Wish I Didn't Know

NEW DELHI (AP By KATY DAIGLE) - India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty.

The computer, called Aakash, or “sky” in Hindi, is the latest in a series of “world’s cheapest” innovations in India that include a 100,000 rupee ($2,040) compact Nano car, a 750 rupee ($15) water purifier and $2,000 open-heart surgery.

Developer Datawind is selling the tablets to the government for about $45 each, and subsidies will reduce that to $35 for students and teachers. In comparison, the cheapest Apple iPad tablet costs $499, while the recently announced Kindle Fire will sell for $199.

Datawind says it can make about 100,000 units a month at the moment, not nearly enough to meet India’s hope of getting its 220 million children online.

Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal called the announcement a message to all children of the world.

“This is not just for us. This is for all of you who are disempowered,” he said. “This is for all those who live on the fringes of society.”

Despite a burgeoning tech industry and decades of robust economic growth, there are still hundreds of thousands of Indians with no electricity, let alone access to computers and information that could help farmers improve yields, business startups reach clients, or students qualify for university.

The launch - attended by hundreds of students, some selected to help train others across the country in the tablet’s use - followed five years of efforts to design a $10 computer that could bridge the country’s vast digital divide.

“People laughed, people called us lunatics,” ministry official N.K. Sinha said. “They said we are taking the nation for a ride.”

Although the $10 goal wasn’t achieved, the Aakash has a color screen and provides word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing. The Android 2.2-based device has two USB ports and 256 megabytes of RAM. Despite hopes for a solar-powered version - important for India’s energy-starved hinterlands - no such option is currently available.

Both Sibal and Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli called for competition to improve the product and drive prices down further.

“The intent is to start a price war. Let it start,” Tuli said, inviting others to do the job better and break technological ground - while still making a commercially viable product.

As for the $10 goal, “let’s dream and go in that direction. Let’s start with that target and see what happens,” he said.

The students Wednesday were well-briefed on the goal of providing tablets for the poor, although most in attendance already had access to computers at home or in their schools.

“A person learns quite fast when they have a computer at home,” said Shashank Kumar, 21, a computer engineering student from Jodhpur, Bihar, who was one of five people selected in his northern state to travel to villages and demonstrate the device. “In just a few years people can even become hackers.”

India, after raising literacy to about 78 percent from 12 percent when British rule ended, is now focusing on higher education with a 2020 goal of 30 percent enrollment. Today, only 7 percent of Indians graduate from high school.

“To every child in India I carry this message. Aim for the sky and beyond. There is nothing holding you back,” Sibal said before distributing about 650 of the tablets to the students.

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A Walmart shopper has successfully sued the retail giant after she was charged two cents more than the listed price for a pack of sausages.

Mary Bach, who has made a habit of taking Walmart to court, was angered when the chain’s store in Delmont, Pennsylvania made her pay $1 for a box of Banquet ‘Brown ‘N Serve’ sausages, which had been priced at 98 cents.

(Daily Mail By LAURIE WHITWELL) — Walmart argued new packaging caused a mix-up on the price, but Ms Bach, a consumer activist from Murrysville, claimed the overcharge was intentional.

Murrysville District Judge Charles Conway agreed with her and ruled the store breached trade laws. He awarded Ms Bach $100 in damages, plus $80 in court costs, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

‘This is the fifth lawsuit that I have now won against this store, this Delmont Walmart, for the same problem: practice of putting up a shelf tag that was lower than the price charged at the cash register,’ Ms Bach told WPXI outside court.

‘All this is for the scanner charge to correlate with the shelf tag or vice versa. I’m not telling them what price to charge for the item they’re selling.’

Ms Bach said she hopes her court case will ensure the error does not happen to any other costumers, no matter how small.

She said the Walmart should be more careful in guaranteeing that prices listed on shelves match what prices scan at the register, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

‘Walmart was wrong. They were overcharging customers. Even though it was a minimal amount, they were wrong,’ she told WPXI.

Ms Bach testified that on August 20 she picked up the sausages, which had a listed price of 98 cents, but was charged $1 when she reached the check-out.

