Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that …17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP’s alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan.

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io9 – Five million people downloaded copies of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie since it opened in theaters, and it’s not even on DVD yet. Paramount cites that fact in its filing with the FCC’s taskforce to create a National Broadband Plan. Easy access to broadband has made movie piracy easier than ever before, and sites like Google and Bing are participating, Paramount charges. So any plan to expand access to broadband has to include some mechanism for preventing piracy, possibly including some kind of “deep packet drones.”

Their worried parents bring them to the doctor, fearing drug abuse or depression, but the evaluations come up empty. A doctor at Children’s Hospital Boston says something else may be at work. “We see kids who are just gaming, and they appear to their parents to have all of the signs and symptoms of drug use,’’ Dr. Michael Rich said about the seductive world of online games. “But in fact they are only hooked on the drug of electrons on their screen.’’

Climbing levels in games like World of Warcraft, where unlimited numbers of role-playing competitors play around the clock and around the world, can be habit-forming and disruptive for both adolescents and adults. Other online activities, from visiting porn sites to incessantly checking e-mail, can also interfere with work, school, and relationships. In a world where always being connected seems as vital as breathing, how much is too much? And does excessive Internet use equal addiction?

A debate already divides behavioral addictions such as compulsive gambling or shopping from physiological addictions to alcohol or other drugs. People don’t die when they unplug from the Internet, Dr. Ronald Pies points out.

“A person who is hooked on a barbiturate, taking tons and tons of it every day, and is suddenly cut off from the supply will go into a physiological withdrawal, which could kill him and often does,’’ said Pies, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. “I have yet to be convinced that a teenager who sits in his room using the Internet for five, six, seven hours a day, as troubled as he or she may be, has a condition that can reasonably be compared to barbiturate addiction. Which is not to say there aren’t people with a severe, pathological use of electronic media.’’

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Murphy — the vivacious judge on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” — told CNN’s Larry King that she wants other victims to learn from how she endured, but escaped, domestic violence.

Discovering her talent with dance eventually changed her life and helped her flee the relationship after nine years, she said.

Her ex-husband strongly denied that he ever physically or mentally abused Murphy, whom he married in 1978 soon after they met as teenagers in college.

“I did just tuck it away and just buried it and went on with my life and I thought that, you know, I could leave it there and I wanted to leave it there until my father died a couple years ago,” Murphy said.

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Detective Sgt Randy F Pfau said the 54-year-old woman was arrested early Sunday after reporting two men had broken into her home in Brant Township, 130km north-northwest of Detroit.

Pfau said the woman told deputies the men fled after one of them demanded her marijuana plants. He said the woman then was booked on charges of manufacturing and delivering marijuana.

Pfau told The Saginaw News the woman claimed the drug was for personal use but didn’t possess a medical marijuana card. He said police will seek charges pending test results on the marijuana they did confiscate.

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Three men have been hospitalized. One man was shot in the arm, one in the side and one in the butt.

September 21, 2009 (WPVI) — The shootings happened in the Germantown, Kensington and Nicetown-Tioga neighborhoods

The first shooting rang out at 7:00 p.m. along the 5600 block of McMahon Street in Philadelphia’s Germantown section.

Three men have been hospitalized. One man was shot in the arm, one in the side and one in the butt.
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None of the injuries appear life threatening and police say they are all deemed prisoners.

Police are looking for the shooter.

No word yet on a motive and no word yet on why the men are prisoners.

Police were called to another shooting around 7:30 p.m. in the Kensington section.

It happened along the 2600 block of North Lawrence Street near Norris Street.

Police say a man in his 40’s was shot in the chest. He is critical condition.

Then around 9:00 p.m. gunfire erupted along the 4500 block of North Bouvier Street in the Nicetown-Tioga section.

A man was shot at least one time in the abdomen.