Christmas came on Leap Day for anti-coal activists. On Wednesday, two Midwestern utilities announced the closure of a total of ten aging coal plants, including two intercity Chicago plants that have long been a focal point for environmental groups.
Midwest Generation announced that it will close Chicago's Fisk Power Plant in 2012 and the Crawford Plant in 2014. Local and national activists have been targeting those two plants for their impacts on poorer city neighborhoods, and new mayor Rahm Emanuel also recently threatened to shut them down. GenOn Energy announced that it is closing eight plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey because the cost of complying with tougher new pollution rules will be too high.
Finding treatments that prevent or cure disease and safe lives is the brass ring of drug development. Developing these drugs, particularly those that treat serious childhood illness, is a complex and challenging process. One of the great historical milestones in pediatric cancer was the development of treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL, the most common cancer in young children. Today, by using a combination of drugs, children with ALL have a more than 80 percent cure rate—a remarkable achievement.
Sales of previously owned homes rose 4.3% in January and inventories fell to nearly seven-year lows as lower prices, unusually warm weather and an improving economy lifted demand.
The National Assn. of Realtors said Wednesday that January sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million. Sales rose in all four major regions, including an 8.8% pop in the West.
Job creation, mild weather, rising rents and increased household formation contributed to the sales gains, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the Realtors group.
Approximately 75,000 jobs were created in the oil and gas sector under the Obama Administration between 2009 to 2011, according to analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s roughly 69,000 more jobs than would be created by construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
The White House last week took a big step in answering businesses’ call for a more effective and efficient interface with federal government programs by launching the new Business USA portal. This single online resource enables businesses large and small to easily discover and research the wide array of federal programs and services provided by dozens of federal agencies to help them innovate and increase their competitiveness.
This is the latest step by the Obama administration toward breaking down bureaucratic silos, increasing interagency collaboration, and making the federal government leaner, more efficient, and more customer-friendly. But much still must to be done to build the modernized government that American workers, businesses, and industries need to stay cutting-edge and to compete for the jobs of the 21st century.
Apple Needs to Make it in America
