scoubidou1

WCC demands repulsion of blasphemy law

2011-10-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

The World Council of Churches (WCC) on Monday demanded the repulsion of blasphemy law, with the WCC general secretary asking the government to repeal Section 295C of the penal code.

Addressing a press conference, Rev Dr Olav Fykes Tveit said WCC expressed its serious concern on several occasions and urged the Pakistani government to repeal Section 295C of the Pakistan penal code, which carries a mandatory death penalty for anyone found guilty of blasphemy.

“On behalf of the member churches of WCC in different parts of the world, the WCC urged the government of Pakistan on several occasions to guarantee the rights of all-religious minorities in the country,” he said, adding that it was a matter of encouragement that there was a voice of dissent against acts of discrimination and violence against minorities coming from the Pakistani public. Ordinary citizens and key religious scholars of this country do speak of reform and maintaining their view that the Islam was a religion of peace that prohibited compulsion and persecution, Dr Olav said.

Encouraging the liberal forces in Pakistan, he said it was also encouraging that there had also been a positive civil response to engage various stakeholders in conversations about the blasphemy law and other discriminatory laws that are targeted against the minorities.

Demanding of the government of Pakistan to provide security to minorities rights, he said that for some years, the WCC had been receiving reports of discriminatory practices and persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan, including Christians, Ahamadis, and Hindus.

During the past several years, the WCC had been following the situation of the human rights violation of minority religious communities in the country, he said, adding that there had been many incidents of violence, killings and other forms of persecutions against Christians in the country and at a number of times, the WCC responded to such situations and wrote to authorities in Pakistan, Dr Olav said. He said the international community as well as civil society organisations in Pakistan had deplored such actions from time to time through various means.

“However, we are extremely disappointed that in spite of all such urges, the authorities in Pakistan could not prevent human rights violations and persecutions against religious minorities in the country,” he said.

Source http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/10/wcc-demands-repulsion-of-blasphemy-law/

Albany businesses, church burglarized

2011-07-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

Someone threw a large rock through the front door of the Rainbow Music at 208 South Jackson about 2:00 AM. Police riding by saw the broken window and stopped a person walking away. Nothing taken, but the door will cost about $300 to repair.

Willie Tom Green was caught by Police, and charged with burglary.

Also burglarized about 4:00AM, the OK Beauty and Fashion Store in the 300 block of South Slappey Boulevard.

Someone broke a front window, broke a board wall and snatched the cash register, and some cash inside.

Also someone pushed a window air conditioner out of the window of one of the Sunday School rooms at the River Road Church of Christ on Martin Luther King Junior Drive about 3:00AM.

The alarm sounded, and the burglar never went inside. Church deacons are upset by the break in at their worship center.

The Bethany Temple Church of God in Christ on Odom Avenue was broken into early Sunday morning.

Source http://www.walb.com/story/15142175/albany-businesses-church-burglarized

Anna: Corruption more serious threat than Pakistan

2011-06-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

Terming corruption a threat “more serious than Pakistan”, social activist Anna Hazare demanded that the corporate sector, too, be brought under the purview of the forthcoming anti-corruption ombudsman, the lokal. The suggestion to include the corporate sector is new. It’s a reaction to the government side’s move in the second draft to include non-government organisations (NGOs) in the purview of the lokpal.

“By bringing in voluntary organisations under the lokpal, the government is trying to target movements. Such organisations have done much more than the government has,” Hazare said. Rejecting the draft legislation as a betrayal, Hazare said he would restart his fast from August 16, and it would be non-negotiable this time. “The second freedom struggle is beginning.”

He said, “There will be no talks, no negotiations. The government must accept our proposals in entirety. Otherwise, I will fast unto death. I am willing to die for the country.” Campaigner Arvind Kejriwal said the government draft did not suggest an autonomous and transparent lokpal.

“The government is trying to control appointments, removal and functioning of the lokpal … We demanded financial autonomy for the lokpal, but it will depend on the government for everything. How will it be autonomous or independent?”

Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, another campaigner, said some “intelligent and informed civil society activists” also must be made part of the lokpal selection process.

Hazare refuted the allegation that the lokpal, as proposed by his team, would amount to creating a parallel and police state, since one of the Hazare team’s demands was sweeping powers for lokpal officials to listen in to any phone conversation that they want to and search and seize documents.

“There is an election commission, there is a judiciary and there is a comptroller and auditor general. Does any one of them make for a parallel state?” he asked.

On the charge that the proposal to allow the lokpal to discipline government officials would make them unaccountable to the government, Hazare said, “That is what we want.

The alliance between politicians and officials is the root cause of corruption. We want a lokpal that would break that nexus.”

On the accountability of the lokapl as envisaged by the activists, Kejriwal said, “It is accountable to the ordinary citizen. Anyone can file a complaint against the lokpal.”

Hazare said he had withdrawn his fast in April after the government promised to accept all the demands. “But they betrayed me. Therefore, now there will be no negotiations. We will mobilise people across the country and force the government to concede to our demands,” he said.

Bringing Peace to Pakistan and India

2011-04-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, told university students in Islamabad, Pakistan, that the “time is now ripe” for India and Pakistan to make real peace.

Cameron has not been to Pakistan since becoming Prime Minister, although he did visit India last year — and caused a ruckus by suggesting that Pakistan is exporting terrorism. The conflict between India and Pakistan is ancient. When Britain, through a variety of political mechanisms, ruled what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Burma, the old differences that had kept these “nations” at each others’ throats were dropped as they united in hostility to the British Raj.

These differences transcend simply the conflict between the Hindu majority in the Raj and the Muslim minority. Within that amorphous population called “Hindu” are various isolated groups. The caste system, for example, kept in separate compartments whole slices of society living in the same provinces, with little possibility of finding common ground. The worst category of all is that of the casteless ones, the Dalits of India or “untouchables,” who still exist in numbers roughly equal to the whole population if England. Their plight even today is pitiable — much worse than that of blacks under Jim Crow in the old South — and the Indian government denies to former Dalits who convert to Christianity the same rights granted to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, or Dalits. Despite the nominal nonviolence of Hinduism, Christians in India are the subject of persistent persecution — in many cases, state-supported. On March 29, 2011, for example, 14 Christians, including two clergymen, were arrested in the Mayurbhanj district of Orissa for coverting Indians to Christianity without a license.

Pakistan is even more hostile to Christianity, and murder and mayhem are very common occurrences against Christians there. The entire Islamic world officially persecutes Christians and tolerates mob violence against them.

The hatred and genocide within the nations that were part of the British Raj were also horrific. When the British left in 1949 and granted India independence, millions of Muslims and millions of Hindus were murdered, raped, or maimed — each side guilty of massacres of the other. The hatred of these two groups dates back more than one thousand years, when Muslims conquered India and treated the natives as if they were atheists (so lacking the protection given to “People of a Book”). Over time, Hindus were raised to the level of dhimmi, or subject peoples such as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, but their plight was still grim. One reason for the suttee — the Hindu practice of the widow of a Hindu burning herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre — was because of the prevalence of Muslim rape of Hindu women. Timur the Lame (or Timerlane) built entire pyramids of human skulls when he conquered cities in the subcontinent, and the rule of the Muslims was savage.

Since 1949, the subcontinent and contiguous parts of the Raj have been violent, bloody places indeed. Old Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, endured one of the longest and most brutal civil wars in history between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Hindu Tamils — both notionally nonviolent groups. The first suicide bombers were not Muslims, but rather members of the notorious Tamil Tigers, who strapped bombs on themselves to commit maximum mayhem.

The Sikhs have assassinated Indian Prime Ministers twice — both times to retaliate for the encroachments of Hindu India into those northern parts of the country that Sikhs consider their homeland. Pakistan itself has been riven with violence. Originally, the Muslims of the Raj were given a nation of two parts — West Pakistan and East Pakistan. The West Pakistanis, though smaller in number, effectively controlled the government and treated their countrymen to the east as stepchildren. As a consequence, the East Pakistanis began a civil war in 1971, with the goal of establishing their own nation, Bangladesh. The West Pakistan army attempted to suppress this revolt, and it is estimated that millions of Bengali women were raped during this civil war.

Really, both India and Pakistan are empires of subject peoples. India has many different languages — including 20 languages, each of which is spoken by more than one million people. The Indian subcontinent — before Britain, France, Portugal, and Holland decided that they must compete for empire there — was not a nation at all (any more than Europe was a nation in 1648), despite the fact that its peoples shared many cultural, religious, and linguistic characteristics. It was home to many different religions: Parsees (or Zoroastrians), who escaped Muslim rule in their native Persia; Sikhs; Buddhists; Jains; Jews; Christians from the Church of the East; and the polyglot varieties of Hinduism, including castes or the wretched casteless “untouchables” — but these groups seldom interacted. Parsees, for example, remained mostly in a small part of Bombay, and Sikhs stayed in northern India.

The British introduced several reforms: For instance, the suttee was abolished by law; child marriage was banned; untouchables, Muslims, and those of other religions were granted equal rights; and thugee (the practice of ritual murder of strangers to placate the Hindu goddess Kali) was punished as murder. Such reforms, however, did not mean that the British Empire resolved all the problems of the subcontinent. What the British did bring to the subcontinent — though they did not recognize it at the time — was something very different: Christian civilization. For instance, the equality of all men (and women) before God was a Christian concept unthinkable to a Brahmin or even a Muslim among dhimmi. The oppression of women was a common characteristic of Islam, Hinduism, and even Buddhism (Gautama Siddhartha considered women so far down the level of creatures in the order of reincarnation that at first he did not even condone Hindu nuns).

The subcontinent was ancient, advanced, populous, and filled with intelligent people. What it lacked was the hope of Christianity, which comes best not by soldier, diplomat, or even a British Prime Minister. The love and tolerance of Christianity come through professing Christians bringing the Gospel to those who do not have it. Consider a frail little woman who grew up in a backward nation and came to India with little more than her faith. Mother Teresa arose, alone, out of a gigantic nation that encompassed one-quarter of humanity and that was filled with every faith and metaphysical system imaginable, and — in a land that considered women inferior and resented Europeans — drew with Christian love huge numbers of Indians so that when she died she was given a state funeral.

Politicians such as Prime Minister Cameron cannot bring peace to that Gordian knot of mistrust and misery. The problems of India and Pakistan are not political, but spiritual. The battle to bring peace to the world is being fought every day all over the world by Christian missionaries bringing medical clinics, schools, orphanages, and hope. It is in this great battle — not in diplomacy or foreign aid or peacekeeping forces — that peace will come. It is through acceptance of God’s love — and nothing else.

Source http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/asia-mainmenu-33/7006-bringing-peace-to-pakistan-and-india

New Queen Bio Tells Complete Story

2011-03-28T22:37:00.001-07:00

Last week saw the U.S. release of a new Queen bio, titled Is This The Real Life? (yep, the opening line from "Bohemian Rhapsody"), via Da Capo Press. Penned by author Mark Blake, the book tells the complete story of the British band that perfected and popularized "arena rock" during the 1970's and 1980's.

The 410 page book is priced at $25.00, and includes such tales about a chance encounter between the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious and Freddie, the writing of such Queen classics as "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," the preparation of the group's show-stopping performance at Live Aid, and Freddie's final reclusive years, before dying from an AIDS related illness in 1991.

Is This The Real Life? also contains a 16-page black and white photo section, which includes such rarely seen shots as the band members during their school days, Freddie preparing for a performance with the Royal Ballet Company in 1979, and a shot of arguably the most over-the-top/gaudy costume ever (from the set of the best-forgotten video for "It's A Hard Life").

Source http://www.ugo.com/music/queen-book

Woman injured by rock-wielding teen may face charges

2011-03-09T19:25:00.001-08:00

A Mid-South woman who was injured after a teen attacked her with a rock says Memphis police may file charges against her.

Charlotte Gathings suffered serious injury after a fight involving her daughter. But now, she may face trouble of a different kind.

"The investigator said that they were thinking about filing charges against me for simple assault and starting a riot," she said.

Gathings claims she was only trying to break up a fight the day she picked her daughter up from Raleigh Egypt High. That's where another teen was trying to fight her daughter. Gathings broke up the altercation with help from her son.

"He said, 'That's not what the camera says,' but I say otherwise because I don't have enough dignity in my heart to put my hands on somebody else's child."

An hour later, Gathings says a carload of teens showed up at her Raleigh home. One of them hit her in the head with a rock.

Gathings says investigators are now giving her an ultimatum.

"They want both of us to drop charges against each other in order for me not to be charged, and I'm not fixing to do that," she said.

Memphis police would not comment on the case, citing an ongoing investigation. However, as of Tuesday afternoon, no additional charges had been filed in the case.

Meanwhile, doctors tell Gathings it may take her up to a year to fully recovery from her injuries. She is currently seeking legal advice.

Source http://raleigh-frayser.wmctv.com/news/news/woman-injured-rock-wielding-teen-may-face-charges/52543

“Shahadat Jariha” on Alsumaria commemorates innocent victims

2011-02-08T22:29:00.001-08:00

Assassinations, bombings and sabotage attacks have become a frequent occurrence in the Arab world. World reactions pour in over any despicable incident. Media rushes to cover the news, politicians take turns in denunciation, and security forces work on containing the repercussions on the ground. Victims however turn into figures as sympathy and sorrow soon fade away.

“Shahadat Jariha” on Alsumaria pays tribute to martyrs and recovers the humanitarian and social value of people lost in the trail of terrorist attacks that cast the life of thousands of innocent people. Victims are no longer figures in this program, they are a sad memory worth of pondering upon.

“Shahadat Jariha” is a seven episode length social program on Alsumaria that airs every Monday at 10:30 pm Baghdad time starting February 14.

