Eideard

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Pharmaceutical company Novartis on Sunday voluntarily recalled a number of over-the-counter drugs — including certain bottles of Excedrin and Bufferin — because of complaints about mislabeled and broken pills…it urged U.S. consumers to “either destroy or return unused” products that are part of the recall.

The items involved in the voluntary recall include Excedrin and NoDoz products with expiration dates of December 20, 2014, or earlier, as well as Bufferin and Gas-X Prevention products with December 20, 2013, or earlier expiration dates.

“(Novartis) is taking this action as a precautionary measure, because the products may contain stray tablets, capsules or caplets from other Novartis products, or contain broken or chipped pills,” the company said.

The moves follows Novartis’ decision to suspend operations at, and shipments from, its Lincoln, Nebraska, facility. The company said this was done “to accelerate maintenance” and make other improvements, adding that it currently “is not possible” to determine when the plant will reopen…

While Novartis announced Sunday’s recall, it said that it did so “with the knowledge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” This came about after an internal review and assessment of complaints identifying “issues such as broken gelcaps, chipped tablets and inconsistent bottle packaging.”

If you want to see a detailed list – and I really recommend you do so – of products associated with the recall, please click on the link and go here.

Photo by Kevin Kramer

Beatrice. NE — Residents who complained about a nearly naked female store mannequin prompted police to conceal the window display and stirred a debate about obscenity. Police covered the window at Hannah’s Treasures for about a day last week after several people in the southeast Nebraska city of 12,500 complained about the mannequin with a pair of pants around its ankles and wearing shoes but no other clothing.

City Attorney Tobias Tempelmeyer said Monday he had yet to receive all the police reports on the semi-naked mannequin.

“We’re not able at this point to issue a determination whether it’s obscene or not,” Tempelmeyer said.

The owner of the closed shop later dressed the offending mannequin in a bikini.

Store owner Kevin Kramer’s lawyer, Dustin Garrison, didn’t immediately respond to a message Monday, but he told the Beatrice Daily Sun that Kramer might sue over the dispute.

“Nothing about a naked mannequin constitutes obscenity,” Garrison said to the Beatrice Daily Sun. “I think we’ve all gone into a department store and seen a naked mannequin at one point in our lives.”

This is one of those stories that prompts me to think the American people get what they deserve: when they elect greedy, self-serving politicians who historically always loot the U.S. Treasury for their corporate country club buddies; when they blather about prayer meetings they believe will somehow solve disasters ranging from earthquakes to oil spills; when police and politicians respond instantly and dramatically to stupid complaints about nude department store mannequins.

I agree with Darwinists that the redirective process of the cerebral cortex enables our species to be self-correcting, learn from mistakes and advance the progress of the human race. Just not in my lifetime.

The situation has played out hundreds of times. From his office, a doctor asks a woman on the computer screen before him one final question: Are you ready to take your pill..?

Then, with a click of his mouse, a modified cash register drawer pops open in front of the woman seated next to a nurse in a clinic — perhaps 100 miles from this city — with mifepristone, the medicine formerly known as RU-486, that is meant to end her pregnancy.

Efforts to provide medical services by videoconference, a notion known as telemedicine, are expanding into all sorts of realms, but these clinics in Iowa are the first in the nation, and so far the only ones, experts say, to provide abortions this way.

Advocates say the idea offers an answer to an essential struggle that has long troubled those who favor abortion rights: How to make abortions available in far-flung, rural places and communities where abortion providers are unable or unwilling to travel. So far only Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa use this method, but around the country, abortion providers have begun asking how they might replicate the concept…

Though the efforts drew little attention until recently, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (which recently combined affiliate operations in Nebraska with those in Iowa) has dispensed abortion medication using teleconferencing equipment at 16 Iowa clinics since June 2008; 1,500 such abortions have been performed in this state…

The total number of abortions nationally has declined in recent years, but the percentage of women opting for abortions by medication — as opposed to the more common surgical alternative — is growing.

The nutball brigade opposing a woman’s right to choose are lining up their pet politicians, cranking up the machinery designed to spew sophistry about hands-on medicine – and any other crap rationales infecting minds governed by superstition and Dark Ages ideology.

I think this is a terrific step forward for modern medicine. That fact that Planned Parenthood and women’s rights are the core engine – is just the icing on the political cake.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

One of Warren Buffett’s favourite sayings about the market is: “be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy”.

When the market was fearful last September, Mr Buffett was greedy, putting $5 billion into the investment bank Goldman Sachs on exceptionally favourable terms…

He has always enjoyed himself in a falling market, which, as he sees it, provides him with the best opportunities.

As if to prove his fabled status as the most successful investor ever, Mr Buffett prints his fund’s spectacular growth record, all the way back to 1965, in the annual report of his company, Berkshire Hathaway.

