Monday, April 21, 2014


News Clips For The Day



South Korean Ferry: Captain Accused of 'Murderous Behavior' – NBC

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- Alexander Smith
First published April 21 2014


South Korea's president accused the captain and crew of the country's sunken ferry of "unforgivable, murderous behavior" on Monday.

The captain of the Sewol ferry initially told passengers to stay in their rooms and waited more than half an hour to give the evacuation order. More than 300 people are either dead or missing five days after the disaster.

"What the captain and part of the crew did is unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense, unforgivable, murderous behavior," President Park Geun-hye told a Cabinet meeting. Her comments were posted on a government website and translated by The Associated Press.

The captain, 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok, and two crew members have been arrested on suspicion of negligence, and Park's comments came the same day as another four crew members were detained, prosecutors told the AP.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye looks at the site where the ferry sank from aboard a coast guard ship on Thursday.

Lee said he waited to give the order because the current was strong and people would have drifted before rescue arrived. As of Monday morning, at least 64 people were confirmed dead and around 240 were still missing.

WATCH: Death toll expected to jump sharply
Park said the captain did not follow a marine traffic controller's instructions to "make the passengers escape," but instead "told the passengers to stay put while they themselves became the first to escape."

"Legally and ethically, this is an unimaginable act," she said.




“The captain of the Sewol ferry initially told passengers to stay in their rooms and waited more than half an hour to give the evacuation order.” President Park Geun-hye speaks scathingly of the captain and crew's lack of notice, failing to deploy the lifeboats, and leaving the ship without evacuating the riders, “unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense, unforgivable, murderous behavior.” The captain, 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok then ran to escape arrest, but he failed. He and a total of six other crew members have been arrested for “negligence,” which seems like a light charge to me. Hopefully the parents of those school kids will put together a class-action law suit, if such is possible in South Korea, and bankrupt them all.

In his defense, the captain said that he was concerned about the strong currents in the area, which is why he waited to give an evacuation order. He went against the traffic controller's orders in taking this action. It is unforgivable that he himself then deployed a life boat and climbed in it. He is 68 years old. He probably should have retired several years ago.




Boy Scouts Tells Church It Can't Host Troop Led by Gay Man – NBC
By Miranda Leitsinger
First published April 21 2014

The Boy Scouts organization has told a Seattle-area church that it can no longer host a troop because the church has vowed to keep a gay man on as troop leader.

The Boy Scouts of America said Sunday that it was contacting leaders and parents of the children in Troop 98 and its affiliated Cub Scout pack to tell them that Rainier Beach United Methodist Church is no longer authorized to be a charter partner.
Boy Scout troops must have a charter partner, which often offers a place to meet and financial support. The scouting organization bans gay adults from membership, and an openly gay man, Geoff McGrath, runs the troop at Rainier Beach.

“Because the church no longer agrees to the terms of the BSA chartered organization agreement, which includes following BSA policies, it is no longer authorized to offer the Scouting program,” Deron Smith, a Boy Scouts spokesman, told NBC News in an email. He added that the organization was “saddened by this development.”

The BSA’s top leader in Seattle has told parents that a local community center has offered to take over the pack and troop.

Rev. Monica Corsaro of the church outside Seattle said the move was expected, but she said that her congregation’s anti-discrimination beliefs were not being respected.
She also called it a “unilateral decision” by the BSA and said that the church was not consulted. (The BSA said it called Corsaro; she said she could not talk last week during the busy Christian Holy Week holidays.)

“Breaking us up like this seems to go against everything the Boy Scouts is about,” Corsaro told NBC News. “It seems to me that when you are in a dispute with a partner you try to work it out with the partner. It’s very clear we’re not viewed as an equal partner.”

Corsaro said the church would still offer a youth program but had not had a chance to discuss what that would be. About 15 boys participate in either the troop or the pack.
NBC News was reporting on Troop 98 and its Scoutmaster, McGrath, in late March when the Boy Scouts revoked McGrath’s membership as an adult leader. The BSA said because McGrath was an openly gay, he could not participate in the organization. Corsaro said at the time that her church would keep McGrath on in his role as Scoutmaster.

The Boy Scouts has grappled with its controversial membership policy barring gays in recent years. In an historic ballot last May, its 1,400-member National Council voted to allow gay youth — but not adults — to join Scouting starting this Jan. 1.

