Houston Chronicle, by Gary Scharrer Posted By: JoniTx- Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:01:51 GMT AUSTIN Houston’s food bank will begin helping qualify eligible Texans for food stamps on Monday under special authority from federal officials designed to shorten long wait times.The waiver will allow food banks in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth to handle food stamp applications directly. Food bank officials in those cities will have access to state computers to make sure applicants are eligible and not already receiving food assistance.(Snip)The interviews take about 30 minutes. The San Antonio Food Bank expects to handle up to 3,000 applications per month, which would save the state staff roughly 1,500 hours.
from: http://www.newmediablog.com/2010/02/food-bank-will-qualify-applicants-for-stamps/
Politico, by Patrick O’Connor Posted By: Photoonist- Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:58:00 GMT On the verge of a procedural fight over health care, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican’s presidential nominee in 2008, said Sunday that he plans to introduce legislation that would prevent Congress from changing Medicare through a process that only requires a simple majority in the Senate. ”Social Security cannot be considered in reconciliation,” McCain said on NBC’s ”Meet the Press”
from: http://www.newmediablog.com/2010/02/mccain-bill-will-aim-to-split-medicare-from-reconciliation/
New York Time News Service, by Andrew C. Revkin Posted By: Photoonist- Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:53:57 GMT Istanbul ‘ As he surveys the streets of this sprawling mega’city, Mustafa Erdik, the director of an earthquake engineering institute here, says he sometimes feels like a doctor scanning a crowded hospital ward. (Snip) In Tehran, Iran’s capital, Bilham has calculated that one million people could die in a predicted quake similar in intensity to the one in Haiti, which the Haitian government estimates killed 230,000. (Some Iranian geologists have pressed their government for decades to move the capital because of the nest of surrounding geologic faults.) As for Istanbul, a study led by Erdik mapped out a situation in
from: http://www.newmediablog.com/2010/02/cities-on-faultline-are-rubble-in-waiting/
