Gold Tops $800 for 1st Time Since 1980 nearing all time high

When gold went over $800 an ounce in 1980 it was all that investors were talking about. With gold approaching its all time high of $875 you really aren't hearing much if anything. Is gold the next oil?

clipped from ap.google.com NEW YORK (AP) — Gold barreled above $800 an ounce Wednesday for the first time since 1980 as investors cheered the Federal Reserve's decision to lower its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point. The Fed dropped its federal funds rate to 4.50 percent, as the markets widely anticipated. Lower interest rates tend to undermine the dollar and raise the allure of precious metals as an investment alternative. The dollar stumbled to another low against the euro following the Fed's decision on Wednesday, helping drive gold higher. Gold last topped $800 an ounce in 1980, when prices reached as high as $875 an ounce in January. Adjusted for inflation, an $800 ounce of gold in 1980 would be worth more than $2,000 today. While the $800 mark means something less than it did 27 years ago, gold prices have surged roughly $150 an ounce since mid-August

New study says a seventh of elderly Americans suffer from dementia

A new study suggests that one out of seven Americans over the age of 70 has dementia. Researchers conducted individual assessments of 856 people drawn from an earlier study that included a representative sample of Americans over 50.As they report in the latest issue of Neuroepidemiology, the findings suggest that 3.4 million Americans aged 71 or older suffer from some sort of dementia, including Alzheimer's. This is about 30% higher than earlier estimates.

From the Alzheimer's Reading Room

McCain Likes Retail Clinics, Drug Imports and Tax Credits

Its too bad we can't clone some of these candidates into one great candidate.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Like many Republicans, McCain is pushing for new tax credits that would put individual insurance on a more equal footing with employer-sponsored insurance He wants safety protocols that would allow importation of cheaper drugs from foreign countries, a possible cost-saving measure that has been loudly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. He’d also support clinics in retail outlets, which have been spreading rapidly despite objections from many doctors’ groups. “I don’t think there should be mandates for health insurance.” “I’m not gonna force Americans to do it. I don’t think that’s the role of government….If we bring down health-care costs more Americans are going to be able to afford it.” “We’re going to have to have a Medicaid fund that will provide those people with sufficient funds to get health insurance.” “You will be gauged and paid by how” well the patient fares. “We should not be paying for medical errors.”

McCain Likes Retail Clinics, Drug Imports and Tax Credits
Posted by Jacob Goldstein

John McCain will be talking health care this morning with a bunch of journos, including the WSJ’s Laura Meckler. Click here to watch a live video feed of the event, which starts at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Like many Republicans, McCain is pushing for new tax credits that would put individual insurance on a more equal footing with employer-sponsored insurance. But he also calls for other, more controversial steps.

He wants safety protocols that would allow importation of cheaper drugs from foreign countries, a possible cost-saving measure that has been loudly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. He’d also support clinics in retail outlets, which have been spreading rapidly despite objections from many doctors’ groups.

McCain describes his health platform here, and the Health Blog wrote about it here. His talk today is part of a series of candidate forums organized by the Federation of American Hospitals and Families USA and hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation. .

Several candidates have already appeared at the forum. Read our posts on what Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Hillary Clinton had to say.

We’re liveblogging McCain’s talk.

11:10 Sounds like he’s reading from his Web site, listing one idea after another — tort reform, transparency, biotech generics, curbing costs, etc.

11:14 “I don’t think there should be mandates for health insurance.” He’s distinguishing himself here from Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who have called for mandates. His Republican rivals haven’t called for national mandates. “I’m not gonna force Americans to do it. I don’t think that’s the role of government….If we bring down health-care costs more Americans are going to be able to afford it.”

11:18: He touches what for some docs is a third-rail of health-care economics: pay for performance. He suggest, for example, that a heart-surgery team be told: “You will be gauged and paid by how” well the patient fares. He adds: “We should not be paying for medical errors.” Medicare has taken tentative steps in this direction already, but it’s been pretty limited so far.

11:25: He explains the rationale for his tax credits ($2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for a family) for individuals to buy their own insurance. “When it’s their money and it’s their decision, I think they make much wiser decisions than when it’s provided by somebody else.” And, like a good Republican presidential candidate, he quotes Ronald Reagan: “Nobody ever washed a rental car.”

