Waste

The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show. The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now. The Air Force had maintained that it...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Officials at Shenandoah National Park are working on a plan to stop the spread of chronic wasting disease. The Daily Progress (http://bit.ly/142odac ) reports that the plan could include thinning the park's heaviest populations of whitetail deer. Park officials also plan to increase surveillance and detection of the disease, which affects the brains and nervous systems of deer, elk and moose. Park biologist Rolf Gubler says the disease has been detected in...

When someone in the Washington area begins to type the president's last name into the search box of Google's home page, the top three terms it suggests as the most popular selections are Obama, Obamacare and . . . Obama phone. Obama phone? A hotline, maybe, to the Oval Office? Hardly. "Obama phone" is the widely used — and misleading — nickname of a 28-year-old federal program known as Lifeline . It provides discounts, averaging $9.25 a month, on phone service for 13.3 million...

Humans Exploring the critical role of bodily waste — in history and now " The Origin of Feces " by David Waltner-Toews Bodily waste is widely considered a topic not to be discussed in polite company; it's something to be flushed and forgotten. But a new book argues that waste, in all its human and animal forms, is worth getting to know intimately. " The Origin of Feces " (not to be confused with the 1992 Type O Negative gothic metal album "Origin of the...

The chief of the General Services Administration resigned, two of her top deputies were fired and four managers were placed on leave Monday amid reports of lavish spending at a conference off the Las Vegas Strip that featured a clown, a mind reader and a $31,208 reception. Administrator Martha N. Johnson , in her resignation letter, acknowledged a "significant misstep" at the agency that manages real estate for the federal government. "Taxpayer dollars were squandered," she wrote.

Ah, summer in Washington. Things slow down, the weather turns hot and humid, and The Post has pages to fill with . . . a story on Post-it "art" on windows in downtown office buildings [Style, July 9]? How does a story such as this even make it out of the afternoon editorial meeting at the paper, not to mention merit a nearly half-page photo? If you're really looking for breaking news that will pique the interest of your readers, I have a potato chip shaped like Abraham Lincoln's head that you might want to check out. Just have a...

Regarding E.J. Dionne Jr.'s Sept. 29 op-ed column, "Why Warren Buffett is conservative enemy No. 1" : Not many conservatives I know disagree with Mr. Buffett's contention that everyone should pay their fair share. Rather, what we find objectionable about paying more in taxes is what all taxpayers should resent: sending more money to elected officials who have demonstrated an incomprehensible malfeasance and ineptness by squandering huge sums of our nation's wealth. For many of us, this is not a quarrel with paying our fair share in taxes;...

As the $787 billion stimulus package starts to flow, the message from on high is clear: No one dare waste a dime of it. "This plan cannot and will not be an excuse for waste and abuse," President Obama declared last month, after he designated Vice President Biden the "sheriff" in charge of patrolling for misuse of stimulus funds. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has warned officials overseeing the money that "we must ensure that haste does not make waste" and that even minimal amounts of misspent money would be simply "unacceptable.

At least one in every six dollars of U.S. spending for contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, or more than $30 billion, has been wasted. And at least that much could again turn into waste if the host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain U.S.-funded projects after our involvement ends. Those sobering but conservative numbers are a key finding of the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan , which will submit its report to Congress on Wednesday.

The news we have all been breathlessly awaiting for months on end is finally in The Post: " Clemens acquitted of all six charges " [front page, June 19]. Roger Clemens was found not guilty of lying to Congress about his alleged use of steroids at some point in his baseball career, perhaps a decade or more ago. For this, taxpayers had to shell out likely millions of dollars for thousands of hours of investigative work by a reported 90-plus federal agents, lawyers, court staff and all the other cogs in the...

NEW YORK — For a split second, Lucas Duda's sharp grounder looked as if it was going to lift the Mets out of their doldrums. An unfortunate bounce later, New York was headed toward another loss in a season in which they are rapidly mounting. Duda's grounder down the first-base line with runners on second and third hit the bag and caromed straight up in the air. That allowed the Pittsburgh Pirates to get the third out of the eighth inning of a 3-2 victory Sunday, sending the Mets to their third...

