Kennedy Memorial Service In Boston: (VIDEO Highlights)
The private memorial service for Ted Kennedy at the JFK library in Boston Friday night drew many luminaries from the political world such as Vice President Joe Biden and Senators John McCain and John Kerry, as well as family members such as Joseph Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy. It was a night full of laughter as well as sadness, as friends and family celebrated the larger than life senator from Massachusetts with speeches and music. Read the whole story from the AP. Some of the highlights are below....
Vanity Fair Slide Show on Ted Kennedy
Bush 43 Pal, Ponzi Scum Stanford's Operation Was Ponzi Scheme From The Start, Says Number 2
Yesterday, we got new details on Allen Stanford's alleged $8 billion fraud, with the release of the plea deal signed by the Texas banker's number 2 man.
Jim Davis, Stanford's college roommate and the CFO of the Stanford Financial Group, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and obstruction charges. He told prosecutors that the company was a sham from the start, using money from new investors to pay off old ones. Davis also described how for years he helped cover up the scheme, and helped bribe a top Antiguan regulator to keep the SEC off the scent.
As the Miami Herald describes it, Davis "said that from the time he joined Stanford's Guardian International Bank in Montserrat in 1988, the operation was a fraud -- with Davis ordered to invent the numbers....
State of Florida Sold Personal Information from Registration and Driver License Records to Mass Marketers
(When Jeb Bush was Gov.)
Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million to settle a complaint that the state violated motorists’ privacy.The panel accepted the deal Tuesday, but it also will need the Legislature’s approval. Florida violated federal law by selling personal information from registration and driver license records to mass marketers from June 1, 2000 through Sept. 30, 2004...
Britain: One Crime Solved Per 1000 CCTV Cameras
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals...
Coming Soon: An Unblinking "Gorgon Stare" For Air Force Drones
The military’s unblinking eye in the sky, which keeps watch over operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is about to get even beadier. A new multi-camera sensor the U.S. Air Force is adding to its killer spy drones will exponentially broaden the area troops can monitor, and the technology lets a dozen users simultaneously grab different slices of the image. Called the Gorgon Stare, it represents the next big step in unmanned combat aircraft...
Remembering Ted Kennedy, My Friend of 56 Years
By Ted Sorensen
After all the magnificent eulogies and obituaries, what more and what new can be said about Ted Kennedy, my friend of almost exactly 56 years and the leader of all the causes in Washington in which I believe -- a more peaceful world, a more just America, a more humane and progressive United States government.
Too many people still think about the human frailties that characterized his youth; and those without sin are permitted by scripture to cast the first stone against him. But that past only emphasizes the extraordinary extent to which, like his brothers Jack and Bobby, Ted grew as his responsibilities increased. His determination to achieve his brothers' goals was genuine and unrelenting, his devotion to each of his own many causes over the years was sincere and unflagging. He became known on both sides of the Senate aisle for his careful selection and retention of a brilliant staff, and - with their help - doing his homework in preparation for every Senate debate....
Slide Show: From Hyannis Port To DC: Official Kennedy Mourning Commences
The Sitka Speech
By Ted Kennedy after MLK assasinated (Video)
The brief post I did yesterday on Ted Kennedy's April 7, 1968 speech to the Alaska state Democratic convention didn't really do it justice. It's a grainy black-and-white film but the audio of Kennedy's lilting Boston accent is clear, and the speech Kennedy delivers, which I was not familiar with until yesterday, stands even 40 years later as a close-to-perfect expression of modern American liberalism.
To set the scene, Martin Luther King had been assassinated on April 4, a Thursday. Sen. Robert Kennedy, then campaigning for the Presidency was supposed to address the convention on that following Sunday in Sitka, but sent his brother instead so he could monitor violence in the wake of King's murder. Robert's own murder would come just two months later.
So the speech comes at a momentous time. Yet even in the heat of that moment, the speech transcends the shock of recent events. I assume it was written for Robert to deliver, but Ted delivers it was a seriousness and forcefulness that belies his age at the time: 36.
Maybe I'm falling into the trap of inflating the significance of the deceased's life, but the speech is so well-written and powerfully delivered that it deserves consideration among the great American political speeches. Fast-forward to the 5:20 mark, where Kennedy uses the King assassination to launch into his passionate assertion and defense of liberalism.
