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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
How Parallel Universes Actually Work, Scientifically
Ex-Goldman trader turns himself in on fraud charges
By Lauren Tara LaCapra and Emily Flitter
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc
Taylor voluntarily turned himself in to agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York around 8:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Taylor in November, accusing him of fabricating trades to conceal an $8.3 billion futures position. The CFTC sought $130,000 in penalties.
Taylor's move on Wednesday is related to criminal charges that are expected to come from federal prosecutors in New York. He is expected to plead guilty to those charges later on Wednesday, the sources said. It was not clear precisely what he will be charged with.
An attorney who represented Taylor in his civil case did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. A Goldman spokesman declined to comment.
Goldman itself paid $1.5 million last year to settle charges that it had failed to appropriately supervise Taylor. The bank has since put in place procedures to catch wayward trading activity more quickly.
According to charges outlined against him, Taylor established his futures position in e-mini Standard & Poor's futures contracts on December 13, 2007. The next day, it was flagged by Goldman's controls. By the time the trade had been unwound, it had caused $118 million in losses.
After leaving Goldman Sachs, Taylor moved to a position at Morgan Stanley
(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Emily Flitter; Editing by Matthew Goldstein, Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)
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Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Penguins captain Sidney Crosby out of hospital
PITTSBURGH (AP) ? Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby is out of the hospital after breaking his jaw Saturday.
The Penguins confirmed on their Twitter account Tuesday that Crosby had been released a day earlier. He will be out of the lineup indefinitely after undergoing surgery.
Crosby was hurt in the first period of the Penguins' 2-0 win over the New York Islanders when he was struck in the mouth by a puck from a deflected shot.
The Eastern Conference-leading Penguins, with 15 straight wins, play their first game without Crosby on Tuesday night at home against Buffalo.
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Dr. Carson on Health Care | HealthWorks Collective
Dr. Ben Carson made quite a splash at the National Prayer Breakfast the other day. Elsewhere I discuss the moral vision he provides in his book, America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great. But here I want to look at his recommendations for health reform.
Most people who saw the speech were thrilled (or appalled) that he called for universal Health Savings Accounts beginning at birth. This is a fascinating idea that would merit some deeper analysis. Unfortunately, he doesn?t mention it in his book, even though he devotes a chapter to health care.
Instead, his writing offers up some off-the-cuff emotional reactions to problems he has experienced. They are not well thought through and I expect he would write something very different if he had an opportunity to dig a little deeper. Let me start that rethinking here.
He then describes one of the problems of providing free health care ? poor attitudes on the part of patients. He says their sense of entitlement turns them hostile, and even abusive, toward providers:
Contrary to popular belief, one of the reasons many physicians refuse to see indigent patients is not that they cannot pay, but because of the poor treatment they receive from such patients.
He goes on to complain about the complexity of dealing with many insurers:
Unfortunately, our healthcare insurance system has become so complex that virtually all medical offices and larger practices need billing specialists just to navigate its intricacies. All of this variation and complexity produces mountains of paperwork and requires armies of people to push it around.
He thinks this is all done to prevent fraud. But he says a better remedy would be to impose very stiff penalties on those few providers who engage in fraud, ?such as loss of one?s medical license for life, no less than ten years in prison, and loss of all of one?s personal possessions.?
Yikes! The family members of such a doctor would not be very happy about this. But, more importantly, what is called ?fraud? is often nothing more than a billing dispute. Indeed, just a few pages later, Dr. Carson relates the story of a physician friend who wanted to get into real estate development, so he sold his oral surgery practice to a colleague. Medicare decided the colleague was engaged in fraud, but he didn?t have many resources, so they went after Carson?s friend as well:
They meticulously examined fifteen years of his practice records for evidence of fraud and were only able to uncover two questionable bills, amounting to a total of $180?He was told that they would take him to trial as a co-defendant with the buyer of the practice and would convince jurors that he had knowledge or turned a ?blind eye? to the other doctor?s activity. And that eventually he would end up in federal prison if he did not plead guilty to a federal offense in connection with the $180 discrepancy?He accepted their deal and was sentenced to a one-year house arrest and a $300,000 fine.
