Facing mounting inflation and the escalating cost of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, on August 15, 1971, took the United States off the gold standard, which had been in place since 1944 and required that the Federal Reserve back all dollars in circulation with gold. The move amounted to a made-in-America double-digit devaluation, shocking the country's foreign creditors.
Nearly 40 years later, the dollar still dominates world trade. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, investors fled to the dollar as a temporary safe haven. But the dollar has been falling steadily since 2002, and as the world economy recovered last year, dollar selling resumed, reviving doubts about how long it could remain the world's unrivaled reserve currency.
A U.S. judge in Washington Tuesday refused to dismiss a whistle-blower suit against the Japanese manufacturer of bulletproof vest material. The suit claims manufacturer Toyobo Ltd. and U.S. company Second Chance Body Armor Inc. conspired to sell defective body armor to law enforcement.
Sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 people and led to $8.1 billion in increased health care costs in the United States in 2006, says a new study by a project called Extending the Cure.
The Vatican's top bioethics official on Monday dismissed calls for his resignation following an uproar over his defense of doctors who aborted the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was raped by her stepfather.
At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday.
Assailants burst into the home of an Iraqi campaign volunteer before dawn Monday, fatally shooting the man before they stabbed his pregnant wife and their five daughters to death, relatives and authorities said. A sixth child, the only son, was found hanging from a ceiling fan with key arteries severed, a cousin said.
Here's a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:
Late Friday, the Department of Justice issued it's long awaited report on the actions of the DOJ lawyers who authored the infamous legal memos authorizing torture. The report consists of two parts: the first is a 300-page report from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility finding that the attorneys, specifically John Yoo and Jay Bybee, engaged in "professional misconduct." The second is a 69-page cover letter from career DOJ staffer David Margolis finding that the lawyers exercised "poor judgment." The OPR finding would under normal circumstances require transmittal to the state bar for disciplinary proceedings. However, Mr. Margolis, a 17-year employee of the DOJ who was in a supervisory position when the legal memos were written, has specifically refused to allow the OPR report to be transmitted. However, he did state that "[t]he bar associations in the District of Columbia or Pennsylvania can choose to take up this matter, but the Department will make no referral."
The US, Europe and other countries including New Zealand are secretly drawing up rules designed to crack down on copyright abuse on the internet, in part by making ISPs liable for illegal content, according to a copy of part of the confidential draft agreement that was seen by the IDG News Service.
