The Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), examined insurance claims for crash damage in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., before and after handheld bans took effect and found no reduction in crashes.
"Absolutely, we were surprised by these results," says Adrian Lund, president of IIHS and HLDI. An Insurance Institute study in 2000 found that drivers talking on cellphones were four times as likely to crash as drivers not using phones. "The key finding is that crashes aren't going down where handheld phone use has been banned," Lund says. "This finding doesn't augur well for any safety payoff from all the new laws that ban phone use and texting while driving."
Despite exponential growth in the number of cellphone subscribers, the number of fatal and non-fatal crashes reported by police has remained fairly flat.
Number of all crashes (fatal and non-fatal ) reported by police:
1993: 6,105,915
1994: 6,495,988
1995: 6,699,415
1996: 6,769,583
1997: 6,624,149
1998: 6,334,573
1999: 6,279,036
2000: 6,393,624
2001: 6,322,963
2002: 6,315,708
2003: 6,327,955
2004: 6,181,027
2005: 6,159,350
2006: 5,973,213
2007: 6,024,008
2008: 5,810,691
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
The arms package announced Friday is primarily defensive, and includes 114 Patriot missiles worth $2.82 billion, 60 Black Hawk helicopters worth $3.1 billion and communications equipment for Taiwan’s F-16 fleet. The package also includes Harpoon missiles and mine-hunting ships, the Defense Cooperation Security Agency said in a statement.
The Chinese reaction was swift, and negative. China’s vice foreign minister, He Yafei, issued a diplomatic message to the State Department expressing his “indignation” over the pending sale, said Wang Baoding, the spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
In general, under the rules, employers and group health plans cannot provide less coverage for mental health care than for the treatment of physical conditions like cancer and heart disease.
Insurers cannot set higher co-payments and deductibles or stricter limits on treatment for mental illness and addiction disorders. Nor can they establish separate deductibles for mental health care and for the treatment of physical illnesses.
Such disparities are common in the insurance industry. By sweeping away such restrictions, doctors said, the rules will make it easier for people to obtain treatment for a wide range of conditions, including depression, autism, schizophrenia, eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse.
The rules, which take effect on July 1, carry out a 2008 law that was adopted with bipartisan support. They significantly expand the rights of people with mental illness, much of which goes untreated because of insurance restrictions.
Under the rules, insurers can still review claims for “medical necessity,” can still require prior approval of some services and can still charge consumers more for using doctors and hospitals that are not on a list of preferred providers.
But under the rules, insurers cannot use these techniques in a more restrictive way for mental health care than for other medical services.
The administration said the new requirements could increase premiums by four-tenths of 1 percent, or $25.6 billion over 10 years. Businesses with 50 or fewer employees are exempt.
Conventional wisdom has evolved that China's 1.3 billion consumers make up a market much too big to leave. But now, Google, the worldwide search-engine giant, may be testing that mind-set.
A week after threatening to quit China, Google reported a blockbuster net income of nearly $2 billion, or 30 percent of revenues, for the fourth quarter, suggesting the world's leading search-engine firm would remain a powerful, valuable, highly profitable media company even if it had to abandon China's burgeoning Internet market.
Election advertising is especially critical this year, given the beating that local stations have taken in the downturn. Exacerbating the economic pressures, the lack of political ad dollars last year meant that many stations experienced 30 percent declines in ad revenue, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.
With the relaxed rules, hundreds of millions of dollars could be at stake. Mr. Lanzano’s group recently revised upward its projection of 2010 election revenue for local stations, to $1.8 billion from $1.5 billion.
Beginning this pay cycle, the city will put all civil service employees in the pension plan, rather than filtering some into the less lucrative Social Security system.
The moves comes a month after a group of employees – now close to 100 – filed a lawsuit seeking rights to the pension after the city said they weren’t eligible because they didn’t pass a physical examination.
Exact costs were not available because some calculations include overtime pay and others don’t, but the change is expected to cost the city more than $1.6 million for the rest of this budget year and $2.9 million annually going forward, city spokeswoman Misty Skipper said.
On top of salary, the city pays 13.5 percent of each employee’s pay into the pension fund — more than double the 6.2 percent it pays in Social Security.
Jacksonville is the 13th best place to launch a new business in 2010, according to a new Portfolio.com/bizjournals study.
Jacksonville placed 25th last year. Rankings were calculated through a formula that took account of population, employment and small-business growth. Austin, Texas, topped the list, followed by Baton Rouge, La.; Raleigh, N.C.; Charleston, S.C.; and Portland, Maine.
The most promising region for entrepreneurs is the South, which is home to 12 of the 20 best metros for small businesses. Orlando ranked 17th; Tampa-St. Petersburg 51st; Daytona Beach 17th; and Lakeland 86th.
In its ninth annual examination of the pay of 185 public university leaders, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Monday that the median rose to $436,111 in 2008-9, an increase of 2.3 percent when compared with the year before. (When adjusted for inflation, The Chronicle said, the median increase was 1.1 percent.)
By contrast, in the previous four years, The Chronicle said, public university leaders’ salaries and benefits rose, on average, by at least 7.5 percent each year, and, in 2005, by 19 percent.
As in 2008, E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, topped the Chronicle’s ranking for 2009, with an annual compensation package valued at nearly $1.6 million.
He was followed by Mark A. Emmert of the University of Washington ($905,000); Patrick T. Harker of the University of Delaware ($810,600); John T. Casteen III of the University of Virginia ($797,050); and Francisco G. Cigarroa of the University of Texas ($787,260).
