October 2009

EU probes mismanagement in prized Spanish wetland

Posted Tue, 10/27/2009 - 06:19 by admin

MADRID – The European Union has launched an investigation into a prized Spanish wetland that has turned bone dry through mismanagement of water resources and is now on fire underground, white smoke now rising from areas where fish once swam.
The EU wants the Spanish government to explain how it plans to save Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park in the central Castilla-La Mancha region, European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The park, one of Spain's few wetlands, is classified as a UNESCO biosphere site and an EU-protected area because of its birdlife.
But it has been drying up for decades, largely because of wells dug by farmers on the edges of the park to tap an aquifer that feeds the wetland's lagoons. Many of the wells are illegal. Environmentalists call this case a particularly glaring example of how a natural resource can be abused.
In August, intense summer heat and parched soil caused the peat just under the surface of the soil to spontaneously ignite. Now, several areas of the park are on fire underground and white smoke seeps out of deep cracks in the parched soil.
"We have seen a situation where there is continuous degradation of territory," Helfferich said from Brussels.
The EU told the Spanish government about its investigation last week and Spain has 10 weeks to explain how it plans to respond to the crisis, Helfferich said.
"Underground fires at the moment cannot be extinguished," she said, adding that the 27-nation bloc has asked Spain how it plans to deal with it.
In a worst-case scenario, the EU could punish Spain with a hefty fine if it deems that the government's management of the wetlands was insufficient.
Josep Puxeau, the Environment Ministry's top official on water issues, said the government has an emergency plan to pump in torrents of water from a river to put out the fires and restore the acquifer.
It will also continue with a policy of buying up land and farms outside the park to halt water being drawn from wells, he told reporters.
The park lies 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Madrid. Not all of it is wetland. The area capable of holding water covers about 4,500 acres (1,800 hectares) but less than 1 percent of that actually has water.
Park ranger Jesus Garcia Consuegra, who grew up in the area, remembers lusher times. He would go fishing there as a boy, venturing out at night in a rowboat equipped with a lantern to draw fish to the surface.
"It was so clear you could see to the bottom. You could see the fish there. You could watch them and it was simply marvelous," he said in a documentary on the park's Web site.
Jose Manuel Hernandez, spokesman for the environmental group Ecologists in Action, placed the blame for the wetland's demise squarely on excessive use of underground water tables for irrigation. He said climate change has nothing to do with the problem because La Mancha is dry anyway and rain levels have not dropped that much.
Rather, the culprit is a government policy over the past 20 years that allowed farmers to shift from non-irrigated crops like olive groves and wheat to thirsty ones like grapes and melons, he told the AP.
The Guadiana River, for instance, which once flowed through La Mancha, has essentially vanished for this reason and peat fires like the ones in Las Tablas de Daimiel have been common in that riverbed for years.
"The Guadiana has been burning for 20 years," Hernandez said. "People are just waking up now because the fires have cropped up in a national park."

He called the idea of bringing in huge amounts of water to put out the fires and restore the acquifer a pointless stopgap measure: the land is so dry and the water table now so low that water brought in from outside will simply get sucked up by the soil and not reach the acquifer.

It is artificial to try to save a wetland this way, and better to manage the existing water more efficiently by cutting down on use of wells, Hernandez said.

"What we need to do is recover the dynamics of the ecosystem."

