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Stefano Zannini, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, is talking with reporters this morning about the situation on the ground. Zannini was in Haiti when the earthquake struck. The call should begin any minute now.

10:09: Starting yesterday, people were trying to rescue their personal effects from their houses. During the day, the streets are crowded with people looking for help and trying to find their families. “I can see thouands of them walking in the streets, asking for help, asking for everything. Trying to stop every car they see in order to get something to go on.”

10:11: At night, people are sleeping in the streets. They are protecting themselves with plastic bags or blankets. They are afraid to go into their houses.

10:13: Patients are being transported on doors used like stretchers, as well as by car, truck and motorbike. There are a few hospitals that were not destroyed in the earthquake.

10:15: “In our hospitals, there are thousands of people waiting for surgery.” They have been able to begin surgery in one hospital in the Cite Soleil area.

10:16: There are many patients with open fractures who need surgical intervention. First surgical activity last night was a complicated delivery. “I am very proud to share with you that we were able to save the life both of the baby and the mother.”

10:19: Trucks are moving around the city collecting dead bodies.

10:20: Three main needs: Medical care (including surgery), food, and drinking water.

10:21: Asked about spread of disease, he says they are focused on surgery. “We have thousands of people who need immediate surgical intervention.”

10:24: Asked about coordinating with the UN or other groups, he says: We are focused around our teams.

10:26: There were hundreds of dead bodies at their facilities, which they turned over to trucks sent by the Haitian government.

10:30: At the moment we are working in public [hospitals] that survived the earthquake. The group is also bringing in an inflatable hospital, which will include an operating theater. It is supposed to arrive today, and the setup will begin immediately.

10:34: Yesterday, they received a delivery of drugs and other medical supplies via plane. “At the moment we have enough supplies.” More supplies are coming in. They have been able to recover some of the materials from their damaged hospitals.

10:38: They are working 24 hours a day, rotating staff in 12-hour shifts.

10:46: Mental health teams will be arriving in the next few days. But surgical activities remain the top priority.

10:47: They have 40 tons of materials on the way.

10:48: They still expect more people to be pulled out alive of collapsed buildings. It is impossible for me at the moment to estimate the quantity of patients who will be arriving in the coming days.

10:50: The English-language portion of the call is over.

A new report from a key committee of the British Parliament finds that incarceration policy in the United Kingdom has swerved far off track and needs sweeping reform. It’s a refreshing message from the British government, and one that I hope resonates on this side of the Atlantic.

The House of Commons Justice Committee Report, two years in the making, expresses serious concern that “the Government seems to accept the inevitability of a high and rising prison population and remains committed to building larger prisons” and calls for public investment in reentry, community supervision, alternative sentences and other rational reforms. Thanks for leading the way, UK.

The report’s list of 98 conclusions and recommendations reads like a prison reform manifesto, and it would be wonderful to see even a third of these bullet points make their way into law. I also hope that the committee report can offer some lessons and guidance to Senator Jim Webb’s proposed criminal justice commission here in the USA. Well, first I hope that Webb’s commission actually happens (President Obama apparently supports the idea and Harry Reid, with all of the political capital he has left, says creating Webb’s commission is a top-ten priority in 2010).

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The most difficult thing about making sandwich cookies, whether you’re making an Oreo-type sandwich with crispy cookies or a whoopie pie with cake-like cookies, if getting all the cookies to be about the same size and shape. When they’re not, your sandwiches will look less than perfect, and you’ll often end up with a cookie leftover that just doesn’t fit well with anything else. My solution to this problem is practice. When you form enough balls of cookie dough, your eye gets used to a certain size. Weighing the dough out works even better, although you still have to shape them into balls.

The Whoopie Pie Pan from Williams-Sonoma makes things even easier. It looks a lot like a muffin-top pan, with shallow rounds for dough that limit how big your cookies can get. All you need to do is place your dough into the rounds and you’ll end up with cookies that are all the same size every time (though it is possible to get different thicknesses if you significantly over or under-estimate the amount of dough you need). The pan is nonstick and can be used with a variety of cookie doughs, from whoopie pies to brownies. It would be great for making ice cream sandwiches, too, and can hold a loose batter together when simply dolloping the batter onto a baking sheet can’t. Still, most of the time you’ll be able to make cookies like these without a specialized pan, but if you make them often, this will definitely speed up the process for you and might be worth the investment!

