text:
Big Tobacco at the Bar of Justice
By PETER PRINGLE
Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
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A NOVEL OBSERVATION"MR. ROSS: I feel that in time an objective study should be made into ... cigarette smoking ... to make certain that people who use [cigarettes] do not place an overdue burden on the others that do not use them and that the payment they make should be equal to the costs they create.
MR. SATTERFIELD: That is a novel observation, I must confess."
--An exchange in 1969 between Arthur Ross, then chairman of the Franklin National Bank, and Congressman David Satterfield of Virginia during hearings to ban cigarette advertising on television
HOLMES COUNTY, Mississippi, is depressingly poor--fifth from the bottom on the federal poverty scale. One reason is the land. The county lies sixty miles to the north of Jackson, the state capital, on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. But, in contrast to the Delta's fertile floodplain, Holmes County's red clay is unworkable and barren. Small landowners raise a few cattle and a hog or two, but in high summer the land is abandoned, blanketed in great cascading sculptures of kudzu. The county seat is Lexington, a tiny town of 20,600 built around a central square. It has a handsome redbrick courthouse with a clock tower, a thirty-foot-high Civil War statue, and several stores doing a brisk trade in secondhand goods with advertisements such as "Used Tires Guaranteed 3 Months." A mobile-home factory provides employment for the lucky few, the size of their wage packet being dependent to a large extent on the damage wrought to the Gulf Coast during hurricane season. A few miles outside Lexington, you could be in rural Central America. Poorly dressed children play in dirty backyards with underfed dogs.
INTO THIS SOUTHERN BACKWATER in the fall of 1987 rolled the frontline legal forces of the American Tobacco Company, maker of Lucky Strikes, Pall Malls, Tareytons, and Carltons. They were preparing to spend millions of dollars from the company's $1.5 billion in annual tobacco sales to defend a lawsuit brought by a black carpenter named Nathan Horton. Aged fifty, Horton had smoked two packs of Pall Malls a day for more than thirty years, and he blamed the American Tobacco Company for his inoperable lung cancer. The image of this huge international tobacco company descending on tiny Lexington to squash the claim of a dying carpenter was the best, and the worst, example of what those plaintiffs' lawyers who had been through a tobacco lawsuit and survived to tell the tale called "the Wall of Flesh"--a legal machine made up of hundreds of attorneys, paralegals, researchers, scientific advisers, and private investigators, not to mention public relations consultants, that form the defense team when any U.S. tobacco company is challenged in the courts. The American Tobacco Company was then owned by American Brands, which, like other tobacco giants, had diversified over the previous decade and also owned life insurance companies, a liquor company that included Jim Beam whiskey and Gilbey's gin, and various other manufacturing enterprises, including makers of office products, padlocks, and golf clubs. Nathan Horton was a self-employed carpenter who had served in the navy, where he'd begun smoking two packs a day. He'd saved enough money to build his own house for his second wife and their six children, a step up from trailers and cement-block duplexes.
In 1986, Horton was hired by a sharp-witted, personable local lawyer named Don Barrett to help build a duck-hunting camp on the nearby Yazoo River. Barrett runs a family firm known as the Barrett Law Offices across the road from the courthouse and if Lexington had a squire, it would be Don Barrett. His home is only a short walk from the courthouse square, past the police station and the county jail. It is a Southern mansion set in a salient of prosperity amid live oaks, neat lawns, and well-groomed family pets. A great Shumard oak, said to 350 years old, guards the main entrance to Barrett's house. The law practice was started in 1933 by his father, Pat, who still works there. Don Barrett is a graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School, class of '69. He started specializing in toxic waste cases and personal injury law in the seventies and became chairman of the toxic torts section of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association.
Like many of his colleagues in the torts business, he kept looking for a chance to take on the tobacco companies. Horton, then fifty years old, had been told by his doctor that he had two years to live. Barrett offered to represent him on a contingency fee.
To Barrett, Horton looked like a good case, perhaps the best opportunity in a while to confront the industry. Mississippi was one of ten states in the union with a tort statute of "pure" comparative fault, which means that a plaintiff can win damages if a jury decides the maker of the product bore even a fraction of the blame for an injury. In almost all the other states, a plaintiff could not recover damages unless the defendants were found to be more than 50 percent responsible. In Mississippi, in theory, a manufacturer who was held just 1 percent responsible for Horton's condition would be liable for a proportionate share of the actual damages awarded.
Horton's suit was unusual in another respect. He claimed that the tobacco company had knowingly sold cigarettes contaminated with pesticides. Barrett had obtained an American Tobacco internal memo from 1976 stating that residues of the bug killer known as DDVP were present in cigarettes, in some cases in amounts more than four times higher than the federal maximum permitted in foods. A second memo a year later reported that American Tobacco was still "exposing unprotected finished cigarettes and little cigars as well as open bulks of tobacco and wrapping materials to DDVP aerosols." The memo also said that the way the company was spraying DDVP was not in compliance with directions from the Environmental Protection Agency. It was not exactly a winning weapon, but Barrett was looking forward to using it in court.
Still another reason for Barrett's confidence was that Lexington is one of the worst places for a large, wealthy corporation to defend a case against an aggrieved individual--especially a tobacco company against a local black smoker. It takes nine of twelve jurors to decide such a case in Mississippi. Holmes County is 75 percent black and an all-black, anti-big business jury was anticipated. Mississippi is also a nontobacco state where the tobacco companies were seen as symbols of big-city corporate culture, white-run businesses manipulating poor blacks from afar. Barrett could also count on some resentment of tobacco company marketing practices. Of late, the tobacco companies had been increasing their advertising targeted to blacks, a group disproportionately affected by smoking-related diseases. Cigarette consumption was falling among whites but it had increased among blacks, with young black females accounting for the fastest growing group of new customers. Black men had a 58 percent higher incidence of lung cancer than white men and blacks lost twice as many years of life, 8.1 compared to 3.8, because of smoking-related disease. Even so, R. J. Reynolds was preparing to market a cigarette targeted at blacks directly. Called "Uptown," it was so roundly condemned by black leaders and doctors that it was eventually scrapped.
After looking at the American Tobacco Company's finances, Barrett decided to demand one of the largest-ever sums for Nathan Horton's illness: $2 million in actual damages and $15 million in exemplary or punitive damages, those intended to make an example of a company's wrongdoing. Adding together Mississippi's favorable law, the sympathy Horton could command from his peers, and the determination of Barrett and his colleagues, observers of tobacco litigation thought Barrett had the best chance yet. The veteran antitobacco campaigner Dick Daynard, of Northeastern University Law School in Boston, commented, "In Holmes County you have people who are not immediately going to assume the beneficence of established American institutions like tobacco companies."
Wall Street was taking the case seriously, too. Tobacco stocks were already heavily discounted--that is, undervalued compared with other blue-chip stocks--because of pending lawsuits. Stock analysis, intent on sending back instant reports, were preparing to descend on the little Lexington courthouse with its one public pay phone. Some analysts were predicting possible drops of 15 percent, which in the case of the biggest company, Philip Morris, meant several billion dollars of lost value.
Even as Barrett prepared the case for trial, Horton's lung cancer was steadily sapping his strength. Once a robust six feet, one and 185 pounds, he was now down to 137 pounds. He was bent and weak of voice, preserved by blood transfusions and dependent on powerful painkillers and other medications. It became clear he would not survive to take part in the trial. Late in January, Morton Mintz of The Washington Post interviewed him at home. They talked about his son, who had studied pharmacy at Ole Miss, and about fishing, but also about death. Horton said, "I have some good days, and I have some days when I cry all day. Some nights," he said, he was "scared to go to sleep, because this will be the end of it." Other times, he had "nightmares about cigarettes. I get to dream about them, craving. If it were so that cigarettes did give me cancer, I wish people would know it. I would hate for anyone to be in the position that I'm in right now." He died a few days later. He was buried in a tiny cemetery down the dirt road from his house. The Veterans Administration picked up the bill for the funeral and gave him a military headstone. His wife, Ella, took up the case on his behalf.
The first sign of American Tobacco's extraordinary commitment to its defense in the Horton case came that fall. At the courthouse in Lexington, a team of private investigators arrived, having come all the way from Los Angeles to carry out a thorough examination of the five hundred names on the jury register and make background files on all of them. The staff at the courthouse was aghast. Earline Hart, a young black woman who was the deputy circuit clerk when the L.A. team arrived, particularly remembers a handsome surfer type named Steve. She never knew his surname. "They went through all the court dockets, civil and criminal," she recalled, "Including copies of marriage records or any liens against property. When they were finished with our records, they went to the Tax Collector's Office to find out if they were property owners, and then they went to the Justice Court to see if they had any misdemeanors filed against them." The courthouse had never witnessed this kind of pretrial investigation.
The company also hired "consultants": local leaders of the community who could advise the defense lawyers on reactions of the jury members once the trial began. Their job was to sit in the courtroom each day and act as a "shadow jury." Earline Hart called them the "fan club" because they would turn up each day and sit on the tobacco company's side of the court. The courtroom, which holds about 150 people comfortably, had up to 300 spectators each day. Local people stood in line to be sure of getting a seat. About fifteen or twenty were members of the "fan club," and anyone who sat in one of "their" seats was promptly asked to move elsewhere. Dick Daynard, who came down from Boston to observe the trial, put his briefcase on one of the reserved seats, and went to get a drink of water. When he came back, his briefcase had been moved to the other side of the courtroom. He was told that this was where the defendant's trial consultants sat. The effect was to let the jury know they were being watched by community leaders who had control over the welfare and economy of the county. "They always began the day shaking hands with the defense lawyers in full view of the jury," he recalls. "I've been in lots of courtrooms in my life and nobody's ever moved my briefcase from one bench to another." Although the tobacco company never admitted paying them, some of the consultants received $50 an hour, more than many workers in Holmes County made in a week.
American Tobacco hired five Mississippi law firms to help defend the case. The leader of the team was James Upshaw of nearby Greenwood. The company's New York lawyers were also present in force. They rented a wing of the local morel and sectioned it off with security guards. Room service meals were provided by the restaurant next door. The out-of-state lawyers quickly discovered that Holmes County is dry and the only local liquor store in Lexington was the Beveridge Shop. For years, the store's supply of Bombay gin had been gathering dust on the shelves, since the locals preferred whiskey. Soon after the tobacco lawyers hit town, the gin disappeared. There also seemed no end to the company's expense account. In Lexington, the defense team rented a house to serve as office space. The Federal Express delivery man made frequent visits there. On his last trip after the trial, he picked up a load of 1,500 pounds of documents bound for New York, at a cost of $5,000.
Barrett's funds, by contrast, were severely limited and his operation was local. It included Fred Clark, a black lawyer from Greenwood, and Charles McTeer, another black lawyer, from Greenville. Clark had graduated from Ole Miss law school ten years earlier and had worked with Barrett on toxic waste cases. McTeer had graduated from Rutgers in 1972 and was a well-known civil rights lawyer.
