Fort Myers Insurance

DAYTONA Beach, Fla. - WESH.com

Two young burglary suspects have been arrested in Daytona Seashore Sunday following they accidentally

referred to as 911

even though looting a vehicle along Glenview Avenue, Daytona Seashore police mentioned.

Dispatchers listened in as Stefanie Vargas, 19, plus a 13-year-old boy argued above what got one of the most value and was well worth stealing, police claimed. Together had been charged with a single count of burglary of the conveyance.

“Hello? Hello? What's your emergency?” the 911 dispatcher repeats inside the call.

“Somebody's speaking about karma,” the dispatcher mentioned.

“Let me see,” the caller says.

“When I beep the horn it implies the cops are on their way, you listen to me? You promise you find out me?” the muffled callers' voices say though the 911 dispatcher listens in.

“Look in the following, during the glove compartment. They have, like, GPSs or a thing.” “Oh, I didn't even feel about that.” “That's wherever the GPSs are at,” the callers allegedly said.

“You received to break the SIM card. Take that SIM card out. They can trace it,” the caller explained. “If there's nothing there, depart it. Trust me, God often works in mysterious means. If you be greedy, that's if you get caught up, alright?”

Police stated Vargas along with the boy had no thought they got unintentionally put the call and that officers had been en route to arrest them.

Police mentioned the suspects nevertheless had the products in theirs hands when they were being arrested.

Together suspects claimed these are Palm Bay residents.

By: Custom Cabinets

One of the more classy types of cabinets that are available for design or purchase is wine and bar cabinets. These cabinets are the classier type of cabinets because you are going to be enjoying wine and liquors here. Furthermore, they are not only effective in holding a lot of stuff for your bar, but more importantly, they are great for entertaining. Picking the right bar cabinets, though, can be a little difficult. Because bar cabinets are not necessary and are more about preference, your wants make finding the exact cabinets more arduous.

While you can always use cabinets that are already installed in the house for the bar, if you have a little money to spend consider purchasing cabinets specifically for your bar. No matter what the design of your house is, you’ll be able to find some sort of bar cabinets that fit perfectly for you. You are going to want to buy cabinets that fit the size of the room perfectly. If you have a very large space available, a tiny bar sort of disappears and doesn’t compliment the room. The same goes for a tiny room and a large bar except this time, there’s no room for partying.

On the bar, you’re going to want to have two separate cabinets for storing wine. For white wines, you’ll want one that you can put a refrigerating unit in so that the wines are kept cool. White wines should almost always be kept cool. On the flip side, you want a dry wine cabinet for the reds because these are usually served at room temperature. You’ll also want to have cabinet space for the different wine glasses that you’ll have. An effective way of implementing these cabinets and to save space is to insert hanging racks inside them to hang the glasses from.

Bar cabinets are a great way of storing all of your alcohol. They are not difficult to find, but picking the one that you want is one that relies on cost. A bar cabinet with a refrigerating unit inside of it is going to cost more money than one without. Furthermore, because of the size of bar cabinets, they are usually much more costly. Therefore, do some research and shop around so that you can get the ideal cabinets at the right price for your wallet. In the end, though, bar cabinets are a great way to increase the space for entertaining.

NEW YORK (WUSA) — Statement from Tom Brokaw From NBC WASHINGTON:

Tom and Meredith Brokaw, at around 1pm today, were in a three vehicle accident on the Bruckner Expressway. The Brokaws were in the far left lane when they noticed a spool of cable bouncing along the far right lane. Just then, a green SUV in the right lane came up fast and tried to avoid the cable. The driver lost control of her vehicle and slid into the middle lane, forcing a mail truck into the Brokaw lane of traffic.

As the mail truck careened into the Brokaw lane, Tom hit the brakes hard and skidded along the median. When the mail truck catapulted the median the Brokaw vehicle slid into it. Neither Tom nor Meredith were injured but tragically the driver of the SUV was thrown from her vehicle and killed.

Tom and Meredith are greatly saddened by this loss of life.

Email compliance has become essential for all types of businesses. It can help protect harassment, security and your business. There are solutions in which those who violate email compliance can be stopped before they occur. Of course, for this to happen, there are automated tools to help accomplish this amazing task. There are even email compliance laws that all public businesses have to abide by. Even HIPAA, (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) has to engage in email compliance laws. The problem with this as many suggest, some HIPAA and email compliance laws contradict each other making this a controversial subject.

