Investigators are trying to find the answer to a problem that eluded Boeing and the FAA in the certification phase, even though the manufacturer and the regulator were well aware of the risks posed by lithium-ion batteries.

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Wellinghoff is well aware of the new threats posed by a multi-directional flow of information and electricity.

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Gaffney noted that this is a threat that goes well beyond the menace posed by Iraq's aggression against Kuwait -- and one that is likely to remain even if Saddam Hussein ultimately withdraws from and relinquishes control over the emirate.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

The challenges posed by the so-called fiscal cliff are well known, and the opportunity that Congress has had -- the House of Representatives in particular -- to mitigate some of those challenges has been available to Republicans in the House for many months now, ever since the Senate passed an extension of the tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people.

WHITEHOUSE: The White House

Absent intervention, well-functioning insurance markets achieve actuarial fairness in which premiums are in direct proportion to the risk posed by each class of insured individual.

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Unfortunately, the same questions might well be posed today about another aerospace technology in which the United States currently enjoys a decisive competitive advantage -- thanks to a farsighted and ambitious Defense Department program and the congressional support it has long received: the V-22 "Osprey" tiltrotor aircraft.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

These movements have the potential to enhance not only the well-being of their own people but also to reduce dramatically and possibly irreversibly the threats posed to the West by the communist regimes they seek to replace.

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But no speech has made such an expansive examination of the war against al Qaeda and its allies in all its manifestations, from drone strikes to detention policies to a clear-eyed assessment of the scope of the threats posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as by those "homegrown" extremists who attacked the Boston Marathon in April.

CNN: Bush's war on terror is over