Kerry becomes all-around adviser to Obama

Posted Mon, 10/26/2009 - 20:30 by admin

WASHINGTON – He's not president, a Cabinet member or ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Barack Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world.
Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Kerry from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but has not resolved a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Kerry knows how Washington works.
Kerry and Obama also share a political pedigree. Both were mentored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died in August.
"Obviously, Sen. Kerry is somebody who has a broad range of experience and an in-depth knowledge of issues, ranging form energy and climate change to health care to foreign policy," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "I think it's that experience and insight that (Obama) certainly greatly values."
That cannot be overstated. Obama made his debut on the national stage at the 2004 presidential convention at which Democrats nominated Kerry to challenge George W. Bush's bid for a second term. Obama's speech electrified the party and the convention. It was the first time many Americans had heard of the young Illinois state senator.
"I'm here because of you," Obama wrote Kerry on the January day he was sworn in as the nation's first black president. The note is framed and hangs on Kerry's Senate office wall.
And now, Obama is leaning on Kerry to help shape his foreign policy. The two men met at the White House on Wednesday just hours after Kerry returned from Afghanistan, where he played a crucial role in persuading President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote after a fraud-plagued presidential election.
"I really tried to be the utility, you know, hitter or fielder at the time," the 65-year-old senator, his voice hoarse and hip sore after an overnight flight home, said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in his Senate office.
The meetings with Karzai, he said, were intensely emotional and played out over "a lot of days, a lot of evenings, a lot of meals, a lot of tea."
Karzai, Kerry said, felt deeply that he had won the election and that he was being insulted for trying to have a democratic process. Kerry could relate.
"Do I understand the day after an election where you think you've won, or you have votes that weren't counted or something? Been there, done that," Kerry said. He talked to Karzai about his own loss to George W. Bush in 2004 and about the 2000 election, in which the Supreme Court called the contested election for Bush.
"It helped him see that ... every country's gone through its difficult races," Kerry said.
Kerry's plane touched down at home around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. By lunchtime, he was advising Obama at the White House. Kerry says he advised the president to know the outcome of the Afghan elections before sending more troops there.
"I mean, who's your defense minister?" Kerry said. "Do you have a good defense minister who's going to help coordinate the Afghan forces with your troops or do you have a political appointee who doesn't know anything about what he's doing? These things matter."
Kerry declined to say whether or when Obama should send more troops and said he'd elaborate on that point Friday during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kerry brushed off a questions about how it felt to be the de facto secretary of state, saying he and the woman who holds that position worked together as a team the whole time. Hillary Rodham Clinton talked to Karzai by phone while Kerry spent face time with him.
Still, observers said, Kerry's role as a presidential adviser on so many major domestic and foreign policy issues is unusual. Earlier this year, for example, Kerry helped reopen talks with Syria in a meeting in Damascus for President Basher Assad. He'll lead a delegation to Copenhagen in December for climate talks and sponsored the Senate bill to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. Then there's his hefty role on Obama's top legislative priority — rewriting the nation's health care policy.
David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, said traditionally the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "stays at home and goes quietly on fact-finding missions.

"It's extremely rare that any president calls on an individual outside the executive branch to do as much representative work and diplomacy as Sen. Kerry," said Gergen, who served as an adviser to four presidents.

If Clinton leaves her position during the Obama administration, Gergen added, Kerry "would be on everyone's short list and probably right at the top of it as a potential successor."

So would Kerry be interested if Clinton leaves the post while Obama is still in office? Fatigue and three rounds of questions did not knock Kerry off his answer, three times, that he's "very happy" as a committee chairman in a Democratic-run Congress under a Democratic president "that I worked very hard to help get into office."

If he ever had any doubts about his Senate role, an old mentor may have set them aside. Aboard the Mya, Kennedy's sailboat, in August 2008, the stricken older senator noted that Kerry stands at the same point in his career as Kennedy, when he bowed out of the 1980 presidential race and returned to the Senate.

According to a Senate official with knowledge of the conversation, Kennedy told Kerry that he has decades of Senate service ahead of him if he wants it, and that without presidential ambition, no one can question Kerry's motives.

Still, Kerry has his hands in so many international issues that it's easy for some to forget that he's not part of the Obama administration.

Earlier Wednesday, Gibbs slipped during an off-camera briefing and called Kerry, "Secretary Kerry." Gergen did the same thing during a telephone interview.

"I'm famous for making one or two slips in my public life," Kerry said with a weary smile. "So I wouldn't take that too seriously."

___

Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS location of Friday's speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.)

