When we first looked at America’s best- and worst-paying jobs a year back, we asked the question, ‘Why do financially pushy parents want their children to marry doctors?’ Our answer then: Because, as Willie Sutton said of banks, that is where the money is. Still is. The medical profession continues to dominate the top end of our list of the 25 best- and worst-paying jobs in America. Anesthesiologists have flipped places with surgeons to take the top spot, but the next eight places are firmly in the healing hands of various sorts of specialist practitioners. Chief executives, at No. 10, and airline pilots, at No. 14, are the only two non-medical occupations in the top 15. Even lawyers don’t make it. They’re No. 16. At the other end of the scale are jobs in restaurants, hotels and leisure businesses. The lowest paid of all? People who cook, prepare and serve in fast-food joints, followed by dishwashers, busboys and the folk who show you to your seat in coffee-shops and the like. According to government data, the mean annual salary for America’s 29,890 anesthesiologists is $184,340; for its 2.5 million fast-food preparers and servers, $15,230. The mean […]
Flood-ravaged Britain is suffering from a wholly new type of civil emergency, it is clear today: a disaster caused by 21st-century weather. This weather is different from anything that has gone before. The floods it has caused, which have left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than £2bn worth of damage – and are still not over – have no precedent in modern British history. Nothing in the past hundred years, in terms of flooding caused by rainfall, has been as bad. According to the Environment Agency, even the previous worst case, the extensive floods of spring 1947, which were aggravated by the vast snow melt that followed an exceptionally hard winter, has been surpassed. ‘We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before,’ said the agency yesterday. ‘The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it.’ And the 1947 floods were said to have been the worst for 200 years. Most remarkable of all is the fact that the astonishing picture the nation is now witnessing – whole towns cut off, gigantic areas underwater, mass evacuations, infrastructure […]
President Bush faces growing disenchantment in his own party on the war in Iraq, with most Republicans — his customarily loyal base — now saying he’s not willing enough to change his war policies. Discontent runs so deep that six in 10 Americans would shift control of the war to Congress. Overall, an overwhelming 78 percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say Bush is not willing enough to change his stance on the war, up from 66 percent last December. The biggest movement is among Republicans; 55 percent say the president is not willing enough to alter his Iraq polices, up 16 points. What to do about Iraq remains vexing; public support for a withdrawal deadline collapses in the face of pushback on the prospect of all-out civil war or an al Qaeda stronghold. But neither is the status quo acceptable in a war that 63 percent say was not worth fighting. Just 22 percent think the ‘surge’ of U.S. forces is improving security, and 64 percent think it will not succeed in the next few months. Congressional Democrats, while also damaged by discontent with the war, lead Bush by 55-32 percent in trust […]
Federal health officials warned consumers last week to throw away certain cans of hot dog chili sauce after the product was linked to botulism that sent four people to the hospital. The warning applies to 10-ounce cans of Castleberry’s, Austex and Kroger brands of hot dog chili sauce with expiration dates between April 30 and May 22, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration said. In a related move, Castleberry’s recalled 721,389 pounds of canned corned beef hash, chili and pork in barbecue sauce because those products also may be contaminated by botulism. ¢ Baby food company Gerber is recalling about 500,000 packs of organic rice and oatmeal cereal because of a risk that babies might choke on the product. Gerber, owned by Swiss drug group Novartis, said there was a danger that lumps of the cereal might not dissolve properly in milk or water. The packages were distributed in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. ¢ About 13,000 Soldier Bear brand toy sets, manufactured in China, have been recalled because paint on the surface of the figures contains high levels of lead. No injuries have been reported. The recall includes various styles of […]
GREENWOOD, Miss. – A national shortage of doctors is hitting poor places the hardest, and efforts to bring in foreign physicians to fill the gap are running into a knot of restrictions from the war on terror and the immigration debate. Doctors recruited from places such as India, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa to work in underserved areas like the Mississippi Delta and the lonesome West already face an arduous and expensive gauntlet of agencies, professional tests and background checks to secure work papers and permanent residency. Those restrictions have only tightened in the years since 9-11, and now many believe the process will become more difficult after the attempted terrorist bombings in Britain that have been linked to foreign doctors. ‘The consensus seems to be that if you have a first name like Mohammed, you can forget it,’ Dr. Sanjay Chaube, a much-needed internist in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Bay St. Louis, Miss., and one of more than 40,000 Indian doctors in the U.S. He is working in this country under what is known as a J-1 visa waiver. The government estimates that more than 35 million Americans live in underserved areas, and it would take 16,000 […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