I understand that businesses must have a policy with email compliance, but some businesses are subject to privacy. Files are becoming increasingly kept in databases and archived. The government is allowed to track email in certain businesses, but if I am writing this business, the government should have no business interfering. For example, if I go to a doctor and I am diagnosed with a chronic cough. He prescribes me codeine to relieve the cough. A week or so later, I email the doctor and say I need more. If a government official wants to check email records, he/she may think I am addicted. This violates doctor – patient confidentiality. This scenario was light, but what if it was about a girl revealing teenage pregnancy. Government does not have the right to know about it. At the same time, if the doctor told his staff through email about someone’s diagnosis, he/she would be violating email compliance and HIPAA, which could result in serious consequences for the doctor.

One positive aspect of email compliance is that it can reduce spamming of real businesses. What do I mean by this exactly? For some businesses, it is a good idea to get a mailing list and send bulk email. It’s really no different than an annoying telemarketer. Legitimate businesses send bulk email after you sign up for certain things online like how to make money off the internet. The specific site that you signed up for may be a partner with another site you are now receiving email from. The email compliance they have to follow is usually an opt-out choice. The opt outs are usually in the fine print at the bottom of the email saying “you have received this email because you signed up for (whatever you signed up for) and if you would like to opt out from receiving this email, please click this link.” When you sign up for a lot of these, it does feel like spam. If this email compliance rule was not in affect, my inbox would be full on a daily basis.

Email compliance can be positive or negative. In any case, every business needs a policy. The use of phones, radio, television, or any other form of communication has a policy. Email may be relatively new, but it is communication, which gives right to all businesses to have an email compliance policy.

By SCOTT HARRINGTON

During his weekly radio address last Saturday, President Obama attacked health insurers for allegedly making excessive profits and paying excessive bonuses, for spreading “bogus” misinformation about the impact of Democrats’ reform agenda on the cost of health insurance, and for “figuring out how to avoid covering people.” He opined that health insurers are “earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our antitrust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

Mr. Obama’s comments followed hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. In an unusual move, Majority Leader Harry Reid testified as a witness, alleging that “exempting health insurance companies [from antitrust] has had a negative effect on the American people” and that “there is no reason why insurance companies should be allowed to form monopolies and dictate health choices.”

Such populist rhetoric might exert additional pressure on insurers to fall (back) into line behind the Democratic reform agenda. But there is no evidence that their antitrust exemption has contributed to higher health insurance costs, premiums or profits, or, as implied by Sen. Reid, of “health insurance monopolies . . . making health-care decisions for patients.”

The legislative basis for the insurance antitrust exemption is the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which also codified state insurance regulation as national policy. This statute exempts the “business of insurance” from federal antitrust law provided that the activities are (1) regulated by state law and (2) do not involve boycott, coercion or intimidation. Its passage followed a 1944 Supreme Court ruling that insurance was interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal antitrust law—a ruling that cast doubt on states’ exclusive regulatory role, and the legality of then typical agreements among property and casualty insurers to use rates developed jointly by state or regional insurance rating organizations.

Most states responded to McCarran-Ferguson by enacting or modifying laws giving regulators authority over property/casualty insurance rates, including those developed by rating organizations. The next several decades saw a steady erosion of the role of collective pricing systems in conjunction with increased price competition, less price regulation, and a significant narrowing of the antitrust exemption’s scope by the courts.

The traditional debate about the antitrust exemption involved property/casualty insurance and medical malpractice liability coverage. Subject to state regulation or prohibition, property/casualty rating organizations collect and analyze loss costs and disseminate projections of future losses. And insurers, subject to state law, can incorporate these forecasts in their ratemaking.

In principle, this system helps produce more accurate rates, thus improving financial stability. More important, it reduces entry barriers for small insurers or insurers entering new markets. Small property/casualty insurers are particularly strong supporters of the antitrust exemption, which allows the sharing of loss projections.

None of this is germane to health insurance, where insurers do not jointly develop forecasts of future medical costs for use in pricing. The antitrust exemption also does not prevent review and challenge of mergers of health insurers by the Department of Justice, which, for example, challenged the 2005 merger of UnitedHealth Group and PacifiCare, and obtained a consent decree requiring the divestiture of certain portions of PacifiCare’s commercial health business.

Mergers and acquisitions of health insurers also are generally subject to approval by state regulators. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario derailed a proposed merger between the state’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross.

Repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurers would not significantly increase competition, and it would not make health-insurance coverage either less expensive or more available. There is no evidence that the exemption has increased health insurers’ prices or profits or contributed to higher market concentration.

Repealing the antitrust exemption would also not lower the cost of malpractice insurance, or prevent future malpractice insurance crises, such as those that occurred in the mid-1970s, mid-1980s, and earlier this decade. It would instead tend to reduce rate accuracy and undermine competition in already fragile malpractice markets.

