Investigators looking into alleged corrupt practices at News Corp’s UK newspapers suspect that cash payments worth more than £100,000 were made to police officers and other public officials, one person familiar with the investigation said.

News Corp’s management and standards committee, set up after the News of the World phone hacking scandal convulsed the News International newspaper division last July, has been under fire from reporters for passing information to police that has led to the arrests of nine journalists at The Sun.

On Wednesday, a person with knowledge of the investigation dismissed claims that journalists were being penalised for innocuous lunches with sources. ‘This is not about sources or expenses,

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The Republican primary field has recently decided to revive the Welfare Queen trope, perhaps in hopes that a bit of that old Reagan magic will rub off on them. The argument, as usual, is that there’s a vast stream of federal money going to people who are sitting on their asses eating Cheetos instead of going out and earning a living instead. These people are being bred into dependence on Uncle Sam’s tit and having their work ethics destroyed.

So the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities decided to add up the numbers and figure out how much money the federal government spends on the nonworking poor. The answer: about 10 percent of all federal welfare spending. How did they come up with that? CBPP’s methodology uses census data to figure out exactly where program dollars are going, but you can get pretty much the same answer using a simpler, easier-to-understand technique. Step One is to list every federal welfare program. Step Two is to deduct spending on the elderly, blind, and seriously disabled. That’s Social Security, Medicare, SSI, and about two-thirds of Medicaid. Step Three is to deduct spending that goes to the working poor. That’s unemployment compensation, EITC, and […]

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You can’t see them. They’re hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry’s big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont.

Health insurers were not able to stop the state’s drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which insurers have spent millions to scare Americans into believing would be the worst thing ever. Despite the ceaseless spin, Vermont lawmakers last May demonstrated they could not be bought nor intimidated when they became the first in the nation to pass a bill that will probably establish a single-payer beachhead in the U.S.

When he signed Act 48 into law on May 27, surrounded by dozens of state residents who worked for many years to achieve universal coverage, Governor Peter Shumlin expressed great pride in what had been accomplished.

‘We gather here today to launch the first single payer system in America, to do in Vermont what has taken too long-to have a health care (system) that is the best in the world, that treats health care as a right and not a privilege, where health care follows the individual, not the employer,

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Arabic readers recognise words in a different way from readers of other languages, a new study suggests.

This doctoral research at the University of Leicester is analysing the reading differences of individuals as well as across languages — and has shown dissimilarities in how Arabic readers recognise words.

Conducted by Abubaker Almabruk from the School of Psychology, the study has shown there are clear differences in how the right and left sides of the brain recognise Arabic words.

Almabruk’s study is one of the first to examine the cognitive and physiological processes underlying word recognition and reading in Arabic, providing important insight into the effects of direction of reading, the form of the script and the construction of the language.

His research reveals the intricacies of an everyday behaviour that most people find relatively easy and will help explain why some people find it difficult to read and provide insights into how these difficulties might be remedied.

Almabruk commented: ‘Differences in left and right brain function influence the recognition of words each side of where a reader is looking on a page but only when these words are outside of central vision — this reveals both left/right brain specialisation for reading and evidence that the […]

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NEW YORK — NEXT month will see the second anniversary of Barack Obama’s health reform. It is unclear whether it will celebrate another. It could die at least two different deaths. The Supreme Court will hear arguments against the suit in late March; the court could throw out the law by July. If that doesn’t kill it, then a Republican could be elected president and scrap the law immediately after his inauguration. By that time, however, America’s health system may have already changed for good.

Nudged by the provisions of Mr Obama’s law, private-sector firms have been reforming themselves. Virtually every insurer and hospital is trying to make care better and more efficient. In many cases their reforms go well beyond the law itself. No-one, however, is staging a bigger experiment than UnitedHealth Group. This is partly because United is an insurance goliath. It had $102 billion in revenue last year and provided cover to more than 34m people, equivalent to the population of Canada. But it is also because it is unveiling particularly bold policies.

An insurer seems an unlikely crusader. United, in particular, has had a long, acrimonious relationship with hospitals. But given its heft, the company’s policies matter. […]

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