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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Senate rejects bid to let states run food stamps

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Republican bid to turn the federal food stamp program over to the states.

The current program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is administered by the Agriculture Department and federal dollars are unlimited as long as recipients qualify. The program cost $78 billion last year, more than double the price in 2008.

A proposal by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to a wide-ranging farm bill would have converted the program into grants to states, which could decide how to use the money, with certain restrictions. The Senate rejected the amendment 60-36.

The total amount of the grants would have been capped at between $46 billion and $54 billion a year over 10 years. Inhofe said the change would make the farm bill, which long has set policy for domestic food aid as well as agriculture programs, "into a farm bill and not a charity bill."

Food stamps have come under renewed scrutiny as the program's costs have ballooned in recent years. Many Republicans have favored changing the SNAP program into grants, though the idea has never gained much traction in Congress.

Last year more than 47 million people used SNAP. The numbers have risen rapidly because of the economic downturn, higher food prices and expanded eligibility under the 2009 economic stimulus law.

Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who heads the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said Inhofe's plan would mean "devastating results or millions of families who are trying to feed their children."

The Senate farm bill would cut the food stamp program by $400 million a year, or about half of 1 percent. The Senate rejected a Republican amendment to increase that cut and a Democratic amendment to decrease the cut Tuesday.

The House version of the farm bill would cut $2 billion a year, or a little more than 3 percent, from the domestic food aid.

Both the Senate and House bills would target states that give people without heating bills small amounts of heating assistance so they automatically can qualify for higher food stamp benefits. The House also would eliminate giving people automatic food stamp benefits when they sign up for certain other programs.

Resolving the differences on food aid will be key to passage of the five-year farm bill that lawmakers are attempting to push through for the third year in a row. The legislation costs almost $100 billion annually and would set policy for farm subsidies, other rural programs and the domestic food aid.

The Senate is expected to consider several more amendments to the farm bill this week, including cuts to government-subsidized crop insurance.

The Senate passed a similar farm bill last year, but the House did not consider it. The House Agriculture Committee approved its version of the farm bill last week and the full House is expected to vote on the bill this summer.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-rejects-bid-let-states-164714144.html

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UK 'Tea Party' surges, pressuring Tories and Cameron

They?re an upstart political movement intent on ?taking back? the country from an out-of-touch political elite accused of ignoring opposition to immigration and threats to what they consider the nation?s Christian heritage.

The insurgents, many of them self-styled libertarians, have marched from one electoral success to another and are pushing the country?s dominant right-wing party even further to the right.

On one side of the Atlantic, that scenario might feel familiar to anyone who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. Yet in this case it is Britain?s Conservative Party leadership, not Republicans, who are feeling the heat. The rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which a poll on Tuesday put just two percentage points behind the Conservative Party itself, is on the rise and transforming British politics.

RECOMMENDED: Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz.

The record high of 22 percent for the UKIP comes after the most important chapter in its transition from the political fringes to the mainstream, when it won more than 140 seats in the English county councils earlier this month, snatching many from the Conservatives and beating the centrist Liberal Democrats into fourth place nationally.

Although UKIP was established to campaign for a British withdrawal from the European Union, it is evolving into a magnet for discontent about a range of issues including immigration and moves by the government to legalize gay marriage and is establishing itself as the foremost port of call for voters seeking to give a black eye to Westminster's three largest parties.

"An exit from the EU is the start of the journey, the key in the door," says Ray Finch, the leader of a crop of new UKIP councillors who ousted Conservatives from the county council of Hampshire, a southern coast county that has traditionally been regarded as a heartland of Prime Minister David Cameron's party. "What we generally are looking towards as a party is to reduce the power of the state and the size of the state, get it out of people's lives as much as possible so that they can live without being continually harassed, spied upon, and continually taxed."

FROM PROTEST TO POWER

Few commentators expect UKIP to pick up large numbers of seats, if any, at the next election in 2015, primarily due to the way the mechanics of Britain's electoral system mitigate against parties whose support is spread out. Many also still view support for UKIP as a mid-term protest vote while opponents seize on what they regard as the ?false promise? of its manifesto ? which combines large-scale tax cuts with promises of investments in healthcare, education, and infrastructure along with dramatically increased spending on defense.