11:28: Under questioning, he agrees that the credits alone won’t be enough for everybody. Federal money will be needed to cover people who are unable to find affordable insurance because they are chronically ill. “We’re going to have to have a Medicaid fund that will provide those people with sufficient funds to get health insurance.”

11:31 Health-savings accounts have been popular with wonks, but not so much with consumers. McCain’s a fan: “I still think they are a great idea for Americans,” he just said in passing.

11:38: McCain explains why he voted against the Medicare drug benefit. “It was intended for people who were low income Americans, but we covered everybody. We also put in provisions, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, that we won’t allow” negotiation for the price of the drugs. But he says it would be politically unrealistic to roll back the program if he were elected. If i were dictator — a nice thought — I’d say let’s look at who really needs this Medicare Part D.”

11:40: In answering the Part D question, he adds another note that the pharma industry isn’t going to like: “We know that the pharmaceuticals from Canada are perfectly safe — they’re just cheaper.” He’s said he’d support importation of drugs.

11:43: McCain voted against the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. He says there was “a lot of smoke and mirrors” in the bill, and the fight over it was “another indication of how bitterly partisan we are here in Washington.”

11:46: On the overuse of new medical technologies: “It certainly is one of the great contraditions in America today that every time we make it better and easier to treat people in America the costs go up rather than down.” He suggests that this is in part because doctors practice defensive medicine to avoid liability lawsuits. And he says the way Medicare reimburses can be an incentive for doctors to perform unnecessary procedures. He’s called both for tort reform and for re-structuring the way Medicare payments are made.

Expect $60 oil soon?

Interesting contrary view.

clipped from members.forbes.com Here's how Littell sees it. Last year Saudi petrocrats thought demand would slacken at the same time that oil production rose from sources outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations. They cut back Saudi production from 9.5 million barrels a day in March 2006 to 8.5 million a year later in order to keep supply and demand balanced and crude prices hovering around $60 per barrel. But the Saudis overestimated non-opec production. Check out the relationship between prices and production in the accompanying chart. The Saudis hold the key to long-term oil prices since they are one of the few exporters--Kuwait and Abu Dhabi are the others--with the ability to increase production significantly. How long before we get some relief? Littell expects the impact of all that additional oil to hit U.S. markets in a couple of months or so. The Saudis "didn't plan on $80 oil," he says. "They wanted to keep it around $60 and did the wrong thing."

Satellite Shot of Killer Storm

Great shot from satellite.

clipped from news.aol.com Tropical Storm Noel heads toward the Bahamas in this satellite image taken Tuesday. Southeast Florida may be placed under a tropical storm watch later Tuesday, forecasters said.

Cows attack dog walker in field, No Joke

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A Sussex policeman has been discharged from hospital after an attack by about 50 cows left him with four broken ribs and a punctured lung. Insp Chris Poole, 50, said the cattle repeatedly butted and stamped on him when he was out walking his dog on the South Downs earlier this month. The officer, from Brighton, said he was crossing a field along a footpath. One cow butted him in the back, forcing him to the ground, before the others joined in, he recalled. Mr Poole said he managed to escape when his Golden Retriever, called Zak, fled, distracting the cows. It was unlucky the cows attacked... it is very rare but obviously it can happen Insp Chris Poole He suffered bruising from his thigh to his shoulder, and faced a life-threatening situation three days later when one of his broken ribs severed an artery. Mr Poole, who spent 11 days in hospital, said he wanted to warn other walkers to give cows a wide berth. He was taken to Eastbourne District General Hospital by air ambulance

Space Station Has Power System Damage

Spacewalking astronauts found evidence of damage to a key part of the International Space Station’s power system today.

Station Has Power System Damage

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Spacewalking astronauts found evidence of damage to a key part of the International Space Station’s power system today.

It was the second of five scheduled spacewalks during the shuttle mission. More than six hours of outdoor activities were originally to be devoted to unbuckling an solar array atop the International Space Station so it could be moved to the side of the station, and also doing some work on the new “Harmony” module that astronauts had installed earlier in the week and first entered on Saturday.

Those tasks proceeded relatively well, as has virtually everything else in this otherwise exceptionally smooth mission. But those successes could well be overshadowed by the discovery of shavings in one of the station's enormous rotating joint assemblies, that appeared to be metallic.

The part, known as the Solar Array Rotating Joint, or SARJ, is 10 feet across and one sits toward each end of the station’s long truss. The motorized joint allows solar panels to rotate and constantly face the sun during the sunny part of each orbit.