To bolster his case, Barrett had deposed the company's former chairman and CEO, Robert Heimann. During two hours of examination about his twenty-five years with the company, Heimann showed himself to be arrogant and uncaring. Among several arresting observations, Heimann claimed that the idea that smoking was hazardous to health had never occurred to him or to anyone else in the company and he could not recall his board of directors ever discussing the issue. Asked whether it had ever occurred to the company that one day researchers would establish that smoking was hazardous to health, Mr. Heimann simply said, "No." Although he had never studied medicine and was not a statistician, the former chairman claimed that he was more qualified than a medical doctor to pronounce on epidemiological findings. The 1964 Surgeon General's report that was the first to establish a causal link between lung cancer and smoking was based on "spurious statistics" and had been advocated in "a reprehensible propaganda campaign," he said. Asked whether the Surgeon General was more qualified than he to determine if smoking is hazardous to health, Heimann replied, "No." He said, "Most physicians have little or no knowledge of statistical nuances and would be easily taken in and misguided by their improper use."
"So, is it your opinion that you are more qualified than a medical doctor?" he was asked.
"In that area, yes," replied Heimann.
"Did any senior executive [of the company] ever consult with any professional medical association ... to determine if there were health, hazards associated with smoking?"
"Not that I know of," answered Heimann.
Nearly a year after Horton's death, the trial began on January 5, 1988. Barrett put up a brave front. "It won't be long," he said of the tobacco industry, "before the house of cards comes tumbling down ... or we slink back into our little holes, never to be heard from again." In his opening remarks, Barrett told the jury of the toxic cocktail of substances in cigarette smoke--from radioactive polonium-210 to high-phosphate fertilizers, residues of pesticides, and even microscopic particles "similar to asbestos." How could Nathan Horton possibly have known all this? he asked. And, therefore, how could he be said to have accepted all the risks? Defusing the personal responsibility factor, Barrett admitted Horton had to some extent been negligent in smoking Pall Mall cigarettes. But so had the company for selling them. "We accept our responsibility. The American Tobacco Company refuses to accept theirs, and that's what this lawsuit is all about." The company's defense ran to the usual argument. Horton was a strong-willed man totally in control of his life. If he chose to smoke and continued despite the 1966 warnings on the cigarette packs, advice from his family, his friends, and even his high school football coach--whom the company had tracked down--then that was his decision.
For almost a month the arguments went back and forth. All the while, the "fan club" dutifully turned up and made their observations for the defense lawyers: the jury was clearly confused by some of the medical evidence, and the word around town was that some of them thought that Barrett had asked far too much in damages. It was an amount of money only dreamed of in Lexington. In its closing speeches, the company charged that the medical experts who testified for Horton were suspect because they were zealots on a crusade against the company and that the plaintiffs' lawyers were out to make big bucks from the industry and out of the controversy over smoking and health. Barrett retorted that he was "proud to be on a crusade to clean up the tobacco industry."
The jury retired on January 28 with a key instruction from the judge that the company could not be held responsible in comparative fault unless the jury agreed it had been selling cigarettes it knew to contain harmful contaminants. As to the $15 million punitive award, the judge told the members of the jury--eleven blacks and one white--that they would have to find that the company had a reckless disregard for the public health in failing to test their cigarettes properly if they wanted to award punitive damages.
On the first day of deliberations, the jury deadlocked, eight in favor of the plaintiff and four for the company. Agreement seemed a long way off, and they were sequestered for the night in a motel in Greenwood, fifteen miles away. By the afternoon of the next day, the jurors were split seven to five in favor of the company and told the judge they couldn't agree. The judge declared a mistrial. The company declared victory, and the plaintiffs cried foul.
Barrett tried to open a judicial inquiry into whether the company's consultants had tampered with the jury. The judge's finding was that one of the consultants had made an improper call to two of the jurors but there was no criminal wrongdoing. The judge also blocked Barrett's efforts to subpoena all the consultants to determine exactly why they had been hired and how much they had been paid. Such a process, the judge ruled, could have a "chilling effect" on their future efforts to take on consultant work--a job that was perfectly legitimate. The two sides dispersed--American Tobacco with a legal bill estimated to be around $10 million and the Barrett Law Offices with a debt of $260,000 in out-of-pocket expenses and $2 million in billable time. Don Barrett had taken out a second mortgage on his house to cover the costs, but he vowed to fight on. "We came so close," he said, "once you slap the bully in the bar ... you're in for the whole fight." But he could not have imagined where that fight would eventually lead him. The retrial was moved to Oxford, the site of Ole Miss, his alma mater, because, the judge ruled there had been so much publicity and so much public sniping between the two sides that a new Lexington jury would be prejudiced. After hearing eleven days of evidence in the Oxford trial, the jury decided that cigarette smoking had caused Nathan Horton's lung cancer but refused to award damages, saying both the company and Horton were at fault. Each side put its own spin on the verdict. Barrett claimed victory because the jury had found Pall Malls were dangerous and Horton had not been fully aware of the risks. A lawyer for the tobacco companies said that when a jury awards no damages the tort isn't complete, and he claimed victory, too.
DON BARRETT HAD NEVER SMOKED but during the Horton trial he developed what he called his "cigarette habit"; he became addicted to suing the tobacco companies. He was bitter about the $2 million he had lost on the trial and wanted revenge. But he also wanted justice. If you live in Lexington, Mississippi, you have a worm's-eye view of the capitalist state whatever your politics. Barrett is a mixture of Southern populist, traditional Republican, and devout Methodist. He had seen who was smoking cigarettes and who was being harmed by them, mostly poor working people. He believed the tobacco companies should be forced to be more socially responsible. Beating them up in court was one way to make them do their public duty.
The strength of his commitment to tobacco litigation was as sturdy as his roots in Lexington. One summer's day in 1996, Barrett and I were driving out of town to visit Ella Horton. When the kudzu vines are at their peak in high summer, the landscape is stifling and you long for the open plain of the Delta, and the cotton fields. I asked Barrett why someone such as himself, who was relatively wealthy, despite his loss to American Tobacco, would stay in tiny Lexington. He replied that he had never had any plans to leave. As Faulkner had said of his treasured native state, "You don't love because; you love despite." But there was something else. Barrett said he had come to believe that he was doing God's work. He thanked the Lord that he had been given this opportunity to fight the wrongdoings of the tobacco companies, he was a crusader, just as the tobacco company lawyers had painted him in the Horton trial. He didn't want to put the tobacco companies out of business; he wanted to hurt them--as they had hurt Nathan Horton, and as they had hurt him.
The image he portrayed was oddly out of place with the picture of the unscrupulous courtroom brawler that most often comes to mind when thinking of personal-injury trial lawyers. A similar religious fervor could be found in two other Mississippi lawyers who would join Barrett in his campaign against Big Tobacco and eventually become the prime movers in bringing the tobacco industry chiefs to the negotiating table in the spring of 1997.
One was Mike Moore, Mississippi's attorney general, whose youthful good looks and instant charm belie the rough and tumble politics of his office. The other was Dick Scruggs, a courtly, bespectacled country lawyer with a ready smile, who had been a navy pilot, otherwise living most of his fifty years in the port town of Pascagoula, on Mississippi's Gulf coast. Scruggs and Moore had grown up in Pascagoula, but six years apart. Scruggs, whose parents were divorced and whose mother was a secretary at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Company, learned early the meaning of money; the shipyards were booming in the '60s making vessels for the navy, and the owners were very rich. As a teenager, Scruggs would spend many days hanging out at one of their grand antebellum houses on the beachfront, which had been converted into a club for families of shipyard employees. When he later made his own fortune through asbestos lawsuits, Scruggs would buy two of those houses. He had wanted to turn one into a reception hall for the town, but the neighbors opposed the idea. "Some of them are concerned the bubbas will be down there peeing in the flower beds," Scruggs would tell American Lawyer in his first big media interview in the spring of 1996.
Mike Moore grew up in a strong Catholic family in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood. One small setback he mentions in an otherwise easy childhood was that it took him longer than most to grow to his full height of five feet, eleven inches. He was only five feet, three inches when he graduated from high school, with the result that he was pushed around by his peers more than he would have liked. The suggestion is that this in part accounts for his congeniality and his reluctance to say no to people; and that it also left him with an uncontrollable ambition to succeed and an irrepressible desire to look after the "little guy." Certainly, he has been a great cheerleader for his small state. When he talked about "li'l ole Mississippa takin' on Big Tobacca," it was said with deep feeling--from a Southerner who was determined to make his mark on the Northern Establishment and, if possible, on the rest of the world.
In 1974, Scruggs and Moore met at the law school of Ole Miss. Moore was a keyboard player in a rock band and a Little League coach. Scruggs, six years older and straight off the flight deck, was more mature. He never had much time for nonacademic pursuits. He continued to fly in the navy reserve to help pay his tuition. Of Moore in those days, he says, "We were friends, but not close." After law school they went their separate ways, Scruggs to a law office in Jackson, the state capital; Moore home to Pascagoula. Still only twenty-seven, Moore became a district attorney, stiffing up the local community during his first year in office by pressing charges and winning corruption convictions against four of the five county supervisors. As he moved up to Jackson to seek wider political office, Scruggs returned to Pascagoula to set up his own business. They met infrequently.
By chance in the late seventies, Scruggs encountered Don Barrett, on opposite sides of the Lexington courthouse. Barrett was a plaintiff's lawyer seeking damages for a domestic electrical fire and Scruggs was representing the power company. Barrett won the case but they became friends and later, when Barrett took up Nathan Horton's smoking case, Scruggs encouraged him.
In 1984, Scruggs started handling asbestos cases. The Johns-Manville Corporation had already filed for bankruptcy, leaving 16,500 asbestos lawsuits pending and an estimated 130,000 claims yet to be litigated. For a decade, the plaintiffs' lawyers had been winning or settling virtually every asbestos case they filed. Pascagoula shipyard workers came knocking on Scruggs's door. They all had lung diseases of various types caused by asbestos. Scruggs had read up on pulmonary medicine and put up his own money, a few thousand dollars, for the men to have medical exams, an initial expense other local lawyers involved in asbestos cases had balked at. Scruggs started winning cases. The result: Scruggs got the most clients, about 4,000 of them in all.
With some deft footwork he also managed to try his cases more quickly than others. The asbestos companies had succeeded in transferring most of the local cases from state to federal court, where they would have to wait in a long line to be heard. But Scruggs seized on a Mississippi Supreme Court ruling on strict product liability that for the first time gave plaintiffs the chance to include local distributors in personal-injury claims. The big asbestos companies had headquarters elsewhere, but by naming a local distributor as a defendant, Scruggs was able to get his cases returned to the state court, a much quicker route to trial. Scruggs was lucky to have a local populist judge, Darwin Maples, in charge of his local court. Maples wanted to get the cases in and out of his court as fast as possible.
As it turned out, Scruggs was also a master at cutting deals. While his colleagues looked on and scoffed, Scruggs slipped through settlements for much lower awards--but clinched the deals before the companies declared bankruptcy. Scruggs also consolidated thousands of claims into a single trial--a type of class action that had been pursued before by two other trial lawyers prominent in asbestos litigation, Ron Motley of Charleston, South Carolina, and Walter Umphrey, of Beaumont, Texas (now both on Wendell Gauthier's class-action committee). In Pascagoula, Scruggs left his colleagues standing on the courthouse steps, pockets empty. His average client received between $50,000 and $60,000 and Scruggs took his 25 percent.