Nevertheless, its dramatic rise as a political force has rattled Conservative MPs, increasing the ranks pushing for Cameron to take a hardline position on future membership of the EU. This week saw the latest rebellion by MPs from his own party, who attempted to interfere with the legislative passage of the gay marriage plans, a central plank of Cameron's attempts to transform the party's image, but which are opposed by many activists, MPs, and even some Tory cabinet ministers.

Further pressure was heaped on his leadership when the Conservative Party's co-chairman, who is also a member of Cameron's inner circle, was forced to fend off allegations that he had dismissed his party's activists as ?swivel-eyed loons? during a conversation with journalists.

"Loongate," which fed a Tory rebel narrative seeking to depict the Cameron leadership as a metropolitan elite divorced from the needs and instincts of the grassroots, has been seized on by UKIP's own leader Nigel Farage, a gregarious former stockbroker seemingly seldom photographed without a cigarette and a pint in his hand.

In a bid to woo disenchanted Conservatives, he took out a full-page ad in the right-leaning Daily Telegraph on Monday in which he accused Britain's political class of being "completely out of touch with the thoughts of ordinary people."

"Only an administration run by a bunch of college kids, none of whom have ever had a proper job in their lives, could so arrogantly write off their own supporters," wrote Farage, describing the loon comment as "the ultimate insult."

LABOUR INROADS, TOO

It's not just the Tories who are being damaged by UKIP. Last week the party won a council by-election in a northern English area regarded as a stronghold of the Labour Party. Statistics also show that UKIP has tended to draw support from blue-collar workers and voters on low incomes ? all groups that are the traditional bedrock for the left-of-center opposition party.

Some analysts caution against reading too much into the UKIP by-election win in Labour's northern heartland.

?I would say they are less of a threat to Labour in the north than they are to the Conservatives the south," says Brendan Evans, professor of Politics at the University of Huddersfield. "The evidence suggests that, north and south, they take more votes from the Conservative Party. It?s true that they will eat into the Labour vote in the north because it is in many ways a protest vote, a vote of rejecting the political establishment and the way the current political agenda is going.... But I think that they are a bigger threat to Conservatives nationwide in that while UKIP probably won?t win parliamentary seats in the next general election they will deprive votes from the Conservatives and hand, in effect, seats over to Labour.?

It?s a nightmare scenario for senior Conservative Party strategists seeking centrist voters, and one which might draw sympathy from Republication counterparts who have long looked over their shoulders at the Tea Party.

For their part, UKIP activists don?t seem to be entirely unhappy with the US parallels.

?We come from slightly different cultures but we do understand particularly Ron Paul, who Nigel met recently and they got on famously together,? says Mr. Finch, the UKIP county councilor in Hampshire. ?We do believe as the Tea Party believes that people should be left, as far as is practicable, left to make the best of their own lives.?

Nor, like many Tea Partiers, does he believe that the movement is a temporary phenomenon.

?We are here to stay. The time for the Conservatives to have changed direction was 20 years ago when UKIP was formed. We see ourselves as a radical party. The Conservative Party is and have been for many years a part of the state, the EU, and big business, which are all linked together.?

RECOMMENDED: Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Study reveals how fishing gear can cause slow death of whales

May 21, 2013 ? Using a "patient monitoring" device attached to a whale entangled in fishing gear, scientists showed for the first time how fishing lines changed a whale's diving and swimming behavior. The monitoring revealed how fishing gear hinders whales' ability to eat and migrate, depletes their energy as they drag gear for months or years, and can result in a slow death.

The scientists in this entanglement response suction-cupped a cellphone-size device called a Dtag to a two-year-old female North Atlantic right whale called Eg 3911. The Dtag, developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), recorded Eg 3911's movements before, during, and after at-sea disentanglement operations.

Immediately after Eg 3911 was disentangled from most of the fishing gear, she swam faster, dove twice as deep, and for longer periods. The study, by scientists at WHOI, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and NOAA Fisheries, was published online May 21 in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

"The Dtag opened up a whole new world of Eg 3911's life under water that otherwise we weren't able to see," said Julie van der Hoop, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography.

North Atlantic right whales were nearly eradicated by whaling and remain endangered today, with a population of 450 to 500. About 75 percent bear scars of fishing lines that cut into their flesh.

