Newsitem List

Most Americans were probably too busy shopping until they dropped to notice, but the U.S. Conference of Mayors just released its latest findings on hunger and homelessness in America. It's not full of holiday cheer. It also doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. Unless you've been comatose for at least the last decade. According to the report, more people were hungry and homeless in this country in 2006 than they were in 2005. Over the past several years, the number of people in ne...

I am a practicing internist proposing a hybrid health insurance plan. This plan, among others has been proposed to the "Citizen's Health Care Working Group" which has recently made proposals for universal health care which have been re-worked by Senator Wyden so as to exclude the possibility of voluntary government sposored health insurance. I believe people should be able to choose either private or government sponsored insurance....

We are a country of overweight people. Americans are tipping the scales in record numbers, with approximately 130 million who are presently considered overweight or obese. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, half of all women aged 20 to 39 in the United States are included in these figures. Many factors contribute to the growing problem, from our sedentary lifestyles to our overindulgence in high-energy, low nutritional foods. Dealing with the crisis is not easy. The marketing of energy dense foo...

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for his pioneering program of giving microcredit loans to the poor. Yunus is the first Nobel winner from Bangladesh. The prize committee said the award also was intended to build bridges between the West and Islamic countries. We plan excerpt of his acceptance speech in Oslo....

“Against the Odds: An investigation comparing the lives of children on either side of Britain’s housing divide,” published by the British homeless charity Shelter, highlights the terrible problems faced by children forced to live in temporary accommodation....

In a manifesto about what the Democrats would do in their first hundred hours in office, Speaker elect Nancy Pelosi never mentioned justice for Katrina victims. NAM editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson reminds them not to forget the failures around assistance for Katrina's victims....

A new study---buried by the media---has found the United States second only to Switzerland in the disparity between the net worth of its top 10% and everyone else. The report follows a recent study that found that America’s wealthiest top 1% earned the highest share of the national income since the 1920’s. Only Switzerland exceeded America in its extent of skewed wealth distribution....

Everybody's heard of the apple that the snake used to tempt Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The modern-day version of that fairy tale is happening in Vancouver, British Columbia....

On November 25, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a report entitled “Rationing: How much will Herceptin really cost?”...

A Federal Judge ruled this week that America must join 180 other nations in producing paper currency that can be easily identified by blind and visually impaired people. Brought by the American Council of the Blind and its members, the suit was hailed by disability rights activists, but was attacked by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as a “gimmick” that “could make things actually worse.” The NFB’s criticism of the suit led some media to claim that the community was split over the ...