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The expanded authority without interruption account of U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., was hammered through by means of previous Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for one’s interest under the jurisdiction he resigned in November 2006. The shift caused friction among leaders at other warfighting organizations who saw it any intrusion into their geographic domains.

Navy Adm. Eric Olson, the command’s older officer since July 2007, has steered clear of micromanaging specific missions against al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. The command’s primordial focus is to ensure these plans are fused into a broader strategy since defeating extremist ideologies. That reflects Olson’s position that the troops closest to the action know best how to feel of it.

“It’s a much different place,” Army Lt. Gen. David Fridovich, a Green Beret who runs the command’s Center with regard to Special Operations, aforesaid in an Associated Press interview.

The command, which has an annual budget of again than $7 billion and nearly 50,000 soldiers and civilian personnel, is also responsible for training and equipping the Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and Air Force combat controllers.

Fridovich, who has extensive experience in the Pacific region, arrived in Tampa last year just as Olson was taking over. For the previous six years Fridovich had been a lock opener player in which the Defense Department considers a successful effort against Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida outgrowth in the Philippines.

Along with Olson, Fridovich is a proponent of indirect strife, a slow and disciplined process that involves training foreign militaries and providing humanitarian, financial and civil backing to areas viewed as possible terrorist having grounds.

Before filling his recent post, Fridovich was in lading of special operations at U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. He didn’t like being controlled from at a distance.

“I didn’t awfully care too much for mob from somewhere else to come in and tell me what they were going to do,” Fridovich said.

As head of the Center for Special Operations, Fridovich’s job is consanguineous to that of a chief operating officer. Instead of running a business, he’s ensuring anti-terror plans are properly coordinated across military channels. That means tracking more than 200 countries that are havens for terrorists, potential U.S. partners, or the one and the other.

“We obtain together populate with a common interest,” Fridovich said. “That is vastly different than us coming into a theater and saying, ‘Here’s the kind of you’re going to do.’”

In March 2005, after months of heated debate inside the Pentagon, Special Operations Command was assigned the lead role in planning, coordinating and conducting the military’s anti-terror activities around the world.

Olson, a Navy SEAL, was deputy commander of special operations when he was named to the utmost degree job later than Army Gen. Bryan Brown removed. Pointing to in what state difficult it was to meet the new establish by charter, Olson told members of Congress prior to his confirmation hearing last year that the “command’s ability to drive behavior not beyond DOD is limited due to unclear exact meaning of authorities.”

During an early March appearance at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, Olson was other thing specific when discussing the expanded authority.

“It’s also much for us to do that and it’s not right for us to do that,” Olson said in remarks delivered on the condition in that place be no attribution. A transcript of the session was later posted on the group’s web site.

U.S. Special Operations Command:

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Mike Gilbert also claims he helped his former friend wiggle out of the put an end to charges by suggesting how to bloat his hands so they wouldn’t fit the notorious bloody gloves.

Gilbert’s book, “How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret and Remorse” (Regnery Publishing, 232 pages, $27.95), is due in supplies Monday. It was released to The Associated Press in send.

He said Simpson had smoked pot, took a quiescent pill and was drinking beer when he confided at his Brentwood home weeks after his trial what happened the night of June 12, 1994. Simpson before-mentioned he went to his ex-wife’s condominium, but did not bring a knife with him. Simpson told him Nicole Brown Simpson had one in her hand at the time she opened the avenue.

In a soft mumble, Simpson told him: “If she hadn’t opened that door with a knife in her hand … she’d soft be alive.”

“Nothing more needed to be said,” Gilbert writes. “O.J. had confessed to me. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death at the entrance to her condominium. The knife was never found.

Simpson’s generally received lawyer Yale Galanter aforesaid none of Gilbert’s claims are true and that Gilbert is “a delusional drug addict who needs money. He’s fallen on very hard ages. He is in trouble with the IRS.”

“I’ve talked to O.J. about it,” said Galanter, who refused to allow Simpson to make notes directly because of his upcoming robbery trial in Las Vegas. “This platitude not only didn’t present itself but it’s not factually supported by the evidence.”

