The U.S. Treasury Department disregarded its own guidelines by allowing large pay increases for executives at three firms bailed out during the financial crisis, a report released Monday says.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said Treasury approved all 18 requests it received for executive raises at American International Group Inc., General Motors Corp. and Ally Financial Inc. Of those requests, 14 were for $100,000 or more. One raise, for the CEO of a division at AIG, was for $1 million.
Report: Treasury approved excessive pay for executives at bailed-out AIG, GM and Ally
The tiniest particles that may be a threat as bad as asbestos
Europe is failing to control a burgeoning industry in microscopic materials, prompting claims that it has failed to heed the lessons from millions of asbestos deaths, according to a hard-hitting new report. Despite early warnings of the damage some nanomaterials could cause, EU governments are still reacting too slowly to signs of potentially deadly environmental hazards.
Nanomaterials – tiny particles as small as a billionth of a metre – are not currently governed by any regulations specific to them in Britain or the EU, despite concern about the possible effect some may have on health.
Fracking wastewater can be highly radioactive
Its contents remain mostly a mystery. But fracking wastewater has revealed one of its secrets: It can be highly radioactive. And yet no agency really regulates its handling, transport or disposal. First of a four-part series on radiation in fracking wastewater.
Randy Moyer hasn’t been able to work in 14 months. He’s seen more than 40 doctors, has 10 prescriptions to his name and no less than eight inhalers stationed around his apartment.
Heat from North American cities causing warmer winters, study finds
Those who wonder why large parts of North America seem to be skipping winter have a new answer in addition to climate change: big city life.
A study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that the heat thrown off by major metropolitan areas on America's east coast caused winter warming across large areas of North America, thousands of miles away from those cities.
The GOP Plan to Steal Elections
I’m optimistic about the Republican Party. Does that surprise you? Well, let me qualify that. When I say I’m optimistic about the Republican Party, I am referring of course to the old joke in which the pessimist says, “Geez, things sure can’t get any worse,” and the optimist replies, “Oh, yes they can!”
When the subject is today’s GOP and the conservative movement, things can always get worse. Having attempted virtually every dishonest and cynical trick in the book under existing rules, they have decided now that the problem is not their dishonesty or cynicism, but the existing rules, so the new task is to change them.
Monster storm expected to explode in Atlantic. It may be one for the books.
Forecasters are predicting explosive intensification this weekend for an extra-tropical storm in the North Atlantic that is expected to eclipse the intensity of last October's superstorm Sandy.
Unlike Sandy, the nameless North Atlantic superstorm poses no threat to land. But it does highlight the power such storms can attain.
It's forecast to develop winds of up to 98 miles an hour, while the air pressure at its center – expected to reach a low between 920 to 930 millibars – would rival that of a category 4 hurricane, according to forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Prediction Center in College Park, Md.
Sarah Palin and the End of an Era
The former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee has been fading from the scene for some time, as she inadvertently highlighted when she complained on Facebook during the Republican convention in August that the network had canceled her scheduled interviews that night. Her brother, Chuck Heath Jr., told Alan Colmes last week on Fox Radio that his sister is “kind of laying low right now,” though he wouldn’t or couldn’t say when asked why.
Fracking In Pennsylvania: Quick Money Or Long-Term Health Concerns?
Dave Cogar counts down the days until he's fracked.
Through a haze of cigarette smoke at the Brass Rail bar here, he laments about living on welfare. He still finds jobs where he can -- working construction or fixing computers around this small town south of Pittsburgh -- but he says he's fallen short of creating the life he wants for himself and his teenage son.
So he's come to the conclusion that natural gas hidden in the Marcellus Shale, thousands of feet beneath his rural Pennsylvania land, may offer him a second chance.
Health answers sought about burned-off war garbage
J.D. Williams didn't think much about the smoke cloud that often shrouded his air base in Iraq. Not when it covered everything he owned with black soot or when his wheezing and coughing made it difficult to sleep at night.
"We just went about our business because there was a war going on," said Williams, a retired chief warrant officer who was responsible for maintaining some 250 aircraft for the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.
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