Smoking ban's impact five years on

The sight of employees smoking outdoors in all weathers is now commonplace. Smoking areas in bars, pubs, restaurants and hotels are long gone.

It is five years since England became the last part of the UK to introduce legislation banning smoking in workplaces and enclosed public spaces.

The aim was to reduce passive smoking, or exposure to secondhand smoke, which is known to be harmful.

Scotland was the first country in the UK to introduce a smokefree law in March 2006.

England's smokefree laws came into force on 1 July 2007, with Northern Ireland on 30 April 2007 and Wales on 2 April 2007.

So what has been the impact of the legislation on our health?

Amanda Sandford, research manager from Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) says it was long overdue.

"When it started people wondered why we'd waited so long to do it. Non-smokers always found it unpleasant breathing in other people's smoke.

"It is one of the most important public health acts in the last century. There's no question it's been hugely beneficial."

The ban was popular with British adults when it was implemented - and a recent poll of more than 12,000 people found that 78% of adults still support it.

A review of the evidence on the impact of the law in England, was commissioned by the government and carried out by Prof Linda Bauld from the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies.

Prof Bauld's report concluded: "The law has had a significant impact."

"Results show benefits for health, changes in attitudes and behaviour and no clear adverse impact on the hospitality industry."

A study of barworkers, using saliva, lung function and air quality tests, showed their respiratory health had greatly improved after the laws came in, thanks to the reduction in exposure to secondhand smoke.

Another study looking at children's exposure to secondhand smoking in England, between 1996 and 2007, found that their exposure levels had declined by nearly 70%.

Although this study only covered a few months beyond the introduction of the smokefree laws, Prof Bauld says children's exposure continues to decline.

Opponents of the legislation feared that it would push adults to smoke more at home, and therefore put children at greater risk of secondhand smoke.

But Scottish evidence suggests the reverse. A Glasgow University study showed a 15% reduction in the number of children with asthma being admitted to hospital in the three years after the ban came into force in Scotland.

Ms Sandford says smokers are now more aware about the dangers of secondhand smoke and are doing more to protect children at home.

Professor John Britton, chairman of the Royal College of Physicians' tobacco advisory group, says the ban "has had a huge impact on quality of life particularly in people with cardiovascular disease".

A Department of Health-funded study examining emergency admissions between July 2002 and September 2008 in England found a 2.4% reduction in admissions for heart attacks.

Breathing in secondhand smoke can increase the long-term risk, as well as the immediate risk of a heart attacks and angina, Prof Bauld says.

Research from Scotland reported a much larger 17% decrease in heart attack admissions in the year after its ban.

Another Glasgow study which looked at smoking and birth rates before and after the ban found a 10% drop in the country's premature birth rate, which researchers linked to the smokefree laws.

But there is no evidence as yet that smokers have given up smoking in huge numbers because of the legislation.

While overall levels of smoking among adults in Great Britain remained constant at 21% between 2007 and 2009, the north east of England saw a different trend.

There, the smokefree ban proved to be a trigger for some adults to quit with the largest drop in smoking in England - from 29% in 2005 to 27% in 2007 and down to 21% by 2011.

Smokers' groups say the ban has been a disaster for many pubs and clubs and the impact on many people's social lives has been huge.

Simon Clark, director of smokers' lobby group Forest, said smokers were being forced to take their habit elsewhere.

"Thanks to the ban many smokers are smoking and drinking at home. Who can blame them when the alternative is standing outside in the wind and rain?"

Calling for a comprehensive review of the impact of the smoking ban, he said: "We want the government to amend the legislation to allow separate, well-ventilated smoking rooms in pubs and clubs. Few people would object to that because no-one would be exposed to other people's smoke against their wishes."

But others want to take smokefree laws further.

The Royal College of Physicians supports a total ban on smoking in cars and would like to see the smokefree ban extended to anywhere where children are present.

"This includes parks, outside areas and cars. We would like to see tobacco imagery taken out of children's lives altogether," says Prof Britton.

A private member's bill to ban smoking in cars when children are present has been debated in the Lords recently.

Ash also supports a ban on smoking in cars but recognises the difficulties of imposing it.

"Cars are not as straightforward as the workplace because they are a private space. It does raise ethical issues, but because they are a confined space the level of smoke is concentrated."

Prof Bauld said: "In the next 20 years we should be able to halve smoking rates."

But that would need the introduction of plain cigarette packaging, tougher legislation on sale displays in shops, high taxes on tobacco and a crackdown on illicit tobacco, she said.

"It's children who start smoking, not adults. We need to prevent people starting in the first place, full stop."

Source & Image : BBC

Moon wedding: Getting married with 4,000 others

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Exactly 30 years ago, 2,000 couples took part in a mass wedding in New York City. The event was organised by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, who matched many of the brides and grooms himself.

When Philip Shanker and his Korean bride Kim Hye-shik walked down the aisle, in many ways they were just like any other couple - excited about their special day and about spending the rest of their lives together.

But there were also some big differences - their marriage was arranged by a religious leader and it was taking place alongside thousands of other couples.

"I always like to say I had a garden wedding with a few friends. Of course, the garden was Madison Square Garden and we had about 4,000 friends there," Shanker says.

He is a member of the Unification Church and a follower of the teachings of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Often referred to as Moonies - a term some church members find offensive - they allow their 92-year-old Korean leader, whom they believe is the messiah, to choose their partners and then to marry them at a mass blessing ceremony with thousands of other couples.

"It is our tradition and it is important for each couple to be part of this ceremony, first because it is officiated by our true parents, father and mother Moon, and second because it is a global statement about the centrality of marriage and family," Shanker explains.

Shanker was 35 years old and had already been a member of the religion for 10 years when Moon chose a woman in Korea to be his bride.

"I aspired to an inter-racial marriage because it appealed to me to create a cross-cultural relationship as an instrument for bringing the world together. That is a strong principle that we are raised with in the movement," he explains.

Usually the elderly Korean picks couples in matching ceremonies in which hundreds of faithful wait for him to point to them and then to their future spouse.

In Shanker's case, he and his future wife lived in different countries, so they were just handed photographs of each other. Shanker says they both trusted their spiritual leader's decision and after meeting in Korea for a few weeks, they decided to go ahead with the marriage.

First they had to overcome a massive language barrier, since neither spoke each other's language. They also encountered vast cultural differences, including the fact that his wife was from a small rural farming village steeped in local traditions.

"My wife's mother was against the match. She told her that even a cripple would be better than a foreigner!" Shanker recalls, laughing.

It would be two years from the time they were matched before they lived together. The couple had to wait for her visa to the United States, while both continued to carry out the work of the church, bringing in new recruits and fundraising by selling flowers and sweets on the street.

Finally, they moved in together in New York City but they still slept in separate beds, sticking to the rules of their faith and remaining virgins while they waited for the day of their wedding. It would be another two years until that day arrived.

"It was tough to be close to each other without being intimate," says Shanker.

Finally, four years after they were matched, the big day was announced. Two thousand couples from at least 12 different countries poured into Manhattan along with thousands of their family and friends.

One of the grooms was 27-year-old Canadian Gordon Neufeld, who had become involved with the church six years earlier.

Both Neufeld and Shanker were young graduates feeling lost and confused when they were recruited by the church. In each case they were approached and invited to attend talks at a commune. Both thought it was a hippy commune and it was several weeks before there was any mention of the Unification Church or the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

At the time Neufeld was an agnostic, perhaps even an atheist, he says. But after just four weeks of living in the commune he became convinced that Moon was the messiah and embraced the church's central principle that if everyone in the world was converted, heaven on earth would be achieved.

