The Olympic Flame arrived in Beijing on Wednesday (Tuesday night in the United States) after a long, strange 130-day trip that began in Olympia back in March. View a map of the torch route.

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It's not just the oil companies reaping the benefits of oil prices gone wild. A new report from the Government Accountability Office estimates Iraqi oil profits from 2005 to the end of this year to be at least $156 billion. The government's budget surplus could stand at $79 billion by the end of 2008.

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Last week the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported that if Black America were its own nation it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with AIDS. Among its findings the report also states that nearly 600,000 blacks are living with HIV and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. The report provides a new perspective on the AIDS epidemic and negligence in its treatment.

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When America's largest kosher meatpacking plant was raided, investigators found something far more egregious than undocumented workers: laborers as young as 14 working through the night and in hazardous conditions.

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A new report by a Rwandan commission has accused former French presidents, prime Ministers and the French military of actively participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The report accuses French troops of direct involvement in killings and rapes and of training the Hutu soldiers responsible for wiping out 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.

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In the wake of violent protests involving the Olympic torch and the murder of 16 policemen in Xinjiang province, Olympics organizers and participants fear more civic disturbances. Ironically, author Charles Cumming's new book "Typhoon" is a thriller about terrorist attacks on the eve of the Olympics, launched by citizens from Xinjiang. Is the work of fiction that far-fetched?

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The famous AIDS cocktail, a blend of life-prolonging drugs with wicked side effects, could be a thing of the past. At this year’s International AIDS Conference, scientists announced that they are testing a vaccine designed to give HIV patients an extended break from their regular medication.

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California has a $15 billion budget hole and a political stalemate in full tilt boogie. Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing with taxes and payrolls as a game of chicken continues with Democrats and fellow Republicans.

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As part of an ongoing conversation on the U.S. role in Iraq, Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells The Takeaway what America needs to do to say, with confidence, “Mission Accomplished.”

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A “citizen scientist” network called Project BudBurst uses everyday observers to collect climate change data related to the leafing and flowering of flora across the United States. Armed with a Web site and thousands of participants, the project notes early flowering trends and other anomalies, which one environmentalist says are a symptom of "global weirding.”

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Look for new placards at your grocery store that say "local." More stores are catching on to food that's made close to home. In part, it's because of high oil prices, which make it harder to transport food, but it's also due to the curiosity of Americans who want to know where their food comes from. It's doesn't matter why: Local farmers know a boon when they see it.

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