Born in 2009, Eg 3911 was first sighted entangled and emaciated by an aerial survey team on Christmas Day 2010, near Jacksonville, Florida. Fishing gear was entangled around her mouth, wrapped around both pectoral fins, and trailed about 100 feet behind her tail.

Teams aboard boats attempted to cut away the fishing gear on Dec. 29 and 30, 2010, but were not successful because the whale was evasive. A multiagency team tried again on Jan. 15, 2011. First, they applied a Dtag. Then they administered a carefully calculated sedative with a dart gun developed for large whale drug delivery by Paxarms NZ in collaboration with Dr. Michael Moore, director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI and a marine mammal veterinarian. The becalmed whale allowed the team to approach and remove nearly all the fishing gear.

The Dtag measured 152 dives that Eg 3911 took over six hours. There were no significant differences in depth or duration of dives after sedation, but "the whale altered its behavior immediately following disentanglement," the scientists reported. "The near-complete disentanglement of Eg 3911 resulted in significant increases in dive duration and depth."

"Together, the effects of added buoyancy, added drag, and reduced swimming speed due to towing accessory gear pose many threats to entangled whales," the scientists wrote. Buoyant gear may overwhelm animals' ability to descend to depths to forage on preferred prey. Increased drag can reduce swimming speeds, delaying whales' timely arrival to feeding or breeding grounds. "Most significant, however, is the energy drain associated with added drag," they said.

To calculate that drain, the scientists, in a separate experiment, towed three types of fishing gear from a skiff, using tensiometers to measure the drag forces acting on Eg 3911. They then calculated how much more energy whales would require to compensate for the drag. The results: Entangled whales have significantly higher energy demands, requiring 70 to 102 percent more power to swim at the same speed unentangled; or alternatively, they need to slow down their swimming speed by 16 to 20.5 percent.

The study provides the first data on the behavioral impacts of sedation and disentanglement and the energetic cost of entanglement in fishing gear due to drag.

On Feb. 1, 2011, an aerial survey observed Eg 3911 dead at sea.

"She didn't make it," van der Hoop said. The whale was towed ashore for a necropsy. "We showed up on the beach that night. I remember walking out there and seeing this huge whale, or what I thought was huge. She was only 10 meters long. She was only two years old. And all these people who had been involved in her life at some point, were there to learn from her what entanglement had caused."

The necropsy showed that effects of the chronic entanglement were the cause of death.

"No fisherman wants to catch a whale, and I wish no fisherman a hungry day," said Moore. "There needs to be a targeted assessment of how the fishery can still be profitable while deploying less gear so we can reduce the risk of marine mammals encountering fishing gear in the first place. At WHOI, we have hosted workshops talking with fisheries managers and fishermen about what might change so that they can continue to catch fish and stop catching whales."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/o2ecGA_Uccw/130521194229.htm

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9-year-old, 65-year-old among first tornado victims identified - U.S. ...

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja'Nae Hornsby, 9, (right) with her cousin Taylor, 14, in a photo taken over the weekend.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

A 9-year-old girl who was "always smiling" is among the first of the Oklahoma tornado victims to be identified.

Third-grader Ja'Nae Hornsby was one of the students who perished when the twister demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. on Monday afternoon.

Members of her grieving family gathered Tuesday at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other after a night of anxious waiting ended with a hope-shattering call from the medical examiner's office.

Her aunt, Angela Hornsby, said Ja'Nae had spent last weekend at her house, playing with her cousins and ?doing what little girls do.?

?They like to play dress-up,? she recalled. ?My daughter puts jewelry on them and I took pictures of them dancing together and they took video. They were just happy.

"She was always happy, always smiling."

Courtesy Angela Hornsby

Ja'Nae Hornsby, 9, with her 2-year-old sister Jia, in a photo taken over the weekend.

On Monday, Ja'Nae went off to Plaza Towers Elementary School while her father, Joshua, headed into Oklahoma City for work.

As the tornado bore down on the suburb of Moore just before dismissal time, the father of two tried to race back home to get Ja'Nae from school and his two-year-old, Jia, from daycare, Angela Hornsby said.

The highways were jammed, though, and by the time he got to Moore, the grade school had been reduced to a pile of rubble, its parking lot transformed into a triage area for surviving students being pulled from the debris.

