Wildfires fanned by fierce winds and high temperatures raged across a western Spanish region and on the Canary Islands on Sunday, threatening to cut off phone contact with one island and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, officials said Sunday.
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Wildfires fanned by fierce winds and high temperatures raged across a western Spanish region and on the Canary Islands on Sunday, threatening to cut off phone contact with one island, killing an emergency worker and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, officials said.
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WASHINGTON President Barack Obama, emboldened by the Supreme Court's affirmation of his health care overhaul, is now embracing the law while campaigning for re-election, just as Republican rival Mitt Romney steps back from it.
Obama sees a second chance to sell voters on the issue despite deep skepticism about it from many people. Romney is avoiding answering hard questions about how he would tackle health care, and thus missing the chance to energize voters who oppose the law.
Democrats say the president always planned to stress health care if the court upheld the law. A month after the ruling, he and his team are focused on promoting individual parts of the law that have proved more popular than the sum. The campaign is targeting its efforts on important groups of voters, including women and Hispanics, who, Obama aides say, will benefit greatly once the law takes full effect.
The primary focus of his campaign speeches remains the economy, the race's dominant issue.
Romney, who declared the overhaul a bad law after the court ruled, has become less aggressive and less expansive in his discussion of health care.
At some recent events, Romney hasn't talked about the issue at all. Romney hasn't featured health care prominently in any television ads since the ruling June 28, but has made a few high-profile comments. The Republican was booed repeatedly during a July speech to the NAACP when he pledged to repeal the law if elected.
He has and will continue to discuss the president's failures on health care, Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said,adding that the candidate will deliver a new direction and will take action to repeal and replace Obamacare.
In a deadlocked race, Romney is hampered by his support for a health care measure similar to Obama's while he was Massachusetts governor. Also, Romney's calls for repeal raise complex questions about what he would do in place of the law; those are questions Romney has struggled to answer.
For Obama, there's a political risk in fully embracing his health care overhaul because the law remains unpopular with many.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in early July showed 47 percent of Americans supporting the law and 47 percent opposing it.
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Barack Obama, Mitt Romney embrace different tactics to address health care law
No `free' health care
Re "No such thing as free" (Letters, July 20):
The letter writer is absolutely incorrect. There is no "free" health care in the UK. I am a British citizen currently living in the U.S. The National Health Service is something that everyone pays into on the day that they are employed, which for me was at 15 years old. As your wage increases so does the amount you pay into the NHS. At such a young age, one hopes they won't have many health issues, but you pay anyway and when the time comes and you do need health care, it is there for you. It would be nice if people got their facts correct before spouting forth something they obviously know little about. My family and I were well taken care of in England. I say that if you cannot afford health insurance in the U.S., you are standing on insecure ground.
- Joan Debbage, Cerritos
Israel's capital
Re "Just smile, Romney" (Letters, Aug. 2):
The letter writer has two misconceptions about U.S. policy regarding Israel's capital. Congress is responsible for setting foreign policy, the president for executing it. Romney can rely on Congress' decision that the American Embassy in Israel should be located in Jerusalem, and the president is remiss in failing to move it there. The world need not "declare" where Israel's capital is. I know of precedents of international recognition (or refusal to recognize)
- Louis Richter, Reseda
Watch on your own time
Re "Keep Olympics viewing in balance" (Editorial, Aug. 2):
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No `free' health care: Letters to the Editor for Monday, August 6, 2012
The Supreme Courts recent ruling on the Affordable Care Act has ignited another round of debate over health care reform.
Unfortunately, that debate is not a sincere effort by interested parties to find a workable solution to the health care needs of the 40 million people in this country that do not have health insurance. Instead, the issue of health care reform has become just another topic that political partisans distort to further their own agenda.
At United Community and Family Services, we do not have the luxury of waiting for the political process to return to reason. We must meet the growing need for our services every day.
Each day, people come to our health centers for comprehensive health services. We offer pediatric and primary care, dental care, behavioral health and womens health services to residents of Eastern Connecticut without regard to their ability to pay.
In the past year, we provided more than 88,000 visits, an increase of 18 percent from the year before.
Because of the growing demand, we are renovating our health center in Norwich, planning to expand our health center in Jewett City and looking at opening a new health center in Plainfield. Weve added providers in our dental, primary care and behavioral health practices, and have added staff in our Access to Care program that helps people determine if they qualify for Medicaid or other programs providing support for health services.
In the past 12 months alone, this free service has helped more than 2,255 people in the region qualify for Medicaid and other entitlement programs.