Congress extends hate crime protections to gays

Posted Mon, 10/26/2009 - 19:33 by admin

WASHINGTON – Physical attacks on people based on their sexual orientation will join the list of federal hate crimes in a major expansion of the civil rights-era law Congress approved Thursday and sent to President Barack Obama.
A priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that had been on the congressional agenda for a decade, the measure expands current law to include crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. The measure is named for Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student murdered 11 years ago.
To assure its passage after years of frustrated efforts, Democratic supporters attached the measure to a must-pass $680 billion defense policy bill the Senate approved 68-29. The House passed the defense bill earlier this month.
Many Republicans, normally staunch supporters of defense bills, voted against the bill because of the hate crimes provision. All the no votes were Republicans except for Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who supported the hate crimes provision but opposes what he says is the open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan.
"The inclusion of the controversial language of the hate crimes legislation, which is unrelated to our national defense, is deeply troubling," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
Hate crimes law enacted after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 centered on crimes based on race, color, religion or national origin.
The expansion has long been sought by civil rights and gay rights groups. Conservatives have opposed it, arguing that it creates a special class of victims. They also have been concerned that it could silence clergymen or others opposed to homosexuality on religious or philosophical grounds.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, hailed the bill as "our nation's first major piece of civil rights legislation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Too many in our community have been devastated by hate violence."
Some 45 states have hate crimes statutes, and the bill would not change current practices where hate crimes are generally investigated and prosecuted by state and local officials.
But it does broaden the narrow range of actions — such as attending school or voting — that can trigger federal involvement and allows the federal government to step in if the Justice Department certifies that a state is unwilling or unable to follow through on an alleged hate crime.
The measure also provides federal grants to help state and local governments prosecute hate crimes and funds programs to combat hate crimes committed by juveniles.
"As we learned in the civil rights era, sometimes communities need assistance and resources from the federal government when they have to confront the most emotional and dangerous kinds of crimes," said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.
The bill also creates a federal crime to penalize attacks against U.S. service members on account of their service.
Attorney General Eric Holder said nearly 80,000 hate crime incidents have been reported to the FBI since he first testified before Congress in support of a hate crimes bill 11 years ago. "It has been one of my highest personal priorities to ensure that this legislation finally becomes law," he said.
The FBI says more than half of reported hate crimes are motivated by racial bias. Next most frequent are crimes based on religious bias, at around 18 percent, and sexual orientation, at 16 percent.
At the urging of Republicans the bill was changed to strengthen free speech protections to assure that a religious leader or any other person cannot be prosecuted on the basis of his or her speech, beliefs or association.
"Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American's freedom of religion, freedom of speech or press or the freedom to assemble," said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. "Let me be clear. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act targets acts, not speech."
That didn't convince Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who said the bill was a "dangerous step" toward thought crimes. He asked whether the bill would "serve as a warning to people not to speak out too loudly about their religious views."

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said the measure was "part of a radical social agenda that could ultimately silence Christians and use the force of government to marginalize anyone whose faith is at odds with homosexuality."

___

The defense bill is H.R. 2647.

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

White House rejects Cheney's Afghanistan criticism

Posted Mon, 10/26/2009 - 16:03 by admin

WASHINGTON – The White House on Thursday forcefully rejected criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans that President Barack Obama's Afghanistan decision is taking too long.
"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."
Obama is nearing a decision on whether to significantly expand the U.S. war posture in Afghanistan by honoring a military request for thousands of additional forces. The decision had been expected as early as mid-August, when Obama's new war commander prepared a harsh assessment of deteriorating conditions in the 8-year-old conflict, and now is expected in what Gibbs calls "the coming weeks."
Obama is also weighing with his national security team whether to focus more narrowly on al-Qaida terrorists believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
Top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's still-secret troop request outlines three options — from as many as 80,000 more troops to as few as 10,000 — but favors a compromise of 40,000 more forces, officials have told The Associated Press. There now are 67,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and 1,000 more are headed there by the end of December.
The previous top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, submitted a request for more troops that went unfulfilled by former President George W. Bush. Obama partly granted that request in March when he ordered an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to go to Afghanistan this year.
Cheney said in a speech Wednesday night that Obama needs to "do what it takes to win" and that "signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries."
Taking a similar tack on Thursday, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized the administration during a speech in Fort Worth, Texas, suggesting Obama has projected confusion onto the Afghanistan conflict in his public statements.
Gibbs said such comments were curious "given the fact that an increase in troops sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months, a resource request filled by President Obama in March."
Other Democrats chimed in to defend the president, despite opposition among congressional Democrats to a major expansion of the U.S. war effort.
"Republicans have developed a troubling pattern of blaming President Obama for trying to fix all the problems that they created," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a member of the Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., also defended Obama, when asked about Cheney's criticism. "I think President Obama is entitled to take sufficient time to decide what our long-term role ought to be in Afghanistan," he said on MSNBC. "I want him to take the time to get it right."
Cheney had also taken issue with statements out of the White House that the Obama administration had to start from scratch to develop a strategy for a conflict begun in 2001, the first year of the Bush presidency.
The Bush administration presented to Obama's transition team the review of the Afghanistan war that it undertook just before leaving office and was asked to keep it under wraps, Cheney said. A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, later disputed that characterization and said the report was not kept under wraps.
Meanwhile, Obama worked Thursday on a strategy to prevent fraud from occurring in Afghanistan in its runoff presidential election set for Nov. 7.
In an hourlong videoconference from the White House Situation Room, Obama and other top advisers heard a briefing and recommendations from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. Gibbs would not specify what steps the U.S. is taking with Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission to avoid the problems that marred the original election on Aug. 20.
President Hamid Karzai faces his main challenger, ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, in the runoff.
Obama is not necessarily going to put off his decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan until after the run-off election, as some — including Democratic Sen. John Kerry — have strongly suggested he do.

