NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Did Citi's past meet Citi's future today?
When 80 or so alumni of Citicorp - the global bank that merged into behemoth Citigroup (Charts, Fortune 500) - met in midtown Manhattan for their annual alumni lunch this afternoon, an intriguing speaker subbed for Chuck Prince, the company's recently ousted CEO: Vikram Pandit, the man who could be king.
Published: December 6 2007 19:41 | Last updated: December 6 2007 19:41
A decline in the physical fitness of US children attributed to changes in modern life first caught the attention of President Dwight Eisenhower more than 50 years ago.
Studies culminating in a 1953 research paper by Dr Hans Kraus at New York University found US children less fit than European children, which President Eisenhower found “alarming.”
That led Mr Eisenhower in 1956 to establish the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, which still exists today. Although no federal programme would be created for a “home and local community problem,” he wrote, “more and better co-ordinated attention should be given to this most precious asset – our youth – within the federal government.”
Now, at the beginning of a new century, social changes have led to even greater concern. Childhood obesity has tripled since 1980, to almost one in six; public health data has found a 40 per cent increase in overweight pre-schoolers aged two to five since 1994.
This is one of the wild cards in any US healthcare reform. Combined with an obesity rate of 30 per cent in adults, the problem of obesity and wellbeing in any healthcare reform could require a significant change in the federal government’s spending priorities on prevention.
It could lead to increasing demands for people to take more personal responsibility to change unhealthy and costly lifestyles or risk paying more themselves.
Paul Mango, a healthcare expert at McKinsey, says: “If we do not arrest, and then reverse, the current rate of health-status deterioration, nearly all other initiatives to improve efficiency and effectiveness combined will not be sufficient to offset its effects.”
The obesity epidemic could wreak havoc on future healthcare budgeting. They would get squeezed from both ends as the younger generation incurs more costs from chronic disease associated with obesity, such as diabetes, and costs continue to rise for the ageing baby boomers.
Several recent studies suggest that people engaging in unhealthy lifestyles consume nearly 50 to 75 per cent more health services per year. Other data show progress in reducing heart disease stagnating in young adults. A recent review of prescription data by Medco, the US drug benefits manager, showed children taking medicine for Type II diabetes – usually seen mostly in adults – also had a staggering increase in use of drugs for complications of diabetes, such as heart problems.
Jon Cohen, a healthcare expert for consultancy PwC, says: “There’s no question that the obesity epidemic is the greatest threat to the American population.”
To combat it, experts say a huge philosophical shift of economic incentives for health prevention is critical.
One way for this to occur would be a change in how Medicare, the healthcare programme for pensioners, reimburses doctors. There is currently little economic incentive for them to spend more time talking to patients about nutrition, fitness and health prevention.
A change in Medicare payments could trigger the private insurers to do more too, experts say. Other government interventions are appearing. A recent Senate proposal would ban the sale of junk food in school shops and vending machines. Efforts in Somerville, Massachusetts, called “Shape Up Somerville” helped reduce children’s weight by a coordinated city-wide community effort led by health researchers.
Another shift in healthcare reform in light of the obesity epidemic could push more personal responsibility for costs arising from a person’s lifestyle and health habits. Increasingly, consumers are being asked to take more financial risk and save money for that risk to try to make healthcare spending more efficient.
Employers have begun to ramp up efforts to change employees’ lifestyles, from smoking to obesity, with incentives including lower health insurance payments for health changes.
This is the final article in a three-part series
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Fifty-seven percent of registered Hispanic voters told the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center they favor Democrats, compared to 23 percent who said the same for Republicans. Back in 1999, the results were 58 percent to 25 percent, roughly the same margin as the current survey.
In June 2006, before Congress began to consider an overhaul of immigration policy and enforcement, the margin was slimmer: 49 percent of registered Hispanic voters then said they favored Democrats, and 28 percent chose Republicans.
Using a formula that took into account both voting patterns from the last presidential cycle and the most recent U.S. Census data, the organization projected there would be 8.6 million Hispanic voters next year – 1 million more than in 2004.
The group also estimated that Hispanics could affect the outcome in four states where Bush prevailed in 2004 by 5 percentage points or fewer: Nevada, Florida, New Mexico and Colorado.
President Bush and other national Republican leaders had made luring Hispanics from the Democratic Party a major priority. But 41 percent of registered voters surveyed said administration policies had harmed Hispanics, compared to 16 percent who said they had been helpful. Thirty-three percent said they had had no impact.
And 41 said the Democratic Party had more concern for Hispanics, compared to 8 percent who said the same for Republicans. Forty-four percent saw no difference between the two parties.
Fifty-nine percent of Hispanic registered Democrats say they would like to see New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as their party’s presidential nominee. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama trails with 15 percent.
