Mon: Would You Like to Be Running a Hospital in a Red State?

Was the Student's Action Performance Art?

A South Korean art student ate a banana that was part of an installation by artist Maurizio Cattelan, saying he was "hungry" after skipping breakfast.

The artwork called "Comedian", part of Cattelan's exhibition "WE", consisted of a ripe banana duct-taped to a wall at Seoul's Leeum Musuem of Art.

After eating the banana, the student, Noh Huyn-soo, taped the peel to the wall.

The museum later placed a new banana at the same spot, reported local media.

The incident, which lasted more than a minute, was recorded by Mr Noh's friend.

The Leeum Musuem of Art did not respond to an email inquiry by the BBC. However, it told media that it will not claim damages against the student.

The banana on display is reportedly replaced every two or three days.

Or Is a Lot of Stuff that Is Called Art, Just Dumb?



If I Duct Taped a Banana to Our Wall, My Wife Would Not Admire It. She Would Make Me Seek Professional Halp.

They Are Messing With the Most Litigious Place on Earth.  

The local governing board that oversees much of Walt Disney World voted on Monday to sue the company as part of an ongoing political feud fueled by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The five-person Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board voted unanimously to sue Walt Disney World in state court less than a week after the company filed its own lawsuit against both DeSantis and the board, among a handful of other officials.

The company sued after the board voted to invalidate an agreement the previous board passed allowing the company to keep control of much of its operations just as DeSantis and his Republican allies were preparing to pass legislation allowing the governor to appoint a new board.

Disney Likes to Sue People As Much as Mitt Romney Likes to Fire People

How Would You Like to Be Running a Hospital in a Red State?

Two hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor put her life in jeopardy and violated federal law, a first-of-its-kind investigation by the federal government has found.

The findings, revealed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, are a warning to hospitals around the country as they struggle to reconcile dozens of new state laws that ban or severely restrict abortion with a federal mandate for doctors to provide abortions when a woman's health is at risk. The competing edicts have been rolled out since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last year.

But federal law, which requires doctors to treat patients in emergency situations, trumps those state laws, the nation's top health official said in a statement.

“Fortunately, this patient survived. But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said. “We want her, and every patient out there like her, to know that we will do everything we can to protect their lives and health, and to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority, in accordance with orders from the courts.”

The federal agency's investigation centers on two hospitals — Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, and University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas — that in August refused to provide an abortion to a Missouri woman whose water broke early at 17 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors at both hospitals told Mylissa Farmer that her fetus would not survive, that her amniotic fluid had emptied and that she was at risk for serious infection or losing her uterus, but they would not terminate the pregnancy because a fetal heartbeat was still detectable.

There Is No Banking Crisis Serious Enough to Not Help the Biggest Banks

Regulators seized First Republic Bank and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to JPMorgan Chase & Co., heading off a chaotic collapse that threatened to reignite the recent banking crisis.

JPMorgan said it will assume all of First Republic’s $92 billion in deposits—insured and uninsured. It is also buying most of the bank’s assets, including about $173 billion in loans and $30 billion in securities.

As part of the agreement, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will share losses with JPMorgan on First Republic’s loans. The agency estimated that its insurance fund would take a hit of $13 billion in the deal. JPMorgan also said it would receive $50 billion in financing from the FDIC.

San Francisco-based First Republic, the second-largest bank to fail in U.S. history, lost $100 billion in deposits in a March run following the collapse of fellow Bay Area lender Silicon Valley Bank. It limped along for weeks after a group of America’s biggest banks came to its rescue with a $30 billion deposit. Those deposits will be repaid after the deal closes, JPMorgan said.

Three of the four largest-ever U.S. bank failures have occurred in the past two months. First Republic, with some $233 billion in assets at the end of the first quarter, ranks just behind the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual Inc. Rounding out the top four are Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, a New York-based lender that also failed in March.

The deal means JPMorgan, the largest bank in the U.S., is poised to emerge from the current crisis even bigger. The lender has said it got about $50 billion in new deposits from panicky customers looking to move their money to a too-big-to-fail bank following March’s failures. JPMorgan had $2.4 trillion in deposits at the end of the first quarter.

Cheer Up. There' Only a 10%-20% Chance of Global Financial Disater in 6 Weeks

Debt ceiling watchers have had June 15 circled on their calendars for weeks now as an important date. The crucial question: Will the government has enough in the bank to stay afloat until then?

A host of new analyses over the last week finds increasing chances that the answer will be yes.

Experts are now projecting that the U.S. economy is more likely to get over that hump and bank a few extra weeks of breathing room before a default is all but assured later this summer without bipartisan compromise.

The news - while far from certain - has eased some fears in the financial world of an immediate default crisis and the economic turmoil that it likely to follow.

One of the updated projections comes from Wrightson ICAP, one of the closest outside observers of the billions that flow in and out of the Treasury department every day.

The research group is now most focused at this point on late July as the "peak danger zone" for default, according to a new outlook released Monday. Wrightson ICAP still projects a 10-20% chance of default ahead of that June 15 date.