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Scrabble players around the world had to double-check their calendars this week after Mattel announced that it was releasing a new version of the game called Scrabble Trickster, which allows players to use proper nouns such as Quzhou (a city in southern China, worth 27 points) and Zuma (the surname of South Africa's President, worth 15 points). "I was sure it was an April Fools' joke," says John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association. "I thought someone was a few days late reading the press release and the joke was on them...
Scrabble Trickster will include several deviations from the traditional rules. There will be squares on the board calling on players to draw cards, which may instruct them to forfeit a letter to an opponent or permit them to spell a word backward or use a proper noun. "Celebrity wars of words could now take place on a new battleground," Mattel spokeswoman Sarah Allen wrote in an e-mail. "It's another part of the process of expanding the brand - it's an evolution." In other words, you might be feeling pretty smug about laying down "Jay-Z" (23 points...
...more important document in the world right now than the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that President Obama released on Tuesday. After all, the text spells out how many nuclear weapons the U.S. will continue to deploy around the world and the conditions under which it would be prepared to use those weapons - no small thing considering that its arsenal is big enough to threaten the survival of the species. Here are five ways in which Obama has shifted - or not shifted - U.S. nuclear policy from the George W. Bush years...
...consumer agency - that it would be tough for him to accept anything less dramatic than his tough proposals. And many Democrats see an uncompromising stance against Wall Street as a political winner; if it doesn't produce a bill, they're happy to have an issue they can use against Republicans in the fall...
...India could use a few fresh ideas when it comes to neonatal care. Behind the screen of its phenomenal economic growth, the country continues to struggle with abysmally high rates of newborn deaths. According to national estimates, for every 1,000 live births, 39 babies die in their first month; a third of these don't survive their first day. In Jharkhand and Orissa, two of east India's most impoverished and underserved states, the numbers are worse still - 49 and 45 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively. The neonatal mortality rate in China, by comparison, lingers under...