Word: tougher
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Labor Secretary Robert Reich released a report, timed to his annual sizing-up of the American work force, saying it's getting tougher for people without college degrees. The wage and benefit gap between college graduates and less educated workers grew last year -- as it has for two decades. College-educated workers now face just 3 percent unemployment, while those without high school diplomas face 12 percent, Reich said. A key part of the gap seems to be computers: two-thirds of college graduates work on computers, in contrast to one-third of those without a degree...
Wildlife advocates see two primary solutions. One is to hire more rangers, which seems unlikely in the current budget-cutting climate. The other is to impose tougher federal laws, which now assign penalties as high as $250,000 for felonies and up to five years' imprisonment. Law enforcers also enlist % state laws to prosecute poachers in national parks, but state statutes vary notoriously. Wyoming, for instance, regulates hunters down to the number of shotgun pellets allowed in heavily hunted areas; while Alabama's idiosyncratic "coon on a log" law is more liberal, permitting the maintenance of up to 10 captured...
Nonetheless, Ruth Musgrave, director of the Center for Wildlife Law based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sees some cause for hope. "There's an ongoing effort to try to make the federal laws tougher," she says, "and the states are trying to coordinate their laws." Rangers around the country were heartened by the conviction of Don Lewis, a nationally known crossbow hunter, who had been brazen enough to have himself videotaped attacking a herd of elk -- smack in the middle of Yellowstone. Lewis pleaded guilty, was fined $15,000 and served 30 days of an 18-month prison sentence...
...panel of three federal judges said two Los Angeles policemen convicted of civil rights violations in the beating of motorist Rodney King should get tougher sentences. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, in Los Angeles, could double the 21/2-year terms given to Sgt. Stacey Koon and Officer Laurence Powell...
...grappled with drafts of health-care reform proposals. At week's end House Democratic leaders announced a bill that would provide universal coverage and require employers to pay most of their workers' insurance costs, with subsidies provided for small businesses. In the Senate, where opposition to employer payments is tougher, majority leader George Mitchell indicated he might propose that employers and workers split the cost of insurance fifty-fifty -- but only as a last resort if voluntary measures fail to achieve universal coverage. Minority leader Bob Dole grumbled ominously that Republicans would not be rushed into approving a plan they...