Troop 98 got its start not long after that contentious ballot. Clergy in McGrath’s Seattle neighborhood wanted to start a youth program because there were few in the area, Corsaro said. The clergy reached out to McGrath, a member of the Methodist Church, to ask whether he could lead a Boy Scout unit.

McGrath, a married Eagle Scout, hesitated because he worried that his sexual orientation would sink the effort. He said he didn't hide his sexual orientation from Scouting leaders, but Seattle’s top BSA official told NBC News that she never knew he was gay.

McGrath is believed to be the first gay adult to be booted from the Boy Scouts of America since last May’s vote. He said Sunday that he was “shocked” by the BSA decision.

“It’s just so astounding to me that they would take this tiny, small issue and dissolve two units over it without having a proper conversation with the pastor,” he told NBC News by phone.

The gay fathers of a child who joined Troop 98 after NBC's article said they had received a letter from the BSA’s top leader in Seattle with the offer to transfer to a troop at a local community center. One of the fathers, Kevin Reed, said they had no plans to go elsewhere.

Their son, Adrian Benitez, 14, said: “I don’t feel too good about it because it’s really offensive to my dads and Geoff.”




Geoff McGrath, a gay Boy Scout leader, is no longer in place. BSA has chosen a community center instead to house the troup. “Rev. Monica Corsaro of the church outside Seattle said the move was expected, but she said that her congregation’s anti-discrimination beliefs were not being respected.” I am interested and pleased to see that her church is Methodist instead of a very liberal church such as the Unitarians. I grew up as a Methodist and now am a Unitarian. The Methodist church was always more liberal than the Baptists. Rev. Monica Corsaro said of the decision, “It seems to me that when you are in a dispute with a partner you try to work it out with the partner. It’s very clear we’re not viewed as an equal partner.” The BSA, as of May 2013, did vote to allow gay boys as members, but not gay adults.

Troop 98 was started just after the BSA's decision by a group of clergymen from the area who wanted to start a youth group, as the community needed something for the kids. They called on McGrath, and he agreed. It is not clear whether the clergymen knew he was gay. The BSA official said she didn't know it, though he is described as being “openly gay.” It is commonly thought that gay people are pedophiles, but the psychiatric community denies that, and the cases in which a gay couple have adopted a child are working out well usually, so the BSA shouldn't fear the influence of a gay teacher or scout master just based on that fact alone. When I was growing up nearly all gay people, at least in my small town in the South, were firmly in the closet, so we never had any such issues to deal with.

http://www.galperlaw.com/gay-law-report/gay-adoption-statistics/ –
Gay Adoption Statistics

“Whether Gay Adoption Affects Children
50% of children with lesbian parents are stigmatized, but 2/3 of them develop effective coping mechanisms.

Among teens with lesbian mothers, no difference in quality of life based on donor status (whether they had been conceived by known or unknown donors), experienced stigmatization (whether or not they had experienced discrimination), or maternal relationship continuity (whether their mothers were still together or had separated).
Source: New Study: Teens of Lesbian Parents are Just as Happy as Teens Raised by Different-Sex Couples”

LGBT parenting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Scientific research has been generally consistent in showing that gay and lesbian parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents.[3][4][5] Major associations of mental health professionals in the U.S., Canada, and Australia have not identified credible empirical research that suggests otherwise.[5][6][7][8][9]

Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are parents. In the 2000 U.S. Census, for example, 33 percent of female same-sex couple households and 22 percent of male same-sex couple households reported at least one child under the age of 18 living in the home.[20] As of 2005, an estimated 270,313 children in the United States live in households headed by same-sex couples.[21] ....Since the end of the 1980s, as a result, it has been well established that children and adolescents can adjust just as well in nontraditional settings as in traditional settings.[23]”




'Lost Class' Found: Columbine Survivors Discover New Purpose – NBC
By Jon Schuppe
First published April 19 2014

In July 2012, the Monday after a gunman opened fire on a crowded Aurora, Colo., movie theater, Jennifer Hammer tapped a text message to a friend. She’d spent the weekend watching the news, feeling angry and useless — not because she knew any of the dead or injured, but because it reminded her of the day she spent 13 years earlier, cowering in a music room in Littleton, Colo.'s Columbine High School, listening to two classmates massacre students.

She’d had the same reaction to other mass shootings. This one, though, was so close to home.