Among Hispanic registered Republicans, 35 percent favor former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, followed by 13 percent who support former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson.
The survey was conducted October 3 through November 9, and involved phone interviews with 2,003 randomly chosen Hispanics, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. It included 843 Hispanic registered voters, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
– CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand
CNN story updated 59 minutes ago (at 5:37PM CST)
(CNN) -- A gunman killed eight people and wounded five others Wednesday at the popular Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, before apparently turning the gun on himself, police said.
...
FOX dose not give the time of update
OMAHA, Neb. — BREAKING NEWS:A man with a rifle opened fire at a busy Omaha shopping mall Wednesday, killing eight people before taking his own life, police said. Five others were wounded, two critically. ...
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I suggest, everyone spend some time reading these peoples views before commenting ...
Richard Carmona, MD, former U.S. Surgeon General
Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP
Billy Tauzin, president and CEO of PhRMA
Edward Langston, MD, chairman, American Medical Association
Grace-Marie Turner, president, Galen Institute
Ron Pollack, executive director, Families USA
Drew Altman, president and CEO, Kaiser Family Foundation
"Education, Energy, and Emergency Health Care" not just "Economy" silly
Posted by tripleEnot1E at 06:13 PM : Dec 05, 2007
Published: December 5 2007 19:01 | Last updated: December 5 2007 19:01
The number of computer attacks from China – some of which use Chinese government websites to download malicious code – has risen sharply in recent months, say private cyber-security specialists.
They say a rise in Chinese activity led Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, Britain’s security service, to write last week to the heads of British companies and banks, warning that sensitive commercial data could be at risk from hacking by Chinese state agencies.
Private security specialists have noted a sharp rise in attacks from China that infect computers with so-called trojans to collect data from users. This information is fed back into sites, also based in China, which then refine the attacks.
Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer for Finjan, a web security group with headquarters in San Jose, California, says his company is in the middle of a study into new hacking techniques that has found “a centralised group of activity based from China”.
“In the last three months, the attacks [from China] have almost tripled,” he said.
The attacks use infected websites that download trojans and then install them on users’ computers. These then feed data to other websites, which monitor the attack and can refine it to secure desired information. Some use new and sophisticated techniques, including malware for which there is no security patch.
Mr Ben-Itzhak said his company had identified a number of Chinese government websites that included malicious code that downloaded trojans on to users’ computers. These included pages on websites of the Economic Committee of Shanghai City, the GuanYang Municipal Office in Sichuan province and the Xincheng Environmental Protection Office in Xian City, Shaanxi province. Harvested information is fed to Chinese-based sites including www.126.com and www.ip369.net.
Owners of websites do not necessarily know their sites are infected.
The attacks do not require users to visit the site concerned. Trojans can be downloaded from other sites – including social networking sites such as MySpace – which contain links to the infected sites.
On Wednesday, Yang Jiechi, China’s foreign minister, denied his government supported computer hackers targeting UK companies. He said hacking was prohibited by Chinese law and that government websites also suffered attacks from hackers.
“Certain reports, about attempts by government agencies to engage in espionage by hacking, are totally baseless,’’ he said at a London news conference.
Private experts say they cannot tell whether hackers are government-sponsored or not, though they assume UK intelligence services have access to other sources that allowed Mr Evans to be explicit in his reference to espionage by Chinese state agencies.
Security specialists say Chinese intelligence-gathering officially is carried out either by the third department of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army or by the Ministry of State Security.
Private security experts said Mr Evans’s letters were prompted in part by a surge in more targeted attacks at UK enterprises. The letters followed briefings earlier this month to cyber-security experts at Britain’s Centre of the Protection of National Infrastructure, which Mr Evans oversees.
The letters have also been sent to law and accountancy firms linked to banks.
Martin Jordan, principal IT adviser at KPMG, said hackers seeking commercial information often targeted third parties with more lax security.
So while a bank working on an acquisition, for example, could have sophisticated cyber-defences, the computers of a law firm with which it shared this sensitive information might well be easier to infiltrate.
He said many business people used websites such as Facebook, where they disclosed home e-mail accounts and other potentially useful data to hackers seeking commercial information.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Cell phone boarding passes going into use here first
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Some Continental Airlines passengers leaving Houston will be the first in the nation to board flights without waving a paper boarding pass, as long as they have a cell phone handy.
A unique new check-in procedure using cell phones or personal digital assistants as boarding passes is being unveiled by Continental Airlines and the Transportation Security Administration at George Bush Intercontinental Airport today.
The three-month pilot program involves technology using encrypted bar codes on mobile device screens, something not being used anywhere else in the world, TSA official Melvin Carraway said.