It shows he has achieved an extraordinary 20.3% average annual growth in the company’s value, which – he helpfully works out – comes to a mind-boggling 336,000% over the years – 84 times that of the standard US index fund, the S&P 500…

This is a man who has not even started a business…Nor has he invented anything, or come up with a way of making businesses more profitable.

And he still lives in his native Omaha, in the mid-western state of Nebraska, 1,200 miles from the financial whizzkids on Wall Street…

He believes that if a deal needs complicated calculations before you can decide if it is right, then it probably is not. He always leaves a “margin of safety”, he says, so that if things don’t work out as he’d hoped, he does not lose money…

Detailed and fun read – even if you’re not investing for something in the future. Buffett’s commentary on the Whiz Kids who can’t think beyond the next quarter warms the cockles of my heart.

Interpol Poster

A man wanted in the Czech Republic for drug and fraud crimes has been arrested while working in the US – at a maximum security prison.

Michal Preclik, 32, had recently been promoted to the post of corporal, the Associated Press reports…

Nebraska officials said they carried out a full background check on Mr Preclik and the fact he was employed was “a concern”.

But Mr Preclik’s wife, Kari, told reporters her husband had been granted legal residency in the US after testifying in another case and that she could not understand why he had been arrested now.

They told him that his status was protected here, that whatever he had done in his past was eliminated

Mr Preclik is currently being held in another prison, where he is fighting possible deportation to the Czech Republic. The exact reason for his arrest has not been made public…

Officials said the state would be reviewing its employment policy and procedures.

Obviously, no one in Nebraska’s Correctional System is familiar with The Google.

TOOELE, UT…Three auto executives with Tooele County ties were taken into custody in connection with the theft of 81 vehicles from a Scottsbluff, Neb., dealership they were running together.

Legacy Auto Sales owner Allen Patch, controller Rachel Fait, and general manager Rick Covello allegedly arranged to have the vehicles — identified as Fords and Toyotas — transported by truck to be sold at auctions in a number of western states including Utah. An investigation was launched Monday when employees at the dealership showed up for work and noticed an empty lot. Investigators reported that the trio’s desks had been cleaned out and their homes vacated.

The Scottsbluff County Attorney’s Office issued warrants to bring the threesome in for questioning, estimating the value of the missing cars at $2.5 million.

Patch, a former Tooele resident, is the previous owner of Quality Automotive in Tooele. Fait and Covello are part-time Tooele residents who worked for Patch at Quality and have remained business associates.

Patch turned himself in to Utah Motor Vehicle Enforcement Division authorities this morning, according to Charlie Roberts, public information officer with MVED. “He was arrested on the outstanding warrant and transported to the Tooele County Jail,” Roberts said.

Fait was taken into custody by the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office Wednesday evening at a family home in Tooele and booked into the Tooele County Jail, according to Sheriff Frank Park. Covello turned himself in earlier Wednesday in Nebraska.

The investigation into the case is ongoing. Roberts said his department recovered 18 vehicles from Bargain Buggies in Erda at around 11:30 a.m. today, with others popping up at dealerships in the Salt Lake Valley.

Har! I’ll bet those buggies were bargains.

A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served due to his unlisted home address.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God. He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward…

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn’t decided yet.

Suing a superstition may prove a point. The judge agreed that it’s pointless. But, then, so is wasting part of your life hoping for a superstition to change anything.

Huddle a little closer to the fire at the cave’s entrance. Get back to inventing the wheel.

A mother has driven for 12 hours across the US to abandon her teenage son in Nebraska, under a law allowing adults to leave children at state hospitals. The state’s safe-haven law prevents prosecution for abandonment.

But the head of Nebraska’s health and human services division said dumping children was not an appropriate way for families to deal with parenting issues.

The abandoned boy from Michigan, 13, is the 18th youth to be left since the law took effect in July. He is the second teenager from outside the state to be abandoned there. The first, a 14-year-old girl from Iowa, was returned home after being left by her grandparents.

The law is unique in that it allows any adult, not just parents, to drop off children of any age at any state-licenced hospital.

“I certainly recognise and can commiserate and empathise with families across our state and across the country who are obviously struggling with parenting issues, but this is not the appropriate way of dealing with them,” said Todd Landry, from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.

The average political hack probably wastes more state funds reading the racing form on the clock – than the cost of dealing with a kid dumped in Nebraska by a strung-out mom.

The important questions are more like [1] why couldn’t she get some help back in Michigan? [2] what are the economic circumstances prompting this destitute flight? [3] why is our society turning full-circle back to “solutions” more appropriate to a Dickens’ novel than 21st Century America?