The trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will last a year longer than previously estimated, trustees said Monday. That means 2041 for the Social Security trust fund to be exhausted and 2019 for Medicare. In their annual report on the financial health of the government’s two biggest benefit programs, the trustees said that slight reductions in projected benefits and slightly higher tax collections had extended the dates that the trust funds are projected to be depleted.
The Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday. Reid said the legislation “immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war.” He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S. forces and conduct “targeted counter-terror operations.”
Alberto Gonzales, with a fresh vote of confidence from President Bush, vowed Monday to remain as attorney general despite lingering differences with senators over the firing of federal prosecutors. Appearing at a news conference on identity theft, Gonzales said he will remain “as long as I can continue to serve effectively.”
Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar of Claysburg, Pa., was crowned LG National Texting champion Saturday. She typed “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from “Mary Poppins” in 15 seconds. She estimated that she sends more than 8,000 text messages a month to her friends and family.
A U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next month will issue a study describing how a united world can avert the worst effects of global warming. Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose as little as 3 percentage points of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure controls.
Long-term dieting doesn’t keep the pounds off, UCLA researchers examining 31 weight-loss studies found. While people can lose weight initially, many relapse and regain the weight they shed. The researchers analyzed 31 diet studies that followed people two to five years after they went on diets. Between one-third and two-thirds gained back the weight they lost.
Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal jumped into France’s presidential runoff campaign Monday by wooing voters who deserted them for a farmer’s son who championed the political middle. Centrist Francois Bayrou didn’t make the runoff. But his strong third-place showing in Sunday’s first round of balloting could make him a kingmaker if he throws his support behind Sarkozy, the law-and-order former interior minister, or Royal, the leftist with a chance of being France’s first woman president.