Sitting among the children at the day-care center where she taught, Hammer texted Heather Egeland, who’d hid in that music room with her.
Watch Dateline NBC's report on the Columbine survivors, "The Road Home," Sunday, April 20th at 8 p.m. ET.

“What do you think about starting a group of shooting survivors that can be available for victims?” Hammer typed.

Egeland responded immediately: “I’m in.”

That short exchange sent Hammer and Egeland on a journey to tend to the emotional injuries of survivors in Aurora and around the country. The project forced the two friends to confront old wounds of their own, and recognize, now 15 years after Columbine, that they still needed help themselves.

“We’re all part of this terrible family,” Hammer said. “So we might as well be there to comfort each other.”

Hammer, 33, and Egeland, 32, are members of the Columbine Class of 1999, the seniors who graduated just weeks after the April 20 attack, in which 12 students and one teacher were murdered in a 49-minute rampage that ended with the shooters, both seniors, killing themselves.

Thrust into adulthood, the graduates went to college or got jobs where they were expected to heal and move on. But for many of the “lost class,” as they are sometimes called, that never happened.

Former Columbine High School students Jennifer Hammer points out their choir group picture in her yearbook to Heather Egeland at the Columbine Memorial on April 18.
“All you want to do is go back to how it was before,” Egeland said. “And we were offered the perfect opportunity: we didn’t have to go back and we didn’t have to talk about it ever again if we didn’t want to.”

Some succumbed to drug use or drinking, or tried suicide. Others dropped out of school, or struggled with spouses. Some, including Hammer, convinced themselves that they’d weathered the worst of it. Others, like Egeland, knew they hadn’t, but were ashamed to admit it.

Egeland enrolled in a local community college, and quickly failed out after encountering students and teachers who didn’t understand why fire drills rattled her or why she couldn’t write a paper on gun control. She worked in restaurants, where colleagues didn't recognize why she so badly needed to go home on 9/11. Humiliated, she stopped telling people about her experience, and chastised herself for being a sissy. “Eventually, time just passed,” she said. “And I learned to cope with it – ish.”

“We’re all part of this terrible family. So we might as well be there to comfort each other.”

Hammer put off college, working in day care for a period she called her “year of rebellion.” The state offered therapy, which she stopped after two sessions because she didn’t think she needed it. Then she persuaded herself to get on with a career and family. She went to school, became a teacher, got married, had a son. “It was the whole, just, trying to live your life normally,” Hammer said.

Many members of the Class of 1999 — and younger survivors, too — were doing the same things. When they ran into each other, they felt a bond. But they didn’t get together formally until the 10-year anniversary of their graduation, when Principal Frank DeAngelis hosted a breakfast for them at the school.

For years, DeAngelis had expressed regret for not being able to take care of the seniors after they graduated. He'd urged everyone to get professional help, but the Class of 1999 left the nest too quickly. "A lot of these kids, and I still call them kids, didn't get into counseling," DeAngelis said. "I have parents now telling me, 'I wished we had listened.' Because now we're paying the price, and they're in their 30s."

The breakfast was, for many, the first time they'd returned since the shooting. They brought their spouses and young children. DeAngelis welcomed them warmly. They hugged and laughed. They visited rooms where they hid from the shooters. They cried, a lot.

Columbine High School principal Frank DeAngelis in his office at Columbine High School. DeAngelis is retiring at the end of this school year after a 35-year career at the school as a teacher, coach and administrator. DeAngelis will have spent 18 years leading the school, driven in part by a personal pledge made after the attack that he would remain as principal until all the students in Columbine feeder schools at the time had graduated. He fulfilled that promise in 2012.

Egeland realized afterward how important that event, the personal invitation to return, was to her. It made her feel like she mattered, and that she wasn’t alone. From then on, instead of leaving town for the anniversary of the shooting, she began to invite other classmates to get together at the memorial at the edge of a park overlooking the school, or at a bar, or at someone’s home. They just hung out and caught up on things, and the others appreciated the effort.

Then came the attack in the Aurora movie theater, just 20 miles from Columbine. For Hammer and Egeland and many of their classmates, it was like a cork had popped. The old feelings of anxiety and fear bubbled over.

Hammer had always wanted to do something for other survivors. A few months earlier, she’d recruited Egeland onto a letter-writing campaign for the people of Chardon, Ohio, which had just suffered a deadly high school shooting. This time, she wanted more.

