Forty-one percent (41%) of Americans say they are overweight, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Fifty-four percent (54%) say they are not, and five percent (5%) are not sure.
While 61% of men say they are not overweight, women are almost evenly divided on the question.
Adults ages 30 to 39 and 50 to 64 are more likely to say they are overweight than other age groups.
WSJ:
WASHINGTON –A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries.
“Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species,” the letter said. “Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets.”
The broadcasters told Mr. Geithner they can bounce back if they are given some temporary assistance while the credit markets are slow. “Unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years,” their letter said.
AP:
(AP) CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A Southwest Airlines 737 aircraft that originated in Nashville made an emergency landing in Charleston after the passenger cabin became depressurized because a hole appeared in the fuselage.
Central West Virginia Regional Airport Authority spokesman Brian Belcher said Flight 2294 was diverted to Yeager Airport and landed shortly after 6:30 p.m. Monday. There were 126 passengers and five crew members on board.
John Benson of Knoxville was on Flight 2294 with his two sons. Benson was planning on taking his sons to New York by way of Baltimore. What was supposed to be a nice family trip, quickly turned into one of the most frightening experiences of his life.
“Literally the whole top of the plane ripped off,” Benson said.
At a time when publishers are scrambling to keep customers willing to pay $26 for a hardcover book instead of $9.99 for an electronic version, the publisher of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s forthcoming memoir is going in the opposite direction - issuing a limited edition it plans to sell for $1,000 a copy.
AP:
WASHINGTON - The federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time ever and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall, intensifying fears about higher interest rates, inflation and the strength of the dollar.
The deficit has been widened by the huge sum the government has spent to ease the recession, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. The cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.
The soaring deficit is making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could also force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government rang up a $94.32 billion budget deficit in June, a record for the month, as the price tag for efforts to prop up the economy, banks and automakers mounted while revenues weakened.
The Treasury Department said on Monday that June marked the ninth straight month in which the government had run a deficit. In June 2008, the budget enjoyed a $33.55 billion surplus.
Through the first nine months of fiscal 2009, the government has racked up a $1.086 trillion deficit. That compares with a shortfall of only $285.85 billion in the comparable year-ago period, underscoring the sharp deterioration in the U.S. fiscal picture.
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is mulling new ways to delay foreclosure for jobless homeowners who are unable to keep up with monthly payments, an administration official said on Monday.
The official told Reuters it was reasonable for policymakers to consider options for loan forbearance — allowing borrowers to delay, defer or skip payments — that are more effective than those currently available in the private sector.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday declined to predict how high unemployment will climb but made clear he expects it to keep worsening for a while as hiring lags behind other signs of economic recovery.
“How employment numbers are going to respond is not year clear,” the president said on a day when he was headed to Michigan, home of a particularly battered economy. “My expectation is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months.”
The unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent, the highest in 26 years.
Obama, addressing reporters in the Oval Office, said the stabilization of the financial markets has allowed banks to start lending again and some small businesses to stay afloat. But he said his administration is aware that the most important factor is whether people are able to get good-paying jobs.
WSJ:
The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.
Seventy percent (70%) of Americans say the media paid too much attention to the death of music superstar Michael Jackson.
Just two percent (2%) say not enough attention was focused on Jackson’s death, while 23% rate the media coverage as about the appropriate amount, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
More men (77%) think the media coverage of Jackson’s death was excessive than women (64%).
African-Americans are evenly divided between the coverage being too much or about right. For 76% of whites, there was too much coverage of the King of Pop’s surprising death at age 50 and the subsequent memorial service in Los Angeles.
In the polling hierarchy, the least signif icant data measure is a president’s per sonal popularity. Here, President Obama
excels, with most polls showing him in the high 60s. Next comes his job approval, significant but not necessarily predictive.
Obama’s approval, in the Rasmussen Poll, has now dipped to 51 percent, one point less than his 2008 vote share of 52 percent. In past polls, most voters registering disapproval for the president had voted for Sen. John McCain. Now, Obama’s starting to lose people who backed him last November.
But the true predictive measurement is a chief executive’s and his party’s ratings on specific issues. As these shift, so usually do his job-approval numbers and eventually his popularity. And current trends suggest that Obama is in for rough sledding — his job-approval ratings likely will quickly fall into negative territory and then drop further.
Democratic support on the congressional ballot has ranged from a low of 37% to a high of 50% in the past 12 months. In that same period, Republicans have been preferred by 34% to 41% of voters nationwide.
Democrats held a six- or seven-point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. That began to slip in early February, and since mid-April, the parties have been roughly even.
Men prefer Republicans by a 43% to 35% margin. Women remain divided this week, favoring Democrats 39% to 38%.
Voters not affiliated with either party like GOP candidates by a 39% to 19% margin, showing little change since last week.