In each episode, host Mohannad Al Khatib interviews families of victims. How are they going through life? How are they dealing with their painful tragedy? What do they have to say to perpetrators? Are they able to forgive? Can their loss be compensated?

A special reportage retracing the life of the victim is shown in every episode. Among the guests is a relative of the victim who shares with viewers touching stories about the deceased in remembrance of his missed presence among his beloveds. The program hosts another guest from the media field to discuss the effect and repercussions of the major incident on society and the country’s security and economy.

Source http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/events-iraq-alsumaria-events/522-%E2%80%9CShahadat-Jariha%E2%80%9D-on-Alsumaria-commemorates-innocent-victims.html

40 jobs to be created by AA Ireland

2011-01-19T20:09:00.001-08:00

AA IRELAND has announced its intention to create 40 new jobs at its headquarters in Dublin.

The insurer today announced that it was hiring 40 new staff immediately, with new positions being created in its insurance and AA rescue divisions.

Policy director Conor Faughnan said it was “great to be able to make a positive announcement about Irish business and Irish jobs”, and said the bulk of the new hires were being sought in the motor insurance, home and travel insurance branches.

Faughnan explained that AA Insurance had been “performing very strongly and we need extra staff in our call centre to deal with growing demand.”

AA Ireland currently has a customer base of 600,000 across its insurance and rescue businesses.

Applications for the positions – based in Dublin city centre – are now open, and application forms can be found on the AA’s website.

Source http://www.thejournal.ie/40-jobs-to-be-created-by-aa-ireland-2011-01/

First Aid Kit Bio

2011-01-12T02:07:00.001-08:00

First Aid Kit, composed of Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg, started gaining popularity a few years ago by posting their soulful folk renditions of popular and underground songs on YouTube, now they’re all set to release their second studio album and tour again.

Swede Dreams

Sisters Johanna and Klara grew up in a suburb outside of Stockholm called Enskede, and were first inspired to make music by listening to pop music like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera but soon turned to more folksy-influenced music like Bob Dylan when they started learning guitar and creating their own melodies.

Previous
Next

Mellow yellow: First Aid Kit has retro style

First Aid Kit inspired by nature

The Soderburg Sisters on Tour

Black and White: The Sisters Soderburg

Internet Sensation

In 2007, at the ages of 14 and 17, they had started posting their nature-infused songs on YouTube along with covers they did of bigger bands, often playing and recording in nearby woods. Their cover of Indie rock band Fleet Foxes “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” brought them rapid recognition from critics and music-lovers around the world!

By summer 2007 these talented teens vocals had already graced Swedish airways with their home-recorded song “Tangerine” and been signed to Swedish electronic band The Knife’s record label Rabbid Records and recorded the EP “Drunken Trees.” In 2008 the Soderburg sisters toured Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.

Recording for Real

No more home-recordings for this sister duo! Even though they had to balance homework with recording sessions at the start of 2010 First Aid Kit released a full-length album,“The Big Black and Blue.”

But these girls aren’t ready to stop yet, if you love their haunting folk sound you’ll probably be excited to hear that they are set to release another two albums in 2011, “Dungen” is the first to come out with a self-titled album hot on its heels.

Fun Facts

First Aid Kit’s music is often compared to old school American songstresses like Joan Baez
The sisters enjoy snowball fights!
First Aid Kit are not just talented at music, they also design their own album art

Source http://www.kidzworld.com/article/25193-first-aid-kit-bio

EU calls for Kashmiri people’s involvement in resolving the Kashmir issue

2011-01-04T03:11:00.000-08:00

European Commission is very closely following developments in Held Kashmir and supports the reconciliation process between India and Pakistan.This was stated by Jean-Christian Remond, Asia Head of European Commission External Relations Directorate General, in response to a letter from Mushtaq A. Jeelani, Executive Director, Toronto-based Peace and Justice Forum (PJF).The PJF’s letter drew EU President Jos Manuel Barroso’s attention to the situation in Kashmir.

Issuing response on behalf of President Barroso, Remond wrote:

“I am sure you [Mr. Jeelani] know that the European Commission and the Delegation of the European Union in New Delhi follow developments in Kashmir very closely.”

He further underlined: “The annual visits to Jammu and Kashmir by Delhi-based EU Ambassadors and embassy staff indeed bear witness to the commitment. During the last such visit in November 2009, the delegation had the opportunity to meet with representatives of political parties, separatist movements, the security forces, civil society, and the universities, in order to assess for itself the situation pertaining in Kashmir.”

“It has been a longstanding position of the EU to support the reconciliation process between India and Pakistan and to call for the Kashmiri people themselves to be as involved as possible in this process,” underscored Remond.

He further stated that he has taken note of Jeelani’s comment regarding a possible mediation by a third party. “But, in our view, such a course of action would require conditions which are not presently met,” Remond added.

“The European Commission remain hopeful that dialogue between all parties concerned including the people of Kashmir, India and Pakistan may begin again, thus assuring the long-term socio-economic and political stability of the region,” he concluded.

Source http://ftpapp.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=126465&Itemid=2

How small-time auto insurance scams have evolved into big business in Canada

2010-12-28T01:55:00.000-08:00

It was easy money for Harris Ahmed. All he had to do was find people willing to take part in a fake car accident.

The man who approached him in Toronto about “doing accidents” told Mr. Ahmed he would get $1,000 cash for every passenger and driver he could recruit for the insurance scam. Each person would claim they were hurt in the crash.

Mr. Ahmed went right to work. A few weeks later, a car driven by one of his recruits collided with a Jaguar while driving through a north-Toronto suburb. The three people in the luxury car were also in on the plan, using vehicles purchased from a salvage yard.

On the surface it looked like a small-time problem: a few people trying to bilk the insurance industry for profit. But when fraud investigators pulled apart the operation, they found a complex ring of more than 40 fake accidents and at least $10-million of fraudulent claims.

It was the most sophisticated auto-insurance fraud ring ever uncovered in Canada, and the case has posed a new problem for the country’s auto insurers.

What made it so striking was that the ring included a rehabilitation clinic, used to submit claims for expensive treatments that never happened. To investigators, that was the clearest evidence yet that organized crime, not merely street-level criminals, was exploiting the auto insurance industry.

Ontario is Canada’s hotspot for auto-insurance fraud. In a province where consumers pay $9-billion worth of premiums each year, insurance companies estimate as much as $1.3-billion goes to cover fraud. The cost is shouldered by other drivers.

“It’s a significant amount and, more importantly, it’s a rising amount,” said Kathy Honor, president of RBC Insurance.

But a Globe and Mail investigation has found that the way the industry and governments combat the problem may be contributing to its growth. Lax oversight, a dearth of legal and investigative support, and reluctance within the industry to co-operate on sharing crucial data are all hindering attempts to stop fraud.

Following a clampdown in the United States in recent years, there are signs Canada is becoming a haven for auto insurance fraud, and that people connected to the largest staged accident ring in the U.S. are now operating in Toronto.

But the problem is not merely an Ontario issue: Two other provinces – Manitoba and B.C. – have recently uncovered some of the biggest staged-accident cases they’ve ever seen.

It is a deceptive problem if judged only by its numbers. Fraudulent accidents amount to less than one per cent of the 160,000 car crashes reported in Canada each year – but the cost for consumers and the industry is high.

As auto-insurance fraud graduates from being a small-time problem in Canada to a large, sophisticated and lucrative business that worth billions of dollars, the financial toll is increasing.

THE EVOLUTION OF FRAUD INC.

The new breed of auto-insurance fraud emerging in Canada comes after a major crackdown in the United States.

In 2002, the largest staged accident ring in the U.S. was uncovered in New York by Peter Smith, then an assistant district attorney on Long Island. Starting with a confession from a man arrested in a staged crash that seemed like an isolated case, Mr. Smith unravelled a web of insurance fraud that spanned more than 1,000 accidents. It was like nothing the insurance industry had ever seen before.

Using a task force of local and federal police, Mr. Smith’s team was able to establish something more significant: The ring used a network of medical clinics to submit hundreds of claims a week to insurance companies, billing them for costly treatments that were never administered, from x-rays to acupuncture.

The investigation led to the indictment of more than 400 people and 112 New York area medical corporations. The losses totalled more than $200-million, including $50-million for insurance giant State Farm. “For the first time, we were able to show how organized it was,” Mr. Smith said.

More importantly, the case changed the industry. The majority of states now use a similar task-force approach, joining local and federal police with insurance industry officials to investigate fraud, and backing them up with prosecutors who are specialists in such cases.

But the unintended consequence of the U.S. crackdown, investigators on both sides of the border believe, is that it made Canada an easy target.

The same problems discovered in the New York investigation are now turning up in Ontario, suggesting gaps in oversight have turned Canada into a haven for insurance fraud migrating north.

Court documents outlining the Ontario case (dubbed Project 92 because each major investigation is numbered) show a level of complexity that is new to the auto insurance sector.

The documents suggest a highly efficient, well-planned operation: Months before an accident was attempted, members of the ring combed auto salvage dealers in Canada and the U.S. looking for specific upscale car models suitable for a crash. The vehicles would be purchased for a few thousand dollars then refurbished. But the repairs were mostly cosmetic – in one Toronto crash, parts were held together using duct tape – since the vehicles only needed to be driven once.

Cars were then fraudulently deemed road-worthy by a mechanic and reinsured with an inflated replacement value, often $30,000 or more. Brands like BMWs worked best because they held their value.

Again, the real money was made through a clinic, by submitting stacks of claims for false treatments under Ontario’s no-fault insurance system that averaged more than $250,000 per accident.

But the increasing complexity of staged car-accident rings is not restricted to Ontario, nor is it limited to provinces that have private insurance as opposed to public insurance. B.C.’s Supreme Court is currently hearing a case where more than 20 people are accused of operating an elaborate and profitable staged-accident ring.

The sophistication of cases is also on the rise In Manitoba, where the province recently uncovered the largest auto insurance fraud operation in its history.

The scam was simple but effective; the criminal group purchased vehicles that were high-end, relatively new, but had high mileage. That mileage allowed the fraudsters to buy the vehicles cheap, usually at auctions.

They would then roll back the odometer to make the car seem newer, and insure the vehicle at an inflated value – often $20,000 or more. Soon after, the car was written-off in a staged crash and the replacement value was collected. By the time Manitoba investigators caught on, the ring had collected $600,000 in payouts, not including another $150,000 of claims that were being processed.

But the key to the plan was how the ring covered its tracks. Each vehicle was sold at least five or six times before the accident, which created a long paper trail and put distance between the ringleaders and the owner listed on the claim.

It was a watershed case that resulted in organized crime charges being laid, a first in Manitoba for insurance fraud. It also showed the extent to which the crime has evolved.

A decade ago, “It would be perhaps just a vehicle owner and his buddy and they would go out and do one staged accident,” said Brian Smiley of Manitoba Public Insurance. “Now we’re seeing multiple people who are organized, conducting staged accidents for profit.”

CANADA’S PROBLEM

Ontario’s Project 92 and the fraud ring detected in Manitoba both share a key ingredient – they involve investigation methods that are not widely used in Canada. They were successful because they are exceptions to the rule.

The task force used in Ontario, teaming insurance company investigators with law enforcement officers and two dedicated crown prosecutors, was an unusual co-ordinated effort.

Though common in the United States, Such resources are rarely expended here. The Insurance Bureau of Canada said Project 92 was a one-off situation. Instead, Canada is a patchwork of companies and jurisdictions where even trying to determine the extent of available investigative resources is difficult.

Though fraud is said to be a multibillion-dollar problem across the country there are no regulations requiring insurance companies to staff a certain number of investigators and nobody can say exactly how many there are in Canada.

Large private insurance companies have in-house investigators who are often former police officers, but they lack the legal powers that their counterparts in the U.S. have. Manitoba’s insurance corporation has 15 investigators, and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia has 24 investigators.

B.C.’s investigators hold quasi police powers and have a direct line to crown prosecutors to lay charges. But in most provinces, investigators employed by the insurance industry have little connection to police resources, which are already strained, or crown prosecutors to push cases forward.

Harris Ahmed pleaded guilty to fraud in Project 92, but investigators know they need more muscle to pursue the people at the top of the pyramid.

“We’re a trade association, so we don’t have the ability to lay charges or prosecute,” said Kirk Quinn, who heads up Ontario investigations for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. “We have to rely upon agencies and authorities outside of our industry. But [Police] have other priorities – and appropriately so – for violent crimes and dangerous crimes.”

Instead, the cost of fraud is built into the auto insurance business model. Investigating suspect claims is expensive, so what has emerged is a cost equation that the average consumer doesn’t know about.

Rather than investigate, it is often easier – and less expensive – to settle a suspect claim, said Mr. Smith. Companies will settle bulk claims for 40 or 50 cents on the dollar rather than spend the funds needed to challenge them. That cost filters its way to other consumers.

“We recognize when there is abusive [medical] treatment in a claim… but it costs us money,” said Ken Bowman, the head of RBC Insurance’s claims team said in a presentation on insurance fraud this summer. “So we’re spending money to not spend money.”

The case in Manitoba also highlights the differences in how provinces track fraud, and the weaknesses in the system.

Manitoba was able to crack its fraud case somewhat quickly because of a province-wide database it operates on all auto claims. As a provincial Crown corporation, investigators were able to dig deep into all insurance records in Manitoba to quickly cross-reference the network of people that were flipping the cars between themselves and orchestrating the crash. “It’s a huge advantage for us to have that database,” Mr. Smiley said.

However, the effectiveness of Manitoba’s database ends at its provincial boundary, pointing to one of the central weaknesses of the system: Sharing information between companies and jurisdictions across provincial borders is a problem in several jurisdictions across Canada.

A national database of insurance claims and other key information that would aid investigators across the country does not exist. It is something that Canada has yet to look at, even though investigators say it would be useful in speeding up investigations, while also give regulators an idea of the size of the problem.

Because provinces and insurance companies are reluctant to share data – due to privacy reasons or because they are worried about disclosing competitive information fraud is nearly impossible to track.

RBC Insurance’s Kathy Honor, speaking this summer, said the industry lacks even the same kind of screening systems used by banks and credit card companies to detect unusual purchases on debit and charge cards. “Right now there’s no kind of intelligence like we have on some of the payment systems in Canada,” Ms. Horner said.

HOW ONTARIO BECAME A HAVEN

Peter Smith remembers one of the suspects in the U.S. fraud ring telling him about Canada.

The man and several of his business partners had plans to move to Ontario and set up clinics that would handle insurance claims.

“He mentioned to me 10 new radiology facilities in Canada, that he was part of a group of investors that were doing it and how lucrative it was going to be,” said Mr. Smith, the former assistant district attorney who is now a fraud consultant to U.S. insurers. “He was very excited… They charge $1,500 a scan and it’s tremendously profitable.”

As New York’s problems increasingly turn up in Ontario, the rules concerning the ownership of clinics are surprisingly lax in the province.

For an initial fee of $500, any person – not necessarily a doctor – can register as the owner of a clinic, hire practitioners and bill insurers for claims. In order to file those claims, a doctor or registered practitioner’s name, signature, and other billing information is needed, but this is sometimes forged.

Using confidential documents obtained from U.S. investigators, which were then cross-referenced with information gathered from court and corporate searches in Canada, The Globe and Mail has learned that at least one person indicted in the biggest auto insurance crackdown ever seen in the United States has since opened a rehabilitation business in Ontario, operating under the noses of regulators and lawmakers.

However, despite calls from the insurance industry and the medical community to fix the problem, there is lax scrutiny by government or regulators of clinic ownership. “There would certainly be benefits to carefully vetting who can own a health care clinic,” said Michael Brennan, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. He is upset that a small number of questionable clinics tarnish the rest of physiotherapists operating across the country.

“Certainly an area where we all should be taking a close look is just what is the process to allow a person to own a health-care clinic?” he said. “It should be at least as stringent as the process to obtain a licence to become a health-care professional.”

For now it is left up to the insurance industry to go to the courts after problems are discovered.

In a separate case that emerged two weeks ago, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company launched a lawsuit against a group of Toronto-area medical clinics alleging they were filing fraudulent insurance claims.

In the suit filed in Ontario Superior Court, State Farm alleged it paid out at least $1.2-million for medical services that were never provided. Instead, the company alleges Vishnukanthan Sabapathy of Scarborough, Ont., was the de facto owner or manager of three clinics that were sending false treatment plans, disability certificates and invoices to State Farm since 2008. Mr. Sabapathy could not be reached for comment and none of the allegations have been proved.

Those documents were allegedly submitted under the names of six chiropractors, a kinesiologist and a registered massage therapist whose signatures were used, the suit alleges. However, the practitioners did not actually work for the clinic at the time, State Farm alleges.

“The clinics were held out to State Farm as legitimate service providers, when in fact they were vehicles for the personal defendants' wrongdoing,” the statement of claim alleges.

The suit is a breakthrough for the insurance sector, since investigators have long been seeking to demonstrate that some clinics are set up to defraud the system. But it hasn’t stopped the flow of claims. “Treatment plans and disability certificates have been and are still being filled out by the clinics,” State Farm alleges.

After the New York case was uncovered, lawmakers in the U.S. formed a multi-state database where the industry shares information on suspect claims.

This allows investigators to use data-mining techniques that spot trends in accident reporting across company and state lines. Crashes that are linked to one person or group of people, however tangentially, or that show similar traits, can readily be spotted—even if they are spread throughout dozens of insurance companies.

Such steps have shown immediate results: In Massachusetts, the state reworked how it handles suspected fraud cases after a 65-year-old grandmother was killed in 2003 near the city of Lawrence during a collision with a driver trying to stage a fake accident.

The Massachusetts Automobile Insurance Bureau created a database to keep track of clinics that billed for an unusually high number of patients. Among its findings: Before the crackdown, the city of Lawrence had 22 chiropractors that were high-volume billers. Five years later, the number had dropped to four.

In Canada, it’s difficult to tell how big the insurance fraud problem is exactly, since data is so hard to get. Regulators in several provinces including Alberta and Nova Scotia told The Globe and Mail they rely on the Insurance Bureau of Canada to inform them of fraud trends. Meanwhile, regulators in Ontario believe the $1.3-billion number the IBC uses to estimate fraud in Ontario may be overstated. However, the province doesn’t have reliable numbers of its own to tell how big the concern actually is.

Despite his work cracking the biggest auto insurance fraud case in the U.S., Peter Smith figures not enough is being done to stop it.

“I would personally just like to see a reduction in rates based on somebody doing something about the fraud.” said Mr. Smith.

“If people understood how their rates are as high as they are because of this reason, they would put pressure on the politicians and their insurance companies to do something about it.” he said. “But people, even myself, will just continue to pay the higher rates and try to avoid being in accidents themselves. But if they actually knew, a lot more of them would get upset about it.”

Source http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article1850088.html

Crumbling Economics Undermine Long-Term Care Offerings

2010-12-22T01:48:00.000-08:00

All publicity may not be good publicity after all, the long-term care (LTC) insurance industry discovered last month.

The industry named November “National Long-Term Care Insurance Month” in hopes of raising awareness of the “need” for the product. However, the bulk of the month’s press highlighted LTC’s drawbacks as it focused on the woes of two key insurers, MetLife and John Hancock.

In early November, MetLife announced that it will stop selling LTC insurance as of Dec. 30. Although it will continue to provide coverage for current policy holders, it will no longer write new policies. It will also discontinue new enrollments in group policies and multi-life plans starting next year.

Meanwhile, John Hancock asked state regulators for an average rate increase of 40 percent on most of its existing policies. The insurer also plans to raise the price of new policies by 24 percent in 2011. John Hancock has stopped selling policies to employers that offer the coverage as an employee benefit but, unlike MetLife, it will continue to sell individual policies, so long as it can find anyone willing to pay its new rates.

There was no single event in November that crumbled MetLife and John Hancock’s LTC business. These two announcements were just the latest signs of the slow decay of the LTC insurance industry as a whole. The problem is not the economy, or any other environmental factor; it is that selling LTC insurance is an unprofitable venture.

The purpose of insurance is to spread the cost of a highly unlikely and catastrophic (read costly) event across a group of people. Instead of risking a potentially large loss, the insured takes a small, known loss in the form of a premium. The key is that the event must be unlikely. If it is too common, affordable premiums will not be able to cover the cost of the claims and still leave a profit for the insurer.

As any insurance salesperson would confirm, as we age our likelihood of needing long-term care approaches certainty. The risk no longer fits the “unlikely” category, and insurance becomes an inefficient and inappropriate solution.

As claims increase, the insurer passes the cost on to the policyholders in the form of higher premiums. Increasing premiums is only a temporary patch, however. Once premiums go up, those who are at lower risk abandon their costly policies. This leaves an even higher risk pool to share the costs, exacerbating the funding problems.

Persistently low interest rates expedited the industry’s current deterioration. Insurers have been unable to earn sufficient rates on their investment portfolios to fund policy payouts, and therefore have had to rely even more on premiums. According to the American Association for Long Term Care Insurance, insurers need to increase premiums 10 to 15 percent to make up for each 1 percent drop in interest rates. It is unlikely that interest rates will rise enough in the near future to ease the stress on insurers.

MetLife vows that its current long-term care policy holders will not be affected by the recent decision. They will still be covered as long as they pay their premiums and they may even be able to change their coverage terms, depending on what their particular policies permit. However, it is unlikely that those currently insured will be entirely unscathed. Without a younger, healthier group of insured individuals entering the pool, it will be difficult for MetLife to find the cash to cover its claims. As a result, the company will most likely have to raise premiums on its remaining long-term care policies to cover its costs.

In its press release, MetLife acknowledged that LTC insurance in its current form cannot balance financing claims with its business goals. That is, the business is unprofitable. However, MetLife suggested that it may return to the market if a profitable product is ever developed.

That profitable product might take the form of a hybrid policy, one that combines an annuity or life insurance contract with a traditional LTC policy. Several insurers are already beginning to offer policies of this sort. Hybrids are more likely to attract lower-risk customers because, even if a policyholder never needs long-term care, he or she still gets a guaranteed payout. This makes the business more likely to be profitable and sustainable.

While hybrid policies are more promising than traditional LTC insurance, I am hesitant to recommend them. The health care industry is too dynamic to be easily predictable, and these are still relatively new, untested products.

We all face a number of potential expenses that we may or may not incur in our old age. We might need to help support children or grandchildren; we might need to renovate a house that is also aging; or we might be unable to resist buying a vacation home on the beach. We might just live very long and healthy lives and need to provide for our own support.

There is no reason to treat the possibility of needing long-term care any differently from these other possible expenses. In all these cases, one should recognize the need for funds and save and invest appropriately throughout one’s lifetime. Relying on a flawed insurance product is not going to help.

Source http://palisadeshudson.com/2010/12/crumbling-economics-undermine-long-term-care-offerings/