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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama proposed new "rules of the road" for the nation's financial system Wednesday, ... Obama blamed the crisis on "a culture of irresponsibility" that he said had taken root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street, .. regulations crafted to deal with the depression of the 1930s were "overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy." The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve to oversee the entire financial system and would also create a new consumer protection agency ... In remarks prepared for delivery later in...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of American opinion leaders - Americans were asked - What are the most admirable traits of the Chinese and their culture? Here are numbers four through one. 4. Commitment to Education - 13%. The Chinese are indeed diligent students. The only people I know who study harder than the Chinese are their children. Oh!, they are Chinese, too, I suppose. 3. One in six - the History - 16%. China has a looong history, and everything that was discovered, created, or found was done...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of American opinion leaders - Americans were asked - What are the most admirable traits of the Chinese and their culture? 9. One in 25 people said the Chinese are friendly - 4% (uh, perhaps they should smile more?) 8. Intelligent - 7%. This one surprised me. Most of my Chinese friends are ten times smarter than I. 7. Disciplined - 8% When it's time, it's time. 6. The Food! - 9% - Nearly one in ten Americans think the Chinese have the market...

During the worst of the Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis, I visited Israel and made a documentary ("Israel in a Time of Terror") about how Israelis regarded and lived with the murdering of their fellow men, women and children. I will forever regard the Israelis of that period as achieving a rare level of national greatness: They were able to go on living normal lives, returning the next day to the same cafes bombed the day before, riding on the same bus line that the day before had its passengers blown up, blinded, maimed and brain damaged. While making the...

Picture an imperfect hall of mirrors, with gene sequences reflecting wildly: That's the human genome. The duplications that riddle the genome range greatly in size, clustered in some areas yet absent in others, residing in gene jungles as well as within vast expanses of seemingly genetic gibberish. And in their organization lie clues to genome origins. "We've known for some time that duplications are the primary force for genes and genomes to evolve over time," says Evan Eichler, director of the bioinformatics core facility at the Center for Computational Genomics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. For three decades, based largely...