The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher
returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued,
but because they have superior access to the political system and can
use their connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama
More than one in five homes in China's urban areas is vacant, and a current housing-price correction is putting additional pressure on the owners of such empty properties, according to a nationwide survey.
Bill Gross, the most important private bond investor in the country with the biggest bond fund, shrinking now over organizational changes and static returns, does not own a cell phone.
The real poor: Thousands of people enraged by power cuts during an extreme heat wave rioted across northern India, setting electricity substations on fire and taking power company officials hostage, officials said Saturday. The impoverished state of Uttar Pradesh has never had enough power for its 200 million people, and many receive only a few hours a day under normal conditions, while 63 percent of homes have no access to electricity at all. And, of course, the response is to hamstring yourself and the solution. An angry crowd set fire to an electricity substation in Gonda, 112 miles southeast of Lucknow. Another substation was set on fire in Gorakhpur, 200 miles southeast of Lucknow.
Who was....Timothy McVeigh?
For anyone who thought the U.N. would aim high: U.N. peacekeepers are trying to bring peace to an eastern Congo town where a cattle-rustling dispute led to the deaths of 30 people. Cattle-rustling in the Congo.
Re: BBC"s "The Tudors:" Dr Starkey, a specialist in the Tudor period, says that it was a disgrace the BBC had "squandered" public money on a historical drama which he claimed had been deliberately "dubbed down'' to appeal to an American audience. We are backward in the colonies. And uncreative; no Yankee I know ever tried to substitute "dubbed down" for "dumbed down."
Analysis by Robert Kocher and Nikhil Sahni published in 2011 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed a nearly 75% increase in practicing doctors employed by hospitals from 2000-2008, and more recent hospital announcements suggest this trend is accelerating. A study by Kessler found that increases in the market share of hospitals that own physicians lead to higher hospital prices and spending; there was no evidence that hospital "ownership" of physicians leads to higher rates of hospital use. The conclusion was the effect was an increase in pricing. Kessler suggests this is the effect of decreased choice, i.e. the monopoly effect, but federal regulations economically favor hospital based activity over private office activity.
The Brazilian wandering spider is the size of a dinner plate—it is also the most poisonous spider in the world. There is an antidote for wandering spider bites, so deaths are rare.
I do not know what about this story surprises me more. A Moscow court on Monday sentenced five men to prison for the 2006 killing of Russian journalist and fierce Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, including two to a life term. A jury found that Rustam Makhmudov shot Politkovskaya at her Moscow apartment building in October 2006, the state-owned legal news agency RAPSI said. He and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, whom the jury found was a mastermind of the killing, were sentenced to life in prison, according to the court.
Authorities
alleged that an unidentified man asked Gaitukayev to kill Politkovskaya
in exchange for $150,000 because of her reports of human rights
violations and other issues, the Moscow city court said.
A second convicted plotter, former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Two of the gunman's brothers, Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Ibragim Makhmudov, were convicted as accomplices.
Golden oldie:
34% of the winners of India's recent elections have criminal indictments pending against them, according to India's Association for Democratic Reforms, including serious charges like murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or looking for work since it started counting such things in 1948. But look what else changed since the 1940s: The share of the population with less than a high school education fell from 76 percent to 12 percent, while the share of Americans with a bachelor's degree septupled to 32 percent. The BLS itself says that "the major factor producing this significant change in labor participation has been an increase in school attendance at all levels." So, perhaps, they are too busy at school to look for work?
Caveat: n: A warning or caution; a qualification or explanation. Also can be a verb. In "caveat emptor," the axiom or principle in commerce that the buyer alone is responsible for assessing the quality of a purchase before buying--or "buyer beware."
There has been considerable variation in recovery from the recession:
Andy Murray has hired Amélie Mauresmo, the former No. 1 player and winner of two Grand Slam singles titles, to be his new coach.
The Office of Special Counsel is investigating allegations that the Department of Veterans Affairs retaliated against 37 whistleblowers. (Washington Post)
In the March 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, there was an article entitled “Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?” Judged against the criteria of the SAT writing test introduced in 2005, failures would have included Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Shakespeare would not test out of freshman English and Stein would have to take a remedial class. But the Unabomber’s manifesto got a perfect 6.
Pro Football Focus rated each of the 32 NFL teams’ lineups from top to bottom and concluded the Steelers have the NFL’s sixth-worst roster. The only teams ranked below the Steelers at No. 27 are the Raiders, Vikings, Falcons, Rams and Jaguars.
AAAAaaaaannnnnnddddddd.........a graph:
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