Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Census Bureau reports the number of Americans in poverty jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, a 27-year high.</p> <p>About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, were in poverty. That is up from 43.6 million, or 14.3 percent, in 2009. It was the highest level since 1983.</p>

On the edge of downtown Los Angeles, overlooking the 110 Freeway, stands a 29-story office building that boasts many of the trappings of a modern corporate headquarters: a cafeteria with flat-screen TVs, a state-of-the-art media production center, an on-site dry-cleaning service. The tower is the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District - home to more than 3,400 employees. They are the core of a massive bureaucracy that has surged in recent years even as the number of students and teachers has dropped. And 3,200 more administrators and support staff are scattered throughout the city, as top officials acknowledge...

Voter registration for Tuesday's election is about 700,000 higher than during the last California presidential primary four years ago. In December, statewide registration already had set a record for a presidential primary. The current registration is 15.7 million voters, compared to just more than 15 million for the 2004 primary. The secretary of state's office released the figures on Friday. The registration jump comes after California's presidential primary this year was changed from June to February. The move gives California - for the first time in years - a stake in deciding nominees for the two major political parties. Secretary...

MEXICO CITY – Mexicans living abroad sent home a record $23 billion last year, raising new questions about whether the government of President Felipe Calderón can afford to slow migration. In just one year, the amount of money migrants wired their families jumped 15 percent, according to Mexico's central bank, overtaking tourism to become the nation's second-biggest source of foreign income after oil. “This is a river of gold that flows into Latin America and Mexico. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. It never stops,” said Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen & Associates, a public opinion research firm in Coral Gables, Fla., that...

Greenland ice swells ocean rise By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis Kangerdlussuaq Glacier "drains" about 4% of the ice sheet Greenland's glaciers are sliding towards the sea much faster than previously believed, scientists have told a conference in St Louis, US. It was thought the entire Greenland ice sheet could melt in about 1,000 years, but the latest evidence suggests that could happen much sooner. It implies that sea levels will rise a great deal faster as well. Details of the study, by Nasa and University of Kansas researchers, are also reported in the journal Science. The...

Despite the forced removal of 10,000 residents, the construction of the Partition Wall and ongoing terror attacks, the number of Jews living in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) increased in 2005. According to figures released by the Peace Now group and confirmed by the Central Bureau of Statistics, 12,000 new residents moved into Judea and Samaria, resulting in a net population growth following the expulsion of close to 10,000 people from communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. The number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, not counting eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, is 250,000. The report also says that the natural growth...