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video 1:16:09 Interesting debate in which the conservatives are now trying to convince UKIP and Nigel Farage to take a dive in the next election while dangling the carrot of alliance later on. Nigel will have none of it. Great response from him. Tea Party is in a similar (yet not as strong) position as UKIP. We should study what is happening with UKIP very closely.

TOKYO - A senior Chinese government official has secretly visited Japan for talks with Japanese officials aimed at improving bilateral relations damaged by an ongoing territorial row, reports said Tuesday. The talks involving a high-ranking official from the Chinese foreign ministry's Asian division were thought to have been held in early October, Japanese news agency Jiji Press reported from Beijing quoting Chinese government sources. A high-ranking official from the Japanese foreign ministry attended the meeting, the report said. A Japanese foreign ministry official declined comment on the content of the report, saying: "Japan and China have been making various exchanges...

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been trying for two weeks to sign up for ObamaCare. Unfortunately as she reported on Monday's New Day, despite trying for fourteen days including at hours that were claimed to be "off peak," she still hasn't been able to establish an account (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary): Read more . . .

Man who jumped into Bronx Zoo tiger den gets year in mental health facility The man who wanted to become “one with the tiger” will become a one-year patient in a mental health facility. David Villalobos, who survived a September 2012 leap into the Bronx Zoo’s tiger den, pleaded guilty Tuesday to trespassing in the strange case, the Bronx district attorney said. RELATED: MAN MAULED BY BRONX ZOO TIGER RE-ENETERS NOT GUILTY PLEA Under a plea bargain deal, Villalobos must complete a one-year stay in a mental health facility as part of his conditional discharge. Villalobos, 26, managed to pet...

(Reuters) - Japan plans to start up 14 new gas and coal-fired power plants by the end of 2014, allowing a switch away from pricey oil, as Tokyo struggles with a shutdown of nuclear reactors and energy imports drive a record trade deficit. Regional power monopolies will construct 12 gas-fired units next year, while two new coal power plants will be completed by December 2013, according to a Reuters survey of utilities. The new power plants will buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal to scale back on the use of expensive crude and fuel oil plants. They will also...

Over the course of the week, the BizTimes editorial team attempted to log on to the website to learn more information about the new marketplaces. After running into several error messages on various attempts, we were eventually able to create an account, but were not able to fully log in to the online marketplace. Stephanie Smiley, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), said that she said she did not know of a single Wisconsin resident who had been able to sign up for health insurance at healthcare.gov. "So far, folks are getting caught up in the...

AFP - South Korea's unemployment rate fell in September to a seasonally adjusted 2.7 percent, led by new jobs in service industries, state data showed Wednesday. The latest jobless rate compared with 3.0 percent reported in August and 2.9 percent in September of last year, Statistics Korea said. The health and social welfare service sector added 172,000 jobs, up 12 percent from a year earlier, while the restaurant industry employed an extra 83,000 people, up 4.3 percent, over the same period. The total number of employed people also rose by 463,000 to reach 25.46 million in September -- the biggest...

The girl’s Muslim parents forced her into the marriage when she was fourteen. Her mother tried to put a good face on a bad situation, enticing the girl with a picture of marriage as a never-ending party: her husband, she said, would treat the girl to ice cream and lollipops and take her to movies and amusement parks. Reality turned out to be a bit different: her husband imprisoned her inside their home and forced her to watch violent videos featuring jihad attacks against soldiers from Western countries. He also raped her and beat her frequently. The girl went to...

SAN FRANCISCO - One reason the Republicans are so adamantly against Obamacare, is that it's driving individual insurance premiums up. And with the law now kicking in, the bills are coming due. In looking into this, we talked to health insurance companies, and representatives of Covered California, agency implementing the Affordable Care Act in California. What they told us may be a bitter pill to swallow, for those who will pay more. Cynthia Jaynes thought her family would benefit from the Affordable Care Act. The author of several young adult books says her family will see a minimum 11 percent...

