April 30, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-to-2 decision, upheld a 2011 rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would limit certain kinds of polluting air emissions that cross state lines. The ruling means that such industries as coal-fired electric power plants will likely be forced to switch to cleaner-burning fuels, such as natural gas.

Scientists have long known that wind, under certain circumstances, carries sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from power plants for long distances. These pollutants react with other substances to form smog and soot that can cause respiratory illnesses and other disease. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged the complexity of the problem before the EPA. “In crafting a solution to the problem of interstate air pollution, regulators [that is, the EPA] must account for the vagaries of the wind,” she noted. “Most upwind states contribute to pollution to multiple downwind states in varying amounts.”

A tug of war between the EPA and smokestack industries over drifting air pollution has been going on for decades. In 2002, the administration of then-President George W. Bush instructed the EPA to adopt new rules overturning a provision of the Clean Air Act of 1970 that required companies to adopt the best available pollution controls when major sources of pollution–such as coal-fired electric plants and refineries–are upgraded or enlarged. The provision was reinstated by the administration of President Barack Obama. Texas and 13 other states and power companies filed a lawsuit challenging its reinstatement, and a federal appeals court ruled in their favor in 2012.

Most coal mined in the United States is used to fuel electric power plants. Domestic coal is also shipped to China, where it contributes to air pollution that drifts across the Pacific to North America. (c) Grapes/Michaud, Photo Researchers.

Legal experts characterize yesterday’s court decision as an important victory for President Obama in his effort to reduce power plant pollution in 27 Midwestern and Appalachian states. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy called the ruling “a resounding victory for public health and a key component of EPA’s efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to breathe.”

Two of the court’s more conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, dissented. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the consideration of the case.

Additional World Book articles:

• Acid rain
• Environmental pollution 2002 (a Back in Time article)
• Environmental pollution 2011 (a Back in Time article)

February 24, 2014

Ukraine’s parliament issued an arrest warrant today for Viktor F. Yanukovych, Ukraine’s ousted president, who is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Crimea. He is charged with mass murder for the killing last week of more than 80 antigovernment protesters in Kiev, the capital. On February 21, Yanukovych and leaders of the antigovernment opposition reached a compromise agreement designed to end the political crisis that had turned Kiev into a battleground. However, the protesters in the streets would have none of it and demanded his immediate resignation. Abandoned by his political party, by the army and police, and even by his own body guards, Yanukovych fled Kiev late on February 22. According to one source, he flew by helicopter to eastern Ukraine, the Russian-speaking half of the country that was once his base of public support.

The Ukrainian parliament, moving quickly to assert control of the government, yesterday stripped Yanukovych of all power and granted its new parliamentary speaker, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, the authority to carry out the duties of the president. In a recorded address to the nation, Turchynov assured the public that all police and security services were now on the side of the new government. “The law enforcement structures are no longer threatening the life, health and security of the citizens of Ukraine,” he declared, noting that the army has also vowed its support. “Our first task today,” he stated, “is to stop confrontation, renew governance, management and legal order in the country.”

The parliament also restored to the state ownership of the presidential palace, which Yanukovych had privatized. The presidential compound was subsequently thrown open to the public, which streamed through the opulent, gilded rooms, gawking at the conspicuous display of wealth: the collections of expensive cars, antique and modern; a zoo; and a private restaurant in the shape of a floating pirate ship. In the face of such profligacy, the leaders of Yanukovych’s own party, the Party of Regions, issued a scathing statement denouncing him as a crook, a criminal, and a coward. Experts on Ukraine’s financial situation noted that the nation faces an economy in shambles, disastrous national debts, and a treasury and national pension system on the brink of bankruptcy.

Former President Viktor Yanukovych, who is wanted for mass murder, is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Crimea, the southernmost region of Ukraine. Border guards claim to have blocked Yanukovych from leaving the country by air sometime over the weekend. (World Book maps)

The unrest in Ukraine began in November when Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to purchase $15 billion in Ukrainian government bonds. These moves to bind Ukraine to Russia infuriated Ukrainians who wanted the country allied to the West with its tradition of democracy and capitalism. Speaking this morning from the Olympic park in Sochi, Russia, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev condemned the movement that brought down Yanukovych: “Today, I see no legitimate Ukrainian partners for dialogue. . . If people crossing Kiev in black masks with Kalashnikov rifles are considered a government, it will be difficult for us to work with such a government.” The next multbillion dollar installment of Russian aid to Ukraine has been cancelled, and yesterday, the Russian ambassador to Kiev was recalled, because of “chaos” in the city, and the.

