Archives: Morning Breakouts

Roll Call reports that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday acknowledged there is little the GOP can do to block passage.

As House and Senate lawmakers work toward a compromise on their health overhaul legislation, various provisions remain in play.

"In the nation's capital, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is on the brink of pushing through a national health program that Democrats rank alongside the creation of Social Security and Medicare. In Nevada, that very achievement is imperiling his re-election prospects," The Wall Street Journal reports.

A study from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a government-backed institution, has found that "China's 'one couple, one child' family planning policy" has resulted in a gender imbalance that is the "most serious demographic problem facing" the country, the Times of London reports.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called 2010 "the year of development" and said "he would make the drive to achieve" the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 "one of his key priorities this year," Agence France-Presse/My Sinchew reports.

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe on Monday during a five-day trip in Kenya, called for a drastic reduction in mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, Capital News reports. "In our continent we still have 400,000 babies born every year with HIV and we know if we are capable of making sure that testing will become available universally to all our pregnant women, (and) that pregnant women also have access to treatment, we will prevent the transmission," Sidibe said (Karong'o, 1/11).

After working to ensure the U.S. had access to enough H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, health officials may now face a new dilemma

A $27 million UNICEF program that aims to decrease disease-related child deaths in West Africa did not meet its goal of reducing death rates by at least 25 percent at the conclusion of 2006, according to a Lancet study published on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. "The U.N. children's agency pursued strategies like vaccinating children, giving them vitamin A pills and distributing bednets to protect against malaria from 2001 to 2005 in parts of 11 countries," according to the article.

The New Jersey Legislature approved a measure Monday that would make the state the 14th in the nation, but one of the few on the East Coast, to legalize the use of marijuana to help patients with chronic illnesses.

Hospitals in the Twin Cities appear to be back in the black after cutting jobs, freezing pay and delaying new construction on hospitals around the region.

News outlets look at some unsettled and sticky policy questions

Top goals of the health overhaul legislation are to cut health care costs and restrain their growth over time, but some experts doubt whether Congress' plans for either will actually work.