Republicans block vote on nominee to lead EPA
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans continued a campaign to delay confirmation of President Barack Obama’s second-term Cabinet-level nominees on Thursday, blocking a committee vote on Gina McCarthy, the president’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Unsettled weather this weekend
Today should be mostly clear and warm, with a high temperature near 80°F — time to install air conditioning! After today, the air will remain humid as the weather takes a turn for the worse. Expect rain showers and thunderstorms on Saturday, ahead of a cold front that will move in Saturday night. Sunday will be cooler and cloudy, with some rain possible. Such weather is not confined to New England; forecasts predict precipitation in 47 of the continental U.S. states in the next 36 hours.
Minnesota House approves same-sex marriage
The Minnesota House of Representatives on Thursday voted to permit same-sex marriage, clearing the way to add Minnesota to a string of states that have recently made it legal for gay and lesbian couples to wed.
Clouds and rain ahead
After a long stretch of clear, calm weather for our area, chances for rain will increase in the coming days. A broad high pressure parked offshore in the northern Atlantic will finally lose its grip and allow more unsettled weather to traverse New England. The high sustained a light easterly to southeasterly breeze during the past week, pushing in cool air off the Atlantic and limiting daytime maximum temperatures. This pattern will continue today, before a weak low pressure center to our south brings warmer and moister air. This low will be sluggish, producing occasional showers through this week and keeping skies cloudy. However it will provide a southerly flow that should allow temperatures to rise into the upper 60s°F (19–20°C).
Shorts (left)
High school students will take the ACT college admissions exam by computer starting in the spring of 2015 — but at least for a while, the paper and pencil version will be available, too.
Slowdown in rise of health care costs may persist
WASHINGTON — One of the economic mysteries of the last few years has been the bigger-than-expected slowdown in health spending, a trend that promises to bolster wages and help close the wide federal deficit over the long term — but only if it persists.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Though it held on to power in the election Sunday, the governing National Front coalition suffered an important loss: For the first time in 44 years, it failed to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Analysts said it left Prime Minister Najib Razak’s position far from secure.
Israel and Turkey negotiate compensation in flotilla raid
JERUSALEM — Talks here Monday between Israeli and Turkish officials over compensation for a deadly Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla almost three years ago demonstrated that while relations between the two countries are improving, they will not be as warm as they once were.
Iran warns Syrian rebels after report of shrine desecration
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Shiite leaders warned of regional sectarian conflict after reports that Syrian rebels raided a Shiite shrine in a suburb of Damascus last week, destroying the site and making off with the remains of the revered Shiite figure buried there.
US is considering arming Syrian rebels, Hagel confirms
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel confirmed Thursday that the Obama administration was rethinking its opposition to arming the rebels in Syria’s civil war, although he said that no decisions had been made.
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Overcoming years of resistance, Rhode Island on Thursday became the 10th state in the country and the last in New England to approve same-sex marriage.
Shorts (right)
SEOUL, South Korea — The United States said Thursday that North Korea should immediately release a U.S. citizen who was sentenced this week to 15 years of hard labor, setting up a potential new source of confrontation between the two countries that could aggravate tensions that are still high over North Korea’s nuclear war threats.
Concern as politics, vetting leave vacancies in top offices
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry is practically home alone, toiling without permanent assistant secretaries of state for the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa. At the Pentagon, a temporary personnel chief is managing furloughs for 800,000 civilian employees. There has not been a director of the Internal Revenue Service since last November, and it was only on Thursday that President Barack Obama nominated a new commerce secretary after the job was open for nearly a year.
US to appeal order lifting age limit on morning-after pill
The Obama administration moved Wednesday to keep girls under 15 from having over-the-counter access to morning-after pills, as the Justice Department filed a notice to appeal a judge’s order that would make the drug available without a prescription for girls and women of all ages. The appeal reaffirms an election-year decision by the Obama administration to block the drug’s maker from selling it without a prescription or consideration of age, and puts the White House back into the politically charged issue of access to emergency contraception.
Unusual snowstorm strikes Midwest
A rare May snowstorm swept through the center of the United States on Wednesday and Thursday, with six to twelve inches of snow falling in a band reaching from Kansas through Minnesota. The unseasonable precipitation was the product of an unusually deep upper-level trough combined with a very strong cold front stationed across the continent. The storm broke several records for snowfall and low temperatures in the month of May across the affected states.
Netanyahu backs vote on any agreement with Palestinians
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that any peace agreement with the Palestinians should be put to a referendum, a move that some Israelis view as a potential obstacle to a deal even as Secretary of State John Kerry works intently to renew long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Gorgeous week to come
High pressure controls New England this week, bringing lovely weather. In a high pressure system, air descends from above; since the cold air high in the atmosphere cannot hold very much water vapor, this descending air is dry and causes clear, sunny conditions. Due to the lack of clouds, the surface radiatively cools very efficiently at night, leading to cool mornings and a large diurnal temperature gradient. Low pressure systems have the opposite effect; moist surface air convects upwards, condensing and forming clouds at the altitude where the temperature is too low to hold excess water vapor. At least for this week, we shouldn’t see those sorts of clouds!
Shorts (left)
ATHENS, Greece — Eurozone officials on Monday approved the release of 2.8 billion euros, or $3.7 billion, in loans to Greece, the country’s Finance Ministry said, paving the way for the approval of an additional 6 billion euro installment at a meeting of the currency union’s finance ministers in mid-May.
Five are convicted in Kosovo organ-trafficking ring
PARIS — Five people were convicted Monday in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, in connection with an elaborate organ-trafficking network that lured poor people to the country and then sold their kidneys and other organs to wealthy transplant recipients from Israel, the United States, Canada and Germany, charging as much as $130,000 for each organ.
After Boston Marathon bombing, US ties with Russia improve
MOSCOW — After President Barack Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke by telephone Monday, a top Russian official said cooperation between the leaders’ intelligence services had “noticeably intensified in the past few days,” though he said Russia had not been able to provide valuable intelligence about the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.