Citizen Cartwright

More on which way the Supreme Court will vote on health care

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy could go either way, veteran reporters Joan Biskupic of Reuters and Stuart Taylor, who's covering the case for Kaiser Health News, said Thursday on National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show.

Their assessments are echoed by The Associated Press.

Foxconn says it will improve conditions in Chinese plants

The pledge is in response to an investigation by the Fair Labor Association, which found widespread problems at Foxconn.

The impact of Foxconn’s changes could signal a new, wide-reaching change in working conditions throughout China, says The New York Times. Foxconn makes more than 40 percent of the world’s electronics products and is China’s biggest and most prominent private employer, with 1.2 million workers.

The era of U.S. 'big box' retail dominance is ending

So says Bloomberg in the wake of Best Buy's announcement that it's closing 50 big stores and opening 100 smaller ones.

“We’re undergoing a seismic shift,” says Natalie Berg, an analyst with Planet Retail in London. “People are still cutting back. People are buying more products online so there is a real case for downsizing stores.”

Canada's approach to its deficit

Oh, Canada. Showing us up with your sense of responsibility again?

The country is upping its retirement age and making other changes to fight its first deficit since the 1990s.

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Did U.S. torpedo Israeli deal for 'secret staging ground' in Azerbaijan?

BRICS nations hit West on lax monetary policy

France arrests 19 suspected Islamic extremists

Spain faces its toughest budget of post-Franco era

House passes Ryan budget plan on partisan vote

90-day transportation bill is on its way to Obama

3 major banks preparing for possible credit downgrades

Is Fannie, Freddie regulator 'single biggest obstacle' to housing market recovery?

Obama administration, 5 states to push for Great Lakes wind farms

2 studies point to pesticide as a culprit in declining bee colonies

Federal study estimates 1 in 88 children has autism

Study: The brain isn't a tangle of circuitry; it's a simple grid

The takeaway from the Supreme Court's last day on health care

The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor both say the Supreme Court appears posed to strike down the entire health care law, but I'm not seeing other media going that far.

Typical swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy did say Wednesday that it could be overreaching to leave parts of the law intact if the independent mandate were struck down:

“We would be exercising the judicial power if one provision was stricken and the others remained to impose a risk on insurance companies that Congress had never intended.”

The court is expected to issue its ruling in late June.

Here is a Q&A on what it all means for consumers.

GOP: We'll still run against health care if Romney heads the ticket

On Wednesday, I ran an Associated Press item saying Mitt Romney would be "singularly ill-positioned" to capitalize on the health care issue in a general election fight against President Obama because Romney is tied to the health law he signed as Massachusetts' governor that's similar to Obama's.

But Politico reports that outside groups aligned with Republicans have poll-tested health care messages and remain convinced that the law is an effective political cudgel for the GOP.  Messages would just need to be — no pun intended — more surgical.

Get ready for more extreme weather, climate panel says

More "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming is on the way, the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a report — the panel's first on the extreme-weather issue.

Government to announce new research on digital data

The National Science Foundation will announce on Thursday a joint program with the National Institutes of Health seeking new techniques and technologies for data management, data analysis and machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence.       

Digital data includes data from the Web, biological and industrial sensors, video, e-mail and social network communications.

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There may be billions of planets like Earth in our galaxy

U.S. suspending plans to send food aid to North Korea

Western troops taking steps to avoid fratricide by their Afghan colleagues

People in 133 nations assess media freedom

AP analysis: The Pope, Castros talked past each other

Apple's CEO visits Foxconn's iPhone plant in China

How to protect your personal data on devices you plan to sell

Cancer death rates continuing to decline, cancer groups say