The Virgin Islands Daily News – Official Site

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ST. THOMAS - The owner of the Sapphire Beach Resort erected barricades Thursday to prevent the public from parking on the resort's property, raising the question of public beach access in the territory.

The new restriction is the latest action taken by the property's new owner, Dean Morehouse of Beachside Associates.

For years, the gravel parking area to the left of the main entrance has been used by locals and visitors coming to enjoy Sapphire Beach.

ST. THOMAS - With a new chief executive officer at the helm, Innovative is poised to take on the competitors that soon will enter the marketplace with the launch of the territory's V.I. Next Generation Network.

The V.I. Next Generation Network was formed after the territory was awarded $107 million in federal grants to build the territory's first open access broadband network.

When the government project was awarded, Innovative already was working on its own project to upgrade the old telecom system to a hybrid coaxial cable and fiber-optic network. The Next Generation Network is expected to be completed in the next six months.

ST. THOMAS - A New Jersey woman was jailed early Thursday morning after police said she pulled a police officer's hair and scratched her face.

Ritika Mehta, 31, was arrested at 2 a.m. Thursday and charged with aggravated assault and battery of a police officer. Her bail was set at $25,000.

V.I. Police Officer Kira Browne responded to another officer's request for assistance with a drunken couple fighting near "Quiet Mon Pub" in Cruz Bay, St. John, according to the probable cause fact sheet.

ST. CROIX - An employee who was shot during a robbery at a metal works in Estate Glynn on Thursday morning was the second person shot on the island in two days.

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The Virgin Islands Daily News - Official Site

Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

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Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

Monday, January 13, 2014

WE all know Christmas is a time for catching up with friends and family, even those spending the festive period abroad.

CFFAM rainn Mhr (Comharchumann Forbartha & Fostaochta) is a community group that manages a number of services for the 500-plus islanders, from library books to youth activities.

During the week the CCFAM twitter account tweeted that Eircom customers may ring the Customer Charter on 1800 40 00 00 and can ask to get a refund of line rental for the days that they were without phone service over Christmas and New Year following the recent storms.

Phone services to some homes on the island were knocked out long before Storm Christine came and caused yet more damage. The logistics of getting crews out to islands for repairs can be tricky ferries to and from rainn (also called Arranmore) were cancelled or cut some days.

Its a hazard and a fact of life for many islanders who live away from the mainland, but the ferocious winds and the damage caused by huge waves has meant many inhabitants of islands from Bere to Inishbofin and beyond are totting up the cost and waiting for repairs.

Writing on her Aran Islands Ireland Blog, Elisabeth Koopmans posted photographs of iche na gCoinnle beaga (Night of the little candles) and outlined how because of the ongoing chain of storms afflicting Inis Mein, the past four weeks were more or less coloured by agitation and unrest.

Living on an island there always will be vivid memories too of loved ones who lost their lives because of the sea. Therefore this whole period of time kept being characterised as one of fear and insecurity.

Over on Inishbofin, the island worst hit by the recent storms, the extent of the hammering dished out by the gales was best illustrated by the destruction of the lighthouse, a literal and metaphorical beacon for life on the islands.

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Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

Tonga slammed by Category 5 cyclone, 1 killed

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Tonga, a South Pacific archipelago of 176 islands, was hit by Cyclone Ian Saturday, with winds up to 178 miles per hour. At least one person was killed, and authorities are still searching remote islands for more victims.

Authorities were searchingTonga'sremote islands for cyclone victims Sunday after a powerful storm cut a swath of destruction through this South Pacific archipelago, killing one person and destroying most of the homes in some areas.

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Relief efforts following Saturday's cyclone were concentrating on the Ha'apai islands one ofTonga'sthree island groups between the main island of Tongatapu in the south and the Vava'u islands to the north,Tonga'sDirector of Emergencies Leveni Aho said.

Cyclone Ian hitTongawith gusts of up to 178 miles per hour. The storm was later downgraded from Category 5 the most destructive level to Category 4, with gusts of up to 155 mph. On Sunday, the cyclone was tracking southeast away fromTonga.

Two navy patrol boats carrying tarpaulins, tents and other emergency supplies left Tongatapu to bring help to victims who were cut off in the Ha'apai islands.

Authorities have been unable to make telephone contact with 23 islands, which account for most of the inhabited islands in the Ha'apai group, Aho said.

"The patrol boats are still out there, going from island to island to scout for information," he said.

The Ha'apai islands are home to 8,000 people, most of whom live on the devastated islands of Lifuka, where the person died, and Foa.

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Tonga slammed by Category 5 cyclone, 1 killed

Strong cyclone hits Tonga in South Pacific, killing at least 1 person amid widespread damage

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NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga Authorities were searching remote islands for cyclone victims on Sunday after the most powerful storm to hit Tonga in decades cut a swathe of destruction through this South Pacific archipelago, leaving at least one person dead and several injured.