Ted Kennedy Slide Show
Boston Globe on The Life of Ted Kennedy
On a spring day nearly two years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy sat on the porch of his sprawling Hyannis Port home with a friend of five decades, Edmund Reggie, who is also his father-in-law. The two men gazed out at the ocean that has been such an anchor in Kennedy's life, and talked about the future.“ You’re nuts to beat yourself to death like this on the Senate floor,” Reggie said. “Passing a new law won't be any more glorious for you than the reputation you’ve made. Some people say you and Daniel Webster are the greatest senators of all time.” Kennedy looked at the older man and deadpanned: “What did Webster do?” It was a telling line, typical of the competitive Kennedys. But Reggie persisted....
Sen. Teddy Kennedy, Dead at 77
By Josh Marshall
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), a giant of liberalism in the latter half of 20th century who was often overshadowed by the memory of his slain brothers, died of brain cancer late Tuesday night in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He was 77.
First elected to the senate in 1962 at the age of 30, Kennedy went on to serve in the body for 46 years -- longer than all but two senators in United States history, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D) of West Virginia and Sen. Strom Thurmond (R) of South Carolina.
Kennedy's long political career was filled with a mix of historic legislative accomplishment, tragedy and recurring scandal. Kennedy was the key legislative mover behind the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national origin quotas that had been in place since the 1920s, as well as a key supporter of numerous Great Society programs. Yet his central role in passing this and other path-breaking liberal reforms in the late 1960s was soon overshadowed by the incident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 in which the passenger in the car Kennedy was driving, Mary Jo Kopechne, died after he drove off the edge of a bridge.
Kennedy later fought a bitter primary battle against President Jimmy Carter in 1980 but failed to wrest away the nomination. And in the years following he gave up the presidential ambitions that had hung about him like an aura since the death of his brother Robert Kennedy in 1968....
Senator Ted Kennedy 1932-2009
Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the patriarch of the first family of Democratic politics, died Wednesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after a lengthy battle with brain cancer. He was 77.
"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," a family statement said. "We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice."
Kennedy, nicknamed "Ted," was the younger brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, who was gunned down while seeking the White House in 1968. However, his own presidential aspirations were hobbled by the controversy around a 1969 auto accident that left a young woman dead, and a 1980 primary challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter that ended in defeat....
China aggressively reducing US debt - Sign of things to come
(USD Down over 20% Vrs Canadian in less than 6 Months)
The United States needs to borrow nearly $10 trillion over the next decade, including about $1.6 trillion this year.
Where's it going to come from?
This is critical question, because resistance on the part of creditors will drive up interest rates, clobbering the housing market and demolishing the value of whatever cash savings Americans have left. The other answer--our government lending the money to itself--will destroy the value of the dollar, and that wouldn't help too many people, either (except debtors--it would help debtors because they will be able to repay nominal debts with toilet-paper dollars.
For now, the money we're borrowing is coming from somewhere, thankfully. But it's not coming from China, which has funded our spending for most of the past decade.
Insurers admit 50,000 employees lobbying Congress Over 100 for each Congressman
Memo tells employees to keep a low profile
A spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s trade group, admitted in an article published Monday that as many as 50,000 industry employees are involved in an effort to fight back against aggressive healthcare reform.
The admission, published in the last sentence of a Wall Street Journal article, highlights the stakes of potential healthcare reform for the private health insurance industry. Insurers and investors alike are terrified at the prospect of a so-called “public option,” which would create a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers....
Healthcare insurers get upper hand
Reporting from Washington - Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.
The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums.
"It's a bonanza," said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive for 20 years who now tracks reform legislation as president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates Inc...
Jon Stewart confronts industry shill who created ‘death panel’ rumor
Jon Stewart invited McCaughey to provide the exact passage in the bill that states end-of-life consultations would be “mandatory.” McCaughey admitted that the word “mandatory” never appears in the legislation but insisted that the doctors would be penalized for not providing consultations.
Stewart quickly corrected her. “That is not in in any way what this said.”
“You and I disagree about the reading of this bill,” said McCaughey. “Because under the new Medicare pay performance system, doctors who don’t adhere to the protocols delivered by the federal government on what is cost effective and appropriate care get dinged in their payments. They get paid less. There’s actual financial pressure,” she said
Stewart disagreed. “That’s not the interpretation of the bill. The interpretation of the bill is to get empirical evidence compiled on things that work. It’s following science for medicine,” he explained....
How American Health Care Killed My Father
ALMOST TWO YEARS ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy....
