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...Virginia has executed John Allen Muhammad via lethal injection on Nov. 10. Muhammad, known as the D.C. sniper, was sentenced to death for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, one of 10 victims gunned down during a three-week rampage around the capital in 2002. Muhammad is the highest-profile inmate to die by lethal injection since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2008 that the state of Kentucky was not violating a statute prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment" by executing prisoners using the controversial method. The ruling effectively allowed executions by lethal injection to recommence after an unofficial...
...Federal Reserve is also talking the talk, although it is difficult to see how it can actually walk the walk. After a year of contraction, U.S. GDP grew 3.5% in the third quarter of this year, but the jobless rate has surged to 10.2%, the highest since 1983. Raising interest rates runs the risk of worsening unemployment. For the same reason, the U.S. cannot withdraw stimulus spending either, even though the U.S. budget deficit has topped a record $1.7 trillion. Last week, mortgage lender Fannie Mae reported $18.9 billion in third-quarter losses and said it needs another $15 billion...
...some of the country's intractable economic problems. Among other popular proposals, the new government, led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, vowed to provide more government assistance for families to promote consumer spending while simultaneously taming the country's ballooning debt, which at nearly 200% of GDP is the highest among rich nations...
...heart of Europe yet is not a member of the European Union. It didn't join the United Nations until 2002, despite the fact that Geneva has the largest U.N. office outside of New York. It has tough immigration and citizenship laws, but also one of Europe's highest immigration rates. A fifth of its 7.5 million population are foreigners, mostly from Western Europe, but increasingly from Turkey, the Balkans and beyond...
...Roger Federer: his dad was born South African. Exceptionalism is out of fashion these days. (Well, unless you're Chinese.) Global recession is a great leveler, its seismic shocks felt in big and small nations alike. Even Switzerland has not escaped the carnage. Its unemployment rate is at its highest for more than 11 years, and those fathomless repositories of Swiss-ness, the banks, are reeling from their exposure to sub-primes and credit markets. Switzerland's two biggest banks needed multibillion-dollar bailouts - UBS with public money, Credit Suisse with private - and, like bankers everywhere, they face the rage...