The reputation occupation and accusations on both sides showed that deep wounds persevere.

In a phone interview, Gilbert called Galanter “an ambulance chaser and an enabler and denier in opposition to O.J. I know. I used to do the same circumstance. I understand the game.”

He acknowledged he has IRS problems which he says were caused by Simpson but said, “I could take a drug test and conjuncture it. I highly doubt that O.J. could.”

Gilbert is the second sports memorabilia dealer to write a Simpson book this year. Thomas Riccio, who arranged a Las Vegas memorabilia sale that led to Simpson’s armed robbery hold, penned “Busted” last month.

Simpson himself participated in the controversial part, “If I Did It,” which he claimed was not a confession. It was withdrawn by the publisher and eventually released last year by the Goldman group of genera to second satisfy a $33.5 million wrongful death judgment.

Gilbert reported he continued to stand in the place of Simpson since another decade after the alleged confession, hawking items with his autograph, hiding the profits and helping Simpson emblazoned field his possessions in like manner they could not be seized by the Goldman family.

Gilbert also claims that he counseled the jailed Simpson during his murder trial to stop taking his arthritis medicine thus his hands would swell up and not fit the bloody gloves in court. He offers no proof Simpson followed his advice or that he was taking any physic, otherwise than that the drama that played away in make love to when the gloves didn’t fit was central to Simpson’s defense.

The prosecutors in Simpson’s murder trial, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, could not instantly be reached for comment on Gilbert’s claims.

Former Gilbert partner Bruce Fromong, who was involved in the Vegas incident, said Gilbert is known for spinning tall tales.

“Mike makes up a lot of great stories,” said Fromong. “Mike Gilbert has a ton of skeletons in his closet. He’s in the manner that dirty considered in the state of anyone.”

Gilbert before-mentioned he broke with Simpson couple years ago because he felt cheated, didn’t approve of his lifestyle and was repulsed by “If I Did It.” He writes that he was guided to do his own the book by dreams in which he saw the ghosts of his dead grandmother and of Nicole Brown Simpson.

He refers to himself in the book as a “Judas,” and says he is betraying Simpson because he’s ashamed of the kind of he did and wants to soothe his conscience. He responded to Fromong’s criticism by saying he’s made mistakes and isn’t dire to clean up his image with the book.

He writes that he was not alone in helping Simpson beat the murder charges, but “I hope to be the primeval to finally admit.”

Gilbert said he funneled money from autograph signing appearances to Simpson under the table likewise the Goldman family could not get it. Gilbert declared he paid Simpson 80 percent, kept 20 percent but had to discharge one’s obligation to taxes on the whole amount. He said Simpson repeatedly told him they’d settle up later.

But they never did and when pushed Simpson reminded him of the Goldman shortcoming: “Hey, at least you don’t owe $33.5 million.”

“Yeah, I didn’t kill anybody either,” Gilbert replied. Simpson scowled.

He offers apologies to the cold Nicole Simpson, whom he said he never liked, and to the Goldman line of ancestors.

“He offers an apology for money laundering?” said Goldman attorney David Cook. “I don’t mean we want the apology. I think we need the currency. Send us a bridle, not an I’m sorry.”

He said he plans to use the book like a treasure map to Simpson’s hidden assets.

Gilbert, 53, was a pupilage fan of Simpson who was thrilled when one more client, football people of distinction Marcus Allen, introduced them and they began doing business arm in arm.

Gilbert wrote in his book that he was admitted to a world of privilege and he got caught up in a potentate ramble in which he believed he was better than “ordinary people.”

Gilbert blames himself and other Simpson friends for failing to act when they detected domestic violence in the Simpson marriage. But he says each present life there was a fight between the couple or a call through the agency of Nicole to police it was dismissed in the same proportion that part of their obsession with each other or they pretended it didn’t happen.

“O.J. mattered more,” he said. “The fringe benefits that came with being one of O.J.’s friends mattered more — or at in the smallest degree we thought they did.”

Gilbert wrote the book for many reasons. It wasn’t just to make cash or hurt Simpson.