My Sunday column focused on ways people could lower their 2014 income enough to qualify for tax-subsidized health insurance on a state-run exchange. Today's column is for people with the opposite issue - their income is too low to buy an exchange policy with a tax subsidy. Unless they increase their income above a certain threshold, their options are to enroll in Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) or pay full price for health insurance. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to a large group of people who were previously ineligible, but expansion was voluntary and not all states adopted it....

DAEGU, South Korea — Asia’s large-scale gas importers, long saddled with premium prices, say a cheaper alternative lies several thousand feet below North American soil, where companies are unlocking enormous gas reserves from shale rock. The shale boom has already revolutionized the gas market in the United States and Canada, giving both countries not only a reliable domestic supply but also the ability to sell overseas. Asian utility and gas company executives, speaking this week at a global energy forum here, have said that North America’s gas wealth could prove nearly as transformative across the world, leading to the first...

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - One lawmaker in the eye of the storm that is the government shutdown offered his encouragement to residents in the Tennessee Valley Tuesday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spoke at a dinner held by the Huntsville Republican Women. He gave a speech and then took questions from the crowd, via a video link from Washington. Cruz had been scheduled to appear in person but the turmoil in Washington kept him there. During the event, Cruz took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration on a wide range of issues. "We're seeing the constitutional rights of law-abiding...

“The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!” the home page on the Health Care.gov website breezily announces, but for most of the 14.6 million people who have tried to log in over the last two weeks, that promise proved a chimera. Computer problems caused by a perfect storm of complexity, inadequacy, and opposition have plagued the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not as if there were no forecasts of impending disaster. The New York Times reported that “deadline after deadline was missed.” Over the last 10 months, while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius continued insisting that all was well, senior...

A Panamanian-registered cargo ship carrying 19 people sank in South Korea's southeast Pohang harbor amid a storm at around 21:30 local time on Tuesday, leaving 10 people dead and one missing, according to the Chinese Consulate General in Busan. An official from the Chinese Consulate General confirmed that among 19 people aboard the ship, 18 were Chinese citizens and the remaining one was Vietnamese. Eight people have been rescued and 10 bodies recovered by far, while one person is still missing, according to the South Korea's coast guard who conducts the rescue operation. They said the ship CHENGLU15 set off...

Is the Affordable Health Care Act making health care unaffordable for some people? Some customers of Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of Oregon’s largest insurance providers, say that's exactly what's happening. They say they are finding their health care plans are dramatically changing under the Affordable Care Act. “Policy holders are seeing almost double their monthly premiums,” said a KATU viewer named Larry in an email. He said his wife’s premium will increase by $300 under the Affordable Care Act. The issue, according to Regence spokesman Jared Ishkanian, is you’ll have to pay for those benefits even if you...

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away. This gorgeous telescopic portrait reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. Wider than the Full Moon in angular size, the field of view stretches over 300 light-years across the nebula. The...

The 2013 edition of the Forbes China Rich List published today identifies a record 168 billionaires from the country, surpassing the previous high of 146 in 2011 and last year’s total of 113. The increase adds to China’s standing as a country with one of the world’s fastest-growing number of billionaires in the past decade. Real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, ascends to the No. 1 spot from No. 3 with a fortune worth $14.1 billion, an increase from $8 billion year, amid a recovery in the country’s real estate market. Underscoring his wish to make...

Police are trying to figure out how the hell they lost track of a 20-year-old female prisoner who wiggled her way out of her handcuffs and casually walked out of the Police Department over the weekend. The bizarre incident happened at about 5:40 p.m. on Sunday when the suspect was brought into the Northern Police Station for questioning about a car burglary. However, the suspect, later identified as Sonya Espinoza, lied to the cops about her identity and then declined to be interviewed. After the cops learned her real name, they also learned she had a no-bail warrant and was...

WASHINGTON DC (KDKA) — Frustration seems to be more common in Washington than the ability to reach a bipartisan deal across party lines. Pennsylvania’s senior senator, a Democrat, knows who he blames. “The Tea Party caused this shutdown, and if we allow it to continue, we’re going to have a Tea Party default and that’s not good for anyone,” says Sen. Bob Casey. Sen. Casey says ultraconservatives in the House are so fixated on repealing or changing Obamacare that they are willing to risk the nation’s economic health. “If they keep throwing out the ideas they’ve been talking about that...