Moore, meanwhile, was running hard for attorney general. He was elected in 1987 with a class of yuppies who had taken over state government. Energetic, bright, and charming, Moore was soon being spoken of as a future governor of the state, something he did not discourage. He would win reelection in 1991 with 75 percent of the vote. Scruggs was a major contributor to his campaigns.
One of Moore's first tasks as attorney general was to add the state of Mississippi to the nationwide lawsuits against the asbestos companies to recover the cost of removing asbestos from public buildings. The attorney general's office had no staff to do the litigation, so Moore hired Scruggs to represent the state. In five years, Mississippi recovered $20 million and Scruggs received his 25 percent fee.
From his modest beginnings, Scruggs had already become a Southern gentlemen of considerable means. "I happened to be in the right place at the right time," he acknowledges modestly. By the '90s, Scruggs had two yachts, a holiday home in Key West, and his own Learjet. But to meet him you wouldn't know that his take-home pay is over a million dollars a year. Unlike some of his more colorful brethren in the plaintiffs' bar, Scruggs works out of cramped, spartan headquarters in a bleak shopping mall in the middle of Pascagoula. He drives a darkgreen, two-seater Mercedes convertible, but it's parked outside the back door because there's no room at the front. In place of the usual English barrister or hunting prints on his law office walls, there are pictures of sailing boats and of Scruggs piloting his navy jets. He is almost apologetic about his boats and jet plane, although he clearly enjoys both.
SCRUGGS HAD now become an elite member of the plaintiffs' bar. While many of its members promote themselves as private attorneys general righting civil wrongs, stepping in to help the common man through the court system when government either can't or won't be of assistance, actually they participate in a litigation lotto. How much they are motivated by money and how much by social conscience or even guilt is a question hard to answer. But in the spring of 1994, the fact is that as a group these self-made men and women had never been so well placed to conduct a crusade. In New Orleans, Gauthier would say of his class action, "I know the outside world thinks we're greedy hogs. As I see it, this is our chance to do some good for society and give something back." Scruggs felt it was time to "reinvest" his capital. "If we don't use a substantial part of that money to reinvest in our clients and reinvest in the people that we represent, then the criticisms of us are justified.... We had a war chest and it was our duty to reinvest it." To Scruggs, it was a straightforward equation; spend some of your money in a good cause or keep your money and be despised for how easily you made it. This did not mean a rush to "invest" without prospects of a return, but none of them, especially the trio that emerged in Mississippi--Scruggs, Barrett, and Moore--imagined how much would eventually be on the table.
Like the other liability lawyers, Scruggs had occasionally thought of suing the tobacco companies. He had discussed the possibility with Ron Motley after a collaboration on an asbestos settlement. "We were bored with asbestos," Motley recalled. But, like the others, Scruggs had been put off by Big Tobacco's unbeaten record--and by his own experience.
In the summer of 1993, Scruggs went to Greenville, a tugboat town on the Mississippi, to lend a hand to Don Barrett and his "tobacco habit." In the second Horton trial, the jury had found that smoking caused Nathan's lung cancer death but, believing that both the American Tobacco Company and Horton were at fault, had awarded no damages. The company had been successful in portraying Horton as "an unattractive person for Bible Belt jurors," as Barrett put it, introducing evidence of his gambling and drinking. Now Barrett had another lung cancer case and it looked more promising.
Anderson Smith had died of lung cancer and emphysema in 1986 after smoking heavily for forty-five years. His daughter Jeannette Wilks sued the American Tobacco Company, Barrett's old enemy. This time he thought he had them. Smith was mentally retarded; he had the mental age of a six-year-old and Barrett had forty years of psychological reports saying that he did not have the ability to make an informed decision about anything. "That is how we were going to get around the `smokers deserve what they get defense,' "Barrett recalled. But the trial didn't quite work the way Barrett had hoped.
In a pretrial motion Barrett also asked Judge Eugene Bogen, of the Washington County Circuit Court in Greenville, to rule on whether cigarettes are "defective and unreasonably dangerous for human consumption ... because they cause cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other illnesses" when used as the manufacturer intended. To everyone's surprise, Judge Bogen ruled that they were and lie imposed absolute liability on the company if it could be shown that cigarettes caused Smith's death. He ruled that the tobacco company could not use the assumption of risk or comparative fault defenses that had so bolstered their cases in the past. But the company turned around and said, in that case, it was then irrelevant that Smith was a mental defective. None of that evidence was ever given to the jury. In the end, the jurors said they had been convinced by the tobacco company that Smith had several other ailments that could have contributed to his death, and dismissed the case. Barrett found out later by interviewing the jurors that, in fact, they thought that there was strong evidence that lung cancer had caused his death, but they recalled the old argument, that no one had made him smoke, and it made them lean in the company's favor. "They never knew that he was mentally defective and was unable to make such a decision for himself," said Barrett. "We outsmarted ourselves. Not the first time," he chuckled.
Despite the loss, Barrett vowed to continue his quest, and Scruggs was now also interested in finding the right tobacco case. In pursuing the asbestos companies, Scruggs had learned about lungs and the effects of tobacco smoke. Many of the victims of asbestosis also smoked, and the two agents work synergistically. A person exposed to asbestos dust increases the risk of contracting lung cancer by about five times, but if that person also smokes, the risk is fifty times greater. The asbestos lawyers had seen two types of the diseases. If the victim didn't smoke, the asbestosis was usually "restrictive"--that is, it attacked the functioning lung tissue and immobilized it, causing slow suffocation. In the case of a client who was exposed to asbestos and tobacco smoke, however, there was usually "obstructive" lung disease; the airways were blocked by rumors. The tobacco companies were never joined as defendants in the asbestosis cases, however, because the asbestos companies feared that tobacco's legal armies would turn against them in court to escape blame. Instead, the asbestos companies came up with the so-called empty chair defense, mentioning the part played by cigarette smoke without actually calling in the tobacco companies. For Scruggs, tobacco had always been a side issue since the asbestos injuries were easily proved without the additional evidence. Whenever he thought about suing the tobacco companies, Scruggs came to the conclusion that there was no-point in using old theories about smoking causing cancer; the industry's highly successful arguments of no scientific "proof" and of personal choice and assumption of risk would always win. A new theory was needed. "It was like choosing the right weapon in war," said Scruggs. "If you use the wrong weapon against a tank you're not going to blow it up."
Scruggs, Barrett, and Moore were to make a formidable legal team. Over the next year, they would push Mississippi into the forefront of the battle against the tobacco industry. Thanks to them, Mississippi became the first state in the union to sue the tobacco companies using an entirely new cause of action: recovery of monies the state had spent looking after the victims of smoking-related diseases. It was an entirely new challenge to the industry and would eventually become a more effective weapon than that of Gauthier's group in New Orleans.
THERE ARE SEVERAL VERSIONS of who first came up with the idea of suing for reimbursement of Medicaid expenses, but they rarely give credit to a 1977 article by Donald Garner, a liberal law professor at the University of Southern Illinois. Long convinced that the tobacco companies should be made to pay for the public health havoc they wreak, Professor Garner was always on the lookout for new legal theories to bring the industry into court. In an article entitled "Cigarettes and Welfare Reform" published in the spring 1977 issue of the Emory Law Journal, he noted increasing economic waste caused by cigarette smoking, especially when it came to health costs.
Back in 1969, in testimony before the House of Representatives on proposed legislation to require a stronger warning on cigarette packages and to prohibit television advertising, Arthur Ross, then chairman of the Franklin National Bank, estimated that various identifiable costs related to smoking, including fire insurance, life insurance, and costs of forest fires, came to about $12 billion. "Fairness dictates that we must not allow cigarette smokers to impose a heavy financial inequity on nonsmokers," he said.
The cost of public health care was going up. In 1928-29, the public paid 13.3 percent of the $3.6 billion health bill. By 1959-60, it was 24.7 percent of $25.9 billion; by 1972-73, it was 39.9 percent of $94 billion. Medicare, the all-federal program for the elderly, was the largest government health-care program; for Medicaid, the program for the poor, the states and Washington share the costs. Together Medicare and Medicaid paid 54 percent of the 1973 public medical-care bill. Noteworthy as well was that the number of deaths from cigarette smoking was rising, as was the cost of attending to smoking victims. (Later, one study from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse run by Joe Califano, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Jimmy Carter, estimated that tobacco-caused illness accounted for $1.7 billion in 1991.)
In his 1977 article, Professor Garner suggested that the states get the appropriate cigarette manufacturer to pay the direct medical cost "of looking after patients with smoking diseases." He did not claim to fully understand how this cause of action would work in the courts and he acknowledged that there might be a problem proving that the illnesses were caused by smoking. But that issue could be overcome, he suggested, by using a method similar to that used to assess the eligibility of coal miners for black-lung disease benefits. Under the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, when a coal miner develops the lung disease known as pneumoconiosis, the mine operator is required to pay certain disability benefits. Proof that the individual coal miner's pneumoconiosis was caused by working in a coal mine is accomplished by employing a legal tool called "rebuttal presumption": after ten years in the mines, the miner's black lung, or his death from a respiratory disease, is presumed to be caused by his employment and the burden of proof shifts to the operator to rebut the presumption.
IN THE SPRING of 1993, the Mississippi Medicaid case was born. One of Mike Moore's Ole Miss classmates, a lawyer named Mike Lewis, who ran a small-town practice with his wife, Pauline, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, called Moore to tell him how angry he was about the death of his bookkeeper's mother. After a lifetime of smoking and a long struggle with lung cancer, the woman had died, having exhausted her personal assets and, in her last days, had her care paid for with stare Medicaid funds. The cost of her illness eventually exceeded one million dollars. Lewis was vengeful. He told Moore, "I'm on a crusade. I want to go after these bastards. I want to sue the tobacco industry to recoup that money."
Lewis's idea was that he should personally sue the tobacco companies on behalf of the state. Such an action was unusual, but it could be done through federal law using the provision in the federal False Claims Act that allows a private citizen to bring a suit in the name of the government if he or she considers the government has been wronged and has not moved to protect itself. The provision was basically designed to stop fraud on government contracts, when a private citizen might have inside information and be in a better position to sue than the government itself. (Sometimes, if the case gets too big for the private citizen to handle, the Justice Department will either provide legal aid or take over the case entirely.) Scruggs had once thought of using the False Claims Act himself in preparing a suit against the tobacco companies and he had mentioned his tentative plan to Moore. So when Lewis came up with a similar idea, Moore put him and Scruggs together. As Scruggs would later say, "The idea blossomed into a very elegant legal concept."
In Mississippi, half a million people--out of a total population of two and a half million--rely on Medicaid. Not all of them have tobacco-related illnesses, of course, but Moore estimated that the state spends between $70 and $100 million dollars a year as its share of the Medicaid funds expended on smokers. In addition, about $8 million of the state's health insurance plan goes toward tobacco-related diseases. Once Scruggs and Lewis had realized how much the state was spending, they started putting together some legal theories they could use to recover these funds.
