Showing posts with label Government. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Private Jet Traffic Plunges for Second Inaugural

By Robert Frank | CNBC – 6 hours ago

President Barack Obama's last inauguration broke many records in Washington - including one for private jets.

Gulfstream II (G-1159) (Credit: AP)In January of 2009, more than 700 private jets swarmed into the D.C. area to unload throngs of super-rich party-goers and Obama supporters, including Bruce Springsteen and Shakira.

The jet count marked a new record and showed how Obama had attracted throngs of millionaire and billionaire supporters even as he pledged to raise their taxes. There were so many jets that a runway at Washington Dulles International had to close so the jets could park.
This year, however, the Gulfstreams will be more scarce.
According to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, only 320 private jets are scheduled to land on local airfields for the inauguration next week. That's less than half of the 2009 inauguration total. Put another way, Obama's Jet-Setter Popularity Index has fallen by more than 50 percent.

(Read more: Private Jets Get Bigger, Faster, Cheaper)

A spokeswoman for the Airports Authority said that about 300 planes are scheduled to land at Dulles and 10 to 20 at Reagan International. She said the number is unlikely to change much before next week, since "most people have reserved their slots." (Read more below the video.)

The 'Jet-Set Popularity Index'CNBC's Robert Frank reports fewer private jets will fly to President Obama's inauguration this year.

The president might be proud to know that there are fewer private jets coming to the ball this year and that he may not be polling as well among G550 owners. They're not exactly his base. He just raised their taxes, after all, and as part of his call to have the rich pay their "fair share" he singled out jet owners for getting unfair "tax breaks."
Still, the president needs the super-rich to help fund the inauguration -- and he's courting them far more assiduously this time around as part of the fundraising effort. In 2009, inauguration donations were capped at $50,000 and corporate donors were banned.

(Read more: Has Obama Been Good for Millionaires?)

This time around, the inauguration committee is asking for donations of $250,000 or more per person and $1 million or more for companies. Those donors get "premium partner access" to the inauguration festivities, including four tickets to the inaugural ball, two bleacher seats to the parade, a VIP reception, and a "Candle Light Celebration" on the night before the inauguration.
It also includes a "Road Ahead" meeting with members of the president's finance team.
Now THAT may be worth the price of admission -- even for the jet set.

More From CNBC

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Payroll Tax Takes a New Bite

By Serena Ng | The Wall Street Journal – Mon, Jan 14, 2013 10:38 AM EST

RELATED QUOTES

Symbol	Price	Change
PG	69.77	+0.14

KMB	85.54	-0.11

JCP	18.36	+0.27

MCD	91.24	-0.29

FL	33.56	+0.30

American workers are opening their first paychecks of the year and finding an unpleasant surprise: The government's take has gone up.
A temporary cut in Social Security withholdings gave Americans hundreds of extra dollars to spend over the past two years. But Congress allowed that break to expire during the wrangling over the fiscal cliff, meaning that Social Security taxes have reverted to 6.2% of salary from the temporary 4.2%.
The noticeable lightening of paychecks as consumers remain tentative threatens to put a drag on economic growth. The effect for companies is that the hit is likely to cement a frugal attitude that led consumers to cut back on eating out and shift to less-expensive store brands.
Kari Barker, an accountant in Salt Lake City, recently received her first 2013 paycheck and realized that she and her husband will take home $250 less every month. The 32-year-old, who works as a financial controller for a medical-devices company, accepted a second job last weekdoing accounting work for a friend's startup company.
Ms. Barker recently had a second child, who joined the first in day care. She has been planning meals more carefully to spend less on groceries and has switched to less-expensive brands of household and baby items. "I used to be a diapers snob and would only buy Pampers or Huggies," Ms. Barker said. "Now I buy Target's house brand, because it's two-thirds the cost."
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG), which owns Charmin, Pampers and other brands, declined to comment, citing the company's scheduled earnings report this month. Huggies maker Kimberly-Clark Corp. (KMB) also declined to comment.

