• Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorated around the world

    By Mish Whalen

    International Holocaust Remembrance day marks the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, on Jan. 27, 1945.

    Janek Skarzynski / AFP - Getty Images

    Former prisoners stand in front of the monument commemorating victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, former Nazi death camp during a ceremony marking 66 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex on January 27, 2011 in Oswiecim.

    Markus Schreiber / AP

    Students pass a red rose at the Gleis 17 (Track 17) memorial at the train station Grunewald on the international Holocaust remembrance day in Berlin, Germany, on Thursday, on Jan. 27, 2011. From Oct. 1941 until Feb. 1945 the train station was one of the major sites of deportations of Berlin's Jewish community.

    Markus Schreiber / AP

    A man walks along the Gleis 17 (Track 17) memorial with the name of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz at the train station Grunewald on the international Holocaust remembrance day in Berlin, Germany, on Thursday, on Jan. 27, 2011.

    Sean Gallup / Getty Images

    A survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camps walk through the grounds of the Auschwitz I memorial and former concentration camp on the 66th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2011 in Oswiecim, Poland. Auschwitz was the biggest Nazi concentration camp during World War II and is infamous for its gas chambers where hundreds of thousands of Jews and other victims were murdered.

    Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

    People visit the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on January 27, 2011.

    Oliver Weiken / EPA

    A visitor views the Hall of Names in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on January 27, 2011.

    Marko Drobnjakovic / AP

    People gather in front of a monument at the site of the World War II Nazi concentration camp of Sajmiste, where some 48,000 Jews, Serbs and Roma perished, in Belgrade, Serbia, on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011.

  • Nick Cobbing / AFP - Getty Images file

    This handout photo released by Greenpeace on Sept. 17, 2008 shows polar bear photographed in drifting and unconsolidated sea ice in Kane Basin, off Cape Clay, in northern Greenland.

    Polar bears on thin ice?

    By James Cheng

    The AP reports

    A grim future for polar bears is one of the most tangible and poignant outcomes of global warming. Four years ago, federal researchers reported that two-thirds of the world's polar bear habitat could vanish by mid-century. Other experts foresee an irreversible ice-free Arctic in the next few years as more likely.

    The new study, which challenges the idea of a tipping point, says rapid ice loss could still happen, but there's a chance that the threatened bears aren't quite doomed.

  • Mick Tsikas / Reuters

    A container ship from China comes into port in Melbourne, Australia, Oct. 19, 2010. Asian stocks fell on Wednesday, with Japan's Nikkei average tumbling over 2%, as investors fretted that China may be embarking on a money tightening cycle after it surprised the global economy with its first interest rate rise since 2007.

    David Gray / Reuters

    A construction worker carrying scaffolding walks past a billboard advertising the new residential building being built in central Beijing, Oct. 20, 2010. Property shares in China and Hong Kong fell sharply on Wednesday as a surprise interest rate hike by China raised concerns of fresh measures to cool the real estate market. It could mark the start of more aggressive monetary tightening, analysts said.

    China's time

    Newsweek has a good story about how many young Chinese view the United States as a place to get an education, but they want to return to China because of its business opportunities.

    Rana Foroohar writes: I asked one physics genius in a fuzzy pink sweater what her plans were after graduation. She had already lined up a scholarship to pursue an M.B.A. at Stanford. After that, she said, "I'll probably stay in the U.S. for a while and work at McKinsey or a venture-capital firm in Silicon Valley." Then, she continued, "I'll come back to China and start a company.

    Read the full Newsweek story here.

    Msnbc.com's John Schoen writes that China wants home-grown innovators.