The power of the individual

February 05, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

There are two big tech anniversaries this year.

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The sweeping farm bill that Congress sent to President Obama Tuesday has something for almost everyone, from the nation’s 47 million food stamp recipients to Southern peanut growers, Midwest corn farmers and the maple syrup industry in the Northeast. After years of setbacks, the Senate on Tuesday sent the nearly $100 billion-a-year measure to the president, who is expected to sign it. The Senate passed the bill 68 to 32 after it passed in the House last week. The bulk of its cost is for the food stamp program, which aids 1 in 7 Americans. The bill would cut food stamps by $800 million a year, or around 1 percent.

Syrian forces dropped a crude bomb on a mosque that was being used as a school in a rebel-held neighborhood of a key northern city on Tuesday, killing at least five people, including children, activists said. The bombing – one of at least seven around Aleppo on Tuesday – came amid an intensified campaign by President Bashar al-Assad’s government to take back parts of the city that were seized by rebels in mid-2012.

Rwanda’s former intelligence chief faced genocide and war crimes charges Tuesday as his trial began in France for a 1994 killing spree that left at least a half-million people in his nation dead. Pascal Simbikangwa could face a life sentence if convicted after the trial – the first in France over Rwanda’s genocide. The case has highlighted criticism of France’s own reaction to the genocide a generation ago, and its slow exercise of justice after the slaughter of at least 500,000 people in Rwanda in just over 100 days.

Several million people will reduce their hours on the job or leave the workforce entirely because of incentives built into President Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. That would mean job losses equal to 2.3 million full-time jobs by 2021, in large part because people would opt to keep their income low to stay eligible for federal health-care subsidies or Medicaid, the agency said.

China has canceled a deal to buy more than a million tons of rice from Thailand because of a probe into the beleaguered Thai government’s subsidies for rice growers. Thai Commerce Minister Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan told a news conference Tuesday that a Chinese state company, Pei Ta Huang, terminated a contract to buy 1.2 million tons of rice out of concern it would run into problems due to an investigation by Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Tunisia’s National Guard stormed a suspected militant hideout in a seaside suburb of Tunis after a daylong standoff Tuesday. Seven radicals were killed, including a suspect in a political assassination last year, a minister said. One National Guardsman also died in the clash, which comes almost a year after the assassination of left-wing politician Chokri Belaid by Islamist extremists.

Republicans in Congress on Tuesday called for an overhaul to the Endangered Species Act to curtail environmentalists’ lawsuits and give more power to states, but experts say broad changes to one of the nation’s cornerstone environmental laws are unlikely given the partisan divide in Washington, D.C. Proponents credit the law with staving off extinction for hundreds of species – from the bald eagle and American alligator to the gray whale. But critics contend the law has been abused by environmental groups seeking to restrict development in the name of species protection.

Microsoft has named the head of its cloud computing business as the company’s next CEO, tapping a longtime insider to lead efforts to catch up to rivals in mobile devices and offer more software and services over the Internet. Satya Nadella replaces Steve Ballmer immediately to become only the third chief executive in Microsoft’s 38-year history. Company founder and first CEO Bill Gates is leaving his role as chairman to serve as an adviser. He will spend a third of his time working on future products and technology.

Libya’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the country’s caches of chemical weapons, including bombs and artillery shells filled with mustard gas, have been completely destroyed. The eradication of the weapons, which date from the era of slain dictator Muammar Qaddafi, marks an important success for Libya, even as Syria, its neighbor in the eastern Mediterranean, is struggling to destroy its own chemical weapons hoard amid a civil war.

Authorities have charged a northern New York woman and her boyfriend because the woman’s 2-year-old daughter used their cellphones to dial 911 a total of 15 times last month. Village of Lowville Police Officer Matthew Martin says the mother and her boyfriend told him they tried to keep their phones away from the persistent toddler, but the girl kept getting them and dialing 911.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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