China may be a burgeoning economic superpower, but it’s also embroiled in a monetary fiasco that could turn into a genuine crisis, warns Paul Krugman in the New York Times . The problem is China’s refusal to let its currency rise. The policy has obviously vexed the US, “but a policy…
Continue reading …Following her first trip outside yesterday , Gabrielle Giffords today departed on an even bigger one: She left her Tucson hospital for a rehabilitation center in Houston. Crowds saw her off holding “Get well” signs and flags as an ambulance carried her to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, MSNBC reports. Giffords was…
Continue reading …Chinese environmental groups say Apple hasn’t responded to health and pollution concerns at supplier factories. A report ranks 29 multinational tech companies on their responsiveness to inquiries about conditions at supplier factories; Apple comes in last, the Financial Times reports. The report cites Apple’s failure to respond to poisonings that…
Continue reading …House Republicans predicted they’d get scores of Democratic defectors in the vote to repeal health care reform, a sign of the “will of the people” to overturn the legislation, writes Eugene Robinson. Yeah, not so much: Not a single Democrat switched. “This is momentum?” Robinson asks in the Washington Post…
Continue reading …Osama bin Laden has released a new audiotape imploring France to withdraw its troops from Muslim lands in exchange for the release of French nationals held hostage in Niger. “President Nicolas Sarkozy’s refusal to remove his forces from Afghanistan is nothing but a green light for killing the French hostages,…
Continue reading …As cash-strapped states scrabble to fix budgets and pay public workers’ pensions, some lawmakers are pointing to bankruptcy as a solution, the New York Times reports. States can’t go that route currently because they’re technically sovereign entities, but backers say it’s a better alternative to what the Times terms “no-strings…
Continue reading …For only the second time in known history, doctors have performed a successful voice-box transplant. Brenda Charett Jensen was unable to speak for more than a decade without using a device that produced robotic-sounding speech. Less than 2 weeks after her October surgery at UC Davis, she was able to…
Continue reading …US airlines didn’t have a single fatality in 2010—a feat that’s at once rarer-than-you’d-think and becoming more common. Fatality-free years have not historically been unheard of in aviation, but they’ve been sporadic occasions—until now. This is the third time in the past four years that US carriers have…
Continue reading …Africa is gradually breaking apart—and in the past several months, the process has accelerated. Now, amid earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, it’s happening exceptionally quickly, reports Der Spiegel . Water is threatening to flood a fracture between Ethiopia and Mozambique, scientists say; while it will be millions of years before that…
Continue reading …House Republicans unveiled their next major legislative push yesterday: the No Tax-Payer Funding for Abortion Act, which, as its name implies, would ban federal funding of abortion. It would essentially make permanent the Hyde Amendment, which does the same thing but must be renewed each year. They introduced that legislation…
Continue reading …