Foreign correspondents in Kiev reported this morning that calm seems to have settled over the city. Former protesters have joined city police–who only last week were shooting at them–to share responsibility for guarding government buildings and directing traffic.

Additional World Book articles:

• Kuchma, Leonid Danylovich
• Viktor Yushchenko
• Ukraine 2004 (a Back in Time article)
• Ukraine 2005 (a Back in Time article)
• Ukraine 2009 (a Back in Time article)
• Ukraine 2010 (a Back in Time article)
• Ukraine 2011 (a Back in Time article)
• Ukraine 2012 (a Back in Time article)

February 4, 2014

Yesterday, Janet Yellen was sworn in as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (the Fed), the central U.S. bank. She is the first woman to assume that position. She succeeds Ben Bernanke, who chaired the Fed for eight years.

In 1994, Yellen joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve following her appointment by President Bill Clinton. In 2004, she became head of the Federal Reserve branch of San Francisco. Yellen attained the position of vice chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors in 2010.

Janet Yellen (Federal Reserve System)

Before joining the Fed, Yellen was a highly respected academic in the field of economics. With her husband, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, Yellen coauthored a number of scholarly papers, including studies of the merging of the East and West German economies upon reunification in 1990 and examinations of the economic dynamics of unemployment. Yellen taught economics at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Janet Yellen was born on Aug. 13, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was a physician and her mother, a school teacher. She attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and subsequently earned a doctorate at Yale University. She married George Akerlof in 1978.

Yellen takes the helm as the central bank begins to unwind a program–known as quantitative easing–that was implemented to stimulate the U.S. economy during the recession of 2008 and 2009. The program involves the purchase of massive amounts of U.S. Treasury and mortgage bonds, which pumped billions of dollars into the economy. The Fed simultaneously held long-term bank interest rates at record low levels. The program–which was based on the theories of English economist John Maynard Keynes–was not universally popular. Conservative economists and politicians claimed pumping so much money into the economy would trigger inflation. This proved not to be true.

In late January, then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke announced that the monthly bond purchases would be cut from $85 billion to $65 billion in response to “cumulative” signs that the economy was improving. The U.S. Department of Commerce subsequently announced that the economy had grown at a healthy 3.2-percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2013.

Additional World Book articles:

• Economics, U.S. 2010 (a Back in Time article)
• Economics, U.S. 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Economic Crisis: The Banking Meltdown (a special report)
• Economics Crisis: The Government Jumps In (a special report)
• Economics Crises: Then and Now (a special report)

December 6, 2013

Nelson Mandela, a key figure in ending apartheid in South Africa and the first black president of that country, died yesterday at age 95. Mandela had been in poor health for several years.

Mandela fought for many years to end the South African government’s policy of rigid racial segregation. Blacks make up about three-fourths of the nation’s population. But until 1994, South African law denied them the right to vote in national elections and to participate in the national government. In the first elections held in South Africa in which people of all races could vote, Mandela was elected president. He served from 1994 to 1999.

Nelson Mandela is sworn in as president of South Africa in May 1994. (© Mike Persson, Gamma Press)

Mandela was born in Umtata, capital of the Transkei territory (now in Eastern Cape province) in southeastern South Africa. His father was a chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. To pursue a career in law, Mandela gave up his right to succeed his father as chief. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1943, he studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1952, he and another political activist, Oliver Tambo, opened the first black law partnership in South Africa. The men had been  founding members in 1944 of the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC).

The ANC party, founded in 1912, fought to gain political and civil rights for the country’s blacks and other nonwhites. The South African government outlawed the ANC in 1960. The ANC then began a policy of violent resistance to apartheid. In 1961, Mandela became the commander-in-chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), an organization that advocated armed struggle against apartheid. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and convicted in 1964 of sabotage and conspiracy. He was sentenced to life in prison. He spent the next 27 years as a political prisoner of South Africa. He slept on the floor of a cell that had no bed, performed hard labor in a rock quarry, and was permitted only one letter every six months.

