[via gizmodo.com]
On a planet with around 6.8 billion people, we’re likely to see 5 billion cell phone subscriptions this year.
Reaching 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, the number of cell phone subscriptions across the globe will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The explosion in cell phone use has been driven not only by developed countries, but by developing nations hungry for services like mobile banking and health care.
[via nytimes.com]
It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.
Anne Mitchell, left, and Vickilyn Galle, right, wrote the letter to regulators that drew felony charges.
[a via abcnews.go.com]
Protestors demonstrate the use of waterboarding in this Nov. 2007 file photo, in front of the Justice Department in Washington. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
An Army sergeant who served in Iraq for 15 months has been restricted to his Washington military base after being accused of waterboarding his 4-year-old daughter because she refused to recite her ABCs.
Joshua Ryan Tabor, 27, was arrested on Jan. 31 and charged with assaulting a child after police in Yelm, Wash., responded to a call of a disturbance at Tabor’s home and then later found the little girl hiding in a locked bathroom, according to Police Chief Todd Stancil.
[via gizmodo.com]
Raising questions about the definition of a vegetative state as well as what to do with people in them, a new study observed the brain of an unconscious patient responding to yes and no questions just like normal.
Of the 54 test subjects in the New England Journal of Medicine study, one man who had been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state some five years earlier accurately answered yes or no questions. The answers came by way of a brain scan conducted by an MRI machine.
[via bbc.co.uk]
Americans voicing their anger at the healthcare proposals at a "town hall meeting"
The Republicans’ shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.
Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why there is often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.
Last year, in a series of “town-hall meetings” across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.
[via gizmodo.com]
So far he’s shown a good grasp of Twitter etiquette in his five tweets, replying to ‘slebs Ashton Kutcher and Ryan Seacrest; retweeting successfully twice, and even has a spiffy background wallpaper and profile pic.
[via consumerist.com]
Photo: WMBF
A South Carolina woman died shortly after a run-in with Walmart loss prevention. Was the asthma sufferer’s death a coincidence, caused by the stress of being caught by security, or something even more sinister than that? Test results and a review of surveillance footage should clarify the situation somewhat in a few months.
Deputy Coroner Tony Hendrick said Williams died of natural causes. An autopsy was performed Sunday, and test results could take 10-12 weeks.Williams’ mother Patricia Jackson said she has a lot of questions about what happened. She said Williams has eight children, and she doesn’t know what to tell them.
[via timesonline.co.uk]
A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.
Members of the weight-loss club were lining up to compare readings on the scales when they heard a bang as the floor came away from the walls of their meeting room in Växjö in southern Sweden.
“We suddenly heard a huge thud – we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one of the those present told the Smålandsposten newspaper.
The Council of Europe will launch a probe into pharmaceutical companies after reports that vaccine manufacturers pressured the World Health Organization into declaring swine flu pandemic seeking increase in profits.
It was supposed to be a deadly pandemic, but is so far is nothing more than a serious cold.
Shhh it's a secret.
And it has left a lasting headache as a debate rages over whether pharmaceutical companies deliberately misled governments about the seriousness of swine flu to make them stockpile vaccines.
The legal standards organization, the Council of Europe, will gather the arguments.
[via consumerist.com]
Kerri (not her real name) says she was detained last week at a Walmart in Utah, after she declined to show the receipt checker her receipt on the way out. She says a police officer blocked her from leaving, told her to show the receipt checker more respect, and then had her go back inside and let Walmart examine her bags while he wrote down the info from her drivers license.
January 9th, 2010
Hello, my name is Kerri ___. I live in Genola, Utah. I am 44 years old.