The Chronicle also calculated the pay of the leaders of 64 community colleges, and identified the three who were paid the most last year: Eduardo J. Padrón of Miami Dade College ($548,460); Michael B. McCall of the Kentucky Community College and Technical College system ($532,910); and Orlando J. George Jr. of Delaware Technical and Community College ($450,070).
Now, on the 25th anniversary of its founding in Jacksonville, the PACE center's formula has become a national model. With 17 centers in Florida, it is unique in the nation as a female-focused intervention program. And it's gaining a lot of attention these days as researchers around the country are sounding the alarm about increasing numbers of girls and women getting in trouble with the law.
Instead of committing them to prisons and juvenile justice, girls need early intervention, which is more effective and cheaper, said Mary Marx, the interim president and CEO of statewide PACE Center organization.
About 90 percent of the girls who left the program remain out of trouble a year after leaving, according to outcome measures that the program is required to report to the Department of Juvenile Justice. The department pays $12,575 to support a young woman in a PACE program vs. $42,000 to place them in a juvenile commitment facility, Marx said.
Controlling the growth of the program over the years has been key to its success, Marx said, with the 17 centers added slowly over the years.
State Attorney Angela Corey, during a mid-morning news conference, announced that Meserve is accused of pocketing $105,000 and participating in a real estate deal five years ago in Mayport.
"As a public official he used his role for private gain," said Corey.
Gov. Charlie Crist issued an executive order this evening suspending Meserve without pay until the matter is resolved.
The former Atlantic Beach mayor and current councilman representing District 13 also made a point of saying that he "welcomes the opportunity to clear (his) name."The state is hoping for as much as $900 million from the four-year Race to the Top initiative for education reform. It estimates that if it receives $700 million, that would translate locally into about $21 million over four years for Duval County down to about $506,000 for Baker County. The amounts for each participating county climbs or drops if the state gets more or less money.
Districts would use the federal money to help make student performance more of a factor in teacher evaluations - and their pay raises - and provide more financial incentives for teachers working in low-performing schools. It also would help districts provide more planning time for teachers, increase the length of the school day in low-performing schools and increase the number of full-time pre-kindergarten programs.
One of the most controversial strings is that to get the money, districts will have to agree to some sort of pay-for-performance system for teachers. But the state hasn't determined exactly what it will look like.
Some districts also worry about out-of-pocket money they'll have to ante up just to get the federal grant. And some are concerned that they may be forced to overhaul staff at some of the state's low-performing schools - many that already have seen new principals, top administrators and some teachers this year - if the schools don't show immediate improvement.
Duval County Public Schools, for instance, said it could get between $20 million and $30 million for four years, depending on how much is given to the state. But the district said it could cost at least $16 million a year to pay for the initiatives called for in the grant. Other local districts have said they don't think they would have out-of-pocket costs.
"I'm very concerned," said Duval County School Board Chairwoman Brenda Priestly Jackson. "I'm not going to vote to do anything that I think is going to take public schools from the public."
She and her fellow board members are also concerned about what will happen to low-performing schools if they fail to make big gains next year. The district is already facing state mandates to make substantial improvements at four schools by the end of this year or have to make more big staff changes at those schools. Participating in Race to the Top would add seven schools to that watch list.
Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton stepped closer Thursday to finalizing $23 million in improvements for downtown parks and amenities, among the mayor’s top goals for his last 18 months in office.
Peyton unveiled the final version of the plans, filing a bill that almost half of the 19-member City Council has already endorsed.
The money will be divided into three main projects: $11.9 million to repair the Southbank Riverwalk; $8.2 million for the first phase of enhancements to Metropolitan Park; and $3.2 million to fix and landscape Friendship Fountain.
The plans come three months after a 9 percent property tax increase, but Peyton’s staff stressed all of the downtown dollars have been earmarked for capital projects and cannot be used to help balance the budget.
“The worst thing we can do is succumb to paralysis and survivalist thinking by not doing anything,” Peyton said.
Florida Highway Patrol Capt. Mark Welch said it's estimated the new law will save about 125 lives annually and prevent more than 1,700 serious injuries.
An October survey shows 85 percent of Florida drivers are buckling up now.
Safety targets often weren't clearly spelled out in the research submitted by device makers and important patient information was missing, according to one study conducted by researchers from the FDA and Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
A separate analysis by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found heart devices frequently got the FDA's blessing based on research done outside the United States in small groups of patients. Many device studies lacked standards most scientists expect: randomization and a clear goal.The number of kids fatally abused who had involvement with the state child welfare agency also increased 20 percent, the State Child Abuse Death Review Committee determined in a report obtained by The Associated Press. In 2008, 79 children were killed who had some type of involvement with the Department of Children and Families in the past five years, compared with 66 children who died in 2007.
It marks a return to 2006 levels, when 76 kids who had DCF contact died.
Twelve of the children died while in foster care, the Department of Children and Families said. Eighty-six percent of the deaths could have been prevented by a state agency like DCF or a caretaker. Seven percent were not preventable, according to the report.
Jacksonville ranks among the least literate cities in the U.S., according to a study released this week by Central Connecticut State University.
The report scored cities of 250,000 people or more against several indicators, including education level, Internet use, newspaper circulation, number of booksellers, library services and local publications.
Jacksonville ranked 55 out of the 75 U.S. cities surveyed. Two other Florida cities appeared in the rankings. Tampa was tied for 20th, up from 29th a year earlier. Miami tied for 33rd, the same rank as 2008.
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