During the time of Mandela’s imprisonment, people around the world became more aware of the injustice of South Africa’s apartheid system and of the plight of its political prisoners. Political activists from around the world circulated petitions calling for South Africa’s captives to be freed. Governments began sanctions against South Africa, refusing to sell the nation arms or to engage in trade with South Africa. Mandela’s wife at the time of his imprisonment, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also spoke out on his behalf.

Eventually, the pressure on the government of South Africa was too great, and in early 1990, Frederik Willem de Klerk lifted the ban on the African National Congress (ANC). On Feb. 11, 1990, Mandela was released from prison. He became president of the ANC in 1991, where he urged a policy of working with the white government of de Klerk during the transitional time at the end of apartheid rule. Mandela and de Klerk won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Mandela never planned on running for a second term as president. After his retirement from politics in 1999, he became an esteemed elder statesman and worked to promote social justice. He campaigned widely to increase awareness of AIDS.

Other World Book articles:

• South Africa, History of
• South Africa 1990 (a Back in Time article)

Other sites or videos of interest: 

• African National Congress: The Nelson Mandela Page
• Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

December 3, 2013

Detroit is officially bankrupt. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes granted Detroit protection from its creditors, marking this the largest public bankruptcy in U.S. history. The creditors include retired city employees–retired firefighters and police officers–whose pensions make up half of the city’s liabilities. Under Judge Rhodes’s ruling, these pensions appear to be imperiled: “Pension benefits are a contractual obligation of a municipality and not entitled to any heightened protection in bankruptcy.” He noted, however, that the court would not “lightly or casually” make changes to existing pensions before exhausting other options. With a total debt estimated to exceed $18 billion, the city of Detroit is hard put to provide even the most basic services to residents.

Once an industrial powerhouse, Detroit has been in decline for decades. In 1950, the city had 1.8 million residents. Through the following decade, thousands of white middle-class families moved from Detroit to new developments outside of the city. Race riots in 1967 hastened the exodus. Today, the population is 700,000. With an estimated 70,000 properties abandoned–including vast empty factories and downtown skyscrapers–Detroit’s tax base has not covered the cost of city services for years. Past administrations borrowed to make up the difference, leaving the city hopelessly in debt.

Analysists fear that the loss of such vital city services as adequate police and fire protection could force such businesses as the General Motors Corporation (GM) out of Detroit. The Renaissance Center (right in photo) houses GM's world headquarters. (Corbis)

Although Mayor Dave Bing has vowed that public services will be kept running, fire, police, and ambulance services are already near collapse. Police response times to 911 calls average 58 minutes, compared with 11 minutes nationally. Two-thirds of Detroit’s entire ambulance fleet was not in service in the first quarter of 2013. Forty percent of the city’s streetlights do not work, and half of the city’s parks have been closed since 2008. Given the situation, analysts have voiced concerns that such businesses as General Motors may move their operations out of the city.

With the bankruptcy approved, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, can begin liquidating city assets to satisfy creditors. Earlier in the year, he raised the specter of selling the vast and highly valuable collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts when he ordered the appraisal of 60,000 pieces of art.

Additional World Book articles:

• Detroit 1967 (a Back in Time article)
• Detroit 1980 (a Back in Time article)
• Detroit 1982 (a Back in Time article)
• Detroit 1990 (a Back in Time article)

October 30, 2013

Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.1 percent in the three-month period from July through September, the Spanish National Statistics Institute reported today. The third-quarter economic growth ended a two-year recession. Spain’s economy had contracted for the previous nine quarters. Spain—with Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal—was one of the countries hit worst by the recent debt crisis in the eurozone. (The eurozone consists of the 17 European Union member nations that adopted a single currency, the euro). According to the Institute report, Spain’s third quarter economic growth was driven by an increase in exports and a boost to tourism from vacationers avoiding the ongoing upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East.

The euro has replaced the individual currencies of the eurozone—made up of 17 member nations of the European Union. The eurozone has finally begun to climb out of a lengthy recession (European Central Bank).