“It’s quite clear,” said Daniel Tani, one of the two spacewalkers, describing what he saw after removing a protective cover over an assembly of gears and bearings. “There’s metal-to-metal scraping, or something, and it’s widespread.”

A sharp-eyed space station flight controller had noticed several weeks ago that the joint on the right side of the station was experiencing unusual vibrations as it rotated. Further examination revealed that the motor on that joint was using greater-than-expected amounts of current, which suggested that it was having to work harder than it should to turn the paddlewheel-like array. Mission managers added the inspection to the spacewalk schedule on Friday.

Mission managers said in an afternoon briefing that the origin of the shavings is still unclear. The leading theory, they said, was that foil backing on a protective cover could be rubbing against the mechanism and shredding into it. Mission managers had hoped the problem with the rotary joint would be easy to spot and easy to fix — something like a bolt out of place or an insulating blanket that was dragging and increasing friction, or even a leftover shop rag that was carried up to space and became lodged in the wrong place but could be removed. Before taking the cover off, Mr. Tani conducted a visual inspection of every bolt and blanket on the exterior of the device, which was made by Lockheed Martin at its Space Systems facility in Sunnyvale, and found no problems.

The problem could have ripple effects that go beyond this mission. If NASA wants a second look at the joint, a second spacewalk will have to be added to the schedule. With five spacewalks already on the shuttle mission’s calendar, it would be difficult to squeeze in another. At the same time, the days between the end of this shuttle mission and the arrival of the next shuttle in December is packed with activities for the three-person space station crew, and so even a single additional spacewalk could mean delaying the December mission.

Kirk Shireman, the deputy space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, noted said in a media briefing on Friday that there are backup motors and controllers for each rotary joint, and so the system might still be able to work after a switchover.

During the same briefing, Derek Hassman, the lead space station flight director, said that the troubled joint could be “parked” in a position that allows it to pick up a fair amount of sunlight throughout the orbit while NASA continues to investigate the problem. “As long as we can get it into an attitude that’s reasonably good for power generation, combined with what the other SARJ can produce, we wouldn’t have any significant power impacts that we couldn’t deal with,” he said.

Sites Already Leaking Black Friday Deals

Let the games begin.

clipped from money.aol.com Hurry up -- grab your coat and car keys! There's no time to waste if you want to score a bona-fide, brag-worthy holiday bargain. Sites like bfads.net are already leaking Black Friday sale details, well ahead of the post-Thanksgiving shopping day that kicks off the holiday shopping season. Despite this new tactic, the Black Friday dance will play out as it has in years past. For those who haven't caught the rerun, allow me to screen the highlights: * The setup: A handful of websites -- BlackFridayAds.com, bfads.net, Gottadeal.com, to name a few -- hype stores' marketing schedules by posting anticipated deals at holiday hot spots like Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, Best Buy, and Circuit City before the ads appear in newsprint or on the stores' websites. First, identify your most-coveted item that will go on sale Buy it before it's a steal: Before the official sale starts, make your way to the store and pick it up at the current, pre-sale price. Ask for a refund on what you overpaid:

Hot Christmas Toys #2 Cookie Monster and Ernie

WOW. I have the original cookie monster and will add these to my collection.

clipped from money.aol.com Elmo is still out there, but this year, T.M.X. Friends from Mattel's Fisher-Price is featuring Cookie Monster and Ernie.

Hot Christmas Toys #1 Hannah Montana In Concert

Hannah Montana in Concert Projected #1

clipped from money.aol.com Analysts expect the Hannah Montana In Concert Collection Doll from Play Along, a division of JAKKS Pacific, Inc., to be at the top of the sales list this holiday season.

Hannah Montana is an American Emmy Award-nominated[1] children's television series which debuted on March 24, 2006 on Disney Channel. The series focuses on Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus), who lives a double life as an average teenage girl at school during the day and a famous pop singer, Hannah Montana, at night, concealing her real identity from the public other than her close friends and family.