Filed under: Truck, Safety, Technology, Ford

If you knew that Big Brother someone who controls your paycheck was watching how you were treating his or her company-owned vehicle, would that knowledge alter the way you drive it? That exact functionality is available with the Crew Chief application of the Ford Work Solutions package, and initial reports are showing that employees driving Ford F-Series trucks equipped with the technology are using less fuel and driving more safely.

According to Bill Frykman, Ford Work Solutions product and business development manager, “We’ve seen fuel economy gains of upwards of 20 percent through the modification of driver behavior. There’s decreased top speed, less engine idle time and more efficient operation of the vehicle.” As any fleet manager will tell you, a 20 percent savings in fuel costs is huge – and all through simple behavioral modification, not costly changes in a vehicle’s running gear.

Interestingly, Frykman also suggests that Ford Work Solutions could someday merge with the Blue Oval’s well-regarded Sync system, creating a package that’s suitable for both commercial and private use depending on the suite of applications the owner chooses to download and install.

[Source: PickupTrucks.com]

Report: Ford Work Solutions customers saving gas, driving more safely – Sync tieup coming? originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese solar power company Yingli Green Energy has received a tax credit of $4.5 million from the Treasury Department, as part of its Recovery Act Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit program — for more on that, see here. The company says it will use this fiscal incentive to finance construction of its first U.S. manufacturing plant.

The Chinese solar panel manufacturer has scoped sites in Phoenix and Austin to house its 100-megawatt manufacturing operation. The plant is expected to initially house 300 employees and cost between $20 million and $50 million to build.

The company expects to select a location in the following weeks and begin production later this year. Press reports say Phoenix has an edge over Austin.

University of Tennessee employees and their families with incomes less than $49,000 may be eligible to receive free assistance with preparing their income tax returns. Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs are certified by the Internal Revenue Service and operated by trained and certified community volunteers.

The free assistance is being promoted by The United Way of Greater Knoxville’s Knoxville Alliance for Financial Independence, as a way to help individuals maximize their refunds through free tax preparation and the claiming of tax credits such as Earned Income Tax and Child Tax Credits.

Many people need access to their tax refunds quickly and are therefore vulnerable to using rapid refund tax services that charge fees and high-interest refund loans. The idea behind VITA is to offer these individuals and families a no-cost alternative to make sure they get as much money back as they are eligible for to help stabilize their financial situation.

For example, many rapid refund preparation businesses overlook the Earned Income Tax credit that is available to low income families. This credit alone can be as much as $4,500, based on income and family size. This can make quite a substantial difference in the amount of their refund.

Participants do not need to be Knox County residents to receive VITA’s free services. For questions or further information, contact Anna Seale with Consumer Credit Counseling Service at 865-329-8006 or [email protected].

Spam is unwanted electronic mail which is sent in bulk. E-mail spam involves unwanted bulk emails which are exactly the same being sent to the recipient. Email providers usually offer filters in order to help the recipient get rid of spam mail.

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There is also instant messaging spam, which is sometimes known as SPIM. Many instant messaging services such as Yahoo! And MSN give users the option of ticking a box which enables them to only receive messages from the people on their contact list in order to prevent spam. Spam can also be found in blogs, mobile phones, forums, search engines etc.

It was Monty Python’s sketch involving a restaurant with only spam to eat which caused the term ‘spam’ to come about. In the sketch, the only food on the menu is spam, which is a reference to spam being one of the few foods available during the second world war.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Natural gas production in the Rocky Mountain region’s top gas-producing state declined in 2009 for the first time since 1997, helping push Wyoming into recession along with the rest of the country.

Last year wasn’t all doom and gloom for gas, since it was the second-biggest year for Wyoming gas volume on record.

But the state leans heavily on its gas industry and the decline had a ripple effect. State revenue is down. Unemployment is up — almost double the rate this time last year. And communities in gas-rich areas are struggling.

Reduced demand put the dent in gas production, said Rob Godby, a University of Wyoming economics professor.

“Industrial demand for natural gas is way down due to the recession,” Godby said Thursday. “For that reason, a lot of gas has been going into storage.”

Wyoming’s annual natural gas production increased steadily from 1998 through 2008, nearly doubling in that time and bestowing the state with billion-dollar budget surpluses.