Video Trailer for New Micheal Moore Movie
"Capitalism: A Love Story"
Two years after his last critique of the nation’s governing bodies in 2007’s ‘Sicko,’ agitprop documentarian Michael Moore is back with a new movie — and this time, his target is the economy. In a just-released teaser clip for Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore puts on his trademark baseball cap to go after corporate America.
“It’s a crime story,” Michael Moore says of his latest documentary, in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But it’s also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it’s also a love story. Only it’s about an abusive relationship.”...
Bush Homeland Security Director Ridge Admits Terror Alert Level raised to help Bush/Cheney Re-election in 2004
A remarkable detail to be published in former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's soon-to-be-released book asserts that the Bush Administration attempted to wield the color-coded terror alert system for political gain -- a charge often leveled by Democrats but not previously confirmed by a high-ranking Bush Administration official.
Ridge's publisher is pushing details from his book in advance of its release. Notable among them:
Tom Ridge, the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security, wasn't keen on writing a tell-all. But in The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again, out September 1, Ridge says he wants to shake "public complacency" over security.
And to do that, well, he needs to tell all. Especially about the infighting he saw that frustrated his attempts to build a smooth-running department. Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.
Liberal columnist and blogger Josh Marshall noted the striking timing of Bush terror alerts in 2006.
"The 18 months prior to the 2004 presidential election witnessed a barrage of those ridiculous color-coded terror alerts, quashed-plot headlines and breathless press conferences from Administration officials," Marshall wrote. "Warnings of terror attacks over the Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions, then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the Democratic convention."...
Bush CIA Hired Blackwater for Assassination Program
Via Cyrptogon: “Blackwater is a CIA cutout that got so big that it just happened to become a household name.”
—Feds Investigating Blackwater USA for Selling Weapons to Iraqi Insurgency
I’ve asserted (for years) that Blackwater was a CIA contractor. Now that Blackwater’s involvement with CIA covert assassination programs has been admitted, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before my speculation about Blackwater’s involvement in narcotics trafficking will be confirmed as well.
With regard to how cutouts operate, note the following paragraph from the New York Times piece below:
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune.
This has been standard operating procedure for CIA since the early years of its existence.
Additionally, while the article gives the impression that elements inside CIA are questioning the use of Blackwater in assassination programs, I want to highlight nine words that we should keep in mind: “The company maintains other classified contracts with the CIA.”
Drug running. “Aviation support.”
Government Permission Will Be Required To Travel With-in America By Air
Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel by air. As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth "Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S." Getting a reservation and checking-in for air travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration authorization. That permission is by no means assured: For example, if your name matches a "no-fly" list, even mistakenly, you can be denied the right to a reserve a seat on a flight. If your name is on a "selectee" list, you and your possessions will be searched more thoroughly before you can board. What is going on here?...
Why AT&T Killed Google Voice
Earlier this month, Apple rejected an application for the iPhone called Google Voice. The uproar set off a chain of events—Google's CEO Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple's board, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity—that may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It's about time.
With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone—office, home or cellular—rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.
Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S., stirring up rumors that AT&T was the one behind Apple rejecting Google Voice. How could AT&T not object? AT&T clings to the old business of charging for voice calls in minutes. It takes not much more than 10 kilobits per second of data to handle voice. In a world of megabit per-second connections, that's nothing—hence Google's proposal to offer voice calls for no cost and heap on features galore.
What this episode really uncovers is that AT&T is dying...
An Avalance of Insider Selling
(Chart of Insider Selling)
What's the "message" of the market here? Over the last two weeks corporate insiders have dumped over $2.1 billion in stock vs. $73.1 million in buys. I'm not sure I've ever seen the ratio of insider sells vs. buys this skewed toward officers and directors looking for the exit door. Talk about the captain jumping into the lifeboat and speeding away before the ship sinks....
Jon Stewart slams misleading cable news instant polls
Jon Stewart on Monday night called out cable news pundits for using unscientific, instant-text polls to support their points of view. Flashing between Fox, CNN and MSNBC anchors, a trend among them became readily apparent: It’s as if completely different audiences are watching the channels.
Polls returning with instant results like 93 percent, 93, percent, 94, percent, 98 percent, or the oft-coveted “Unanimous” (aired by Fox News Channel), Stewart quipped: “Those are the numbers Saddam Hussein would have killed for … And did.”....
You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again
More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.
Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not.
What’s even sneakier?
Several services even use the surreptitious data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, which is called ‘re-spawning’ in homage to video games where zombies come back to life even after being “killed,” the report found. So even if a user gets rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the “backup."...