This is how Medicare often operates. It chooses not to do simple claims adjudication before paying bills, so every five years or so, it makes a big public relations splash of criminally prosecuting providers who never should have been paid in the first place.
Also, to reduce paperwork Carson would have all payers pay all providers the exact same rate, regardless of their skills or underlying expenses. And he would require all insurers to ?become non-profit service organizations with standardized, regulated profit margins.?
He would also ?remove from the insurance companies the responsibility for catastrophic healthcare coverage, making it a government responsibility.? He thinks this would make coverage more affordable, because ?if we did not regulate utilities, few people would be able to afford their water or electricity.? He would confine insurers to ?a 15 percent annual profit, 5 percent of which would go to the government?s national catastrophic healthcare fund.?
Readers of this blog know that I am no great fan of health insurance companies and would like to see their role in health care greatly reduced. They are far too intrusive into the patient/physician relationship and have indeed piled on vast amounts of administrative costs to the entire system.? The idea of universal HSAs Dr. Carson presented during his speech might help remedy all this but the ideas presented in the book are poorly informed:
- Insurers don?t currently make anywhere near 15 percent?profits, more like 4 percent.
- Five percent of claims wouldn?t come anywhere close to funding catastrophic expenses.
- Not-for-profit insurance companies are no more efficient, accountable or affordable than for-profit ones.
- Utilities make a whole lot more money by selling services to the masses than they could by raising prices so that only a few could afford it.
- The reason utilities are regulated is because they are state-sanctioned monopolies not subject to the discipline of competition.
- Using criminal fraud to deter false claims is already being done in Medicare, with poor results.
After his prayer breakfast talk, some people thought Dr. Carson should run for president. That is a terrible idea. We don?t need more politicians, but we could use a great moral leader like Billy Graham or Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Carson?s gifts would be wasted by descending into the weeds of public policy and practical politics.
Connect: 
Authored by:
John Goodman
John C. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank established in 1983. The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal have called Goodman the ?Father of Health Savings Accounts.? Goodman?s health policy blog is the premier right-of-center health care blog on the Internet. It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector ...See complete profile
Source: http://healthworkscollective.com/johncgoodman/92141/dr-carson-health-care
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U.S. demand for skilled worker visas seen topping quota soon
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A popular U.S. visa program for skilled workers is likely to hit its quota within days after its application period opens, triggering a lottery and signaling that companies feel confident enough about the economy to hire more foreign workers.
The H-1B program will not have reached its base cap of 65,000 so quickly since early 2008, before the economic crisis hit. That was the last time a lottery was used, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes the applications.
The application period opened on Monday. The USCIS plans to announce by the middle of next week if it will hold a lottery for the visas, a spokesman told Reuters on Monday. It had previously said it anticipated the quota for the year starting October 1 could be met by Friday.
Last year the cap was not reached until June.
Preliminary paperwork that prospective visa seekers must file with the Department of Labor before applying to USCIS indicates that there is demand for well over 65,000 visas, said Jacksonville, Florida-based lawyer Ashwin Sharma, who handles H-1B visa applications for technology consulting firms. He expects a record volume of applications this year.
U.S. companies, particularly in technology, say they need the visas to fill vacant positions. But some worker-advocacy groups counter that the companies are using the visa program to hire cheaper foreign labor.
While the official quota is 65,000, the actual number of people who enter the United States on H-1Bs is far greater because workers at universities and some other workplaces don't count toward the limit. Masters and PhD graduates from U.S. universities have their own quota of 20,000 visas.
Last year, the government issued 129,000 H-1B visas - almost double level of the official quota.