Relief efforts following Saturday's storm were concentrating on the Ha'apai islands one of Tonga's three island groups between the main island of Tongatapu in the south and the Vava'u islands to the north, Tonga's Director of Emergencies Leveni Aho said.

Cyclone Ian hit Tonga with gusts up to 287 kilometers (178 miles) per hour. The storm was later downgraded from the top of five-scale destructive cyclones to category four, with gusts of up to 250 kph (155 mph). On Sunday, the cyclone was tracking southeast away from Tonga.

Two navy patrol boats carrying tarpaulins, tents and other emergency supplies left Tongatapu to bring help to victims who were cut off in the Ha'apai islands.

Aho said authorities have been unable to make telephone contact with 23 islands, which account for most of the inhabited islands in the Ha'apai group.

"The patrol boats are still out there, going from island to island to scout for information," Aho said.

Ha'apai islands are home to 8,000 people, most of whom live on the devastated islands of Lifuka, where one person died, and Foa.

Aho estimated that hundreds of people on the two islands were taking shelter in church buildings that were being used as evacuation centers.

A New Zealand air force P3 Orion plane made a surveillance flight over the disaster area on Sunday, taking pictures showing the extend of the damage that surprised officials.

Aho said up to 70 percent of the homes and buildings in some areas had been flattened.

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Strong cyclone hits Tonga in South Pacific, killing at least 1 person amid widespread damage

Contact made with Tonga’s isolated islands as relief efforts get underway after Cyclone Ian

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ABC A church with extensive damage in the town of Pangai on Lifuka island, Ha'apai, Tonga.

Tongan authorities say they have made contact with most of the smaller islands battered by Cyclone Ian.

Contact with small northern islands of the Ha'apai group, home to about 8,000 people, was lost when the category five storm packing winds of more than 200 kilometres per hour swept through the area over the weekend.

There's been extensive damage to the islands and at least one person was killed.

Communication and power is still limited in some areas and there is concern for the well-being of residents on low-lying islands.

The director of Tonga's Disaster Management Team, Leveni Aho, says it appears some smaller islands were lucky to escape serious damage.

"The path of the cyclone was very narrow indeed, so it hit some islands, and yet the neighbourhood about 40 to 50 kilometres away was almost untouched," he said.

Mr Aho, who is co-ordinating the emergency response to the disaster, says he's surprised there are not more casualties.

"We haven't had any further reports of any deaths, which is very good indeed, and looking at the amount of devastation it was a miracle that not more than one person has a loss of life."

He says residents on some of the low-lying islands are being moved to higher ground after a sea surge left flooded some of their homes.

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Contact made with Tonga's isolated islands as relief efforts get underway after Cyclone Ian

Four years after passage of Obamacare, health care system remains in crisis

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ST. LOUIS When federal lawmakers agreed in 2010 to pass the Affordable Care Act, they recognized that the U.S. health care system was in desperate straits.

Not only was the cost of health care significantly higher than in other industrialized nations, but Americans were among the unhealthiest populations in the Western world.

Nearly four years later, the system remains in crisis. While the growth of health care spending has slowed, it is still climbing. And despite higher costs, Americans health outcomes have not significantly improved.

Other wealthy nations achieve longer lives, lower infant mortality, better access to care, and higher care quality while spending far less, states a January 2013 report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

The Affordable Care Act was never intended to immediately halt these basic trends; improving health outcomes and quality of life while cutting costs is a tall order. But the nations volatile, partisan debate over what is popularly known as Obamacare seems to have missed that point.

The tech-savvy Obama administration was expected to deliver a user-friendly website that would increase Americans access to health care by subsidizing insurance coverage. But HealthCare.gov was a bug-ridden disaster. And many consumers have voiced sticker shock over the higher monthly premiums and higher deductibles of insurance plans for 2014 both on and off the online marketplaces, also known as health exchanges.

The stalled rollout has bolstered the new laws opponents, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose quasi-filibuster helped trigger a federal government shutdown last fall. Cruz has blasted the federal mandates on health insurance policies and vowed to repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare.

The most simple rule of economics is there aint no such thing as a free lunch, Cruz told the Texas Tribune in 2012 when he was running for Senate. Everything you mandate that an insurance policy cover drives up cost, which means there are more and more people that cant afford to get insurance.

But where does that leave us? Regardless of how you view the overall merits, regulatory strictures, or societal costs of Obamacare, consider these facts:

In the United States, health care spending eats up nearly 18 percent of the gross domestic product, which is the sum of all goods and services produced in the country. This figure could reach 21 percent by 2023.