Buried deep in the May 6 Metro article " To clean up the bay, researchers say, we need to unleash oyster power " was this linguistic gem: "When oysters and other creatures eat phytoplankton, they poop it into dark areas of the reef where microorganisms feed. " It is ironic that an article on science used the infantile term "poop" to describe a bodily function that is fundamental to virtually all biological life and that is the subject of widespread scientific study. It would have befitted the otherwise well-written and informative piece to...

WARSAW, Poland — Polish prosecutors say they are questioning a man suspected of burying body parts and other medical waste instead of delivering them for incineration. A prosecutor in Chorzow, in southern Poland, Marta Zawada-Dybek said Friday that the man, identified as Marek M., has confessed to burying body parts, syringes, bandages and other waste on a plot of land that he owns. His firm that has contracts with some 300 hospitals and private surgeries to professionally dispose of the...

WESTMINSTER, Md. — Carroll County may soon reverse a ban on guns at the county's solid waste facilities in response to a Second Amendment group's objections. The Carroll County Times reports (http://bit.ly/16XZ2Jy) that the Board of Commissioners decided without a vote Tuesday to remove the county's 1992 prohibition on allowing people to carry firearms at facilities like the Northern Landfill in Westminster. The county attorney will create an amendment to the county code. Second...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After James Shields pitched eight shutout innings, he was gone. Soon, so was Kansas City's lead and the game. The Chicago White Sox tied it in the ninth against closer Greg Holland and Jordan Danks homered in the 11th Monday for a 2-1 lead over the Royals. Shields said he was fine with manager Ned Yost's decision to pull him with a 1-0 lead. "Ned's the kind of manager who works with his starters," Shields said. "But we're going to...

Power producers must curb the tainted water they discharge into waterways under a proposal the Environmental Protection Agency issued Friday, the latest in a series of rules aimed at utilities that burn coal. The EPA proposed four options for regulating the disposal of toxic waste from power plants, which are the top source of pollutants in streams, rivers and other waters. The final rules would have the most impact on coal-fired plants, which are the primary source of the pollutants, and would be...

More than $500 million in taxpayers' money was wasted by the government's investment in Solyndra . That's a terrible loss. But can you explain why that story is getting vastly more attention from journalists and Congress than an Associated Press story printed in The Post on Aug. 31 and then apparently ignored? "As much as $60 billion in U.S. funds has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade through lax oversight of contractors, poor planning, and payoffs to warlords and...

Regardless of The Post's opinion of Mitt Romney, given all the other critical events happening in the world, do the editors really think that Mr. Romney's activities in high schoolare relevant news today? Even if one could argue that they are newsworthy, the paper's decision to place the article about them on the front page was particularly suspect and indicated to me that The Post is so desperate to find dirt on Mr. Romney that it is willing to go back in ancient history to do so. What a waste of time and effort that could...

As the District takes steps to cull the deer herd in Rock Creek Park [" Four-night controlled deer hunt set for Rock Creek Park ," Metro, March 28], I hope officials will consider hiring a butcher or two to process the meat and donate it to local homeless shelters or food banks. I'm not a hunter, but after living in West Virginia for many years, I've had my share of venison. If the butchers don't want to take the time to carve up steaks and other cuts, the meat can always be ground and pressed into burgers.

TO MISSOURI lawmakers, it's a common-sense community development project. To what seems like almost everyone else, it's a bizarre waste of taxpayer money and an ecological disaster that a few members of Congress refuse to drop. The New Madrid Floodway is a strip of land along the Mississippi River in Missouri's "bootheel. " The Army Corps of Engineers dumps water into it when the river threatens to flood the city of Cairo, Ill., as it did in 2011. People nevertheless farm the land in the floodway, and they want the Corps to help...