The U.S. Congress is currently working on immigration reform legislation. Among proposals being considered is a revamp of the H-1B program that could raise the quota based on demand and eliminate the lottery.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-demand-skilled-worker-visas-seen-topping-quota-011854262.html
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Monday, April 1, 2013
Try Italy's Pulia region for powerful reds | Food & Drink | Rock Hill ...
Rome is eternal. Tuscany's terrific. But there's lots more to Italy. And every region has its own trademark wines.
Picture yourself in the Pulia region, a long peninsula at the southeast tip of Italy, between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. Mapmakers say that, if Italy is shaped like a boot, then Pulia is its heel.
Imagine an outdoor cafe in a small town of sunblasted, whitewashed buildings, with sandy beaches stretching down to the sea. Lunch arrives - antipasto platters of boiled octopus, raw calamari, tomato bruschetta, then a "second plate" of pasta with tomato-rabbit sauce, finally the main course of skewered lamb and sausage and veal.
Taste the potent, inky red wines they serve with them.
These wines, from the Salento province in southernmost Pulia, are from native Italian varietals including negroamaro, primitivo and aleatico, all powerful reds.
If you visit, you might help pick those grapes. Pulia is deeply into the "Agriturismo" system in which big farms, including wineries, host visitors in fancy rooms, feed them local foods and let them help with the farm work.
An important local farm and winery is Masseria Li Veli, founded in 1999 by the Falvo Family. Here are some of its wines:
Recommended:
-2010 Li Veli "Primonero" Red Wine (50 percent primitivo, 50 percent negroamaro), Salento IGT: deep purple hue, aromas of roses, flavors of black cherries and spice, soft and rich; $10.
-2010 Li Veli "Passamante" Red wine (100 percent negroamaro), Salice Salentino DOC: Deep ruby hue, aromas and flavors of ripe red plums and spice, smooth and rich; $12.
-2008 Le Veli "Pezzo Morgana" Reserva Red Wine (100 percent negromaro), Salice Salentino DOC: deep ruby hue, aromas and flavors of dried red fruits and brown sugar, long finish; $20.
-2011 Li Veli "Askos Verdeca" White Wine (90 percent verdeca, 10 percent fiano minutolo) Valle d'Itria IGT: floral aromas, flavors of ripe apricots and mangos, hint of minerals, fruity and crisp; $18.
Next day, picture yourself in a bustling trattoria in the shadow of the cathedral in the ancient city of Assisi, home of St. Francis, namesake of newly canonized Pope Francis. The waiter brings you a two-pound T-bone steak from the region's famous white cow called Chianini.
With it she proudly pours the region's locally famous but little-known elsewhere red wine called Sagrantino di Montefalco, with all the tannin and heft to handle the well-marbled beef.
Assisi is in Umbria, southeast of Florence and Tuscany. Winemaking here dates back to Roman times, and the sagrantino grape was born here, probably a natural cross of other local red grapes. Here are some examples:
Highly recommended:
-2005 Arnaldo-Caprai "Collepiano" Sagrantino di Montefalco, DOCG Umbria (100 percent sagrantino): deep ruby hue, aromas and flavors of red raspberries and cinnamon, full-bodied and rich, firm tannins, long, smooth finish; $50.
Recommended
-2006 Antonelli Montefalco Sagrantino Red Wine, DOCG Umbria, (100 percent sagrantino): deep purple hue, hint of oak, aromas and flavors of black plums and black raspberries, big, ripe tannins, long finish, $37.
-2006 Tenuta CastelBuono Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG Trento, Italia: deep purple hue, aromas and flavors of black raspberries, espresso and cloves, firm tannins; $37
Source: http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/04/01/4735487/try-italys-pulia-region-for-powerful.html
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Rubio: Reports of immigration deal 'premature'
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Even with one of the largest hurdles to an immigration overhaul overcome, lawmakers on Sunday cautioned much work remains and that no final deal has been reached.
The AFL-CIO and the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce reached a deal late Friday that would allow tens of thousands of low-skill workers into the country to fill jobs in construction, restaurants and hotels. Yet despite the unusual agreement between the two powerful lobbying groups, lawmakers from both parties tried to curb expectations that the negotiations were finished and an immigration bill was heading for a vote.
"Reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature," said Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is among the lawmakers working on legislation.
Rubio, a Cuban-American who is weighing a presidential bid in 2016, is a leading figure inside his party. Lawmakers will be closely watching any deal for his approval and his skepticism about the process did little to encourage optimism.
"Eight senators from seven states have worked on this bill to serve as a starting point for discussion about fixing our broken immigration system," Rubio said. "But arriving at a final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people's consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren't part of this initial drafting process."
Fellow Republican, Rep. Peter King of New York, was skeptical about any prospects for a deal.
"Eight guys in a room saying the border is going to be secure is not enough," said King, who is not working on the bipartisan proposal.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., helped negotiate the deal between AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue during a late-Friday phone call. Under the compromise, the government would create a new "W'' visa for low-skill workers who would earn wages paid to Americans or the prevailing wages for the industry they're working in, whichever is higher. The Labor Department would determine prevailing wage based on customary rates in specific localities, so that it would vary from city to city.
The detente between the nation's leading labor federation and the powerful business lobbying group still needs senators' approval, including a nod from Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican whose previous efforts came up short.
The measure also under serious discussion would secure the border, crack down on employers, improve legal immigration and create a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already here.
Schumer acknowledged on Sunday that the lawmakers themselves had not settled on a final deal and said the senators have not yet finished writing a bill to address the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States.
"Business and labor have an agreement," Schumer said. "This is a major, major obstacle that is overcome."
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., also warned the negotiations were not complete despite the truce between labor and business.
"That doesn't mean we've crossed every 'i' or dotted every 't,' or vice versa," said Flake, another lawmaker intimately involved in the talks.
Big labor and big business were at a standoff over wages for low-skill workers and which industries would be included. Those disputes had led talks to break down a week ago, throwing into doubt whether Schumer, Flake and other senators crafting a comprehensive immigration bill would be able to complete their work as planned.
It's a major second-term priority of President Barack Obama's and would usher in the most dramatic changes to the faltering U.S. immigration system in more than two decades.
"This is a legacy item for him. There is no doubt in my mind that he wants to pass comprehensive immigration reform," said David Axelrod, a longtime political confidant of Obama.
During the last week, an immigration deal seemed doomed. But the breakthrough late Friday restarted the talks.
Ultimately the new "W'' visa program would be capped at 200,000 workers a year, but the number of visas would fluctuate, depending on unemployment rates, job openings, employer demand and data collected by a new federal bureau being pushed by labor groups as an objective monitor of the market, according to an official involved with the talks who also spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.
A "safety valve" would allow employers to exceed the cap, the official said, if they could show need and pay premium wages, but any additional workers brought in would be subtracted from the next year's cap.
The workers could move from employer to employer and would be able to petition for permanent residency and ultimately seek U.S. citizenship. Neither is possible for temporary workers now.
"As to the 11 million (illegal immigrants), they'll have a pathway to citizenship, but it will be earned, it will be long, and it will be hard, and I think it is fair," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
The new program would fill needs employers say they have that are not currently met by U.S. immigration programs. Most industries don't have a good way to hire a steady supply of foreign workers because there's one temporary visa program for low-wage nonagricultural workers but it's capped at 66,000 visas per year and is only supposed to be used for seasonal or temporary jobs.
Separately, the new immigration bill also is expected to offer many more visas for high-tech workers, new visas for agriculture workers, and provisions allowing some agriculture workers already in the U.S. a speedier path to citizenship than that provided to other illegal immigrants, in an effort to create a stable agricultural workforce.
King spoke with ABC's "This Week." Schumer, Flake and Axelrod appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press." Graham was interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union."
___
Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rubio-reports-immigration-deal-premature-144123665--politics.html
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