The Barkers at their Farmington, Utah, home. (Erik Szylard Daenitz/WSJ)Roberton Williams, a tax economist and the Sol Price Fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington, said the expiration of the payroll-tax cut will leave the average American household with $18 to $20 less to spend each week, or $900 to $1,000 a year.

For the country's consumers as a whole, Mr. Williams said, that is a decline of $120 billion from last year. The total comes to about 0.8% of U.S. gross domestic product and is nearly equivalent to the most recent full-year sales at P&G, J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) and McDonald's Corp. (MCD) combined.
The payroll break wouldn't have affected Social Security's solvency, at least on paper, because Congress had promised to make up the lost revenue. But many liberal lawmakers had worried that the break could have added to the program's long-term problems.
The impact on the economy now is hard to quantify, because it isn't clear how much of the money in consumers' paychecks was spent and how much of it was saved. Still, "it's a significant amount of money that's being pulled out of people's pockets and not being replaced," Mr. Williams said.
The tax hit could affect companies such as consumer-goods makers, clothing retailers, department stores, food producers, grocery stores and restaurants. Some companies said it is too soon to estimate the potential impact of the tax break expiration on their sales and profits, but it nevertheless has been a nagging concern.
Foot Locker Inc. (FL) Chief Executive Ken Hicks said in November that the payroll tax increase was "of particular concern," even though the shoe retailer has had 11 consecutive quarters of sales and profit growth.
"Anything that takes money out of the pockets of our customers creates a more challenging business environment," he told analysts during the company's earnings conference call.
Executives at Sanderson Farms Inc. (SAFM), the country's third-largest chicken producer, said the payroll-tax change and any other activity in Washington that could damp consumer spending might reduce chicken prices, which were on the upswing recently.
"When people tighten their wallets and cut back on eating out, it hurts our industry," said Mike Cockrell, chief financial officer of the Laurel, Miss. He pointed to the experience in August 2011, when political wrangling over the debt ceiling took a bite out of consumer confidence and led to a drop in sales for many restaurants and other companies.
The payroll tax's impact is likely to be uneven. Sales of big-ticket items like cars, flat-screen television sets and computers may not be hit. But consumers are expected to trim spending on everyday products and clothing.
Edward Riggle, a 61-year-old in Virginia Beach, Va., said he noticed a nearly $40 increase in the amount of Social Security tax withheld on his recent pay stub. Mr. Riggle, a Vietnam War veteran who retired from the Navy in 1991 and now works at a military call center, calculated that he will pay $1,036 more in Social Security tax this year, a large unexpected decrease in his take-home pay.
In response, Mr. Riggle said he changed the withholding amounts for his federal and state taxes to make sure no excess cash is kept from his paychecks and is looking to save money on regular purchases.
On a recent shopping trip, Mr. Riggle and his wife decided not to buy their usual Charmin toilet paper and Purina One dog food, choosing less-expensive versions instead.
Nestlé SA (NESN.VX), which owns Purina, didn't respond to a request for comment.
Sung Won Sohn, an economist and vice chairman of budget-fashion chain Forever 21 Inc., said companies that make or sell lower-priced items may not see much of a hit as shoppers get more stingy. "It could benefit us as people trade down," he said.
Some consumers won't cut corners on essentials, though the higher taxes will mean less money for extras like eating out. Karen Fuller, a 35-year-old mechanical engineer and mother of two children in Bellingham, Wash., said she never worked the additional cash from the tax break into her family's budget, because she knew it was temporary.
"We didn't need the extra money, so we spent it going out to eat, on shopping and baby stuff," Ms. Fuller said. "I didn't want to be dependent on anything that might have to go away if the money went away."
—John D. McKinnon contributed to this article.

More From The Wall Street Journal

Source(http://finance.yahoo.com/news/payroll-tax-takes-bite-041300823.html)

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Europe mulls banning 'boxes' for abandoned babies

By DAVID RISING and MARIA CHENG | Associated Press – 4 hrs ago

BERLIN (AP) — German pastor Gabriele Stangl says she will never forget the harrowing confession she heard in 1999. A woman said she had been brutally raped, got pregnant and had a baby. Then she killed it and buried it in the woods near Berlin.

