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The inflated costs for spinal surgeries at some hospitals in California. How surgeons, doctors, consultants, distributors and hospitals operated in a flawed system to make revenue gains through overbilling, and focus on increasing the number of surgeries performed.

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Kristof says social ills- the lack of stable marraiges, drug use, poor day care resources- compound the problems of lack of education beyond high school in America's white underclass. The lack of good manufacturing jobs and lower wages have hit people with only a high school education the hardest. Two decades of decline in good manufacturing jobs with globalization have hit this part of the population in the U.S. hard creating increasing inequality in America. He sounds a Moynihan type call to the plight of America's poorest white communities.

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Jet Blue came to Boston in 2004. At the time it had one gate and 30 employees at Boston's Logan International Airport. The airline now has 2300 workers and 17 gates in Jan 2012. It now has 104 nonstop daily flights to 44 locations in the U.S. and Caribbean, with plans to reach 150 flights by 2015. As American and Delta pulled back to focus on their main hubs, Jet Blue expanded quickly. It started as an airline for vacation travellers, but soon attracted business passengers for the cheaper cost of flights, especially for cost conscious travellers after the recession hit in 2008. Jet Blue also offered better service and more leg room for business passengers. Jet Blue's CEO, Dave Barger, says 30% of traffic into and out of Logan now is for business travel.

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Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, provides a five point proposal to strengthen the European Union and take the steps to a closer political union. She says the Maastricht Treaty does not provide the strong foundation the European Union needs and the steps are already underway to change this. The fiscal compact for financial discipline in the eurozone that all members of the eurozone agreed to is one such step. Other steps remain for a closer union and she suggests the time is now for an open debate inside the EU countries about what people want to see the EU become by 2020. As a timetable a treaty on political union could be ratified between 2016 and 2019, with it going into effect once two thirds of the countries have approved it with referendums. Countries would have the opton of political union or staying in a close form of association but not union.

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Shift of Toyota Highlander hybrid production from Japan to the U.S. with a $400 million investment in the Princeton, Indiana manufacturing plant. The Princeton plant will make 50,000 of the Highlander hybrid vehicles a year.