British Gov’t No Longer Teaching Students To think Like Suicide Bombers

The British government has taken down a lesson plan on their government run website Teachernet, that encouraged students to think about the suicide bombings they here about, from the prospective of the bombers themselves.  The lesson included "A brief presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the perspective of the bombers." and a movie about the pressures that suicide bombers face. Personally I think we need to know, and understand how they think; but i can also see why this could be controversial.

Source: Newsvine

Health Care Costs

The cost of health care will continue to rise at 6% annually as it has since 2007; this rate is roughly twice the official rate of US inflation. These are the finding of a survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health; which looked at over 300 companies (mostly large) and found that over 30% of companies have revamped their healthcare policies recently, with another 30% planning to do so in 2009. 62% percent of  companies remain very confident that they can provide health care to their employees, though that is down from 73% last year. In 2008 it cost an average of 7,173$ per employee that is expected to jump to 7,400$ in 2009. For more details click here.

Beijing Buried In Snow

China Officials were trying to combat a bad drought when they attempted to create fake rain clouds, to make it rain. It kinda worked, instead of rain the city of Beijing was completely blanketed in snow. The snow however; is not enough to end the drought though it was enough to close 12 highways. This just a week after a natural snow storm shut down London for two full days. The snowfall in Beijing also attracted an extra 4,000 tourists to the city that day according to officials. Street sweepers were working overtime to clear the roads and people were out with brooms cleaning off their blanketed world.

Source:UK Times Online

Police Mistakenly Take New-Born From Mother For Weeks

Authorities took a new born baby from its mother for weeks after a foreign doctor miss diagnosed a bump on the babies head as a sign of abuse. It took the mother doing her own research on the internet to prove that the doctor was wrong with his diagnose. She then pressed for a second opinion; and even volunteered to pay thousands for another expert opinion, eventually she got her way and the second expert said that the bump was without a doubt a result of labor not abuse. The mother said:  ‘I’m furious with social services and the police for putting me through this unnecessarily. If they spent more time on cases like Baby P and less on things like this then more babies would be alive.’

Source: Daily Mail UK

Download complete List Of Madoffs Victims

  The 162 page file of all of Madoffs victims has been released, it is in PDF format, it can be searched it contains names and addresses, I think there is the strong possibility of a lawsuit that takes these all down so get it while you can. Download link.

Download Your Copy Of the Stimulus Bill

It is important that we know what the laws are; especially since when the latest stimulus bill was singed, we did not get the five days to review the bill as promised by Obama on the campaign trail. Though it is over 1,000 pages long here is a link to downloading a PDF version of it.

Americans Still support Afghanistan War

Americans are in general pretty anti-war in this time, but 68% of Americans said they expected Obama to increase US military in Afghanistan, according to Gallup. In addition to that 68%, 43% said it was very important for Obama to do that. 52 percent or Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is going well, which is up from 41%. This would seem to mean that although we don’t like that Iraq war; we are supportive of Obama’s move to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

90% Of Canadians Support Obama

According to a poll by Gallup Obama’s pick of Canada as his first international visit was a good one. He enjoys a 90% approval rating in Canada, higher than any other country including the US.

Obama’s approval rating in the US is about 65%, which means he is more popular in several countries than he is hear at home.

7.2$ Bln for Broadband Expansion

Though it is only 7.2$ billion out of 789$ billion (less than 1%), there was money in the stimulus plan for broadband expansion; a first step toward a nation wide broadband plan. There are no details about the broadband money as of yet except; that it will be in the form of grants. Companies and non-profits will be able to compete for the money which is going to be given out to both rural and urban projects. The general idea is to get roughly 20 million Americans broadband access who currently don’t have it.

We’ll have to see how this plays out, in the earlier part of the twentieth century I believe that there was a government plan to get every American electricity; and I view this as in the same category, therefore I don’t have a huge problem with my tax money going for this.

NY Post’s Apology…ish

After its cartoon caused such a huge uproar (google it) the NY Post has issued this editorial explaining itself:

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy.
It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: "They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.
It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Period.
But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.
This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.
However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.
To them, no apology is due.
Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

 

Though not an apology, the fact that the post had to print something at all is pretty important (I believe that there was a lawsuit involved). It is even more impressive that they printed a follow up within a couple of days, a step that is nearly unheard of for the NY Post. All in all, I think that this story is not really a story at all, and it was just a slow news day for mainstream media.