AP:
BEAR, Del. (AP) - Amtrak has wasted little time using its $1.3 billion slice of the federal stimulus package, unveiling the first of 81 passenger cars to be restored with the help of economic recovery funds.
Passenger car no. 25103, damaged a few years ago in a yard collision but now completely refurbished - complete with that “new car” interior smell - was shown off Monday at Amtrak’s maintenance facility in Bear. More than 100 hard-hatted workers joined Amtrak president and CEO Joseph Boardman in celebrating completion of its restoration.
The car, refitted at a cost of about $687,000, will rejoin the Amtrak fleet next week and will be used on long-distance routes stretching from Toronto to Miami.
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - A much-criticized subsidy for rural air travel would get a budget increase of more than 40 percent under a spending bill unveiled in the House on Monday.
The legislation approved by a House Appropriations subcommittee would give $173 million in the upcoming budget year to the Essential Air Service, which provides subsidies to small airlines to fly unprofitable routes. That’s a $53 million increase.
In many cases the flights are nearly empty. In other instances, such as flights between Buffalo Niagara International Airport and Jamestown, N.Y., just 76 miles away, it’s quicker to drive than fly.
Fox:
A billboard proclaiming that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican has stirred a religious and political hornets’ nest in Houston, where a church leader is trying to draw black voters into the Republican Party.
The jumbo-sized roadside ad made its contentious claim for about a week — until a local black activist charged that the sign unjustly politicized King’s legacy and was hurting his community by telling a “blatant lie.”
“Martin Luther King may have very well believed in some of the Christian principles of the Republican Party, but Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican or a Democrat,” said Quanell X, who heads the New Black Panther Party in Houston.
“Dr. King was bigger than a political party — he was a humanitarian, and so to attach him exclusively to any party is to devalue his humanitarian global status,” he said. “We were insulted … by the billboard because it was a blatant lie.”
CBS:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said her betrayal has cost the city $260 million in lost tax revenues and counting.
It didn’t take long for Clinton to double cross New York City. Six months into her tenure as secretary of state she has suddenly exempted diplomats from paying some property taxes here.
“It is totally unfair,” Bloomberg said.
The mayor said it’s not only a double cross but a double flip flop. As New York’s junior senator, Clinton fought to make diplomats pay up. And he said her reversal changes a longstanding policy.
“Since 1873 they’ve been saying this is taxable,” Bloomberg said.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Four Russians, a Frenchman and a German ended a simulated 105-day space trip in Moscow on Tuesday designed to test their responses in the kind of isolated surroundings they would experience in a manned mission to Mars.
Stepping out of their sealed compartments in a Moscow scientific complex, the crew members were ending one test just as space agencies step up preparations for a longer 520-day isolation experiment expected to start next year.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of adults believe the economy will be stronger a year from now, up three points from Mayand six points from the first of the year.
Thirty-six percent (36%) say the economy will be weaker in 12 months’ time and 9% expect little change.
Investors are just a bit more confident than non-investors. Among the Investor Class, 50% say the economy will be stronger in a year, while 35% think it will be weaker.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? Sign up now. If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls.) Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter.
Both the Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes are up slightly from the first of the year.
Looking at a longer-term prognosis, 58% of American adults predict the economy will be stronger in five years, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since April but is down from 62% in January. Twenty-one percent (21%) believe the economy will be weaker by then.
Sky:
The animal can operate the robot with such dexterity that it can reach out to grab, and turn a handle.
The mechanical arm has an arm, elbow, wrist and simple hand, which the monkey controls with the power of thought.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the laboratory at Pittsburgh University in the United States.
The research is progressing so rapidly that scientists hope to start trials on paralysed patients within a year.
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will say in Michigan, a state hard-hit by the downturn in the car industry, that some auto industry jobs that have been lost will not be returning.
“(The) hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won’t be coming back,” Obama will say, according to prepared remarks released by the White House.
NEW YORK, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. government officials are weighing a plan that would let borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their homes instead, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking said on Tuesday.
Under one idea being discussed, delinquent homeowners would surrender ownership of their homes but would continue to live in the property for several years, the sources told Reuters.
AP.
Hill:
With their Speaker behind them, House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold a series of hearings investigating instances in which intelligence officials may have misled members of Congress.
Senior Democratic aides said that a major announcement could come by the end of week, but it was already clear on Monday that House Democrats are seizing on weekend news reports that former Vice President Dick Cheney hid information from Congress.
AP:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.-The number of cadets with confirmed cases of the swine flu at the Air Force Academy has increased to 67.
The academy said Monday that a total of 121 incoming freshmen with flu-like symptoms are being kept in dorms, away from other cadets.
The “doolies,” members of the incoming freshman class, are among about 1,300 recent arrivals for their first weeks of military training. Cadets who started showing symptoms were separated from the rest of the class at the base near Colorado Springs late last week.
AFP.
Now that it has become the first major airline to outfit its entire fleet with wireless Internet service, AirTran Airways is offering passengers a few do’s and don’t’s.
