New England Sun-Times

Walmart made Green Dot.  Now it’s making Blue bird.  The low-cost merchant has long offered a full suite of payments products to its customers.  From international money transfer to bill-pay to check cashing and prepaid, Walmart has been a pioneer of financial services for the emerging middle class.  In 2010 a venture-backed company originally called NextEstate went public largely due to its exclusive deal with the retailer to distribute its general purpose, reloadable, branded prepaid card.  At some point, after the IPO, and after Walmart financial services executive, Jane Thompson, moved on, Green Dot’s deal became non-exclusive.  Walmart did a deal with American Express, which has made a massive investment to market its nascent prepaid capabilities, and dealt a massive blow to the value of Green Dot. Unlike everyone else, it appears, I believe Green Dot is undervalued and remains a critical player in prepaid (disclosure: I own no GDOT stock).  ...

A portrait of Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820-1913).      Petitions to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman were delivered to the White House Harriet Tubman won an online poll asking which woman should be featured on the $20 bill, as part of a movement to push President Obama to support the idea. More than 600,000 people voted in the online poll, and Tubman won with over 33% of the vote, beating runner-up Eleanor Roosevelt by 7,000 votes. Tubman was an escaped slave and abolitionist who devoted her life to working as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, helping other slaves get to safety. She also served as a spy and scout for the Union Army during the Civil War. The $20 bill currently features former President Andrew Jackson. “Our paper bills are like pocket monuments to great figures in our history,” Women On 20s Executive Director Susan Ades Stone said in a statement. “Our work won’t be done until we’re holding a Harriet $20 bill in our ha...

Ignaz Semmelweiss made one of the most important contributions to modern medicine when he instituted hand washing in an obstetric clinic in Austria in 1847, decreasing mortality there from more than ten percent to two percent. Unfortunately, infections can still occur in pregnancy and during delivery and can have associated mortality rates of up to 30 to 50 percent if not treated quickly and properly. Brenna Anderson, MD , director of the Women’s Infectious Diseases Consultative Service at Women & Infants of Rhode Island and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has published an article as part of a Clinical Expert Series in the April 2014 edition of Obstetrics & Gynecology , now available online. The article, entitled “ Puerperal Group A Streptococcal (GAS) Infection: Beyond Semmelweiss ,” offers a description of the recommended approach to diagnosing and treating GAS in pregnant and postpartum...

Kate Hudson joins a stellar cast in a film about the BP Oil spill. Along with Kate Hudson and Mark Wahlberg, both Kurt Russell and John Malkovich are attached to the crew for what is sure to be an intense look into the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and its aftermath. The project, entitled Deepwater Horizon after the BP oil spill disaster that took place in April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico is being directed by Lone Survivor ’s Peter Berg. The cast is already turning out to be quite impressive for this real-life disaster turned cinematic thriller. Among the new additions of Hudson and Malkovich, previously announced on board include Russell, Dylan O’Brien ( The Maze Runner ) and Gina Rodriguez ( Jane the Virgin ). The story will follow the eleven crew members that were killed in the blast, and Berg has said that he want to tell the story of the “real heroes” who were working on the rig when the accident occurred, and their attempts to prevent the explosion.  A...