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Four years after passage of Obamacare, health care system remains in crisis

Spanish Speakers Frustrated By Federal Health Care Website

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) People who have tried to sign up for insurance on the Spanish version of the federal health care website have run into their own set of difficulties.

First off the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.

Another problem, a Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form. Also, translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated the name of the site itself can literally be read for the caution of health.

When you get into the details of the plans, its not all written in Spanish. Its written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them, said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.

The issues with the site underscore the halting efforts across the nation to get Spanish-speakers enrolled under the federal health care law. Critics say that as a result of various problems, including those related to the website, many people whom the law was designed to help have been left out of the first wave of coverage.

Federal officials say they have been working to make the site better and plan further improvements soon. Also, administrators say they welcome feedback and try to fix typos or other errors quickly.

We launched consumer-friendly Spanish online enrollment tools on CuidadoDeSalud.gov in December which represents one more way for Latinos to enroll in Marketplace plans, said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Richard Olague in an email. Since the soft-launch, we continue to work closely with key stakeholders to get feedback in order to improve the experience for those consumers that use the website.

Still, efforts to enroll Spanish-speakers have fallen short in several states with large Hispanic populations, and critics say the translated version of HealthCare.gov could have helped boost those numbers.

In Florida, federal health officials have not said how many of the states nearly 18,000 enrollees for October and November were Latino, but that group accounts for about one-third of the roughly 3.5 million uninsured people in the state. About 1.2 million people in the state speak only Spanish.

Across the U.S., about 12 percent of the 317 million people in the country speak only Spanish, but federal officials have said less than 4 percent of calls to a national hotline were Spanish-only as of last month.

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Spanish Speakers Frustrated By Federal Health Care Website

Health care website frustrates Spanish speakers – Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

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By RUSSELL CONTRERAS and KELLI KENNEDY Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Mirroring problems with the federal health care website, people around the nation attempting to navigate the Spanish version have discovered their own set of difficulties.

The site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.

A Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form.

And the translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated - the name of the site itself can literally be read "for the caution of health."

"When you get into the details of the plans, it's not all written in Spanish. It's written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them," said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.

The issues with the site underscore the halting efforts across the nation to get Spanish-speakers enrolled under the federal health care law. Critics say that as a result of various problems, including those related to the website, many people whom the law was designed to help have been left out of the first wave of coverage.

Federal officials say they have been working to make the site better and plan further improvements soon. Also, administrators say they welcome feedback and try to fix typos or other errors quickly.

"We launched consumer-friendly Spanish online enrollment tools on CuidadoDeSalud.gov in December which represents one more way for Latinos to enroll in Marketplace plans," said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Richard Olague in an email to The Associated Press. "Since the soft-launch, we continue to work closely with key stakeholders to get feedback in order to improve the experience for those consumers that use the website."

Still, efforts to enroll Spanish-speakers have fallen short in several states with large Hispanic populations, and critics say the translated version of HealthCare.gov could have helped boost those numbers.

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Health care website frustrates Spanish speakers - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

Rare genetic mutation confirmed as a cause of Tourette Syndrome

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Brain researchers say they have confirmed for the first time that a rare genetic mutation can cause some cases of Tourette syndrome, with the fault disrupting production of histamine in the brain.

The New Haven, CT, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine say the histamine effect "is a cause of the tics and other abnormalities of Tourette syndrome." Tics are repetitive movements and vocal sounds, and they are unwanted and involuntary - they cannot be controlled.

Publishing their research on mice in the journal Neuron, the authors raise the question of investigating treatment of Tourette syndrome by drugs that target histamine receptors in the brain.

Drugs with such a mode of action are already being explored by pharmaceutical companies for the treatment of separate brain disorders, schizophrenia and ADHD.

Information from the national gene database about histamine describes the chemical's role - it is a messenger molecule released by nerves, among other functions.

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Rare genetic mutation confirmed as a cause of Tourette Syndrome

Effort to demystify GMOs was tough

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POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 12, 2014 LAST UPDATED: 05:59 a.m. HST, Jan 12, 2014

NEW YORK TIMES

KONA From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on Hawaii island was introduced in May, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.

Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or GMOs: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.

Like some others on the nine-member council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill's proponents called a "GMO-free oasis."

"You just type 'GMO' and everything you see is negative," he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone's re-election prospects.

Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island's papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study purporting that a diet of GMO corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban's supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.

And University of Hawaii biologists urged the council to consider the global scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.

"Are we going to just ignore them?" Ilagan wondered.

Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban's sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to "act before it's too late," the council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence.

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Effort to demystify GMOs was tough

NYC Commuters are Suspended in Time in Stainless

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Artist Adam Magyar uses sophisticated software and high-speed camera rigs of his own design to capture beautifully haunting slow-motion footage of commuters, trains and passengers inside NYC's Grand Central Terminal.