There was no sign of Ja'Nae, though. Her father and other relatives shuttled from shelter to shelter, ?looking for answers,? Angela Hornsby said. She dialed all the hospitals that had taken the injured but could not find her niece.

As night fell, Joshua Hornsby went to St. Andrew?s United Methodist Church, where a dwindling number of parents waiting for reunions were camped out.

?He would not leave until he found out what happened to his baby,? his sister said. ?They received a call while they were at the church this morning.

?My sister called to tell me. They were just sobbing.?

Joshua Hornsby also lost his house to the twister. His youngest child, who was picked up from daycare by her grandmother, survived.

Ja'Nae, whose mother died last year of lupus, had doted on her baby sister, family members said.

?She was a good big sister,? her aunt said, her voice cracking with emotion. ?She was just a good girl.?

Pastor James Dorn Jr. of Mount Triumph Baptist Church said he had watched Ja'Nae grow up because her grandfather, Henry Hornsby, used to be the associate pastor there.

Courtesy Bhonde family

Hemant Bhonde, 65, died after a tornado struck Moore, Okla., on May 21.

Like everyone else, he remembered her as full of joy.

?She was a beautiful child to be around, someone you feel privileged to know,? he said. "She did well in school. She was just awesome."

Officials in Moore late Tuesday also identify a second tornado victim as Hemant Bhonde, 65. His family members told NBC News that Bhonde became separated from his wife when the tornado hit their home. His wife survived.

Ed Zurga / EPA

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead as the threat of further storms continues.

NBC News' Jamie Novograd contributed to this story

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18402060-9-year-old-65-year-old-among-first-tornado-victims-identified

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Evaluating a new way to open clogged arteries

May 21, 2013 ? Over the past few decades, scientists have developed many devices that can reopen clogged arteries, including angioplasty balloons and metallic stents. While generally effective, each of these treatments has drawbacks, including the risk of side effects.

A new study from MIT analyzes the potential usefulness of a new treatment that combines the benefits of angioplasty balloons and drug-releasing stents, but may pose fewer risks. With this new approach, a balloon is inflated in the artery for only a brief period, during which it releases a drug that prevents cells from accumulating and clogging the arteries over time.

While approved for limited use in Europe, these drug-coated balloons are still in development in the United States and have not received FDA approval. The MIT study, which models the behavior of the balloons, should help scientists optimize their performance and aid regulators in evaluating their effectiveness and safety.

"Until now, people who evaluate such technology could not distinguish hype from promise," says Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and senior author of the paper describing the study, which appeared online recently in the journal Circulation.

Lead author of the paper is Vijaya Kolachalama, a former MIT postdoc who is now a principal member of the technical staff at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

Evolution of technology

Until the late 1970s, the standard treatment for patients with blocked arteries near the heart was bypass surgery. Doctors then turned to the much less invasive process of reopening arteries with angioplasty balloons. Angioplasty quickly became the standard treatment for narrowed arteries, but it is not always a long-term solution because the arteries can eventually collapse again.

To prevent that, scientists developed stents -- metal, cage-like structures that can hold an artery open indefinitely. However, these stents have problems of their own: When implanted, they provoke an immune response that can cause cells to accumulate near the stent and clog the artery again.

In 2003, the FDA approved the first drug-eluting stent for use in the United States, which releases drugs that prevent cells from clumping in the arteries. Drug-eluting stents are now the primary choice for treating blocked arteries, but they also have side effects: The drugs can cause blood to clot over time, which has led to death in some patients. Patients who receive these stents now need to take other medications, such as aspirin and Plavix, to counteract blood clotting.

Edelman's lab is investigating a possible alternative to the current treatments: drug-coated balloons. "We're trying to understand how and when this therapy could work and identify the conditions in which it may not," Kolachalama says. "It has its merits; it has some disadvantages."

Modeling drug release

The drug-coated balloons are delivered by a catheter and inflated at the narrowed artery for about 30 seconds, sometimes longer. During that time, the balloon coating, containing a drug such as Zotarolimus, is released from the balloon. The properties of the coating allow the drug to be absorbed in the body's tissues. Once the drug is released, the balloon is removed.