"It could be before the runoff. It might be after the runoff," Gibbs said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he will prod NATO allies this week for more economic and security aid to Afghanistan while trying to sidestep the debate over more troops.

NATO nations have supplied 36,000 troops, and NATO officials have signaled they won't ask their nations to send more until Obama makes a move.

Gates said there are enough other topics to discuss with NATO allies during a defense chiefs' gathering in Bratislava, Slovakia, this week.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the allies must do more to enable Afghan forces to eventually assume responsibility for security in their country.

NATO currently has 59 training teams working with the Afghan army. Alliance officials say they need the allies to come up with nine more to fulfill present plans that call for an expansion of the Afghan forces from the present 94,000 to 134,000. But if a future expansion plan boosting the Afghan army to 400,000 troops is approved, NATO will need a total of 103 training teams on the ground.

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Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes contributed to this report from Bratislava, Slovakia.

Portable Home Gym

Posted Mon, 10/26/2009 - 15:54 by admin

A health club (commonly referred to as a gym) is a place which houses exercise equipment for the purpose of physical exercise.

Some health clubs offer sports facilities such as a swimming pools, squash courts or boxing areas. In some cases, additional fees are charged for the use of these facilities.
[edit] Personal Training
Personal training at a gym.

Visit

Sony Ericsson reports widening loss on sales plunge

Posted Fri, 10/16/2009 - 05:34 by admin

STOCKHOLM (AFP) –
Delays in competing in the smartphone market hit third-quarter results at mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson which reported on Friday a sharply wider net loss and a 42-percent sales plunge.

The joint Japanese-Swedish enterprise formed in 2001 said that net earnings came to 164 million euros (244 million dollars) in the July-September period after a shortfall of 25 million euros in third quarter 2008.

Third quarter sales fell 42 percent to 1.62 billion euros from 2.80 billion a year earlier. Compared with the second quarter sales were down 4.0 percent.

From July to September the company sold 14.1 million mobile phone units, a 45 percent fall from the 25.7 million sold in the year-earlier period.

But the company pointed to a 2.0 percent gain in sales from the second quarter. The average third quarter sales price was 114 euros against 122 euros in the second quarter.

Sony Ericsson estimated its third-quarter market share at 5.0 percent, unchanged from the second, and forecast a 10-percent contraction in the global mobile phone market this year.

The company has suffered from delays in its operations on the smartphone market, currently dominated by Apple's iPhone and the Blackberry by Research in Motion.

But outgoing head Dick Komiyama said: "Having refreshed our brand we are now better positioned to support the launch of new products ... in fourth quarter 2009."

Komiyama was replaced on Thursday by Bert Nordberg.

Sony Ericsson is not quoted on the stock exchange and its accounts remain integrated with those of Sony and Ericsson.

In early trade on the Stockholm exchange Ericsson was showing a gain of 1.5 percent to 72.30 kronor on an overall market that was 0.8 percent stronger.

Parks and Recreation Software

Posted Mon, 10/05/2009 - 19:45 by admin

Computer software is often regarded as anything but hardware, meaning that the "hard" are the parts that are tangible while the "soft" part is the intangible objects inside the computer. Software encompasses an extremely wide array of products and technologies developed using different techniques like programming languages, scripting languages or even microcode or a FPGA state. The types of software include web pages developed by technologies like HTML, PHP, Perl, JSP, ASP.NET, XML, and desktop applications like OpenOffice, Microsoft Word developed by technologies like C, C++, Java, C#, etc. Software usually runs on an underlying software operating systems such as the Linux or Microsoft Windows. Software also includes video games and the logic systems of modern consumer devices such as automobiles, televisions, toasters, etc.

Computer software is so called to distinguish it from computer hardware, which encompasses the physical interconnections and devices required to store and execute (or run) the software. At the lowest level, software consists of a machine language specific to an individual processor. A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. Software is an ordered sequence of instructions for changing the state of the computer hardware in a particular sequence. It is usually written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for humans to use (closer to natural language) than machine language. High-level languages are compiled or interpreted into machine language object code. Software may also be written in an assembly language, essentially, a mnemonic representation of a machine language using a natural language alphabet. Assembly language must be assembled into object code via an assembler.

