WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump has named Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., as his director of the Office of Management and Budget, signaling his intent to slash spending and address the deficit as president.
Mulvaney, 49, was elected to Congress in 2010 in the wave that brought a cohort of younger, staunchly conservative members into the House. Mulvaney quickly staked out ground as one of Congress’s most outspoken fiscal hawks – playing a key role in the 2011 showdown between President Obama and House Republicans that ended in the passage of strict budget caps.
He has been an advocate for spending cuts, often taking on his own party to push for more aggressive curbs to government spending.
NEW YORK – U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is increasing the heat on the federal government to consider recalling e-cigarette batteries and devices that explode and catch fire, injuring users.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called e-cigarettes “ticking time bombs” and said they continue to cause injuries including severe burns.
At a news conference Sunday, Schumer cited a recent Associated Press story saying the FDA identified about 66 explosions in 2015 and early 2016 after recording 92 explosions from 2009 to September 2015.
He said he wants the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to figure out why so many devices, many from China, are exploding. He said the recent injuries are proof federal action is needed.
CHICAGO – Dangerous, record-low temperatures caused cancellations of some holiday festivities in the Plains and Midwest over the weekend before the cold front pushed into the Ohio Valley and the Eastern Seaboard on Sunday.
The National Weather Service expects a warming trend early this week as a quieter weather pattern starts developing.
On Sunday, temperatures plunged to minus 20 degrees and lower across much of the northern Plains with a fresh surge of bitter arctic air reaching into the Midwest.
LOS ANGELES – Zsa Zsa Gabor, the jet-setting Hungarian actress and socialite who helped invent a new kind of fame out of multiple marriages, conspicuous wealth and jaded wisdom about the glamorous life, has died. She was 99.
The middle and most famous of the sisters Gabor died Sunday of a heart attack at her Bel-Air home, her husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, said.
Gabor had been hospitalized repeatedly since she broke her right hip in July 2010. She already had to use a wheelchair after being partly paralyzed in a 2002 car accident and suffering a stroke in 2005. Most of her right leg was amputated in January 2011 because of gangrene and the left leg was also threatened. Her misfortunes were duly reported to the media by von Anhalt.
Washington Post, Associated Press
