Tag Archives: pictures

Report: Michael Jackson Hospitalized

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has never shied away from talking about his religious faith. So perhaps it should have come as no surprise that he invoked “God’s law” throughout his long, rambling press conference on June 24 — after going missing in Buenos Aires for six days — to confess his yearlong extramarital affair with an Argentine woman. But in acknowledging his infidelity, Sanford was actually admitting that he had broken a state law: adultery is still punishable in South Carolina by up to a year in prison and a $500 fine

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North Korea Tries to Ramp Up Its Lagging Tech Infrastructure

Returning home one spring five years ago from a secret visit to Beijing in his armored, fully wired train car, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il got an unnerving, firsthand demonstration of the potential downside of technology. A huge explosion ripped through the Ryongchon border station, and some officials initially thought it was an assassination attempt triggered by a cell phone. As it turned out, the fireball was more likely the result of two trains’ colliding nearby, possibly as a result of miscommunication about changed schedules stemming from Kim’s clandestine travels

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Can Health Coops Do the Job of a Public Plan?

If anyone had any remaining doubts about the daunting politics of health care reform, the last couple of weeks have served as a stark reminder. Congressional Budget Office estimates of the ten-year costs of Senate health bills have caused the GOP to pounce and deficit-wary Democrats to start scaling back their proposals; and despite the fact that recent polls show a sizeable majority of Americans supporting the creation of a public health plan as an alternative to private insurance, Republicans made clear over the weekend that they remain steadfastly opposed to any government option. But perhaps the clearest sign yet of the unpredictable nature of such an ambitious policy overhaul is the approach that is suddenly starting to emerge on Capitol Hill as an alternative to a public plan — non-profit, consumer run health insurance cooperatives

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Lessons For the U.S. As the Iranian Revolution Unravels

Who would have thought that Iran, a country that has been the nemesis of the past five American presidents, might actually become a model for what Washington wants to see happen politically in the Middle East? Who would have thought that a Berlin Wall moment for the region might happen in the strict Islamic republic, where a revolution 30 years ago unleashed Islam as a modern political idiom and extremism as a tool to confront the West Unlikely as it seems, the rise of a popular movement relying on civil disobedience to confront authoritarian rule — in the last bloc of countries to hold out against the tide of change that has swept the rest of the world over the past quarter century — is almost a diplomatic dream for the Obama administration

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Former Congressman Tom Davis Emerges as Favorite in Obama’s Cyberczar Search

Tom Davis, a moderate Republican from Virginia, has emerged as a leading candidate for the Obama Administration’s newly created position of cybersecurity czar. Sources familiar with the White House’s deliberations on the subject say Obama officials feel a Washington power player would make a better candidate than a tech guru

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Starting Health Care Reform in the ER

To get a sense of just how dysfunctional American health care is, members of Congress don’t need to look further than their local emergency department . The overcrowding in EDs is so bad these days that patients who walk in with “immediate” needs, meaning the most severe on a clinical scale, wait an average of 28 minutes to see a doctor, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in May. That’s 27 minutes more than the recommended wait time for such conditions.

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