The traditional legal theories for an injured person did not apply because the state was, in effect, a third party paying the bill for the injured party. The state doesn't smoke. People do. Two legal doctrines could be used. One was the doctrine of "subrogation," which gives someone other than the victim the task of recovering damages. For example, if someone runs a red light and hits your car, your insurance will pay for the repair of the car and pay your medical expenses. The insurance company then engages in subrogation. It will sue the other driver on your behalf and try to recover the money.
The second possible route used theories of recovery based on equity--such as the doctrine of restitution, or "unjust enrichment." The first maxim of equity is that no one "will suffer a wrong without a remedy." In the case of a state obligated as a matter of law to pay medical bills of the poor, the state can recoup costs from the person who caused the injury.
Throughout the summer of 1993, Scruggs, Lewis, Moore, and Barrett talked over the theories with several law professors, among them David Owens at the University of South Carolina and, later, Laurence Tribe at Harvard Law School. And they spent a weekend at the seaside home of Ron Motley, in Charleston, South Carolina.
They quickly ruled out the theory of subrogation--or being a "surrogate"--for the tens of thousands of individual smokers whose health bills the state had to pay. It was not feasible for the state to file thousands of suits to recover monies for individual smoking victims, nor was it feasible to recover medical costs for each health-care recipient. It would be an overwhelming task beyond the capacity of the state, or the judiciary.
Instead, Moore chose equitable theories of recovery. The claims were not in tort. The premise was that unlike the smoker who supposedly had a "choice" to smoke, the state had no choice in providing health care to its citizens. In legal parlance Mississippi's claims would be based on restitution, or unjust enrichment, indemnity, common law public nuisance, and injunctive relief to protect the interests of minors. Mississippi claimed the tobacco companies had been "unjustly enriched" because the state paid bills that were the consequence of them selling cigarettes to Mississippi citizens. The industry, the state claimed, should have paid the bills "of the economic by-products of its enterprise."
The concept of "indemnity" called for shifting the loss incurred by the state onto the companies, again because the state was an innocent third party and had no choice but to pay the medical bills. Under "public nuisance," courts have allowed governments to take action to recover expenditures on such things as cleaning up water pollution and fighting fires. Moore would argue that the state acted to abate a public nuisance created by the tobacco industry by providing health care to keep Mississippians from getting sicker, or dying sooner, from smoking-related illnesses.
Moore also wanted to stop the industry from targeting children with advertising and promotions, such as T-shirts and other trinkets. As Scruggs put it, "A major reason for the equity court's existence is the protection of children; they can provide such relief."
By confining Mississippi's suit to these claims, Moore aimed to have the case heard before a single judge in the state's Chancery Court. After Barrett's experience with the Horton trial, he thought they stood a better chance with a judge than a jury. Also, a recent study had challenged the widely held assumption that juries were more sympathetic than judges in cases involving personal injury. In one of the biggest tort areas--defective products--plaintiff's who opted for a jury trial won only 28 percent of their cases, whereas those who went before a judge won 48 percent.
The tobacco companies would object and try to move the case to federal court and a jury trial. There would be big battles over discovery and prolonged wrangles over depositions, but Moore and his team were ready. Initial estimates suggested the case would cost about $5 million to bring to court, and Moore deputized Scruggs, as he had done in the asbestos cases. Together they assembled a team that purposely included both Republican and Democratic law firms; Moore was a Democrat and Scruggs a Republican and the two men did not want this to be a partisan attack. Scruggs, Barrett, and the other firms also took the case without a contingency fee contract with the state. This was to fend off attacks from the state legislators that the plaintiffs' firms were getting too much money. If they won, the plan was that Moore would apply to the court for attorney's fees--but they were to be paid by the defendants, not by the state.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1994, Moore was starting to prepare his charges against a dozen of the major tobacco companies and a handful of associated organizations (such as the industry's public relations concerns) when the attention of all plaintiffs' lawyers was suddenly focused on a surprise announcement from the Food and Drug Administration in Washington.
On February 25, FDA Commissioner David Kessler charged there was "mounting evidence" that the tobacco companies controled the levels of nicotine in cigarettes in order to satisfy the smoker's addiction. This was an astonishing departure from previous FDA policy toward the tobacco industry. For decades, the nation's regulator of consumer products had never pressed to oversee the production of cigarettes, taking the position that tobacco was neither a food, nor a drug. The antitobacco forces had been vainly pushing the FDA for decades to impose stricter controls on tobacco and, since 1988, a petition had been sitting on the commissioner's desk from the Coalition on Smoking or Health, which included the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association and American Lung Association, asking the FDA to regulate cigarettes as a drug.
Now, in a letter to the Coalition's chairman, Scott Ballin, Kessler said evidence suggested that the manufacturers intended their products to contain enough nicotine to satisfy "an addiction," and therefore should be regulated as a drug. "In fact, it is our understanding that manufacturers commonly add nicotine to cigarettes to deliver specific amounts of nicotine." If the agency were able to prove these facts in court, Kessler went on, "it would have the legal basis on which to regulate these products."
Kessler gave no reason for the sudden change in FDA policy, but it was partly an outgrowth of a secret investigation made by the agency and partly the result of an inquiry by the staff of an ABC muckraking news program called Day One. Two years earlier, Kessler had directed his staff to take the agency's first serious look at tobacco, and by coincidence ABC's inquiry had been in parallel. Kessler scooped the TV network by three days.
On the night of February 28, ABC aired the Day One program. This program had been fifteen months in the making. It originated from a conversation between Clifford Douglas, a lawyer and antitobacco activist, and Walt Bogdanich, an ABC television producer who had won a Pulitzer prize while on The Wall Street Journal. Bogdanich was intrigued by the idea that cigarette companies could artificially control the level of nicotine in cigarettes, not simply by blending different varieties of tobacco, but also, possibly, by adding nicotine from other sources. In the program, there was no equivocation about "mounting evidence," no legalese such as "our understanding is ... " The report directly accused the tobacco industry of "artificially spiking" cigarettes with nicotine to keep smokers hooked. Under the alluring title, "Smokescreen," ABC charged that the tobacco companies used a secret process that included adding a "nicotine rich" tobacco extract from outside suppliers. The revelations, the program declared immodestly, "could change the tobacco industry forever."
The industry immediately denied the allegations, saying it never added any nicotine that wasn't in the original leaf. Philip Morris, the largest of the U.S. companies, went on to sue ABC for $10 billion, the biggest libel claim on record. Their complaint focused on the word "spike." ABC would eventually settle the case and apologize for mistakenly reporting that companies "add significant amounts of nicotine from outside sources." The case would end up costing the TV company $15 million in the out-of-court settlement, but the publicity given to the case added to the changing public perception of what exactly does go into a cigarette, and it raised the question of whether the companies could control nicotine levels to keep smokers hooked. The program would also push Wendell Gauthier into action in New Orleans and trigger the world's largest class-action suit. Don Barrett would get a call from Gauthier, whom he had never met, asking if he would like to join the Castano group. For a while, the Mississippi suit was to be overshadowed.
(C) 1998 Peter Pringle All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-8050-4292-X
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I am a full time photographer because of Instagram, here is how I did it. : photography. Why to Not Not Start a Startup. March 2007 (This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.)
We've now been doing Y Combinator long enough to have some data about success rates. Our first batch, in the summer of 2005, had eight startups in it. Of those eight, it now looks as if at least four succeeded. Three have been acquired: Reddit was a merger of two, Reddit and Infogami, and a third was acquired that we can't talk about yet.
How To Make $2k In a Weekend — The Altucher Report. I started reaching out to everyone in my network who ever succeeded – large or small – and started getting them to give me blueprints, maps, tactics, strategies, and ways they personally built their fortunes… launched their side businesses… discovered hidden income.
And I started writing it up in a report. Mapping out income plans… success secrets… money-making ideas. I listed out motivational strategies, productivity tips, happiness practices, and every little way successful people each chose themselves. For example, if you ever need emergency income… emergency as in, if you don't make $2,000 this weekend then you're going to get kicked out of your house… then I have you covered. I get a lot of emails from people who are scared because they are losing their jobs and don't know what to do.
So I wrote Matt Barrie, the CEO of Freelancer.com the largest freelance job company in the world, and asked, "How can people earn $2,000 in a weekend with only a few months of training?" The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine. The way to have good ideas is to get close to killing yourself.
It's like weightlifting. When you lift slightly more than you can handle, you get stronger. SEO: The Free Beginner's Guide From Moz. New to SEO?
Need to polish up your knowledge? The Beginner's Guide to SEO has been read over 3 million times and provides comprehensive information you need to get on the road to professional quality Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. SEO isn't just about building search engine-friendly websites. This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO—from finding the terms and phrases (keywords) that generate traffic to your website, to making your site friendly to search engines, to building links and marketing the unique value of your site.
Why does my website need SEO? The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. 5 Key Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read. When I sat down to write my book, An American Hedge Fund (which I now make free to the public), I wrote it with one key goal in mind, to provide entrepreneurs like me with access to the information they need to be as successful as possible.
I honestly believe that reading books is one of the best ways to gain insight on the world and to learn more not only about others but also about business. I realized that without some of these influential titles, I never would have gotten to the level of success I am today or be in a position to share my stories of success with others. This is why I have complied a list of the five key books I believe every entrepreneur should read. They have helped me along on my journey and I believe they will help any entrepreneur looking to get a leg up in today's fast-paced market. Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson. There are very few entrepreneur's in today's market that are as successful and as eccentric as Richard Branson. Inside the Bacardi Legacy Rum Cocktail Competition.
Moe Aliaff, who placed in the global Top 3 with his Carousel cocktail, grew up as an Iraqi refugee, spending the first three years of his life moving from camp to camp before his parents and six siblings finally settled in Norway.
With flavours of dulce de leche, banana liqueur, PX sherry, salt, and Carta Oro, Carousel represented a narrative that stretched from Aliaff's first happy memory -- going to the fair with his mother -- through his family's travails, while also tying in the exodus of the Bacardi family. How To Find And Do Work You Love: Scott Dinsmore at TEDxGoldenGatePark (2D) Forbes Welcome. 25 Creative Ways to Promote Your App For Free. Join us for a free, live webinar covering social media strategies to increase sales.
Tune in 5/17 at 9 a.m. PT. Register Now » I've been meeting more and more app entrepreneurs who have made it in the app world without spending a penny on promoting their app. And I've known entrepreneurs who've earned more than a million dollars selling their app, largely promoting it for free. In my experience, it does not make sense to pay advertising dollars to get customers because the cost of a customer acquisition is never lower than the price of the app. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Want to Know if Your App is Successful? Check These Metrics. Building a mobile app can be a cash cow, but if not developed correctly, it can be among the 78 percent of apps users never return to after using once.