Stangl wanted to do something to help women in such desperate situations. So the following year, she convinced Berlin's Waldfriede Hospital to create the city's first so-called "baby box." The box is actually a warm incubator that can be opened from an outside wall of a hospital where a desperate parent can anonymously leave an unwanted infant.
A small flap opens into the box, equipped with a motion detector. An alarm goes off in the hospital to alert staff two minutes after a baby is left.
"The mother has enough time to leave without anyone seeing her," Stangl said. "The important thing is that her baby is now in a safe place."
Baby boxes are a revival of the medieval "foundling wheels," where unwanted infants were left in revolving church doors. In recent years, there has been an increase in these contraptions — also called hatches, windows or slots in some countries — and at least 11 European nations now have them, according to United Nations figures. They are technically illegal, but mostly operate in a gray zone as authorities turn a blind eye.
But they have drawn the attention of human rights advocates who think they are bad for the children and merely avoid dealing with the problems that lead to child abandonment. At a meeting last month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child said baby boxes should be banned and is pushing that agenda to the European Parliament.

There are nearly 100 baby boxes in Germany. Poland and the Czech Republic each have more than 40 while Italy, Lithuania, Russia and Slovakia have about 10 each. There are two in Switzerland, one in Belgium and one being planned in the Netherlands.

In the last decade, hundreds of babies have been abandoned this way; it's estimated one or two infants are typically left at each location every year, though exact figures aren't available.
"They are a bad message for society," said Maria Herczog, a Hungarian child psychologist on the U.N. committee. "These boxes violate children's rights and also the rights of parents to get help from the state to raise their families," she said.
"Instead of providing help and addressing some of the social problems and poverty behind these situations, we're telling people they can just leave their baby and run away."

She said the practice encourages women to have children without getting medical care. "It's paradoxical that it's OK for women to give up their babies by putting them in a box, but if they were to have them in a hospital and walk away, that's a crime," Herczog said. She said the committee is now discussing the issue with the European Parliament and is also asking countries which allow the practice to shut them down.

Herczog also said it's wrong to assume only mothers are abandoning these children and that sometimes they may be forced into giving up children they might otherwise have kept. "We have data to show that in some cases it's pimps, a male relative or someone who's exploiting the woman," she said.

In some countries — Australia, Canada and Britain — it is illegal to abandon an infant anywhere. Yet, in the U.S. there are "safe haven" laws that allow parents to anonymously give up an infant in a secure place like a hospital or police department. A handful of other countries including Japan and Slovakia have similar provisions.

Countries that support this anonymous abandonment method contend they save lives. In a letter responding to U.N. concerns, more than two dozen Czech politicians said they "strongly disagreed" with the proposed ban. "The primary aim of baby hatches, which (have) already saved hundreds of newborns, is to protect their right to life and protect their human rights," the letter said.
However, limited academic surveys suggest this hasn't reduced the murder of infants. There are about 30 to 60 infanticides in Germany every year, a number that has been relatively unchanged for years, even after the arrival of baby boxes. That's similar to the per capita rate in Britain where there is no such option.
Across Germany, there is considerable public support for the boxes, particularly after several high-profile cases of infanticide, including the grisly discovery several years ago of the decomposed remains of nine infants stuffed into flower pots in Brandenburg.
Officials at several facilities with baby boxes say biological parents sometimes name the infant being abandoned. "The girl is called Sarah," read one note left with a baby in Lubeck, Germany in 2003. "I have many problems and a life with Sarah is just not possible," the letter said.
The secretive nature also means few restrictions on who gets dropped off, even though the boxes are intended for newborns. Friederike Garbe, who oversees a baby box in Lubeck, found two young boys crying there last November. "One was about four months old and his brother was already sitting up," she said. The older boy was about 15 months old and could say "Mama."
Still, Germany's health ministry is considering other options. "We want to replace the necessity for the baby boxes by implementing a rule to allow women to give birth anonymously that will allow them to give up the child for adoption," said Christopher Steegmans, a ministry spokesman.
Austria, France, and Italy allow women to give birth anonymously and leave the baby in the hospital to be adopted. Germany and Britain sometimes allow this under certain circumstances even though it is technically illegal. Eleven other nations grant women a "concealed delivery" that hides their identities when they give birth to their babies, who are then given up for adoption. But the women are supposed to leave their name and contact information for official records that may be given one day to the children if they request it after age 18.
For German couple Andy and Astrid, an abandoned infant in a baby box near the city of Fulda ended their two-year wait to adopt a child nearly a decade ago.
"We were told about him on a Sunday and then visited him the next day in the hospital," said Astrid, a 37-year-old teacher, who along with her husband, agreed to talk with The Associated Press if their last names were not used to protect the identity of their child. The couple quietly snapped a few photos of the baby boy they later named Jan. He weighed just over 7 pounds when he was placed in the baby box, wrapped in two small towels.

