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Top 10 News Stories
News, Politics & Science
1. America's Economic Crisis: Now for the Non-Recovery
Spencer Platt / Getty
We were warned. But when the worst recession in seven decades smacked us in the face, all the gruesome auguries did little to dull the pain. As unemployment soared to 10.2% — the highest rate since 1983 — spendthrifts became tightwads, a new age of austerity dawned, and the era of easy money lurched to a close. With the financial system coaxed back from the brink, the Obama Administration injected massive sums into the sagging economy with stimulus packages and incentives like the wildly popular (if myopic) Cash for Clunkers program. But even as experts grasped for green shoots — a process that for a while required a high-powered microscope — the wreckage piled up. Long an icon of the rusted state of U.S. manufacturing, Detroit was battered badly — its economy cratered, Fiat bought a stake in Chrysler, and GM plunged in and out of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Wall Street's behemoths — nursed back to health by savvy bets with taxpayer money — notched healthy profits and doled out prodigious bonuses once more. Buoyed by government subsidies, the U.S. appeared to emerge from the recession by posting modest growth in the third quarter, but for many of us, the downturn's effects will linger.
2. Afghanistan: Can the U.S. Avoid a Quagmire?
Joe Raedle / Getty
Eight years in, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is as murky as ever. Dismayed by the country's downward spiral, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the top U.S. commander, General David McKiernan, less than midway through his two-year term. His replacement, General Stanley McChrystal, drew plaudits for recalibrating military strategy, but his request for additional troops to battle Taliban militants forced President Obama to spend months grappling with whether to double down on a war that could not be cleanly won. On Dec. 1, Obama announced that he would commit 30,000 additional troops to the conflict and stated his intention to begin drawing down U.S. forces in July 2011 — a decision that came in the wake of a bracing reminder that his primary Afghan ally left much to be desired. President Hamid Karzai won a second term in November when his primary rival bowed out of a runoff that was brokered by the U.S. after the August ballot was blighted by rampant fraud. October also hammered home the costs of the conflict: 59 U.S. troops were killed, making it the deadliest month since the war started in 2001.
3. Iran's Tumultuous Election and Its Aftermath
Getty
Who would have thought that hope would spring from an election marked by fraud, censorship and bloodshed? In June, after incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election by an implausibly wide margin, millions of Iranians massed in Tehran to shout anti-regime slogans and protest a rigged election. Bedecked in green, they turned out day after day, many donning sneakers in case they were forced to flee from the thuggish Basij paramilitary force patrolling the demonstrations and clubbing dissidents. Thanks to a media crackdown, social media spread the gruesome news, making household names out of victims like Neda Agha-Soltan, whose murder was caught on a video that ricocheted around the globe. There was no happy ending for the protesters: Ahmadinejad's win was certified. But though the crowds went home, they coalesced intermittently around anniversaries to protest again and again, leaving the country in a political quagmire as reformists and heavyweights in the conservative theocracy battle it out behind closed doors.
4. The Divisive Debate Over Health Care Reform
Scott J. Ferrell / Congressional Quarterly / Getty
Even as his advisers moved to calm the financial storm that was buffeting the nation, President Obama pinned the hopes of his domestic agenda on overhauling the nation's health care system. It was a dogfight that consumed the first year of his presidency. It's easy to see that the ailing system is broken: despite ballooning expenditures, the U.S. comes up short in key health indicators, and some 46 million Americans lack coverage. But Obama struggled to convince the public that his plan was more palatable than the status quo. At town halls across the country during the summer, members of Congress were berated by incensed constituents who balked at the prospect of increasing costs, denounced the public option and spurred apocryphal rumors that "death panels" would be installed to ration end-of-life care. But even as the tenor of the debate grew nastier, the White House began to surmount critical hurdles. On Nov. 7, the House passed a sweeping bill by a razor-thin 220-215 margin; two weeks later, the Senate voted along party lines to send its proposed 10-year, $848 billion legislation to the floor of the chamber, paving the way for proceedings that are likely to rage into the New Year.
5. Massacre at Fort Hood: The New Face of Terrorism?
Reuters / Corbis
In the deadliest assault on a military base in the U.S. in history, Major Nidal Malik Hasan rampaged through Fort Hood in Texas on Nov. 5, killing 13 people — including 12 troops — and wounding more than 30. An Army psychiatrist charged with caring for soldiers scarred by a war he was scared to join, Hasan was cast by some as a shattered loner driven to madness by the prospect of fighting against fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. Others feared that he was a harbinger of the future of terrorism: single-person cells activated by little else than virtual adherence to an extremist creed headquartered in a cave. But as critics noted, before Hasan snapped, he hoisted a series of warning signs, including a PowerPoint deck castigating U.S. foreign policy, Internet posts glorifying suicide bombers and e-mail exchanges with a radical Yemeni cleric. Critics have suggested that Army officials failed to respond to the barrage of red flags because they feared accusations of racial profiling.