Last year, the state produced about 2.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, down about 9 percent from 2008’s record 2.3 trillion cubic feet, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Prices since have recovered to around $5.25 per mcf. But with gas providing an ever-growing share of state government revenue — about 60 percent of severance taxes in a minerals-rich state — state economists have had to keep revising their projections downward.

Each $1 change in the price for Wyoming gas equals $270 million more — or less — annual state income.

Gas producers need to keep drilling new wells for the state to keep producing more or even the same amount of gas, said Bruce Hinchey, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming.

“When a well comes on, that’s usually about the best it’s ever going to do. Then it’s going to be in a continual decline until it depletes out,” Hinchey said.

But fewer wells are being drilled. The Wyoming office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management reports that it processed 2,162 oil and gas drilling permits last year, down from 3,681 in 2008 and the lowest number since 2003.

Especially because drilling is much more labor-intensive than maintaining an existing well, less drilling means fewer jobs. The state’s energy industry shed 20,000 jobs last year, many of them in the gas fields.

Those cuts contributed significantly to Wyoming’s unemployment rate, which increased from 3.7 percent a year ago to 7.2 percent last fall. The rate since has improved to 7 percent.

Meanwhile, less drilling and fewer jobs have taken a heavy economic toll in gas-rich areas. Year-to-year sales tax revenue, Godby said, is down 30 to 40 percent in some places.

If there’s any good news in all of this, low gas prices have been good for home heating costs in a cold winter. Economists expect large inventories of gas to help keep prices under control.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• T. Boone’s New Natural Gas Media Campaign Takes ‘Talking One’s Book’ To A Whole New Level
• Natural Gas Bid Prices Double In Pennsylvania Auction
• EIA: No Salvation For Natural Gas Investors In 2010

J&J said today that it’s recalling certain lots of Tylenol, Motrin and Rolaids. The issue: “an unusual moldy, musty, or mildew-like odor” according to the press release. There’s a complete list of the lots being recalled at the bottom of the release.

In a “small number of cases,” the pills were associated to problems such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, the company said. The issue is apparently related to a trace amount of a chemical in wood pallets that are used to transport and store product packaging materials. (The chemical is called 2,4,6-tribromoanisole.)

This has been a problem for J&J for a while now. Customers were complaining back in 2008 that their pills smelled musty, and the company recalled some Tylenol lots last November. An FDA report made public earlier this week says the company didn’t properly follow protocols at some of its manufacturing plants, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

A spokeswoman for McNeil, the J&J subsidiary that sells the drugs, told Dow Jones that the company “is actively working in consultation with the FDA to address their concerns.”

Photo: Associated Press

It’s hard to argue against the fairness of President Barack Obama’s proposed tax on banks to recoup the costs of last year’s bailouts. On logical grounds, though, there is a reason to be skeptical.

Administration officials worry about a credit crunch and want banks to lend more. Banks don’t lend out of thin air — they need liabilities on the other side of their balance sheets to fund new loans. The proposed tax would assess a 0.15% levy on bank liabilities (minus insured deposits.) Taxing bank liabilities after their big bailout might be fair. And as the administration notes, it might be a deterrent to banks against about taking on too much leverage and taking on unwise risks. But it’s not an incentive to lend, something to remember the next time they’re getting bashed for worsening the credit crunch.

It just shows, there are few easy choices in this post-crisis world, and doing what is right often works at cross purposes with doing what is good.

Among the new 3D games for the Palm Pre that hit the App Catalog last week were two old favorites from my PalmOS days: Monopoly and Scrabble. Having spent countless hours playing Handmark Monopoly and Niggle (the freeware game that evolved into Handmark’s Scrabble, which I installed for this test), including currently via Classic, thought it would be fun to compare the webOS versions to their PalmOS predecessors. My take? It’s a split decision.

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Everyone has been obsessed about slates lately, don’t ask me why. OK, I know why, but you have to admit it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Some folks are anxious for a big slate running an ARM processor, although there are many who insist on having Windows on board so the slate will be a full, familiar computer. The DigitalRise X9 is clearly aimed at the latter group, and it looks to be a pretty decent Windows slate computer.

