Sunday’s Super Bowl kept the officials scrambling to review hard-to-call plays on the field, so maybe it’s no surprise that the TV ratings needed a thorough look too.
After examining the numbers more closely, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday that NBC’s game actually delivered an average of 98.7 million total viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl ever and the No. 2 telecast of all time, behind only the 1983 series finale of “MASH” with 106 million.
It was Sunday. I had one last patient to see. I approached her room in a hurry and stood at the doorway. She was an older woman, sitting at the edge of the bed, struggling to put socks on her swollen feet. I crossed the threshold, spoke quickly to the nurse, scanned her chart noting she was in stable condition. I was almost in the clear.
I leaned on the bedrail looking down at her. She asked if I could help put on her socks. Instead, I launched into a monologue that went something like this: “How are you feeling? Your sugars and blood pressure were high but they’re better today. The nurse mentioned you’re anxious to see your son who’s visiting you today. It’s nice to have family visit from far away. I bet you really look forward to seeing him.”
She stopped me with a stern, authoritative voice. “Sit down, doctor. This is my story, not your story.”
I was surprised and embarrassed. I sat down.
So utterly simple and yet so often forgotten. Read or listen to it all.
The Obama administration is expected to impose a cap of $500,000 for top executives at companies that receive large amounts of bailout money, according to people familiar with the plan.
Executives would also be prohibited from receiving any bonuses above their base pay, except for normal stock dividends.
President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner plan to announce the executive compensation plan on Wednesday morning at the White House.
The new rules would be far tougher than any restrictions imposed during the Bush administration, and they could force executives to accept deep reductions in their current pay. They come amid rising public fury about huge pay packages for executives at financial companies being propped up by federal tax dollars.
Yesterday, with great fanfare, the results of The Good Childhood Inquiry were published. Knowing you, you probably read all about it. But let’s just say, for a moment, that you didn’t. I will provide a brutal summary. Not at all, all part of the service.
The inquiry concluded that children in Britain are unhappy. This is largely caused by the behaviour of their parents, especially working women. And this damaging behaviour results from the social evil of excessive individualism. There were a couple of hundred more pages, but that just about does it.
Here is an equally brutal summary of my response. Children in this country are not unhappy. The inquiry presents no convincing evidence at all that children are being damaged by the behaviour of their parents or by women working. There is no reason to believe that our individualism is excessive or a social evil. And even if it were, it is impossible to divine what might connect individualism to the happiness of children or the behaviour of parents.
The abrupt collapse of Tom Daschle’s cabinet nomination on Tuesday undercut President Obama’s mission to expand health care by depriving him of an unusually well positioned architect for a big legislative campaign and leaving him without a backup plan.
Mr. Daschle’s decision to withdraw his candidacy for secretary of health and human services could slow the president’s drive to reshape the nation’s health care system as the White House searches for a replacement, and it could allow Congress to step into the vacuum during that delay, analysts said.
But the White House insisted that Mr. Daschle’s departure would not stop the effort to cover the uninsured and rein in health costs, a goal that is “bigger than one person,” as the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, put it. “We’re looking for a new nominee,” Mr. Gibbs said, “but the problem has existed for quite some time, and the work toward a solution to make health care more affordable won’t stop or won’t pause while we look for that nominee.”
The European Union warned the US yesterday against plunging the world into depression by adopting a planned “Buy American” policy, intensifying fears of a trade war.
The EU threatened to retaliate if the US Congress went ahead with sweeping measures in its $800 billion (£554 billion) stimulus plan to restrict spending to American goods and services.
Gordon Brown was caught in the crossfire as John Bruton, the EU Ambassador to Washington, said that “history has shown us” where the closing of markets leads ”” a clear reference to the Depression of the 1930s, triggered by US protectionist laws.
The Primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting in Alexandria, Egypt on 3rd February, 2009, heard first hand reports of the situation in Zimbabwe, and note with horror the appalling difficulties of the people of this nation under the current regime.
We give thanks to God for the faithful witness of the Christians of Zimbabwe during this time of pain and suffering, especially those who are being denied access to their churches. We wish to assure them of our love, support and prayers as they face gross violation of human rights, hunger and loss of life as well as the scourge of a cholera epidemic, all due directly to the deteriorating socio-political and economic situation in Zimbabwe.
It is a matter of grave concern that there is an apparent breakdown of the rule of law within the country, and that the democratic process is being undermined, as shown in the flagrant disregard of the outcome of the democratic elections of March 31st 2008, so that Mr Robert Mugabe illegitimately holds on to power. Even the recent political situation of power sharing, brokered by SADC, may not be long lasting and simply further entrench Mr Mugabe’s regime. There appears to be a total disregard for life, consistently demonstrated by Mr Mugabe through systematic kidnap, torture and the killing of Zimbabwean people. The economy of Zimbabwe has collapsed, as evidenced by the use of foreign currencies in an independent state.
