Saturday, May 14, 2011

Law News

Hey, I am a lawyer after all. So I thought I would provide a few news stories involving the LAW. Here are the stories I thought that were interesting:

  1. Osama Bin Laden's Will. Just 3 months after 9/11, Osama Bin Laden had his Will drafted. And in his Will, there were a couple of interesting provisions: his wives – not allowed to marry again. And his children – they are not allowed to join Al Qaeda. So much for continuing in the family business…


     

  2. For 1st time, more women getting advanced degrees than men. Story here. For the first time, American women have passed men in gaining advanced college degrees as well as bachelor's degrees, part of a trend that is helping redefine who goes off to work and who stays home with the kids….Among adults 25 and older, 10.6 million U.S. women have master's degrees or higher, compared to 10.5 million men. Measured by shares, about 10.2 percent of women have advanced degrees compared to 10.9 percent of men — a gap steadily narrowing in recent years. Women still trail men in professional subcategories such as business, science and engineering.

    When it comes to finishing college, roughly 20.1 million women have bachelor's degrees, compared to nearly 18.7 million men — a gap of more than 1.4 million that has remained steady in recent years. Women first passed men in bachelor's degrees in 1996…


     

  3. Betting has gone crazy in the US. But have you thought about betting on whether or not someone will be convicted? You can do it at Intrade – which had as its odds that Raj Rajaratnam to be found guilty of at least one count of insider trading is 94% probable). He ended up being convicted.


     

  4. Elizabeth Taylor Requests that She Will be Late to Her Own Funeral. Story here. True to the sense of humor and flair that defined her life, Elizabeth Taylor knew exactly how she wanted her final starring role to play out… The service was scheduled to begin at 2 pm but at Miss Taylor's request started late. Miss Taylor had left instructions that it was to begin at least 15 minutes later than publicly scheduled, with the announcement, "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral."


     

  5. Most Americans Do Not Have a Will. Story here. The March 2011 survey of 1,001 adults revealed that more than half of all adults (57 percent) do not have a Will, including a shocking 92 percent of adults under age 35 and 44 percent of baby boomers (ages 45-64). Hey, you have to have a Will, so if you do not have one, give me a call or drop me an email at tewolff@aol.com.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Tom - just wanted to add a note about #2. Despite the great increase in women receiving higher degrees, there still is a huge issue post-graduation. The number of female professors, particularly at research universities, is quite low. I guess they tend to drop off during post-doc training. I hope that we can catch up soon!

tom wolff said...

Thanks Allie for your comment. You would think this has a long-term effect on pay equality between sexes, right?