The show centers on 14-year-old Miley Stewart and takes place in Malibu, California. She's a teenage girl who has a big secret. Only her close family, best friends Lilly and Oliver, ex-boyfriend Jake Ryan, and bodyguard Roxy know that she is living a double life as "Teen Pop Sensation" Hannah Montana. She lives in a house by the beach with her father Robby (played by Miley's real life father Billy Ray Cyrus) and older brother Jackson (played by Jason Earles), who works down at Rico's Surf Shop by the beach. The Stewarts are from Nashville, Tennessee. Miley's mother died before the show began, leaving singer-songwriter Robby a widower and the sole caretaker of their children, giving up his previous career as a famous country singer. He is also the disguised father and manager of Hannah Montana. Miley's two best friends Lilly Truscott (played by Emily Osment) and Oliver Oken (played by Mitchel Musso) also live nearby and attend school with her. Each episode deals with life, personal conflicts, or problems that are easily solved with lessons learned by the end of the show.

Edwards Would Ban Consumer Drug Ads for 2 Years

Good or bad idea? Would you miss those Viagra ads?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Add one more health-policy prescription to a presidential campaign that’s been full of health talk. John Edwards yesterday rolled out a plan to impose tighter rules on the direct-to-consumer drug ads that have played an increasingly important role in the drug industry’s marketing arsenal. Under Edwards’s plan, a drug would have to be on the market for two years before it could be pitched directly to consumers. The plan would also require prior FDA approval of “major ad campaigns” and beef up rules about disclosing how well a drug stacks up against a placebo, according to Edwards’s Web site. “You’ve seen these ads. You know who’s paying for them, right? You are,” Edwards said yesterday at a speech in New Hampshire, the AP reported. He added that the ads are “driving up demand for the most expensive and most profitable drugs.” In the 2008 presidential race, the health-care sector has given $6.5 million to Democrats and $4.8 million to Republicans, the New York Times reports.

Global Warming Bad for Kids

clipped from www.usatoday.com Global warming is likely to disproportionately harm the health of children, and politicians should launch "aggressive policies" to curb climate change, the American Academy of Pediatrics said today. •Air pollution does more damage to children's lungs, causing asthma and respiratory ailments, because their lungs are still developing, they breathe at a higher rate than adults and are outdoors more. •Waterborne infections, such as diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, hit children especially hard. These infections rise sharply with more rain, which is expected as the climate warms. •As mosquitoes are able to move to higher ground, the malaria zone is expanding. Kids are especially vulnerable; 75% of malaria deaths occur in children younger than 5. The report briefly mentions that mass migrations are expected as regions become uninhabitable. "Children fare very poorly in these major population shifts," says Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness

French president storms out of interview

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com

School sends mixed message "BETTER...DO...DRUGS"

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com Try to spot the subliminal message on the bracelets that were handed out to children in Iowa as part of an anti-drug program: "I've Got BETTER Things to DO Than DRUGS." Congratulations to those who keyed in on "BETTER...DO...DRUGS." The Hawk Eye reports that the silicone bracelets were manufactured by Positive Promotions in New York and distributed to students in Henry County, Iowa. (Positive Promotions tried to delete the image from its website, but you can still see the bracelet here.) Shawn Twyman, the father of two high school students, says the bracelets are very popular. "The kids are jumping on it. They think it's just cute," he tells the paper, adding that the attention being paid toward those three words "kind of defeats the purpose." The company tells the Associated Press that it received two complaints, and plan to replace the bracelet with one that features the same message in all capital letters.

Space Station Has Power System Damage

clipped from www.nytimes.com Spacewalking astronauts found evidence of damage to a key part of the International Space Station’s power system today. “It’s quite clear,” said Daniel Tani, one of the two spacewalkers, describing what he saw after removing a protective cover over an assembly of gears and bearings. “There’s metal-to-metal scraping, or something, and it’s widespread.” The problem could have ripple effects that go beyond this mission. If NASA wants a second look at the joint, a second spacewalk will have to be added to the schedule. With five spacewalks already on the shuttle mission’s calendar, it would be difficult to squeeze in another. At the same time, the days between the end of this shuttle mission and the arrival of the next shuttle in December is packed with activities for the three-person space station crew, and so even a single additional spacewalk could mean delaying the December mission. Sphere: Related Blogs & Articles

Station Has Power System Damage

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Spacewalking astronauts found evidence of damage to a key part of the International Space Station’s power system today.

It was the second of five scheduled spacewalks during the shuttle mission. More than six hours of outdoor activities were originally to be devoted to unbuckling an solar array atop the International Space Station so it could be moved to the side of the station, and also doing some work on the new “Harmony” module that astronauts had installed earlier in the week and first entered on Saturday.