6. The Death of Michael Jackson
Kevork Djansezian / Reuters
Like the passing of Princess Diana or John F. Kennedy Jr., his was an epoch-defining death, an event that announced itself in ways both large (Google News buckled under the volume of searches) and small (in New York City, bodega owners looped Thriller all weekend in tribute). On June 25, a caller summoned an ambulance to Jackson's Los Angeles mansion; the star wasn't breathing. The King of Pop was rushed to a Westwood hospital, where he was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest, the victim of a lethal cocktail of prescription pills. (In August, his death was ruled a homicide by a Los Angeles County coroner; no charges are pending.) For days, the world kept vigil, and for months after that, battles were waged over everything from Jackson's place of burial to the custody of his children. Through a summer of tributes and an autumn of fresh keepsakes, the applause did not subside. This Is It, a film documenting Jackson's rehearsals for his planned string of 50 London concerts, earned glowing reviews. In November, the sale of more than 80 of his prized possessions hauled in $2 million at auction.
7. Pakistan: On the Verge of a Breakdown
A Majeed / AFP / Getty
The country that poses the greatest threat to U.S. security may be neither of those in which the U.S. is embroiled. Beset by feckless leadership, riven by class divisions, preoccupied with its rivalry with India and dotted with militant groups that claim sprawling hinterlands as theirs, Pakistan devolved into a miasma of terrorism and political malaise. The death of firebrand Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in an August drone strike ratcheted up the stakes. After months of planning, Pakistan launched Operation Path to Deliverance in October, sending 28,000 troops into insurgent-infested South Waziristan to confront a confederation of militant groups. As threatened, extremists responded by unleashing a torrent of attacks throughout the country.
8. Mexico's Bloody Drug War
Guillermo Arias / AP
Some 14,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón declared war on Mexico's vicious drug cartels in 2006, and the bloodshed escalated in 2008. Border trenches like Juárez — a bullet-pocked city of 1.5 million with swaths of territory under martial law — were ravaged by drug-related killings, with more than 1,800 murders through the first nine months of 2009. In this democracy of 110 million, corruption is so endemic among the police, army and government that some analysts have gone so far as to dub Mexico a failed state. Through the three-year Merida Initiative, launched in 2008, the U.S. has committed $1.6 billion in aid to help combat drug-fueled crime. But critics point out that caches of weapons, not cash, have been perhaps the most significant cross-border export flowing from the U.S.
9. H1N1: That's Swine Flu to You
Juan Carlos REYES / AFP / Getty
Last winter, a potent virus with a catchy name began ravaging southern Mexico. By April, the pathogen, born in pigs, had bounced around the globe, infecting people in Asia, Europe and the U.S. The virus, spawned by genetic mutations, was something new — and it disproportionately afflicted the young. Health experts insisted on constant vigilance; the world girded for a once-in-a-century pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu. The World Health Organization estimated that up to 3 billion people worldwide could become infected. Though it ripped through nearly every U.S. state — prompting President Obama to declare a national emergency in the fall — H1N1 wasn't as lethal as anticipated, even though its potential for devastation was abetted by a spotty vaccine-delivery system. As of mid-November, about 4,000 Americans had died from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a grim tally, but far from the seismic event that some had feared.
10. The End of Sri Lanka's Cataclysmic Civil War
AFP / Getty
For 26 years, a war between Sri Lankan authorities and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ravaged the island nation, killing more than 70,000 people as the ruling ethnic Sinhalese majority fought the separatist Tamils. In May the fighting came to an end, as Sri Lanka's army trapped a cohort of LTTE stalwarts in a 2 sq. mi. sliver of territory in the nation's northeast and killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group's elusive chief. Though the end of the ghastly conflict was cause for celebration, beleaguered Sri Lankans were left to languish in the aftermath of a war in which neither side could claim the moral high ground. To crush the rebels, the Sri Lankan government suppressed dissent, curtailed human rights and green-lighted a final onslaught that killed 7,000 civilians, according to the U.N. For their part, the Tigers — who were considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and U.N. and who at one point controlled a quarter of the country and installed their own system of roads, taxes and courts — pioneered suicide bombing as an insurgent tactic and used civilians as human shields. More than 250,000 Tamil civilians were detained after the fighting petered out; in December, the government moved to accelerate their release.
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发表于 2010-1-5 14:09
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