In other words, the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption is inconsequential to the health-care reform debate. It just distracts attention from important issues and further demonizes private health insurance.

Rhetoric about monopoly notwithstanding, Congress’s reform proposals are not designed to increase competition in private health insurance. The House bill proposes a government-run insurer. The Senate Finance Committee proposes creation of quasi-public cooperatives. Both bills (and the Senate HELP bill) include restrictions on health insurance underwriting, pricing, profitability and policy design that would essentially turn private health insurers into regulated public utilities.

If the goal were to promote robust concentration in private health insurance, Congress would focus on reducing impediments to competition. It could do so by allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines at terms that do not require them to subsidize other buyers or to buy coverage for state-mandated benefits they are unwilling to pay for. Congress could also eliminate tax and regulatory rules that favor employment-based coverage over individual coverage.

In short, the rationale for repealing the insurance antitrust exemption is—to borrow a word used by Mr. Obama in his radio address—bogus.

—Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:31 PM on 07th October 2009

Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress.

Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels.

Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube - then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.

Taunts: Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, are punched to the ground after attacking two cross-dressing cage fighters

But the other cage fighter, wearing a sparkling black dress and matching long wig, sprang to his friend’s help, delivering two lightning-quick punches to the two stunned yobs.

The cage fighters were then seen teetering away in their high heels, stopping only to pick up a clutch bag they dropped during the melee.

Gardener and Fender were left dazed and seen staggering to their feet after their failed attack.

Knockout: One of the cross dressers casually feels for his clutch bag before walking away

CCTV cameras followed the pair as they weaved along The Kingsway in Swansea, South Wales, before being arrested by police.

Mark Davies, defending, said: ‘You know it cannot have been a good night when you get into a fight with two cross-dressing men.

‘Unfortunately they were extremely drunk.

Dazed: The two cage fighters teeter off on their high heels as their two attackers struggle to get to their feet

‘They had been out drinking jugs of cocktails and Fender had drunk at least 10 pints of cider.’

Police later discovered the two drag queens were cage fighters on a fancy dress stag night out with other friends.

Both Gardener and Fender, from Bonymaen, Swansea, pleaded guilty to using abusive words and behaviour.

CCTV footage of the attacks was shown at Swansea Magistrates’ Court. It shows them fighting with several men before the approach the two cage fighters.

The pair were sentenced to a four-month community order, were electronically tagged and placed under a curfew between 7pm to 7am.

In the light of day: The Kingsway Swansea, where the incident took place

LONDON — Ireland’s vote to ratify the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty has finally cleared the way for the creation of a powerful new president, intended to elevate the 27-nation bloc’s standing on the global stage.

But do European leaders actually want one?

Ahead lies a difficult discussion about how much power and influence a new European Union president should have and whether the post should fall to a political star — like former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain — or one of his grayer, more technocratic rivals.

The leaders of member countries will decide, probably this month, and their decision could determine whether the union really seeks the bigger role it says it needs to try to match the influence of the United States and that of rising powers like China, Russia, India and Brazil.

The Lisbon Treaty, which aims to streamline decision-making and reform the bloc’s ramshackle structures, lays down a two-and-a-half-year term for a full-time president of the European Council, the body that represents member nations. The treaty, if finally ratified by the Poles and Czechs, also mandates a single new foreign affairs chief, in charge of both policy and aid money, and a new European diplomatic corps.

Both new jobs would be subordinate to the leaders of member countries, and the position of commission president, held by José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, continues. But those who fill the two new posts will have a considerable chance to carve out significant roles for themselves, since they will be the most prominent faces of a collective Europe.

There would also be greater powers for the European Parliament — the only popularly elected European Union institution — an effort to improve democratic accountability.

The treaty, assuming it passes, is “a splendid virtual success,” said Justin Vaïsse, a French scholar at the Brookings Institution. “It is virtual not only because much will depend on the men and women who occupy the main functions, and how they choose to define them and assert their authority, but also because there will be no real improvement without greater convergence and cooperation between the big three European countries,” he said, referring to France, Germany and Britain.

So when they gather at a summit meeting this month, the 27 European leaders face a clear choice between appointing a prominent president to represent them, or someone who will be more submissive.

The identity of the new president will determine the type of job that is created, said Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a research institute in London. “If you have someone like Tony Blair, he will not want to be talking about the minutiae of service-market liberalization,” she said. “He would want to be talking about Iran to Barack Obama.”

While the European Union says it desires a bigger international role, national politicians know that a charismatic figure would overshadow many of them and could shift the bloc’s center of gravity.

