pay differential...

Sleeping too much, just like sleeping too little, could increase a person's risk of dying, a new U.K study indicates. Researchers at the University of Warwick's Warwick Medical School studied 10,308 British civil servants in two different time periods: between 1985 and 1988, and between 1992 and 1993. Study participants who slept longer than eight hours were more than twice as likely to die as those who kept sleeping for seven. Researchers believe depression, low socioeconomic status and cancer-related fatigue could play a part. (CBC) With seven hours seen as the optimal amount of sleep for the average adult, the...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-20-katrina-crime_N.htm Rules,link only

YATA, West Bank -- One slip, and Issa Abu Shakr's 5-year-old nephew plunged into the fetid stream of sewage that flows outside the family's West Bank home. The contact with the filthy water required multiple blood transfusions and a 10-day hospital stay, Abu Shakr says. A few miles away, Maisoun Seidat picked up a blue bucket for one of her three daily trips to a communal cistern. People shouldn't have to fret about something as elemental as water, Seidat says, but in the parched West Bank, it's a constant worry. These are the human face of the toll exacted by...

Binge eating is not yet officially classified as a psychiatric disorder. But it may be more common than the two eating disorders now recognized, anorexia nervosa and bulimia. The first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States, a nationwide survey of more than 2,900 men and women, was published by Harvard researchers in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. It found a prevalence in the general population of 0.6 percent for anorexia, 1 percent for bulimia and 2.8 percent for binge-eating disorder. Lifetime rates of the disorders, the researchers found, are higher in younger...

Records from online vendors will help the state target buyers who didn't pay levy. California consumers and retailers who thought they had dodged sales and excise taxes when they bought cigarettes from out-of-state Internet and mail-order vendors are about to get smoked out. As part of a sweeping effort to crack down on such purchases, the state Board of Equalization has obtained 450,000 invoices from out-of-state Internet tobacco sellers showing untaxed sales to California residents over the past three years. It also has secured another 65,000 shipping records showing deliveries of 250,000 packages of untaxed cigarettes to Golden State residents...

In the nine months since Hurricane Katrina bore a hole through the Gulf Coast and triggered cataclysmic flooding in New Orleans, Sen. Mary Landrieu has been battling for more than just cash to rebuild. “I’m still in a fight to explain,” the Louisiana Democrat said during an interview in her seventh-floor Hart Building office suite. In endless meetings with lawmakers, aides, interest groups and even singer Placido Domingo, she uses color-coded charts, sweeping gestures and Cajun charm to explain the difference between the hurricane and the flood, the biblical-scale damage to her home city, coastal restoration plans, why New Orleans...

All my life, I believed in Republican values -- individual responsibility and limited government. Then it happened; I found myself with a small child, unemployed and disabled. I turned to my church, and after years of regular tithes, suddenly I just wasn't their problem. My Republican friends? I was now a pariah to them. My only relief was to turn to government assistance for housing, food, and other needs and I was able to survive with dignity. So chalk me up as one who no longer drinks the GOP koolaid.

WASHINGTON -- Congress hasn't given the same attention and aid to states slammed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita as it did to New York after the 2001 terror attacks because the storms didn't spark as much patriotism, Louisiana's economic development chief said Monday. In an interview with The Associated Press, state Economic Development Secretary Michael J. Olivier called Congress' response to terrorism very different "from an act of God" like a hurricane. "I guess it's different because it was such a patriotic deal," said Olivier, in Washington to attend a meeting of rebuilding and economic recovery officials from the Gulf...

House may vote on 75-cent-per-pack increase in state cigarette tax By AMY F. BAILEY The Associated Press 5/16/2004, 7:54 a.m. ET LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The state House could vote this week to increase the state tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack. It's the second time Republican House Speaker Rick Johnson of LeRoy has hinted that the chamber could take up legislation imposing the $2-per-pack tax. He said he decided against holding a vote on the bill last week after support from Democrats appeared unclear. Bills need 55 votes to win approval in the 110-member House, rather than...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 — President Bush is expected to propose a health care initiative in his State of the Union address to help the uninsured and the underinsured, White House advisers said on Friday. It was unclear how much the initiative, to be announced in the address on Tuesday, would cost at a time when Mr. Bush is under pressure because of a growing budget deficit. But White House officials have made clear that they do not want to cede the politically potent issue of health care to the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom have made health care a...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 — President Bush is expected to propose a health care initiative in his State of the Union address to help the uninsured and the underinsured, White House advisers said on Friday. It was unclear how much the initiative, to be announced in the address on Tuesday, would cost at a time when Mr. Bush is under pressure because of a growing budget deficit. But White House officials have made clear that they do not want to cede the politically potent issue of health care to the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom have made health care a...

Twelve hours after union negotiations for Kapiolani Medical Center nurses started yesterday, the first thing out of negotiator Theresa Yee's mouth was, "Things are not looking good." Yee was among the Hawaii Nurses Association negotiating teams that met with federal mediators and hospital bargaining teams yesterday morning during separate sessions for nurses from the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children and the Queen's Medical Center. Talks for both negotiating teams began at 9 a.m. and continued well into the evening. Yee, who has been a registered nurse at Kapiolani for almost five years, said the sticking point remains "incentives"...

Clinton library donors sought $35 donation to project will get you a holiday ornament 09/17/2002 Associated Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The foundation heading Bill Clinton's presidential library project is offering some holiday cheer to donors willing to pay for it. In a letter sent last week, the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation offers about 80,000 previous donors the chance to purchase the first in a series of holiday ornaments. The gold-finished ornament depicting the main building of the Clinton Presidential Center can be picked up for a contribution of $35 or more. If supplies last, foundation officials say,...

Can you believe it? Allowing this to go on for 8% of gross sales? A prototype of "The Heroes of the World Trade Center Collector Cards" featuring New York firefighter Manuelle DelValle Jr., is seen in this photo released April 18, 2002, by Chestnut Publications. The cards were created by Kingsley Barham of Delray Beach, Fla. Besides profiles of Sept. 11 victims, the cards will have information on related subjects such as the impact of the terrorist attacks on animals and what's happened to the rubble from the World Trade Center. Family members will get 8 percent of gross revenues....