On Aug. 1, 2012, 50 Columbine survivors packed into the sanctuary of Peace Mennonite Community Church in Aurora, just down the street from the movie theater. It was the first big meeting of The Rebels Project, which Hammer and Egeland created after that Monday morning text-message exchange. The goal of the group, named after the Columbine mascot, was to support the Aurora survivors, to help guide them through the treacherous months ahead.

The Columbine grads, many of whom were from the Class of 1999, arrived early, all wearing silver and blue Rebels gear. Egeland and Hammer encouraged them to share whatever they wanted. They were nervous, but also relieved to be shaking off their feelings of helplessness.

The guests arrived, and the Rebels began telling their stories. One after another, they talked about how difficult it had been for them. Drugs, alcohol, suicide attempts. “The Columbine class was falling apart,” Egeland recalled. “They were sobbing, couldn’t complete their sentences. Couldn’t finish their stories because they were too busy crying.”

It was clear that the Aurora folks weren’t the only ones who needed help.
“It was a turning point for us, just seeing that,” Hammer said.

Classmates said they’d never realized how much pain they were still in, and how encouraging it was to know there were others in the same predicament. Some likened it to the missing piece of a puzzle. Others said they finally realized they needed therapy.

Hammer and Egeland organized more meetings: some for the Aurora survivors, others focused on the Columbine survivors. They created two private Facebook groups as extensions of those meetings. Among the guiding principles was that no one’s experience was any better or worse than the others'. Everyone was on equal ground.
They began spreading the word to other survivor communities, adding to the list as new mass shootings happened. They learned to focus their outreach efforts a few months after a shooting, when the attention began to wane and loneliness set in.
“Our goal is to sort of be there when everybody else has moved on,” Egeland said.
“It gives me an outlet and recognition that I’m not alone and that there are people out there who can help."

The Rebels Project has hosted and organized a fundraiser for a charity, The Avielle Foundation, created by the father of Avielle Rose Richman, a 6-year-old killed in the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. They plan to visit Newtown this year as guests of local advocacy groups, the next step in what they hope will be more trips to survivor communities. Former classmates have formed a charity, Phoenix 999, that aims to raise money to help The Rebels Project travel.
“We can see ourselves after 20 years with Rebels Projects around the country, sent out to different locations to be support groups for people,” Hammer said.

Jeremy Richman, Avielle's father, has become close with Egeland and Hammer. He makes the Rebels Project Facebook page a part of his weekly routine, mostly to counsel others in discussions that can be brutally frank: he helps them along, but cautions that there is no way to ever truly “move on,” or fully heal.

“It gives me an outlet and recognition that I’m not alone, and that there are people out there who can help, and that I can help my healing process by helping others,” Richman, 44, said. “That ability to empathize, to listen and hear, makes us human, and I think it’s critical that we do that.”

Kim Blair Woodruff, who graduated Columbine in 2000, dealt with her emotional wounds by practicing tai chi. Through The Rebels Project, she invited Aurora survivors to join her. She now teaches many of them.

“My part of the project is to show them that peace is completely possible,” Blair Woodruff, 32, said. “It’s really hard, but it’s possible.”

The process remains a work in progress for the group's founders.
Egeland finished college in May 2013, and in August started teaching English in the Aurora Public Schools. She's given academic presentations about her experiences with The Rebels Project.

She admits to still being embarrassed talking about her deepest anxieties to people outside the community of survivors. But she can feel things coming together.
“Surprisingly, this year, I’m doing fantastic,” she said. “I keep myself really busy. So maybe it’s the focus.”

After many years as a day-care teacher, Hammer is now a librarian at the school her 7-year-old son attends. After Aurora, she started seeing a therapist so she'd feel strong enough to lead The Rebels Project. She thinks it's working.

“I wasn’t able to talk about it easily. But it has made such a huge difference because it brought out other feelings that I hadn’t felt in so long.”
Now, she said, she was beginning to feel "like myself again."



The “lost class,” floundering in their lives and suffering what psychologists would probably call PTSD, have started a group to help others who are suffering from similar experiences and themselves at the same time. Jennifer Hammer was offered therapy and tried it briefly, but didn't think she needed it. She coped, but didn't heal completely. Many people are averse to doing therapy, thinking there is a stigma attached to it. Many think religion will be the answer or that time will take away the fear and anger.

