Palin steps down as Alaska governor

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave her final speech as Alaska’s governor Sunday before stepping down from her post, telling a Fairbanks crowd that she is resigning "to chart a new course to advance the state." “Now people who know me, they know how much I love this state … I feel it is my duty to avoid the unproductive, typical, politics-as-usual, lame-duck session in one’s last year in office,” Palin said, just moments before Lt.

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Does your doctor judge you based on your color?

John Reid, a retired businessman, came home from a Caribbean cruise a few years ago with an infected toe as a souvenir. As a diabetic, he knew it was serious, so he went to the emergency room near his home in New York City. There, he says, the first doctor he saw ordered an immediate amputation, scheduling him for surgery right then and there

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Viewpoint: The Stupidity of the Gates Arrest

Here is what the absurdist, typically stilted police language of Sergeant James Crowley’s official report on his arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates really means: Gates: You’re not the boss of me! Crowley: I am the boss of you. Gates: You are not the boss of me! Crowley: I’ll show you. You’re under arrest

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Truly Worldwide Web: Broadband Finally Comes to East Africa

For weeks, it had been impossible to ignore the quiet revolution coming to East Africa. Across Nairobi, work crews could be seen unspooling thousands of meters of black cable into freshly dug trenches along the city’s roads. The flurry of work was all done in anticipation of what was heralded as the dawn of a new era: At long last, East Africa would be connected to an undersea fiber-optic Internet cable, and with it, to the planet’s cheap, high-speed information superhighway.

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Chinese Film Directors Protest Documentary on Uighur’s Kadeer

Political tension over the deadly riots that struck northwest China has spilled into an unlikely venue: the Melbourne International Film Festival. Three Chinese directors announced they were pulling their works from the event to protest the inclusion of a documentary about a Uighur activist. The Uighurs are a Turkic speaking, largely Islamic minority group concentrated in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.

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The State of Play for Health-Care Reform

President Barack Obama did his best to keep health-care reform on track with his Wednesday evening press conference, but after months of choosing to let Congress manage the day to day details, there is only so much he can do to speed along the process. He continued that effort on Thursday, dispatching chief of staff and former House Democratic Conference Chairman Rahm Emanuel to Capitol Hill to try to ease the concerns of the group of key, fiscally-conservative Democrats known as the Blue Dogs, who are balking at what they view as the high long-term costs of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health-care proposal. Pelosi is racing to deliver at least one completed health care bill to President Obama ahead of the scheduled August recess.

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