Archives: Morning Breakouts

The decision, announced Tuesday, will make it harder for parents who maintain that their children were injured by vaccines to file lawsuits against drug makers. Public health advocates say the ruling will help maintain the nation's vaccine supply levels.

Politico reports on the signs in the early primary states indicating that a presidential run by Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who signed into law that state's universal health care plan, could be haunted by the issue.

As G20 financial leaders met in Paris over the weekend, the Washington Post reports on the "debate over how to respond" to the recent increase in food prices. France, the G20 chair, spurred discussion about "whether new regulations on commodity trading might prevent speculators from pushing up prices by investing heavily in grains or other goods on the expectation that they will increase even further in value. Yet it is unclear how much of a role speculation plays in the movement of prices," the Washington Post writes.

The U.N. on Friday said Haiti's cholera outbreak appears to be waning overall, but high death rates from the virus in rural regions of the country remain a concern, the Associated Press reports. According to figures released by the Haitian government, 231,070 cholera cases and 4,549 deaths from the disease have been reported since the outbreak first emerged in October.

The House voted 235-189 on Saturday to pass legislation that "would fund government operations through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2011, while sharply reducing spending across a wide swath of federal agencies and programs," CQ reports. "Most spending levels under the bill would be based on fiscal 2010 levels, less eliminations, reductions and rescissions totaling roughly $61.5 billion. The measure would provide $99.6 billion less than President Obama sought for fiscal 2011," the news service writes (Weyl, 2/19).

Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general who now heads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), discussed the possibilities for agriculture in Africa and called for reforms to improve farming on the continent in a speech given Saturday during the opening day of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development's (IFAD) annual meeting in Rome, Italy, the Jakarta Post reports (Asrianti, 2/21).

Bloomberg reports that legislation has been introduced in Congress on this point, but it is not likely to come to a vote.