Inhospitable Hospital

Worse, even. Downright Deadly, is the National Health Service:

Crowded wards, a shortage of nurses and financial problems led to 1,176 people contracting Clostridium difficile over two and half years at three hospitals in Kent.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary today described the failures as a "scandal", and said he would send the damning report to all hospital bosses in Britain so lessons would be learned.

Though the superbug was rife on the wards, managers failed to act. Isolation units were not set up, nurses were so rushed they did not have time to wash their hands and patients were left in soiled beds. Bedpans were not decontaminated properly and beds were not cleaned as well as they should have been.

The health watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, concluded that the infection probably or definitely killed at least 90 patients and was a factor in the deaths of a further 241.

Fourteen patients who died were found to have C.diff but it did not contribute to their deaths. In total 345 people died with the infection.

....The report said some patients at the hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Hospital Trust should have made a full recovery from their initial illness. But they caught the bug and died. Police will determine if there are grounds for criminal charges.

In May 2004 the chief executive of the trust, Rose Gibb, told the BBC she had known about the cleanliness problem for six months. But by September last year the hospitals were in the grip of their second outbreak.

Ms Gibb resigned on Friday before the release of the report. The commission found cases where the patient probably died as a result of their C.diff infection but it was not mentioned on the death certificate.

The number of people who died also turned out to be far higher than declared to the media and the commission.

It's a Dog's Life

For Michael Vick:

The disgraced quarterback lost the first round in his financial battle with the Atlanta Falcons on Tuesday, when an arbitrator ruled that Vick should repay just over half the bonus money he got while secretly bankrolling the long-running dogfighting operation.

The case is far from over. The NFL Players Association said it would appeal the ruling by Stephen Burbank, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, who oversaw the arbitration hearing in Philadelphia.

The Falcons argued that Vick, who pleaded guilty to federal dogfighting charges, knew he was in violation of the contract when he signed a 10-year, $130 million deal in December 2004.

The team said he had used proceeds from the contract to fund his illicit activities and sought the repayment of $19.97 million in bonuses he was paid over the past three years.

Re-Tune Your Piano Business

If you're going to survive the Chinese challenge:

The company, founded in Paris by the Austrian composer Ignaz Pleyel, has struggled through two world wars, the emergence of electronic music and the rise of Japanese pianos. To stem three decades of losses and tackle the latest threat - competition from China - the last piano maker in France is cutting annual production to 30 of the most expensive instruments from 600. It is eliminating upright pianos from its repertoire.

"I can't fight against the Chinese," said Arnaud Marion, the chairman of Pianos Pleyel. "I have no choice but to focus on quality, become the Hermès of piano manufacturing," he added, referring to the French maker of luxury scarves and handbags.

Pleyel is banking on a new grand piano, the P280, that is 2.8 meters long, or 9.2 feet, to put the company's instruments back into concert halls. Two of the P280s, with a price tag of more than €100,000, or $141,000, have been sold in Japan, and one in China. Its classic baby grands start at €30,000; those decorated by artists like Marco del Re begin at €80,000. By comparison, a concert grand made by Steinway, the U.S. piano maker, sells for almost €114,000.

Hmm. That means Pleyel's annual revenue would only be about $ 4-1/4 million dollars. Meaning wages would have to be kept verrrry low, to make a manufacturing business work. Because, later in the article, we read:

Pleyel reported a net loss of about €1.9 million in 2005 on sales of €4 million.

The numbers are playing a grim song:

French consumers can buy a Chinese-made Pearl River piano for €1,500. It costs Pleyel €2,500 just for the raw materials to produce a similar instrument.

Pleyel's soundboard is made from red spruce that grows on the northern face of the mountains in the Fiemme Valley of Italy. The white keys of concert pianos are made from the tusks of prehistoric Siberian mammoths, a few of which are exhumed each year.

"The material gives a piano its primary personality," said Cyril Mordant, a tuner at Pleyel.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 100 piano makers in France, and Pleyel's original factory in Saint Denis was the world's largest, said Marion, the company's chairman. It made 3,600 pianos in 1913, selling them in London, New Orleans and Sydney. Today, Pleyel's domestic market is shrinking: About 10,000 new pianos are sold in France each year, down from 45,000 two decades ago.