We therefore call upon President Robert Mugabe to respect the outcome of the elections of 2008 and to step down. We call for the implementation of the rule of law and the restoration of democratic processes.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said Tuesday the new figure is nearly double what MySpace officials originally acknowledged last year when detailing who had used their site.
Google has lifted the lid on its first major upgrade to its global mapping software, Google Earth.
Google Ocean expands this map to include large swathes of the ocean floor and abyssal plain.
Users can dive beneath a dynamic water surface to explore the 3D sea floor terrain.
The map also includes 20 content layers, containing information from the world’s leading scientists, researchers, and ocean explorers.
Al Gore was at the launch event in San Francisco which, Google hopes, will take its mapping software a step closer to total coverage of the entire globe.
Read it all and the new Google ocean link is here.
(AP) — Nancy Killefer: can’t be Obama performance officer because of failure to pay unemployment tax
The first full day of business at the Primates meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, has been held in a relaxed atmosphere with primates generally positive about the days ahead.
The media spokesman for the primates meeting, Australia’s Primate, Archbishop Dr Phillip Aspinall, said day two of the meeting included a presentation by five Primates about the impact of the current situation on province mission priorities.
Archbishops Fred Hiltz from Canada, Thabo Makgoba from Southern Africa, Henry Orombi from Uganda, Stephen Oo from Myanmar and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori from the United States made presentations.
Citing allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, an Anglican bishop has suspended the lead minister of a year-old church that broke off from the national Episcopal Church, officials said Monday.
The Rev. Lorne Coyle, of Christ Church of Vero Beach, was suspended effective 2 p.m. Sunday because his bishop received an out-of-state woman’s allegations that she and Coyle, who is married, had an affair, said the church’s senior warden, Jim Reamy III.
The bishop, from Virginia, met with Coyle last week in Vero Beach to inform him of the accusation.
On Sunday, Coyle stood in front of the 400-member congregation and confirmed he had sexual relations with an adult women over a period of years, Reamy said. Coyle left the building before the recessional hymn.
There has been a “pulling back from the language of sanctions and teeth” in the crafting of the Anglican Covenant, the Primate of Australia told reporters at the Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria on Feb 2.
The Most Rev. Philip Aspinall said that whereas earlier drafts of the covenant envisioned sanctions for violations, disciplinary mechanisms were not likely to make it into the final draft.
“Hitting people over the head with sticks” was not what the Anglican Communion wanted to do to provinces that violated the Covenant, Archbishop Aspinall said. Instead, the covenant””designed to set the parameters of Anglican life and worship””is evolving into a document about “koinonia”¦fellowship”¦of communion” between churches, and would not be a sanctions-based legal code, he explained.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised churches that have too many events on their noticeboards.
Churches should concentrate less on activities and more on “praying” he said at a service in Egypt, where is chairing the meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion.
Dr Rowan Williams, preaching at the dedication of the new St Mark’s pro-cathedral in Alexandria, also criticised people who back-stab and undermine each other, interpreted as a reference to the internecine Anglican wars which seem to be drawing to a surprisingly peaceful close in this heartland of the Christian Creed.
Dr Williams told more than 30 Primates of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion who are in Alexandria in an attempt to heal the rift over homosexuality that all churches needed to make more room for prayer and place less emphasis on being so “busy”.
Many American Muslim leaders are eager to help President Barack Obama improve the image of the United States in the Islamic world, but they worry that their contribution might not be welcome. The broad suspicion of Muslims in the country since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks persists in keeping many U.S. groups from working with the Muslim community, they say.
“These issues are not going to go away just because we have a president now who has more understanding of the Muslim world,” said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “We’ll actually be under more scrutiny now that these issues are going to be raised at the top of the Obama administration.”
Call it the Great Repression. The reality being repressed is that the western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Worst of all are the banks. The best evidence that we are in denial about this is the widespread belief that the crisis can be overcome by creating yet more debt.
The US could end up running a deficit of more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product this year (adding the cost of the stimulus package to the Congressional Budget Office’s optimistic 8.3 per cent forecast). Today’s born-again Keynesians seem to have forgotten that their prescription of a deficit-financed fiscal stimulus stood the best chance of working in a more or less closed economy. But this is a globalised world, where unco-ordinated profligacy by national governments is more likely to generate bond market and currency market volatility than a return to growth.
There is a better way to go but it is in the opposite direction. The aim must be not to increase debt but to reduce it. Two things must happen. First, banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured ”“ a word that is preferable to the old-fashioned “nationalisation”….
The second step we need to take is a generalised conversion of American mortgages to lower interest rates and longer maturities.
At first glance, perhaps no line item in the nearly $900 billion stimulus program under consideration on Capitol Hill would seem to offer a more perfect way to jump-start the economy than the billions of dollars pegged to expand broadband Internet service to rural and underserved areas.
