WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo lobbied Congress on Monday for billions of dollars to help rebuild from Superstorm Sandy, saying the U.S. House leader wanted a reconstruction bill passed by year’s end.

Cuomo, a Democrat, put the damage from the late October storm at $40 billion to $50 billion for New York alone, with the total likely to rise.

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
lobbied Congress on Monday for billion of dollars to help
rebuild from Superstorm Sandy, saying the U.S. House leader
wanted a reconstruction bill passed by year’s end.

Cuomo, a Democrat, put the damage from the late October
storm at $40 billion to $50 billion for New York alone, with the
total likely to rise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York state is seeking $42 billion in aid to deal with damage from superstorm Sandy, but there is no assurance Congress will move quickly as it grapples with a budget crisis, officials from the state said on Wednesday.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lobbied Congress on Wednesday, saying he was confident that lawmakers would agree to help pay for damage from Sandy, the second-costliest disaster in U.S. history, even as they deal with the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House is expected in the coming days to send Congress a multi-billion dollar request to fund recovery from Superstorm Sandy, which caused an estimated $71 billion in damages in New York and New Jersey.

Congressional aides said there was no clear indication of the request’s size, but some said it would likely be at least $11 billion.

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (Reuters) – The northern snakehead is
known as “Frankenfish” and “rattlesnakes with fins,” and some
chefs say one way to stop the predatory, fast-spreading fish is
obvious – with a fork.

With a reputation as fearsome as its name, the voracious
snakehead fish has intruded throughout much of the Potomac River
basin in Virginia and Maryland in the last decade, snapping up
anything that gets in front of it.

WASHINGTON, Nov 26 (Reuters) – U.S. and European authorities
seized 132 domain names in a counterfeit goods crackdown linked
to Cyber Monday, the online bargain day, the head of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

ICE agents seized 101 domain names in the United States and
31 were taken over by officers in Britain, Romania, Belgium,
France and Denmark and by Europol, the European Police Office,
ICE Director John Morton said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fans of fictional super spy James Bond rely on the durable film franchise for must-have elements, such as jaw-dropping stunts, great clothes, sultry women – and villains who are drop-dead evil.

An exhibition that opened on Friday makes clear that the nasty types that 007 has battled for five decades have changed but one constant remains. The only true match for the world’s greatest secret agent are characters that moviegoers love to hate.

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) – A project to help track
Arctic climate change using volunteers to transcribe U.S. ship
logs online was launched on Wednesday by the National Archives
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Using citizen scientists to transcribe thousands of pages of
logbooks from Navy, Coast Guard and other ships from 1850 to
World War Two will fill a big data gap, NOAA Administrator Jane
Lubchenco said.

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Stacks of federal money may
have buffered Washington and its wealthy surroundings from the
Great Recession, but now the area must adapt to a new reality -
life without government spending.

Sectors from biotechnology to cybersecurity and logistics,
and even traffic-beating Potomac River ferries are the focus as
the fourth-biggest U.S. metro economy tries to reinvent itself
for a sharp tightening of the federal budget.

FORT BELVOIR, Virginia (Reuters) – Defense lawyers for Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood massacre suspect, told an Army appeals court on Thursday that his court martial judge had overstepped his authority in ordering him to appear clean shaven for trial.

A prosecutor, in turn, argued before the Army Court of Criminal Appeals that the court martial judge, Colonel Gregory Gross, was empowered to maintain decorum in his courtroom. Hasan is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009.