Israeli medical students donate books to Patan Academy for the Health Science

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Israeli medical students donate books to Patan Academy for the Health Science

Israeli Ambassador to Nepal Hanan Goder-Goldberger on Thursday handed over a collection of books sent from the Medical School for International Health (Soroka University Medical Center), Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel to Prof. Dr. Rajesh Gangol, Dean of the Patan Academy for the Health Science.

The book was handed over to Dr Gangol amidst a ceremony held at the Patan Hospital.

The books have been collected from the students of the Ben Gurion Unitersity School for International Health in Beer Sheva, Israel with the initiative of Professor Michael Alkan for the students of Patan Academy of Medical Science. Prof. Alkan has been instrumental in promoting Patan Academy for Health Science in Israel since its inception in 2008.

In recent years there is ongoing cooperation and sharing of knowhow and exchange of professional staffs from Israel to Nepal and Nepal to Israel.

During the Ceremony Prof. Dr. Gangol expressed his appreciation for the ongoing cooperation between the two hospitals and the two universities. He hopes that this cooperation will further develop in the future.

Ambassador Goder-Goldberger expressed his satisfaction for the ongoing cooperation between two hospitals and said that the Embassy will be happy to see such projects in the future too. nepalnews.com

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Israeli medical students donate books to Patan Academy for the Health Science

Liberty sign G-F Katelan Redmon

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NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Liberty signed guard-forward Katelan Redmon on Thursday.

The former Gonzaga star was a third-round selection, 36th overall, by the Liberty in this year's WNBA draft. She appeared in one preseason game for New York, scoring 10 points on 5-for-6 shooting in 16 minutes against Connecticut, before being waived during training camp on May 27.

The 6-foot-1 Redmon averaged 13.8 points and 5.4 rebounds in three years with the Lady Bulldogs. She began her collegiate career at Washington and led the team in scoring (11.8) during her one season with the Huskies in 2007-08.

The Liberty waived veteran guard Kelly Miller on Monday.

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Liberty sign G-F Katelan Redmon

Ali to receive Liberty Medal

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Muhammad Ali will be honored as the 24th recipient of the Liberty Medal on Sept. 13 at the National Constitution Center at Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The National Constitution Center is the national headquarters of the Constitution's 225th anniversary celebration, and part of the celebration includes honoring Ali with the Liberty Medal, which is awarded to individuals of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe. Among the past winners of the Liberty Medal are former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, movie director Steven Spielberg, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Colin Powell, Sandra Day O'Connor and Nelson Mandela. Ali is the first former athlete to be awarded the Liberty Medal. "It is incredibly fitting that Muhammad Ali, a representative for , the bicentennial of the Constitution, be awarded the prestigious Liberty Medal in 2012, as the nation celebrates the 225th anniversary of our founding document," former President Bill Clinton, Chair of the National Constitution Center and past Liberty Medal recipient, said in a statement. "Ali embodies the spirit of the Liberty Medal by embracing the ideals of the Constitution - freedom, self-governance, equality, and empowerment - and helping to spread them across the globe." As well as being a gold-medal winner and one of the greatest boxers in history, Ali has been an outspoken advocate of religious and civil rights domestically and throughout the world. When selected for the military draft, he became a conscientious objector. He took his battle to the Supreme Court and won, even though it cost him his boxing title and time in the ring. Ali, who turns 70 this year, has been an ambassador for peace and justice worldwide throughout his adult life. He has become an advocate for those suffering from Parkinson's disease, a disease that has afflicted Ali. He was selected in 1987 by the California Bicentennial Foundation for the U.S. Constitution to personify the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. "Muhammad Ali symbolizes all that makes America great, while pushing us as a people and as a nation to be better,'" National Constitution Center President and CEO David Eisner, said in a statement. "Each big fight of his life has inspired a new chapter of civic action. We look forward to welcoming him back to the Center, particularly during this momentous 225th anniversary year." Ali flew to Lebanon in 1985 to help achieve the release of four hostages, and traveled to Iraq to help secure the release of 15 United States hostages during the first Gulf War. He has participated in goodwill missions to Afghanistan, North Korea and Cuba, and he traveled to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela when Mandela was released from prison. Ali has devoted time domestically, too, and in November 2005, Ali and his wife Lonnie opened the Muhammad Ali Center in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The center encourages people to commit to personal growth, integrity, and respect for others.