“Nothing be possible to hurt O.J.,” he said in an interview. “He doesn’t be in possession of the emotions we have.”

In a chapter on the Las Vegas case, he acknowledges that Simpson was in scrutiny of memorabilia he believed Gilbert stole from him, including the suit he wore the day he was acquitted.

“I never sold the suit, not but also when I was depth broke,” he writes. “At least that’s affair small to be proud of.”

But Gilbert does acknowledge that he unsuccessfully tried to sell the suit at one sally — judgment he sold his book. John Rogers contributed to this report.

Krista Means opened a children’s-clothing boutique because she couldn’t find a place to buy a cute baby gift in West Seattle. Carol Schiller started Baby Chaleco because she couldn’t find a bib that would keep her baby boy severe. Jackie Friedman Mighdoll created Sponge School because she wanted to expose her infant son to foreign languages. And Kat Stremlau opened Tot Spot Cafe in Woodinville because she had no drollery place to take her baby during the winter.

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These women are “mamapreneurs”

More Seattle-area moms

“The chief understanding women launch their own businesses is for freedom, flexibility and mastery,” said Beth Schoenfeldt, co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a media company with programs in more than 50 U.S. cities

Many women furthermore want more adoration, fulfillment and creativity in their lives, Schoenfeldt aforesaid. She estimates that about half of the organization’s 100,000 subscribers are also mothers.

“It’s not that they don’t want to labor obdurate, it’s just that they scarcity to work hard on their own terms,” she said. “They want to be their own boss.”

In the past decade, female-owned businesses accept grown at twice the rate of all firms, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. Women compose 46 percent of the workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and almost three-quarters of U.S. mothers have jobs surface of the home.

But despite graduating from literary institution in increasing numbers, women motionless earn less than their male counterparts. In fact, mothers earn 27 percent less, and single mothers earn up to 44 percent less, according to MomsRising.org.

“Entrepreneurial vibe” here

So it’s no surprise that women are increasingly trading in their career suits or soccer-mom shoes for the freedom that entrepreneurship provides.

The trend holds true in the Seattle area, that is human being of the top markets for Ladies Who Launch. And last month, Fortune Small Business magazine named Bellevue the No. 1 place in the country to live and launch a business.

“Seattle has a great entrepreneurial vibe relative to it,” said Kelly Sharples, co-owner of Blue Dress Press and caster of Northwest Enterprising Moms, a group for the innovative entrepreneur and head who is moving to raise her children.

The organization grew loudly of an event be unexhausted year showcasing products and services sold by local, mom-owned companies. At the time, Seattle lacked an organization for women who understand the balance of being a mother and owning a duty, said Sharples, 37, who has a 2-year-old son.

Northwest Enterprising Moms now has more than 60 members, who range from women using their kitchen table-company as each office to owners of multimillion-dollar companies.

Their own stories

Stremlau, 33, who opened Tot Spot Caf

“There’s no marketing books for us. There’s no ‘how to open a kid-friendly cafe’ ” book while keeping your soundness and your marriage, she said.

Before her son was born, Stremlau worked as a program manager because a technology company except didn’t feel she could be an adequate mom and an effective full-time employee. She now works about 30 hours a week, and her 22-month-old son plays in the toy district of the cafe and takes naps in her employment.

Schiller, 41, who founded Bellevue-based Baby Chaleco after the birth of her third child, likes in what state she have power to sometimes set up a meeting with one more woman who has kids at a children’s location so the kids be possible to play while the moms talk business.

“That is sole,” she said.

She also likes how her kids see what’s involved in making a living. “It’s kind of like a magnified ‘Take Your Daughter to Work’ day.”

The mama network

Despite the increased flexibility, some mamapreneurs still operate long hours, even supposing they might squeeze them in during short sleep time or after the kids go to bed. And many find they trade a regular paycheck conducive to an uncertain income.

Not everyone can match the overnight luck of Nicole Donnelly, founder of Seattle-based BabyLegs, who, in just three years, went from selling baby leg warmers at play groups to running a 25-person copartnership that sells products in 50 countries. She credits the meteoric arise of her office in part to the “mother network,” online parenting groups that spread the word well-nigh BabyLegs as a solution to diaper rash.