The X9 seems to be a real product, although it was strangely not present at the CES this year. It’s also produced by DigitalRise, a company famous for iPhone clones. In any event. the X9 has all of the right specs to produce a decent slate, including multitouch.

• CPU: Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz
• Memory: 2GB DDR2
• HDD: 160G SATA2.5
• Monitor: 10.2” TFT Multitouch screen, 1024 x 600
• Battery: Li-ion 3000mAh
• Webcam: 1.3 megapixels
• Wireless network: 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, WCDMA-SCDMA, CDMA2000
• Video card: Intel 950 integrated graphics

The DigitalRise X9 is listed for $780, but there is a “two week waiting list”. I guess it’s real.

(via engadget)

That’s essentially the question asked by Gallup’s Well-Being Poll. Its results for 2009 are in. America’s well-being in 2009 looked an awful lot like it did in 2008. Actually, it looked identical — according to the Overall Well-Being Index Composite Score. Given what an awful recession the U.S. was in during 2009, you might suspect shenanigans. But the result kind of makes sense, when looking deeper into Gallup’s methodology.

In fact, most measures of well-being were down, while only one was up. Here’s a chart with the full results:

As you can see, the only sub-index score that actually increased year-over-year was the “Life Evaluation Index.” So what was this mystical category of well-being that was so substantially better in 2009 that it overshadowed all of the other categories’ decline? According to Gallup:

The Life Evaluation sub-index is based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, which asks people to evaluate their present and future lives on a scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst possible life and 10 is the best possible life. Those who rate today a “7” or higher and the future an “8” or higher are considered to be “thriving.” Those who rate today and the future a “4” or lower on the scale are considered to be “suffering.” The overall Life Evaluation Index score is calculated as the percentage of thriving Americans minus the percentage of struggling Americans.

I think that sort of makes sense, because it sounds like the Life Evaluation Index is more forward looking than the others. You may remember that 2008 was a year — particularly the second half — of great uncertainty and pessimism. The economic world as we knew it was crumbling around us. Americans likely didn’t know what to think about their future, but it didn’t look good.

In 2009, however, stability ensued. Even though unemployment increased and the recession continued, I find it completely plausible that people would have been more optimistic about the future in 2009 than in 2008. But given all that unemployment and recessionary agony, I’m also unsurprised that all those other sub-indices showed declines in 2009.

The Work Environment Index is particularly notable, since it had the largest decline. Gallup explains:

The Work Environment Index includes four items: job satisfaction, ability to use one’s strengths at work, trust and openness in the workplace, and whether one’s supervisor treats him or her more like a boss or a partner.

So what drove that down? How about unemployment increasing from 7.4% to 10%? It’s hard to have trust in the workplace or feel like your boss treats you like a partner when you’re worried a pink slip could be in your future. I know I never felt worse about my work environment when at a firm undergoing mass layoffs (before I came to The Atlantic!). And you can hardly use your strengths at work when there’s little to do there, in an economy that has come to a near-halt.

As the net job losses come to an end (let’s hope in 2010), this and other well-being factors might get better. But if 2010 turns out to be a completely stagnant year, that future optimism that held the line in 2009 could suffer and result in a lower overall well-being score for 2010. And if, somehow, we end up in a double-dip recession, then all bets are certainly off.

New York City is embracing California’s unwanted Chihuahuas. More than a dozen of the goggle-eyed poochies from San Francisco were flown to New York last week, where the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) will help them find new homes.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Chihuahuas, best known for inhabiting the handbags of Paris Hilton and other Hollywood simpletons, became New Yorkers this month after being rescued from the West Coast. The evacuation was in response to what ASPCA calls the “massive overpopulation of Chihuahuas in California.”

Diane Wilkerson, director of the ASPCA volunteer program, blames a change in Hollywood trends and the poor economy for the increase in homeless Chihuahuas.

“Small dogs are very, very popular here in New York, so there seemed to be a really nice way New York could work with this,” she said.

During the Wrooom – Press Ski Meeting held in the Dolomites by Ducati and Ferrari teams this week, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta stated he has high hopes that the number of riders on the MotoGP grid will boost in 2012, following the decision to increase the maximum engine capacity to 1000cc.

Grid numbers dropped to as low as 17 by the end of the season, but Ezpeleta is confident that it will increase to 22 thanks the new regulations, even if he insists Dorna won’t specifically target any company… (read more)