Posted: Jan 3, 2013 10:40 PM
Updated: Jan 3, 2013 10:40 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) New Jersey Congressman Frank LoBiondo says cold, unhappy victims of Superstorm Sandy are waiting for Congress to get busy and send disaster aid. The House is set to vote Friday on a $9.7 billion bill to replenish the National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA says the program will run out of money next week unless Congress acts. Northeast lawmakers, including Republicans, were enraged at House Speaker John Boehner's decision to cancel Tuesday's vote on a storm aid package.
WASHINGTON (AP) Some analysts are predicting that the unemployment rate for December will remain at 7.7 percent. The government will release the number Friday. According to a survey by FactSet, economists have forecast that employees added 155,000 jobs in December. Three reports released Thursday show companies were not thrown off by congressional disputes over taxes and spending.
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords may attend a meeting in Connecticut Friday with families of the victims of the deadly Newtown elementary school shooting. A spokesman for Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman says Giffords and her husband are expected to attend but have not confirmed. The meeting is to be held at a private home with the families of the 20 first-graders and six school officials killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. Giffords was wounded in a mass shooting in Arizona two years ago in which six people were killed.
BOSTON (AP) Jury selection is set to begin Friday in Boston in the trial of a lawsuit by four sisters who say their breast cancer was caused by a drug their mother took during the 1950's when she was pregnant. The case involves the drug DES diethylstilbestrol (dahy-eth-uhl-stil-BES-trawl). Millions of pregnant women were prescribed the drug between the 1930s and the early 1970s to prevent miscarriages, premature births and other problems. Drug firms dispute any link between DES and breast cancer.