“I think moms trust each other,” related Donnelly, whose daughter was born in 2004. “Everyone’s very willing to help and share information.”

Finding balance

Some women thrive on following their suffering. Jackie Friedman Mighdoll knew she wanted language and culture to be a part of her children’s lives, especially in imitation of learning of a study about the benefits of exposing infants to sounds from foreign languages. But when she started looking on account of a language program, she couldn’t find one.

So Mighdoll, who formerly worked full-time in new-business expansion for Vulcan, spent 18 months researching and developing a curriculum. In 2005, she opened Sponge School, which offers classes in Spanish, French, Japanese and Mandarin. She now has locations in Seattle and Issaquah.

“It’s my third part baby,” said Mighdoll, 39, who has two boys, ages 4 and 2.

Although she regularly puts in more than 40 hours a week, thanks to the help of a nanny, she’s furthermore expert to work around her sons’ lives.

“The very strange part is I’m working on something that I care over and in addition caring for my children.”

joy.jernigan@enjoy life.com.

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Harold Thomas wasn’t having any luck finding clams Thursday afternoon. So, the lifelong clammer ventured farther onto the mud flats at Penrose Point State Park on the Key Peninsula and started digging in the muck for a geoduck.

As he tried to wrestle a giant clam from its burrow, Thomas felt himself sinking. He pulled his right foot out of its caoutchouc premium, but that just made his left foot be overwhelmed deeper. As he tried to haul his left ankle prompt, Thomas’ right foot became stuck in the mud.He tried to dig himself out with a shovel, but that didn’t work. His wife, Carol, wrapped her arms around him and pulled. Nothing. Two women came to help, then a man and his son.

Thomas didn’t budge. And the concurrence of influences was coming in.

Carol Thomas called 911. The water — which was 50 feet at a distance when Harold Thomas started digging for the geoduck — had reached his knees. Six minutes later, the before anything else firefighters arrived. They waded out and found Thomas waist-deep in water, the mire sucking at his thighs. The firefighters tried to pull him from the dirt, but couldn’t. They bring forward a life jacket on Thomas and tied a line around his body.

The sprinkle and calender kept rising. It was so devoid of warmth, Carol Thomas could see her husband’s hand turn white as she held it in her own. The firefighters shooed her in a backward direction. \ to shore, where she stood on the beach with the others who’d helped do one’s best to charitable her husband.

“We just stood there on the spit and prayed,” Carol Thomas said Friday from her home near Purdy, Pierce County. “I prayed for sense and discrimination for the fire division people.”

Out in the water, Harold Thomas began to panic. But then, “a calmness came over me,” said the 65-year-old retired shipyard machinist. “I knew they’d go me abroad of there.”

Battalion Chief Hal Wolverton of the Key Peninsula Fire Department wasn’t so sure. He considered calling for a Coast Guard helicopter or maybe a Pierce County dive team but knew Thomas didn’t have that friendly of time. He called the Anderson Island Fire Department, and they sent disclosed a rescue boat. Twenty minutes seemed an eternity. Wolverton’s crew stood by with snorkels.

The boat arrived, but even then, rescuers couldn’t draw Thomas from the mud. The water lapped at his shoulders.

Then Wolverton had an idea: “I don’t know how it came to me,” he said Friday. “… I dress in’t think they all had faith in my theory. They totally gave me the eyebrow.”

Wolverton connected a 200-foot long fire hose to the boat’s fire cross-examine. At the other end, he attached a 4-foot-long sharp nozzle, a rod-shaped piece of equipment firefighters use to bust from one side roofs to issue water on a blaze abroad. The firefighters stuck the nozzle into the sand around Thomas’ legs, and the “uproarious action” from the pressurized water in the end broke “the suction that was holding him there,” he uttered.

“He popped out like a big, giant geoduck,” Wolverton said.