Spain’s economy was hard hit when a decade-long property bubble burst with the worldwide crash of 2008. The country’s banks, sitting on hundreds of billions of euros in bad property loans, only survived with government bailouts. Thousands of businesses went under, and the country’s rate of unemployment soared to 26 percent. The rate of unemployment among people under the age of 25 spiked to more than 50 percent. High unemployment combined with a government austerity program consisting of spending cuts and tax hikes triggered huge public protests.

Many economists now suggest that the eurozone debt crisis appears to be easing. They point out that Ireland emerged from recession in the second quarter of 2013, helped by a rebound in exports and a rise in consumer spending. Portugal pulled out of two and a half years of deep recession with economic growth of 1.1 percent in the second quarter of this year, surpassing expectations. Economists believe that Greece’s record six-year recession is bottoming out, with the economy set to shrink this year by significantly less than analysts had forecast in June. Italy remains in recession, but the Economics Ministry reported yesterday that economic indicators suggest that a predicted recovery next year will likely be stronger than expected.

Additional World Book articles:

• Crisis in the Eurozone (a special report)
• Economics Crisis: The Banking Meltdown (a special report)
• European Union: The Euro (a special report)
• Eurozone Crisis: No End in Sight (a special report)

October 23, 2013

The Australian state of New South Wales is braced for another day of devastating bushfires. The commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has urged people not to travel in various parts of the state due to conditions that are set to be “as bad as it gets.” Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned that today’s weather forecast—temperature in the mid to high 80′s °F (30′s °C), humidity down to 10 percent, and winds of 50 to 60 miles (80 to 100 kilometers) per hour—is worse than previously thought, making it the most dangerous day yet in the bushfire emergency that began last week.

Dozens of bushfires are burning to the north, south, and west of Sydney, and the city is wreathed in smoke. “You can smell smoke inside buildings,” National Public Radio correspondent Stuart Cohen reported yesterday, noting that health authorities were expecting a surge in cases of people with respiratory problems. Since the start of the bushfires, more than 200 homes have been destroyed, and wildlife experts believe that thousands of koalas, opossums, reptiles, and other animals have been killed. However, only one life has been lost in the disaster.

A dangerous wildfire in the Blue Mountain region was started by the Australian army testing explosives in a military training exercise. (World Book map)

Firefighters from three states are battling the fires through backburning—that is, starting a fire that burns in the opposite direction to the line of the advancing wildfire. Australian fire officials say the threat to the Blue Mountain area west of Sydney “has been averted” for today, but warn the crisis is far from over. In total, 73 fires are burning across the state, 29 of them out of control. Meteorologists note that the severity of the bushfires is due to extremely dry conditions following Australia’s hottest September on record.

Additional World Book articles:

• Hakea
• Australia 2009 (a Back in Time article)

October 17, 2013

Some 800,000 federal employees went back to work this morning after a 16-day shutdown of the United States government. The political stand-off between the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama ended just minutes before a midnight deadline after which the government’s ability to borrow money by selling bonds would have expired.

A bill brokered by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D., Nevada) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Kentucky) finances the operations of government until Jan. 15, 2014, and raises the nation’s debt limit through the middle of February. The Senate passed the measure last night by an 81-to-18 vote. The House followed suit, passing the bill by a vote of 285-to-144. Eighty-seven House Republicans broke ranks to join a united Democratic caucus in approving the measure.

An attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act by hardline conservatives in the House of Representatives collapsed on October 16, when both houses of Congress passed legislation financing the federal government and raising the debt limit.  (© Brooks Kraft, Corbis)

Passage of the measure ended a stalemate led by hardline conservatives, generally members of the House Tea Party caucus. The caucus pushed their Republican leaders to use the double threat of a shutdown and a default on the national debt to defund the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.”

Political experts generally agree that pushing the federal government to the edge of a fiscal meltdown for political gain was a major misstep by Congressional Republicans. A Washington Post-ABC public opinion poll taken earlier this week found that 74 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress were handling the negotiations. A Pew poll taken yesterday found that public approval of the Tea Party was in free fall. Only 20 percent of polled Republicans now support the Tea Party movement. The Wall Street credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s announced yesterday that the shutdown had drained at least $24 billion out of the already fragile U.S. economy.  Conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh described the Republican shutdown and subsequent surrender as “One of the greatest political disasters I’ve ever seen.”

