Bill Moyers RetiresEric Alterman Moyers's most significant legacy is that he treated his audience as adult citizens of a republic. Read Article   

   Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Jobs Makes Appearance at Apple Event By BRAD STONE  Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, appeared on stage Wednesday at an Apple music event, more than three months after returning from medical leave.    

  
Current level of influenza pandemic alert raised from phase 4 to 5
Based on assessment of all available information and following several expert consultations, Dr Margaret Chan, WHO's Director-General raised the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to 5. She stated that all countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans. At this stage, effective and essential measures include heightened surveillance, early detection and treatment of cases, and infection control in all health facilities.
Statement by WHO Director-General
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29 April 2009
Swine influenza - update 5 

 
Feds spike voter citizenship checks in Georgia By SHANNON McCAFFREY, The Associated Press

Editorial: The GOP's road map to obscurity Editorial: Distant neighbors: If the United States had a rational immigration policy... ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election. In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters. The decision means Georgia must halt the citizenship checks, although the state can still ask the Justice Department to reconsider, according to the letter and to the Georgia secretary of state's office. "This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday. The decision comes as Georgia awaits word on whether a law passed in the spring that requires newly registering voters to show proof of citizenship will pass muster with DOJ. Under the law that takes effect in January, people must show their proof up front compared to doing checks through databases. A three-judge federal panel in October ordered the state to seek Justice Department preclearance for the checks under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the same reason the federal agency must sign off on the new law that made Georgia only the second state after Arizona to require such proof. Georgia is one of several states that need federal approval before changing election rules because of a history of discriminatory Jim Crow-era voting practices. Secretary of State Karen Handel blasted DOJ's decision, saying it opens the floodgates for non-citizens to vote in the state. "Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy," said Handel, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010. Justice Department officials said the citizenship match through driver's license and Social Security data has flagged 7,007 individuals as non-citizens but that many have been shown to be in error. "Thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged," the Justice Department letter said. The Justice Department decision marks the first time the new Democratic Obama administration has weighed in on Georgia's election laws. It is also the first time the Justice Department has rejected a change in election procedures by Georgia since the 1990s, according to a spokesman for the Georgia attorney general. "We are pleased with this decision," said Elise Shore, Southeastern Regional Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "It vindicates our filing of the lawsuit." But Handel said that more than 2,100 people who attempted…

 Obama's muddled solutionsThe president is trying to please everyone, but he needs to take tough action to prevent the US economy's second freefall Joseph Stiglitz guardian.co.uk, Saturday 6 February 2010 12.00 GMT Article historyDefeat in the Massachusetts senatorial election has deprived US Democrats of the 60 votes needed to pass healthcare reform and other legislation, and it has changed American politics – at least for the moment. But what does that vote say about American voters and the economy?It does not herald a shift to the right, as some pundits suggest. Rather, the message it sends is the same as that sent by voters to former president Bill Clinton 17 years ago: "It's the economy, stupid!" and "Jobs, jobs, jobs". Indeed, on the other side of the United States from Massachusetts, voters in Oregon passed a referendum supporting a tax increase.The US economy is in a mess, even if growth has resumed, and bankers are once again receiving huge bonuses. More than one out of six Americans who would like a full-time job cannot get one; and 40% of the unemployed have been out of a job for more than six months.As Europe learned long ago, hardship increases with the length of unemployment, as job skills and prospects deteriorate and savings gets wiped out. The 2.5-3.5m foreclosures expected this year will exceed those of 2009, and the year began with what is expected to be the first of many large commercial real-estate bankruptcies. Even the Congressional budget office is predicting that it will be the middle of the decade before unemployment returns to more normal levels, as America experiences its own version of "Japanese malaise".As I wrote in my new book Freefall, Barack Obama took a big gamble at the start of his administration. Instead of the marked change that his campaign had promised, he kept many of the same officials and maintained the same "trickle down" strategy to confront the financial crisis. Providing enough money to the banks was, his team seemed to say, the best way to help ordinary homeowners and workers.When America reformed its welfare programs for the poor under Clinton, it put conditions on recipients: they had to look for a job or enroll in training programs. But when the banks received welfare benefits, no conditions were imposed on them. Had Obama's attempt at muddling through worked, it would have avoided some big philosophical battles. But it didn't work, and it has been a long time since popular antipathy to banks has been so great.Obama wanted…