finally seeing more on Twitter from Beruit, but little live coverage elsewhere.
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"Everyone gets to play with dolls, and while most are anatomically correct, some are also black."
Best line from Swedish School De-emphasizes Gender Lines via The New York TImes
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Daniel Lawlor from Los Angeles poses after winning first place in the freestyle moustache category at the third annual national beard and moustache championships in Las Vegas.
You can check out all the best news images of the day with our picture desk: live blog.
Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images
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Picked up my papers this morning. #news #korea #obama #USelections2012
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A Giant Hospital Chain Is Blazing a Profit Trail
Profits at the health care industry giant HCA, which controls 163 hospitals from New Hampshire to California, have soared, far outpacing those of most of its competitors.
The big winners have been three private equity firms — including Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate — that bought HCA in late 2006.
HCA’s robust profit growth has raised the value of the firms’ holdings to nearly three and a half times their initial investment in the $33 billion deal.
The financial performance has been so impressive that HCA has become a model for the industry. Its success inspired 35 buyouts of hospitals or chains of facilities in the last two and a half years by private equity firms eager to repeat that windfall.
HCA’s emergence as a powerful leader in the hospital industry is all the more remarkable because only a decade ago the company was badly shaken by a wide-ranging Medicare fraud investigation that it eventually settled for more than $1.7 billion.
Among the secrets to HCA’s success: It figured out how to get more revenue from private insurance companies, patients and Medicare by billing much more aggressively for its services than ever before; it found ways to reduce emergency room overcrowding and expenses; and it experimented with new ways to reduce the cost of its medical staff, a move that sometimes led to conflicts with doctors and nurses over concerns about patient care.
In late 2008, for instance, HCA changed the billing codes it assigned to sick and injured patients who came into the emergency rooms. Almost overnight, the numbers of patients who HCA said needed more care, which would be paid for at significantly higher levels by Medicare, surged.
(Source: The New York Times)
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Terrible Statistic of the Day:
1 IN 3. 1 IN 3. 1 IN 3.
That’s ridiculous.
- The Justice Department statistics report that 1 in 3 Native American women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, a number more than twice the national average.
Incidentally, House Republicans are against a bipartisan-supported provision in the Senate’s version of the Violence Against Women Act which would grant tribal courts greater authority to prosecute who are not Native American for abusing their Native American spouses and domestic partners. They have not included it in the House version of the bill and consider it a unacceptable expansion of tribal authority.
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
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But mobile is fast emerging as a major transformative power. Already, in places like South Africa, mobile carries more advertising than all the traditional media combined. In places like Kenya, mobile banking is outpacing all traditional financial channels. And, everywhere from Nigeria to Uganda, people are turning to mobile for news or entertainment ahead of traditional media. People are hungrier than ever for quality content.
Why Now Is the Time for Media Innovation in Africa
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Two top political reporters in Iowa. Both Mizzou grads. Married. Great story from Washington Post.
Dave and Emily Price, University of Missouri graduates who met covering candidates, individually told colleagues that Santorum was the one to watch. Both endured derision. “People thought I was crazy five weeks ago,” Emily said. And the husband and wife never shared their analysis — or the blowback — with each other.
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Muslims outraged over pig parts dumped at Swiss mosque site | CNN.com
By Brian Walker, CNN
November 12, 2011
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Police in the town of Grenchen uncovered the pigs Friday
- “We can’t say yet it is a hate crime in those words,” police chief says
- An unsigned flier said the act was a “protest against the growing expansion of Islam in Switzerland”
- “It is an escalation” in Switzerland, “where Christians and Muslims have all been living together,” imam says
(CNN) — Muslims in Switzerland are responding with shock and outrage after a pig carcass and severed swine heads were discovered buried at the site of a proposed mosque.
Police in the town of Grenchen uncovered the pigs Friday after they received an anonymous message claiming that someone had buried the body parts and spilled 120 liters of blood from the animals in an effort to desecrate the ground to halt the construction of the mosque.
Pork and pork byproducts are haram, or forbidden, in Islam.
The unsigned flier, written in German, says “This operation was done (conducted) to protest against the growing expansion of Islam in Switzerland,” and says that a similar desecration in Spain earlier halted another mosque construction project.
Thomas Suber, chief of the Solothurn Canton police, told CNN by phone that there were no suspects currently, but that a full investigation is under way.
“We can’t say yet it is a hate crime in those words, but it could have been done to stop the mosque,” said Suber.
Suber said that whoever is responsible may be brought up on environmental pollution charges.
The police chief says that veterinary health officials have been called in to find if pig’s blood has in fact been spilled, and that charges may be filed over illegal dumping of animal parts in addition to other potential criminal charges.
But for Muslims in Switzerland, it’s just the latest sign that they are being victimized by some in the far right.
Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi, spokesman for Switzerland’s Central Islamic Council said the deed “crossed a line” that had already been pushed against Muslims since a popular referendum in 2009 banned the construction of new minarets.
“Since the ban on minarets there’s been an increase in Islamophobia and Islamophobic events, so it was not really surprising” said Illi. “But it is an escalation in Switzerland because this is a peaceful country where Christians and Muslims have all been living together… and we are a bit afraid this may increase.”
There are an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Switzerland, out of a population of more than 7 million says Illi, who admitted that the population is rising but that most Swiss Muslims were immigrants from Albania and elsewhere in the Balkans, where there is a tradition of moderate Islam.
The property had been purchased by the local Muslim community several years ago from a Swiss far right political activist. The man claimed that he had not been informed that it would be used for a mosque and had fought the sale in court, before ultimately losing his civil case recently allowing construction to go forward.
“We can just wait for the next rain or snowfall to cleanse the ground, so we do not fear from this side anything,” said Illi.
“But on the other hand it’s an emotional thing, it means that there are actually people in this society who deny the right of Muslims when it comes to a mosque in Switzerland and this is something that hurts us.”
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John Darkow / The Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune
(via CagleCartoons.com)
