The Obama Plan: Stability & Security for all Americans | The White House
“It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government.”– President Barack Obama
Bangkok’ s Buddhist Body Snatchers
[T]he Por Tek Tung Foundation [is] Bangkok’s largest provider of emergency medical services. Created by Chinese immigrants in Thailand’s capital more than 100 years ago, Por Tek Tung began by offering free funeral services for the city’s poor, and now specializes in quick-response rescues. You can spot its staff—over a thousand, nearly all unpaid—by their distinctive blue jumpsuits as they drive around in packs, on the lookout for road accidents.If this sounds a touch morbid, consider that last year alone a motorist was killed in Bangkok every 36 minutes. The city has five and a half million registered vehicles; drivers scorn speed limits and traffic rules, and unhelmeted motorcyclists carelessly zip in and out of congested lanes. The result is regularly lethal.
Por Tek Tung also handles murders, airplane crashes, collapsed buildings, and boating mishaps. But whatever the tragedy, the foundation’s main duty is “body-snatching”—rushing the still-living to hospitals and ferrying the dead to morgues. …
They are all volunteers.
Exonerated Texas Prisoners Find Prosperity
DALLAS (Sept. 4) — Thomas McGowan’s journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.
“I’ll let my girlfriend pick out the rest,” said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.
He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week….
I am absolutely in favor of this, but it does make you think about all the ones who were executed, doesn’t it? Texas still has the highest rate of executions in the US, higher than any other Western country!
Iraq’s new war is a fight for water – The National Newspaper
Dam projects by neighbouring states are drastically reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates and helping to turn a once-fertile plain into desert. Phil Sands and Nizar Latif report as an environmental crisis deepens
Fed Takes 2nd Look at Threat to Desert Tortoise
Japan’s annual dolphin cull disrupted by activists
China Gradually Improves Environmental Transparency
U.N. Reports on Developing Nations’ Energy Needs
Monkeys Appreciate Monkey Music and Metallica
A Bad Mix: Exposure May be “Safe” Only With One Chemical at a Time.
People won’t change lifestyle for planet: straw poll
Consumers Backlash Against Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs
Elephant in the Room – dailyforeclosure – Open Salon
Foreclosure is, for lack of a better term, heavy stuff. It’s heavy on the heart and heavy on the head. …
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2009/09/02/2003452594
More than 17,000 people from across the country packed the Kaohsiung Arena yesterday morning as the Dalai Lama held a two-hour prayer ceremony for the victims of Typhoon Morakot.Although the ceremony officially started at 9:30am, many people began lining up on Monday night and by 9am the stadium was packed….
Montana Court to Rule on Assisted Suicide Case – NYTimes.com
The state’s highest court on Wednesday will take up Mr. Baxter’s claim that a doctor’s refusal to help him die violated his rights under Montana’s Constitution — and lawyers on both sides say the chances are good that he will prevail.