Parks and Recreation Software

Ala. woman lets daughter ride in box on top of van

Posted Mon, 10/05/2009 - 19:33 by admin

ALBERTVILLE, Ala. – An Alabama woman has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child after police say she let her daughter ride in a cardboard box on top of their van. Albertville Police spokesman Sgt. Jamie Smith said the 37-year-old woman was arrested Sunday after police received a call about a minivan on a state highway with a child riding on top.
Smith said the woman told police the box was too big to go inside the van, and that her daughter was inside the box to hold it down.
Smith said the mother told officers it was safe because she had the box secured to the van with a clothes hanger.
The 13-year-old daughter wasn't harmed and was turned over to a relative. A jail worker said the mother was out on bond Monday.
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Information from: The Huntsville Times, http://www.al.com/hsvtimes/hsv.html

AP Sources: NYC suspect contacted senior al-Qaida

Posted Mon, 10/05/2009 - 18:51 by admin

WASHINGTON – An Afghan immigrant accused of plotting a terrorist attack in New York after receiving training in Pakistan was in contact with a senior al-Qaida operative, intelligence officials familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.
The CIA learned about Najibullah Zazi through one of its sources and alerted domestic agencies, including the FBI, intelligence officials said.
U.S. intelligence organizations first became aware of Zazi in late August, a senior administration official said. Interest in Zazi surfaced just weeks before prosecutors claim he was planning to strike on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The intelligence and administration officials declined to offer more details on the operative and spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
The fact that intelligence officials learned of Zazi through a CIA source sheds more light on the government's claim that the charges against him are part of a broader, international case and begins to explain why the investigation triggered such a large offensive from the nation's intelligence community.
It also shows the case stems from the CIA's counterterrorism efforts to track al-Qaida and not an investigation initiated in this country by someone's suspicious actions, like most other domestic terrorism cases handled by the FBI.
President Barack Obama began receiving briefings on the investigation in late August, updated at least daily and sometimes several times a day as intelligence officials were crafting their case against Zazi, senior administration officials said.
Zazi initially was characterized to Obama as a person of interest because of suspected involvement in terrorist activities, the officials said. Obama's primary interest in those briefings was to ensure an attack was prevented and all involved in the plot were identified, the officials said.
The CIA declined to comment Monday, spokesman George Little said.
Federal agents began watching Zazi in Denver in early September. He drove a rental car to New York on Sept. 9, but left the city to return to Denver on Sept. 12 after learning that investigators were looking for him, prosecutors said. FBI agents raided three apartments in Queens two days after Zazi left the New York area.
Zazi and his lawyer agreed to meet with investigators at FBI offices in Denver on Sept. 16. And after three days of meetings, Zazi was arrested and charged with lying to federal agents.
Speaking Monday in Colorado at a conference of police chiefs, Attorney General Eric Holder said the plot had the potential to kill scores of people.
Zazi, 24, is the only suspect publicly identified in the terror plot. More arrests are expected. Prosecutors have said three others in New York City worked with Zazi, although they do not currently pose a threat.
Calls to Zazi's lawyer were not returned Monday.
Zazi was initially arrested on charges that he lied to federal investigators. He remains held without bond and has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. The charges related to his statements to investigators later were dropped.
Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, and a Queens, N.Y., imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, face charges of lying to investigators last month when first questioned about Zazi.
Prosecutors said Zazi received explosives training at an al-Qaida training camp. They have accused him of planning an attack in New York, perhaps on the city's subway system around the anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, using powerful homemade bombs of hydrogen peroxide and flour. Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid attempted to use the same type of explosive in 2001 and the material was used by the terrorists in the London bombings in 2005 that killed 52 people.
Zazi received was recruited and trained by al-Qaida to make the bombs from common supplies purchased at beauty supply stores, intelligence officials said, although they declined to say when that occurred. Zazi's contact with the senior al-Qaida operative occurred through an intermediary, one official said.

Zazi, who moved to the U.S. with his family as a teenager, has denied any involvement in a terror plot. He has said his travels to Pakistan, which began in 2006, were to visit family, including his wife, whom he married on that first trip.

The case against Zazi involves classified information as well as evidence the FBI collected in searches of Zazi's computer that discussed bomb making.

Prosecutors submitted court documents saying they intend to use electronic information the FBI obtained through the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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Associated Press writers Adam Goldman in New York and Eileen Sullivan, Matt Apuzzo and Lara Jakes in Washington contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS the substance used in the bomb to hydrogen peroxide.)

Georgia Health Insurance

Posted Mon, 10/05/2009 - 15:14 by admin

Guidance exists for insurers and reinsurers, whose CEO's and CFO's attest annually as to the reinsurance agreements their firms undertake. The American Academy of Actuaries, for instance, identifies three categories of contract as outside the requirement of attestation:

* Expatriate insurance provides individuals and organizations operating outside of their home country with protection for automobiles, property, health, liability and business pursuits.

Georgia Health Insurance