Word: could
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...There was a brief boom of research into whether animals could be used to predict earthquakes in the 1970s, when a few scientists documented changes in the behavior of birds, mice and domestic animals immediately before the earth's beginning to shake. But the idea never gained much traction. The very difficulty of predicting earthquakes makes it hard to study how animals react to them. "This was a completely fortuitous event," says Halliday. "It would be practically impossible to plan research like this. You'd spend a lot of time watching toads with nothing happening." (Read "Why Chile's Quake...
...Some seismologists have doubts about Grant's research, saying the toads' behavior could have just been a fluke. After all, critics say, the L'Aquila earthquake was preceded by minor shocks that also worried the city's residents. "If there was a fright among the toads, it would have been a reflection of the fright that was happening among the people," says Pascal Bernard, a seismologist at the Institute of Earth Physics in Paris. "People were afraid, but nobody knew for certain that something was going to happen...
...been a standard theme of commentary of late to say that Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, could be the leader of Europe - but doesn't want the job. When Merkel took on much of the E.U., above all French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with her lonely, stubborn and ultimately victorious campaign against a Greek bailout, she became "Madame Non" in France, and Public Enemy No. 1 in Greece. At home, Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister of the government she ousted in 2005, gave her an F for an "extraordinary foreign policy disaster." Germany, he surmised, was no longer the "motor...
...Nothing could be further from the truth. Assertive Angie is no Kaiser Bill. Nor is fiscal probity anti-European - quite the contrary. Article 125 of the Lisbon Treaty, Europe's quasi-constitution, forbids bailouts for the reckless. Moreover, in the last few months the euro has lost more than 10% against the dollar, and the fiscal chickens have come home to roost. The central problem - as critics of the euro predicted before the currency's launch - is not Germany's tightfistedness; it is a common monetary policy without a common polity that sets fiscal policy. (See pictures of immigration...
...already get plenty of funds from the European kitty as steady entitlements. And solidarity, a favorite shibboleth of all good Europeans, goes both ways. Europe should spread the wealth, but help works best when the profligate show remorse for their sins. This is why Merkel's no-bailout rule could have an entirely salutary effect, by imposing fiscal rectitude on the wayward...