‘The clerk did everything right when I pointed out the error and refunded me the difference and noted the error,’ Ms Bach said.

However, six days later, she went back to the store to purchase more of the same sausages when the same thing happened, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

This time Ms Bach was not interested in a refund and she took the store to court.

Walmart attorney Timothy J. Nieman argued that Ms Bach, who has a reported 17-year history of legal battles over pricing faults, was not really shopping for groceries, but was looking for her next lawsuit.

‘Never once have I been questioned by a cashier whether an item I’m purchasing is for my personal use or not,’ Ms Bach said. ‘Everything I buy is for my personal use.’

Ms Bach told the court her husband and grandchildren enjoy the sausages on a regular basis.

Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter told WPXI the company tried to refund the money to Ms Bach, but she refused. He said Walmart respectfully disagrees with the decision, and is considering its options.

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This utility company wants to collect their past due amount and they want it now!

Source: HappyPlace

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Weakness in leading economic indicators has become so pervasive the Economic Cycle Research Institute now predicts a new recession is unavoidable.

Posted to WIDK by Bianca Coombs

(Aaron Task, Daily Ticker) -“The vicious cycle is starting where lower sales, lower production, lower employment and lower income [leads] back to lower sales,” co-founder Lakshman Achuthan declares in the accompanying video.

Whereas Achuthan said the jury is still out in late August, the weakness in leading economic indicators — and ECRI uses a dozen for the U.S. alone, he notes — has become a “contagion” that is spreading like “wildfire.”

Although the recovery has been “subpar” by nearly every measure, Achuthan refutes the idea the economy never got out of recession in the first place. “Just because it looks and feels a certain way doesn’t mean it’s a recession,” he says. “You haven’t seen anything yet. It’s going to get a lot worse.”

It’s too soon to predict just how bad it’s going to get, but he expects another spike in unemployment and further expansion of the federal government’s $1 trillion deficit. This forecast has huge ramifications for the 2012 election and the already struggling U.S. consumer and Achuthan says a “mild” recession is the best-case scenario.

By now you may be wondering what separates ECRI’s recession call from the myriad other recession calls out there. First, ECRI’s primary raison d’etre is predicting recession and recovery calls. Second, and more importantly, The Economist reports ECRI has never issued a “false alarm” on a recession call, meaning many of the Chicken Littles currently declaring “the sky is falling” might actually be right this time around.

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The Bank of America website crashed yesterday after being overwhelmed by angry customers following the decision to charge them to use $5 a month if they use their debit cards.

The site went down for hours in the morning and hours later service was still intermittent.

Posted to WIDK by Emily Moore

(Daily Mail Reporter) — The breakdown came less than 24 hours after the bank revealed it will roll out the fee  early next year.

Though the bank, like several others who instated similar fees, will use the revenue to help increase revenue, the move is seen as biased against less wealthy clients as they are more likely to use a debit card because they are often denied credit.

U.S. banks have been looking for ways to increase revenue as regulations introduced since the financial crisis limited the use of overdraft and other fees.

In spite of hesitations about the new fee, Bank of America’s stock price was up at the close of business Thursday, coming in at 6.35.

The new fee will go into effect next month when portions of the Dodd-Frank Act, created in response to the financial crisis, begin.

Paying to use a debit card was unheard of before this year and is still a novel concept for many consumers. But several banks have recently introduced, or said they are testing, debit card fees. That’s in addition to the spate of other unwelcome changes checking account customers have seen in the past year.

Bank of America’s announcement carries added weight because it is the largest U.S. bank by deposits.

Customers will only be charged the fee if they use their debit cards for purchases in any given month as opposed to simply withdrawing cash from ATMs, said Anne Pace, a Bank of America spokeswoman.

The fee will apply to basic accounts, which are marketed toward those with modest balances, and will be in addition to any existing monthly service fees. For example, one such accounts charges a $12 monthly fee unless customers meet certain conditions, such as maintaining a minimum average balance of $1,500.

The debit card fee is just the latest twist in the rapidly evolving market for checking account.