Individual and institutional investors want a say on executive make payment to, and Aflac agrees

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In November of 2006, Aflac (AFL) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Amos received a take by surprise proposal from one of the company’s shareholders. Boston Common Asset Management, the socially amenable investing. fund, presented the Columbus (Ga.) insurer by a "say-on-pay" proposal, a new trend in shareholder activism in the U.S. at the time.

If adopted, the proposal would give shareholders a piece of luck to vote on a visitor’s executory compensation package. While the resolution solitary called for some "advisory," or nonbinding vote, companies that adopted the proposal and then ignored a negative consecrated by a vow by shareholders would have a public and investor relations problem on their hands. "My initial reaction [was] they don’t like us, or they don’t like something about what we’ve done," Amos remembers.

To help determine why Aflac, which was known more because of its quacking duck commercials than its executive pay, had been targeted, Amos asked the board if he could speak to Boston Common directly. After all, a hefty amount of his 2005 satisfy was tied to performance goals. Boston Common’s response? "We don’t possess any problem with your comp," Amos recalls them telling him. "We just think [investors] ought to have the right."

Amos was still skeptical—he says he’d at nay time heard a complaint about his pay—and knew he needed greater degree of input from key shareholders to decide what to do. So he asked the reparation committee whether or not he could talk to individual and institutional shareholders to get their thoughts on the resolution. He knew that granting that Aflac adopted the proposal, any vote on atonement would be hard to ignore, taken in the character of two-thirds of the company’s race is owned by institutional shareholders. "I didn’t not to be present to take any chances," Amos says. "There had been a lot of stuff in the papers about comp, and we toil very hard [to be] lucid."

Individual shareholders didn’t have strong feelings either interval—several thought it made sense, but didn’t push him. Institutional shareholders, meanwhile, design Aflac should take the proposal. One large mutual fund was particularly positive forward the model. "Frankly, I was shocked," Amos says. "I thought they were going to say no."

Between that response and the approbation for the decision from Institutional Shareholder Services, that advises investors on proxy votes, Amos began leaning toward adopting the proposal. "If this greater interchangeable fund thinks it’s a good creative, this could be a domino issue," Amos remembers thinking. "I thought this was a chance for us to show our leadership [on being] clear, and that we let people know exactly what we do."

The board gathered for three or four meetings to make the final decision, and in February, 2007, announced it would suffer shareholders break the ice to vote on Amos’ pay in 2009. The board wasn’t naive—they knew some investors would inevitably vote no. But they also found comfort in the fact the company had a remote from the equator number of institutional shareholders whom they hoped would study the package diligently rather than vote on emotion. As a result, Aflac became the first company in the U.S. to adopt an advisory vote on executive pay. (The votes are common in a maniple of other countries, including Britain and Australia.)

By early 2008, after receiving much attention for being the first to appropriate the proposal, Aflac decided to move up the timeline. "There had been so much debating about it we wanted to move onward to other issues," Amos says very lately. It didn’t hurt that the company’s stock—up 38% in 2007—had soared in the year before. At the Aflac annual meeting on May 5, the company announced the results: More than 93% of shareholders approved the satisfaction package for the top five executives at the house. Amos’ total 2007 reparation, according to the company’s proxy mention: $14.8 million.

While Amos may be able to breathe easy now, when he made the cry out he wasn’t sure how shareholders would react. Even his employees joked with him about their support. "They’ll cut up in the elevator, and say ‘I’m debating whether I’m going to vote for you,’" Amos says.

Still, a number of factors led him to convinced investors would support his reparation. After 18 years in the job, Amos says he is the eighth-longest tenured CEO in the U.S. "My go to shareholders has been a compromise growth of 22%," he told BusinessWeek back in March. "If we’re not going to pass [a vote on pay], then who is?"

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A week’s worth of frustration exploded in Richie Sexson’s brain as a fourth-inning size came at him at face level.

Within seconds, Sexson was notching the biggest carry the point his Mariners would achieve Thursday night. Unfortunately for the team, it only came via a direct succeed off Texas Rangers pitcher Kason Gabbard with a thrown batting helmet after Sexson charged the mound and ignited a dugout-clearing fracas.

