By Ray Rivera and Carlotta Gall, New York Times, May 23/24, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban said Monday that their reclusive leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was still very much alive and “leading the mujahedeen in all aspects,” disputing reports from inside Afghanistan’s intelligence agency indicating that he had been killed in Pakistan last week.[...]

Rumors of Mullah Omar’s death spread quickly in Kabul after Tolo TV, a major news channel here, citing an unnamed source inside the intelligence agency, reported Monday that the Taliban leader was shot dead late last week. According to the news report, the killing occurred as he was being moved from Quetta — the southern Pakistani city where he and other senior Taliban leaders known as the Quetta Shura are suspected of hiding — to North Waziristan by a former Pakistani intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul.

A source inside the security directorate, speaking on the condition of anonymity, provided similar details to The New York Times. But reached by telephone in Pakistan, General Gul laughed at the reports and called them baseless. “Was I killed too?” he said. “Am I speaking to you from heaven?”[....]

Nice. 

Currently the Democratic Candidate is winning with 48% of the vote (22000+ have been counted so far), in a district that generally votes for the Republican candidate. Does this really mean Paul Ryan's medicare plan is the kiss of death for  Republicans in 2012? I don't know, but it will interesting to watch this play out.

Unembeddable 1:53 youtube from Post Carbon Institute, featuring Tom Whipple

When I walked into the offices of Dr. Ken Cirka, [...] the receptionist handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. After the usual patient information form, there was a "mutual privacy agreement" that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dr. Cirka. Surprised and a little outraged by this, I got into a lengthy discussion with Dr. Cirka's office manager that ended in me refusing to sign and her showing me the door.

[...]The agreement that Dr. Cirka's staff asked me to sign on that February morning began by claiming to offer stronger privacy protections than those guaranteed by HIPAA, the 1996 law that governs patient privacy in the United States. In exchange for this extra dollop of privacy, it asked me to "exclusively assign all Intellectual Property rights, including copyrights" to "any written, pictorial, and/or electronic commentary" I might make about Dr. Cirka's services, including on "web pages, blogs, and/or mass correspondence," to Dr. Cirka. It also stipulated that if Dr. Cirka were to sue me due to a breach of the agreement, the prevailing party in the litigation will pay the loser's legal fees.

This seemed fishy to me, so I asked for more information. I had a long conversation with Dr. Cirka's office manager, who insisted that the agreement was not intended to censor the truthful reviews of Dr. Cirka's patients. Rather, she said, it gave Dr. Cirka a tool to remove fraudulent reviews. She said they were especially concerned about non-patients (such as competitors, ex-spouses, or former employees) writing fake reviews to damage Dr. Cirka's business.

She didn't have a good answer when I pointed out that the agreement's text didn't say anything about fraudulent reviews. She also couldn't explain how the agreement could bind non-patients, who by definition will not have signed it.

[...]When Ars asked Schultz about medical professionals who ask their patients to sign these agreements, he was scathing. "It's completely unethical for doctors to force their patients to sign away their rights in order to get medical care," he said. He pointed out that patients seeking treatment can be particularly vulnerable to coercion. Patients might be in acute pain or facing a life-threatening illness. Such patients are in no position to haggle over the minutia of copyright law.

And it gets worse. The "mutual privacy agreements" promise not to exploit a loophole in HIPAA that allows doctors to sell patient information for marketing purposes. But Schultz said that loophole was closed several years ago. Which means that recent versions of the Medical Justice agreement (including the one I was asked to sign) are lying to patients when they promise more protections than are offered under federal law. The Medical Justice website still claims that patients are "granted additional privacy protections" under the law, but doesn't elaborate or back up this claim.

[...]We think the lessons here are pretty obvious. If you're a patient whose doctor or dentist asks you to sign a "mutual privacy agreement," find yourself a different doctor or dentist. And if you're a medical professional, please respect your patients' right to freedom of speech. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it's likely to be better for your bottom line in the long run.

[all emphasis mine - kgb]

Jason Zengerle, New York Magazine, published May 22, on David Brock.

The operator of the nuclear power plant at the centre of a radiation scare after being disabled by Japan's earthquake and tsunami confirmed on Tuesday that there had been meltdowns of fuel rods at three of its reactors.

