The Daily Slog

While companies continue to pay for about three-fourths of workers’ health-care premiums, an annual survey found that more are passing health-insurance costs onto employees at a significantly higher rate this year than last. “The increased cost-shifting reflect an acceleration of a trend that has been on the rise for years,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “As companies struggled to cut costs amid difficult economic times, more of them are reducing benefits they offer workers or making workers pay more for them.” A survey of about 2,000 companies both large and small earlier this year by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Education Trust found that employees paid an average of about $4,000 toward coverage for their entire family this year, which is a 14 percent jump from what the nonprofit research groups found last year. But, the groups noted, total insurance premiums paid rose at the slowest rate in a decade at just three percent. “It’s the first time I can remember when employers have coped with costs by shifting it all to workers,” said Drew Altman, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s president and chief executive. “It’s no surprise, since businesses are struggling to keep their doors open,” James Gelfand, director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Wall Street Journal. “The premium increase may have been modest but it’s still a premium increase and businesses can’t absorb those costs.” Workers with family coverage are not paying 30 percent of their premiums, compared with 26 percent five years ago and 27 percent last year.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

In an effort to shut down renewed peace talks between Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas has announced that it plans to ramp up “more effective attacks” against Israel, hinting that those attacks would include increase suicide bombings. When asked what form the new attacks might take, a Hamas spokesman replied: “All options are open.” The threat comes after thirteen militant groups from Gaza announced that they would join forces to launch new attacks against Israel. “Also on Thursday, Hamas condemned the launch of direct talks, saying its goal is to ‘liquidate’ the Palestinian cause, and accusing Abbas of allowing Israel to build settlements in the West Bank and denying refugees’ ‘right of return,’” the Jerusalem Post reported. “Earlies this week, Hamas claimed responsibility for two attacks on Israelis: one, which killed four, and another that injured two. Both were shootings that took place in the West Bank.” Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh made it clear that Palestinians would not recognize any agreement that comes out of the talks between Netanyahu and Abbas, noting that Abbas does not have a mandate to negotiate with Israel.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

At least six large boats have been stranded near Peru’s port of Iquitos because the Amazon river has dropped to its lowest level in 40 years in the northeastern part of the country. In a region that depends on the Amazon as its main transportation route, the economic effect has been disasterous. According to Peru’s national meteorological office, the low water level is the result of a drawn-out dry weather spell and, before the rainy season begins next month, the level of the river is expected to fall even further. “Iquitos and other towns in Peru’s rainforest region have no road links to the rest of the country, and depend on the Amazon and its tributaries for transport,” the BBC reported. “Food and other supplies are now being brought in by smalled boats that can navigate the shallow channels, weaving between exposed mud banks.” While the Amazon is the second-longest river in the world behind the Nile, it discharges more water and covers more territory. The level of the river in Iquitos has reached 347.8 feet above sea level, which is 19.7 inches lower than a previous record set in 2005.

Source: BBC

All concourses at Miami International Airport are open on Friday morning after the discovery of a suspicious item in a checked bag promped an overnight evacuation of most of the building. Four of airport’s six concourses and airport roadways were evacuated and a passenger detained after the suspicious item was found by a screener late Thursday. “The passenger was located and is now in law enforcement custody,” read a statement from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which declined to identify the passenger and the supicious item found in his or her bag. A bomb squad, fire officials and other law enforcement agents from the Miami-Dade Police were called in to search the concourse. A photographer from the Associated Press also spotted a hazardous material team on site. “I’m still not sure how many flights came in during this time, but any that did were relocated to the eastern or western ends of the airport,” spokesman Greg Chin said early Friday. “We had to have passengers moved out on the curbside.”