No one was gravely hurt. The game soon continued, and the Mariners resumed their losing ways, captivating a 5-0 baffle in a game that axiom them notch only four hits and run their frustration level to the breaking point.

“It’s a fury,” Sexson said of his state of mind in charging the bulwark. “If that ball hits me in the face, that which are we talking about to this place? Who knows that which that could have led to?”

What it ultimately led to this epoch was Sexson hitting a ducking Gabbard through his helmet, which he’d ripped off about halfway to the ewer’s mound. Rangers catcher Gerald Laird, who was drilled earlier in the game by Felix Hernandez, tackled Sexson from behind and they both toppled over Gabbard.

After several minutes of pushing, shoving and mostly shouting, between the teams, the players were separated. The crowd of 22,922 at Safeco Field treated the Mariners to their loudest ovation all week, then watched the offense vanish yet again as the club ran its scoreless innings slice to 23.

The bad blood began building after Hernandez, trailing 2-0 after the first inning, hit Laird on the forearm to twitch the second. Two batters later, Ian Kinsler lined a round body over the left-field wall to make it 4-0 and set the stage for what happened later.

“Felix had difficulty the first two innings,” Mariners governor John McLaren said. “He threw a lot of pitches. First hitter of the game, he was throwing 96. It looked like it was going to happen, no more than it just didn’t befall.”

Kinsler came up anew in the fourth and was hit by the agency of an inside pitch from Hernandez, though he did little to turn out of the way. As Kinsler walked up the first-base line, he had words with catcher Kenji Johjima and stared menacingly at Hernandez.

In the bottom of the inning, after two quick outs, Sexson expected some retaliation.

“I understand the situation,” he said. “There’s a right and a wrong way to play the valorous. Hit me on the earth the shoulders, and I’m fine with that. You make acquisition up present the face and that’s when you start talking about careers and you scare talking about group of genera.”

The launch from Gabbard was allied by blood eye level. Sexson initially ducked out of the way, though the ball torture up crossing closer to the center of the plate.

Sexson nevertheless made a beeline for Gabbard.

“I’m 6-8, what are we talking about here?” Sexson said. “He’s a guy who can hit corners at will. All of a sudden, he’s up near my face?”

Laird was initially slow to react in defending his pitcher.

“I was a little bit surprised,” he said. “I didn’t think the ball was that close.”

Sexson mortify up beneath several players and was pulled to safety by Raul Ibanez and Adrian Beltre.

“Nothing advantageous can happen when you get caught at the native strength of a pile like that,” Ibanez reported.

Off in another corner, a gesturing, shouting Hernandez was being pulled away by teammates in the manner that he and Laird jawed at both other and within a little ignited a encourage fight.

Laird wound up pointed up and carried begone from the melee by teammate Milton Bradley.

“I’m not saying he did anything on purpose tonight,” Laird said of Hernandez hitting the brace batters. “The overall look was just bad.”

Hernandez, who needed 109 pitches to make it end five innings, did not talk to reporters. Gabbard refused to comment on the matter, nevertheless he wound up leaving the game two batters later with what the Rangers described as “bruised legs” from the fight.

Sexson admitted that throwing the helmet was wrong. He’d missed Wednesday’s game tending to his sick son in the hospital, and admitted the stress of that and his team’s offensive spiral likely contributed to his rage.

“I’m without doubt it all came to a head rightful there,” he reported. “It’s no secret we haven’t scored a lot of runs for a while. It’s no secret we haven’t lived up to our potential.”

That’s putting it mildly. The Mariners have lost eight of nine, own the American League’s quell record at 14-22, trail their division leaders by means of eight games and have scored just once in the last 32 innings.

“I’ve never seen it this bad before,” Sexson admitted.

And by Seattle’s sum of two units best starting pitchers now used up without ceasing this homestand, it could get a sum lot worse.

.

Insurers make big profits from college students, but some families are left with huge bills

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Marquis had $100,000 coverage but got stung by the handsome print David Deal

by dint of. the agency of Ben Elgin and Jessica Silver-Greenberg

In fall 2006, Ralph Giunta Sr. decided to buy his son Ralph Jr. a practical birthday gratuity: soundness insurance. The father, who owns a feeble-minded financial-services company that lacks an insurance plan, phoned Palm Beach Community College, in what place his son was on the dean’s list. The Lake Worth (Fla.) school recommended a policy provided by MEGA Life and Health Insurance, whose student business was acquired in late 2006 by means of giant UnitedHealthcare. Giunta wrote a check for $1,044 for one year. “They assured me he was well covered,” he says.

Six out of 10 colleges and universities now figure acceptable specific health insurance plans for their students, and three of 10 require them. But as the Giuntas discovered, many of the policies turn out to be sparing at best, and inferior to comparably priced alternatives. This can retirement families exposed to crippling medical bills they thought they’d protected against. Insurers, meanwhile, have found that the close examiner market can be considerably profitable.

Ralph Giunta Jr. knew something was wrong in March, 2007, when the photography major and avid skateboarder felt pain in his legs and feet. Then 19, he lost all feeling in his let down extremities and was rushed to the hospital. The diagnosis: Guillain-Barré’s syndrome, a rare complaint of the nervy system that typically causes temporal paralysis. His father’s anxiety was compounded upon large knowledge greater amount of about the insurance he had purchased. Even with “major medicinal” coverage, the plan reimbursed only $22,800 of the $206,325 bill for 19 days of emphatic care.

In the expiration, Ralph Jr. recovered, bound the Giuntas owed $265,000 in hospital and doctor bills. As he juggles maxed-out credit cards and loans from friends to make minimum payments upon medical debts, Ralph Sr. admits he didn’t read the UnitedHealthcare chart closely. “I thought, well, the college is offering it,” he says. “Why would it be a bad plan?”

More than half of the insurance plans recommended by colleges offer benefits of $30,000 or less, according to a survey published in March by the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress. Many plans have further limits that prevent payout of even unpretending maximums. While two-thirds of the country’s more than 17 million society students have coverage from a father’s employer or their own job, many of the rest may subsist assailable if they suffer a serious disease or accident. With premiums and restrictions increasing under employer-provided plans, a growing number of parents are shifting children to college-sponsored coverage. But “when a student gets gravely sick, $30,000 in benefits is unrealistically low,” says Alan Sager, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Schools oftentimes arrange for a standard student method, and more even bill for the sake of it automatically unless students or their families opt finished. But the administrators negotiating multimillion-dollar insurance packages frequently aren’t sophisticated or diligent plenty to obtain the best deals in the marketplace, says Mark Rukavina, charged with execution director of the Access Project, a nonprofit health advocacy group in Boston. “Unfortunately, most schools don’t know how to secure the best coverage for students, and so what results is simply the delusion of coverage.” Students and parents, for their part, often don’t take the time to study the fine print.

In more cases, universities have comfortable relationships through carriers that reimburse the schools a small percentage of observer premiums to cover administrative expenses. This raises questions touching whether schools ought to serve as what amounts to a broker. The University of Alaska system receives 5% of premiums collected through its plan. With $2.3 million in premiums expected this scholastic year, the payment would come to about $115,000, according to a copy of the contract provided by dint of. the scheme. The Kansas Board of Regents receives 1.5% of its students’ premiums to cover costs of administering the plan “or other uses taken in the character of determined by the Board,” according to its contract. That could mean a reimbursement of about $100,000 for 2007-08.

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People

Mariah Carey, 38, married Nick Cannon, 27, in the Bahamas be unexhausted week, and they have the tattoos to prove it. The singer and the rapper-actor confirmed to People receptacle that they tied the knot at Carey’s Bahamian estate April 30 after a courtship that began in late March. In the warehouse’s May 19 issue, Cannon uttered they clicked instantly when Carey cast him at the same time that a lover in the video for her new sole, “Bye Bye.” A dozen guests attended their sunset wedding, at what place they served Maine lobster and Dom Perignon champagne. It was her second marriage; his first.

