The former French justice minister, Rachida Dati, has condemned the wearing of the burka, saying that it ‘does not correspond’ to European values. Ms Dati, the first person of North African descent to serve in the French cabinet, is in the UK to visit the Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s Blackburn constituency. In a rare interview, she told Today programme reporter Zubeida Malik that ‘it’s important to remind what helps citizens live together and have a common destiny and living together and having a common destiny means having principles and values in common. ‘And it’s true that the burka’ – the wearing of which is now the subject of heated debate in France – ‘does not correspond neither to our values nor to our principles whether French or British and not even European. So it is important to say no to this expression that is not a religious expression.’ President Sarkozy and Rachida Dati President Sarkozy brought Dati into his cabinet in 2002 Ms Dati rejected suggestions that banning the burka and other face veils would make them more popular. ‘We have to remember that often women who wear the burka are either doing it out […]
Two words will be on repeat from the myriad of automakers debuting cars at the Geneva’s International Motor Show: hybrid and small. For any manufacturer that hasn’t debuted a hybrid yet, the next two international auto shows, in Geneva (March 4-14) and Beijing (April 23-May 2), will be the platforms for them to do so. This includes big-engine speedster thoroughbreds like Ferrari and Lotus. Ferrari is going green with the 599, which will premier at the Geneva show. It’s said to be an all-wheel-drive model with much of the engineering done by its fabled F1 team, but it will feature a regenerative braking system and hybrid engine. Lotus will also show off its first hybrid: The Evora 414E combines a common 47-horsepower fuel hybrid engine with a twin set of electric engines that can produce an additional 408 horsepower over a range of 35 miles. The distance may not be too impressive, but the speed is-reports say this car can do zero to 60 miles per hour in under four seconds. Small-car manufacturers will be vying for attention at the Geneva Motor Show, too. Small cars have grown from a niche into the mainstream as Kia, […]
A group that favors health care reform released disturbing estimates Thursday on premature deaths among people who lack insurance. The consumer group, Families USA, said the failure to pass health reforms will lead to 34,600 premature deaths in California for people ages 25 to 64 in the next 10 years. The report ‘Lives on the Line: The Deadly Cost of Delaying Reform’ said it used the methods of previous studies on the perils of living without health insurance in the United States. The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, found that 18,000 uninsured Americans died prematurely in 2000. The institute’s series of studies contested notions that the uninsured are well cared for by emergency services and government programs. Its 2002 study reported that people without insurance are sick more often, receive medical care that is too little or too late and receive poorer care in hospitals. The Urban Institute, which focuses research on social and economic issues, estimated 22,000 deaths in 2006 among uninsured Americans with limited access to health care. Families USA said the national death toll was 290,000 between 1995 and 2009, the 15-year period when […]
WASHINGTON — Data from the US Census bureau, found that doctor’s hours declined while at the same time their incomes dropped 25 percent between 1995 and 2006 In the U.S., doctors are known for working extraordinarily long hours, seeing patients in the office and then at the hospital. But in the last decade American doctors have been either retiring or putting in shorter work weeks while fewer Americans are entering medical school. There’s a shortage of students in American medical schools and that is one of the issues. In recent years, U.S. medical colleges have graduated an insufficient number of students. Experts say the United States needs at least 50,000 more doctors, and if nothing is done about it there could be a shortage of 200,000 by the year 2025. The drop in the number of physicians is acute in rural areas. In addition, there are two growing segments of the population in greater need of medical care: the elderly and the uninsured, largely made up of immigrants and the poor. So, if there’s a huge demand for medical services, why aren’t doctors putting in longer hours? Professor Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth […]
ISTANBUL — The charges filed against 20 senior military officers in Turkey this week mark the most serious development to date in a series of alleged plots against the government by members of the armed forces. It all started with Nokta (‘Point’), a small weekly news magazine. In its edition published on 29 March 2007, it ran details of diaries found on the laptop computer of retired Admiral Ozden Ornek, former commander of the Turkish Navy. In them the admiral allegedly wrote of various action plans, which he purportedly discussed with many of his military colleagues, intended to undermine the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP). Shortly after this, Nokta’s offices were raided by the police at the request of a military prosecutor, and the magazine was closed down, never to reopen. Three months later a large quantity of grenades and explosives were discovered by police hidden in the roof of a house in Istanbul. Over the following months, these two cases were tied by state prosecutors into a much larger conspiracy they called Ergenekon. Bogged down Around 200 people, including some senior military […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
