Portable Planet

Halloween may be over, but Medicare Part D beneficiaries shopping during open enrollment could be in for a nasty scare, with up to $1,915 in cost increases next year for premiums and five commonly used prescriptions — the equivalent of about two month’s worth of Social Security checks.
“Anyone currently enrolled in the Medicare drug program […]

Over the past few days, the area around Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing, where more than 2,000 communist party delegates will gather Monday, has been awash with police and security forces.
They are ready to prevent dissidents and petitioners, mostly aggrieved rural residents, from disrupting the proceedings.
The Communist Party Congress, […]

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honors Professor Ertl for his groundbreaking studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces. 
He is credited with creating a methodology for demonstrating how different experimental procedures can be used to provide a complete picture of a surface reaction, observing how individual layers of atoms behave on the extremely pure surface […]

U.S.-based monitoring groups say the al-Qaida terrorist network intends to release a new video recording of Osama bin Laden on or before next week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
No photos or video of Bin Laden have been seen since late 2004, and the last audio message attributed to the […]