"They were such nice people and I didn't want to be rude. I thought I would put my doubts to one side for a while and just go with it and eventually I forgot those doubts," says Neufeld.

Six years after he joined the church he was paired with Erica Jenner, an English woman who had flown to America for the matching ceremony. They spent an afternoon and evening getting to know each other before she flew back to the United Kingdom. They had to wait two years for their wedding.

To hear Gordon Neufeld and Philip Shanker talk about taking part in a mass wedding listen to Witness on the BBC World Service on Wednesday 4 July

As the big day approached, Manhattan prepared for the thousands of couples to descend on the city. Dentists and barbers offered cheap rates for brides and grooms, while many restaurants advertised "newly-weds" meal deals.

The 2,000 couples, all wearing the same white dresses and blue suits with red ties, lined up and marched into the arena in Madison Square Garden. As they entered they were sprinkled with water by Moon and his wife.

Speaking in Korean, the leader of the church read out the marriage vows and, after they had heard a translation, the brides and grooms affirmed their consent by shouting in unison: "Yes father!"

Finally, after years of waiting, Neufeld and Shanker had married their brides. But unlike most newlyweds, they didn't rush off to consummate their union.

"Part of our tradition is that we wait for 40 days after the wedding, it is a period of time we offer to God to sanctify the marriage," says Shanker.

But Neufeld says he was asked to wait far longer and to carry out a number of tasks.

"In most cases we were expected to wait around three years and recruit three new members before we could be together," he says.

Neufeld's marriage didn't last. A few years after they were married, Jenner, who was still in the UK, lost her faith and left the church.

Neufeld was devastated. But about four years later he too found that he couldn't continue with the religion.

Walking away was far from easy, though.

"It was extremely frightening and difficult. I worried that I would be entering a spiritual void. I felt empty and lost," he says.

Now remarried, he lives in New York state where he works as a bookseller and freelance writer.

Shanker had a very different experience. Although he admits that his marriage was far from easy, he says it was a committed relationship.

His wife died suddenly from a stroke a few years ago but in the last decade of their marriage, he says they reached a new kind of harmony in their relationship.

"Marriage and family is really the Unification Church's spiritual path and whatever maturity I have achieved in my life has been through being someone's husband and someone's father."

Shanker has made his career in the faith and is now the Director of the Blessed Life Ministry of the Church.

He estimates that about 75% of the couples who were married in 1982 are still together. This is higher than the average in the US, where 50% of marriages end in divorce.

But Gordon Neufeld believes that the 75% figure is suspect - and could, for example, include people who divorced and remarried.

Whatever the success rate of the arranged marriages, they have remained popular. Since that wedding in 1982, tens of thousands of people have been married in the same way, including some of Philip Shanker's own children.

Gordon Neufeld and Philip Shanker spoke to Chloe Hadjimatheou for Witness on the BBC World Service

Source & Image : BBC

Cities Balk as Federal Law on Marijuana Is Enforced

ARCATA, Calif. — Faced with growing chaos in the state’s medical marijuana industry, this city in Northern California passed an ordinance in 2008 that meticulously detailed, over 11 pages, how the drug could be grown and sold here.

Humboldt Medical Supply, a dispensary here in Humboldt County regarded as a law-abiding model that has given free cannabis to elderly patients, became the first to obtain a permit in 2010. The Sai Center, whose owner has a history of flouting city regulations and was described by the mayor as running his business “purely for profit,” was rejected last year.

Humboldt Medical quickly closed shop after federal prosecutors began shuttering hundreds of dispensaries in October in one of the biggest crackdowns on medical marijuana since its legalization in California in 1996. The Sai Center’s owner moved locations and has defied the authorities by continuing to operate, most recently out of his mother’s house. City officials, afraid of becoming targets themselves of the prosecutors, have suspended the applications of two other dispensaries that were expected to be approved.

“We feel the federal government’s actions have had a very negative effect,” said Mayor Michael Winkler. “We’re very upset with their actions.”

Like their counterparts in many other municipalities that have regulated medical marijuana on their own, Arcata officials say the federal offensive has brought renewed chaos to the medical marijuana industry. The federal authorities, their critics say, have indiscriminately targeted good and bad dispensaries, sometimes putting the best ones out of business. The crackdown, the critics say, has made it difficult for qualified Californians to obtain marijuana for medical use and is just pushing buyers into the black market.

Acting on federal law, which considers all possession and distribution of marijuana to be illegal, California’s four United States attorneys, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, have shut down at least 500 dispensaries statewide in the last eight months by sending letters to operators, landlords and local officials, warning of criminal charges and the seizure of assets. The United States attorneys said the dispensaries were violating not only federal law but also state law, which requires operators to be primary caregivers to their customers and distribute marijuana only for medical purposes.

“We’re not concerned in prosecuting patients or people who are legitimate caregivers for ill people, who are in good faith complying with state law,” said Benjamin B. Wagner, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of California. “But we are concerned about large commercial operations that are generating huge amounts of money by selling marijuana in this essentially unregulated free-for-all that exists in California.”

Because of the lack of regulation, it is difficult to know precisely how many dispensaries have shut down or even how many were in operation before the start of the current crackdown. But figures provided by three of California’s four United States attorneys totaled more than 500: “dozens” in Mr. Wagner’s district; 217 in the Southern District, in San Diego; and more than 200 in the Central District, in Los Angeles. Officials in the three districts say they have succeeded in putting out of business more than 90 percent of the dispensaries they have identified so far.

Declining to release figures was the United States attorney for the Northern District. The district includes San Francisco and Oakland, the two cities that have led the fight against the current federal offensive, as well as Arcata and other municipalities long known for their tolerance of marijuana.

Dan Rush, an official at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said about 650 out of the 1,400 marijuana dispensaries that existed last October have ceased operating. The union represents between 600 and 800 members working in statewide dispensaries, he said.

Except for San Francisco and Oakland, the roughly 50 municipalities with medical marijuana ordinances have suspended the administration of dispensaries, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes access to medical marijuana. Though federal authorities have periodically gone after dispensaries since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, Mr. Hermes described the current crackdown as “unprecedented” because of its “intensity” and because of the number of dispensaries closed and federal agencies involved.

Prosecutors denied that legitimate patients were being driven to illegal sellers.

Source & Image : New York Times

Venezuela election: Violence set to be key issue

Rising violent crime in Venezuela is set to be a key issue as campaigning officially begins for October's presidential election.

In his family's apartment in a middle-class neighbourhood of Caracas one recent lunchtime, Juan Carlos, a young professional, told me about his experience of being kidnapped.

He was driving his girlfriend home one Sunday evening when another car blocked his way and two men with guns took him hostage along with his car.

"They said I was their guarantee until they could get away with my car," he said. "They even told me it was an order. They were ordered to get an SUV like the one I had."

His ordeal lasted a few hours while the gang drove to the outskirts of the city.

"They told me that if I behaved everything was going to be OK and they said they were going to let me go to a taxi rank so I could get a cab."

Juan Carlos, who did not want to give his full name, was left shaken but unharmed by his ordeal.

This type of kidnapping is essentially an elaborate robbery, but it has become increasingly common in recent years.

"Ten years ago you didn't hear this very often," Juan Carlos said.

