What made Romney change his mind?

Mitt Romney has said that he has decided to withdraw from the race for the Republican nomination for president in the 2016 election. His withdrawal seems to have surprised observers just as much as his previous announcement that he was thinking of entering the race. His latest statement was a little equivocal, suggesting that he still thought he was the best candidate and could win, and hinted that he was open to being drafted as the party nominee if no suitable candidate emerged from the large scrum of current hopefuls and the party is deadlocked at the convention.
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Israel shows its power over the US again-but pays a price

There has been an unusual development in US-Israel relations. The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited by the speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner to give a speech to a joint session of Congress on February 11. This by itself is not too unusual. It is an honor given to foreign leaders and Israeli leaders have done so many times and the routine is that they are given multiple standing ovations by members who are eager to demonstrate to the Israel lobby how supportive they are of Israel.
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Silly weather reporting

The massive storm predicted earlier this week for the northeast corridor of the US and caused New York City to pretty much shut down, resulted in a mixed outcome. The storm did hit hard many regions of Massachusetts and the upper regions of New England, though friends of mine who live in Maine said that it was pretty much the kind of bad storm that hits them every winter and not an unprecedented one.
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Technology in cricket

I have been warming up for the cricket World Cup to be held from February 14 to March 29 by watching more games, so as to get up to speed on what the teams are like and what changes have occurred in the game since my youthful days of addiction to the game, and one thing that struck me was the increased use of technology, much of it for the better.
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“H-e-double-hockey-sticks”?

I came across this article about the inability of the Republican party leadership to pass a piece of legislation further restricting abortion rights on the occasion of the annual rally in Washington on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. When there was some dissension within their ranks, especially from women members of their caucus, they pulled the bill from the floor before the vote. As you can imagine, this abrupt change did not go down well with those who felt that they had been betrayed and one abortion foe was so furious that she complained angrily, saying, “What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks just happened?”
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What happened to Rapa Nui?

The story of Rapa Nui (better known as Easter Island), consisting of 63 square miles located 2,300 miles west of Chile, is one of enduring interest. How a lush island became a wasteland denuded of its trees, bereft of most of its population, and finally ended up primarily as a home for gigantic stone statues, is a mystery that has intrigued scientists for years.
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Who is not vaccinating, why, and who is suffering because of it

At the risk of sounding like broken record, I want to return to a topic that I feel very strongly about, and that is this issue of people not vaccinating their children. In the US at least, the opposition to vaccinations of children seems to be something affecting the affluent. These are the people who seem to have latched onto scary tales on the internet and the media that are warning about the dangers of the vaccines, though those claims have been thoroughly debunked.
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