Saturday, Nov 01st
Last update08:10:46 AM GMT
The Army's recent announcement that another infant had mysteriously died while living in post housing at Fort Bragg was especially eerie to Pearline Sculley, like a bookend to her own tragic story.
The latest death was a boy, 4-1/2 months old, with no obvious illness, who seemed fine one minute on the morning of Feb. 24 and not breathing the next. Sculley's own son, Jaden Willis, was 2-1/2 months old when he died suddenly on the same date in 2007. She still doesn't why.
In February 2006, with roadside bombs killing more and more American soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon created an agency to defeat the deadly threat and tasked a retired four-star general to run it.
Five years later, the agency has ballooned into a 1,900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17 billion on hundreds of initiatives. Yet the technologies it's developed have failed to significantly improve U.S. soldiers' ability to detect unexploded roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances. Indeed, the best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and soldiers themselves.
Instead of keeping watch itself, the Department of Defense today relies on contractors to monitor the work of other contractors, a risk strategy that became cemented during the Iraq War thanks to a politically-connected-and powerful-company with ties to the Bush White House.
In late 2004, the U.S. Army command overseeing logistical support for troops in Iraq had a serious problem on its hands. Army officials had hired KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney had helped lead, to supply soldiers with food and other supplies. But at least $1 billion in billing by KBR was questioned by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency, resulting in the Army deciding to withhold 15% of its payments to KBR.
Republican governor Rick Scott's push to privatize Medicaid in Florida is highly controversial—not least because the health care business Scott handed over to his wife when he took office could reap a major profit if the legislation becomes law.
Scott and Florida Republicans are currently trying to enact a sweeping Medicaid reform bill that would give HMOs and other private health care companies unprecedented control over the government health care program for the poor.
Push a cart down a supermarket aisle, and you’ll pass a kaleidoscope of color. The use of artificial dyes by foodmakers is up by half since 1990, and it’s not limited to candy. The list of foods made pretty by chemicals now includes pickles, bagels and port wine cheese balls.
“Americans are really turned on by a bright-red strawberry juice, and they think it’s natural,” said Kantha Shelke, co-president of the food research firm Corvus Blue. “Or cheese — cheese is naturally a pale color, but most young kids will not eat cheese unless it’s a bright, almost fluorescent orange.”
When the big one hits the Pacific Northwest, the best place to escape the wall of water moving at jetliner speed from 50 miles off the coast may be a City Hall on stilts.
Once the ground finishes two to four minutes of lurching and shaking, residents and tourists in Cannon Beach would flock to the refuge on concrete columns 14 feet above the waves racing beneath.
They would ... if the refuge gets built. There's nothing like it from Northern California to British Columbia and, so far, no money for anything like it.
Home health agencies, hospitals and consumer groups are complaining that a new rule intended to curb unnecessary Medicare spending will make it harder for senior citizens to get home care services.
Under the requirement, which is to take effect next Friday, Medicare beneficiaries will have to see doctors 90 days before or 30 days after starting home health services in order for the home health agencies to be reimbursed. Those face-to-face visits may be a burden for some home-bound frail seniors, as well as those who live in rural areas, the industry says.
Long known as a "boy's club", the worldwide media industry continues to struggle with gender equality, with new research showing women are still under-represented in the majority of newsrooms across the globe.
The study, conducted over a two-year period for the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), covered 170,000 people in the news media and involved interviews with 500 companies in 59 countries.
Parts of America's radiation alert network have been out of order during Japan's nuclear crisis, raising concerns among some lawmakers about whether the system could safeguard the country in a future disaster.
Federal officials say the system of sensors has helped them to validate the impact of nuclear fallout from the overheated Fukushima reactor, and in turn alert local governments and the public. They say no dangerous levels of radiation have reached U.S. shores.
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