Proponents say it will create jobs, build crucial infrastructure and begin to fulfill one of President Barack Obama’s major campaign promises: to expand the information superhighway to every corner of the land, giving local businesses an electronic edge and offering residents a dazzling array of services like online health care and virtual college courses.
But experts warn that the rural broadband effort could just as easily become a $9 billion cyberbridge to nowhere, representing the worst kind of mistakes that lawmakers could make in rushing to approve one of the largest spending bills in history without considering unintended results.
Monday was the last day of Iris Chau’s 11-year career at JPMorgan Chase and she says there’s a lot she’ll miss about the job: her colleagues, her paycheck and her role managing a technical support team. But one thing she won’t miss about JPMorgan is telling people that she works there.
“For a long time, it was kind of glamorous and I had friends who’d ask me ‘Can you get me a job there?’ ” says Chau, 35, who was part of a recent round of layoffs at the firm’s Manhattan headquarters. A few weeks ago, she mentioned her work to a photographer she’d met through a friend. “And he looks at me and says, ‘Oh, you’re one of them.’ ”
Nobody in the investment banking world is expecting pity, or even a sympathetic ear, these days. But when Wall Street talks about the collapse, it talks about life on Wall Street and the industry’s uncomfortable new role as national pariah.
In a case that pits religious freedom against the right of a defendant to face an accuser in court, a judge here has ordered a Toronto woman to testify without her face-covering niqab at a sexual assault trial.
The Toronto Star reports the case could be precedent-setting because it doesn’t appear there is any Canadian case law on the question of veiled women testifying in court.
In Canada, home to at least 600,000 Muslims, the case will be closely watched, amid fears that veiled Muslim women will be forced to bare their faces.
US President Barack Obama has already used experts within the last few months to hold high-level but discreet talks with both Iran and Syria, organizers of the meetings told AFP.
Officially, Obama’s overtures toward both Tehran and Damascus have remained limited.
In an interview broadcast Monday, Obama said the United States would offer arch-foe Iran an extended hand of diplomacy if the Islamic Republic’s leaders “unclenched their fist.”
A leading member of Germany’s Jewish community said Monday that Benedict XVI, the German-born pope and leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide, was sowing divisions and abetting far-right groups by rehabilitating four ultra-conservative bishops, one of whom has denied the Holocaust.
Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in an interview that because of the pope’s nationality, Benedict had a special responsibility to avoid creating rifts between religious groups over the comments of the controversial bishop, Richard Williamson of Britain.
“The pope’s decision is particularly disturbing in that he is also a German pope,” Kramer said. “Yes, he made a statement pledging solidarity with the Jews. But, frankly, the statement was made nearly 13 days after Williamson’s interview. Why? The question is how the pope wants to proceed from here in relations with the Jewish community.”
More than 20m rural migrant workers in China have lost their jobs and returned to their home villages or towns as a result of the global economic crisis, government figures revealed on Monday.
By the start of the Chinese new year festival on January 25, 15.3 per cent of China’s 130m migrant workers had lost their jobs and left coastal manufacturing centres to return home, said officials quoting a survey from the agriculture ministry
The job losses were a direct result of the global economic crisis and its impact on export-oriented manufacturers, said Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of Central Rural Work Leading Group. He warned that the flood of unemployed migrants would pose challenges to social stability in the countryside.
Speaking without a script, Archbishop Williams described the city’s history in the life of the church, and touched upon some of the theological controversies of the past, alluding to the relevance of the Arian controversy in the present day. Christians should pursue stillness, quietness and diversity, he said, and not be quick to condemn those who hold opposing theological views. He urged the primates, and the congregation, to extend Christian charity to those with whom they disagree.
A question that has yet to be answered to the satisfaction of all the primates is what they hope to achieve in Alexandria. The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, general secretary of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), said the primates have come at the invitation of Archbishop Williams to “review the work of the Lambeth Conference”¦explore issues of common interest, [and] prepare for the gathering of the ACC” in Jamaica in May.
The contrast in visions between an activist primates’ meeting as envisioned by the 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences and supported by a majority of primates, and an indaba-oriented meeting of discussion, where all points of view hold equal weight and no decisions are taken, may make Alexandria the last united primates’ meeting. None of the primates have threatened to boycott future gatherings, but archbishops on both theological sides share similar frustration with the current environment because “no one is listening anymore,” one primate said.
Children’s lives are being blighted by “obsessive” testing, relentless advertising and a long-hours culture that contributes to family breakdown, the Archbishop of Canterbury says in a report published today.
In a scathing attack on a society that he says is organised around the needs and desires of adults, Dr Rowan Williams argues that people must change their ways if Britain is to become a better place for children to grow up in.
He also makes an impassioned plea for marriage to be encouraged and valued, not least to set an example to young people about commitment.
“In plain terms, it will not serve us as a society, and it will not serve the growing generation, if we simply regard marriage as just one option in the marketplace of lifestyles,” he says.
Please note: the full report as well as the summary thereof may be found via the links provided here.