"Nowadays it could happen to anybody - a neighbour, a family member - it actually has happened to more than 10 of my friends."

The Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV) says that kidnappings increased from 41 in 1999 to 589 in 2009.

It now estimates that there are more than 1,000 cases every year.

Abductions originally happened mainly along the country's border with Colombia - a tactic used by or borrowed from Colombian Farc rebels and paramilitary groups to kidnap wealthy ranch owners for large sums of money.

Now kidnapping has become an urban crime.

"In nine out of 10 cases it's what we call an express kidnapping," says lawyer Fermin Marmol, a criminologist who has negotiated the release of hostages in several kidnap cases.

"They choose the victim based on the vehicle they are driving and the zone they're in. They're looking to cut off the car along an isolated road."

Some victims are held for a few hours while their family is forced to hastily come up with the ransom.

Others are taken back to their homes where the robbers steal all their possessions.

Mr Marmol says few report these incidents to the police, for fear of reprisals.

Kidnapping clearly targets wealthy victims. If it were the only kind of crime on the increase, it might not matter too much to the re-election chances of President Hugo Chavez, whose traditional and continued support base is among the poorer sectors of society.

There has been a similar increase, however, in other offences.

According to the OVV, the number of murders in Venezuela in 2011 topped 19,000, more than double the total 10 years previously.

Street crime and gang violence plague the poorer neighbourhoods of Venezuela's cities, making everyone a potential victim.

Maria Elena Delgado, 57, is a perfect example.

She has lived all her life in Petare, a vast suburb of ramshackle houses built on a steep hillside overlooking Caracas.

In that time she has seen her son, daughter and grandson killed just metres from her house, caught in the crossfire of shoot-outs between rival gangs.

"When they killed my first son, it was very hard but I managed to get up and keep going," she says.

"But then when my 12-year-old daughter was killed, I didn't want to get up or go out."

Ms Delgado has joined more than 50 other women to take part in Proyecto Esperanza, a project to raise awareness of violence and its consequences.

Her image, along with those of some of the other women, appeared on billboard-sized posters at sites all over Caracas.

"Our relatives who've been victims of violence appear as statistics. So we have to demonstrate that they exist, they're not just numbers, they were people," she explains.

The politicians have taken note. President Chavez recently launched an initiative known as a "mission" to improve security.

It will see new tribunals created at a more local level, the creation of a compensation fund for victims of crime and modernisation of prisons.

Presidential challenger Henrique Capriles has his own security plan as part of his election manifesto.

It includes increasing access to education, reducing corruption in the police and judicial systems and improving the country's prisons.

Government supporters have been quick to point out that violence has always been an issue in Venezuela and that President Chavez inherited the problem when he came into office in 1999.

The statistics show that the problem has increased since then. Although President Chavez remains ahead in opinion polls, the political opposition sees an opportunity to gain some ground on this issue.

The victims of violence in Venezuela will be hoping that whoever wins the election in October follows through on their plans to improve security.

Source & Image : BBC

A refuge for the Roma in Berlin

It seems unlikely but Berlin, the very city where the genocide of the Roma (Gypsy) peoples was planned 70 years ago, has become the city where they now find refuge.

In the suburb of Neukoelln, a large complex of run-down apartments is being done up to become comfortable homes for more than 100 families from a dirt-poor village near Bucharest in Romania.

Where the Nazis planned the mass murder of Roma, modern Germans plan comfort and acceptance.

There is no doubt that Europe remains a continent where Roma still face widespread discrimination.

A Swiss magazine recently ran the headline They Come. They Steal. They Go alongside a picture of a Roma boy toting a gun (which later transpired not to be a real one).

And the human rights campaigners Amnesty International reported: "Roma are among the most deprived communities in Europe.

"They suffer massive discrimination and are denied their rights to housing, employment, health care and education. Roma communities are often subject to forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment."

The German project aims to buck that trend.

A series of apartment blocks is, in effect, being transformed into a small village for Roma families.

Rather than scatter them discreetly in a series of small projects, they are being housed in one large complex in the suburb of Neukoelln.

The project manager is Benjamin Marx, a dapper man in his late fifties who exudes both kindness and authority.

He told the BBC: "The idea is to provide homes for people who have been excluded and discriminated against.

"We want to show Berliners that these people are completely normal and can integrate."

He works for a Catholic charity which decided to take over the apartment block because it was in such a bad state.

Roma had ended up there over years of migration, mostly from the village of Fantanele near Bucharest. Their new home in Berlin had a reputation among local people for being dirty.

But when a Catholic housing charity saw what was going on, it decided to transform the place and put Mr Marx in charge.

Now, the housing complex is a buzz of construction. Murals are being painted on outside walls. The apartments are in a classic Berlin block, around a courtyard which is a scene of scaffolding and barrows carting rubbish away.

Rooms are being gutted and refurbished. A small theatre is being constructed as well as workshops and play-rooms.

At Christmas, all the new Roma residents got gifts of oranges.

They treat Mr Marx with great respect and obvious gratitude as he walks around the project.

They are also grateful to Germany.

Their children go to the local school and they say they want to work and make new lives.

Olimpia Nitu, who came from Bucharest with her husband and children, told the BBC: "I live here now with my boys and my husband and I want to learn life here step by step.

"I want something new in my life."

Benjamin Marx says that Roma get a bad public image because of the ones who get noticed hustling in city centres - but the ones who integrate, by definition, do not get noticed. His aim is to help the ones who move to Berlin to integrate.

The project is based on optimism but is it starry-eyed, naive optimism?

It may be noble but is it wise to concentrate so many people from a group known to face animosity in one place?

It is the right thing to do, according to Christine Lueders, the head of Germany's anti-discrimination ministry.

"You have to have such projects to show that society is interested in integrating people and not separating people," she says.

"And when racists try to fight against such projects you have to stand in front of them and do something against racism and racists."

More than 200,000 Roma were murdered in the Holocaust. Their surviving relatives sometimes feel they are the forgotten victims, a group still treated badly despite the past.

When the leader of today's Roma walked around the project he was visibly moved, tears misting his eyes.

"What I've seen here gives hope," said Romani Rose, the head of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and who lost 13 family members in the Holocaust.

"It shows that there is another way when one at least respects minorities and gives them opportunities in the economy."

There is bright optimism, then, in the city of the darkest pasts - and that is a triumph in itself.

Source & Image : BBC

A Point of View: Don’t mention the war?

It's time to stop invoking Hitler and the Nazis in arguments about everything from censorship to birth control - but we should never stop heeding the lessons of World War II, says Adam Gopnik.

Over the past few weeks, I have been talking about bees, and the Beatles, and babies (at least ones who are babies no longer), and also about books and bad reviews. I am as deep in the Bs as the crew that went hunting for the Snark in Lewis Carroll.

I hope you will forgive me if I turn this week to something, if not more serious, then more obviously sombre, and that is the question of what the memory of World War II ought to mean to people now.

It recedes, its soldiers die, its battles become the occasion for camp fantasy, or Quentin Tarantino movies - the same thing.

Recently, the Economist published a long book review asking just that; what WWII ought to mean to people now?

We know already what it means to publishers and television networks. The publishers love new books about the war's battles, and the cable shows can never get enough Nazis. A German friend once complained to me that educated Westerners often know far more about the German government during those five years of war than they do about all German governments in the 60 years of subsequent peace.

