Technology:

Apple and its CEO-on-leave-but-still-active-sort-of Steve Jobs practically forced the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into the adequacy of the company¹s disclosures about Job’s medical problems. But the investigation may have less to do with Jobs's health than with the SEC's.
The SEC, trying to reestablish its credibility after years of ignoring explicit and apparently dead-on warnings that Bernard Madoff was running a massive Ponzi scheme, could hardly afford to ignore Apple's latest in-your-face flip-flop concerning Jobs's battles with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, a subject that Jobs and the company's board have generally considered Jobs's personal, private matter and none of investors' business.
Though the precise scope of the probe, reported yesterday by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, is still unclear, it was obviously triggered by Jobs's announcement last week that he would be taking a six-month medical leave notwithstanding a press statement just nine days earlier in which he reassured investors that his gaunt appearance was the result of a mere "hormonal imbalance" whose remedy would be "simple and straightforward." An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the media reports of an SEC inquiry.
Jobs was first diagnosed with the disease in October 2003, but disclosed nothing until Aug. 1, 2004, the day after his surgery, when he publicly pronounced himself "cured." Then, after Jobs's emaciated appearance last June spurred press inquiries over whether the cancer had returned, an Apple spokesman claimed Jobs was suffering from "a common bug." A month later the New York Times reported that Jobs had recently undergone more surgery to address nutritional problems apparently stemming from his cancer surgery.