The abandoned corpses, in white body bags with number tags tied to each toe, lie one above the other on steel racks inside a giant freezer in Detroit’s central mortuary, like discarded shoes in the back of a wardrobe. Some have lain here for years, but in recent months the number of unclaimed bodies has reached a record high. For in this city that once symbolised the American Dream many cannot even afford to bury their dead. ‘I have not seen this many unclaimed bodies in 13 years on the job, said Albert Samuels, chief investigator at the mortuary. ‘It started happening when the economy went south last year. I have never seen this many people struggling to give people their last resting place. Unburied bodies piling up in the city mortuary - it reached 70 earlier this year - is the latest and perhaps most appalling indignity to be heaped on the people of Detroit. The motor city that once boasted the highest median income and home ownership rate in the US is today in the midst of a long and agonising death spiral. After years of gross mismanagement by the city’s leaders and the […]
Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase. On the eve of Saturday’s showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn’t secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state. And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote — and to trumpet the financial ‘fix’ she had arranged for Louisiana. ‘I am not going to be defensive,’ she declared. ‘And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.’ It was an awkward moment (not least because her figure is 20 times the original Louisiana Purchase price). But it was fairly representative of a Senate debate that seems to be scripted in the Southern Gothic style. The plot was gripping — the bill survived Saturday’s procedural test without a single vote to spare — and it brought out the rank partisanship, the self-absorption and all the other pathologies of modern politics. If that wasn’t enough of a Tennessee Williams […]
WASHINGTON — The most sweeping federal anti-discrimination law in nearly 20 years takes effect today, prohibiting employers from hiring, firing or determining promotions based on genetic makeup. Additionally, health insurers will not be allowed to consider a person’s genetics — such as predisposition for Parkinson’s disease — to set insurance rates or deny coverage. Not since the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 has the federal government implemented such far-reaching workplace protections. Stuart J. Ishimaru, acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said in a statement that the law reaffirms the idea that people have a right to be judged solely on merit. ‘No one should be denied a job or the right to be treated fairly in the workplace based on fears that he or she may develop some condition in the future,’ he said. The National Federation of Independent Business, a nonprofit lobbying group for small businesses, filed a number of concerns in April with the EEOC, which oversees the law. The concerns included whether employers who ‘innocently discover’ genetic information about their workers may be held liable for having that information in their files, the ‘confusing’ interplay of other federal statutes, and […]
EAST LANSING, Mich. – The more prominent and financially successful a corporation becomes, the more likely it is to break the law, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar that challenges previous research. MSU’s Yuri Mishina and colleagues argue that unrealistically high pressure on thriving companies increases the likelihood of illegal behavior, as the firms are faced with continuously maintaining or improving their performance. Previous research suggested high-performing firms are less likely to feel the strains that can trigger illegal activities such as fraud, false claims and environmental and anticompetitive violations. The MSU-led study, which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Academy of Management Journal, analyzed 194 large public manufacturing firms in the United States between 1990 and 1999. ‘We found that high-performing companies tended not to be able to sustain that high level of performance over time, said Mishina, assistant professor of management and lead researcher on the project. ‘At the same time, high performing and highly prominent companies tend to be the ones that are punished most severely for not meeting performance expectations. And so it becomes a choice: Do I cut corners to try to meet these […]
Got vitamin D? It may protect you from heart disease. Vitamin D, of milk fame, is known for helping with calcium absorption and for building strong bones, which is why it’s routinely added to milk. But there is more and more evidence that vitamin D is a critical player in numerous other aspects of metabolism. A new study suggests many Americans aren’t getting anywhere nearly enough of the vitamin, and it may be affecting their heart health. In the study, researchers looked at tens of thousands of healthy adults 50 and older whose vitamin D levels had been measured during routine checkups. A majority, they found, were deficient in the vitamin. About two-thirds had less vitamin D in their bloodstreams than the authors considered healthy, and many were extremely deficient. Less than two years later, the researchers found, those who had extremely low levels of the vitamin were almost twice as likely to have died or suffered a stroke than those with adequate amounts. They also had more coronary artery disease and were twice as likely to have developed heart failure. The findings, which are being presented today at an American Heart Association conference in Orlando, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