subset: commoncrawl


text: In 2018, 40 years after the Declaration of Alma-Ata, Member States, people, civil society and international development partners will come to togehter to renew commitments to strengthening primary health care to achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. Collective pledge and action are required in order to achieve this goal. In this inclusive spirit, WHO calls for comments of all stakeholders on the new Declaration on primary health care. (You can read the draft of the declaration here)


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Hiérarchie anatomique
Anatomie générale > Muscles; Système musculaire > Muscles du membre supérieur > Muscles > Muscle extenseur de l'index
Origin: Ulna
Insertion: Index finger (extensor hood)
Nerve: Temporal branches of facial;
Action: Tightens scalp.
The Extensor indicis is a narrow, elongated muscle, placed medial to, and parallel with, the preceding. It arises, from the dorsal surface of the body of the ulna below the origin of the Extensor pollicis longus, and from the interosseous membrane. Its tendon passes under the dorsal carpal ligament in the same compartment as that which transmits the tendons of the Extensor digitorum communis, and opposite the head of the second metacarpal bone, joins the ulnar side of the tendon of the Extensor digitorum communis which belongs to the index finger.
Variations.—Doubling; the ulnar part may pass beneath the dorsal carpal ligament with the Extensor digitorum communis; a slip from the tendon may pass to the index finger.


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As daylight hours taper out and the weather becomes frigid, one thing you can look forward to is getting out your beloved scarf collections! Scarves can be a fun way to add a flair to your daily ensemble while keeping warm as the bitter cold air moves in. If you are anything like me, you adore your personal scarf selection. They have become my silver lining as the dreaded wintery weather settles in.
With the extensive assortment of designs and materials on the market, you also have a variety of ways you can tie a scarf that fits your particular mood or outfit.
One fun way to tie your scarf is the timeless infinity knot. It is simple, classy and fun! All you need to do is to tie the two ends of the scarf together in a small knot. Next, put it around your neck just as you would a necklace. Then simply loop the scarf around your neck again (or as many times as needed depending on the length of the scarf as well as your own personal preference).
Another easy but fun technique is the Euro Loop. To get this look, fold the scarf in half lengthwise and drape around your neck. If the closed loop end is to your right, simply take the opposite side that has the other two ends of your scarf and pull it through the closed loop. Tighten to what feels best for you!
The third style is a hair scarf cover. I personally love this style because even if you are out somewhere and currently wearing your scarf a different way, and it suddenly starts raining, this is a quick way to save your hair from the rain. I have frizzy, curly hair and if my hair detects any moisture, the time I spent to straighten my hair was for nothing. To obtain this style just open the scarf and find the center. Place the center edge along your hairline while the rest drops down covering the back of your head and the ends fall in front of your shoulders. Grab one end of your scarf, crossing over your chest and drape it over the opposite shoulder.
There are so many ways to wear your scarves! Other fun ways to wear your scarf include;
The loose knot, the boyfriend tie, the modern loop, the pinup, the pretzel, the Audry, the back drape, the hipster hoodie and so many more!
What is your favorite way to wear a scarf?
If you are looking for a great new scarf, be sure to check out Scarfsense's 'Green Winter Essence' scarf which is featured above! This is a beautiful 100% pure silk scarf with a classy gold leaf design. It is great for both formal and casual occasions.
Click the link below to check out all of their collections! With Christmas right around the corner, this would make a great gift! It comes to you already beautifully packaged and ready to be gifted!
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The Scarf Boutique – Scarfsense


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Annie Machon, Former MI5 Intelligence Officer, Whistleblower, Data Activist
Annie Machon is a former MI5 intelligence officer, who resigned in the late 1990s to help blow the whistle on the spies' incompetence and crimes with her former partner, David Shayler.
Drawing on her varied experiences, she is now a public speaker, writer, media pundit, and political campaigner. From 2012 to 2016, she also served as the European director of LEAP.
She has a rare perspective on the inner workings of governments, intelligence agencies and the media, as well as the wider implications for the need for increased openness and accountability in the public and private sectors.
Annie is also a recognized international public speaker on a variety of issues, such as security and intelligence, ethics and citizenship, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on whistleblowers, Internet freedoms, press and media freedoms, secrecy legislation, civil liberties, totalitarianism and police states, and accountability in government and business, and also discusses her personal story of being "on the run."
From 2012 to 2016, she was the European director of LEAP, a global group of serving and former police officers, lawyers, judges, intelligence officers, prison governors, customs officers, and former drug czars. LEAP speakers have worked on the frontline of the failed war on drugs policy, recognize this abject failure, and as a result campaign for an end to drug prohibition.
In this role, Annie kickstarted new national LEAP groups in the UK and Germany, has spoken in a number of European parliaments, international conferences, and festivals, met with government ministers, government advisers, and drug czars across Europe, represented LEAP four times at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual event in Vienna, and even appeared in the occasional film – most notably in The Culture High.
She is proud to be on the organizing committee of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, as well as a member of Veterans for Peace UK and the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.
Annie is currently on the board of The Freedom Index Foundation, and also on the advisory board of the Courage Foundation, supporting key whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden.
She has also given evidence to both the the European Parliament and the UK Parliament about surveillance in the wake of the Snowden disclosures.
Annie has an MA (Hons) in Classics from Cambridge University.
She read Classics at Cambridge University. In 1991, she was recruited by MI5, where she was posted to their political and counter-terrorism departments.


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Bonjour! Today, on Le Monde, the French newspaper reported that Amazon is in search for partnerships in the French Grocery Market, in a bid to open about 15 physical non-cash stores inspired by Amazon Go.
Amazon Go is a line-free, grab and go grocery store introduced by the online retailer last December. No check-out counters, no lines, just grab what you need and walk out the store. The first Amazon Go store is already in Seattle on Beta testing, but Amazon plans to open more than 2,000 grocery stores – globally?
According to LeMonde.fr, the American e-commerce giant has approached big firms such as Casino, Intermache, Systeme U and Carrefour. Unfortunately (for Amazon), Group Casino refused the offer. Same goes for Intermarche and Systeme U.
"We see the interest in Amazon, but ours is less obvious. Amazon is not our friend: in the end their goal is to eat us and we are not going to open the door to them and give them the menu, said a dealer." (LeMonde.fr)
Exactly! Sorry, Jeff Bezos. I guess it's a no from the French market. Well, at least you still have a spot on the French e-commerce space.


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Twitter isn't quite sure how it feels about Aamir Khan breaking his "no award shows" rule to be handed a prize by Mr Bhagwat.
On the work-side, Aamir Khan will be next seen in "Secret Superstar" and is also prepping up for upcoming venture Thugs of Hindostan that also stars Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan.
Contrary to media reports which said that Aamir received the award for Dangal, organizers however said that the award was given to the actor for "attending an awards ceremony" and not for any movie.
The Master Deenananth Mangeshkar Awards are held in memory of Lata Mangeshkar's father - a well-known Marathi theatre actor, a renowned Natya Sangeet musician and a Hindustani classical vocalist. The honour was for his performance in Dangal, one of the biggest hits of 2016.
"This is a huge honor for me, director Nitesh Tiwari and the entire team of "Dangal". She said, "I know he doesn't collect awards".
Once bashed for his comments on intolerance, Aamir was honoured by RSS Chief Mohan Bhagat which raised many eyebrows.
The director, who often gets embroiled in controversies due to his remarks, tweeted on Sunday that "Aamir doesn't care to be measured by any Indian award committee including National (Film Awards)". It was also quite ironical as to who presented him the award. Along with him, the yesteryear actress Vyjayanthimala and former cricketer Kapil Dev will also be rewarded. Now the Indian Express has a story about the same Aamir Khan accepting an award from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.


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Bake | Matcha Shortbread Cookies
December 29, 2015
I've recently gotten into a phase of matcha madness which sees me craving for matcha in all shapes and forms. I've been cafe hopping around Melbourne in search for that perfect matcha latte, researching Japanese cafes for matcha desserts and even savoury matcha dishes like ochazuke (matcha poured over cooked rice with savoury toppings). In recent years … More Bake | Matcha Shortbread Cookies


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Salaries For Education Jobs
As a higher education (HE) lecturer, you'll teach academic or vocational subjects to undergraduate and postgraduate students aged 18 and more than. To differentiate or to individualize instruction is to recognize students varying background expertise, readiness, language, preferences in finding out, interests, and to react responsively. The intent of individualizing instruction is to maximize every single student's development and individual achievement by meeting every single student where he or she is, and assisting in the finding out method. It provides the chance for students to learn at their personal pace, in their personal way, and be effective.
ü The IEP is intended to support youngsters reach educational targets more simply than they otherwise would and should especially support teachers and connected service providers realize the student's disability and how the disability affects the understanding process.
three. Activate. Decide what students know and what they need to understand subsequent. This might be accomplished 1 to 3 weeks prior to the unit to allow a lot of time for arranging understanding activities, grouping activities, and raising anticipation about the new subject. Emotional hooks" can be employed to engage and to capture the consideration of the students through challenge, novelty, and exclusive experiences.
The nationwide statistics conceals the dramatic developments in Vienna, due to the fact German is hardly spoken in the main schools of the federal capital. The district in Vienna where this is most blatantly visible is Margareten, exactly where the proportion of immigrant children has risen to 89 % — that is, 924 out of 1038 young children have as their mother tongue some thing other than German. The districts Rudolf Fünfhaus and Ottakring have a proportion of 80%, Brigittenau 79% and Meidling at least 70%.
Individualized instruction technique refers to those classroom practices of teaching which recognize the uniqueness of each and every student learner and therefore supply for adequate tutorial guidance, and other assistance solutions suited to bring about a wholesome development in the particular person (mind, physique, and spirit).


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LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 Review
If you're a big Harry Potter fan and have followed J K Rowlings book series, you'll find it hard pressed to find fault with the latest edition to the LEGO franchise, LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4. This follows Harry and his adventures from the first four movies. Each LEGO chapter follows the fine detail of the series which all Harry Potter fans will identify with and is filled with pure LEGO goodness. You'll have to collect a zillion LEGO studs, unblock passages, solve puzzles and get the chance to try out each of the Harry Potter characters.
There will be wandering back and forth through corridors, waving at wizards inside picture frames and drinking special potions. Some wizards will reward you with gifts, while others may just ignore you if you're not the right character. Some potions will allow you to become powerful and strong enabling you to pull levers, while other potions will cause characters heads to grow humongous and bulbus.
Your starting place is The Leaky Cauldron, the center point from which Harry begins his adventures in the wizarding world. Wandering into Diagon Alley you'll encounter all the wonderful stores that were in the original Harry Potter movie, such as Madam Malkin's Robes where you can purchase Harry Potter characters and even customize your own character upstairs in the fitting room. There's a great collection of costumes to give your character some style and finesse.
Inside Eeylops Owl Emporium, where owls can be seen perched on their stands, is a great place for purchasing Gold Bricks, but be warned as they are very expensive. Upstairs you can purchase more wacky items such as silly disguises that don't always quite fit and an ice rink where you can have your character sliding all over the place. I would only purchase these at the end of the game for a bit of fun.
Wiseacre's Wizarding supplies gives players the opportunity to buy spells and upstairs in the store allows you to insert LEGO codes to unlock special features within the game.
During your journey you'll travel in a mine cart into the deep dark depths of the famous Gringotts bank, which is operated by funny looking Goblins. Here you'll find 10 vaults which are locked. Each vault can only be opened by collecting the required number of gold bricks. Players will need to invest a fair amount of time to gather the gold bricks, because the further you go on along the vaults the more gold bricks are required. Each of the vaults contain valuable lessons in the world of LEGO and bonus gameplay.
Most of the time the game play is about manipulating your environment in order to progress, such as opening blocked passageways and locked doors. I spent a vast amount of time just zapping everything and destroying anything. Most of the appeal of LEGO is experimenting and that's what LEGO Harry Potter tries to encourage in this game. You'll be taught new spells in lessons and shown how to use them. Something that made me laugh was when you can handle screaming Mandrakes within the game. Not only can the wailing screams of a Mandrake give you a serious nervous deposition, if you don't find some earplugs the only thing you'll be hearing is the echo of those bloody whinny things in your mind. Find a wardrobe as they each contain funny oversized ear protection to reward you with silence while you insert the blasted screaming Mandrakes into their pots. Screaming Mandrakes can be used to break the glass, but this is another lesson you will have to eventually learn.
Each of the characters have special features. One example is Ron's faithful rat, 'Scabbers'. This furry rodent was enabled by pressing the B button and then, under your control, he was able to go into certain transparent pipes which in turn give access to switches or unreachable areas. Another example is the fun and friendly Hagrid, whose ability is to move heavy items or pull certain levers.
Each chapter of the game is closely based on the movies, while adding a fun element using the power of LEGO. Fine detail and comedic cutscenes constantly had me in stitches. It's hilarious to watch all of the time. You couldn't want for a better game to be honest.The game offers so many surprises throughout. There were a few occasions when trying to lift certain items with my wand, I would end up catapulting another character across the scenery as sometimes casting spells was not as precise as I would have liked. The mechanics of the game are still the same if you've played the LEGO series before, such as Star Wars or Indiana jones. Collect studs, unlock special features, find and accumulate as many gold bricks as you can possibly find and basically zap everything in sight. I did find that the game didn't always offer a straightforward path through the story. I found myself wandering aimlessly sometimes until either the next cutscene or I had accidentally stumbled upon something that helped my progress. The layout is not as clear or concise as the previous LEGO games.
Overall I love LEGO Harry Potter years 1-4 years. It lives up to all of my expectations, if leaving me a little lost at times. There are some great characters to play, new lessons to be learnt, funny cutscenes to be watched and a gazillion LEGO studs to collect. You'll have great fun with Harry and his great adventures. If you're a Harry Potter fan you'll love it and it will entertain you for hours. If you're new to the LEGO franchise, I suggest giving it a try. It was studtastic.


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A Case Conference is a confidential meeting about any adult who may be at risk of harm. If one is being held for you, it is because someone is worried about your welfare and/or safety. You have been invited to attend the Case Conference to put across your views about whether you feel you are being harmed.
You may agree or disagree with what others are saying and it is very important that you have a chance to have your say and be heard. It's your life and your point of view that is needed.
Altrum have produced two easy read leaflets explaining more about case conferences, one explaining the steps in the process and the other explains the support that is available to you. For more information visit the Altrum website.


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Congratulations to Professor Mater for Two Recent Lectures
April 25, 2018
Kudos to Professor Nabil Mater for two recent lectures: Professor Matar gave the Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture at the Renaissance Society of American convention on 23 March in New Orleans. The lecture was on "The Protestant Reformation in Arabic Sources, 1517-1798." He also gave the Farhat J. Ziadeh Distinguished Lecture in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Washington on 26 April. The Lecture was on the religious and ethnic minorities that the first Arab emigrants met in the United States. The title of the lecture was "The United States through Arab Eyes, 1876-1914."


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Moisturizing Skin Care Salve + more great skin care options!
Moisturizing Skin Care Salve nourishes and repairs the skin, bringing life to your body's largest organ.
This salve's benefits are numerous:
- Great for rejuvenating tired skin
- Helps bring down inflammation of bruises
- Helps with acne, blemishes
- Perfect for moisturizing dry skin
- Great first aid salve, helping mend broken skin
Moisturizing Skin Care Salve is gently infused with herbal oils of comfrey leaf, arnica flower, yarrow, chickweed, and calendula flowers in a natural base of extra virgin olive oil and hemp seed oil. The Salve is blended in smooth organic beeswax and includes the essential oils of cooling peppermint and nurturing lavender oil. Preserved in all natural grapefruit seed extract and neem oil.
Also try our Soothing Detoxifying Clay Mask:
Soothing Detoxifying Clay Mask is a four part mixture of absorbent and detoxifying clays and roots. After application, the skin will feel rejuvenated and clear.
- Moroccan Clay acts as a drawing agent, pulling impurities from the skin's pores.
- Bentonite Clay helps absorb impurities, and helps improve circulation.
- Activated Charcoal is very absorbent, binding to toxins and removing them from the skin.
- Turmeric root powder contains the antioxidant curcumin, to help combat skin aging.
Mix 1tsp of powdery product with clean water to form a mud mask.
Apply to a small area of skin and rub in.
Let stand for 20 minutes, allowing the ingredients to absorb and pull toxins from the skin.
Wash with soap and warm water, thoroughly rinsing the mud mask from the skin.
Personal testimony: This product effectively pulls out the poisonous oil and resin from blistering poison ivy, sumac and oak rashes, speeding up the healing process.
Another great skin care option:
Choose from our favorite selection of essential oils:
- Peppermint
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All essential oils are bottled in 1 oz glass vials with dropper dispenser.
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*We do not compromise purity with essential oils; therefore, the scientific name and country of origin is marked for each variety. Essential oils are used for medicinal purposes in aromatherapy and topically on the skin. We do not provide guidance on ingestion/dosages, leaving that determination up to the individual.


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Browse by Uncontrolled Keywords
Group by: Year | Authors/Creators | Item Type | Full Text
Jump to: 2001
Number of items: 1.
Fine, PE; Floyd, S; Stanford, JL; Nkhosa, P; Kasunga, A; Chaguluka, S; Warndorff, DK; Jenkins, PA; Yates, M; Ponnighaus, JM; (2001) Environmental mycobacteria in northern Malawi: implications for the epidemiology of tuberculosis and leprosy. Epidemiology and infection, 126 (3). pp. 379-87. ISSN 0950-2688 https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/16280


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gnutls_x509_crt_set_proxy(3) gnutls gnutls_x509_crt_set_proxy(3)
NAME gnutls_x509_crt_set_proxy - API function
SYNOPSIS #include <gnutls/x509.h>
int gnutls_x509_crt_set_proxy(gnutls_x509_crt_t crt, int pathLenCon- straint, const char * policyLanguage, const char * policy, size_t sizeof_policy);
ARGUMENTS gnutls_x509_crt_t crt a certificate of type gnutls_x509_crt_t
int pathLenConstraint non-negative values indicate maximum length of path, and negative values indicate that the pathLenConstraints field should not be present.
const char * policyLanguage OID describing the language of policy.
const char * policy opaque byte array with policy language, can be NULL
size_t sizeof_policy size of policy.
DESCRIPTION This function will set the proxyCertInfo extension.
RETURNS On success, GNUTLS_E_SUCCESS is returned, otherwise a negative error value.
REPORTING BUGS Report bugs to <email@example.com>. GnuTLS home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/ General help using GNU software: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/
COPYRIGHT Copyright © 2008 Free Software Foundation. Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
SEE ALSO The full documentation for gnutls is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and gnutls programs are properly installed at your site, the command
info gnutls
should give you access to the complete manual.
gnutls 188.8.131.52 gnutls_x509_crt_set_proxy(3)


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I am excited about doing it.
We also have this mechanical 'monster' guy who sings Michael Jackson's Thriller and he dances too. He is going to be resting by the water and we taped a snorkel to his mouth! LOL!!! I will take photos. =)
I finished my BLOG SCARF!!!
How are the rest of you coming along? I ended up making it nearly 5' long (it's 57" or so). Wraps around my neck nicely and tucks into a coat. Hope someone can make good use of it as it's really turned out so cool looking! (If I do say so myself!)
And Cookie was quite happy to pose next to it! It is so warm with the sock yarn doubled up with various worsted weight yarns. I will have to make more items like that. I think I will try self striping sock yarn, and maybe plain white for baby hats. =)
Well, I told the kids I was going to relax today and make some baby booties for our newborn kits for UMC and I have barely started on that and it's 11:30 am already! They will be home in a couple of hours, and then HALLOWEEN will start I guess. Costumes, candy, trick or treaters-- there will still be a few even though we are having Trunk or treat. Our little valley is a really safe place to be, especially our neighborhood, so trick or treating is still done.
HUG THE ONES YOU LOVE and CHECK THEIR CANDY before they eat it.


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Carie Broecker is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Peace of Mind Dog Rescue in Pacific Grove, CA. Please visit their site and if you are not able to adopt or foster one of their amazing older dogs, consider donating to their cause.
Bunny Rosenberg is the Foster Care Manager at Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco, CA. We strongly encourage our viewers and fellow dog lovers to check them out and see how you might be able to help their cause.
Why you should adopt a senior dog?
Senior dogs need more help than the younger dogs. They typically have already known a loving home, so it is very difficult for them in shelters. They can become depressed and sometimes they just give up.
So, one thing that really made an impact for me in my choice of adopting a senior animal, is that these animals would not have any other options. These animals were all slated for euthanasia at their local shelters because they were considered unadoptable for no other reason other than they are old. And they are really amazing dogs with a lot of life left in them. That's the biggest thing and the biggest take-home message is that by adopting a senior, you are literally saving a life because these animals would have no other options.
Why adopting an older dog is the better option.
Rescue Dog Bond. Dogs who have been uprooted from their happy homes or have not had the best start in life are more likely to bond very completely and deeply with their new people. Those who have lost their families through death, divorce or lifestyle change go through a terrible mourning process. But, once attached to a new loving family, they seem to want to please as much as possible to make sure they are never homeless again. Those dogs that are just learning about the good life and good people seem to bond even deeper. They know what life on the streets, life on the end of a chain, or worse is all about, and they revel and blossom in a nurturing, loving environment. Most rescues make exceptionally and extremely loyal companions.
They are already housebroken! Did you know that a puppy needs to be taken out about every 2 hours while potty training? We are not guaranteeing that an older dog might not have accidents because they are not yet used to your house, but you will not spend a lot of time getting them adjusted to where they should potty. You can cross potty training off your list!
No eating of the underwear. One of the top insurance claims is because a puppy has swallowed something, usually underwear or socks. Older dogs have been around and usually know not to chew on clothes in the laundry basket and will most likely, leave your fancy Prada shoes alone. An older dog can usually have the run of the house without destroying it.
You can get a good night's sleep. Now, some older dogs might take a little bit time to adjust to their new home and might keep you up one of the nights, but odds are they are ready to snuggle up with you and just enjoy getting some zzzz's with you.
Relax. With an adult dog, it will only be the kids running amok, because your dog will be sitting calmly next to you, while your workday stress flows away and your blood pressure lowers as you pet him. However, there are some quite active older dogs out there if that is what you wish for. Gabe is almost 13 and he still wants to wrestle and hunt for bunnies. But he is also able to just chill out with you and snuggle.
Cheaper vet bills. Puppy visits can add up! Between shots and fecals, and getting altered, and emergency trips to the vet cause the puppy swallowed something, your wallet can start feeling a little used up. When you rescue an older pup should get you a dog with all shots current, already altered, heartworm negative and on a preventative at the minimum.
What you see is what you get. How big will the puppy be? What kind of temperament will he have? Will he be easily trained? Will his personality be what you were hoping for? How active will he be? When adopting an older dog from a rescue, all of those questions are easily answered. You can pick large or small; active or couch potato; goofy or brilliant; sweet or sassy. The rescue and its foster homes can guide you to pick the right match. (Rescues are full of puppies who became the wrong match as they got older!).
Used to children and adults. Most older dogs are used to being around all sorts of people, especially kids. A lot of the come from homes with younger kids because parents think they can't take care of both. Shelters have the dog's history and will be able to tell you if they are good with kids and other animals. Older dogs have been around much more and do not need to be highly socialized, which can take a lot of energy and time from you.
Perfect match. Puppies can change so much between first coming to your home and by the time they have grown up. There is just no real way to see what kind of a dog you will be getting. Most shelters and rescues do some behavior evaluations. You will know if your dog is a couch potato or is an active senior.
You will have been able to select the most compatible dog.


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VASTU AND FENGSHUI GUIDELINES TO SET-UP A NEW OFFICE – Mostly, the business premises are set up in rented buildings, hence you may have least control over the size and shape of the premises, but if you find a premises of your choice, try one which is square or rectangular shapes. Avoid any multi corner, cut corner, multidimensional, uneven area. If the premises is broad in front side and less in right & left sides, it is very auspicious & profit giving, however, the back side should also be the same as front side. In rare case if the front side (road side) is increasing by a couple of feet, it shall be more positive. Such shape is known as 'SINGH-MUKHA' and enhances the business prospects if positioned as per VASTU. In a different case when the shape becomes GAU-MUKHA i.e. premises with front less than the back one, is not appreciated, that too if the Vastu principles are ignored.
Customer's Psychology: Looking at the customers' psychology too, if the front side is narrowed, the first impact is not very attractive, be the depth of any length. We may recall a structure that is too broad in front and less in sides, gives an impact of inviting more clients like welcoming them to receive & retaining them to have a look on other multiple items. In nutshell, for business premises, the broad front opening provides more space & enhances the Positivity.
Fengshui Cures: Fengshui provides a number of cures to treat the cut-corners, reduced front area or a critical obstruction on the entrance. One can treat the same by having an increased impact by using enhancers like convex mirrors, non-cut large mirrors, posters giving depths effects or highlighting the main entrance area with a proper combination of lights recommended in Fengshui, but avoid putting any such reflecting instrument just in front of your main gate that could return back the positive Ch'i. However Ba-gua mirror, if placed properly, is enough to repel back the negative vibrations, emerging due to poisonous arrows like an ugly looking huge tree, smoke-chimneys, high-rise buildings pointing to your premises.
Business premises in BASEMENTS:
The cellar (basements) can also contribute Positivity if the positioning and placement is confirming to VASTU principles. Though, basements are not much appreciated in VASTU, but due to the shortage of business areas and in order to make the best use of available space, we are left with no option than to add our space by having a basement. I have visited and experienced a number of businesses turned into flourishing in basements, especially in metropolitan cities, one can find a row of basements in which a number of offices are running as good profit centres.
The proper place for the chief of the business i.e. owner/ Director is making the best use of NAIRUTYA corner i.e. South-west direction, avoiding the papers and records in FIRE corner. The basic fundamental for Nairutya corner is to maintain it H+H (highest & heaviest), so the chief is recommended to be placed here who could be more heavier in this area. This is why this area is kept free from a tenant in houses, otherwise anyone who stays in this area may become more sovereign as compared to the owner thus becoming the owner of the total operations. The ideal position and placement for the owner is shown in the diagram given below.
Above we have discussed VASTU principles for business premises while deciding to set-up a new office & highlighted the main factors related to the Size, Shape, Owner's Positioning & placement, Basements Scenario, place for electronic gadgets, books, files, computer, Pooja place in the office & different Fengshui cures. In the current issue, we shall take-up other concerned factors.
Facing to auspicious directions: Since North is the direction of lord KUBER, the wealth provider. Hence, it is recommended for the business owner to face North while sitting in the chamber, talking to the clients or negotiating business deals/ signing a contract/ deed. But there should be no poisonous arrows mentioned in the last issue, otherwise the impacts may be adverse. Try to do transactions too as per VASTU principles mentioned here. In a case where facing to North is not possible due to any negativity, one can face to East too, the holy direction for multiple comforts. If you find an ISHAAN corner (the direction of ISH, i.e. God) to face, nothing like it, but take care to decide the direction that locates between perfect North & perfect East and no pointed corner, beam, toilets and other negative factors as per VASTU are causing the discomfort.
Harness the directions of Quantity & Quality: North is considered for the money, quantity of products, idea generation, innovation & creativity. Therefore if all the main operators, staff grade employees also follow their respective operations to face as advised here-above, it shall turn the business to mobilise to growth, thus opening all the avenues to expansion and/ or divercification. Watch the performance on a regular basis, if you find that at any point of time the quantity is going on comfortable, but there are cases of complaints in quality of the products or services, than take-up the other holy direction i.e. East, if not for all, at least for the operations where the problems are emerging from. However using the pyramids, made of natural crystal are experienced to be quite helpful in such casaes when the quantum of rejections had increased upto substantial level. So one can place them pointing the right side of the pyramid/ set of nine crystal pyramids to pefect North-south.
Maintain Ishaan corner lightest & lowest: This is needed to maintain a proper balance between the N-E & S-W (Nairutya corner. Since the Ishaan corner is the area where the head of Vastu-purush rests, it should be kept lightest of all sides, directios and corners. Otherwise this may emit overall discomforts to business. On the other hand, South west direction is advised to keep heaviest and highest. This Nairutya corner is the place where the feet of Vastu purush rest. Therefore keeping this side heavier as compared to all other seven directions, is beneficial, representing the stability and longivity.
Given below is another diagram showing the appropriate positioning & placement of the business premises. More Info For "VASTU AND FENGSHUI GUIDELINES"
Dr. Anand Bhardwaj is one of the eminent vaastu consultant form India. He provides consultation on Vastu Tip, Vastu Direction, Vastu Facing, Vastu Shastra Consultant, Vastu Shastra Consultancy, Vastu Consultancy Services, Fengshui, Pyramidology, Numerology, Energy Scanning, etc. Read More
Contact Dr. Anand Bhardwaj Learn Vastu Shastra
Call Dr. Anand Bhardwaj Consult Now


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