A study by Bankrate.com this week found that just 45 percent of checking accounts are now free with no strings attached, down from 65 percent last year and 76 percent in 2009. Customers can still get free checking in most cases, but only if they meet certain conditions, such as setting up direct deposit.

The study also found that the total average cost for using an ATM rose to $3.81, from $3.74, the year before. The average overdraft fee rose slightly to $30.83, from $30.47.

An increasing reliance on credit cards would be particularly beneficial for big institutions like Bank of America, which have large credit card portfolios, notes Bart Narter, a banking analyst with Celent, a consulting firm.

‘It’s become a more profitable business, at least in relation to debit cards,’ Narter said.

This summer, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that two-thirds of consumers use debit cards more frequently than credit cards. But when asked how they would react if they were charged a $3 monthly debit card fee, 61 percent said they’d find another way to pay.

With a $5 fee, 66 percent said they would change their payment method.

Several banks are nevertheless moving ahead with debit card fees.

SunTrust, a regional bank based in Atlanta, began charging a $5 debit card fee on its basic checking accounts this summer. Regions Financial, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama, plans to start charging a $4 fee next month.

Chase and Wells Fargo are also testing $3 monthly debit card fees in select markets. Neither bank has said when it will make a final decision on whether to roll out the fee more broadly.

The growing prevalence of the debit card fee is alarming for Josh Wood, a 32-year-old financial adviser in Amarillo, Texas.

Wood relies entirely on debit cards to avoid interest charges on a credit card. If his bank, Wells Fargo, began charging a debit card fee, he said he would take his business to a credit union.

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Hold Onto Your Hats Scientologists - Meet John Travolta Circa 1860 (WIDK)

Posted to WIDK by Emily Moore

(John Stevens and Mark Duell, Daily Mail) — He is a member of the Church of Scientology, which believes in reincarnation and asks some members to sign one billion year contracts of service.

And one photograph collector in Ontario, Canada, claims he has found a picture of John Travolta from a previous incarnation in 1860.

The 150-year-old photo of a man who looks remarkably like Travolta has been put up for sale on eBay.

‘I’ve had this interesting photograph for years and I’ve been unable to part with it,’ the seller said on the auction site.

‘When you look at it and into the eyes of the sitter you will see what I mean!

‘I believe this is the photograph of a very young John Travolta taken around 1860… This is a ruby glass ambrotype photograph and it is one of a kind.

‘It hasn’t been changed, tampered with or altered in anyway. It is clear and is as nice as the day it was taken roughly 151 years ago.

The photo is listed at $50,000 or nearest offer, and while it has a large price tag comes with free shipping and gift wrapping.

The listings comes after another antique dealer joked that he has a photo that is proof Nicolas Cage is more than just an a-list actor - he’s also a vampire who lived during the American Civil War.

The eBay seller claims to have a 4” by 2.5” carte de visite photo from around 1870 of a man who looks exactly like the 47-year-old star of Con Air, Ghost Rider and The Rock.

The seller, who has put the starting price at $1million, says the photo is 100 per cent genuine and was taken of a man who lived in Bristol, Tennessee, around the time of the Civil War.

The man who put the photo on eBay is Jack Mörd, of Seattle, Washington, whose Facebook page says he is originally from Los Angeles, California, and owns ‘The Thanatos Archive’.

‘My theory is that he allows himself to age to a certain point, maybe 70, 80 or so, then the actor “Nicolas Cage” will “die”,’ Mr Mörd joked.

‘But in reality, the undead vampire “Nicolas Cage” will have rejuvenated himself and appeared in some other part of the world, young again, and ready to start all over.’

The picture was found in the back of an album that contained many unusual death portraits from the Civil War era - but the Nicolas Cage lookalike was not identified by name, Mr Mörd said.

He has a 100 per cent positive feedback rating on eBay and his profile says he is interested in collecting and selling Victorian Era post-mortem photography, as well as other vintage pictures.

The eBay product description for ‘Nicolas Cage is a Vampire / Photo from 1870 / Tennessee’ says: ‘Original c.1870 carte de visit showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage.

