Winners & Losers

Posted By Blake Hounshell Friday, January 5, 2007 - 7:00 PM Share

Winners

Merkel backrub Angela Merkel: No touchy-touchy in her meeting with Bush yesterday.

Xunlei: The Chinese downloading service inks a deal with Google. Let the renminbi roll in!

Government reformers: The new House ethics rules are more than window dressing. But did they have to take away the free tickets to 'Skins games?

Ethiopia: The speed of their victory over the Islamists in Somalia stunned the world. But if they don't get out of there soon, they could wind up in the loser column one of these weeks.

Russian workers: They don't come back from their extended New Year's break until next Tuesday.

Losers

Cancer: Johns Hopkins researchers say they've found the cure. The secret? "A designer molecule made of sugars and fatty acids."

Democracy scholars: Seymour Lipset, the Hoover Institution scholar who made enormous contributions to the understanding of how democracies develop, has died.

Linton Brooks: The U.S. nuclear weapons czar was fired after a series of embarrassing security breaches at Los Alamos.

Felipe Calderon: Mexico's president can't travel without a note from mom.

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus: Inherits General Casey's nightmare to become the Creighton Abrams of the Iraq War.

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