But then, as The Economist wrote: "The sheer magnitude of the human tragedy of [WWII] puts it in a class of its own, and its relative closeness to the present day makes claims on the collective memory that more remote horrors cannot."

Does it, should it, make such claims? Of course, there is a band of American neo-conservatives who insist on seeing every new year as another 1938, with whomever is the monster of the week cast as a Hitler figure.

On the other extreme, there are those who insist that there is, in a sense, nothing to learn from what happened then, because it was so uniquely, horribly evil. There is even a principle, frequently repeated during internet squabbles, and half-jokingly called Godwin's Law (after Mike Godwin, an expert in internet law of the unjoking kind, who first invoked it). It states simply that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler gets greater. The stupider the argument becomes, the more likely someone is to use the "reductio ad Hitlerium".

Therefore Godwin's law implies - and this is the law-like bit - one should try never to compare anything or anyone current to Nazis, Nazism - or for that matter, to mention 1938, Munich, appeasement or any of the rest of the arsenal of exhausted exemplars. It's a bit like Basil Fawlty's old rule when the German guests come to the hotel: "Whatever you do, don't mention the war!"

And, to an extent, this caution is sane and sound.

The people on the right who invoke "liberal fascism" should be bundled off - with those on the left, who morph Thatcher's or Blair's picture into Himmler's - shut up in a library, and made to read some history.

But I'm always haunted by the simple words of the historian Richard Evans towards the end of his good book, The Third Reich at War, where he said that we should always remember that what happened was not some act of Satan - though Satanic acts took place - but the result of the unleashed power of long latent traditions of militarism, nationalism and the hatred of difference. It was the force of three ever-living things, braided together like hissing, poisonous snakes around a healthy tree.

The danger is that each of these things is not necessarily evil on first appearance, and each seeks a new name in new times.

"There are obvious topics in which the [Nazi] comparison recurs. In discussions about guns and the Second Amendment, for example, gun-control advocates are periodically reminded that Hitler banned personal weapons.

"And birth-control debates are frequently marked by pro-lifers' insistence that abortionists are engaging in mass murder, worse than that of Nazi death camps. And in any newsgroup in which censorship is discussed, someone inevitably raises the spectre of Nazi book-burning.

"I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

The old distinction between patriotism and nationalism, made many times by many people, has never been more vital to our mental health than it is now - as vital for the health of the country as the distinction between sexual fantasy and pornography is for the health of a marriage. Patriotism, like fantasy, is a kind of sauce, a pleasing irrationalism that is part of what makes us human - and saucy. Nationalism, like pornography, is a kind of narcissistic addiction that devours our humanity.

Patriotism is a love of a place and of the people in a place. As GK Chesterton understood, it becomes more intense the smaller the unit gets, so that it was possible for him to feel more patriotism for Notting Hill than for Britain.

Nationalism is the opposite belief; that your place is better than everyone else's and that people who don't feel this way about it are somehow victimising you.

Recently in America, "exceptionalism" has become the new name for this illness. All nations are exceptional, but some are more exceptional than others, and America is the most exceptional of all. This sounds like a mordant joke, but it is actually what many people in the US believe, and want everyone else to believe, and routinely arraign President Obama for not believing in enough. (As it happens, for good or ill, he does.)

To believe this, it is necessary first of all to be exceptional in never having lived in any other place that thinks itself exceptional.

"History is full of wars that were bloodier than the Second World War. As a proportion of the population, more people were killed during the An Lushan rebellion in 8th Century China, for example, or by the Thirty Years War in 17th Century central Europe.

"But the sheer magnitude of the human tragedy of WWII puts it in a class of its own, and its relative closeness to the present day makes claims on the collective memory that more remote horrors cannot."

Any American lucky enough to grow up in Canada, as I did, which believes itself rightly to be exceptional among the world's nations in its ability to cover an entire continent in common values without the governments ever having once resorted to internal violence. Or else to have lived, as I also have been lucky enough to do, for many years in France, which believes itself to be exceptional among the countries of the world because… well, I haven't time to enumerate all those reasons, though they were nicely summed up in Noel Coward's remark, just after the death of General De Gaulle. Asked what De Gaulle might say to God, Coward said that that depended entirely on how good God's French was.

Exceptionalism, it seems, is the least exceptional thing on earth.

Just as nationalism is the opposite of patriotism, not its extension, so militarism is an emotion opposed to the universal urge to honour soldiers for their courage. Militarism is the belief that the military's mission is moral, or moralistic. That the army can be used to restore the honour of the nation, or to improve our morals, and that a failure to use it to right every imagined affront is a failure of nerve, rather than a counsel of good sense.

Basil Fawlty: Is there something wrong?

German guest: Will you stop talking about the war?

Basil: Me?! You started it!

Guest: We did not start it!

Basil: Yes you did, you invaded Poland!

After 9/11, in the US we suffered from a plague of militarism of this kind, again mostly from sagging middle-aged writers who wanted to send someone else's kids to war so that the middle-aged men could feel more manly in the face of a national insult. Militarism is not the soldiers' faith that war can be conducted honourably, but the polemicist's belief that war confers honour.

Hatred of difference - notice I carefully did not say racial hatred, or religious hatred. Hitler hated Jews because of their religion, and because of their race, but he hated them above all because of their otherness.

When I read well-intentioned people talking about the impossibility of assimilating Muslims in my adopted country of France, for instance, I become frightened when I see that they are usually entirely unaware that they are repeating - often idea for idea and sometimes word for word - the themes of the anti-Semitic polemics that set off the Dreyfus affair a century ago. For those writers, too, believed not that Jews were eternally evil, but that Judaism was just too different, too foreign to France, and tied to violence against the nation and its heritage.

And indeed there were Jewish anarchists in Europe, as there are Muslim extremists now. But there was never a Jewish problem in France, any more than there is a Muslim problem now.

This is a question in which after a half-millennium of religious warfare, the results are really all in. If we accept the Enlightenment values of tolerance, coexistence and mutual pursuit of material happiness, things in the long run work out. If we don't, they won't.

So, from now, when we evoke Godwin's Law, as we ought to, I would like to propose Gopnik's Amendment to it. We should never believe that people who differ from us about how we ought to spend public money want to commit genocide or end democracy, and we should stop ourselves from saying so, even in the pixelled heat of internet argument.

But when we see the three serpents of militarism, nationalism and hatred of difference we should never be afraid to call them out, loudly, by name, and remind ourselves and other people, even more loudly still, of exactly what they have made happen in the past.

We should never, in this sense, be afraid to mention the war. We should say, listen: you've heard all this before - but let me tell you again just what happened in the garden the last time someone let the snakes out. It is exactly the kind of lesson that history is supposed to be there to teach us.

Send us your comments and we'll publish a selection

Source & Image : BBC

Endurance swimmer looks strong en route to Florida Keys

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Penny Palfrey has swum about 70 miles


• She is more than halfway across the expected distance to the Florida Keys


• She started her swim in Cuba

(CNN) -- She has been scorched by the sun, stung by jellyfish and inspected by sharks. But Penny Palfrey keeps swimming.

Palfrey, 49, is vying to be the first person to swim 103 miles across the Florida straits without any assistance -- no shark cage, flippers, wet suit or snorkel.

And even though she has been in the water since Friday morning, the Australian-British dual citizen and grandmother of two shows no signs of quitting.

"Her mental and physical state are reported as strong," read a message on Palfrey's Facebook page Saturday afternoon.