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Ali to receive Liberty Medal

Libertarian governor candidate won't be on ballot

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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - The Libertarian Party's candidate for North Dakota governor won't be on the November general election ballot.

The Bismarck Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/KW1T6M) that Roland Riemers will not be on the ballot in November because his lieutenant governor running mate missed the deadline to appear on the primary ballot.

The state's constitution requires the governor and lieutenant governor to be elected jointly on the ballot.

Riemers' running mate, Richard Ames, did not completely fill out the paperwork to appear on the primary ballot. Riemers appeared on the primary ballot by himself and earned enough votes to qualify for the November election, but the attorney general ruled that Riemers could not appear on the November ballot.

That means only the Republican and Democratic-NPL Party tickets for governor will be on the November ballot.

Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Libertarian governor candidate won't be on ballot

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, visits South Florida

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BOCA RATON -- Hes so conservative that he would slash federal spending across the board, including sacred cows most Democrats and Republicans are afraid to touch. Hes so liberal that he would legalize marijuana, immediately withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and support marriage for same-sex couples as a constitutional right.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, is completely unlike whats offered up by the two major parties and thats what appeals to his supporters.

Read the full story at Sun-Sentinel.com.

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Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, visits South Florida

Libertarian to enter 2nd District US House race

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by AP

WHAS11.com

Posted on July 5, 2012 at 8:23 PM

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- A Libertarian is planning to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie in this fall's general election in Kentucky's 2nd District. Craig Astor, former chairman of the Larue County Republican Party, will make his candidacy official on Monday by filing the necessary paperwork in the secretary of state's office. The 49-year-old Astor, an ordained minister from Hodgenville, will also face Democratic nominee and perennial candidate David Williams in the Nov. 6 election. Williams has run unsuccessfully for a litany of offices over the years. Astor campaign manager Ken Moellman said he believes this will be a good year for Libertarian candidates because of what he sees as dissatisfaction among voters with Republican and Democratic standard-bearers on the national level.

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Libertarian to enter 2nd District US House race

GOP Pushes for Repeal of ObamaCare — Then What?

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Republicans have long pledged to repeal and replace the Obama health care law.

Democrats, however, argue Republicans who want to repeal the law also would reverse the law's most popular reforms, sending the United States back to the days when insurance companies were free to drop people's coverage whenever they liked.

"The choice is to go forward or be dragged backwards," Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said. "It's time for Speaker Boehner and Republicans to put politics behind us, join with us in ensuring that every American has access to quality affordable care, that no person is denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition."

Republicans say they agree the old system will not work.

"The health care system, the status quo, is unacceptable," Rep. Tom Price, R-GA, who is also a doctor, said. "As a physician, I can tell you it doesn't work for patients. It certainly doesn't work for doctors."

"I know the system is broken. It needs to be fixed," Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said. "And there are a lot of ideas that Republicans wanted to throw out when it was initially brought up back in 2009, but we weren't given that opportunity."

One conservative analyst says now is the time -- that Republicans should lay out the details of their plans to show people exactly what they would do.

John Goodman, the author of "Priceless: Curing the Health Care Crisis," said Republicans "need to be able to talk about a health care vision that is different from the ObamaCare vision."

"They need to be able to announce some principles that people can understand and agree with," he said. "No one understands ObamaCare. If you lay out a reasonable alternative, people will understand it and agree with it."

"All the Obama administration and the people that supported the president's health care reform did was add more people to a failed system or a failing system," Rehberg added. "That's not health care reform."

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GOP Pushes for Repeal of ObamaCare — Then What?

Campaigns Duel Over Calling Health Care Mandate a 'Tax'

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JUDY WOODRUFF: The debate over whether the health care mandate is a tax remained front and center in the campaign today, even as the president shifted his attention to economic issues at the start of a battleground state bus tour.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama was back on the stump today in Ohio, touting his own economic policies and taking a shot at those of Republican Mitt Romney.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I don't think that Mr. Romney's plan to spend trillions of dollars more on tax cuts for folks that don't need them and aren't even asking for them is the right way to grow our economy, especially since they want to pay for it by cutting education spending, and cutting job training programs, and raising middle-class taxes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president's stop was part of a two-day bus tour across Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, to draw attention to economies in both states which have been buoyed by a stronger auto industry. But, in his first campaign event since last week's Supreme Court's decision to uphold his health care law, Mr. Obama also issued a firm defense of his overhaul of the system.