‘This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program.

‘It’s an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN, sometime around the Civil War.’

It is believed the photo was taken by a confederate Civil War prisoner of war photographer called Professor G.B. Smith.

Mr Mörd joked that Nicolas Cage could be a walking undead man who reinvents himself once every 75 years - and might be looking at going into politics or talk show hosting next.

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Fuck Comcast (WIDK)

(WIDK) — Customer discusses bill with Comcast.

Source: Reddit

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Quite The Mix-Up Mr. President - Obama Compares Rich To JEWS Instead Of Janitors - VIDEO

(Meghan Keneally, Daily Mail) — Days after the UN general assembly where the hot topic was a potentially free Palestinian state, President Obama is touring the country giving speeches about the ‘Buffett tax’ intended to increase tax rates for millionaires.

In a speech on Saturday, the President embarrassingly got the two issues mixed-up.

Instead of referring to the low tax rate of janitors, Mr Obama said that it was a mistake to have billionaires pay the same tax rate as Jews.

Problems with the teleprompter? Not this time. President Obama mistakenly referred to the low tax rates of ‘Jews’ when he meant to say ‘janitors’

‘If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, as a janitor, makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honour. I have no problem with that. It’s about time,’ he said.

Named after billionaire Warren Buffett, the new tax that President Obama is promoting would put a higher tax rate on the salaries of Americans earning more than $1million annually.

This is not the first gaffe that President Obama made recently.

In Ohio on Thursday, the president touted America as the country that built ‘the Intercontinental rail road’. Clearly, the fact that no rail road crosses oceans to reach other continents was overlooked.

America’s first transcontinental rail road was built during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln- who Mr. Obama publicly admires. However, this is the second time this year that Mr. Obama misused the word ‘intercontinental’.

Conservative pundit and radio host Rush Limbaugh was quick to discuss Saturday’s gaffe on his show Monday morning, and was quick to bring two controversial Obama supporters into the debate.

‘So he was confusing Jew with janitor, and he admits that,’ Mr Limbaugh said Monday. ‘Just think how outraged the Reverends Wright and Farrakhan would be if they heard Obama say that Jews were paying too much in taxes like he thinks the janitors probably are.’

Thankfully for the president, he was in front of a friendly crowd: the Congressional Black Caucus remains a strong supporter of President Obama.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S GAFFES

In 2011 in London’s Westminster Abbey, President Obama signed the guest book and dated it 24 May 2008.

During the 2008 campaign, he said: ‘I’ve now been in 57 states — I think one left to go.’

At Fort Drum, N.Y., the President said: ‘Jared Monti was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.’ Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was killed in action, while Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, was the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor.

In April 2009, on a foreign trip, the President said: ‘I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for wheeling and dealing.’

During the health care debate he praised the benefits of ObamaCare: ‘The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.’

The speech was given at the Caucus’ Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards in Washington DC and first lady Michele Obama attended as well.

Among guests at the event included pop singer Lady Gaga who paid $35,800 for a seat at the exclusive event.

The singer did not perform at the event attended by around 75 guests, but thanked the President for what he has accomplished and asked a question during a Q&A.

Today the president continued his tour plugging his jobs agenda in fielding questions on the employment picture, education, Medicare and Social Security. The president spoke midway through a three-state Western swing built largely around fundraising for himself and other Democrats.

The President is in a deadlock with congressional Republicans, including House leaders, over raising taxes as part of a formula for helping a staggering economy. He has put forward a debt-reduction plan that would raise $1.5 trillion in new revenue, including about $800 billion over 10 years from repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for couples making more than $250,000.

Obama also said the financial crisis rippling through Europe is “scaring the world” and that steps taken by European nations to stem the eurozone debt problem “haven’t been as quick as they need to be.” His reference to the European debt crisis came on the heels of remarks by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who over the weekend urged governments to unite with the European Central Bank to help defuse the “most serious risk now confronting the world economy.”

Fast forward to 19 minutes 40 seconds to hear the gaffe..

