Add To Favorites
Some states reject federal money to replace dangerous lead pipes
Headline Legal News | 2023/08/24 12:56
As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds.

Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found. Some states are less prepared to pay for lead removal projects because, in many cases, the lead must first be found, experts said. And communities are hesitant to take out loans to search for their lead pipes.

States shouldn’t “shrug their shoulders” and pass up funds, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s troubling that a state would decide to take a complete pass on the funding because part of the reason for the funding is to figure out whether you even have lead,” Olson said.

The Biden administration wants to remove all 9.2 million lead pipes carrying water to U.S. homes. Lead can lower IQ and create behavioral problems in children. The 2021 infrastructure law provides $15 billion to find and replace them. That money will help a lot, but it isn’t enough to get all the toxic pipes out of the ground. State programs distribute the federal funds to utilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is reviewing state requests to decline funds but did not provide a full list of states that have said no so far. That information will be available in October, officials said. States that declined first-year funds can still accept them during the remaining four years.

“EPA has been working closely with our state partners on utilizing Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding that is available,” the agency said.

Lead pipes are far more common in some states such as Michigan and Illinois, which each have hundreds of thousands. The harm there is clear. Flint’s lead crisis elevated lead in tap water to a national health issue. Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, drank water with too much lead for years until all their lead pipes were replaced. In response, however, Michigan is clamoring for as much money as it can get to remove lead.

The states that declined funds have fewer problematic pipes, but that doesn’t mean lead isn’t an issue. There’s concern about lead in some Maine schools. Portland, Oregon, has struggled with high lead levels for years, although recent tests have been better and officials say the issue isn’t lead pipes, but household plumbing.

Washington accepted $85,000 of $63 million it could have taken and said the decision was based on the limited number of water systems that wanted loans. The EPA estimates the state has 22,000 lead pipes. Oregon, which could have accepted $37 million, said inventories are going to be done with existing staff and resources, adding that utilities have no known lead lines. The EPA projected that the state has 3,530 lead pipes — a relatively small number — based in part on information collected from utilities.


Trump’s Lawyers Meet With Prosecutors as Election Interference Charges Loom
Headline Legal News | 2023/07/28 12:39
Lawyers for Donald Trump were meeting Thursday with members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential indictment loomed over the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The meeting included Trump lawyer John Lauro, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to describe a private gathering. Trump earlier this month was informed by Smith’s office that he was a target of the Justice Department’s investigation, suggesting that an indictment could be soon.

The investigation has focused on the turbulent two month-period after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes. More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen — despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.

A spokesman for Smith declined to comment on Thursday’s meeting.

Trump was charged by Smith’s team last month with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Mar-a-Lago, and concealing them from investigators. He was also indicted in New York in March on charges of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to a porn actor. And prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, are preparing to announce charging decisions in the coming weeks related to efforts to subvert the election in that state.


Judge upholds the $5 million jury verdict against Trump
Headline Legal News | 2023/07/21 07:48
A federal judge on Wednesday upheld a $5 million jury verdict against Donald Trump, rejecting the former president’s claims that the award was excessive and that the jury vindicated him by failing to conclude he raped a columnist in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the jury’s May award of compensatory and punitive damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation in the civil case was reasonable.

Trump’s lawyers had asked Kaplan to reduce the jury award to less than $1 million or order a new trial on damages. In their arguments, the lawyers said the jury’s $2 million in compensatory damages granted for Carroll’s sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that Trump had not raped Carroll at Bergdorf Goodman’s Manhattan store in the spring of 1996.

Kaplan wrote that the jury’s unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”

The judge said the section requires vaginal penetration by a penis while forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled “sexual abuse” rather than “rape.”

He said the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.

The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Trump’s lawyers were correct in arguing that the $2 million award for sexual abuse would have been excessive if the jury based the compensatory award on a conclusion that Trump had groped Carroll’s breasts through her clothing or similar conduct, the judge said. But, he said, that’s not what the jury found.


Diversify or die: San Francisco’s downtown is a wake-up call for other cities
Headline Legal News | 2023/07/17 10:59
Jack Mogannam, manager of Sam’s Cable Car Lounge in downtown San Francisco, relishes the days when his bar stayed open past midnight every night, welcoming crowds that jostled on the streets, bar hopped, window browsed or just took in the night air.

He’s had to drastically curtail those hours because of diminished foot traffic, and business is down 30%. A sign outside the lounge pleads: “We need your support!”

