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Cracking the whip on all those throwing plastic bags in drains, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has fined nearly 150 people and collected a fine of Rs 1.32 lakh in a fortnight. After having learnt lessons from July 26 deluge, when plastic bags had blocked drains and led to flooding in the metropolis, the civic body has formed two 'plastic ban' squads consisting of six people. "We have collected a fine of Rs 1.32 lakh from 146 people who were caught throwing plastic in drains in the last 12-13 days. These people are largely hawkers and shopkeepers," Deputy Municipal Commissioner...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday took a shot at former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell by accusing him of turning his back on Republicans, adding that conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh is a more loyal party member than the retired Army general. "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh," said Mr. Cheney on CBS' "Face the Nation." Mr. Powell recently said that Republicans need to move to the center politically and said that Mr. Limbaugh's conservative rhetoric is polarizing and hurts the party's image. The radio talk-show host fired...

Biggest brain drain from UK in 50 years By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor Last Updated: 2:08am GMT 21/02/2008 Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday. Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years. Over a quarter of qualified professionals who have moved abroad had health or education qualifications There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the...

Comings and goings 'are deskilling UK' Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:56pm BST 07/04/2007 International migration is eroding Britain's skills base with an exodus of professionals matching the arrival of low-skilled foreign migrants, the Government is to be warned. The number of Britons emigrating has jumped in recent years, with a growing proportion leaving professional or managerial jobs to work overseas. By contrast, the number of immigrant workers - many of them manual workers - has risen sharply. The extent of the problem will be revealed in the annual report on international migration from the Organisation...

Huge cost of Iranian brain drain By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran The number of young Iranians wanting to leave is increasing "Today we are going to talk about jobs," says the English language teacher to his class in Tehran. And it's better jobs they're all after. They're preparing for what's known as the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam - a requirement for emigration to many countries like Canada and Australia. Everyone in the class wants to go abroad. "The main point for going out of Iran is we have no job security here and there is economic...

Ahmad Soboh, the Undersecretary of the Palestinian Authority Foreign Office, called for an immediate stop to the brain drain from PA-controlled Judea and Samaria (Yesha). Soboh was speaking at an October 31 press conference organized by Shaml: The Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Centre. The event highlighted the out-migration of Arabs from Judea and Samaria, which has been coupled with Israeli-imposed obstacles to residency requests by Arabs who wish to work, invest and live in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Soboh cited the fact that 10,000 residency applications by PA Arabs have been accepted by various Western countries...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

Study: Illegal Immigrants Attended College June 15, 2005 Maribel Gonzalez A groundbreaking study has enhanced the profile of the undocumented Hispanic immigrant to the United States, showing that a quarter of those without a visa or Green Card have at least some college education. "Not all of the unauthorized population fits the stereotype of a poorly educated manual laborer," said demographer Jeffrey S. Passel, who prepared the study "Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics," released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The document establishes that, overall, undocumented immigrants have less formal education than the rest of the U.S. population. Some 49...

Jill Stewart is the pre-eminent journalistic truth-teller about California politics. Naturally, she is a free-lancer, who lives column-by-column, without the benefit of s fulltime job for one of the state's newspapers or TV stations. Fortunately, the San Francisco Chronicle has been buying a lot of her columns lately, including today's number, headlined "Victimized by the poor." She methodically lays out the structure of self-interested parties who have ensured that California become a chronically deficit-ridden state, starving its infrastructure of necessary repairs, and lavishly funding all kinds of welfare for the poor, and even the middle class. Although she never uses...

Insight on the News - National Issue: 05/27/03 Cheap Labor at America's Expense By Kelly Patricia O Meara "Hey, it's good work if you can get it," says New Jersey state Sen. Shirley Turner about the outsourcing of the Garden State's welfare-processing contract. But neither New Jerseyans nor any other Americans are getting the work, so she has introduced legislation that she believes will keep those jobs at home. Turner, a Democrat, filed her proposal after learning that the New Jersey Department of Human Services had contracted with an Arizona-based company to service paperwork for the state's welfare recipients at...

This is huge. It means that Scott's boat was NEVER LAUNCHED.