| Rickshaw-puller to hospital owner
AGRA: As a Class IX student, Hari Kishen Pippal pulled a rickshaw at night, hoping to fund his education after his shoemaker father was laid low by paralysis. Now the 56-year-old Dalit owns a state-of-the-art hospital in the Taj Mahal town.
In these parts of western Uttar Pradesh, several Dalit entrepreneurs run hotels, own factories, even beer bars. But nobody had tried to set up a multi-speciality hospital before. "I initially thought whether a non-medico like me would be able to run a hospital. I also wondered whether my caste would be a hurdle. But I decided to go ahead anyway," says Pippal.
The hospital also employs five Dalit doctors, the entrepreneur's proactive effort to encourage medicos from his own community. "I want to prove that given an opportunity, they can be as good, if not better than the rest," says Pippal, who never went to college but speaks six languages: Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, English, German and Russian.
Send condolences to the family of Corey Williams
Lightning struck and killed Carbondale Community High School student Corey Williams Thursday afternoon during a track meet on the campus. Family, friends and school officials, understandably, are mourning this unexpected loss. If you would like to send condolences and prayers or share memories of Williams, do so in the comments section below. Comments are limited to 250 words.The Southern Illinoisan will pass your thoughts on to the family.
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Save for college with a 529 plan
It's never been more important for the children in your life to receive a college education. Studies show that over a lifetime, the earning gap between a person with a high school education and one who has a college degree may exceed $1 million.* According to The College Board (a not-for-profit educational association), for 2004-2005, average costs per year totaled $5,132 at a state university and $27,516 at a private university.** Should you also be thinking about graduate or professional school, the costs may really skyrocket. A 529 Plan Can Help .
Analysis: US Mortgage Crisis Looms
On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial,had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks. What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21. The analyst's untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn't the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.
A gift from Canada
The whole bunny-Easter connection is finally starting to make sense, thanks to the weather: If you wore an Easter bonnet made of rabbit's fur, you might just be able to keep warm today. Chaucer wrote about April's sweet showers, and Walt Whitman about lilacs blooming in the dooryard, but this year our money goes to T. S. Eliot, who managed to see the gloom behind the cheer every time and reminded us that April is the cruelest month. .
Tivo plays a trump card: web smart features
This feature lets you send home movies and photo slide shows from your computer directly into the Now Playing lists of TiVo owners who might enjoy them. You upload your raw material at OneTrueMedia.com, where you can add a musical soundtrack, if you like. Then youre given a numeric password, which you supply to any TiVo owner who wants to be able to tune in to your new channel. The rest is automatic. From now on, any new movies that you upload automatically appear in the TiVo owners Now Playing lists. Its too bad that you, the uploader, have to pay by the month or year for this service; a fee for each movie would make more sense. Cell phone programming You can now download a subset of the TiVos software onto a cell phone. You can use it to search the TV listings and command your TiVo, back at home, to record any show or series, even if you give it only 15 minutes notice.
USAA customer service is the best in the nation
Paul Grossman chats easily with a lieutenant calling USAA to buy insurance on a $7,500 engagement ring. The 24-year-old Grossman tells the military man that with a rock like that, she is sure to say yes. By the end of the call the ring is insured, Grossman has assured the lieutenant about the breadth of the coverage "from France to Atlanta or Timbuktu," and the deal is done with little fuss. "You guys are too easy," the lieutenant says as he compliments the San Antonio-based company on all aspects of its customer service. Grossman, a four-year USAA employee and part of the New Member Solutions Team, said those kinds of compliments from members are common in his day-to-day work. This is why USAA was named the best company in the country for customer service in any industry in a recent cover story in Business Week magazine.
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