When Jan started asking questions about where he came from around age 2, his parents explained another woman had given birth to him. They showed him the photos taken at the hospital, introduced him to the nurses there and showed him the baby box where he had been left.

Earlier this year, the couple began the procedure to adopt a second child, a boy whose mother gave birth anonymously so she could give him up for adoption.

Astrid said Jan, now 8, loves football, tractors and anything to do with the farming that he sees daily in their rural community. She said it's not so important for her and her husband to know who his biological parents are.

But for Jan, "it would be nice to know that he could meet them if he wanted to," she said. "I want that for him, but there is no possibility to find out who they were."

____

Medical writer Maria Cheng reported from London

Source(http://news.yahoo.com/europe-mulls-banning-boxes-abandoned-babies-075454911.html)

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Top Five Degrees for In-Demand Careers

Check out these five degrees that could help you prepare to pursue an in-demand career.

By Tony Moton
To better meet the needs of students who want to improve their hiring potential, colleges have started changing course - and their courses, too.
In fact, some schools are now tailoring their education programs to focus on giving students more employable job skills, with the hope of aligning them with in-demand careers, according to Esther Hugo, a spokesperson for the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), a national trade organization for college counselors and admissions professionals.
"What I see is colleges making a concerted effort to offer things that would lead directly to jobs," Hugo says. "There is more pressure for colleges and universities to show that their students are going to be employable."
And while there are no guarantees that earning a degree will land you a job, it could help put you in the right direction.
Still intrigued? Check out these five degree options that are connected to careers with high potential job growth.

Degree #1 - Bachelor's in Health Care Administration
In-Demand Career: Medical and Health Services Manager

What does it take to make a hospital or health care facility run smoothly? How can health care providers enrich the experiences of patients in their care?
These are the kinds of questions you might answer during a health care administration program, which generally includes courses in accounting, human resources administration, law and ethics, and hospital organization and management, the U.S. Department of Labor reports.
What's more, "prospective medical and health services managers have a bachelor's degree in health care administration," says the Department of Labor. Earning a master's degree in an area like health services, public health, and business administration is also common.
Click to Find the Right Health Care Administration Program.
Why are medical and health services managers in demand? Medical and health services managers are projected to see a 22 percent increase in hiring numbers between 2010 and 2020, due to an aging population and people remaining active longer, notes the Department.* This could explain why Meg Benke, provost and vice president for academic affairs at State University New York, Empire State College, is seeing a greater number of programs in health care administration. "Education institutions now do market research, and we don't start a new program unless there is a need," says Benke.