"She reports no physical complaints," the crew reported. "She is still the boss in the water. She is all business."

As of 4 p.m. Saturday, Palfrey had swum 69.05 miles, breaking her record of 67 miles set in 2011 while swimming from Little Grand Cayman island to Big Grand Cayman island, the posting said.

Earlier Saturday, a meteorologist helping Palfrey's team told CNN he thought she would complete the swim between Cuba and the United States. "She is looking very strong and strong after 24 hours in the water is a good thing," meteorologist Bill Cottrill said.

"She has the best chance to make it," according to Cottrill. "I would say weatherwise there is no reason she shouldn't be able to."

Cottrill told CNN said the team expects Palfrey to complete the journey late Sunday afternoon. The Gulf Stream current added about 18 miles to her swim.

In 1997, 22-year-old swimmer Susie Malroney completed the feat, using a shark cage.

Last year, swimmer Diana Nyad twice tried to make the swim, also unassisted, but was turned back by health problems and stinging jellyfish.

A crew of 15, including medical personnel and staff updating Palfrey's social media pages, are following her in boats and kayaks.

She will stay nourished and hydrated by consuming a carbohydrate-rich drink every 30 minutes.

The crew also employs "shark shields," cables that hang from the boats and kayaks around Palfrey and emit a pulse designed to keep the predators at bay.

"We attach [the shields] to the kayaker and to the boat which emit an electric field through the water," Palfrey told reporters in Havana on Thursday. "When a shark comes within five meters it picks up the sensors on the snout. It doesn't harm them, but they don't like it and swim away."

According to the Facebook posting on Satuday, the devices may have come in handy after Palfrey spotted hammerhead sharks swimming beneath her.

The sharks, though, "quickly vanished," according to the posting.

Open-water swimming tips from the pros

Source & Image : CNN World

E-Mails Suggest Paterno Role in Silence on Sandusky

Joe Paterno appears to have played a greater role than previously known in Penn State’s handling of a 2001 report that Jerry Sandusky had sexually assaulted a boy in a university shower, according to a person with knowledge of aspects of an independent investigation of the Sandusky scandal.

E-mail correspondence among senior Penn State officials suggests that Paterno influenced the university’s decision not to formally report the accusation against Sandusky to the child welfare authorities, the person said. The university’s failure to alert the police or child welfare authorities in 2001 has been an issue at the center of the explosive scandal — having led to criminal charges against two senior administrators and the firing of Paterno last fall.

The university’s much maligned handling of the 2001 assault began when Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant in Paterno’s football program, told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky assaulting a boy of about 10 in the football building showers. McQueary has testified several times that he made clear to Paterno, and later to university officials, that what he had seen Sandusky doing to the child was terrible and explicitly sexual in nature.

To date, the public understanding of Paterno’s subsequent actions has been that he relayed McQueary’s account to the university’s athletic director and then had no further involvement in the matter.

But the e-mails uncovered by investigators working for Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director leading an independent investigation ordered by the university’s board of trustees, suggest that the question of what to do about McQueary’s report was extensively debated by university officials. Those officials, the e-mails show, included the university’s president, Graham B. Spanier; the athletic director, Tim Curley; the official in charge of the campus police, Gary Schultz; and Paterno.

The existence of the e-mail correspondence was first reported by CNN. The person familiar with aspects of the Freeh investigation would not be identified because the investigation is continuing and no one is authorized to speak about it.

The Penn State e-mails, according to the person with knowledge of the Freeh investigation, indicate that Spanier, Curley and Schultz seemed at one point to favor reporting the assault to the state child welfare authorities, recognizing that if they did not, they could later be vulnerable to charges that they had failed to act.

But in one e-mail, Curley wrote that after talking to Paterno, he no longer wanted to go forward with that plan.

In the end, the university told no one other than officials with Second Mile, the charity for disadvantaged youngsters founded by Sandusky.

The e-mails suggest that the officials decided that Sandusky could be dealt with by barring him from taking children onto the campus and encouraging him to seek professional help.

Not reporting the accusation to the authorities, the men determined, was the more “humane” way to deal with Sandusky, according to the e-mails.

Curley and Schultz were indicted last fall on charges of failing to report the assault to the police and child welfare authorities, and then lying about their conduct under oath before a grand jury. Curley and Schultz, through their lawyers, have insisted that they were never told of the graphic nature of the assault in the showers, saying they were under the impression that it had amounted to little more than “horsing around.”

Lawyers for Curley and Schultz, contacted about the e-mails, issued a statement saying in part: “For Curley, Schultz, Spanier and Paterno, the responsible and ‘humane’ thing to do” in 2001 “was to carefully and responsibly assess the best way to handle vague but troubling allegations. Faced with tough situations, good people try to do their best to make the right decisions.”

Spanier, who resigned as Penn State’s president in November, declined to comment when reached by phone on Saturday.

Paterno died of lung cancer in January. When reached by phone Saturday, his son Jay Paterno deferred comment to the family’s spokesman, Dan McGinn.

Source & Image : New York Times

Dream to Nightmare

Doug Glanville on baseball, its controversies and its lessons for life.

Tags:

baseball draft, brien taylor, college world series

Source & Image : New York Times

US man in critical care after SAfrica chimp attack

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In the six years he's managed a sanctuary for abused and orphaned chimpanzees, South African conservationist Eugene Cussons is from time to time called on to comment when an ape elsewhere in the world attacks a human. Cussons says he could always pinpoint a moment of taunting or perceived aggression that could have set off the quick and powerful animals.

This time, though, the attack was at his own Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden in eastern South Africa. And Cussons, host of the Animal Planet show "Escape to Chimp Eden," is without an explanation.

In telephone interview Saturday, Cussons said he would have to wait until the severely injured victim, a University of Texas at San Antonio anthropology graduate student who was inspired by famed primatologist Jane Goodall to study chimps, was well enough to provide details on what sparked Thursday's attack.

It was the first such attack since Cussons, working with Goodall's renowned international institute, converted part of his family's game farm into the sanctuary in 2006.

"You can train for it, you can do your best to prepare," Cussons said. "But when it actually happens, it's shocking and traumatic for everyone."

Cussons's team quickly evacuated the dozen tourists to whom Andrew F. Oberle had been giving a lecture and tried to separate the chimps from Oberle. In the end, Cussons, who was himself attacked by a chimp as he tried to pull it off Oberle, took the extreme step of firing into the air, scaring the animals away.

Oberle was bitten repeatedly and dragged for nearly a kilometer (half mile). Cussons said one of the chimps was injured in the scuffle, and he was awaiting a veterinarian's report to determine the nature and extent of the injury. No one else was hurt.

Male chimps can stand up to 1.7 meters (5 feet, 7 inches) tall and weigh about 70 kilograms (154 pounds), according to the Jane Goodall institute. The two chimps that attacked Oberle were male, though the sanctuary's website did not say how large those animals were.

Cussons said it was the first time he had asked Oberle to speak to visitors. The student had arrived last month for a follow-up study visit after an extended stay to observe the chimps a year or so ago, Cussons said. As a researcher, Cussons said Oberle had been trained to ensure he understood how the animals might behave and knew to keep a safe distance. Cussons said Oberle was given additional training before addressing the tour group.

Cussons said Oberle broke the rules by going through the first of two fences that separate humans from the chimps. The chimps then grabbed him and pulled him under the second fence, which is electrified. Cussons said it was unclear why Oberle had moved so dangerously close.