Only two and a half hours away from the business hub of Shanghai is an outlet from the urban pressure. Naked Stables Private Reserve is set in a valley in the rolling Moganshan (“Mount Mogan”) area of Zhejiang Province that was a getaway for expats before China’s Communist revolution. Today the region illustrates how well-off Chinese themselves enjoy the good life. A quirky blend of kid- and eco-friendliness and Chinese-African themes yields a boutique resort that doesn’t need an internationally known brand name such as Aman or Banyan Tree. “There is a shift in toward lifestyle spending in China, but...

Officials said William Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection. Florida has executed 51-year-old William Happ for the 1986 rape and strangulation of a woman he encountered by chance in a convenience store parking lot. Officials said Happ was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke. He was executed by injection, 24 years after he was sentenced to die following his conviction in the murder of 21-year-old Angie Crowley. In a final statement, Happ expressed remorse for his actions. "To my agonizing shame, I must...

First, some background: I've spent almost a decade in the healthcare insurance industry now, after departing my last job. I've •investigated fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare claims , personally having revoked some $113 milion worth, and disenrolled over 25,000 fraudlent Medicaid subscribers •Investigated fraud / waste / abuse trends in hospital and small clinic claims •Investigated and testified about waste and abuse in most electronic medical billing and diagnosis code platforms, as well as willful 'bundling' of unrelated and fraudlent charges by hospitals and clinics•Researched electronic eligibility and risk pool demographics and statistics in studying insurance rate increases and stabilizations •Worked...

(Reuters) - Chinese authorities in the northern city of Tianjin have punished 13 medical workers for taking bribes from Danone S.A. to recommend the French food maker's infant formula, the local government said on Monday. The move comes after the official China Central Television (CCTV) reported in September that Danone bribed doctors and nurses to recommend its Dumex milk powder brand at one Tianjin hospital. The CCTV report led to Tianjin's government and police launching an investigation into the bribery charges. Danone also said it had launched an investigation. The "serious violators" received penalties ranging from cancellation of medical licenses...

Mountain View police bust a nationwide drug ring and they did it with the help of a three year old lab named ZuesWhen it comes to sniffing-out illegal drugs, no nose may be better than the nose of a dog named Zeus. Zeus has only been a member of Mountain View's police force for 18 months, but in that time he's compiled quite the resume helping get mounds of drugs off the streets. "He has his own badge and probably the most popular person inside the station," said Police Chief Scott Vermeer. While that may be tough for the police...

China has sealed a deal with the U.K. allowing investors around the world to trade directly in Chinese shares and bonds through London's banks and financial institutions. The agreement is the first of its kind in the western world and will allow as much as 80 billion yuan ($13 billion) to be invested in Chinese securities via approved London institutions. Previously, foreigners could only make these kinds of investments through Hong Kong, where a similar arrangement allows investors to buy up to 270 billion yuan ($44 billion) in securities in mainland China. The agreement should shore up London's dominant role...

Abdellah Taia, the only openly homosexual Moroccan writer, was in Venice to present his debut film, “Salvation Army”, adapted from his autobiographical novel about growing up gay in Morocco. FRANCE 24 sat down with Taia for an interview. By Jon FROSCH (text) In an edition of the Venice Film Festival notable for the prevalence of works grappling with global and societal woes (unemployment, terrorism, pollution, war), perhaps no film has blended the personal and the political as strikingly as Abdellah Taia’s “L’Armée du salut” (“Salvation Army”). A promising directorial debut presented in the independent “Critics’ Week” category on Wednesday, the...