To meet the needs of our patients, we must take advantage of every resource available to us within the current system. In the past year, with the great support of our area legislators and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, we were fortunate to receive bond money from the state to support the renovation of our Norwich Health Center.
Federal assistance
On the federal level, we continue to work with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and our federal legislative delegation to secure designation as a funded Federally Qualified Health Center, which will enable us to further expand our services.
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Budget-strapped California is aggressively moving its poorest residents to managed health care, whether they're seniors, rural residents or people with disabilities.
So when Gov. Jerry Brown proposed earlier this year to transfer the nearly 900,000 poor children in the Healthy Families insurance program into Medi-Cal, he saw it as another opportunity to reduce costs by expanding dental managed care.
But something happened between then and now - and that was Sacramento County.
Sacramento's poor-performing Medi-Cal dental managed care program foiled Brown's plans, legislators say.
"That failure certainly has stopped the expansion of dental managed care," said Assemblyman Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who also is a pediatrician.
"Hopefully, we as a state have learned from that failure, and not only on the dental side.
"Hopefully, we can apply those lessons on the medical side."
Sacramento joins Los Angeles as the only two counties with Medi-Cal dental managed care.
Their lackluster performance getting poor children into dentists made legislative leaders balk at adding Healthy Families kids to Medi-Cal dental managed care.
Instead Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Assembly Speaker John P rez of Los Angeles negotiated a deal to move Healthy Families kids into the more flexible - and potentially more expensive - "fee-for-service" dental care model under Medi-Cal, interrupting the state's seemingly
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Budget-strapped California is aggressively moving its poorest residents to managed health care, whether they're seniors, rural residents or people with disabilities.
So, when Gov. Jerry Brown proposed earlier this year to transfer the nearly 900,000 poor children in the Healthy Families insurance program into Medi-Cal, he saw it as another opportunity to reduce costs by expanding dental managed care.
But something happened between then and now - and that was Sacramento County.
Sacramento's poor-performing Medi-Cal dental managed care program foiled Brown's plans, legislators say.
"That failure certainly has stopped the expansion of dental managed care," said Assemblyman Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who also is a pediatrician.
"Hopefully we as a state have learned from that failure, and not only on the dental side.
"Hopefully, we can apply those lessons on the medical side."
Sacramento joins Los Angeles as the only two counties with Medi-Cal dental managed care.
Their lackluster performance getting poor children into dentists made legislative leaders balk at adding Healthy Families kids to Medi-Cal dental managed care.
Instead, Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Assembly Speaker John Prez of Los Angeles negotiated a deal to move Healthy Families kids into the more flexible - and potentially more expensive - "fee-for-service" dental care model under Medi-
Originally posted here:
The Defense Department's push to phase in substantial Tricare fee increases for military retirees came under fresh attack from Congress and military associations this week after officials conceded an unexpected "downward spike" in Tricare cost growth tied to private sector health care.
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Military health care fee hikes criticized after surplus shown
If chicken sandwiches can become political, how can health care be immune?
Last week, I wrote about Susan, a divorced woman in Ladue who decided to go back to school and become a teacher. To comply with student teaching requirements, she quit a nonteaching job with the Clayton School District. That job had provided her with health insurance.
So she got health insurance through COBRA, a program that requires employers with group health insurance to offer former employees the opportunity to buy insurance through the group plan for up to 18 months.
Susan figured she would get a teaching job before the 18 months were up.
That has not worked out. She graduated this spring but has been unable to find a position.
As I mentioned in the column, the job market is tight and nobody was willing to take a chance with a first-time, 50-year-old teacher.
She has decided to work as a substitute teacher. Maybe that experience will help her get a job.
But her 18 months of COBRA will run out in December. She tried to get an individual policy, but because of pre-existing conditions scoliosis and a mild blood disorder she was turned down.
Susan told me she doesn't know what she will do. She said she won't be eligible for pool insurance until she has been without insurance for six months.
She said she is waiting to see what happens with Obamacare. Under the new law, insurance companies would not be allowed to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
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Brazil is using genetic engineering to help fight dengue fever, creating mosquitoes whose offspring die before they mature. Tests in two towns have been successful - but are there ecological implications?
Dengue is a tropical fever with similar symptoms to the flu: feverand shivering, headache and joint pain, and a rash. Most infections are comparatively mild and last no longerthan a week.
But every year there are around half a millionserious cases,some of which prove fatal.The disease hasspread considerably in recent years. Even Europe is no longer safe. In 2010, more than 600 travellers returning to Europe from abroadwere diagnosed with dengue fever. "The number of unreported cases is estimated to be farhigher," says Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg."We believe it could be ten times as many."2010 alsosaw the very first cases of infection in France and Croatia.
