NPR News

The sputtering U.S. economy isn't just bad news for America, it's a drag on the global economic outlook as well.

"What matters to the rest of the world is the amount of demand the United States is going to generate," says economist Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell.

"Weak job growth translates to weak domestic demand in the U.S., and that concerns all of the U.S.'s major trading partners," he says.

Cancer is everywhere.

And, before long, cancer will be a major cause of death in every part of the world, not just a big factor in what's now the developed world.

In 2030 the world's population is expected to hit 8.3 billion, up from 7 billion today. By then, new cases of cancer cases are expected to nearly double to 20.3 million from 12.8 million in 2008, according to an analysis in The Lancet Oncology.

From the day a grand jury indicted former Sen. John Edwards on six felony charges nearly one year ago, the case drew jeers from election lawyers and government watchdogs.

"It was an incredibly aggressive prosecution because it was based on a novel theory of the law," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There was literally no precedent. No case had ever been like this."

The CIA has a term called "blowback" to describe when an operation against the enemy has unintended negative consequences for the U.S. or its allies. In the age of cyberwarfare, blowback seems to be a paramount concern.