The U.S. has grounded its entire fleet of 51 F-35 fighter jets after the discovery of a cracked engine blade. The fault was detected during a routine inspection of an Air Force version of the jet (F-35A) at Edwards Air Force Base in California, said the Pentagon. read more
A 32-year-old Brooklyn man is suing his parents, claiming he wasn't loved enough by them and that their neglect caused him to be homeless and jobless. Bernard Bey filed a self-written lawsuit in Brooklyn court earlier this month, accusing his parents of causing him mental anguish and making him feel "unloved and beaten by the world." Bey is asking the court for more than $200,000 in damages. He wants his parents to mortgage their home and purchase two franchises such as Domino's Pizza outlets.
Steven Brill: I got the idea for this article when I was visiting Rice University last year. As I was leaving the campus, which is just outside the central business district of Houston, I noticed a group of glass skyscrapers about a mile away lighting up the evening sky. The scene looked like Dubai. I was looking at the Texas Medical Center, a nearly 1,300-acre, 280-building complex of hospitals and related medical facilities, of which MD Anderson is the lead brand name. Medicine had obviously become a huge business. In fact, of Houston's top 10 employers, five are hospitals, including MD Anderson with 19,000 employees; three, led by ExxonMobil with 14,000 employees, are energy companies. How did that happen, I wondered. Where's all that money coming from? And where is it going? I have spent the past seven months trying to find out by analyzing a variety of bills from hospitals like MD Anderson, doctors, drug companies and every other player in the American health care ecosystem.
Three sisters from a devoutly Catholic family have seen their personal and political careers ruined by a scandal that began with, of all things, a letter to some nuns. Thursday's conviction of suspended Pennsylvania state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin along with her aide and sister, Janine Orie, on campaign corruption charges mean they might join a third sister -- former state Sen. Jane Orie -- in state prison.
Weekly Standard: David Goldhill is a liberal Democratic business executive whose father was killed by a hospital-borne infection several years ago. The experience drove him to study the American health care system in search of an explanation. "How is it possible," he writes, "that my father's death was an avoidable accident with no one to blame?" The answer shocked him. Goldhill discovered that health care is unlike any other industry: "Everything about health care -- how we pay for it, how we regulate it, how we judge its effectiveness, how we're willing to accept low standards from it, even how we talk about it -- exists on a separate island from the mainland of every other service or product in our economy."
Six underground storage tanks at a nuclear site in the state of Washington are leaking, authorities say. Governor Jay Inslee (D) described the situation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as "disturbing news." But he stressed that there was no current risk to human health. Nearly 200 aging containers hold millions of liters of radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons. "There is no immediate or near-term health risk associated with these newly discovered leaks, which are more than five miles from the Columbia River," Inslee said. "But nonetheless this is disturbing news for all Washingtonians."
A Nanuet, N.Y., man has been arrested on terroristic threat and weapons charges after allegedly posting death threats on Facebook against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (R), Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), several Democratic Congressional leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus. Police searching the home of Lawrence Mulqueen, 49, found two rifles, bayonets, ammunition, body armor, a sword and a knuckle knife, police said. He's a convicted felon prohibited from owning the weapons, said Clarkstown police Sgt. Glenn Cummings. Mulqueen used a pseudonym on the Facebook posts, Cummings said.
The identity of dozens of residents who participated in a Santa Fe, N.M., gun buyback program accidentally were released to the public -- along with their address, phone number and the weapons they sold. The information was put by mistake into a packet for the City Council. "It shouldn't have happened, but it did," said Santa Fe Police Chief Raymond Rael. "I apologize on behalf of the city, I don't think that information should've been out there."
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