Degree #2 - Bachelor's in Business Administration
In-Demand Career: Financial Analyst

If you have dreams of moving up the corporate ladder, earning a bachelor's degree in business administration could help you get one step closer.
Hugo says schools are responding to the popularity of business programs by making sure students are working on skills sets they'll need when looking for employment. "Programs are showing students how to construct business plans, allocate resources, and develop budgets," Hugo says. "Right now, you see so many startups, and people who have those skills are in high demand."
And what's one in-demand career you could prep for with this degree? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bachelor's degree in business administration is one option to pursuing a career as a financial analyst.
Click to Find the Right Business Administration Program.
Why are financial analysts in demand? "A growing range of financial products and the need for in-depth knowledge of geographic regions are expected to lead to strong employment growth," says the Department of Labor. Just how much employment growth are we talking about? A whopping 23 percent between 2010 and 2020.*

Degree #3 - Bachelor's in Communications
In-Demand Career: Public Relations Specialist

In today's age of the blogosphere and social media, communications degree programs recognize the importance of communication skills when it comes to employment opportunities.
According to the College Board, an education organization that administers tests like the SAT, a bachelor's degree program in communications may offer courses in advertising and marketing communications, media analysis and criticism, public speaking, and public relations writing.
And, "In a class on public relations writing, you'll learn how to create and promote a public image - of an organization or a person," says the College Board. This is a great skill to have - especially if you're interested in pursuing an in-demand career as a public relations specialist, which generally requires a bachelor's degree in public relations, communications, or journalism, says the U.S. Department of Labor.
Click to Find the Right Communications Program.
Why are public relations specialists in demand? Thanks to the growth of social media and the need to maintain an organization's reputation, the Department of Labor projects public relations specialists to see a 23 percent spike in jobs between 2010 and 2020.*

Degree #4 - Bachelor's in Computer Science
In-Demand Career: Software Developer

Do you want to earn a degree that could help you pursue your interest in computers, electronic gadgets, and technology? Starting a bachelor's degree in computer science might be a step in the right direction.
Why? Well, let's take a look at the commonly offered courses, per the College Board. For a computer science major, it lists courses like artificial intelligence, software engineering, and digital system design.
What's more, the College Board says "Computer science majors learn about computer systems and the way humans and computers interact from a scientific perspective."
So, what kind of in-demand career is this degree ideal for? Software developer is one option, as people in the career generally have a bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related area, notes the U.S. Department of Labor.
Click to Find the Right Computer Science Program.
Why are software developers in demand? Because computer systems are built into our everyday gadgets - like cell phones and tablets - software developers are projected to see a 30 percent job growth from 2010 to 2020, according to the Department of Labor. Other reasons for growth in this field include concerns over cyber security and the technological advances in the health care industry.*

Degree #5 - Associate's in Nursing
In-Demand Career: Registered Nurse (RN)

Do you want to pursue a degree that could help you help others combat and recover from sickness and injury? Consider earning a nursing degree.
The U.S. Department of Labor says nursing education programs generally include courses such as nursing, psychology, social and behavioral sciences, anatomy, as well as classes in liberal arts.
And an associate's degree in nursing, plus passing the National Council Licensure Examination, is one common route towards pursuing an in-demand career as a registered nurse, notes the Department of Labor.
Click to Find the Right Nursing Program.
Why are RNs in demand? The Department projects the number of RNs will increase by 26 percent from 2010 to 2020, thanks to several factors, including technological advancements that will enable the treatment of more patients.* "Nursing is one of the fields that have been identified as having demand across the board," says Benke.

*Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition, at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm (visited May 16, 2012).

Source(http://education.yahoo.net/articles/degrees_for_growing_careers.htm?kid=1LSB1)

Monday, June 11, 2012

When it Comes to Politics, Are We More Racist Than We Think?

President Barack Obama giving the 2012 State of the Union address. (AP Photo/Saul Loeb)People are usually reluctant to admit their real feelings in surveys, but there's no doubt that our experiences and our prejudices play a part in the way we vote. In order to figure out whether racial bias affected Barack Obama's results in the 2008 presidential election, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, passed over easy-to-manipulate surveys and looked at data from another source: online searches.

Related: My 3-year-old has race issues. Where did she learn to think that way?

When most people are searching for information online, they're likely to be alone and less likely to censor their thoughts, he explains. "You may have typed things into Google that you would hesitate to admit in polite company," he writes in a New York Times article. "I certainly have. The majority of Americans have as well: We Google the word 'porn' more often than the word 'weather'."

