Joseph Burns

This headline is staggering: “If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month.”

That headline comes from the Grist.org, a site devoted to reporting environmental news. In the article, the Grist’s writer, Philip Bump, quotes from a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about temperatures last month (October 2012), saying,

The average temperature across land and ocean surfaces during October was 14.63°C (58.23°F). This is 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average and ties with 2008 as the fifth warmest October on record. The record warmest October occurred in 2003 and the record coldest October occurred in 1912. This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.

The entire blog post is well worth reading.

More than 100,000 U.S. employees will enroll in a new health insurance exchange from human resources consultants Aon Hewitt, the company announced on Sept. 27. The employees can use the exchange to purchase health benefits through this multi-insurer, multi-employer exchange starting this fall. This rate of enrollment might be a record for a health insurance exchange, either public or private. Could the state exchanges being developed under the Affordable Care Act learn a lesson from Aon’s experience with a private exchange? I covered this topic in a Managed Care magazine cover story this summer.

“There are examples in every industry, including iTunes, Amazon.com and Orbitz, where the introduction of competition on a retail, consumer level has driven down prices and made the industry more efficient,” said Ken Sperling, Aon Hewitt’s national health exchange strategy leader. “The Aon Hewitt Corporate Exchange is a viable alternative for companies searching for solutions that can reduce cost, transfer risk to insurers, empower employees to make smarter health care choices and create a more sustainable health care benefit program.”

“The case for extending the same rights to LGBT persons as those enjoyed by everyone else is neither radical nor complicated. It rests on two fundamental principles that underpin international human rights law: equality and non-discrimination. The opening words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are unequivocal: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’.”

This quote from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is in the forward of a new publication, Born Free and Equal, from the UN Human Rights Office. This publication on sexual orientation and gender identity in international human rights law identifies the source and scope of the core legal obligations that countries have to protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.  The booklet focuses on the obligations nation’s have to protecting people from homophobic violence,  preventing torture, decriminalizing homosexuality, prohibiting discrimination,  safeguarding freedom of expression, and allowing the association and peaceful assembly for all LGBT people, the UN’s announcement said. The booklet is available as a pdf.

Addressing the Human Rights Council in March 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Some say that sexual orientation and gender identity are sensitive issues. I understand. Like many of my generation, I did not grow up talking about these issues. But I learned to speak out because lives are at stake, and because it is our duty under the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to protect the rights of everyone, everywhere.”

Source: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Photo of the Martyrs Monument in Memento Park, Budapest, Hungary. The Martyrs Monument is one of 42 pieces of art from the Communist era in Hungary (1945 to 1989). A work done in stone by Kallo Viktor in 1960, it stood in Koztarsasag Square in Budapest until 1989. After the fall of the Communist regime in Hungary, it was removed from the city along with other Communist-era statuary. In 1993, it was displayed again in the open-air Memento Park along with statues of famous personalities such as Engels, Lenin, and Marx.
Photo credit: Joseph Burns, December 2010.