You would be wrong. In recent years, DNA testing has freed 72 inmates from prison –eight from death row. Each year brings new advances that expand the universe of cases where DNA analysis can help. But the political and legal systems are just now waking up to the potential of this rapidly improving technology. Only two states –Illinois and New York –give inmates the right to use the latest DNA testing....
But Medco’s customers and other drug makers have more worries than Merck’s head start. Could Merck gain access to proprietary information about other drug companies that work with Medco? And would Medco promote Merck drugs at the expense of rival products that might be less expensive? Merck chairman P. Roy Vagelos did not entirely reassure competitors. “The house brand usually wins, doesn’t it?” he said last week. But Medco chief Martin Wygod insists his company will operate as a “stand-alone” subsidiary–with outside experts to evaluate drugs and “more than a Chinese wall” around proprietary information....
Nothing could prepare me for the numerous text messages I read going to bed one night this past February. My twelve-year-old son’s texts come to my iPad, but I rarely read them. This night, the sheer quantity of them led me to read. They all said the same thing: “Braeden, are you really gay?” Trying to keep calm, I started reading them to my husband, Scott. It was almost midnight and Braeden was fast asleep, but Scott insisted we wake him up and ask him if it was true....
Drug regimens that control HIV have been around since 1996 and now cost less than a dollar a day. Yet 56,000 people are dying untreated every week, and 6 million of the world’s 40 million HIV-infected people now need immediate care. After years of inaction, governments and relief agencies are racing to address the crisis, but they’re moving in different directions. The 3 by 5 initiative is the boldest effort yet to integrate and streamline their efforts....
As readers know, I’m a longtime booster of index mutual funds. These funds follow the market as a whole. Tons of research has shown that most money managers don’t beat the markets they invest in, after costs. Maybe your own stocks or funds have excelled in the past couple of years, but the odds are against you in the long run. Indexing puts the odds on your side. Today, however, there’s more than one way of indexing....
And so does poor old India. For 50 years the national identity has depended on isolation from perceived enemies - from plotting neocolonialists in the West, from greedy multinational companies, even from those intrepid Indians who resisted the official creed of self-sufficiency. But now satellite TV has come to Bihar, and Coca-Cola, too. Health and education will one day follow. The leaders in New Delhi have a new national ideal - rapid growth - and, at least in spirit, they have thrown open the doors to multinationals everywhere....
April 15, 2008 Pope arrives, Washington, D.C. April 17, 19 & 20 Masses for the Masses: The masses at Washington’s Nationals Park and New York’s Yankee Stadium will provide opportunities for Benedict to confirm Roman Catholics in their faith. Look for the pope to mention the need for a personal encounter with the living Jesus while showcasing the sacredness of the liturgy and the beauty of the church’s tradition. Translation: don’t expect dancing girls on the altar or Radiohead tunes from the choir....
Corporate America, it seems, is learning to share. Frequent fliers like Brule are defecting in droves to time-share jet services like NetJets and Citation Shares, which maintain large fleets of corporate aircraft–usually twin-engine jets with six to 12 seats. After buying a symbolic stake in one plane, customers are guaranteed access to a similar plane within a few hours of notifying the company. The programs are growing at a breakneck pace....
We live under the guise of democracy, but there is no separation of powers. Widespread corruption permeates the governing elite, as evidenced most recently by the sentencing of President Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother earlier this year. President Hernández himself has been identified in U.S. courts as a co-conspirator in a drug conspiracy case. Democratic institutions intended to investigate public officials linked to organized crime have been largely disabled. Scores of human rights violations have occurred, including assassinations of political candidates, journalists, lawyers and judges....
The Spin Doctors’ new album, “Turn it Upside Down,” is a worthy follow-up to “Kryptonite.” At a time when young bands tend to wallow in noise and negation, the Spin Doctors continue to embrace everyone and everything. Guitarist Eric Schenkman, 29, glides irreverently through pop, funk, jazz and bullish, distorted, ’70s-style rock. (Kurt Cobain’s guitar said, What for? Schenkman’s says, Why not?) And front man Chris Barron – a 26-year-old hippie, history buff and thinker of deep thoughts – offers lovely, nimble melodies and lyrics filled with an eccentric poetry: “I’m beige and funky, like a rubber band/I’m a lapis-eyed devil with my pen in hand....
Most jobs remain safe, of course. But even people who feel immune sometimes get that heart-stopping tap on the shoulder. “There’s a feeling of insecurity,” says financial planner Janet Briaud of Briaud Financial Planning in Bryan, Texas. “Clients say, ‘It’s still good, but it might get bad so I need to be prepared’.” Surprisingly, planning isn’t much different whether your job is tenuous or not. First, secure your base, so a turn of fortune can’t wipe you out....
Not far from Zaire’s border with Rwanda, relief workers found a little boy sitting on a pile of guns and corpses, next to the bodies of his parents. The child, 2 or 3 years old, couldn’t say his own name, so his rescuers called him Pinocchio. Apparently he had been sitting there for two days, after a mortar bombardment panicked a crowd of refugees, setting off a mad stampede in which more than 100 people were trampled to death....
Biden has also made recent complaints about what he sees as confrontational lines of questioning. When reporters last week asked about the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield, Biden answered, “I want to talk about happy things, man.” “I’m concerned you guys are asking me questions that I will answer next week,” he continued. “It’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.” During the same interaction, the president corrected himself to say the questions were “legitimate” after first characterizing them as “negative....
The well-intentioned but very-much-a-work-in-progress system has generated mixed reviews this season. Most in baseball agree with the basic idea — get as many calls right as possible — but the implementation of the challenge/replay process is a different story. Gone are the days when Earl Weaver or Billy Martin would come charging out of the dugout spewing profanities and venom that would make hardened criminals blush when they disagreed with a call....
It wasn’t the pizza that got the juices flowing at the Pierre. As the age of interactive media finally dawns, business people realize they are biting into something very tasty. Measuring this market is a fool’s exercise now: estimates range from $4 billion to $14 billion by 1995. But it’s going to be big: a gold rush, a revolution or, as Goldman, Sachs likes to call it, a “communacopia” of untold riches....
MORE: Active players that’ll follow A-Rod into 3,000 hit club | A-Rod gets his ball back … at a price As part of this resolution, Mr. Rodriguez and the Yankees have agreed that a total of $3.5 million in charitable contributions will be made by the club, with $1 million going to the following charities that have long enjoyed the support of one or both: the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, the Boys & Girls Club of Tampa, and Pitch In For Baseball; and $2....
Said had always been in exile from mainstream culture. Born in 1935 to a prosperous Christian family in Jerusalem, he spent most of his childhood in Egypt and Lebanon, followed by the United States, where he attended boarding school and Princeton University. In Cairo, the young Arab was steeped in Shakespeare and Beethoven. Later, living and teaching in the United States for four decades, he became an outspoken critic of America’s media, government and foreign policy–an Ivy League professor speaking on behalf of Gaza’s dispossessed....
The U.S. Naval Academy is foundering in a sea of bad ink. Last week Academy Superintendent Adm. Charles R. Larson ordered an unprecedented “stand-down,” canceling all leave to give his charges time to discuss proper conduct. But midshipmen complain that there is no shortage of talk about basic principles like honor and integrity at the venerable 151-year-old institution on the banks of the Severn River. The problem is translating those principles into practice....