SEE VIDEO HERE

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True Sign Of A Down Economy - New Yorkers Ditch Their Coke Habits (WIDK)

Submitted to WIDK By Scott Kamolsiri

(Chuck Bennet, New York Post) — Here’s another sign of the stalled economy — New Yorkers are ditching their coke habits.

Cocaine-related emergency-room admissions, overdoses and requests for rehab have declined since the economy started its 2008 decline, according to data obtained by The Post.

“It is sort of on a slight but steady downward trend,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, director of NYU’s Langone Center of Excellence on Addiction. “I treat patients in private practice. Many cocaine addicts tell me stories they don’t have enough money to buy it anymore.”

There were 478 “accidental” deaths in which cocaine was a factor, typically overdoses, in New York City in 2006, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

That number plunged to just 274 in 2010.

Powder-cocaine addicts typically shell out $60 to $80 a gram, so perhaps the high cost of blow is why also a smaller number of people — 7,693 — sought treatment for cocaine addiction in New York City last year, according to the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.

That number is a drop from 9,654 in 2008.

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Posted to WIDK by Emily Moore

(AP)  No matter the season, we all take part in the pursuit of pleasure, each in our own way. And although there’s an art to enjoying life, it turns out there’s science behind it, too. Our Cover Story is reported now by Susan Spencer of “48 Hours”:

It can be as simple as a sunset, as decadent as a dessert, or as extravagant as a weekend in Paris. But we all have our own little pleasures …

“Chocolate and peanuts! … mmmmm …”

“I’m a Barbie collector. I have, like, over 100 Barbies.”

“I love Mexican food!”

“The rush of cliff jumping, when you’re up in the air, and you’re hoping the water is deep enough, and your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour, and you SPLASH!”

Professor Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, notes that some pleasures are no less than a matter of survival.

“Pleasure is an instantaneous feeling of something good,” Dr. Berns said. “When you teach a bunch of undergraduates and teenagers like I do and I ask them to list the things that give them pleasure, sleep is always at the top of the list.

“You have kind of the basic needs, right? So you have food, sleep, and sex. Pretty much boils down to that, if you’re talking about actual pleasure,” Berns laughed.

But pleasure goes well beyond basic needs. Yale psychologist Paul Bloom says WHY we enjoy what we enjoy is very complicated.

“It seems like we just taste food, and taste wine, we respond to our visceral sensations. But actually it is surprisingly deep,” Bloom said.

So deep, in fact, that Bloom was pleased to write a book on pleasure, which he says is as much about our brains as about our experiences.

“Our pleasure is a response not just to the physical makeup of something, what it looks like or tastes like, or smells like, or feels like, but rather to our beliefs of what it really IS, what its real essence is,” Bloom said.

And boy, can we be fooled!

Bloom recalls one famous experiment with wine drinkers done by scientists at Stanford and Cal Tech …

“Half the people are told they’re drinking cheap plunk, the other half are told they’re drinking something out of $100-$150 bottle,” Bloom said. “It tastes better to them, if they THINK they’re drinking from an expensive bottle. And it turns out that if they think they’re drinking expensive wine, parts of the brain that are associated with pleasure and reward light up like a Christmas tree.”

“So if I have people over for dinner, I should add a little ‘1” in front of the price tag, and put it on the table?” Spencer asked.

“That is the ultimate trick to making wine taste better,” Bloom said.

And it’s the sort of trick that works only on human beings.

“Both my dog and me enjoy drinking water when we’re thirsty, but I’m the one who cares about where the water came from - whether it’s bottled water, or from the tap,” Bloom said. “My dog doesn’t care.”

WATCH VIDEO HERE

“You’re the one that, if we put a higher price tag on that bottle of water, you’ll enjoy it more?” suggested Spencer.

“That’s right! I might give my dog premium dog food, but the dog doesn’t care that I spent a lot of money for it.”

People, on the other hand, seem to get ENORMOUS pleasure out of spending ENORMOUS sums on some very curious things.

Was Michael Jackson’s jacket really worth $1.8 million?

Or how about President Kennedy’s tape measure, which went for almost $50,000 at auction?

