Word: draconian
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While the Chinese government has been criticized for its draconian public-health response to swine flu - using quarantines, canceling school and detaining entire planeloads of people when a single passenger appears to have flulike symptoms - the country's officials say the strict measures helped stem the spread of flu. So far, China reports about 36 deaths and 62,800 H1N1 cases - compared with U.S. government estimates of 4,000 American deaths and 22 million infections. China plans to immunize 65 million citizens, or 5% of the country's population, by the end of the year. As in the U.S., health...
...Three Mile Island incident in 1979, there has been a de facto moratorium on the construction on the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing applications for 26 new reactors, none of which would be constructed before 2016. Hurdles include draconian environmental regulations, a shortage in the supply of nuclear components and qualified personnel, and the lack of willing investors.This status quo is unacceptable. Nuclear energy is far and away one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal for cutting emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, constructing...
Lingle's two-year contract with the teachers union and its 13,000 members amounts to a 7.9% pay cut. The bulk of the union's teachers will have 17 furlough days a year, giving Hawaii the shortest school year in the nation. "It's completely Draconian," says Vernadette Gonzalez, whose 5-year-old daughter, Inez Anderson, is a kindergartner at Noelani. "People are shocked when they hear that this was allowed, or even considered as a sane solution to the budget crisis." Gonzalez fears that students will not be able to make up for the lost school time, noting...
...creating Silicon Valley, San Diego's biotech cluster and the state's other private-sector centers of innovation. So it's been a juicy target for right-wingers who consider Schwarzenegger a squishy sellout. If a low-carbon, Big Government, change-obsessed state with high taxes on the wealthy, draconian environmental regulations, a porous border and the nation's most vibrant labor movement were imploding, what would that say about the age of Obama...
...elusive. Finance Ministers of the G-20 nations earlier this month agreed that bonuses should be more clearly tied to performance, but Britain and the U.S. resisted demands by France and Germany to have them capped. Sensing the prevailing political winds, some bankers are already moving to forestall draconian new rules. The Dutch banking association announced that its members have agreed to cap bonuses and severance pay. And in France, bankers have been so frequently called to the Elysée Palace this year to be chided in person by Sarkozy that they're rewriting their rules...