USA
A congressional advisory panel that investigates US-China issues said Thursday that Chinese spying represents the greatest threat to US technology. Industrial espionage allows Chinese companies to acquire new technology "without the necessity of investing time or money to perform research," according to the report.
Consumer prices rose a brisk 0.3 percent in October, driven by the sharpest rise in energy costs in five months, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Thirty-four vehicles, or three times as many as last year, are listed in the "safest" category by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which announced its annual ratings Thursday. To earn the designation, cars and trucks must have electric stability control or anti-rollover technology. Ford and Honda had the most top-rated vehicles.
Union representatives for striking Broadway stagehands will resume negotiations with the League of American Theatres this weekend in an effort to break a week-long strike, the two sides said Wednesday. Having 27 plays and musicals closed as the lucrative holiday theatergoing period begins lends a sense of urgency to the talks, observers say.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education honored four educators Thursday at its 2007 US Professors of the Year awards luncheon in Washington. The Carnegie Foundation-sponsored program recognized the teaching contributions to undergraduate students of Glenn Ellis of Smith College, Rosemary Karr of Collin County Community College in Texas, Carlos Spaht of Louisiana State, and Christopher Sorensen of Kansas State.
A Las Vegas justice of the peace ordered O.J. Simpson Wednesday to face charges of leading an armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers. A trial could begin within 60 days. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his wife more than a decade ago.
Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Oceana, filed a petition Thursday with the Interior Department, asking that loggerhead sea turtles be reclassified from "threatened" to "endangered." Extra protections are necessary, they claim, since tens of thousands of the turtles are killed or injured annually by commercial fishing, mostly off the southern Atlantic coast. Below, a rehabbed loggerhead turtle was carried to the ocean Oct. 17 at Folly Beach, S.C.
Denis Johnson's fictional account of a CIA agent during the Vietnam War, "Tree of Smoke," and Tim Weiner's nonfiction "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA," took major honors at the 58th annual National Book Awards Wednesday in New York.
