Downturn Will Test Obama’s Vision for an Energy-Efficient Auto Industry

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: December 20, 2008

DETROIT ? President-elect Barack Obama leveled a stern warning at General Motors and Chrysler last week after the federal government promised them billions to help them survive: “The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices.”

bailout will give him a tool to prod the industry to change, but it will also test his resolve as he pushes it in new directions.

Mr. Obama, after all, has been thinking out loud about the future of the American automobile industry for years, well before his presidential campaign began. He co-sponsored two bills in 2006, during his second year as a United States senator ? one to raise fuel economy standards, and the other to encourage the use of alternative fuels.

Having a baby through a surrogate mother

After 11 attempts at IVF and four miscarriages, Alex Kuczynski was desperate for a child. That’s when she asked another woman to have her baby. Portraits by Gillian Laub

A 31 weeks, my baby was kicking and stretching. On the ultrasound I could see he was doing his customary sit-ups. The mon-itor broadcast the slushy sound of his heartbeat. The technician tore off the images and handed them to me with one hand; with the other, she reached to wipe the gel off the stomach of the woman who was bearing my child.

I did not give birth to my son. He is the product of my egg and my husband’s sperm. After half a decade of trying to become pregnant, sometimes succeeding but always failing to carry a baby to term, I came to the conclusion that if we wanted to have a child who was genetically related to us, we would have to find a woman with a more reliable uterus to gestate and deliver our baby. That was in April 2007. I was 39 years old. Exhausted by years of infertility, wrung emotionally dry by miscarriage, my husband and I decided we would give surrogacy ? hiring a woman to bear our child ? one try. It was a desperate measure.

Monday, Dec. 22, 2008

Sato wanted U.S. ready to nuke China

Later went on to win Nobel Peace Prize

Kyodo News

Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who won the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize for working out Japan's three-point nonnuclear policy, asked the United States in 1965 to use its nuclear weapons against China in immediate retaliation should a war break about between that country and Japan, according to newly declassified Japanese diplomatic documents.

In talks with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in Washington, Sato also said it would be possible for the United States to put such an operation into action immediately from the sea ? remarks that could be taken as tacit consent to bring nuclear arms into Japanese territory