WASHINGTON — Paul Wiedefeld stood on an overcrowded platform at Union Station, watching as trains came and went, too full to pick up more commuters. Metro was making him — the general manager of Washington’s subway system — late for a meeting about customer service. Wiedefeld was just another rider that day, angered by Metro’s [...]
WASHINGTON — Tempers are rising in America, along with the temperatures. Two decades ago, the issue of climate change wasn’t as contentious. The leading U.S. Senate proponent of taking action on global warming was Republican John McCain. George W. Bush wasn’t as zealous on the issue as his Democratic opponent for president in 2000, Al [...]
WASHINGTON — The race is on to win President Barack Obama’s attention as he puts some final touches on his environmental legacy. Conservation groups, American Indian tribes and federal lawmakers are urging his administration to preserve millions of acres as national monuments. Such a designation often prevents new drilling and mining on public lands, or [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s transplant network is taking a long-awaited step to ease a serious disparity: Where you live affects whether you get a timely liver transplant or die waiting. Desperate patients sometimes travel across the country to get on a shorter waiting list — if they can afford it. The United Network for [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The issue: Who should be able to vote and how easy should it be? It’s a question that goes to the core of democracy. Voting rights are in flux in the final months of Barack Obama’s two terms as the first black president. Citing a need to combat fraud, Republican-controlled legislatures are [...]
WASHINGTON — Following a lengthy tug-of-war with Capitol Hill, the Pentagon has given a senator the first-ever, unclassified report detailing the suspected militant backgrounds of more than 100 detainees at or recently released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay — a report that will likely spur more debate over shutting it down. The [...]
WASHINGTON — Young people in America overwhelmingly support LGBT rights when it comes to policies on employment, health care and adoption, according to a new survey. The GenForward survey of Americans ages 18-30 found that support for those policies has increased over the past two years, especially among young whites. But relatively few of these [...]
WASHINGTON — North Carolina’s top public health official acted unethically and possibly illegally by telling residents living near Duke Energy coal ash pits that their well water is safe to drink when it’s contaminated with a chemical known to cause cancer, a state toxicologist said in sworn testimony. The Associated Press obtained a copy of [...]
WASHINGTON — An internal Federal Aviation Administration report more than three years ago urged greater safety oversight of the hot air balloon tour industry, but agency officials ignored the warning and later rejected similar recommendations from a federal accident investigations board. The November 2012 report, written by an FAA safety official, strongly urges agency officials [...]
WASHINGTON — Red-light cameras are widely hated, but a new study says getting rid of them can have fatal consequences. Traffic deaths from red-light-running crashes go up by nearly a third after cities turn off cameras designed to catch motorists in the act, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The [...]