There are no declared candidates. But the politician thought to have the best prospect is also the most controversial: Mr. Blair. Other contenders include: Jan Peter Balkenende, François Fillon, Herman Van Rompuy, and Jean-Claude Juncker, respectively the Dutch, French, Belgian and Luxembourgian prime ministers; Paavo Lipponen and Felipe González, the former Finnish and Spanish prime ministers; and former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland.

Though Mr. Blair led the British Labour Party to three victories, he does not have the support of most European center-left parties, which have not forgiven him for his role in the Iraq war. Britain remains outside several important union initiatives, like its single currency, the euro, and Mr. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, is thought very likely to lose the next election to David Cameron of the Conservatives, who is sharply critical of further European integration.

But with the possible exception of Mr. Fillon, Mr. Blair’s is the only credible big name to emerge so far from informal discussions. Supporters say that Mr. Blair thinks he could play a useful role because of his good relations with Mr. Barroso and several other European leaders. Smaller countries suspect that Mr. Blair would be too susceptible to favoring the big nations, reducing the influence of the bloc’s minnows.

Mr. Fillon, who is reaching the end of a successful premiership, has already proven his ability to work with and around an imperious and sometimes petulant leader, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

But Mr. Sarkozy and the freshly re-elected German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will be crucial in deciding who gets the job, and both do not want their influence diminished.

Mr. Sarkozy has spoken positively of Mr. Blair for the post, but his current thinking is unclear. Mrs. Merkel was never enthusiastic about Mr. Blair, but she was more open to the idea during recent talks with Mr. Sarkozy, a European diplomat said.

Olivier Ferrand, the president of Terra-Nova, a research institute in Paris, said Mr. Sarkozy backed Mr. Blair because the British leader would strengthen the leadership of big member states like France in an enlarged Europe.

But there will be other political considerations, too, like balancing politicians from the left and the right and from large and small nations.

If the president comes from the center-right, for example, the foreign policy chief is likely to come from the left.

Mrs. Merkel is pressing for a woman to be appointed to one of the two big jobs, with the Greek foreign minister, Dora Bakoyannis, and Austria’s former foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik, possible contenders.

“We don’t want to have a big-personality president, like Tony Blair, and then a big-personality foreign high representative, because then they will compete with each other,” said Ms. Barysch, of the Center for European Reform. “We already look ludicrous on the international stage having so many different voices.”

The Iraqi national who famously threw a shoe at the previous president George W Bush was unapologetic on his release.

He is quoted as saying “I got my chance and took it.”

Muntadhar al-Zaidi served nine months of his one year sentence and was released this week on a conditional discharge. Under Iraqi law a conditional discharge allows a well behaved prisoner their freedom if they have served seventy five percent of their sentence.

al-Zaidi received a hero’s welcome as he left the prison where he spent most of this year. He was mobbed by journalists and family as he exited the compound smiling. He was then taken away to his employer, Al-Baghdadia TV where he was interviewed live on air wearing a sash of the Iraqi national flag.

Giving the reason for his actions he said he was profoundly affected by the US led invasion, and the damage it did to his country. He said he had promised that he would do something to protest and avenge the wrongs he believed his people suffered.

He staged his protest last December when he attended a news conference held by the former president in Iraq. He threw both his shoes at the president and called him a “dog.” These are two of the worst insults an Arab can express.

The president to his credit ducked the shoes and made a joke afterwards, but it must have sent the Secret Service into convulsions.

The only apology al-Zaidi has ever expressed has been to his fellow journalists, who had seen the act as unprofessional. In his defence al-Zaidi said “Professionalism does not preclude nationalism.”

He was then jailed for a charge that surely isn’t used that often, especially in the Middle-East, “Assaulting a foreign head of state on an official visit.” The original sentence was for three years, but was reduced to one on an appeal lodged in April.

Despite the attitude towards America and Americans in Iraq, opinion was mixed after the incident. al-Zaidi was viewed as a national hero by some, but others said he had defiled the Arab tradition of honoring guests.

This is an interesting point worth laboring for a moment. The only disapproval from the Iraqi public asked about the situation said they didn’t agree with the gesture because it went against Arab tradition. Not that they disagree because an important member of the international community was insulted, or that the leader of the main contributor to their freedom was insulted.

This illustrates how America is really viewed in Iraq, and it isn’t fondly. Too many mistakes were made, and entirely too many innocent civilians were killed or injured during the conflict. This is what incensed al-Zaidi enough to hurl the shoes in the first place.

While we may sit back with a sense of satisfaction at a job ‘well’ done, the Iraqi’s see it differently. As quite adequately displayed by al-Zaidi in both his actions, and the reception he received upon his release.