Additional World Book articles:

• National budget
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)

October 1, 2013

A central provision of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” went into effect today amid a general shutdown of the U.S. government. Federal and state-run insurance exchanges opened for business this morning. As many as 7 million uninsured Americans are eligible to buy affordable health insurance on these exchanges.

Condemning the Affordable Care act as an unprecedented intrusion into Americans’ private lives, Congressional Republicans waged a years-long campaign to undermine it. The latest effort led to today’s government shutdown. A number of Republicans in the House of Representatives, in particular the Tea Party caucus, demanded that the law be repealed or stripped of funding as a condition for continuing to fund the government. The Senate refused to pass the House bill, and House leaders refused to even bring the Senate-approved budget up for a vote. (Political experts note that the Senate bill would have passed in the House, largely with Democratic votes, if it had been brought to the House floor by Speaker John Boehner. They suggest, however, that if Boehner had brought the Senate bill up for a vote in defiance of the Tea Party caucus, his action would have cost him his position as speaker of the House.)

With no new budget or budget extension in place, the U.S. government shut down this morning at 12:01 a.m. At least 800,000 federal employees will likely be sent home without pay as many government agencies prepared to close their doors. More than 1 million others will be asked to work without pay. President Barack Obama signed legislation late on September 30 ensuring that uniformed members of the military will be paid during the shutdown. The 533 current members of Congress will also receive their paychecks.

The shut down of the U.S federal government on October 1 led to the closing of national parks and monuments across the nation (c George Goodwin, Monkmeyer).

Republicans in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals across the country, have battled to repeal the health care law since its passage in 2010. The House of Representatives took 40-some symbolic votes to nullify it or eliminate its funding. Legal challenges led by Republican governors ended in June 2012 when the Supreme Court validated its most controversial provision: the individual mandate, which specifies that Americans not receiving health coverage from their employers or from the government must purchase individual plans or pay a fine.

Several provisions of “Obamacare” went into effect prior to today: children can now remain on their parents’ insurance plans up to age 26; children with pre-existing health conditions can no longer be denied coverage; senior citizens now enjoy prescription drug discounts; and insurance companies can no longer place lifetime limits on health coverage. Another major provision—the employer mandate—requires employers with at least 50 full-time workers to provide insurance or incur a $2,000 per employee penalty. Implementation of that provision has been delayed until 2015.

Additional World Book articles:

• Congress of the United States 2010 (a Back in Time article)
• Health Care Reform–What’s in it for You? (a special report)
• Medicaid in Distress (a special report)
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)

September 27, 2013

Scientists are 95 percent certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming, the authors of a landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced today. The authors of the report stated emphatically that global warming is “unequivocal” on the ground, in the air, and in the oceans; and that since the 1950′s, many of the observed changes in the climate system are “unprecedented over decades to millennia.”

The glacier Qori Kalis in the Andes Mountains in Peru melted substantially between 1983 and 2000. According to scientists at the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State University, this melting provides a clear sign of global warming (© Lonnie G. Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University).

IPCC Co-chair Qin Dahe wrote, “Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and that concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.” Speaking today at a news conference in Stockholm, Co-chair Thomas Stocker declared that climate change “challenges the two primary resources of humans and ecosystems, land and water. In short, it threatens our planet, our only home.” Both scientists contend that since 1950, humans are clearly responsible for more than half of the observed increase in temperatures through the burning of fossil fuels.

The IPCC report downplayed a so-called pause in the increase in temperatures in the period since 1998. The authors pointed out that this period began with a very hot El Nino year: “Trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends.”

The authors of the report warned that continued emissions of greenhouse gases at current levels would trigger further warming and changes to all aspects of the world’s climate system. They predict that continued emissions of greenhouse gases at current levels could result in sea levels rising by the end of this century by 10 inches (26 centimeters) at the low end and 32 inches (82 centimeters) at the high end. They conclude that to halt or even forestall these changes will require “substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Additional World Book articles:

• The Great Meltdown (a special report)
• Methane (a special report)
• Meltdown: Climate Change in the Arctic (a special report)
• Probing the History of Climate Change  (a special report)
• What We Know About Climate Change (a special report)