The root of the problem
Aedes aegypti, the mosquito's scientific name,has a black and white patternand is actually quite pretty, as insects go. Butit can carry andtransmit several viruses. It's one of the maincarriers of yellow fever, and for humans it can be disastrous. In the Spanish-American War of 1898, the number of US soldiers who diedof this kind of infectious diseaseis believed to have beenhigher than the number killed in battle. There is nowa vaccine against yellow fever, but none has yet been foundto preventdengue fever.
Fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes: a teaspoonful of standing water is enough
All attempts to fight the mosquitoes with the help of insecticide have failed. In Brazil, awareness campaigns warn peoplenot leavecar tires lying around where rain can collect inside them, and toflush toiletsregularly, even if they're not beingused.Thedangerous larvae generally breed in standing water,which people are advised to avoid - but the mosquitoes can also breed ina puddle, a hollow in a rock, or eventheheart ofa flower.A teaspoon of water isallthey needin order to deposittheir eggs.
Assistance fromgenetic engineering
British scientistswith the company Oxitec have now developed a genetically-modified male mosquito whose offspringare unable to survive into adulthood. The idea is that the genetically-modifiedmalesarereleased intoa natural environmentandallowed tomate with female mosquitoes. The fertilized eggs developinto larvae or pupae, andthen die.
Oxitec hasconducted successfulfield trials on the Cayman Islands and in Malaysia. In 2011, the biotech company Moscamed in the Brazilian city of Juazeiro joined the project. Here, in the hinterland of Brazil's Bahia state, dengue is more common than almost anywhere else in the world.
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Great innovations are often launched on modest budgets, writes Tim Longhurst, a trend spotter and futurist, and founder of strategy consultancy, Key Message. For small business owners setting up in business with the expectation...
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Get The Answers: Short-term strategy essential for new ventures
August 5, 2012 - Frontier League (FL) Florence Freedom Florence, KY-The The Florence Freedom(38-32) came back from a 4-2 deficit and rallied for a 5-4 win Sunday night over the Road Warriors. The Freedom hit three homeruns and remained in contention for a wild card berth in the Frontier League playoffs. With the win, and Windy City splitting their doubleheader against Rockford, the Freedom are now 2.5 games behind Windy City for the final wild card spot.
With the Freedom trailing 4-2 in the 5th and two runners on base, Freedom catcher Jim Jacquot muscled a three run homerun over the left field wall. The homerun just barely made it over the fence as Matt Wright nearly brought the ball back on a leaping effort. Jacquot's 7th homerun of the season gave the Freedom a 5-4 lead.
The trio of Jose Velazquez, Matt Kline, and Brennan Flick were terrific out of the Freedom bullpen combining for 4.1 innings of hitless baseball. Velazquez raised his record to 5-0 after reliving starter Brent Choban with two outs in the fifth. Choban took the no decision going 4.2 innings allowing 4 hits, on 2 earned runs.
The Freedom came back from an early deficit of 2-0, as David Harris led off the 1st, with a solo homerun. It was Harris's 7th homer of the year. The Freedom then tied it on another solo shot, this one coming from John Malloy in the 2nd. Malloy now has a team lead of 10 homeruns for a Freedom team that ranks second in the Frontier League in homeruns hit.
The Freedom and Road Warriors will play a doubleheader Monday evening, with both contests scheduled for 7 innings. LHP Greg Hendrix(0-1, 18.00) will start for the Road Warriors as LHP Andres Caceres(6-3, 4.48) will climb the hill for Florence. The game can be heard starting at 5:45 with Steve Jarnicki on Real Talk 1160 AM and realtalk1160.com.
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The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
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In this Viewpoint Web exclusive, Eliot Spitzer and George Lakoff, co-author of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, discuss the meaning of the words freedom and democracy as Democrats define them versus how Republicans define them.
The Republican argument always reverts to the word freedom. And freedom in their linguistic structure means freedom from government, Spitzer notes. But despite this obsession with freedom, Republicans seem to have no problem with subjugating individuals to corporate power, Spitzer points out.
Lakoff agrees, noting, Rather than being about citizens caring about each other and providing for each other, [Republicans] see democracy as about the liberty to pursue your self-interest and your own well-being without being responsible for the well-being or interests of anybody else.
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Viewpoint: Why Democrats should re-appropriate ‘freedom’
By Bob Lewis The Associated Press August 6, 2012
RICHMOND
Exactly 85 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state governments could force involuntary surgical sterilizations of people society deemed genetically inferior or deficient under laws based on a discredited pseudoscience called eugenics.