Those tasks proceeded relatively well, as has virtually everything else in this otherwise exceptionally smooth mission. But those successes could well be overshadowed by the discovery of shavings in one of the station's enormous rotating joint assemblies, that appeared to be metallic.

The part, known as the Solar Array Rotating Joint, or SARJ, is 10 feet across and one sits toward each end of the station’s long truss. The motorized joint allows solar panels to rotate and constantly face the sun during the sunny part of each orbit.

“It’s quite clear,” said Daniel Tani, one of the two spacewalkers, describing what he saw after removing a protective cover over an assembly of gears and bearings. “There’s metal-to-metal scraping, or something, and it’s widespread.”

A sharp-eyed space station flight controller had noticed several weeks ago that the joint on the right side of the station was experiencing unusual vibrations as it rotated. Further examination revealed that the motor on that joint was using greater-than-expected amounts of current, which suggested that it was having to work harder than it should to turn the paddlewheel-like array. Mission managers added the inspection to the spacewalk schedule on Friday.

Mission managers said in an afternoon briefing that the origin of the shavings is still unclear. The leading theory, they said, was that foil backing on a protective cover could be rubbing against the mechanism and shredding into it. Mission managers had hoped the problem with the rotary joint would be easy to spot and easy to fix — something like a bolt out of place or an insulating blanket that was dragging and increasing friction, or even a leftover shop rag that was carried up to space and became lodged in the wrong place but could be removed. Before taking the cover off, Mr. Tani conducted a visual inspection of every bolt and blanket on the exterior of the device, which was made by Lockheed Martin at its Space Systems facility in Sunnyvale, and found no problems.

The problem could have ripple effects that go beyond this mission. If NASA wants a second look at the joint, a second spacewalk will have to be added to the schedule. With five spacewalks already on the shuttle mission’s calendar, it would be difficult to squeeze in another. At the same time, the days between the end of this shuttle mission and the arrival of the next shuttle in December is packed with activities for the three-person space station crew, and so even a single additional spacewalk could mean delaying the December mission.

Kirk Shireman, the deputy space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, noted said in a media briefing on Friday that there are backup motors and controllers for each rotary joint, and so the system might still be able to work after a switchover.

During the same briefing, Derek Hassman, the lead space station flight director, said that the troubled joint could be “parked” in a position that allows it to pick up a fair amount of sunlight throughout the orbit while NASA continues to investigate the problem. “As long as we can get it into an attitude that’s reasonably good for power generation, combined with what the other SARJ can produce, we wouldn’t have any significant power impacts that we couldn’t deal with,” he said.

The real stuff on housing and subprime

Lot's of pictures and charts so you get the picture. Points out delinquencies are worst on loans made at the end of the frenzy.

clipped from krugman.blogs.nytimes.com The new Joint Economic Committee report on subprime is, aside from its policy moral, a great source document for facts about the housing bubble, illustrating some key facts about what happened, where, and when. I thought it might be interesting to readers if I gave you a few highlights, plus some useful pictures from other sources. First, in case you don’t know just how anomalous, how at odds with historical experience, the runup of prices in recent years has been, here are real housing prices over time: The overall rise in prices is, as I tried to explain more than 2 years ago, an average between modest rises in some areas and clearly bubbleicious increases in others: The popping of the bubble has produced a big, big slump: Delinquencies are already soaring to recession-type levels, even though we’re not in a recession (yet?): And the delinquencies are worst on the loans made in the final bubble frenzy:

Da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Supper" Online (Fantastic)

Absolutely fantastic. High resolution. Must be seen. Please share with friends.

clipped from news.aol.com Can't get to Milan to see Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Supper?" As of Saturday, all you need is an Internet connection. Officials put online an image of the "Last Supper" at 16 billion pixels - 1,600 times stronger than the images taken with the typical 10 million pixel digital camera. The high resolution will allow experts to examine details of the 15th century wall painting that they otherwise could not including traces of drawings Leonardo put down before painting. clipped from www.haltadefinizione.com clipped from news.aol.com See It for Yourself: 'The Last Supper' in Detail Photo Gallery Now that a detailed copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' is online, experts are likely to discover more about the famous 15th-century painting. In July, Slavisa Pesci claimed he found hidden figures in it.