Magyar compiled the footage into a 24-minute short film called Stainless. Josh Hammer describes the "long-running techno-art project" in a must-read profile on Magyar and his work, recently published over at Matter:

In a growing body of photographic and video art done over the past decade, Magyar bends conventional representations of time and space, stretching milliseconds into minutes, freezing moments with a resolution that the naked eye could never have perceived. His art evokes such variegated sources as Albert Einstein, Zen Buddhism, even the 1960s TV series The Twilight Zone. The imagessleek silver subway cars, solemn commuters lost in private worldsare beautiful and elegant, but also produce feelings of disquiet. "These moments I capture are meaningless, there is no story in them, and if you can catch the core, the essence of being, you capture probably everything," Magyar says in one of the many cryptic comments about his work that reflect both their hypnotic appeal and their elusiveness. There is a sense of stepping into a different dimension, of inhabiting a space between stillness and movement, a time-warp world where the rules of physics don't apply.

Magyar's aesthetic is absolutely captivating; if you're into this style of art, you'll definitely want to read up on him and his work.

[Adam Magyar via Matter]

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NYC Commuters are Suspended in Time in Stainless

Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company responsible for contaminating the water of 300,000 Kanawha Valley residents, was founded by a two-time convicted felon, benefited from the 2009 federal stimulus and at least two of its executives have longstanding ties to the Charleston business community.

Since the chemical spill on Thursday, Freedom Industries executives have entirely avoided media requests, except for a brief news conference Friday night.

On Sunday morning, Charles Ryan Associates, a prominent Charleston public relations firm hired by Freedom, abruptly dropped the chemical distributor as a client.

"I made the decision not to represent them," said Susan Lavenski, who was handling Freedom for Charles Ryan. She would not give any details as to why she would not longer represent the company.

Freedom Industries was founded in 1992 by Gary Southern and Carl Lemley Kennedy II, according to filings with the West Virginia secretary of state. The company's website, however, says it was founded in 1986.

"Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruption to everybody's daily life that this incident has caused," Southern, the company's president, said at the news conference Friday night. "It has been an extremely long day, I'm having trouble talking at the moment. I would appreciate it if we could wrap this thing up."

He has not spoken publicly since.

Kennedy is still listed as "incorporator" with the secretary of state, but a woman who answered the phone at Freedom Industries on Friday said he left the company "years ago."

As recently as 2005, Kennedy owned 5 percent of Freedom Industries, according to a bankruptcy filing. That stake was valued at $675,000, according to Kennedy's filing, meaning that in 2005 Freedom Industries was valued at $13.5 million.

That valuation has almost certainly increased over the past eight years. In 2008, the company employed 45 people, sold 10 million gallons of material and earned $26 million, according to newspaper records.

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Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

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On its website, Freedom Industries says it was founded in 1986 and has two production facilities. The Etowah River Terminal, where the leak occurred, can store 4 million gallons worth of chemicals. According to WOWKTV, Freedom bought the property in December.

The website says it is a full service producer of specialty chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries [and] a leading producer of freeze conditioning agents, dust control palliatives, flotation reagents, water treatment polymers and other specialty chemicals.The leaked chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), is used in a coal cleaning process.

Kanwaha County Commission President Kent Carper saidyesterdaythat a containment wall meant to prevent chemicals from reaching soil at Freedom Industries was in need of $1 million in repairs, but was never fixed.

Carper said county officials have requested the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and Environmental Protection Agency investigate the spill.

According to NBC, who spoke to the state Department of Environmental Protection, Freedom Industries is exempt from DEP inspection because it only stores chemicals and does not produce them, despite the Freedom Industries' claiming on its website that it is producer. Whether the Etowah River Terminal facility does produce chemicals or is only a storage facility is unclear.

The West Virginia Gazette reports that the spill was discovered by Department of Environmental Protection air-quality officials after they received complaints of an odor around the facility. Freedom Industries did not report the spill to regulatory agencies, but company president Gary Southern said it was unaware of the leak by 10:30 a.m. on Jan 9.

The DEP has ordered Freedom Industries to move its coal processing chemicals to a safer site. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has responded by saying he will work on tightening regulation on chemical storage facilities.

Many residents are frustrated with both Freedom Industries and West Virginia American Water, who owns the treatment plant where the MCHM made its way into the water supply. On Friday, one angry resident threatened that he was on his way to teach everyone [at Freedom Industries] a lesson.

The spill reportedly originated from a 35,000-gallon storage tank along the Elk River. From there, MCHM made its way through the soil and into the river. The chemicals then rode the river down to the West Virginia American Water-owned Kanawha Valley Water Treatment Plant, where the chemicals saturated a special filter system and flowed into the water supply.

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Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill