Hospitals Have Got Your Back, Maybe A Little Too Quickly

Back surgery is one of the best documented examples of expensive medical treatments that drive up health care costs while not always helping patients, and sometimes even hurting them. And the latest Medicare data show that doctors frequently order MRI back scans for patients who haven’t tried recommended treatments such as physical therapy. An MRI [...]

Romney Asks New Hampshire Voters To ‘Take Good Look’ At Candidates

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, criss-crossed neighboring New Hampshire Wednesday with events in Keene, Claremont and Lebanon. He planned to be in Exeter and Dover on Thursday. He’s doing so as his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination play it a bit more low-key now that the post Ames Straw Poll frenzy has [...]

No Relief In Sight For Somali Refugees In Kenya

Even in the relentless heat and dust of the sprawling Dadaab refugee settlement in northern Kenya, camp residents observe the dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast. Hawa Abdi is among them. She is from southern Somalia, a part of the country where famine has been declared by the United Nations. She says she has been a refugee at [...]

Libyan Rebels Struggle To Impose Order On Tripoli

Packed into cars and pickup trucks, Libya’s rebels honked their horns and fired into the air as they paraded through Tripoli’s central square on Wednesday in a show of force and celebration. Some fighters deliberately targeted the ancient stone walls of the old city that flank the square — apparently because Moammar Gadhafi used the [...]

Unwed Women Living With Men Risk More Unplanned Pregnancies

OK, so your mom was right. It turns out that moving in with that special someone without getting married first puts you at very high risk for an unplanned pregnancy. That’s one of the key findings of a new report from the Guttmacher Institute. The report found that overall, “the United States did not make [...]

When Forgetfulness Needs Medical Attention

In Pat Summitt’s 1999 book Reach for the Summit, what comes through about the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach is her singular toughness. Summitt, 59, announced yesterday that she has been diagnosed with early onset dementia caused by Alzheimer’s. Her grit, it seems, remains intact. She said she will continue coaching as she [...]

Child Pornography Bill Makes Privacy Experts Skittish

Late last month, while Washington, D.C., was focused on the debt ceiling, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation that could have long-term consequences on Internet privacy. The bill requires all Internet service providers to save their customers’ IP addresses — or online identity numbers — for a year. The bill’s stated purpose is to help [...]

Romney To Skip DeMint’s S. Carolina Labor Day Candidates’ Forum

Mitt Romney signaled Wednesday that he doesn’t see South Carolina as key to the presidential nomination. His campaign said he won’t attend Sen. Jim DeMint’s South Carolina Labor Day forum for presidential candidates. A Romney spokesman cited scheduling conflicts. But by not attending the South Carolina event, Romney fuels speculation that his strategy may be [...]

On Location: ‘Fort Apache,’ A War Zone In The Bronx

When the film Fort Apache, The Bronx, starring Paul Newman as a conflicted cop patrolling a neighborhood ravaged by poverty and drugs, came out in 1981, it was a controversial hit. Local community leaders fought with the film’s producers and threatened to sue because of the way the film depicted blacks and Puerto Ricans. Fort [...]

Sell Your Hoard: The Canny Cocktail Of Fox’s ‘Buried Treasure’

There are two kinds of household-junk reality shows at the moment. One is valuable-stuff shows, where people’s stuff turns out to be worth a lot of money. Whether it’s Pawn Stars or the more upscale Antiques Roadshow, the hook is the promise that whatever is lying around the house might be secretly valuable. The other [...]