Tokyo Electric Power Co said meltdowns of fuel rods at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant occurred early in the crisis triggered by the March 11 disaster.

The government and outside experts had said previously that fuel rods at three of the plant's six reactors had likely melted early in the crisis, but the utility, also known as Tepco, had only confirmed a meltdown at the No.1 reactor.

Tepco officials said a review since early May of data from the plant concluded the same happened to reactors No.2 and 3.

By Robert Pear, New York Times, May 22/23, 2011

The Obama administration is raising serious objections to a new Indiana law that cuts off state and federal money for Planned Parenthood clinics providing health care to low-income women on Medicaid.

The objections set the stage for a clash between the White House and Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, over an issue that ignites passions in both parties.

The changes in Indiana are subject to federal review and approval, and administration officials have made it clear they will not approve the changes in the form adopted by the state. Federal officials have 90 days to act but may feel pressure to act sooner because Indiana is already enforcing its law...

By Christine Hauser, New York Times,  May 23, 2011

Sovereign debt concerns and the prospects for slower growth in Europe and Asia took their toll on global markets on Monday, with stocks on Wall Street spiraling more than 1 percent lower on all three major indexes.
 
Treasury prices and the dollar rose. Asian and European shares were lower after developments in Greece, Spain, and Italy refocused attention on the euro zone’s fiscal uncertainty. Manufacturing statistics released by Germany and China were softer than forecast, raising the prospect of slower growth in Europe and in China, which has the world’s second largest economy, and unsettling investors....

Analysts said recent news from Europe has not instilled confidence in the continent’s ability to handle its fiscal challenges. Last week, Fitch Ratings said it downgraded Greece’s credit ratings by three levels to B+, a rating that is below investment grade. Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on Italy’s debt to “negative” from “stable” over the weekend, citing lower prospects for the country’s ability to trim its debt and because of a weaker outlook for growth....

Also see:

Euro contagion fears hit Spain and Italy
By David Oakley, Financial Times, May 23, 2011

The euro and the Spanish and Italian bond markets came under pressure on Monday amid growing investor fears that the problems of Greece are hitting the bigger economies of Europe's single currency.

The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the system's designed capacity.

There are more than 142,000 inmates in the state's 33 adult prisons, meaning roughly 32,000 inmates will need to be transferred to other jurisdictions or released.

Controlling overall inflation is a goal of monetary policy. Measures of overall, or headline, inflation attempt to include changes in the prices paid for a wide variety of goods—that is, what households actually have to pay for their daily purchases. This is a sensible notion of precisely what the central bank can and should control over the medium term.

Many discussions of monetary policy, even within the central banking community, discuss movements of subsets of prices instead of the overall or headline measure of price changes. The most famous subset is the “core”—all prices except those relating to food or energy. Core inflation is the measured rate of increase of these prices. Control of core inflation is not the goal of monetary policy, although it sometimes seems to be given the amount of emphasis put on this concept in the U.S.

In my remarks tonight I will argue that many of the old arguments in favor of a focus on core inflation have become rotten over the years. It is time to drop the emphasis on core inflation as a meaningful way to interpret the inflation process in the U.S.

One immediate benefit of dropping the emphasis on core inflation would be to reconnect the Fed with households and businesses who know price changes when they see them. With trips to the gas station and the grocery store being some of the most frequent shopping experiences for many Americans, it is hardly helpful for Fed credibility to appear to exclude all those prices from consideration in the formation of monetary policy.

There are several key arguments that are commonly used to favor a focus on core inflation in monetary policy discussions. I will argue that all of them are essentially misguided. Because of this, the best the central bank can do is to focus on headline measures of inflation. The headline measures were designed to be the best measures of inflation available—the Fed should respect that construction and accept the policy problem it poses. Many other central banks have solidified their position on this question by adopting explicit, numerical inflation targets for headline inflation, thus keeping faith with their citizens that they will work to keep headline inflation low and stable. The Fed should do the same.

Let me stress before I continue that my remarks tonight are my own views and do not necessarily reflect those of others in the Federal Reserve System or on the Federal Open Market Committee.

Let me turn now to four broad arguments that are often invoked to rationalize a focus on core inflation and why I think they are all misguided.