Clinton Tests Reforms On Historic Visit To Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touched down in Myanmar on Wednesday, the first top-level American official to visit the reclusive country in half a century. Myanmar, long known as Burma, has been notorious for its repressive rule, though there have been signs of reform in recent months, such as the easing of media [...]

HIV Treatment Lags In U.S., Guaranteeing More Infections

The United States is doing a pretty miserable job of treating people with HIV. The latest numbers show that only 28 percent of the nation’s 1.2 million HIV-infected people are getting effective treatment — that is, antiviral medications to keep the virus in check. “This means that about 850,000 Americans do not have the virus [...]

Employers Added 206,000 Jobs This Month, Report Signals

The nation’s private employers boosted their payrolls by 206,000 jobs this month, according to the widely watched ADP National Employment Report. That’s well above the 130,000 increase that economists had been expecting the report would show, Reuters reports. Produced by Automatic Data Processing Inc. and Macroeconomic Advisers, the ADP report is something of a preview [...]

Central Banks Join To Battle Credit Crisis, Stocks Surge

The Federal Reserve and five of the world’s other major central banks just announced “coordinated actions … to ease strains in financial markets” and make more credit available to consumers and businesses by pumping money into the global financial system. In a statement released at 8 a.m. ET, the Fed says: “The Bank of Canada, [...]

Does Milwaukee’s Campaign Against Sleeping With Babies Go Too Far?

Three infants have died in the past three weeks in Milwaukee because they were sleeping in the same bed as adults, according to officials. The deaths come on the heels of an aggressive and controversial ad campaign designed to get parents to place their babies in cribs to sleep. Ads on bus shelters in the [...]

Complaint Tests Rule Protecting Science From Politics

One of the first things President Obama did after he took office was put out a memo that basically said: Don’t mess with science. The March 9, 2009, memorandum stated that “political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions” and said all government agencies should have appropriate rules and procedures [...]

Hearing May Lead To More Freedom For Hinckley

More than 30 years ago, on March 30, 1981, John Hinckley shot President Reagan and three other people outside a Washington hotel. A jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, and authorities sent him to a mental institution. Hinckley mostly faded from the public imagination. But he could be about to draw attention [...]

High Court To Hear HIV-Positive Pilot’s Privacy Case

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case testing whether the federal government is liable for damages when it violates the Privacy Act by disclosing that an individual is HIV-positive. The government does not dispute that it broke the law, but it asserts that the Privacy Act authorizes damage suits only for violations [...]

The Search For Analysts To Make Sense Of ‘Big Data’

Second in a two-part series Businesses keep vast troves of data about things like online shopping behavior, or millions of changes in weather patterns, or trillions of financial transactions — information that goes by the generic name of big data. Now, more companies are trying to make sense of what the data can tell them [...]

A Steel Town Looks At Its Future, And Sees Rebirth

Part of a monthlong series The Great Recession has hit the industrial Midwest especially hard in recent years, from big cities to small factory towns. But now, in at least one small Illinois city, local leaders believe the worst is finally behind them. Sitting across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis, Granite City, Ill., [...]