Obtaining health care is no laughing matter. Yet the only way to cope with practical implications of the Democrat-sponsored Affordable Care Act is comic relief. Would Democrats rather commit political suicide than try to fix massive flaws in a bungled rollout of a mangled law? Forget about delaying Obamacare for a year, perhaps we should delay it until Democrats can pass a critically scored sanity check. A divisive law, that few read, and that a thin majority shoved down our throats deserves the date it will eventually get with the electoral version of “death panels”. It is a monstrosity which...

Women's rights have advanced across the world, and legislation is catching up with the times. In most modern countries, gender equality has been codified into the system. But not everywhere. Unfortunately, some retrograde legislation against women persists — and some laws are just downright incomprehensible. 1) Driving in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's long-standing driving ban hit headlines recently, after conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan announced that driving "harms women's ovaries" on a popular news site. "If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show...

There have been a number of articles published recently, following a show in Moscow, of carved icons of a Russian couple Rashid and Inessa Azbuhanov (their website is here and h/t Deacon Paul Iacono of the Fra Angelico Institute for bring these to my attention). These are exquisite works and are of interest to me particularly because I have to admit I have never seen anything quite like them. I am told that they are re-establishing the tradition of carved icons. These portray form through a combination of color and relief and in this sense are a halfway house between...

The Chinese sure are doing a lot of worrying these days about the stalemate in Washington. Li Keqiang, China’s Premier, told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he was watching the tussle over raising the government’s debt ceiling with “great attention” in a meeting last week. He has good reason to be concerned. With a stash of nearly $1.3 trillion in Treasury securities, China is the world’s largest foreign owner of U.S. government debt. If the U.S. Congress fails to lift the ceiling to allow the government to borrow more by Thursday, Washington may not have enough money to...

"The big Kerry arm." That's how some of his Senate staff used to describe John Kerry's approach to negotiation. It's reminiscent of what Lyndon Baines Johnson used to do to his Senate colleagues: a little light physical pressure to drive home a point. You can bet that at some point over the weekend the six-foot-four Kerry, who landed in Kabul on an unannounced visit Friday, applied that big arm to the shoulders of the diminutive Hamid Karzai, the often combative and erratic president of Afghanistan, whom Kerry knows well and with whom no one else in the U.S. government seems...

Estimating casualties of war is a difficult science. Exact counts are nearly impossible to achieve, especially in areas where violent conflict continues long after the last of foreign troops have withdrawn. Determining a death toll for Iraqi civilians during the eight-year U.S.-led occupation has proven especially challenging. Multiple attempts by different organizations have covered only a few years of the war, and the resulting tallies range from as low as just over 100,000 to as high as 600,000. The latest estimates, detailed in a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, come from an investigation into the total number...

Ever since China emerged as the world’s rising economic power, Western governments have been wrestling with how to approach the last major state on earth still ruled by a Communist party. George Osborne and Boris Johnson, visiting the People’s Republic this week, have demonstrated their answer: forget about political issues, let alone human rights, and go for the money. By all means, is their clear message, increase your already extensive investments in our country. It is an approach that Beijing is very much in favour of, and the Osborne-Johnson trip has been crammed with smiling photo opportunities and expressions of...

A man has said he is still haunted after being abducted and probed by aliens 40 years ago. Calvin Parker Jr said he encountered the UFO when he was 18 years old while fishing with his friend Chase Brandon. And he has spent the past four decades shunning the press attention that the incident attracted. He has moved jobs and home several times over decades to avoid being detected. When questioned he said: "This is something I really didn't want to happen.” Parker and Brandon, then 42, were on the banks of the Pascagoula river in Mississippi in October 1973....

Ithaca, NY — An inmate in an Ithaca jail was named as part of a Central New York sex trafficking ring arraigned today. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Tuesday the arrest and arraignment of three people involved in a ring which operated in Ithaca, Syracuse, Watertown and elsewhere. Eric Oliver, 30, of Syracuse, is alleged to be the leader of the ring. He was assisted by Tirra Pate, 19, also of Syracuse and Jessica Moro, 19, of Cicero. The New York Attorney General alleges Oliver contacted Pate and Moro in Ithaca and Watertown jails. “The sex trafficking ring was so...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