Or Eric Clapton’s guitar, snapped up for just under a million bucks?

Given all that, Paul Bloom wondered what people might pay for the pleasure of owning, say, George Clooney’s sweater?

“And the answer is, a fair amount,” said Bloom. “Much more than they’d pay for MY sweater, or for a brand new sweater.”

But why? For bragging rights? Or to re-sell on eBay? Apparently not …

Bloom conducted an experiment where people were not allowed to tell people or boast about buying Clooney’s sweater, or even re-sell it, and the perceived value was reduced. “But here’s what makes the value really drop: We told another group of subjects that we thoroughly washed it before it got to them. Now the value plummets.”

“It’s not still ‘George Clooney’s sweater’?” asked Spencer.

“As my wife put it, you washed away the Clooney cooties!” Bloom laughed. “You’ve washed away the sort of essence of the person.”

“That gives them more pleasure in owning it?”

“Human beings are strange,” laughed Spencer.

“Human beings are extraordinary,” he replied.

Some pleasures are universal, like eating the mouth-watering butter-and-sugar concoctions at Magnolia Bakery in New York City - it really is pure pleasure on a plate.

But not all of life’s pleasures are so straight-forward. In fact, if you think about it, some of them are downright weird.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

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781 Days Later…Free At Last - Hikers Recall Strife In Iranian Prison (WIDK)

(New York Times) — The two American hikers who were held in Iran on espionage charges say they kept their days strictly regimented, running laps, weight-lifting water bottles, discussing literature and quizzing each other, in an effort to stay physically and mentally fit while in captivity.

They spent 781 days that way in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Joshua F. Fattal, with fellow hikers Sarah E. Shourd and Shane M. Bauer, spoke to reporters in New York. He and Mr. Bauer, both freed last week, arrived in the United States on Sunday.

On Sunday, the hikers, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal, arrived in New York City after a long diplomatic battle to secure their release that further challenged the fraught relationship between the United States and Iran. A third hiker arrested with them, Sarah E. Shourd, was freed last September.

“Sarah, Josh and I can now finally leave prison behind us,” Mr. Bauer, 29, said at a news conference in Manhattan. “We want more than anything to begin our lives anew, with a new appreciation for the sweet taste of freedom.”

Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal, also 29, who were released and sent to Oman on Wednesday, had been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of espionage and trespassing.

The hikers said from the beginning that they had wandered over the Iranian border by accident while touring in the Kurdish region of Iraq. No evidence of espionage has been presented publicly, and on Sunday they asserted their innocence again and called themselves “hostages.”

At a Midtown hotel, the two men, looking ashen and thin, stood flanked by their families and Ms. Shourd. They thanked their supporters and the elected officials and celebrities, like Muhammad Ali and Sean Penn, who pressed for their release. They did not thank the government of Iran, and called for Tehran to release other political prisoners.

Referring to the Iranian authorities, Mr. Fattal said, “They do not deserve undue credit for ending what they had no right and no justification to start in the first place.”

The men described their lives in prison as harrowing. They were blindfolded regularly, they said, and refused to eat when the letters that their families wrote to them daily were withheld. The men made shoelaces out of their blindfolds so they could keep up their fitness regimen.

Sometimes, the hikers heard the screams of other prisoners.

“It didn’t happen often,” Ms. Shourd said, “but it doesn’t have to happen often to leave an indelible mark on your soul.”

Power struggles among Iran’s leaders complicated and delayed the release of the two men. The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said before his trip to the United Nations last week that they would be freed imminently, only to be contradicted by an Iranian court shortly afterward. The court, which answers to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Mr. Ahmadinejad lacked the authority to grant the men freedom; it did so itself a few days later.

Ms. Shourd, 33, who became engaged to Mr. Bauer while they were all in jail, was released after payment of $500,000 in bail. The Iranian authorities said the same amount was paid for each of the two men last week.