"We have been in favor of this for a long time and had fairly consistent dialogue with TSA on our desire to do this," said Mark Bergsrud, a senior vice president for Houston-based Continental. "We were ready technically and we are pretty nimble with our ability to develop software and test it."
Carraway said the TSA, which has had a problem with people trying to use fraudulent paper boarding passes in the past, is confident the technology can't be cracked.
The program will allow passengers to receive boarding passes electronically, then present bar codes on the screen to be scanned by TSA security officers at the checkpoint, according to Continental.
Ultimately, it could eliminate the need for a paper document besides photo identification. Continental is the first U.S. carrier to test paperless boarding passes.
Initially, the pilot program will be used solely on Continental flights at Intercontinental. If successful, plans call for it to be rolled out to other airlines in about three months, Carraway said.
"The idea was to find a way to provide security," he said.
While the TSA had expressed reservations in the past about aspects of the electronic check-in for security reasons, it appears solidly behind the technology that's been developed in the partnership with Continental.
While Continental passengers will be the first group that can use the new technology, the TSA also wants to expand the use of encrypted bar codes whether on paper or on screens, according to Callaway. Continental was chosen for the program because it has been working aggressively with the TSA for on the use of the technology.
"Working with them, the technology is at a point where it can be piloted," TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley said. "The technology in itself is really beneficial from a security standpoint in that the information embedded in the bar code cannot be altered. So it is an additional layer of security."
The encrypted data is a sort of summary of passenger information, such as the traveler's name and flight information.
Each paperless boarding pass will display a two-dimensional bar code — which looks like a rectangle of TV snow, as opposed to parallel lines of a traditional bar code — along with passenger and flight information that will identify the traveler. TSA document checkers will have handheld scanners to validate the authenticity.
Continental said the new technology, open immediately to passengers who check in online, heightens the ability to detect fraudulent boarding passes while improving customer service and reducing paper use.
"It is going to be significant for customers but conceptually it is real simple," Bergsrud said. "And we love to save paper. It is good for the environment."
Continental said the paperless pilot program is consistent with the global standard of the International Air Transport Association for bar coding of passenger boarding passes.
The IATA, which represents 240 airlines comprising 94 percent of international air travel, is requiring all airlines to stop using magnetic strip technology on boarding passes by the end of 2008 and to use the so-called two-dimensional bar codes by the end of 2010.
"It is a great technology," she said. "We are really excited about rolling this out and having a successful pilot."
bill.hensel@chron.com
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Published: December 3 2007 21:56 | Last updated: December 3 2007 21:56
Before signing his landmark healthcare reforms into law last year, Mitt Romney, then governor of Massachusetts, took a moment to thank some of the people who made it possible.
Among those praised was Edward Kennedy, the state’s veteran Democratic senator, whom Mr Romney called a “collaborator and friend”. The ceremony marked the crowning achievement of Mr Romney’s time as governor, and sealed his reputation as a moderate Republican who could work with Democrats.
Many more are covered but funding is a concern
Mitt Romney’s landmark bill to provide nearly universal healthcare coverage to the residents of Massachusetts, introduced in April 2006, was touted across the US as a model for how to provide healthcare coverage without establishing a single government-controlled system.
The law requires all residents to buy health insurance or face a fine or tax penalty. Perhaps the plan’s biggest achievement is its number of new enrollees: as of November 1 of this year, more than 200,000 formerly uninsured residents have now secured coverage.
Nearly 135,000 are with Commonwealth Care, the subsidised programme that provides insurance to people who have no access to work-based coverage but earn less than three times the federal poverty level – about $31,000. The state pays the full premium for the lowest-income residents and subsidises the rest.
Another 73,000 are covered through expansions to MassHealth, the state’s free programme for its poorest residents, and about 10,000 are covered under Commonwealth Choice, which provides a suite of unsubsidised products for those individuals and small businesses ineligible for the other programmes.
Funding, however, remains a big concern as the rapid enrolment has made the plan more expensive than previous estimates. Writes Rebecca Knight
Eighteen months later, however, the image of Mr Romney celebrating the introduction of near-universal health insurance in Massachusetts alongside the godfather of US liberalism has become a source of embarrassment.
Opponents have posted video clips of the ceremony on the internet to undermine Mr Romney’s attempt to win the Republican presidential nomination. The fact that his success in pushing through bipartisan healthcare reform could be construed as a liability highlights the depth of suspicion among Republicans about government involvement in healthcare.
Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have put healthcare at the heart of their campaigns, with competing proposals to provide health insurance for the 47m US citizens without coverage. But while opinion polls show broad public support for government intervention, Republicans are much less enthusiastic than Democrats.
