Greece

The Greek government may think it has given significant ground in its latest proposal but the creditors appear to be saying think again. The mood goes from bad to good and back again. In terms of absolute numbers, the distance between the two sides isn't huge. But the political gulf is significant.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is caught between a rock and a hard place - between the promises he made back home, and the commitments the creditors insist he must respect.
 
But these negotiations aren't just about budget targets. The Greeks are also demanding that there has to be serious discussion of debt restructuring. On that issue there is more sympathy from the IMF. But there is less from the European Central Bank and several Eurozone countries.

Beyond finances, the outcome of those negotiations will have lasting ramifications for European unity and security, raising profound questions about Ms. Merkel’s leadership and about her legacy as a primary driver of five years of austerity policies that Greeks blame for pushing them to a precipice.

 

Some financial experts say that Europe could absorb a Greek exit from the Eurozone, despite the many questions that departure would raise for creditor nations forced to write off hundreds of billions of euros.

 

If they stay or go, they will pay for their own affair, no one else.

  Just a thought.

Nonchalant....

Emanual AME Church

SC State Senator and the Minister of the Church-killed



Deadly Quake

 

 

 

A British woman has offered a public apology for posing topless on a sacred Malaysian mountain peak.

Eleanor Hawkins, 23, was one of 10 travelers who stripped down earlier this month for a photo on top of Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia. The peak is considered a sacred resting place for the region's ancestors.

Hawkins' statement was made after being charged with public indecency and jailed for three days in the southeast Asian country.

"I just want to say how relieved and happy I am to be home," said Hawkins of Draycott, England, in a statement to Sky News.

"I know my behavior was foolish and I know how much offense we caused to the local people of Sabah. For that I am truly sorry."

 

Three others -- Canadian siblings and a Dutch man -- were jailed following the incident.

 

The earthquake that followed claimed the lives of 18 climbers. Many locals blamed the travelers' act for causing the earthquake.

It would be a better relief  to do that nakedness not on the top, to avoid the quake, but on the bottom of the Mountain.  Just a safe thought.

New Cholesterol Medicine.

Praluent is the first in a new class of cholesterol-lowering biotech drugs to come before the FDA. The drugs are considered the first major advance in lowering bad, or LDL, cholesterol since the introduction of blockbuster statin drugs in the late 1980s.

More than 73 million U.S. adults, or nearly one-third, have high LDL cholesterol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Patients with high cholesterol have double the risk of heart disease.

Across company studies, patients taking Praluent, in addition to a statin, saw their cholesterol fall 46 to 60 percent, depending on the dose taken. That was significantly more than the reduction of 20 to 22 percent for patients taking a statin alone.

FDA regulators are weighing whether to approve Praluent based on its cholesterol-lowering benefit, or whether to wait for longer-term studies designed to show whether it actually reduces heart attacks and death in patients. Those data are not expected until 2017.

In 2006 Pfizer halted a study of its cholesterol drug torcetrapib, after study results actually showed higher rates of heart problems and death in patients taking it.

But the prospect of approving a new class of expensive injectable drugs for such a common condition has raised concerns among providers and payers, who worry about rising drug costs. Particularly since most statin drugs, including Zocor and Lipitor, are now available as cheap generics.

A new class pops up as the old one goes Generics. The role of Food intake can't be ignored.   Just a thought. 

Eighth-grade Dropout ....

Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who built Las Vegas' biggest hotels, tried to take over Chrysler and bought and sold MGM at a profit three times, has died. He was 98.

He built the 30-story, 1,568-room International Hotel, the world's largest hotel when it opened in the late 1960s.

When Kerkorian opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, it was again the world's largest resort hotel, containing more than 2,000 rooms. Years later, he would build another MGM Grand, this one with more than 5,000 rooms—and again, the world's largest.

Kerkorian also bought and sold the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio three times, each time realizing a profit. He also invested heavily in the auto industry and tried unsuccessfully to take over Chrysler. Net worth is 4.2 billion USD (2015) Forbes

Just a thought.

Buy swatch

Deadly zoo animals were prowling the streets of Tbilisi on Sunday after floods that killed at least nine people damaged their cages, setting them free, local news agencies reported.

Tigers, lions, bears and wolves were among the more than 30 animals that escaped from the zoo in the Georgian capital overnight.
Reuters photographs showed a marksman shooting tranquilizer darts at a hippopotamus walking past shops on a mud-soaked street.

Residents were advised to stay indoors until the animals could be captured.
Heavy rains turned the Vere river that flows through Tbilisi into a torrent that swept away dozens of buildings and cars. 
"Dozens of families remain homeless as their houses were destroyed or damaged in the capital,"  Just a terrifying thought.

Hospital Charges YOU

Some hospitals are marking up treatments by as much as 1,000 percent, a new study finds, and the average U.S. hospital charges uninsured patients three times what Medicare allows. North Okaloosa Medical Center, Florida charges uninsured and out-of-network patients 12.6 times what Medicare allows.

Part of the problem is the Convoluted U.S. healthcare system. Medical costs can be paid by private insurance companies, directly by employers, by government-funded systems such as Medicare or Medicaid, and directly by patients. Hospitals negotiate different rates with different payers.
 

Then there is in-network and out-of-network rates. And patients often don't know until after they've received a treatment whether their insurance will pay for it, or for the doctors who delivered it.

It leads to confusion, and hospitals are taking unfair advantage of this. "Because it is difficult for patients to compare prices, market forces fail to constrain hospital charges," Bai and Anderson wrote in their report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

"These hospitals have markups (ratios of charges over Medicare-allowable costs) approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs compared to a national average of 3.4," Bai and Anderson wrote.

Bai alleges certain hospitals are taking advantage of the most vulnerable patients. 
The wide variation in the charge-to-cost ratio … or why some hospitals are charging 10 times their own costs, is unknown except they CAN.

Just a thought. 

Hidden Danger ??

New York city's Department of Health will propose  that all chain restaurants add a salt-shaker-like symbol on menus next to products that contain more than the recommended daily limit of 2,300 milligrams of sodium, about 1 teaspoon of salt.

At Panera Bread, the Italian combo sandwich which includes seared steak, smoked turkey, ham, salami and onions has 2,830 mg of sodium, while the sesame jack chicken strips at TGI Friday's contain 2,700 mg of sodium. That is only one meal. By the end of the day the total intake of Sodium will be far worse.

Overconsumption of sodium increases the risk of high blood pressure, which can lead to heart attack and stroke. Correcting the high blood pressure with medication has its own side effects -bad effects that are serious sometimes.

The average American consumes about 3,400 milligrams of sodium each day, more than 2300 milligrams recommended .   "High sodium levels are probably the biggest health problem related to our food supply,"

The composition of menus may soon have more warning labels than food products. Studies have found that the vast majority of dietary salt comes from processed and restaurant foods. 

Just a thought.

Tailor...

Joyce Mitchell, 51, a prison tailor shop instructor, was arraigned on the felony charge of promoting prison contraband and misdemeanor count of criminal facilitation. Keith Bruno, Mitchell’s lawyer, entered a not guilty plea on her behalf.

Investigators are looking into whether Joyce Mitchell may have had sex with inmates other than convict David Sweat, who, along with Richard Matt, have been on the run for nearly three weeks, multiple sources told ABC News.

The two killers are on the lam after making a daring escape from an upstate prison. They planned to kill the husband of the woman accused of helping them out, a source told the Daily News on Sunday.

This high security prison has turned into a  friendly, sexually active, drug available, and big future plans type of facility. Why would any runaway and destroy own life? There must be a strong reason behind it.  Just a thought.