Only after Oberle is well enough to talk will investigators "be able to find out why he crossed the safety fence to go on to the main fence," Cussons said.

Mediclinic Nelspruit hospital said Saturday that the 26-year-old Oberle remained in critical condition in intensive care. Oberle underwent surgery at the hospital Thursday.

Cussons said Saturday that Oberle's mother was on her way to South Africa. Oberle's mother, Mary Flint of St. Louis, said Friday that chimpanzees have been her son's passion since seventh grade, when he watched a film about Goodall.

Goodall, a Cambridge University-trained ethnologist, began studying chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park in 1960. Since 1994, her institute has been involved in conservation programs across Africa. The institute says its Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center in Congo is the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in Africa.

Flint said Oberle knew the risks of working with chimps and would not want them blamed for the attack.

"He adored them," she said. "Since he was a little boy he just loved them, and I just have faith that ... when all is said and done, he's going to go right back into it."

The sanctuary has been closed to tourists since the attack, while government and police officials investigate. The Jane Goodall Institute South Africa is conducting its own investigation.

"Everyone at Chimp Eden is hurting," Cussons said, saying the thoughts of staff members were with Oberle and his family.

Cussons said the two chimps that attacked Oberle, Amadeus and Nikki, had been isolated in their night pens since the attack. He said they were calm and exhibiting remorse, which he said chimps show by behaving submissively.

Human-animal contact is kept to a minimum at the sanctuary, designed as a haven for chimpanzees, which are not native to South Africa, that have been rescued from elsewhere in Africa. Some lost their parents to poachers in countries where they are hunted for their meat or to be sold as pets, and others were held in captivity in cruel conditions.

"They come here and we rehabilitate them by giving them space ... and contact with their own kind," Cussons said. According to the sanctuary's website, one of the chimps involved in the attack, Amadeus, was orphaned in Angola and brought to South Africa in 1996, where he was kept at the Johannesburg Zoo until the sanctuary opened. The other, Nikki, came from Liberia in 1996 and also was held at the zoo until becoming among the first chimps at the sanctuary. Before arriving in South Africa, Nikki, whose parents were killed for their meat, had been treated like a son by his owners, who dressed him in clothes, shaved his body and taught him to eat at a table using cutlery, the website said.

In the United States, a Connecticut woman, Charla Nash, was attacked in 2009 by a friend's chimpanzee that ripped off her nose, lips, eyelids and hands before being killed by police. The woman was blinded and has had a face transplant. Lawyers for Nash filed papers this week accusing state officials of failing to seize the animal before the mauling despite a warning that it was dangerous.

Source & Image : Yahoo

It’s Time to Set Up Exchanges

Now that the health care reform law has been ruled constitutional, it is imperative that as many states as possible move aggressively to establish a centerpiece of the reform structure: new insurance policy exchanges for people who lack affordable coverage through an employer. Federal subsidies will be available for those with low or moderate incomes.

States that were dawdling or refusing to set up exchanges in expectation that the Supreme Court would strike down the law have little time left to meet tight deadlines. If they fail, the federal government will establish an exchange to serve their residents, who otherwise would have no way to obtain subsidies to reduce the cost of their insurance.

The exchanges will essentially be online marketplaces for private plans that provide a package of essential benefits and consumer protections like guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions. They will compete to sell policies to individuals, families and small businesses. Anyone can use the exchanges to gain the benefits of comparative shopping, but most customers are expected to be individuals and families with incomes between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. They will be eligible for federal tax subsidies to make insurance affordable.

Many states are well on the way toward setting up exchanges, a complicated process in which governance procedures must be established, standards must be set for the plans that will compete and new information technologies put in place. The big uncertainty is how many Republican-led states will refuse to set up exchanges either because they adamantly oppose all aspects of the reform law or because they are reluctant to spend any time, effort or money to set up a mechanism that they hope Republicans will repeal after the November elections. That sounds like wishful thinking. States would be foolish to rely on it with deadlines fast approaching.

States must tell the secretary of health and human services by Nov. 16, just 10 days after the election, whether or not they plan to set up their own exchanges. The secretary must then certify by Jan. 1, 2013, whether states are on track to start enrolling people by Oct. 1, 2013, and to actually open for business on Jan. 1, 2014.

The Obama administration, which is eager to see the law implemented effectively, seems willing to accommodate any states that will make a good-faith effort. On Friday, the secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, announced that, in addition to grants already made to 34 states and the District of Columbia to plan their exchanges, she would open up additional financing sources that could be used even after the original start-up deadline. She also pledged to work closely with the states to tailor a federal exchange to meet their needs and a plan for transition to state control.

That sounds like a deal that no responsible elected official should pass up in the quixotic hope that the reform law will somehow go away.

Source & Image : New York Times

David Cameron 'prepared to consider EU referendum'

David Cameron is prepared to consider a referendum on the UK's EU relationship, but only when the time is right, he has written in the Sunday Telegraph.

In the article, the prime minister said he wanted a "real choice" for voters but said that an immediate in/out referendum was not what most wanted.

BBC political correspondent Carole Walker said Mr Cameron was "opening the door" to a possible referendum.

Nearly 100 Conservative MPs have called for a poll during the next Parliament.

In a letter to the prime minister, they urged him to make it a legal commitment to hold a vote on the UK's relationship with the EU.

The prime minister acknowledged the need to ensure the UK's position within an evolving European Union had "the full-hearted support of the British people" but said they needed to show "tactical and strategic patience".

He disagreed "with those who say we should leave and therefore want the earliest possible in/out referendum" because he did not think it was in the country's best interests.

"An 'in' vote too would have profound disadvantages. All further attempts at changing Britain's relationship with Europe would be met with cries that the British people had already spoken," he added.

He wrote: "There is more to come - further moves, probably further treaties - where we can take forward our interests, safeguard the single market and stay out of a federal Europe.

"Let us start to spell out in more detail the parts of our European engagement we want and those that we want to end. While we need to define with more clarity where we would like to get to, we need to show tactical and strategic patience.

"The eurozone is in crisis which needs to be resolved, and we are in a coalition government during this Parliament.

"Nevertheless I will continue to work for a different, more flexible and less onerous position for Britain within the EU.

"How do we take the British people with us on this difficult and complicated journey? How do we avoid the wrong paths of either meekly accepting the status quo or giving up altogether and preparing to leave? It will undoubtedly be hard going, but taking the right path in politics often is.

"As we get closer to the end point we will need to consider how best to get the full-hearted support of the British people, whether it is in a general election or a referendum.

"As I have said, for me the two words 'Europe' and 'referendum' can go together, particularly if we really are proposing a change in how our country is governed, but let us get the people a real choice first."

The BBC's Carole Walker said the article meant Mr Cameron had moved a step closer to offering a referendum and that the prime minister was trying to tell his backbenchers he was on their side.

But he was also saying that with the "huge amount of change going on in Europe" now was not the time.

"He wants to change Britain's relationship with Europe, and, interestingly enough, he says that he believes that there's far too much Europe, too much bureaucracy, too much legislation... which in his view should be scrapped," said our correspondent.

Many Conservative MPs believe Britain should renegotiate the terms of its EU membership and take back significant powers.

More than 100 earlier this year demanded that Britain should withdraw from the European Arrest Warrant and 130 other crime and policing rules.

