President Obama announced Friday that he will grant waivers to states struggling to meet the high standardized test scores required under the No Child Left Behind education law. At least 20 states are expected to request the waivers next year. The White House says it will only grant those requests if the petitioning states agree
Continue reading …Palestinians calling for UN recognition of a Palestinian state clashed with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on Friday, just hours before their president, Mahmoud Abbas, was to deliver his widely anticipated request to the world body. (Sept. 23)
Continue reading …The NBA postponed training camps indefinitely and canceled 43 preseason games Friday because it has not reached a new labor deal with players. (Sept. 23)
Continue reading …When I think of nurses, I think of caring. I think of hard-working people who, despite being spread increasingly thin, do so much for the patients under their care and get relatively little in return. That’s why I love California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. They not only demand reasonable concessions on patient care , they also demonstrate in favor of public policies like a Wall Street transaction tax . Yesteday thousands of their members walked picket lines, joined rallies and sent a message to employers that RNs will not accept reductions in patient services: At a boisterous rally at Sutter Alta Bates Thursday morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised the RNs as “the last line of defense for patients” and excoriated the corporate assault by Sutter. “ They disrespect you by attacking your healthcare, your retirement benefits, your right to advocate for patients, and now they want to force you to work when you are sick. Having sick nurses care for sick patients is sick.” Trumka said it was 23,000 nurses taking a stand, but that they were joined by “millions of patients” and had the support of working people across the country. “When nurses are on the outside, there’s something wrong on the inside,” said CNA Co-President DeAnn McEwen at the rally. She called the sweeping concession demands by Sutter “drastic, unwarranted, and unconscionable. They’re harming patients and we’re standing in the gap.” “Nurses will never be silenced in standing up for our patients and our communities, or our members and our families,” says Children’s Oakland RN Martha Kuhl.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media There were tons of softball questions at the third GOP debate in 15 days on Thursday. “Do you think Obama is a socialist?” was t-balled (er tea-balled) for Mitt Romney by Megyn Kelly. When it’s a Fox News “debate” is more of a two hour showcase for Republican mythology (i.e. tax cuts solve everything). Where are the tough questions? That’s too mainstream for Fox. One wet kiss went to Rick Perry on health care in his state. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the nation. It ranks dead last. And Perry being the state’s three-time governor, strangely, has blamed the federal government for his states problems vying for a job on the federal level so he can fix (wait for it) Texas’ problems. (But they’re not really problems because people are moving to Texas.) Chris Wallace’s question to Perry was, “So the question is, isn’t Texas’ uninsured problem because of decisions made by Texas?” Now if Perry were smart (he isn’t) he’d be able to (ahem) parry this question into something awesome about Texas. Like: “Chris, in Texas we love freedom.” And POW the crowd would cheer like it’s execution number 3 34! But he didn’t. Perry’s answer: “Well, I disagree with your analysis there, because we’ve had a request in for the federal government so that we could have a Medicaid waiver for years. And the federal government has stopped us from having that Medicaid waiver. Allowing the state of Texas, or for that matter the other states that we’re making reference to here, that have waivers give them more options to be able to give the options, there’s a menu of options that we could have, just like Jon Huntsman talked about. That is how we go forward with our health care.” Huh? ” That have waivers give them more options to be able to give the options, there’s a menu of options that we could have ?” Hear that? That’s the sound of a poll numbers sinking for the A&M D-student in the race. Full transcript of the video after the jump. WALLACE: Governor Perry, I now have a question for you. Texas has the most uninsured residents of any state in the country, 25 percent. In the last debate, you blamed it on restrictions imposed by the federal government. But we checked about that, sir, in fact the feds treat Texas like they do all the other big states. On its own, on its own, Texas has imposed some of the toughest eligibility rules for Medicaid of any state in the country. In fact, you rank 49th in Medicaid coverage of low income residents. So the question is, isn’t Texas’ uninsured problem because of decisions made by Texas? PERRY: Well, I disagree with your analysis there, because we’ve had a request in for the federal government so that we could have a Medicaid waiver for years. And the federal government has stopped us from having that Medicaid waiver. Allowing the state of Texas, or for that matter the other states that we’re making reference to here, that have waivers give them more options to be able to give the options, there’s a menu of options that we could have, just like Jon Huntsman talked about. That is how we go forward with our health care. Each state deciding how they’re going to deliver that health care. Not one size fits all. And I think this whole concept of not allowing the states to come up with the best ideas about how to deliver health care in their state. And the fact is, people continue to move to the state of Texas. Some of the highest rates in the country, because we’ve created a state where opportunity is very much the word of the day there, if you will, for finding work and what have you. And our health care is part of that. Our education is part of that. And we are proud of what we put together in the state of Texas.