This failure of an option B has set the stage for Bohners end game, very much like what happened early this year with taxes.Reid Slams New House GOP Debt Limit Offer (Hissy fit) Roll Call ^ | 10/15/13 | Meredith Shiner House vote pulled, chaos continues Politico ^ | 10-15-13 | By JAKE SHERMAN, BURGESS EVERETT, JOHN BRESNAHAN and SEUNG Reid will pass his ‘bipartision’ bill using a procedure that only requires 50 votes but gutting a previously passed bill. That allows lots of GOP Senators cover to vote symbolically ‘no’ with no effect. Then that Bill goes to house...

http://youtu.be/6dxpiO2Chc0

<p>Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.</p>

Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin has finally found something he loves about the SAFE Act. “The only upside,” McLaughlin, a two-term Rensselaer County Republican, said from atop a homemade stage at the University at Albany Tuesday, is “that Andrew Cuomo will never, ever be president of the United States.” McLaughlin, who for 10 months has railed against Cuomo’s divisive new gun control law, assured the sparse but appreciative crowd that rushing the law through the Legislature on its first day in session last year torpedoed any White House aspirations harbored by the Democratic governor. “This was an arbitrary bill that just attacked...

A Florida woman posed as a teen to seduce a 14-year-old boy into a seedy sexual relationship before choking him when he tried to leave her home, police said. Naomi Dixon, 31, allegedly pretended she was just 17 after meeting the boy at a party near her home in Deltona.

This is very funny. A Daily Kos regular gets his Obamacare premium notice and is shocked to learn that as young, healthy people, he and his wife will pay twice as much! "My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe. Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to...

For the past two Sundays, hundreds of Pakistanis of all faiths have formed human chains in front of churches during mass – first in Karachi, then in Lahore. This solidarity movement was launched in reaction to the terrorist attack that killed 81 worshippers at a church in Peshawar, making it the deadliest ever perpetrated against the country’s Christian minority. Militant groups linked to the Pakistani Taliban said they carried out the September 22 bomb attack in response to US-led drone strikes. Christians have been targeted for their faith before, but previous attacks have usually taken the form of mob violence...

"The Walking Dead" is now, by some ratings measures, the No. 1 show on TV. Sunday's season 4 premiere of AMC's zombie drama chowed down on 16.1 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. That's a record for the series, of course, as well as a remarkable 48% boost from last year's season 3 rollout. It also puts "Walking Dead" in the rarefied company of TV's most-watched shows. "NCIS," currently the No. 1 show on TV, averages around 20 million viewers for new episodes...... "

President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview: "One thing that I've shown is that if I say I'm prepared to compromise on something, I can deliver votes and we can get it done," Obama said. "So, look: Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do because I see day in and day out the damage that something like a shutdown does."

There is nothing more pernicious than the illusion of liberty surviving, or even flourishing, alongside growing government power. It doesn’t work that way, not once you get past the transition from anarchy to lawful government. Personal liberty does not exist in a state of anarchy, because individuals can be defrauded, robbed, and killed at will by lone predators and organized gangs. Some degree of government power must clearly be exercised to secure liberty. But when a government the size of America’s federal system grows larger, it occurs only at the expense of liberty, and the contraction of the private sector....

Attorney: Divorce rate likely to rise under Obamacare SAN DIEGO — The Affordable Healthcare Act could make health coverage more affordable for some, but it may have other side effects, like an increase in the divorce rate. heart healthFamily practice attorney Myra Fleischer stressed how healthcare costs carry a heavyweight when it comes to those considering calling it quits on their marriage. “The middle class is what this is supposed to help and most divorces are middle class,” said Fleischer. “We look at those numbers and they choose to stay in the marriage,” said Fleischer who explained how that may...

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Paul Preston discusses the deaths of Breitbart, Hastings and Clancy.

The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America’s online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site’s visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week. The new numbers on the new health-care law — released by Kantar US Insights and based on an assessment conducted by the nonpartisan research firm Millward Brown Digital — provide a partial snapshot of how the federal health-care exchange has fared since it launched at the start of the month. Of the...