In their new study, Kolachalama, Edelman and colleagues set out to rigorously characterize the properties of the drug-coated balloons. After performing experiments in tissue grown in the lab and in pigs, they developed a computer model that explains the dynamics of drug release and distribution. They found that factors such as the size of the balloon, the duration of delivery time, and the composition of the drug coating all influence how long the drug stays at the injury site and how effectively it clears the arteries.

One significant finding is that when the drug is released, some of it sticks to the lining of the blood vessels. Over time, that drug is slowly released back into the tissue, which explains why the drug's effects last much longer than the initial 30-second release period.

"This is the first time we can explain the reasons why drug-coated balloons can work," Kolachalama says. "The study also offers areas where people can consider thinking about optimizing drug transfer and delivery."

In future studies, Edelman, Kolachalama and colleagues plan to further examine how blood flow affects drug delivery. They also plan to study a variety of different drugs and drug coating compositions, as well as how the balloons behave in different types of arteries.

The National Institutes of Health and Abbott Vascular funded the research.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/heart_disease/~3/q4_1CBDKLMU/130521121513.htm

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Genesis Communications Celebrates 25th Anniversary | AllAccess ...

Congratulations to FLORIDA radio station owner GENESIS COMMUNICATIONS on its 25th anniversary.? The company presently owns clusters in TAMPA, ORLANDO and MELBOURNE.

"We are going to use this milestone anniversary to build on our strengths and to forge exciting new opportunities, enabling us to continue to meet and exceed the needs of our clients," said Pres./CEO BRUCE MADURI.

? see more Net News

Source: http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/118558/genesis-communications-celebrates-25th-anniversary

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96% Blancanieves

All Critics (48) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (45) | Rotten (2)

Most films are experiences to be ignored or at best forgotten. "Blancanieves" is a little classic to be treasured.

It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s, if such details as the kinky sadomasochism of this film's evil stepmother could have been slipped past the censors.

Blancanieves, which won 10 Goyas (Spain's equivalent of the Oscars) and was a smash hit in its native Spain, has traces of a kinky undertone and an uncommon willingness to embrace the darkness inherent in this fairy tale.

As if bewitched, the legend of Snow White is transferred to Seville in the early twentieth century and transformed into high melodrama.

Sensuous, mischievous, hotblooded retelling of the old Teutonic fairy tale.

This gorgeous silent film is an unexpected gift from the gods of pure cinema.

The story might be familiar, but Berger's film is so beautifully shot and so wonderfully scored - and so distinctively Spanish - that it stands as its own film.

Blancanieves holds to the structure, but not strictures, of the source fairy tale.

A new, purely silent movie from Spain that never once speaks and doesn't need to speak. What's more, it seems to get the infinite possibilities of silence, and how much passion can come from it.

Berger's film doesn't show loyalty to any traditional version of Snow White. Berger's Blancanieves takes a darker approach, which seems appropriate.

A completely enchanting fairy tale about the vicissitudes of fate, in live action and glorious black and white.

The fun in the Spanish "Blancanieves" is the way it plays with our expectations.

May not have much depth to its characters or particular surprise, but its lovely depiction of family's ability to harm and mend has the flair of flamenco and the sorrow of opera.

No, "Blancanieves" isn't subtle, but it's an unforgettable time at the movies.

Inspired filmmaking steeped in the imagery of silent film history, a dark Iberian strain of Roman Catholicism and the magic of fairy tales.

... lusty and heartfelt, fiery flamenco and spirited country jig. Don't go expecting a Disney-fied fable. Berger seasons with S&M and the kind of macabre touches you'd expect in vintage Browning or Bunuel.

If not for some faintly disturbing imagery and a pleasingly feminist heroine, you could mistake this for a movie actually made in the 1920s (and even those two factors weren't utterly unknown then).

A loving tribute to European silent films of the 1920s; a reminder that cinema need not be constrained by words.

By the time the film arrives at its grand theatrical finale, you're almost prepared for Berger's last great twist. Almost.

this beautifully shot and imaginatively told fairy tale should be seen my many, but only a few will likely get to enjoy it. This is a shame for the audience it is intended for.

This film is simply gorgeous, pure beauty on film, a vision that leaves you breathless and reeling.

Much of the film's emotion is conveyed by Alfonso de Vilallonga's music, which celebrates Spain with uptempo guitar and flamenco when it isn't tipping its hat to Bernard Herrmann during a scene inspired by Hitchcock.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blancanieves/

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