Though there were widespread reports that the Sultanate of Oman, which has diplomatic relations with both Iran and the United States, had made the payments, Ms. Shourd said on Sunday that no one had publicly taken credit for bailing them out. Oman was the first stop for all three hikers on their journeys home, and they issued a statement thanking Sultan Qaboos bin Said after the two men arrived there on Wednesday.

Ms. Shourd declined to say when the wedding would take place, except that she hoped it would be very soon. Mr. Fattal will be the best man.

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Ex-Mortgage CEO and Homeless Man Get Sentenced (WIDK)

(WIDK) — A homeless man gets sentenced.  So does the Ex-CEO of a large mortgage company.  Was justice properly served?

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Government Pays $600 Million In Benefits To DEAD People (WIDK)

Posted to WIDK by Emily Moore

WASHINGTON (Sam Hananel, AP) — The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years, a watchdog report says.

Such payments are meant for retired or disabled federal workers, but sometimes the checks keep going out even after the former employees pass away and the deaths are not reported, according to the report this week from the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general, Patrick McFarland.

In one case, the son of a beneficiary continued receiving payments for 37 years after his father’s death in 1971. The payments - totaling more than $515,000 - were only discovered when the son died in 2008.

The government has been aware of the problem since a 2005 inspector general’s report revealed defects in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. Yet the improper payments have continued, despite more than a half dozen attempts to develop a system that can figure out which beneficiaries are still alive and which are dead, the report said.

“It is time to stop, once and for all, this waste of taxpayer money,” it said.

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said Friday that the agency has already adopted 10 of the inspector general’s 14 recommendations for stopping the improper payments.

“Though we have implemented many positive reforms, I remain deeply committed to keeping this a top priority and to working with our IG to ensure the proper internal controls are in place to protect the taxpayers and our employees and retirees,” Berry said in a written statement.

Berry said the agency is attempting to recoup its losses, including $113 million currently in collection.

There are about 2.5 million federal workers who receive over $60 billion in benefit payments from the program each year. The improper payments represent less than two tenths of one percent of the program, Berry said.

Federal officials have tried matching the fund’s computer records with the Social Security Administration’s death records, checking tax records and improving the timeliness of death reporting.

OPM has also sampled its records of all recipients over 90 years old to confirm whether they are still alive. In 2009, there were more than 125,000 recipients identified as over 90 and about 3,400 over 100 years old.

Both the Obama administration and Congress have made it a higher priority to crack down on improper government payments.

Last year, government investigators found that more than 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each from the massive economic recovery package went to people who were either dead or in prison.

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Only 55 Percent Of Young Americans Have Jobs, Lowest Since WWII (WIDK)

Posted to WIDK by Bianca Coombs

(Zachary Roth, The Lookout) - Unemployment among young adults is at its highest point since World War II, new data show.

And it’s having a disconcerting impact on the trajectory of their careers and lives.

“We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers,” Andrew Sum, an economist with the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University told the Associated Press.

Just 55.3 percent of people between 16 and 29 were employed in 2010 on average, the according to new figures released by the Census Bureau. That represents an enormous drop from 67.3 percent in 2000. Among teens the figure was less than 30 percent.

The result? Young people are delaying taking the steps that traditionally represent movement into adult life: moving to a new place, getting married, and buying a new home. Just 4.4 percent of 18- to 34-year olds moved across state lines — again, the lowest level since World War Two (though such moves have been declining since long before the recent downturn, it’s worth noting). Roughly 5.9 million Americans between 25 and 34 lived with their parents. That’s up by 25 percent since before the recession began in late 2007. (Men are nearly twice as likely as women to move back in with Mom and Dad.) The marriage rate for those between 25 and 34 fell to 44.2 percent, also a new low. And home ownership declined for the fourth straight year.

“Many young adults are essentially postponing adulthood and all of the family responsibilities and extra costs that go along with it,” Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau told the AP. If that continues, it would make the U.S. more like Europe, where youth unemployment is far higher and many people continue to live with their parents into their 30s.

In addition, studies have shown that when people experience unemployment at a young age, it depresses their likely earning power over the course of their entire career. “These people will be scarred, and they will be called the ‘lost generation’ - in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster,” Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, said.

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