Continue reading …Notoriously difficult to pin down, electrons have always been free spirits — until now that is. According to a paper published by science journal Nature , folk at Cambridge University much cleverer than we have tamed single electrons, succeeding in coaxing them directly from point-to-point. The technique involves creating a small hole in gallium arsenide, called a “quantum dot,” then creating a channel of energy higher than the neighboring electrons to shuttle cargo off to another empty “dot.” Why should you care? Well, while you might not see this technology in the next smartphone, it should give quantum computing a bit of a nudge forward, smoothing the rate of information transfer. If the concept works out, it’ll improve the way qubits move around those sub-atomic circuits, where jumping around like a frog in a sock is generally considered bad form. [Image courtesy of the io9 ] Scientists manipulate electron, this time everyone wins originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …On last night’s Daily Show , Jon Stewart summarized the US response to Palestine seeking UN membership: To win a seat, “all you need to do is settle your differences with Israel!” Though a “spelling change” could also help–instead of “Palestine,” how about “Palestein”? Stewart likened Palestine’s membership effort to joining…
Continue reading …It is understood Mishcon de Reya lawyer asked to to go to the Met with allegations made by Goody’s mother The Metropolitan police are to be asked to investigate allegations that reality TV star Jade Goody’s phone was hacked while she was dying of cancer. It is understood Charlotte Harris, the Mishcon de Reya lawyer representing several phone-hacking claimants, has been asked to represent her and to go to the Met with the allegations made by Goody’s mother, Jackiey Budden. Budden believes both her and her daughter’s phones were hacked, but did nothing about it until July this year when she read about murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone messages being intercepted by the News of the World. She could not understand how journalists were getting hold of information and, when she read the Dowler story, believed it could have been through phone-hacking. “She [Jackiey] will be going to the police. She believes her phone was hacked by the News of the World, and Jade’s. Jade told me ‘I’m convinced my phone is being hacked’,” said Max Clifford, who handled Goody’s PR after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in August 2008. “Jade had said to me on many occasions that someone had been bugging her phone because of stuff that was coming out in the papers. She would say, ‘I’ve had these conversations and there’s no way any of these people would have revealed them’,” added Clifford. “This was all while she was ill. I think it’s absolutely disgusting.” Clifford said Goody was convinced calls she made to her mother in August 2008 from the Big Brother set in India to tell her she had cancer had been hacked. “She said to me ‘I think my phone is being bugged’,” he added. The PR man, who settled his own News of the World phone-hacking action for more than £1m last year, said the former Big Brother contestant was an obvious target – in the months between being diagnosed and her death in March 2009, there was “a feeding frenzy” and “immense interest” in getting exclusives about her personal life. If the allegations against the News of the World are substantiated, it would increase the duration of the now defunct News International title’s allegedly illegal activities. Up to now the News of the World has been implicated in phone-hacking allegations up to mid 2006 when Glenn Mulcaire, the phone investigator who formally worked for the title, was arrested. Mishcon de Reya said it “could not confirm” whether or not it had been instructed by Budden. News International declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said the company continued to cooperate fully with police investigation. Goody lived the last seven years of her life in the spotlight, with every twist and turn documented or exposed in the tabloids from her first appearance in Channel 4′s Big Brother in 2002, when she was branded “Miss Piggy” by the tabloids, to the day she died. Her on-off relationship with the father of her two children, a miscarriage, and then her cancer were all covered in minute detail by the tabloids, with 140 stories alone featuring Goody in the News of the World between diagnosis and her death seven months later. But she also regularly co-operated with the now defunct News International paper in “buy-ups” – deals in which she would talk about her life in exchange for payment. In a separate development on Friday, the actress Sienna Miller revealed that she accused her mother, her sister and her former boyfriend Jude Law of selling stories about her to the press because she could not understand how journalists were getting information about her private life. “I changed my mobile number three times in three months. There were clicks on the line. I would pick up the phone and it would drop, there were messages I would never get, coupled with articles [containing private information] coming out every week. “So I started to do tests. I would leave messages on people’s phones, like we’re going to rent this house or whatever, and it would appear next day in the papers,” she told the Independent . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Phone hacking News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Jade Goody James Robinson Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …It is understood Mishcon de Reya lawyer asked to to go to the Met with allegations made by Goody’s mother The Metropolitan police are to be asked to investigate allegations that reality TV star Jade Goody’s phone was hacked while she was dying of cancer. It is understood Charlotte Harris, the Mishcon de Reya lawyer representing several phone-hacking claimants, has been asked to represent her and to go to the Met with the allegations made by Goody’s mother, Jackiey Budden. Budden believes both her and her daughter’s phones were hacked, but did nothing about it until July this year when she read about murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone messages being intercepted by the News of the World. She could not understand how journalists were getting hold of information and, when she read the Dowler story, believed it could have been through phone-hacking. “She [Jackiey] will be going to the police. She believes her phone was hacked by the News of the World, and Jade’s. Jade told me ‘I’m convinced my phone is being hacked’,” said Max Clifford, who handled Goody’s PR after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in August 2008. “Jade had said to me on many occasions that someone had been bugging her phone because of stuff that was coming out in the papers. She would say, ‘I’ve had these conversations and there’s no way any of these people would have revealed them’,” added Clifford. “This was all while she was ill. I think it’s absolutely disgusting.” Clifford said Goody was convinced calls she made to her mother in August 2008 from the Big Brother set in India to tell her she had cancer had been hacked. “She said to me ‘I think my phone is being bugged’,” he added. The PR man, who settled his own News of the World phone-hacking action for more than £1m last year, said the former Big Brother contestant was an obvious target – in the months between being diagnosed and her death in March 2009, there was “a feeding frenzy” and “immense interest” in getting exclusives about her personal life. If the allegations against the News of the World are substantiated, it would increase the duration of the now defunct News International title’s allegedly illegal activities. Up to now the News of the World has been implicated in phone-hacking allegations up to mid 2006 when Glenn Mulcaire, the phone investigator who formally worked for the title, was arrested. Mishcon de Reya said it “could not confirm” whether or not it had been instructed by Budden. News International declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said the company continued to cooperate fully with police investigation. Goody lived the last seven years of her life in the spotlight, with every twist and turn documented or exposed in the tabloids from her first appearance in Channel 4′s Big Brother in 2002, when she was branded “Miss Piggy” by the tabloids, to the day she died. Her on-off relationship with the father of her two children, a miscarriage, and then her cancer were all covered in minute detail by the tabloids, with 140 stories alone featuring Goody in the News of the World between diagnosis and her death seven months later. But she also regularly co-operated with the now defunct News International paper in “buy-ups” – deals in which she would talk about her life in exchange for payment. In a separate development on Friday, the actress Sienna Miller revealed that she accused her mother, her sister and her former boyfriend Jude Law of selling stories about her to the press because she could not understand how journalists were getting information about her private life. “I changed my mobile number three times in three months. There were clicks on the line. I would pick up the phone and it would drop, there were messages I would never get, coupled with articles [containing private information] coming out every week. “So I started to do tests. I would leave messages on people’s phones, like we’re going to rent this house or whatever, and it would appear next day in the papers,” she told the Independent . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Phone hacking News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Jade Goody James Robinson Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sarah Jessica Parker, Naomi Watts, Liv Tyler, and Stella McCartney were among the stars attending the premiere of Sir Paul McCartney’s ballet ‘Ocean’s Kingdom’ in New York. (Sept. 23)
Continue reading …