Delegate Patrick A. Hope, D-Arlington, plans to mark Monday's anniversary by calling for "a symbolic payment" from the General Assembly and Gov. Bob McDonnell for victims of eugenics who are still alive.
Eugenics is among the darkest stains on Virginia's 405-year history.
It was born in 1924 as Virginia's aristocracy sought to purify the white race. It mandated involuntary surgical sterilization for virtually any human malady believed to be hereditary, including mental illness, mental retardation, epilepsy, criminal behavior, alcoholism and immorality. Even people deemed to be "ne'er-do-wells" were sometimes targeted.
The same law banned interracial marriage.
"A symbolic payment? What's a symbolic payment? How would you do that? How would you find the victims?" asked Deborah Skiscim of suburban Midlothian. She said she had a cousin who was institutionalized under the eugenics law, and because of that she never met her cousin.
"There is no amount that could ever really give back to those people what was taken from them," Skiscim said in a Friday interview.
Hope plans to begin Virginia's eugenics reparations at a Monday news conference on Capitol Square.
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The cleanup from Hong Kong's worst typhoon in 13 years could take months, the government said Monday, after hundreds of millions of plastic pellets washed onto beaches from containers that fell off a ship.
Environmental groups are concerned the pellets will absorb toxins and pollutants and then be eaten by fish that may in turn be eaten by humans. They're also worried rare marine species such as the Chinese white dolphin could be threatened by the pollutants.
Also known as nurdles, the pellets are used by factories to make plastic products. Authorities say six containers filled with the pellets were lost from a ship in waters south of Hong Kong when it was caught in Typhoon Vicente last month.
Several hundred volunteers at one beach Sunday used trowels, paintbrushes, dustpans and sieves to painstakingly pick up the translucent pellets, which coated the shore.
AP
"It's a bit overwhelming. It seems like we can't get rid of them even though there are hundreds of people here," said Mathis Antony, one of the volunteers on Lamma Island off the western coast of Hong Kong Island. "It looks like it's going to take a lot more to clean it up."
The volunteers filled dozens of garbage bags but there were still many pellets left at the end of the day, piled like snow between rocks.
The government said Monday it would deploy additional manpower and contract out work to speed the cleanup, which could still take several months.
The typhoon prompted authorities to raise the storm warning system to its highest level, indicating hurricane-force winds of 118 kilometers (73 miles) an hour or more, for the first time since 1999.
The government said large amounts of pellets have been found at 10 beaches. At some beaches, numerous sacks filled with pellets and bearing the markings of the manufacturer, China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, have also washed ashore.
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Illustration by Soner n
By Caleb Scharf 2012-08-05T22:30:26Z
Astronomy, the most ancient of sciences, has always been about mapping.
Australian aborigines looked at the constellation we call Orion and saw a canoe carrying two banished brothers. The Finns saw a scythe. In India, it was obviously a deer. For the Babylonians, it was the heavenly shepherd, and for the Greeks, it was the hunter, a primordial giant.
Over the centuries, mapping the cosmos has been a gradual process of locating the brighter objects and then filling in the gaps. We have helped our eyes along by constructing telescopes, some gathering much more than just visible light to illuminate phenomena beyond our wildest imaginations.
Seeing the universe for what it is has required us to overcome many other blind spots, including the one that places ourselves at the center of the map. It took the insight and intellectual conviction of Galileo and Copernicus to challenge the orthodoxy that Earth was at the center of everything. Even then, the notion that our solar system was nonetheless located somewhere at the middle of the visible universe lasted into the first decades of the 20th century.
The discovery, by the astronomer Harlow Shapley in 1918, that our solar system was not even at the center of the Milky Way galaxy opened the floodgates for more revelations in the following decades. The Milky Way, it turned out, is merely one of many galaxies, all flying apart as the universe expands.
So what does our current map look like? It is both three- dimensional and four-dimensional, linked as it is to time. The farther away objects are, the longer their light has taken to reach us, all the way back through the universes 13.8-billion- year history. There are so many categories of objects and phenomena, and so much higgledy-piggledy data from several hundred years of telescopic astronomy, the best we can do to begin to grasp what this atlas looks like is to play out a thought experiment.
Let us pretend that a very large box has just been delivered to our doorstep, and we have hauled it inside. It contains an ominous-looking sack filled to bursting. An occasional wisp of gas escapes through the knotted top, and every so often a muffled thump or muted glow comes from within.
