Ponzi Schemes

The $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly masterminded by former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff punctuated a miserable year for Wall Street in the worst possible way: by underlining, yet again, that savvy market-makers can harness arcane financial instruments as weapons of mass destruction. Left in Madoff’s wake are bankrupt investors, mortified regulators and a raft of unnoticed red flags.

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Why Some Brits Don’t Want a Sir Ted Kennedy

If Gordon Brown expected props back home for being the first European leader to enjoy President Obama’s hospitality at the White House and only the fifth British Prime Minister ever to address Congress, he might have reconsidered the fourth paragraph of that speech. Like a nervous entertainer at a particularly rowdy children’s party, Brown pulled his rabbit out of the hat almost at the start of his act. Her Majesty — Britain’s Queen — had bestowed an honorary knighthood on “Sir Edward Kennedy,” he announced

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German Company Seeking Bailout Is Tied to Auschwitz

Germany’s Nazi past continues to unsettle its present. Privileged clans and mighty industries alike have subjected themselves to public scrutiny and painful mea culpas over activities and associations before and during World War II. But the latest controversy links the poisoned mementos of Auschwitz to the ongoing global financial crisis in a still unraveling tale of leveraged buyouts, corporate hubris and financial humiliation.

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Scientists discover new species in ocean’s depths

Until last December, no one had ever seen the bottom of the Tasman Fracture, a trench that drops more than four kilometers below the surface of the ocean. A group of Australian and American researchers recently spent a month hundreds of kilometers southwest of the Tasmanian coast, exploring the fracture’s depths. Jess Adkins, a professor at Caltech and one of the project’s lead scientists, remembers sitting in his control room and watching the underwater life on his monitors with a sense of awe

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Commentary: Lifting image ban respects war dead

The reversal of two decades of policy on images of returning war casualties is an important and welcome milestone for the American people. NEWARK, Delaware (CNN) — The reversal of two decades of policy on images of returning war casualties is an important and welcome milestone for the American people.

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