“I’d stand outside my bar at 10 p.m. and look, it would be like a party on the street,” Mogannam said. “Now you see, like, six people on the street up and down the block. It’s a ghost town.”

After a three-year exile, the pandemic now fading from view, the expected crowds and electric ambience of downtown have not returned.

Empty storefronts dot the streets. Large “going out of business” signs hang in windows. Uniqlo, Nordstrom Rack and Anthropologie are gone. Last month, the owner of Westfield San Francisco Centre, a fixture for more than 20 years, said it was handing the mall back to its lender, citing declining sales and foot traffic. The owner of two towering hotels, including a Hilton, did the same.

Shampoo, toothpaste and other toiletries are locked up at downtown pharmacies. And armed robbers recently hit a Gucci store in broad daylight.

San Francisco has become the prime example of what downtowns shouldn’t look like: vacant, crime-ridden and in various stages of decay. But in truth, it’s just one of many cities across the U.S. whose downtowns are reckoning with a post-pandemic wake-up call: diversify or die.

As the pandemic bore down in early 2020, it drove people out of city centers and boosted shopping and dining in residential neighborhoods and nearby suburbs as workers stayed closer to home. Those habits seem poised to stay.

No longer the purview of office workers, downtowns must become around-the-clock destinations for people to congregate, said Richard Florida, a specialist in city planning at the University of Toronto.


First over-the-counter birth control pill gets FDA approval
Headline Legal News | 2023/07/13 10:37
U.S. officials have approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, which will let American women and girls buy contraceptive medication from the same aisle as aspirin and eyedrops.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it cleared Perrigo’s once-a-day Opill to be sold without a prescription, making it the first such medication to be moved out from behind the pharmacy counter. The company won’t start shipping the pill until early next year, and there will be no age restrictions on sales.

Hormone-based pills have long been the most common form of birth control in the U.S., used by tens of millions of women since the 1960s. Until now, all of them required a prescription.

Medical societies and women’s health groups have pushed for wider access, noting that an estimated 45% of the 6 million annual pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended. Teens and girls, women of color and those with low incomes report greater hurdles in getting prescriptions and picking them up.

Some of the challenges can include paying for a doctor’s visit, getting time off from work and finding child care.

“This is really a transformation in access to contraceptive care,” said Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, a non-profit group that supported the approval. “Hopefully this will help people overcome those barriers that exist now.”

Ireland-based Perrigo did not announce a price. Over-the-counter medicines are generally much cheaper than prescriptions, but they typically aren’t covered by insurance.

Forcing insurers to cover over-the-counter birth control would require a regulatory change by the federal government, which women’s advocates are urging the Biden administration to implement.

Many common medications have made the switch to non-prescription status in recent decades, including drugs for pain, heartburn and allergies. Birth control pills are available without a prescription across much of South America, Asia and Africa.


[PREV] [1][2][3][4][5][6].. [95] [NEXT]
All
Legal Business
Headline Legal News
Court News
Court Watch
Legal Interview
Topics in Legal News
Attorney News
Press Release
Opinions
Law Blogs
Law Firm News
Legal Marketing
Former Georgia insurance com..
Alabama woman who faked kidn..
A Supreme Court ruling in a ..
Court upholds mandatory pris..
Supreme Court restores Trump..
Supreme Court casts doubt on..
Donald Trump appeals $454 mi..
Dani Alves found guilty of r..
Ken Paxton petitions to stop..
Attorney Jenna Ellis pleads ..
Trump arrives in federal cou..
Why Trump's bid for presiden..
Samsung chief is acquitted o..
UN court rejects most of Ukr..
Hong Kong court orders China..
Man sentenced to death for a..
Pita Limjaroenrat: Thailand ..


   Lawyer & Law Firm Links
St. Louis Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer
St. Charles DUI Attorney
www.lynchlawonline.com
Car Accident Lawyers
Sunnyvale, CA Personal Injury Attorney
www.esrajunglaw.com
Oregon Family Law Attorney
Divorce Lawyer Eugene. Family Law
www.mjmlawoffice.com
New York Adoption Lawyers
New York Foster Care Lawyers
Adoption Pre-Certification
www.lawrsm.com
 
 
Disclaimer: The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Romeo Media as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case or circumstance. Blog postings and hosted comments are available for general educational purposes only and should not be used to assess a specific legal situation. Lawyer Website Design Company Law Promo