This sack contains what we could regard as a representative portion of the universe -- a fair sample, a cosmologist would say. If you divided the total mass in the sack by its volume, you would obtain a good estimate of the average density of the universe as a whole. Equally, if you measured just how lumpy the arrangement of galaxies was within this volume, it would be a close match to the universal lumpiness of structure.
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Starfest 2012 is Saturday from 4 to 11:30 p.m. at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Union Township.
The Chesmont Astronomical Society will present programs and speakers on astronomy, with telescopes available to view celestial objects.
Admission and parking is free. Donations will be accepted.
The schedule:
4 p.m.: Telescope setup/solar observation.
6 p.m.: Children's activities.
7 p.m.: Stan Stubbe, president, Pennsylvania Outdoor Lighting Council, discusses the Hopewell Big Woods Dark Sky Reserve.
7:35 p.m.: Karl Krasley, president, Chesmont Astronomical Society, marks the group's 25th year.
8:20 p.m.: Dr. H. John Wood of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
9:15 p.m.: Public stargazing.
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By Jake Frankel on 08/04/2012 06:59 AM
After taking July off, commissioners will hold a public hearing Aug. 7 on the $8.4 million in grants Buncombe County has promised to New Belgium Brewing Co.
In exchange, the Fort Collins-based brewery has agreed to invest $175 million in a new production facility on Craven Street at the edge of the River Arts District, eventually hiring 154 workers.
The county grants are in addition to the $3.5 million in incentives and infrastructure improvements being offered by the city of Asheville and a $1 million grant from the state One North Carolina Fund. All in all, the brewer has been offered roughly $13 million in incentives from city, county and state governments.
The hearing will give the public a formal opportunity to weigh in on the plans.
In other business, the board will consider setting the date for county property reappraisal to Jan. 1, 2013. The goal of the reappraisal process is to determine the fair market value of property for taxation purposes.
The meeting agenda also includes consideration of a rezoning request to allow more development on a 0.3 acre plot at 15 Tupper Road in Black Mountain. The Buncombe County Planning Board recommends approving the request but staff recommends denying it.
In addition, the board will consider several changes to county personnel policies, including longevity pay.
Commissioners also will consider dedicating the newly renovated Health and Human Service building at 40 Coxe Ave. in honor of Margaret Hall Coman, who retired as the director of the county's Department of Public Welfare in 1983 after 43 years of public service.
The board will meet at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 7, in the commissioners chambers, located at 30 Valley St. A short pre-meeting review of the agenda will begin at 4:15 p.m.
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Buncombe Commissioners preview: Economic incentives, property reappraisal, longevity pay and more
NICEVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Authorities say DNA evidence has helped close a 37-year-old murder case in the Florida Panhandle.
Catherine Ainsworth's body was found in her Niceville apartment on Aug. 30, 1975. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
Authorities say they've linked the crime scene to William P. Rouse, a New York man who had been based at Eglin Air Force Base at the time.
Rouse died in 2006. Authorities tell the Northwest Florida Daily News (http://bit.ly/N9gUoN ) that Rouse's relatives provided two hats he frequently wore for DNA testing.
Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office Investigator Travis Robinson says DNA from the hats matched DNA evidence found on a rug under Ainsworth's body.
Rouse had been Ainsworth's neighbor. Robinson said Rouse had given conflicting stories to the case's original investigators.
Information from: Northwest Florida Daily News, http://www.nwfdailynews.com
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
5 August 2012 Last updated at 08:28 ET By Neil Prior BBC News
DNA mapping has shed light on a 260-year-old mystery of the origins of a child shipwrecked on Anglesey, who helped shape medical history.
The boy of seven or eight, who could not speak English or Welsh, washed up on the north Wales coast with his brother between 1743 and 1745.
Named Evan Thomas, he was adopted by a doctor and went on to show bone setting skills never seen before in the UK.
Now a DNA study has revealed he came from the Caucasus Mountains.
The boys' dark skin and foreign language led people to believe they were Spanish - a myth which went on for hundreds of years.
Evan's brother survived only a few days, but he went on to demonstrate he already possessed bone setting skills, including the first recorded use in Britain of traction and splints to pull apart the over-lapping edges of breaks and immobilise limbs while healing took place.
It's not yet a perfect match, but you can definitely say that their background was heavily influenced by this region.
Analysis of DNA from the 13th generation of Evan's descendants is now indicating that the brothers came from an area of the Caucasus Mountains, including Georgia, Ossetia and Southern Russia.
Anglesey bone setter DNA project director John Rowlands said: "When we embarked on the project, all the historical evidence seemed to point to Spain as being the most likely origins of Evan Thomas.
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DNA clue to bone setter mystery