Conservatives have also long pressed for Britain to be exempted from the European Working Time Directive and other laws they see as harming Britain's economic competitiveness.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and fellow Lib Dem coalition members are likely to resist moves to repatriate powers.

The pro-European Liberal Democrats made a manifesto commitment to an "in/out referendum the next time a British government signs up for fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU".

Source & Image : BBC

Frankie Boyle hits back over tax claims

Comedian Frankie Boyle has strongly defended his tax arrangements after it was alleged he could have avoided paying nearly £900,000 tax last year.

Boyle said on Twitter that he had paid £2.7m in tax since 2007, which amounted to just under 40% of his income.

He said he was certain he paid more tax than most people in showbusiness and the cabinet.

The Daily Mail said the tax could have been saved when he put his production company into voluntary liquidation.

It comes after fellow comic Jimmy Carr was criticised for using a complex scheme to reduce his tax payments.

The newspaper said Boyle, who mocked Carr after he hit the headlines, might also have been the beneficiary of sharp but legal accountancy methods to save tax on the millions of pounds he has earned through TV shows, tours, DVDs and book sales.

By closing Traskor Productions Limited, of which he was sole director and shareholder, the paper said he might have been able to pay a tax rate of 10%, rather than 50% if he had taken money out as dividends or income.

This is because he could have been entitled to "entrepreneur" tax relief, saving him £880,762, it said.

On Twitter Boyle wrote: "From 2007 I have paid £2.7m in tax and this equates to just under 40% of my income.

"There's a lot of things people do to avoid paying tax and I don't do any of them.

"I wound my company up for legal reasons separate from tax and my accountant applied for tax relief on this. This tax relief is approximately half of the tax saving the Mail quoted in its article today.

"I am certain I pay more tax than most people in show business and the cabinet."

Prime Minister David Cameron called Carr's use of the K2 tax scheme, which can lower the amount of tax paid as "morally wrong".

It is legal and Mr Carr made clear in his statement it was fully disclosed to HMRC.

He said he had "made a terrible error of judgement".

More than 1,000 people, including Carr, are thought to be using the Jersey-based K2 scheme, which is said to be sheltering £168m a year from the Treasury.

Source & Image : BBC

For Uninsured in Texas, Supreme Court Ruling Adds to Uncertainty

PASADENA, Tex. — In an ordinary world, Josh Hebert would have accepted the raises his employer offered.

But in the extraordinary world of the uninsured, he has not only turned down the pay increases at the bank where he works, but has twice asked for a pay cut — so that he and his wife’s ill 7-year-old daughter can qualify for government-sponsored children’s health insurance.

By keeping his income low, he and his wife, Kyla, are able to ensure that their daughter continues to have health coverage. The parents remain uninsured themselves, like thousands of others in this working-class refinery town outside Houston. Thirty-three percent of the population here lacks medical insurance.

Nearby in Houston, hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday upheld the core provisions of President Obama’s health care overhaul, Luis Duran hardly paid attention. He and his wife sifted through medical documents stuffed in a paper bag, evidence of his ordeal to survive cancer without health insurance.

A crane operator, Mr. Duran had been covered for years through his employer, but a simple paperwork oversight left him uninsured last year. Months later, he learned he had colon cancer, and spent roughly $7,000 on a colonoscopy and surgery — a reduced rate — using money he received from relatives and from selling some of his and his wife’s jewelry, including a 14-karat gold medallion of Jesus Christ.

“When you don’t have insurance, nobody listens to you,” said Mr. Duran, 51, who had been making about $50,000 annually but is now on disability. “It’s a powerless feeling. You feel like you’re an outcast. You feel that you’re homeless without insurance.”

In Texas — where 25 percent of the population lacks health insurance, the highest uninsured rate of any state, according to the Texas Medical Association — the Supreme Court’s ruling was not quite the partisan victory or defeat it might have been in Washington. Though those without health coverage perhaps had the most at stake, the ruling was one more element of uncertainty in uncertain lives, drowned out by more pressing medical needs and financial pressures.

The uncertainty was intensified by unanswered questions over the state’s efforts to fight the expansion of Medicaid, the government health-insurance program for low-income and sick people. Expanding Medicaid was the major portion of the health care law that the Supreme Court restricted in its decision, allowing states flexibility to opt out of the expansion without penalties. Thomas M. Suehs, the commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services agency, said he remained concerned that expanding Medicaid without reforming it multiplied the costs the program put on states, adding that Medicaid already consumed a quarter of the state budget.

As a result, many of the uninsured in Texas who would be eligible for coverage under the expansion remain in a state of limbo.

“It’s a big concern,” said Gladys Vasquez, 50, a Houston home health aide who cannot afford private insurance on her $17,000 annual salary and whose employer does not offer her coverage. “Right now, it’s scary to get sick, because if you don’t die from the sickness, you die when you see the bill.”

Mrs. Vasquez takes care of her own medical needs at a local clinic and by relying on her 90-year-old mother’s home remedies. On Thursday, watching the television news coverage of the ruling at her client’s house, she let out a cheer.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Mrs. Vasquez, a member of the Texas Organizing Project, a community activist group. “It’s something we really needed.”

In Houston and the surrounding suburbs and cities in Harris County, including Pasadena, the number of uninsured people like Mrs. Vasquez is so large — more than one million people — it rivals the total population of Dallas. They defy easy categorization.

Though some are newly arrived illegal immigrants living in extreme poverty, many others, like Mr. Hebert, Mr. Duran and Mrs. Vasquez, are American citizens with mortgages or part-time and full-time jobs. Some work in businesses that do not offer coverage, or they cannot afford private insurance; others are eligible but not enrolled in government programs like Medicaid.

Source & Image : New York Times

Some Dems still skittish on health care; GOP riled

WASHINGTON (AP) — Victory at the Supreme Court for President Barack Obama and Democrats on health care is reopening political divisions within the party over the unpopular law.

Four months to an election with control of Congress in the balance, the court's affirmation of the law left several Democrats insisting that the issue was settled and it's time to focus on helping the sluggish economy.

Other Democrats saw the newfound attention as a chance to reset the debate and make a fresh case for the law's more popular elements, especially as 12.8 million people start getting health insurance rebate checks in the coming months.

The most vulnerable Democratic incumbents and challengers — Montana Sen. Jon Tester and North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp among them — cautiously welcomed the court's judgment but said the law could be improved.

Even before Obama signed the measure in March 2010, Republicans were unified in opposition and clear in their message: repeal and replace. The White House and divided Democrats have been frustrated in trying to explain and sell the law to a skeptical public in a sharp contrast to the GOP. The court's decision was a reminder of political reality.

Two years ago, grassroots outrage over health care contributed to the Democrats losing the House majority and seven Senate seats. Republicans and outside groups promise more of the same in the campaign push to November.

The court has "done a favor" for Republicans, freshman Rep. Allen West of Florida, who owes his seat in part to that anger, said in an interview. "Why would the Obama administration and Democrats want the pre-eminent issue of 2010 to be the pre-eminent issue of 2012?"

Conservative leader Richard Viguerie said the court's decision has raised that anger to "a revolutionary fervor that will sweep President Obama and many other Democrats from office." The Tea Party Express appealed to its supporters for money and backing to defeat Obama and "a liberal U.S. Senate that have foisted Obamacare down our throats." Outside groups, both parties and candidates have been furiously fundraising off the ruling.

