When House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP blueprint for cutting government spending, he asked Americans to make sacrifices on everything from Medicare to education, while preserving lucrative tax subsidies for the booming oil, mining and energy industries.

It turns out a constituency within his own personal investments stood to benefit from those tax breaks, Newsweek and The Daily Beast have learned.

The financial disclosure report Ryan filed with Congress last month and made public this week shows he and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan.

Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

Some of these firms would be eligible for portions of the $45 billion in energy tax breaks and subsidies over 10 years protected in the Wisconsin lawmaker’s proposed budget. ‘Those [energy developing companies] benefit a lot from these subsidies,

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House Republicans narrowly passed a bill that makes significant cuts across the Department of Agriculture and related agencies that is being chided by Democrats for making steep cuts to food safety and child nutrition programs.

The measure narrowly passed on a vote of 217-203 Thursday, with 19 Republicans joining all House Democrats voting against the legislation, which makes a 21 percent cut to the FDA’s budget totaling $572 million below the president’s request — including $285 million or 12 percent just this year.

Democrats, including Rep. John Dingell – the Dean of the House – slammed Republicans for voting for the bill, charging that these deep cuts are ‘indefensible

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UPDATE 3-

TOKYO — A rise in radiation halted the clean-up of radioactive water at Japan’s Fukushimi nuclear power station on Saturday hours after it got under way, a fresh setback to efforts to restore control over the quake-stricken plant.

The power plant has been leaking radiation into the atmosphere ever since the March 11 quake and tsunami and both China and South Korea have expressed concern over the possibility of further leaks into the sea.

Tokyo Electric Power Company , the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said it expected to resume the clean-up within a week.

The plan hit a new hurdle as Japan marked 100 days since the earthquake and tsunami left left nearly 24,000 dead or missing and knocked out cooling systems at the plant. Buddhist memorial services were held throughout the country on the day when the bereaved traditionally seek closure from grief.

A statement issued by the utility, known as Tepco, said the suspension was prompted by a faster than expected rise in radiation in a part of the system intended to absorb caesium.

‘At the moment, we haven’t specified the reason,’ a Tepco spokesman told a news conference. ‘So we can’t say when we can resume the operation. But […]

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A fire in Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.

The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.

On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.

‘No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM,’ referring to the ‘notice to airmen,’ effective immediately.

Since last week, the plant has been under a ‘notification of unusual event’ classification, becausing of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.

The OPPD claims the FAA closed airspace over the plant because of the Missouri River flooding. But the FAA ban specifically lists the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant as the location for the flight ban.

The plant is adjacent to the now-flooding river, about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, and has been closed since April for refueling.

WOWT, the local NBC affiliate, reports on its website:

‘The Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Facility is an island right now but it is one that authorities say […]

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Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claim to have determined the proper dose levels needed to create positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior that persist for more than a year with the psychoactive substance in so-called ‘magic mushrooms.’

The findings are the latest in a series of experiments done at Johns Hopkins to investigate psilocybin, a psychedelic substance contained in certain mushrooms. The findings were published online this week in the peer-reviewed journal Psychopharmacology.

‘In cultures before ours, the spiritual guide or healer had to discern how much of what type of mushroom to use for what purposes, because the strength of psychoactive mushrooms varies from species to species and even from specimen to specimen,’ said Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s lead scientist.

‘In our laboratory, weʼre working with the pure chemical psilocybin, which we can measure out precisely,’ he added. ‘We wanted to take a methodical look at how its effects change with dosage. We seem to have found levels of the substance and particular conditions for its use that give a high probability of a profound and […]

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