Palm accused of 'spying' on Pre owners
Palm Pre owner Joey Hess claims to have uncovered code within the phone's operating system which shows that the device is sending back information about his location to Palm....The software developer said that log files for the handset show that his phone has been sending data back to Palm on a regular basis.
Mr Hess said that although the data was sent over a secure link, it contained information about his location, and a list of the applications installed on his handset. It showed how long he spent using those applications, and sent back crash data whenever applications unexpectedly quit....
Big Brother Expands Watch On Canadian Border With:
Operation Empire Shield
To protect the American Empire, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the unmanned Predator B drone was deployed to Fort Drum as part of Operation Empire Shield in June.
The unmanned aircraft was deployed as part of a month long exercise to conduct surveillance missions between New York and Ontario to evaluate whether the Predator is necessary for the U.S.-Canadian border....
Real Time With Bill Maher looks at health care debate and asks: "WTF?' (Video)
HBO's 'Real Time' with Bill Maher on Friday evening featured a segment with comedian Dana Gould taking an up-close look at the health care reform debates, as well as those likely most affected: the people without health care.
First, Gould went to town hall meetings where protesters rallied against health care reform, noting all the anger and hateful rhetoric coming from people who, presumably, already have health care insurance....
The brutal truth about America’s healthcare
An extraordinary report from Guy Adams in Los Angeles at the music arena that has been turned into a makeshift medical centre...They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life....
In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition
In Pennsylvania last week, a citizen, burly, crew-cut and trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator: "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." He was accusing Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance.
In Michigan, meanwhile, the indelible image was of the father who wheeled his handicapped adult son up to Rep. John Dingell and bellowed that "under the Obama health-care plan, which you support, this man would be given no care whatsoever." He pressed his case further on Fox News....
The Economy is in Deep, Deep Trouble...
ooyah. It's morning in America. The jobless numbers are stabilizing, the stock market is sizzling, quarterly earnings came in better than expected, traders have turned bullish, housing is showing signs of life, and clunker-swaps have given Detroit a well-needed boost of adrenalin. Even Cassandra economists --like Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini--have been uncharacteristically optimistic. Is is true; did we avoid a Second Great Depression? Is the worst really behind us?
Maybe. But there is only one way to find out for sure. Raise rates....
A Complete Unknown: Bob Dylan Detained by Police for Failure to Produce His Papers
A novice policewoman picked up an "eccentric old man acting suspiciously", completely unaware that it was Bob Dylan. The 22-year-old officer was dispatched after residents in the New Jersey town of Long Branch had phoned to complain that a man in the Latin quarter was acting suspiciously. When the officer asked the man for identification papers, he did not have a driving licence or other form of ID to prove his identity.
The songwriter, famous for hits such as Like a Rolling Stone and Mr Tambourine Man, was then ordered into the back of her police car and driven back to his hotel to authenticate his story.
It was not until she radioed her colleagues at the police station to ask who he was did she realise her mistake.....
Woodstock Turns 40, and the Dead are still Touring, and Jimi is still Putting Out New records
Saturday it’ll be forty years since the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair began.
To my fellow Boomers, for so many of whom (like me) Woodstock was such an existential moment, Bob Dylan’s question seems relevant: How does it feel?
To younger generations who see Woodstock only through the prism of history and who find the Boomers ‘ fascination with and smugness about this event alternately inscrutable and unbearable, John Sebastian’s explanation seems fitting: It’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.
Here are my stories. Make your own narratives….
Interviewing Jimi Hendrix
He was a lithe, light-skinned African American who grew up in a Pacific Rim state, had briefly served in one of the nation's most elite patriotic institutions, and had, in a couple of years' time, become the most charismatic man in America, so wildly adored by upscale young whites he was called a one-man racial-barrier breaker. Now, in front of a euphoric crowd (and nervous crowd-control officers), he was putting his personal stamp on an official Founding Fathers text at the conclusion of an event that led to onlookers' enduring self-congratulation about the nation (or, one might say, the "nation").
Forty years before Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office, this was Jimi Hendrix playing The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock.
I interviewed Jimi shortly after Woodstock, in the town next to Woodstock where he was living.My article appeared in Rolling Stone...
Audio slideshow: Remembering Woodstock
In August 1969, an estimated 400,000 young people converged on a dairy farm in upstate New York for a music festival that would leave a legacy that endures today. Rainstorms failed to dampen the spirits of the revellers, whose good behaviour over the four days inspired Joni Mitchell to write her classic song Woodstock. With the help of some of those who were there, take a nostalgic look back at the festival.