BARACK OBAMA: I will work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yesterday, in an interview with CBS, Mitt Romney said he disagreed with the court's decision, and for the first time, called the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, the individual mandate, a tax.

MITT ROMNEY (R): Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it's a tax. It's -- they decided it was constitutional, so it is a tax, and it's constitutional. That -- that's the final word.

There's no way around that. You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way, but they didn't. They concluded it was a tax. That's what it is. And the American people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that comment signaled a shift in position. A similar requirement is part of the state health care law that Romney fought for as governor of Massachusetts.

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Campaigns Duel Over Calling Health Care Mandate a 'Tax'

Health care, education consume 63 percent of planned state budget

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Between the Medicaid program, subsidized insurance under the 2006 health care access reform law, and investments in state employee health insurance and public health programs, health care spending this fiscal year is on pace to rise to 43 percent of the overall state budget, according to an analysis of the spending bill being reviewed by Gov. Deval Patrick.

One in five Massachusetts residents will have their health care largely covered through the budget and taxpayer-supported health care costs next year will gobble up the majority of new discretionary state revenue, hitting $15.14 billion, up from $14.65 billion. But education accounts will also get a big boost, according to a Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center analysis of the budget lawmakers agreed to last week.

While lawmakers and the Patrick administration this year have described fiscal 2013 spending plans ranging from $32.4 billion to $32.5 billion, the centers analysis estimates total state appropriations and transfers at $35.229 billion. Center officials say the higher figure reflects revenues collected and spent on transportation, school construction, public employee pensions and health care based on directives that carve out such spending before deliberations on the rest of the state budget begin each year.

Patrick has until Sunday, July 8 to sign the budget and announce his vetoes and amendments to the bill.

The center provides independent research and analysis of state budget and tax policies. Northeastern University Law School professor Peter Enrich chairs its board, which also includes former Gov. Michael Dukakis, American Red Cross of Eastern Massachusetts CEO Jarrett Barrios, Community Catalyst Executive Director Robert Restuccia, and former Revenue Commissioner Navjeet Bal of Nixon Peabody.

Aside from a proposed $546 million increase in spending on Medicaid and health care reform, the fiscal 2013 budget, approved easily last week by the House and Senate after a deal was struck by a conference committee, proposes $6.95 billion in total education spending, an increase of $302 million.

The majority of the increased education spending, or $238 million is targeted for the K-12 education system, with higher education in line for an increase of $58 million to a total of $1.02 billion, and early education and care spending scheduled to fall to $500 million, from $507 million.

Taken together, proposed state spending on health care and education in fiscal 2013 will approach $22.1 billion, representing about 63 percent of all state spending. Health care spending, as a percentage of the budget, will rise to 43 percent from about 42.8 percent.

But even with the 5.3 percent increase in spending on Medicaid, budget managers will need to secure about $500 million in savings in the program to balance the budget next year. The savings, along with some spending cuts and $615 million in temporary revenues, are being relied upon to close an estimated $1.3 billion gap between available revenues and projected state spending based on fiscal 2012 levels. The centers analysis identifies $41 million in homeless shelter cuts and $8 million in child care subsidy cuts.

State spending on education and health care, by comparison, towers over investments in other key areas.

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Health care, education consume 63 percent of planned state budget

Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated – Video

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04-07-2012 07:50 Conference by Fyodor Kondrashov, ICREA Research Professor, leader of the laboratory Evolutionary Genomics, within the Bioinformatics & Genomics research programme, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, in Barcelona, Spain. In this talk he discusses the work that his lab does and the role of bioinformatics in the study of disease-causing mutations in humans. The study of the genome through sequencing produces an enormous quantity of data. This data is analysed by bioinformatics researchers dedicated to the management and analysis of all of the information obtained when a genome is sequenced via, for example, mathematical, biological, computer and statistical tools. Personalised medicine is based on the premise that if a disease is caused by a mutation of a patient's genome, this mutation will always produce the same effect in another person: the effect is stable and constant, independently of whom the individual might be. However, recent research suggests that this effect may depend on the combination with other mutations. In some cases, it can be demonstrated that two "bad" mutations could combine to produce a perfectly healthy person, meaning that in the world of genetics, two "negatives" sometimes make a "positive". It is also likely that some mutations which cause disease may be benign if combined with other genetic changes, although this phenomenon has not yet been observed in humans. This is discouraging for personalised medicine, as the study of mutation interaction ...

