Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s Rough-Edged Mayor, Tries the Sandpaper

nytimes.com - CHICAGO — Alderman Scott Waguespack was in a conference room at City Hall in the spring of 2011 for a formal sit-down with this city’s newly elected mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Mr. Waguespack attempted some small talk, he said, but Mr. Emanuel was not much interested.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’” recalled Mr. Waguespack, now a chief adversary of the mayor. “Then he said, ‘Let me tell you something,’ and he went off at me. Just started yelling and swearing. He went so far off the handle that I almost got up and walked out.”

Role of Illness in Germanwings Crash Raises Worry About Stigma

nytimes.com - An intense focus on the role of the co-pilot’s mental illness in the Germanwings jetliner crash has raised concerns that it risks unfairly stigmatizing millions of people with mental disorders and making it less likely they will seek treatment. That, in turn, could make it even harder to identify people working in high-risk professions who pose a threat to public safety.

The co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, would not be the first aviator to hide the fact that he was having psychiatric difficulties or that he had received mental health treatment.

Imaginary Health Care Horrors

nytimes.com - There’s a lot of fuzzy math in American politics, but Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, recently set a new standard when he declared the cost of Obamacare “unconscionable.” If you do “simple multiplication,” he insisted, you find that the coverage expansion is costing $5 million per recipient. But his calculation was a bit off — namely, by a factor of more than a thousand. The actual cost per newly insured American is about $4,000.

Now, everyone makes mistakes.

Train companies mustn’t get away with ripping us off

thetimes.co.uk - Are we supposed to be shocked by the Crown Prosecution Service’s figures that 2,587 rail passengers were prosecuted last year for fare dodging? I could come up with as many cases where train companies deserve to be taken to court for scamming their passengers.

They could include the woman who bought a ticket from London to Dundee online but arrived at King’s Cross to find the ticket-printing machine broken. She was told by staff to board the train, only for a ticket inspector to charge her £162.50 for a new ticket.

Raffaele Sollecito: I never want to see Amanda Knox again

thetimes.co.uk - Raffaele Sollecito said today he does not want to see his former girlfriend Amanda Knox again and will sue anyone who calls him an “assassin” as he sought to forget the seven years and five months he stood accused of killing the British student Meredith Kercher.

Mr Sollecito, 31, said the years he spent fighting to clear his name alongside Knox, including four years in jail in Italy, amounted to “kidnapping” by a justice system that convicted, acquitted, and again convicted the pair before Italy’s high court dramatically threw out their case on Friday.

Isis lay waste to homes in Tikrit ahead of battle

thetimes.co.uk - The anonymous phone caller had a simple but devastating message for Latif Rajab, an Iraqi oil ministry employee who had recently fled Tikrit.

“The man on the phone said he was standing outside my home and asked if I would return — knowing that I would never do so,” Mr Rajab said. “Then he said, ‘Listen to this!’”

There was a huge, rumbling explosion. When the noise subsided, the man spoke again. “That was your house being blown up,” he told Mr Rajab.

The destruction of houses by Islamic State of anyone suspected of having ties to the government is part

Thousands of pensioners’ private data ‘sold to cold-callers’

thetimes.co.uk - An investigation has been started into claims that highly sensitive details of thousands of people’s pension savings are being sold on the open market.

The revelation comes just a week before the government’s new pension freedoms take effect and confirms experts’ fears that scammers will rush to exploit the new rules, which will allow people to take their entire pension pot in one lump sum.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) today said it was looking into the allegations that details of people’s pay, pension pots and investments were being passed on to criminals and cold-calling firms.