Categories
The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.
The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.
“America’s healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial,” the report reads.
Source: ReutersHistory remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce’s CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to “persuade” peace protesters to stay at home.
Source: Guardian UKFood production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world’s growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.
The world population is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.1 billion by mid-century.
Climate change, involving floods and droughts, will affect food production.
Source: BBCA key witness in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was secretly paid up to two million dollars (1.4 million euros) in a deal approved by the US government, according to legal papers released Friday.
The claims were made in new documents published by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, which he maintains prove he is innocent of the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.
Source: AFPEnvironment, Health/Biotech/Pharmaceutical
September 30
New film blames drug firm for plight of honey bees
It’s a question that has baffled the worlds of agriculture and science – what is it that has caused the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five years? A new film may have the answer.
Vanishing of the Bees, which will be released in Britain next month, claims the cause is the use of a new generation of pesticides that weakens the bees and makes them more susceptible to other diseases.
Narrated by the British actress Emilia Fox, the 90-minute film tells the story of what has become known as colony collapse disorder.
Source: Independent UK