| MySpace, Facebook Pages Called Key to Dispute Over Insurance Coverage ...
Litigation over an insurer's refusal to pay health benefits for anorexia or bulimia may turn on what is revealed from the alleged sufferers' e-mails and postings on the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. The plaintiffs are suing in federal court in Newark, N.J., on behalf of their minor children, who have been denied benefits by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Horizon claims that the children's online writings, as well as journal and diary entries, could shed light on the causes of the disorders, which determines the insurer's responsibility for payment. New Jersey law requires coverage of mental illness only if it is biologically based. Horizon claims the eating problems are not biologically based and that the writings could point to emotional causes.
TheStar.com | columnists | The needle and the damage done
Which means it has taken 27 years for oil to recover to its previous peak price – six years longer than it took for stock prices to regain their losses during the Great Depression. If anything, the sticker shock motorists have experienced at the pumps in recent years doesn't yet reflect the enormity of a crisis in oil that even industry and pro-industry government agencies are beginning, finally, to acknowledge. The world is not running out of oil. But, sooner than expected, it will run short of the kind that is easily and cheaply tapped, a day of reckoning some experts predict will be upon us early next decade – in the blink of an eye for a capital-intensive industry that thinks decades into the future. Long before that point, before pools of conventional oil already in decline are depleted altogether, consumers, governments and the industry will have to make some very tough decisions (see "What").
Obamania clobbers Clinton
They argued that McCain could actually win in November and keep the GOP hold on the White House, depending on the outcome of several big ifs. The biggest is having Hillary Clinton as the Democrats' nominee, followed by damped-down U.S. casualties in Iraq. Think again. A few hours later, at the Madrona School and other venues across the state, an estimated 200,000 Democrats gave themselves to Obamania. The Clintons, who have courted this state for 16 years, saw their support dissolve like a soap bubble. The 37th District is the state's most Democratic. Bill Clinton dropped by the neighborhood in 2008 to attend a Hillary fundraiser hosted by Starbucks chief Howard Schultz. The count at Madrona precincts told the story: 79-34 for Barack Obama in precinct 37-1913, Clinton's best showing.
Ups and Downs
It is about a woman who, along with her husband and son, comes to live in the former orphanage where the wife (played by Belén Rueda) once lived. Bad things happened here under the Franco regime. Her son begins to see children who may or may not be in his imagination. When the boy disappears, his obsessed mother is sure the house has something to do with it and is determined to find him, even when her husband has given up hope. Belén Rueda is terrific as the mother, and the film has several excellent jolts for those who prefer suspense to gore. However, the movie is not quite as good at the end as it was at the beginning. n The Kite Runner **½ Directed by Marc Forster; rated PG-13 The Orphanage** Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona; rated R OPENING THIS WEEK Cloverfield The partying people in Manhattan get a rude shock when a monster starts tearing up the town.
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