Tip #134. “The lavatory is not your personal conference room.”
The bathroom admonition is one of several included in the primer Internetiquette: A Guide to Keeping Everyone In Line, While They’re Online that AirTran (AAI) will place in every seat pocket following its announcement Tuesday that the Internet is now accessible on each of its 136 planes.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saying the new H1N1 virus is “unstoppable”, the World Health Organization gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.
Every country will need to vaccinate citizens against the swine flu virus and must choose who else would get priority after nurses, doctors and technicians, said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research.
ABC:
“The comeback tour was a good idea, but the wrong idea about it. There was more tours added onto it,” Joe Jackson told ABC News’ Chris Connelly in an exclusive interview. “Michael told me himself. That he agreed to 10 shows. But they went and added all these other shows.”
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - A sweeping overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system to be announced on Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives will include a surtax on millionaires of 5.4 percent, congressional sources said.
July 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican opposition doesn’t yield soon, two of the president’s top advisers said.
“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a-wasting.”
Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.
“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor fended off Republican attacks on Tuesday, saying “diversity on the bench is good for America” and promising rulings based on law, not racial bias.
Grilled by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor — who would become the first Hispanic on the U.S. top court — coolly explained the context for one of her most controversial comments: that a “wise Latina” might reach a better legal decision than a white man.
NBC:
It’s unclear how the basking shark died or how it found its way to Gilgo State Park near Babylon in Suffolk County. A necropsy will be performed soon.
Basking sharks are the second largest shark in the sea after the whale shark and are not a threat to humans.
Related Stories
Massive Squid Wash Up in Quake Aftermath
According to marine biologists, these sharks have no teeth and are called basking sharks because they are often observed when feeding at the surface and appear to be basking in the water. They can grow up to 30-feet long and the one found today is full grown, experts said.
In the 20-page document - filed July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia - the California-based Taitz asks the court to consider granting his client’s request based upon Cook’s belief that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Cook further states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. … simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”
Cook, a reservist, received the orders mobilizing him to active duty on June 9.
According to this document, which accompanies Cook’s July 8 application for a temporary restraining order, he has been ordered to report to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday. From there, the Florida resident would go to Fort Benning before deploying overseas.
CBS:
A north Dallas neighborhood is up in arms after another attack on the American flag has reignited anger among residents. The incident happened at Preston Valley Villas off of Spring Valley Road.
Two weeks ago, a homeowner came home to find his American flag in ashes on his front yard. Last night, it happened again.
Preston Valley Villas has become a noticeably patriotic neighborhood. But some of the American flags are now flying as a message to whoever is burning them. “It’s kind of an ‘in your face’ type of situation,” said resident Bill Sendelback. “If people are going around burning the flag, I’m not about to take mine down.”
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is firing back at Sen. Jon Kyl for calling for an end to economic stimulus spending, and they’re aiming for where it hurts the most - at home in Arizona.
The White House on Tuesday released letters from four cabinet secretaries to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, citing Kyl’s comments and outlining transportation, housing, Indian education and other projects in his home state they said would be eliminated if the senator has his way.
Kyl, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, has said the stimulus spending hasn’t succeeded in boosting the economy and that it’s adding to the deficit. He’s suggested on his Senate Web site and in interviews that spending not already allocated be halted.
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor firmly denied racial bias Tuesday at her Senate confirmation hearing and said an oft-criticized remark about her Hispanic heritage affecting judicial decisions was a rhetorical device gone awry.
An attempted play on words “fell flat” in a speech in 2001, Sotomayor told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., referring to remarks in which she suggested that a “wise Latina woman” would usually reach a better conclusion than a white male.
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court aspirant Sonia Sotomayor said Tuesday that she considers the question of abortion rights“settled law” and says there is a constitutional right to privacy.
The federal appeals court judge was asked at her confirmation hearing Tuesday to state how she felt about the landmark Roe versus Wade ruling legalizing abortion in 1973.
Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “there is a right of privacy. The court has found it in various places in the Constitution.” She said this right is stated in the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure and in the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection of the law. She declined to say pointblank if she agreed with the high court’s precedent on this volatile issue.
AP:
LEAHY SAID: “You said that, quote, you ‘would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions.’”
THE FACTS: If that’s all Sotomayor said, the quote would barely have mattered to opponents of her nomination. The actual quote, delivered in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley, was: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Leahy’s revision dropped the controversial part of the phrase, the part that has attracted charges of reverse racism.
Sotomayor said her words have been misunderstood. She said she intended to tell students that their experiences would enrich the legal system. But she softened her language Tuesday, say that no ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in judging.
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) - An anti-abortion activist has been removed from Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the fifth demonstrator to disrupt the proceedings in two days.
It took a half-dozen Capitol Police officers to remove the struggling protester from the hearing room Tuesday after he yelled, “She’s a baby killer.”