He chose a common racial insult that starts with "N" and looked for searches that used the singular and plural forms of the word. "The most common searches including the epithet… return websites with derogatory material about African-Americans," he writes in his study. "The top hits for the top racially charged searches are nearly all textbook examples of antilocution, a majority group's sharing stereotype-based jokes using coarse language outside a minority group's presence."

That held true for searches from 2004 through 2007 (searches for "n**ga" led mostly to rap lyrics, which he disregarded for this study). "I used data from 2004 to 2007 because I wanted a measure not directly influenced by feelings toward Mr. Obama," he writes in the New York Times.

But from 2008 on, he discovered, "Obama" was one of the most prevalent search terms in racially tinged online searches.

Related: Obama's team suggests racism behind proposed Write ad campaign

After gathering information on the racially charged search queries, Stephens-Davidowitz took a look at voting data from around the country and compared each area's 2008 results, when Obama was running for president, to voting results from 2004, when all of the candidates were white.

Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz's research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama's totals. "In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor," he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.

"The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote," Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. "This implies racial animus gave Obama's opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide."

"Any votes Obama gained due to his race in the general election were not nearly enough to outweigh the cost of racial animus, meaning race was a large net negative for Obama," he adds.

The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.

Even if states that are considered fairly liberal, racism is prevalent enough in certain areas to put the entire state high up on the list. "Other areas with high percentages included western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi," Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his New York Times article.

The 10 states with the fewest racially charged searches were Utah, Hawaii, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Washington DC, Minnesota, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming.

What does this mean for this year's contest? "Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate's winning the popular vote by a third," Stephens-Davidowitz explains. "Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania."

Copyright © 2012 Yahoo Inc.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Colombia Secret Service Prostitution Scandal Spreads to the DEA

By PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN | ABC News – 17 hrs ago

A month after the Secret Service was rocked by allegations that agents brought prostitutes to a Colombia hotel where they were preparing for a visit by President Obama, the Drug Enforcement Administration today announced that at least three of its agents are also under investigation for allegedly hiring prostitutes in Cartagena.

Two of the agents allegedly had encounters with masseuses in the apartment of one of the agents, according to Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
[Related: Scandal undermine Americans' faith]
"It's disturbing that we may be uncovering a troubling culture that spans more than one law enforcement agency," the Maine Republican said this evening. "In addition to the Secret Service scandal, we now learn that at least two DEA agents apparently entertained female foreign national masseuses in the Cartagena apartment of one of the agents. The evidence uncovered thus far indicates that this likely was not just a one-time incident."
The revelations that Secret Service personnel had been drinking heavily and cavorting with prostitutes ahead of Obama's trip to Colombia last month overshadowed the president's trip to the Summit of the Americas. Twelve members of the military were also investgated for allegedly hiring prostitutes.
Eight of the 12 Secret Service employees implicated in the scandal lost their jobs, another is in the process of losing his security clearances, and three agents were cleared of serious misconduct but still could be disciplined. The military has completed its investigation but no disciplinary action has been carried out.
[Related: Can the Secret Service be trusted?]

"The Drug Enforcement Administration was provided information from the Secret Service unrelated to the Cartagena hotel Secret Service incident, which DEA immediately followed up on, making DEA employees available to be interviewed by the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General," a DEA spokesperson said in a statement.

"DEA takes allegations of misconduct very seriously and will take appropriate personnel action, if warranted, upon the conclusion of the OIG investigation." the statement said.

A spokesman for the OIG said the DEA is cooperating in the investigation, which is being coordinated with the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, and the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.

The DEA has agents posted in Colombia to work on counter-narcotic and drug interdiction missions with Colombian authorities. According to officials the agents were among those assigned in Colombia, they were not specifically working on the President's trip.

The revelations about the DEA agents comes ahead of a hearing scheduled on Wednesday with Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Private Jet Traffic Plunges for Second Inaugural

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