Only 16 per cent of Republicans rate healthcare among the top two issues in next year’s election, compared with 34 per cent of Democrats, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. A separate Washington Post/ABC survey also revealed a gulf in attitudes. While 71 per cent of Democrats said expanding access to insurance should be the top healthcare priority, 80 per cent of Republicans said reducing costs was most important.
For many US conservatives, government meddling in healthcare is viewed as an unappealing symbol of European-style “socialism”. The fact that healthcare reform is indelibly associated with Mrs Clinton, dating back to her time as US first lady, only deepens Republican scepticism.
All this helps explain why Mr Romney has been so hesitant about trumpeting his healthcare record on the campaign trail as he seeks to promote himself as a small-government, tax-cutting conservative.
Speaking in Iowa City recently, he expressed pride in Massachusetts’ scheme, which has already nearly halved the number of people in the state not covered by any healthcare plan. But his tone was defensive. “I don’t think it’s a perfect plan,” he said. “There are some things I would change.”
The Massachusetts model was designed to achieve universal healthcare by making insurance mandatory for those who can afford it, while providing subsidised coverage for the poor. Rival Republican candidates have likened the scheme to Mrs Clinton’s current proposals, and argued that forcing people to buy insurance infringes personal liberty. Rudy Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner, said it was a step towards “socialised medicine”.
Defending the scheme, Mr Romney said in Iowa that it was designed to reduce the burden on taxpayers by extending private insurance to people who previously relied on government-funded care. “My plans couldn’t be more different from Hillary Clinton’s,” he added.
Mr Romney made clear he would not extend the Massachusetts scheme nationwide if elected president. Instead, he would provide incentives for each state to make its own reforms. “I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer,” he said.
While Republican candidates reject the sweeping reforms proposed by Democrats, they acknowledge action is required to make the system more efficient. All the main hopefuls want to make it easier for individuals to choose their own health insurance rather than relying on schemes provided by employers.
Although his experience in Massachusetts is unlikely to help Mr Romney win the Republican primary, it would be a powerful asset if he won the nomination.
Polls show healthcare is among the top concerns of independent voters, who could prove decisive next November, with Democrats the most trusted party on the issue by a wide margin.
Paul Eubanks, a 29-year-old independent in Iowa City, said Mr Romney was the Republican with the best chance of narrowing that gap. “His experience of pushing through healthcare reform, rather than just talking about it, is his biggest appeal,” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
The picture was unveiled last week by the Chinese prime minister amid much trumpeting and patriotic pats on the back.
Wen Jiabao said it was the first published image from the Chang-e 1 lunar probe mission.
But star-gazers disagree, flooding the internet with rumours that the picture might not be authentic.
Postings on messageboards claim it is suspiciously similar to one released by Nasa in 2005.
Ouyan Ziyuan, head scientist of the Chinese Lunar Exploration has defended the image's originality, insisting: "There is absolutely no forgery."
"Careful examination shows that there are some differences," he said.
"There were two craters on a certain spot of the Chinese photo. Yet there is only one on that same spot of the American picture."
Mr Ouyan suggested that the resolution of Nasa's shot was not high enough to show all the craters.
The Chang-e 1 Explorer was sent into space in October and marks China's long-term goal of putting a man on the Moon by 2020.
CANBERRA, Australia — Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister of Australia, said on Monday that he had signed the paperwork to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, making good on an election promise that overturns a decade of opposition to the international global warming pact.
SOURCE: cbsnews.com / AP [not reported by http://www.nytimes.com]
(He renewed his government's goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050, switching Australia's coal-dominated power generation industry to 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, and creating a national emissions trading scheme by 2010.)
"This is the first official act of the new Australian government, demonstrating my government's commitment to tackling climate change," Rudd said in a statement issued hours after he and his Cabinet were officially sworn in after Nov. 24 elections.
Rudd said that he had signed the "instrument of ratification" of the Kyoto Protocol and that it would come into force 90 days after the paperwork was received by the United Nations.
"Australia will become a full member of the Kyoto Protocol before the end of March 2008," Rudd said.
"Australia's official declaration today that we will become a member of the Kyoto Protocol is a significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically and with the international community," he said.
Rudd, 50, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, led the left-leaning Labor Party to a sweeping victory at the elections that ended more than 11 years of conservative rule under former Prime Minister John Howard.
"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.
World - International News #2 Reporters Notebook: Chavez Gracious in Defeat
Not only the red carpet, the red chairs, the red poinsettia flowers (conveniently, it is Christmas season) but also the guards, attaches and state media, all dressed in the bright red of Chavistas, the loyal leftist followers of Venezuela's controversial and charismatic president, Hugo Chavez.
...This country has a modern and sophisticated system of electronic voting machines that print paper backup ballots for added security....