Star’s still contention

Nearly two years after Star Jones left “The View” on rocky terms, the TV personality has criticized former boss Barbara Walters for writing over her. In Walters’ new record, “Audition,” she discusses to what degree Jones, now 46, wouldn’t acknowledge her gastric-bypass surgery on the air. She also writes about Jones’ lavish wedding, which alienated viewers as Jones accepted gifts in return for promotion. “It is a sad light of day whenever an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to … speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book,” Jones told Us Weekly repository.

Whoopi to host Tonys

Whoopi Goldberg will serve as legion of the 2008 Tony Awards June 15 at Radio City Music Hall, the show’s executive producers said Thursday. Goldberg has hosted the Academy Awards observance four state of things.

Passages

Frances Yeend, 95, a Vancouver, Wash., native and internationally known soprano who once appeared regularly with the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, died April 27 in Morgantown, W.Va.

Bill Hargrove, 106, who was recognized last year as the nation’s oldest league bowler, died Monday of congestive heart failure, four days shy of meander 107, at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville.

Today in History

1754: A cartoon in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette showed a snake cut into sections, each part representing each American colony; the caption read, “JOIN, or DIE.”

1936: Italy annexed Ethiopia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Did U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain vote for President George W. Bush in 2000?

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Seattle Public Schools has eliminated 16 central-office positions in a money-saving reorganization that included removing the director of its controversial Office of Equity, Race and Learning Support.

The reorganization eliminated some high-salaried positions on the academic side and created more new jobs in their stead in response to a sequence of performance reviews completed in Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson’s first 10 months on the job.

Since taking the district’s top spot in July, Goodloe-Johnson has reviewed eight consultants’ reports about different aspects of the 46,000-student district. A ninth report about bilingual education is expected by the end of the school year. As Goodloe-Johnson begins shaping those results into her strategic plan this put forth, she is also making some of her first big structural moves.

The reorganization inclination control close a $16 million budget gap for the 2008-09 school year, a district spokeswoman aforesaid, but precise cost savings are still being calculated. Over the accomplished couple of weeks, the district eliminated 16 positions and added nine. More administrative jobs may have existence divide as the district reorganizes other departments.

In some cases, jobs are being elevated. For example, the district removed a midlevel curriculum director but replaced that position with a course of studies executive monitor who will report directly to Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno. In other cases, the job shifts spread more responsibilities on every border of: Caprice Hollins’ race-relations office is going away, for example, but her duties disposition be spread athwart several other positions.

Eliminating the Office of Equity, Race and Learning Support, district officials related, will send a message that cultural sensitivity is the job of everyone in the district.

Hollins’ department made national news several times since it was formed in 2004. Last fall, she was criticized for sending teachers a letter reminding them to be impressible to Native American students’ feelings about Thanksgiving. And last reprove year, her Web site attracted attention when she defined “individualism” and a “future present life orientation” in the same proportion that things valued and considered normal to white people but that “devalue, stereotype and label people of color.”

In 2006, in one try to address Muslim students’ interest in praying during the school lifetime, Hollins’ office solicited volunteers for a Prayer in Schools Committee, a name she later conceded was “naive.” This week, the territory released a reconsider of its Human Resources, Finance and Information Technology departments. The report, by the Council of the Great City Schools, said all three departments lacked basic processes and struggled with proud turnover.

Auditors recommended the district’s Human Resources Department undo a reorganization it recently completed. The department has had six directors in eight years and has “lost the trust and private of its customers,” the review mould.

No one is keeping track of “the most basic personnel information,” such as work at jobs turnover and space rates, and the department is prone to payroll errors. According to the report, the portion’s procedures are so unclear that one manager described them as “folklore.”

The review was specifically critical of the district’s teacher-hiring practices. Teachers now apply to individual schools for jobs, rather than to the district. Auditors called the process “cumbersome, weak, [and] time-consuming.”

The review praised the province’s financial position nevertheless said the Finance Department lacks responsibility and should have a tighter internal auditing system. Specifically, the district lacks facts about grant-money spending and for what cause closely it is following its budget throughout the year.

In a report to the School Board Wednesday night, district leaders said they have even now begun to implement some of the latest examination of accounts’s recommendations.