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Genome complexity and medicine: illness prediction gets complicated - Video

Fitch Affirms Financial Freedom's U.S. RMBS Servicer Rating; Assigns Positive Outlook

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Fitch Ratings has taken the following actions on the U.S. residential primary servicer rating for Financial Freedom, a division of Onewest Bank, FSB:

--U.S. Residential primary servicer rating for reverse product affirmed at 'RPS3'; Outlook Positive.

The servicer rating actions reflect management changes within several key senior positions and strategic plans to focus on system and operational efficiencies, including several recently completed and in-process enhancements. The rating also incorporates the servicer's proactive adoption of a single point of contact (SPOC) model for its Maturities, Collections and Foreclosure areas. Based on the analysis and the company's profile, Fitch has assigned a Positive Outlook to Financial Freedom's servicer rating.

Although the servicer's customer service metrics, on an annual average, deteriorated slightly compared to the prior year, Financial Freedom implemented measures earlier this year to address this concern. Fitch was provided recent months' metrics which were considerably improved and expects that these efforts will continue; however, Fitch feels that a longer period of time is needed to determine the final impact of these changes.

The rating takes into consideration the financial condition of OneWest Bank FSB (OneWest), a non-rated entity, as financial condition is a component of Fitch's servicer ratings. In addition, the rating reflects Fitch's overall concerns for the U.S. residential servicing industry which include the ability to maintain high performance standards while addressing the rising cost of servicing and changes to industry practices, which are likely to be mandated by regulators and other parties.

Finally, the rating reflects changes Fitch made to its servicer rating category weightings, which was instituted for all forward mortgage servicers in 2011.

The rating was determined in accordance with Fitch's criteria 'U.S. Residential and Small Balance Commercial Mortgage Servicer Rating' and 'Global Rating Criteria for Structured Finance Servicers' which are available on the Fitch Ratings web site at 'www.fitchratings.com'.

As of Feb. 29, 2012, Financial Freedom's servicing portfolio consisted of 145,939 loans with an unpaid principal balance of approximately $24.7 billion. The reverse portfolio is composed of 69% GSE loans (based on unpaid principal balance), 16.2% non-agency RMBS, 9.3% third-party servicing, and 5.3% owned loans.

OneWest is a wholly owned subsidiary of OneWest Bank Group, LLC, which was founded in March 2009 by a consortium of investors including Paulson & Co and J.C. Flowers & Co. IndyMac Mortgage Services (IndyMac), another division of OneWest, operates materially separate from Financial Freedom and maintains its own operations and systems. Financial Freedom has been servicing reverse mortgage product for 19 years and has operations in Austin, TX and Kalamazoo, MI.

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Fitch Affirms Financial Freedom's U.S. RMBS Servicer Rating; Assigns Positive Outlook

Pressures on the Planet: Food Security in an Increasingly Complex Ecosystem – Video

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05-07-2012 15:42 Moderator: Frank Sesno, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University; Creator and Host, Planet Forward Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation Chris Policinski, President and CEO of Land O'Lakes Calestous Juma, Professor at Harvard University James Boomgard, President and CEO of DAI After examining the major trends on the horizon, this panel will delve more deeply into the specific challenge of increasing food production while sustaining ecosystem function, addressing linkages between markets, food access and food availability from a developing country perspective. The role of innovation and markets in addressing challenges of climate change, population, and energy in meeting the food gap will be highlighted, as well as the impacts on small-holder African farmers. What role does analysis of ecosystem function currently play in efforts to increase agricultural productivity? What role does water and natural resource management play? Have policies or practices to this end shifted as a result of climate change? What is the role for sustainable Intensification?

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Pressures on the Planet: Food Security in an Increasingly Complex Ecosystem - Video