Getting Their Irish Up

This Belgian wasn't waffling:

Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (VBO)...Chairman Jean-Claude Daoust said on Tuesday that the country could take a lesson from the Irish economic model.

....Between 1993 and 2000, the Irish economy had an average annual growth of 8 percent. The unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is exceptionally low and more than 1,200 foreign companies have set up business there. A young, highly-trained population, an active immigration policy, tax reductions and efforts to attract foreign investors are a number of the keys to this success, according to VBO chairman Daoust. ....

Daoust referred to a reduction in tax, among other points. In Ireland, corporate tax comes to just 12.5 percent; in Belgium this is 33.99 percent. The VBO argues for a reduction in tax to 25 percent, roughly the European average.

Spoilsports

Old dog, same tricks, in India:

Prakash Karat and the organization he leads, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), would seem like anachronisms in the roaring capitalist economy that is India today.

But quite improbably, by seizing on India's deepening friendship with the United States, Karat and his party have lately emerged as a sharp and dangerous weapon against the coalition government, making it plain that though the Communists do not have the strength to rule India, they have the power to spoil the plans of those who do.

....India's electoral math makes it impossible for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition government, which is led by the Congress Party, to govern without the backing of its Communist allies, principally Karat's party. And so, if Karat carried out his veiled threats to withdraw support, the government could not continue, and fresh elections would have to be called before its five-year term expires in 2009.

....The Communists, long a part of the Indian political fabric, have rarely wielded as much influence as they have in the past three years as the government's allies. They have been blamed for blocking further liberalization of the economy, including the entry of foreign retail chains, for putting the brakes on proposed changes in labor laws and for opposing the nuclear deal on the basis of a lingering cold war mind-set.

"There is a knee-jerk anti-Americanism," said the historian Ramachandra Guha. "In some sense they can't forgive America for having won."

When vegetables are outlawed, only...

in Zimbabwe will outlaws have vegetables:

Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land — in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months.

The case in Chegutu district, 70 miles southwest of Harare, exposes the perversity of President Robert Mugabe's policies. Commerical agriculture was the mainstay of the economy in the days when Zimbabwe was a food exporter.

Since 2000, when the government began seizing white-owned farms, many of them violently, the agricultural sector has collapsed and the economy has gone into freefall, with inflation now at 6,600 per cent, the highest in the world.

The World Food Programme estimates that it will be feeding 4.1 million Zimbabweans, one third of the population, by the end of the year.

Keep the Changer

In jail...til they can find out who he is, and what he was up to:

A man who handed over a counterfeit million-dollar bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket and asked for change has been arrested.

Police told the BBC the man became abusive when a manager at the Giant Eagle store confiscated the fake note.

He broke an electronic funds-transfer machine at the counter and reached for a scanner gun, said police.
There is no real US bill worth $1m (£490,000). Since 1969, the $100 note has been the highest in circulation.

....After refusing to give his name to police, the suspect, who was not carrying identification, was charged with forgery and criminal mischief.

....Police are investigating whether the bogus note was among a batch distributed last year as a publicity stunt by a Dallas-based religious ministry.

Not that he was an original.

A US woman has been charged with forgery after trying to use a fake $1 million bill at a supermarket.

Alice Pike, 35, pulled out the note at a Georgia Wal-Mart store to pay for $1,672 worth of goods and asked for change, police said.

The cashier immediately noticed the bill - bearing the picture of the Statue of Liberty - was fake and called her manager who alerted the police.

Land of Opportunity

According to Claudio Michelacci and Josep Pijoan-Mas, it isn't Europe.

Since the early 1970s Americans have gradually outworked their European counterparts so much, that today GDP per capita is 30% higher in the U.S. And, hours worked explains just about all of that gap. They write:

...we argue that workers view working hours as an investment as well as a source of current income. By working longer hours, they acquire greater skills, get promoted more frequently or switch to better jobs. The greater the expected career gains, the greater the incentive to work longer hours. ...Europeans and Americans...face different incentives during their working lives.

And what explains the different incentives? It's--Paul Krugman, call your office--our old friend, income inequality:

Individuals work longer hours when wage inequality is higher. ...for the U.S. and in...Germany, there is evidence that individuals work longer hours in occupations with larger wage inequality.

But, income inequality has increased little in Germany in the last 35 years. Not so, the U.S.

The fraction of prime age male workers working very long hours has increased substantially in the US. ...this is a side effect of the higher inter-temporal return to hours worked caused by the increase in wage inequality.

Hillary Care to Comment?

On the nursing situation in Britain:

The Health Service is wasting millions a year on agency nurses - with one hospital paying a nurse more than £1,000 for a single shift.

The payment is the most extreme example of the huge sums being spent on expensive temporary staff at a time when the NHS is rationing life- saving cancer drugs it says it cannot afford.

Agency staff were being hired as cash-strapped trusts were forced to cut the number of permanent nurses and hundreds left the service to work abroad.

The money doesn't all go to the nurses themselves, but to the temp agency that provides them. Still, $200 per hour does seem a bit extravagant in light of these problems:

The Department of Health insisted in 2001 that growth in the NHS workforce would reduce the demand for agency staff. But spending on temporary nurses rose from £795million in 2000 to £1.09billion in 2005.

Last year financial problems in many trusts meant more than 20,000 nursing jobs were cut, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

More than 8,000 demoralised nurses have registered with the RCN to work abroad.

Frontline staff say patients will die as a result of plans to downgrade or close A&E units.
Campaigners say more than 20 casualty units in England are threatened with closure while ambulance services put the figure at up to 50 of the 200 currently open all hours. Critically-ill patients will have to go to 'super A&Es' which may be many miles away.

Good things come in small packages...

and, at high prices:

Baby Organic Parisienne carrots will sell for £1.45 for a 300g punnet, which equates to a hefty £4.83 a kilo.

That makes them more than four times the price charged for supermarket organic carrots, which sell for £1.11 per kilo.

While they are well over seven times the cost of ordinary supermarket loose carrots, which are just 64p per kilo.

However, the producers insist this latest incarnation of the carrot is worth the higher price, for it has some key advantages over its ordinary cousins.

They are particularly sweet-tasting and the skin is so thin and soft that they do not need to be either peeled or chopped.

While they have a stronger flavour than other types, which means they taste nice eaten raw, with dips, sliced into rounds or fried into carrot crisps.

The carrots will be sold by Marks & Spencer which believes the fun shape - they are about the size of a 50p piece - will also mean they appeal to children for school lunchboxes.

Parisienne Carrots were originally grown in window boxes in Paris in the early 1900s so that they could be picked as they were needed.

Today they are sold in French farmers' markets and are much sought after by gourmet chefs because of their superior flavour. They are picked early which partly accounts for their tiny size.

Organic carrot sales have soared in the last year and are now the biggest selling organic vegetable. Sales are up by almost 10per cent in the last 12 months, according to retail analysts TNS.

Supersize Our Fries

Sarko the Magnificent strikes at the Evil Empire Wannabe:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy levelled a new charge against Russia on Thursday, accusing the country of complicating the world's problems, and urging it to start helping resolve them.

Russia "should understand that big countries have not only rights, but also responsibilities," Sarkozy said during a question and answer session with students during a visit to the University of Sofia.

"And among those responsibilities, there are two, to be exemplary in the domain of democracy and helping to resolve the big issues in the world and not being a country which complicates the resolution of the world's big problems," he added.

The French president's statement comes ahead of his first official visit to Russia on Tuesday and Wednesday, at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin.

No 'I' in Team Award

We have a winner in Pullman, Washington:

This week, 6-foot-5 guard-forward Marcus Capers of Winterhaven, Fla., committed to WSU for 2008-09 — after WSU junior guard Taylor Rochestie decided to give up his scholarship. Rochestie's decision allowed the Cougars to squeeze in Capers with the NCAA maximum of 13.

"For somebody to do something for me, when they've got it [a scholarship] already, I'm truly blessed," said Capers, who this year is attending Montverde Academy, about 30 miles from Orlando.

....WSU informed Jerome Capers that it had no available scholarships, with a projected class of four recruits for 2008. Then Rochestie, whose Santa Barbara, Calif., family is able to afford the loss of the scholarship, broached the idea to WSU coach Tony Bennett.

"After I talked to my dad about it, I knew it was a no-brainer," Rochestie said in a statement.

"The recruits I met are exciting, athletic and are special kids. To be able to set something up for the future and continue what we've got going means the world to me."

Maybe it's a sin to tell a lie...

But it isn't illegal in the state of Washington:

Government has no business trying to stop political candidates from deliberately lying about each other in campaign ads, a divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In the 5-4 decision upholding a lower-court ruling, the high court said a state law aimed at punishing political candidates for false advertising is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

....The case stems from a 2002 state Senate race in the 35th Legislative District, which covers Mason and parts of Thurston, Grays Harbor and Kitsap counties.

During the campaign, Green Party candidate Marilou Rickert sent voters a brochure claiming the longtime incumbent, Democrat Tim Sheldon, "voted to close a facility for the developmentally challenged."

Sheldon, in fact, had twice voted against a budget that closed the facility.

After the election, which Sheldon won easily, he filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission. He said Rickert had violated a state law that prohibited candidates from sponsoring "with actual malice" political advertising that "contains a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office."

The PDC sided with Sheldon. It said Rickert had acted with "reckless disregard" for the truth and slapped her with a $1,000 fine, the maximum.

In the Happily Thereafter...

they'll be burning books that disappoint:

Children's books that don't have happy endings should be banned, it was claimed yesterday.

Youngsters are already exposed to enough misery in their lives and should be protected from such stories, says a parents' group.

The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings.

The foundation has also written to school librarians across the country to coincide with Children's Book Week, which began on Monday, urging them to take ' controversial' books off shelves.

Mood Indigo

That feelin' goes stealin' down to my fenders:

Ron, a peacock , has begun attacking any bright blue cars which drive into his territory at a stately home.

In his latest assault, on a blue Lexus, he scratched and dented every panel - causing £4,000 worth of damage.

Ron's owner, Sir Benjamin Slade, said: "He doesn't seem to be bothered by other birds, but the peacock-blue cars just drive him wild.

"He suddenly becomes aggressive and can't control himself."

....Ornithologist Quenton Spratt, at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said it was likely the peacock saw blue cars as a threat.

He said: "I've come across this in the past. I suspect the peacock thinks the car is a bird.

Watering Heights

4 b-rms, vu, 4 sale:

Just two miles from Blackheath, in ...south-east London, a converted Victorian water tower has recently come onto the market....

A product of the late Victorian drive to bring clean water to the surrounding area, today the tower is being marketed as a super-smart four-bedroom home.

...the tower contains eight storeys, negating any need for a home gym.

Each floor holds one room only: the largest measures just over 12ft long by 10ft wide....

...if any aspect of the property could prompt agent hyperbole it is the tower's crowning glory, the glass observatory. Unsuitable for the vertiginous, the far-reaching views are best enjoyed from the balcony, which wraps around the tower.

....The observatory has been fashioned into a cosy living space complete with cocktail area, plasma screen TV and low sofas, making it the ultimate pulling pad to entice any damsel keen on letting her hair down à la Rapunzel.

For owner Alan Rowell, who developed the tower as a commercial venture, this is his favourite spot: "It's just so relaxing and is a great chill-out room." Alan Rowell took on the tower conversion after being inspired by an architect's vision, but admits that it was not the most financially successful of projects.

"It has been challenging and difficult but it's also been a lot of fun and I'm really proud to have done it," he says.

Feet of Clay?

Call them The Saints?

The Vatican has pledged to clean up Italian football after buying its own club.

The Italian Bishop's Conference now has a controlling stake in AC Ancona, currently top of Italy's third division, after the money was provided by a group of Roman Catholic businessmen.

Edoardo Menichelli, the Archbishop of Ancona, said the move would help bring more morality into football.

"We want to bring some ethics back into the game, which has been undergoing a grave crisis in terms of sportsmanship," he said.

The Vatican aims to introduce an ethical code which will punish Ancona's players for any foul play.

....Fans will be forbidden from taunting and insulting the opposition, and from unfurling offensive banners and flags.

....Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, is a fanatical football fan and has openly spoken about his ambition to create a football team of priests.

Last year, he established the Clericus Cup tournament for priests and seminarians in Rome.

The tournament was widely seen as a success, although there was rather more dirty play than anticipated.

While the Getting Was Good

They got out:

Shareholders and executives at Airbus parent EADS engaged in "massive" insider trading, a press report said Wednesday, citing a document that also alleges the government had been aware of difficulties at EADS prior to the lucrative sale of shares.

Le Figaro said the French market regulator AMF had provided the public prosecutor with a note detailing the alleged illegal trade, which reportedly saved participants a total of 90 million euros (127 million dollars) after a 2006 profit warning prompted a collapse in the EADS share price.

Quoting the document, the paper said a total of 1,200 alleged cases of insider trading on the shares were detected....

According to the paper the documents are "damaging" for the French media and defence group Lagardere and German automaker DaimlerChrysler, both shareholders in the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, as well as key executives at EADS and Airbus.

4 Wheel Droning

Look Ma, no hands on the wheel:

During a recent test on property owned by manufacturer Oshkosh Truck Co., TerraMax barreled down a dusty road with its driver seat empty. It stopped at a four-way intersection and waited as staged traffic resolved before obediently lurching on its way.

If the Defense Department gets its way, vehicles like TerraMax - about as long as a typical sport utility vehicle and almost twice as high - could represent the future of transportation for the military's ground forces.

Consider 80 soldiers driving a convoy of 40 trucks across the Iraqi desert, said Joaquin Salas, spokesman for the Oshkosh, Wis.-based company. If most of those vehicles could drive themselves, the same convoy might manage with just 10 soldiers.

"You're reducing the number of people susceptible to enemy fire," said Salas, who served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps. "It's simply amazing technology."

....The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has sponsored a series of contests since 2003 in which prototype vehicles must navigate rough terrain and avoid obstacles.

Oshkosh Truck, a public company that in August projected its 2008 sales would be about $7 billion, is fielding one of 35 teams whose vehicles passed qualifying tests this year. Some teams see the competition as a way to improve automotive technology.

....Early on, DARPA competition results were disappointing. In 2005, only five of 23 vehicles completed the 132-mile course, led by the Stanford team that won the $2 million top prize with its modified Volkswagen Passat station wagon.

This year's competition is expected to be stiff. Squads from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University are among those invited to participate in an Oct. 26-31 qualifying event in Victorville, Calif., along with industry teams that include employees of Delphi Corp. and Ford Motor Co. The entrants include modified cars, pickups and SUVs.

Salas said he's tempering his optimism about how TerraMax will do.

"Everybody's extremely competitive," he said. "We're so much further, the entire industry, than it was just two or three years ago. It's absolutely incredible how advanced the technology has become."

Don't know the half of it

In Holland they're just wishin' and hopin', rather than askin' the boss:

More than half of workers in the Netherlands (57 percent) would like to work part time. But only one quarter of those who work actually hold part time positions.

This emerged from the Randstad Work Monitor for October, which surveyed more than 800 working people. For the purposes of the survey part time work was defined as a job involving at least 24 hours and no more than 34 hours a week.

....10 percent of the workers say they have difficulty balancing work and private life, the survey shows. One in five says the employer does not provide enough latitude for reaching a good balance. More than 40 percent feels that the employer should also actively support staff members in finding this balance.

Despite their wishes, few workers who want to work part time actually broach this with their employers. Many workers also turn down the opportunity to work less when presented with it. They are not eager to accept a lower salary and worry about getting a bad reputation. They have the impression they will be regarded as less ambitious and committed to work.