Hsi-Chang Lin

This morning, Honda, Toyota, Suzuki, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan release their domestic production levels, sales, and export results for the month of March. This is the first time that the largest Japanese automakers have shown hard numbers of their company’s activity since a deadly earthquake occurred off the coast of Sendai. Ever since the devastating earthquake officials in Japan have been putting on a brave public face. But, that posture may be coming at a high cost.

Is sugar toxic? A 90 minute YouTube video of pediatrics professor Robert Lustig trying to answer the question has counted 800,000 hits. The New York Times has an interesting piece in the magazine section that explains why sugar is on the minds of so many Americans. Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition at New York University and the author of "What to Eat" and Barry Popkin is the distinguished professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina school of public health. Together they explain why sugar is a major public health risk, and what we should do to control it.

How does the looming shutdown compare to the 1995 government shutdown? Byron Dorgan, former Democratic senator from the state of North Dakota and Bob Bennett, former Republican Senator from the state of Utah held their senate seats during the last government shutdown back in 1995. However,  this time they are watching the situation unfold with the rest of America. Both men share their frustrations with, and their concerns for, the nation's representatives.

In 1999, the body of 41-year-old, high school dropout Ricky McCormick was discovered in a St. Charles County, Missouri cornfield. There were no weapons, no motives, no suspects in the case. The only clue investigators had were two hand-written documents found in the pockets of the victim's pants, a scrambling of letters that read like an encoded message.

If Washington lawmakers cannot come to an agreement on the nation’s operating budget by Friday, the government will be forced to shut down many of its non-essential functions, sending thousands of government employees home without a paycheck.  

Over 800,000 federal employees were furloughed in the nation's November 1995 shutdown, and about 284,000 workers were sent home in a second shutdown a month later. Combined, those two shutdowns cost the government about $1.4 billion. However, those shutdowns coincided with a time when America was experiencing one of its longest periods of financial growth. If the shutdown were to occur on Saturday, it would be doing so in a very different financial climate.  

Friday's potential government shutdown directly affects “non-essential" employees, putting them at risk of taking a furlough. However it's not only this class of employees that will feel the effects of shutdown. There are serious economic ripple effects and, more simply, it costs money to shutdown the government.

When America intervened in Libya, we were told we were doing so for humanitarian reasons. President Obama declared “some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refuse to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” This sounds like as noble a reason as any to commit the nation to a military engagement; but, is it a realistic one?

The slogans “Yes We Can” and “Change We Can Believe In” transformed then-Senator Barack Obama’s underdog bid for presidency into a frenzied, anti-incumbency movement that launched him to the Oval Office. Fast forward to today, and President Barack Obama has officially begun his re-election bid, though the word “change” is probably the last one he wants to hear.

A Sacramento bound Southwest Airlines flight declared an in flight emergency on Friday when five feet of paneling ripped out of the 737's ceiling. Flight 812 made a rapid descent from its cruising altitude of 36,000 feet down to 11,000 feet and later landed safely at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station.  

In the recent past, airlines have been caught being lax in their adherence to maintenance inspections. In 2008, the FAA levied a $7.5 million penalty against Southwest for its failure to do mandatory inspections for fuselage fatigue on some of its planes. Southwest wasn't the only airline.

Later today 55-year-old Eric Schmidt leaves his post as Google CEO, to be replaced by the company’s 38 year old co-founder Larry Page. The last time Larry Page lead the company was in 2001. Then, Google had about 200 employees. Today, the monolithic company employs over 24,000. Is Page ready for his old role, and more importantly, what changes will his new leadership bring to the direction and focus of the company that built its fortunes around his visionary search algorithms? For the answer we speak to Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of law and media studies at the University of Virginia and author of "The Googlization of Everything."

As a part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s push to expand Internet freedoms across the globe, the U.S. State Department is developing a smart phone app which will allow international activists to hit a “panic button,” wiping out their cell phone’s address book, contacts, text messages, and even emit emergency alerts to other activists. This app is designed to protect networks of pro-Democracy activists in the event that their phone is confiscated by police.

Around tax time, Absolute Return magazine publishes a list of Wall Street's biggest winners of the year. This year, while most of America continues to battle a financial recession and 9.5 percent of the workforce remains actively unemployed, the nation's top hedge fund managers took home staggering sums of money. Louise Story, finance reporter for our partner The New York Times tells us why and how these managers make billions each year.

Although President Barack Obama has publicly denied that the U.S. will provide ground troops to Libya, it appears that the CIA has begun covert operations to push back forces still loyal to Moammar Gadhafi. However the details of those operations are still murky and the question of whether supporting the Libyan rebels could come back to haunt the U.S. and coalition forces seems to be on the minds of leaders from both sides of the Atlantic. Will the arms fall into the hands of the wrong people? Should we fear an al-Qaida presence among the rebels?

Ivory Coast is one step closer to civil war after troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara dismissed Laurent Gbagbo’s offer of a ceasefire and seized the political capital of Yamoussoukro. Richard Downie, deputy director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that a link can be drawn between Libya's Gadhafi and Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo.

In his address to the nation on Monday, President Barack Obama explained the rationale behind sending US military troops to Libya. In describing the situation, the President reminded Americans that "If [America] waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte would suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. It was not in our national interests to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.” But what if it happens in other countries, like Yemen?

Tokyo's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is said to be registering at 100-thousand times the normal level of radiation following the Sendai earthquake three weeks ago. Is the breach at Fukushima further proof that, in our search for energy independence, nuclear power may just be an uncontrollable gambit? Or is there a safer means to extract the power of the atom? Does fail-safe technology really exist?

Alassane Ouattara has been internationally recognized as the president of Ivory Coast since the election last November. But incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the city of Abidjan because of widespread unemployment and an increase in violence there. We talk to J. Peter Pham, director of the Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, about the escalating unrest and whether an all-out war is imminent.

The latest Census confirms that once-segregated Southern cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Miami are luring African Americans from northern metro areas like New York and Chicago. Today, 57 percent of the nation’s black population now lives in the South, which is the highest it's been since 1960. Why are we witnessing a Great Reversal of the Great Migration? For the answer we speak with Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.”

According to the most recent Census data, the city of Detroit lost over 237,000 people over the past decade. Today, the Motor City has a population of only 713,777, making Detroit America’s 18th most populated city. The Census findings fit nicely into the narrative of Detroit as a modern-day ghost town. However, say argue that the city's blight is also an opportunity to build a new urban environment with opportunities to create a new local economy.

Just three months ago, the common assumption was that al-Qaida was losing its importance in the Muslim world. The popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt appeared to herald a newer, younger, Internet-savvy, pro-democratic voice— a voice silenced by autocratic regimes for decades. Following the U.N.'s authorization of a no-fly zone over Libya, and a swift military intervention by international forces, those same pundits fear that al-Qaida might find new inspiration and opportunities for safe haven. Michael Scheuer, Former head of the CIA Bin Laden Tracking Unit, and author of the book “Osama Bin Laden" says that the U.S. is essentially providing air cover for al-Qaida.