Woodstock: 40 Years Down The Road And A Nation Lost (Video)
As you may have heard, we are on the precipice of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. The famous, and infamous, cultural milestone took place down on Max Yasgur's dairy farm outside of Bethel New York between August 15 and August 18, 1969. Thirty-two acts performed, during a sometimes rainy weekend, in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. The history and lore of Woodstock began immediately, it was clear to both those who loved it, and those who hated it, that it was a uniquely seminal moment..
Obama says insurance companies holding U.S. hostage
U.S. President Barack Obama, pushing for healthcare reform during a trip to conservative Montana, said on Friday the country was "held hostage" by insurance companies that deny coverage to sick people....
Jon Stewart: Glenn Beck ‘talking out hole in his ass’
sign US health care not working
...Stewart then showed footage of Beck recovering from hemorrhoid surgery—or “some type of anal procedure,” as Stewart put it—in January of 2008.
“It was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life to receive health care in the United States,” Beck said. “This is one of the hospitals where the president of GE is going. If they don’t care about the president of GE, do you really think they care about shlubs that are just average working stiffs?”
Joked Stewart, “If only that poor shlubby working stiff in the video had been getting the kind of health care Glenn Beck was raving about.”
Stewart rolled more footage of Beck talking about health care, shortly after his surgery: “No matter how much the health care system would try to keep me down, I’m back … A personal voyage through the nightmare that is our health care system … Getting well in this country can actually almost kill you.”
“So in just 16 months during which Glenn Beck moved from CNN to Fox, you can chart the incredible progress of health care in this country,” Stewart said. “I’ll tell you what really doesn’t speak well for our health care system—that in those 16 months, the hole they stitched up in Glenn Beck’s ass hasn’t healed enough for him to stop talking out of it.”
Stewart also took a look at a new Web site for former Bush administration officials....
In Michigan, Blue Cross raising individul, group rates 22 pct.
Michigan insurance regulators have approved a 22 percent increase for group and individual Blue Cross Blue Shield health policies in the state, according to reports published Thursday.
“Blue Cross officials have said they need rate increases to help cover $133 million in financial losses in 2008 on its individual health insurance policies,” reported Crain’s Detroit Business.
“You Do Not Cut Deals with the System that Has to Be Replaced”: Ralph Nader on Secret White House Agreements with the Drug Industry
The Obama administration admitted last week it promised to oppose proposals to let the government negotiate drug prices and extract additional savings from drug companies. In return, drug companies reportedly pledged to reduce costs by up to $80 billion. The White House has tried to back off the reported agreements, but the drug industry says it expects the White House to uphold its pledge. We speak to former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader....
Canadian firm gets patent win over Microsoft Judge Orders $241 Million in Damages and for Microsoft to stop Selling Word
A tiny Toronto firm that took on Microsoft Corp. (MSFT-Q23.570.040.17%) has succeeded in winning an injunction against sales of the technology giant's flagship word-processing software.
A U.S. judge, agreeing with an earlier jury verdict that Microsoft had willfully infringed a patent belonging to i4i LP, gave the software giant 60 days to comply with the injunction and awarded the Canadian company about $290-million (U.S.).
The injunction bans U.S. sales of Word 2003, Word 2007 and future versions of the software that use i4i's technology without a licence. Microsoft said it would appeal.
Cannabis may prevent osteoporosis
Researchers looking at the effects of cannabis on bones have found its impact varies dramatically with age.
The study found that while the drug may reduce bone strength in the young, it could protect against osteoporosis, a weakening of the bones, in later life. The results were uncovered by a team at the University of Edinburgh who compared the drug's effects on mice.....
Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle
THE INTERNET CAFÉ in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all hours with teenage boys playing boisterous rounds of video games. But one day soon after I arrived, the staff told me they now had to shut down by 5 p.m. Police orders, they shrugged: The country's military junta had declared martial law a few days before, and things were a bit tense.
I sat down and sent out a few emails—filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. "It will just be a few minutes," one of the clerks said. Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. "We're going to take you in for questioning about the emails you've been writing," they said.
What followed, in a windowless room at the main police station, felt like a bad cop movie. "Who are you really?" the bespectacled inspector wearing a khaki uniform and a smug grin asked me over and over, as if my passport, press credentials, and stacks of notes about Fiji Water weren't sufficient clues to my identity. (My iPod, he surmised tensely, was "good for transmitting information.")...