Minority populations are climbing everywhere. ‘The white population, I wouldn’t say is fading into the background, but it is becoming the older, less fertile part of the population,’ says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute. Frey crunched the census data and found huge jumps in the Hispanic population far from the traditional melting pots – up 21 percent in St. Joseph, Missouri; up 17 percent in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and 15 percent in Pascagoula, Mississippi – all in just one year’s time. ‘You’re seeing it everywhere. People are going for jobs,’ Frey says. ‘They’re going because they want the American Dream.’ Whites still make up 66 percent of the population. But their numbers have grown only two percent since 2000, compared to eight percent for blacks, 29 percent for Hispanics and 26 percent for Asians. ‘It’s tough because we are seen as being either inconsequential or that we’re not even really Americans,’ says Chinese-American writer Helen Zia. It’s forcing school systems to adjust quickly to new fault lines. In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside Washington, D.C., the schools went from mostly white in the 1990s to 60 percent minorities today. Superintendent Jerry Weast dropped […]
Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% - or even more than 1,000% - for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs. The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions. Among the examples: Questcor Pharmaceuticals last August raised the wholesale price on Acthar, which treats spasms in babies, from about $1,650 a vial to more than $23,000. Ovation raised the cost of Cosmegen, which treats a type of tumor, from $16.79 to $593.75 in January 2006. The average wholesale price of 26 brand-name drugs jumped 100% or more in a single cost adjustment last year, up from 15 in 2004, the university study found. In the first half of this year, 17 drugs made the list. ‘This does drive up the price of health care,’ says Alan Goldbloom, president of Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. ‘Hospitals are either eating the cost or passing […]
NEW YORK — Harvard scientists say they have created stems cells for 10 genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases develop in a lab dish. This early step, using a new technique, could help speed up efforts to find treatments for some of the most confounding ailments, the scientists said. The new work was reported online Thursday in the journal Cell, and the researchers said they plan to make the cell lines readily available to other scientists. Dr. George Daley and his colleagues at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute used ordinary skin cells and bone marrow from people with a variety of diseases, including Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Down syndrome to produce the stem cells. The new cells will allow researchers to ‘watch the disease progress in a dish, that is, to watch what goes right or wrong,’ Doug Melton, co-director of the institute, said during a teleconference. ‘I think we’ll see in years ahead that this opens the door to a new way to treating degenerative diseases,’ he said. The new technique reprograms cells, giving them the chameleon-like qualities of embryonic stem cells, which can morph into all kinds of […]
My first surprise was that legendary oil man T. Boone Pickens is advocating a radical wind power plan to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. But the bigger surprise came when I learned that Pickens is using a savvy, Web 2.0 campaign to build grass-roots support for his agenda. After all, the 80-year-old Oklahoman seems like a character from a bygone age, someone more myth than man. From his humble entrepreneurial beginnings as a newspaper delivery boy, Pickens founded one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States and later built a financial empire that made him a central figure in the 1980s takeover mania. He’s a staunch conservative and Republican backer whom Forbes ranks as the 117th richest person in the country. Humble, he is not. According to his Web site: ‘The breadth of T. Boone Pickens’ career is staggering.’ But as he strides into my office, it’s clear he’s not here to revel in the past. Instead, he wants to solve the U.S. energy crisis, proposing an ambitious plan that calls for a massive investment in wind power. To galvanize support for the ‘Pickens Plan,’ he’s turned to the […]
Pakistan’s embattled President Pervez Musharraf is to be impeached and forced to step down, it has been confirmed. The announcement will be made at a press conference later today. In the early hours of this morning, the leaders of Pakistan’s main coalition parties, Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif agreed to impeach the president and restore dozens of judges fired by him last year. The ruling parties were committed to reinstating the judges, a spokesman for former Prime Minister Sharif said. Ahsan Iqbal told AP that President Musharraf should have resigned after the defeat of his allies in February elections.. But he provided no details ahead of a news conference by Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari. The decision concludes two days of talks between the two men. Rifts over whether to impeaach the president and how to restore the judges have weakened the four month old government and hampered its efforts to formulate policies to counter rising Islamic militancy and a slew of economic problems.
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