Source: The Associated Press

As reports were released that put the cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico above $8 billion, BP executives went to Congress to warn that they will not be able to pay for more damages if legislation is passed that bars them from obtaining new offshore drilling permits. “The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support,” the New York Times reported. Until this point, BP has gone along with most demands from the Obama administration and other government figures: They have committed to setting aside $20 billion in an escrow fund to pay for damage claims over the next four years, contributed $100 million to support oil rig workers who have lost their jobs because of the deepwater drilling moratorium, pledged $500 million for a research program to study the long-term impact of the spill, and donated $77 million to the marketing efforts of four gulf states to promote tourism in affected regions. But now, executives are showing their reluctance to continue paying more than what is required of them by law. “If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow,” said David Nagle, BP’s executive vice president for BP America. Still, the requests keep coming. For example, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal asked that BP finance a $173 million program to test the seafood coming out of the gulf. “But the company, which is based in London, now appears to be using such voluntary payments as a bargaining chip with American lawmakers,” according to the Times. Executives are obviously concerned with a drilling overhaul bill that was passed by the House in July and supported by the Obama administration. The bill includes an amendment that would bar any company with more than 10 fatalities or more than $10 million in fines from securing permits to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf. BP wasn’t named in the amendment, but it is the only company that currently meets those criteria. “The risk of having a dangerous company like BP develop new resources in the gulf is too great,” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff to Rep. George Miller, who wrote the amendment. “Year after year after year, no matter how many incidents they’ve involved in, no matter how many fines they’ve had to pay, they never changed their behavior. BP has no one to blame but themselves.”

Source: The New York Times

In a project dubbed Solar Probe Plus, slated to launch sometime before 2018, NASA plans to visit the Sun. The mission won’t involved sending anybody up there, nor will it involve landing on the surface, but it will send a spacecraft within four million miles and into the Sun’s atmosphere to carry out tests. “Four million miles doesn’t sound very close, but it’s still very exciting, since this is a region no other spacecraft (created by us) has ever encountered,” Mashable reported. “NASA plans for the project to ‘unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries.’” Those big mysteries, it turns out, are how the Sun’s outer atmosphere produces so much more heat than the Sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects both Earth and the rest of our solar system, according to Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington. “We’ve been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers,” said Fisher. The spacecraft that NASA sends up will require a carbon-composite heat shield that can withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and also intense radiation.

Source: Mashable

United States District Judge Richard Kopf overturned Nebraska’s ban on flag mutilation Thursday. It is unclear whether his ruling, that the law can’t be applied as long as the person in question is otherwise acting peacefully, would affect only the individual who filed the lawsuit and her fellow church members or everyone in the state. “Thursday’s ruling is a victory for activists from a Kansas church who trample on the U.S. flag when they protest at military funerals,” the Associated Press reported. Megan Phelps-Roper, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, filed the lawsuit in July on the grounds that the ban violated her right to free speech. Westboro Baptist members often protest at soldiers’ funerals across the United States because they believe troop deaths are a punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality. Nebraska’s Attorney General Jon Bruning has previously said that his state’s ban on flag mutilation is not consistent with U.S. Supreme Court rulings that declared desecration of the flag a form of protected speech and that he wouldn’t fight to save it. Should Bruning refuse to appeal, Thursday’s ruling would stand.

Source: The Associated Press

Ever wondered what panhandlers actually do with the change that fills their Dunkin Donuts cups every day? Now you don’t have to. Toronto Star reporter Jim Rankin spent several days wandering downtown Toronto and passing out prepaid cards worth $50 or $60 to people who asked him for money. He asked his test subjects to buy what they needed and then return the cards. And what did they need? A double quarter-pounder with cheese. A root beer. Fifteen minutes’ worth of talk time on a pre-paid cell phone. Cigarettes. More than a few stops at the liquor store. Rankin was surprised by some of the transactions (one man took a $50 card, spend $8 at McDonalds, and promptly returned the card), and by the number of people who turned down the card altogether. Some people weren’t sure it would work, and others didn’t want to leave their panhandling spots. According to Rankin, some of Toronto’s panhandlers make $50-60 per day, enough to buy time at an Internet cafe and Skype with family members.

Source: The Toronto Star