Archives: Morning Breakouts

Rep. Fred Upton, who will head the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says Republicans' priority is reversing health law passed by Democrats last year.

The Hill reports that House Republican leaders will use budgetary strategies and other efforts to fight regulatory action by the administration. Meanwhile, the New York Times highlights a new strategy in the court fight on the health law.

"Steve Radelet, who joined the State Department last January to be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's top advisor on development, is moving over to USAID to be their first Chief Economist since the 1990s," Foreign Policy's blog "The Cable" reports.

"Nearly 260,000 people died in earthquakes, floods, typhoons, heatwaves, fires and landslides in 2010

MedPage Today examines recent HIV prevention developments, in a 2010 year in review piece, beginning with the announcement at the International AIDS Conference in July that a microbicide gel used by women before and after sex reduced HIV infection by 39 percent.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter said Thursday that recent food price spikes in China, "in the world's most populous nation," underscore the country's food security challenges resulting from decreasing amounts of arable land, Agence France-Presse reports. Significant land degradation is also hindering China's agricultural output, De Schutter said as he wrapped up a visit to China. "The recent food price hikes in China are a harbinger of what may be lying ahead," he said in a statement. "This situation should encourage China to move towards more sustainable types of farming," De Schutter added (12/23).

A report (.pdf), released Wednesday, on breastfeeding practices in 33 countries found that out of 78 million infants born each year, about 42 million do not receive an optimal amount of breastfeeding, IANS/Sify News reports (12/22).

Scientific American examines how, in an attempt to improve early recognition of viruses that could give rise to pandemics in people, such as last year's H1N1 swine flu, scientists are looking to better understand "the viruses that infect the estimated 941 million domesticated pigs around the world." However, as the article notes, "[i]ntensive monitoring of pig viruses is unlikely to come any time soon

"Dilma Rousseff had barely been confirmed as Brazil's new president in November when she made her first foreign visit, to Mozambique," which "included a symbolic stop-off at a pharmaceutical factory that is under construction in preparation for opening in 2014.

"Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come," the New York Times writes in an article that examines the factors contributing to a growing interest in such land among investors.