In North Dakota, Crossroads GPS released an ad Friday that calls out Heitkamp, the Democratic Senate candidate, for her support of the law and contends that it raises taxes and expands regulations. Crossroads GPS is the conservative-leaning group tied to former President George W. Bush's longtime political director, Karl Rove.

Looking to finesse a difficult issue, Heitkamp has aired an ad that argues for the law in personal terms.

"I'm Heidi Heitkamp and 12 years ago, I beat breast cancer," she says. "When you live through that, political attack ads seem silly."

The former state attorney general, who's in a close race with Republican Rep. Rick Berg, said the bill has its good and bad points and needs to be fixed but that she would never deny coverage to seniors.

In suburban Chicago, Democratic candidate Tammy Duckworth said that as a survivor of a health crisis, she understands the importance of affordable health care. Duckworth, who piloted a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq, lost both legs when her aircraft was hit in 2004.

She highlighted the popular elements of the law: banning denial of coverage for people with medical conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, and reducing seniors' Medicare prescription drug costs by closing the "donut hole." But Duckworth complained about the law's "unfair burden on employers, especially our small businesses," and promised to address the issue if she ousts first-term Republican Rep. Joe Walsh.

Public opposition to the health care law remains high. Forty-seven percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-GfK poll said they oppose the law while 33 percent said they support it. Thirteen percent said they are neutral. Those who strongly oppose the legislation also outnumber those who strongly support it, 32 percent to 17 percent, about a 2-to-1 margin.

Critical to both parties, just 21 percent of independents support it, the lowest level of support the AP-GfK poll has recorded on the issue.

Much of the polling does find strong support for individual elements, like allowing young adults to remain on their parents' plan to age 26. Some Democrats see that as an opening to reframe the debate.

"I see this as a huge moment for us," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in an interview. "Now that the benefits are kicking in, it's a lot easier to explain it."

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the court's ruling lifts a cloud of uncertainty.

"Now the American people are going to say, 'Now what's in that for me?'" Harkin said. "As long as Democrats are willing to go out there and positively say, 'Look, now you are guaranteed that you will get affordable health insurance if you had breast cancer in the past ... preventive care, free mammograms. ... And they (Republicans) want to take it away from you. You have it now and they want to take it away from you. If you want it taken away from you, you just go ahead and vote for them.'"

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presidential nominee in 2004, said Democrats need to seize the chance.

"I think it's very important to do what wasn't done sufficiently before," Kerry said.

The Republican response? Bring it on.

The court ruling gave clarity to the GOP call for repeal — electing Republican candidates in November is the only way now to ensure the law's demise. In a fundraising appeal within hours of the court announcement, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said, "Now we know — four seats to repeal Obamacare," a reference to the net number that the GOP needs to seize the Senate majority.

Republicans also used the ruling to craft a new attack line. Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion said the law's requirement that Americans purchase health care is a tax, which Republicans argued contradicted Obama and Democrats who insist they aren't raising taxes on the poor and middle class.

"The court blew the president's cover," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

The tax debate will be at the forefront when the House votes the week of July 9 to overturn the law, a largely symbolic step with a Democratic-controlled Senate but one that will put Democrats and Republicans on record and provide fodder for the campaign.

____

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

Source & Image : Yahoo

Yitzhak Shamir, former Israeli PM, dies

As Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir presided over negotiations with Egypt on the post-treaty normalization process.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Yitzhak Shamir was born in Poland


• The 96-year-old politician was involved in key foreign policy initiatives


• Netanyahu says he 'belonged to the generation of giants" that established the state

Jerusalem (CNN) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir died Saturday, the country's prime minister's office said. He was 96.

Shamir twice served as Israeli premier: from 1983 to 1984, and from 1986 to 1992. He also was Israel's foreign minister from 1980 to 1986.

Born in Poland, Shamir moved to Palestine and fought for Israeli independence. He joined the Likud movement, serving as a member of Israel's parliament.

He succeeded Menachem Begin as prime minister in 1983.

"Yitzhak Shamir belonged to the generation of giants who established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people on their land," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fellow Likud member.

Shamir was involved in key foreign policy initiatives.

He presided over negotiations with Egypt on the post-treaty normalization process, and started diplomatic relations with several African countries that had severed relations with Israel after the Yom Kippur War, according to a biography of Shamir on the prime minister's website.

Shamir ordered Operation Solomon, the airlift rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews following a regime change in 1991. During the operation, which took less than 48 hours, 14,000 Jews boarded Israeli planes to emigrate to Israel, according to the Israeli government.

In September 1991, Shamir represented Israel at the International Peace Conference in Madrid.

Source & Image : CNN World

Growing up in an Egyptian military household

You never really think about what kind of household you grow up in, nor do you think that much about your family.

The fact that my late father and my late grandfather were in the army was just a part of life.

My father was a lieutenant-general in the army and retired early for health reasons.

My earliest memories are of him taking and picking me up from school in his uniform.

I remember he commanded so much respect from everyone around him. I think it was mainly his self-assured character, but I'm sure the uniform also helped.

My father was also strict - very strict.

That to me was the most affecting thing about him being an army man, more than the uniform.

His answers were firm and final, and understandably he did not speak at all of his work.

Photographs of my father's graduation from military school and hand-painted portraits of him in full uniform were a source of pride in my grandparents' house in our home town, Alexandria.

I'm sure this was the same for many families.

Having a son, a brother or a husband in the army was a cause for many Egyptians families to boast.

There are few institutions in Egypt that command immediate respect and admiration. The army is right at the top.

As a child I didn't know much about the army's vast economic ventures - the factories making everything from pasta to stoves and fridges and even kitchen utensils - but I did know about their beach clubs.

The Armed Forces Officers' beach club in Alexandria is where I spent so many weekends growing up.

We couldn't go in without my father as he was the only holder of the membership card.

No-one could enter without the membership card, and these were exclusive to the military.

The beach club itself was not too luxurious but it was good enough for me and my sister to have the fondest childhood memories.

The military-owned bakeries were famed for being among the best and the most affordable in the country.

My father would bring home the best cakes and pastries for us.

When we visited Cairo, we stayed at one of the big military hotels near Heliopolis.

There wasn't much I knew about Cairo as a small child except that it was a big city with no beach - which I hated - and that we stayed at a nice military hotel with a lovely swimming pool - which I loved.

The army also had housing projects for officers - big apartment blocks in one of Alexandria's prime areas.

My sister and I used to spend time in the gardens of one of the buildings playing with our cousins.

Their father was also a military officer and they lived there.

It is a parallel economy that from the outside looks extremely bizarre, but it is a way of life in Egypt.

It was a way for the army to be self-sufficient and it also provided thousands with job opportunities in a country where unemployment is a constant headache for authorities.

The Egyptian army takes care of it's own - anyone in Egypt will tell you this - and when my father had his first heart attack, he was treated in Alexandria's biggest military hospital.

I remember the gates and checkpoints we had to go through to visit my father at the hospital, including again the military membership card.

This time it was my grandfather presenting it at the gate.

It was in the same hospital that he would sadly pass years later.

Egypt has a new president now, but it is the military that is very much still in charge - they gave themselves sweeping powers just before the presidential election announcement.

Some criticise them for what they see as holding on to power, while others say that in a time of uncertainty, who better than the Egyptian army to hold the country together?

Their role in Egypt at the moment will continue to be a subject of constant debate.

Their role in my life however will always be associated with memories of my late father.

Source & Image : BBC