Prison inmates collect unemployment

Columnists - philly.com
DID YOU KNOW that Philadelphia prison inmates collected unemployment benefits while sitting in their cells?

They did: 1,162 of them got an average of $344 a week for, on average, 18 weeks. That's more than $7 million.

And many of the 25,500 inmates in other county jails in Pennsylvania did the same.

We're talking cash for cons - tens of millions of tax dollars paid by employers and employees fraudulently scammed by incarcerated crooks.

Makes you want to get up every day, go to work and pay your taxes, right?

Dissident blogger leaves Cuba

Dissident blogger leaves Cuba: Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger and fierce critic of the governments of Raul and Fidel Castro, embarked on a long-denied trip abroad Sunday.

Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

And we wouldn't be as violent a society:

Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.

The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.

"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.