As AA members have found, a peer group for discussions and mutual support eventually brings about adjustment and improved mental health. At the ten year anniversary Principal Frank DeAngelis hosted a breakfast for them. He said of them, "A lot of these kids, and I still call them kids, didn't get into counseling," DeAngelis said. "I have parents now telling me, 'I wished we had listened.' Because now we're paying the price, and they're in their 30s."

Hammer and Heather Egeland began to get together and do some projects to help recent victims. The group The Rebels Project, composed of 50 Columbine alumni, was formed to help the people from the Aurora shooting. They each told their story. “Hammer and Egeland organized more meetings: some for the Aurora survivors, others focused on the Columbine survivors. They created two private Facebook groups as extensions of those meetings. Among the guiding principles was that no one’s experience was any better or worse than the others'. Everyone was on equal ground.”

They keep expanding their group as more shootings occur. They recently were active with parents of the children at Sandy Hook. Jeremy Richman, one of those parents, now helps The Rebels Project. “He makes the Rebels Project Facebook page a part of his weekly routine, mostly to counsel others in discussions that can be brutally frank: he helps them along, but cautions that there is no way to ever truly “move on,” or fully heal.” It is, I think, a common experience among most adults that there are memories from the past that they have to come to terms with and then do their best to have a positive life. It is possible to be a happy person afterward, but something like this peer support group is very helpful to achieving that goal. As Richman states, “That ability to empathize, to listen and hear, makes us human, and I think it’s critical that we do that.”




Ukraine claims photos prove Russian special forces in eastern Ukraine
CBS News April 21, 2014

Ukraine's government has handed photographs to allies in Europe and the U.S. to bolster its case that Russian special forces are operating in the eastern parts of the country amid Ukraine's escalating crisis-- something Russian President Vladimir Putin has flatly denied.

In an April 16 letter to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from Ukraine's ambassador, the new administration in Kiev compiled several photos showing men identified as Russian special forces soldiers taken in the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

Both the U.S. and Russia are members of the OSCE.

All the men are pictured wearing the now-familiar green fatigues and military tactical gear which has become familiar in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian insurgents have seized local government buildings in as many as 10 different towns in recent weeks.

During a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, President Putin flatly rejected reports that Russian special forces were taking part in the unrest in the east alongside pro-Russian Ukrainians.

"It's all nonsense, there are no special units, special forces or instructors there," Putin said.

Putin did, however, admit for the first time on Thursday that soldiers in the unmarked green uniforms who swept through Ukraine's Black Sea region of Crimea, laying the ground for its annexation by Moscow last month, were Russian troops.
Putin, who previously said the troops were local self-defense forces, said the Russian soldiers' presence was necessary to protect the local population and ensure holding a referendum, in which an overwhelming majority of its residents voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.

A photo distributed by the Ukrainian government to the OSCE purportedly shows a member of the Russian special forces in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk this April, and also in Georgia in a photo from 2008.

One of the photo-sets offered in the letter to the OSCE shows a bearded Russian soldier wearing the insignia of the Russian special forces during Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, and then two other photos purportedly showing the same man in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

Another composite set of photos shows two alleged Russian special forces soldiers at various locations in the two eastern Ukrainian cities, along with a pair of "family photos" said to be of the Russian special forces' "sabotage and reconnaissance" group in which the same two men can purportedly be seen.

It was unclear how the Ukrainian government obtained the photos, and CBS News could not independently verify their authenticity, or confirm they showed the same men.
The U.S. government does believe they are authentic, and prove what U.S. officials have said all along; that Russia is fomenting the unrest in eastern Ukraine.

"There has been broad unity in the international community about the connection between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine, and the photos presented by the Ukrainians last week only further confirm this, which is why U.S. officials have continued to make that case," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Sunday, according to the New York Times.

The photos also sought to highlight the fact -- well-documented already by CBS News' own video shot in eastern Ukraine -- that many of the unidentified, well-armed men patrolling the streets in the region, wear the same green camouflage and carry much of the same tactical gear as the Russian troops who Putin eventually admitted to having deployed to Crimea.

The United States and its allies in Europe have warned Putin against stoking the dissidents in the regions north of Crimea, threatening further sanctions if his government does not comply.

A hard-won diplomatic deal hammered out late last week between Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and European Union saw both sides agree to de-escalate the crisis by having militant groups disarm and abandon occupied buildings.

That has not happened; militants in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Slavyansk appeared entrenched on Monday and there was no indication that either side was about to back down.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the government in Kiev on Monday for "crudely" violating the truce deal after a shooting at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian militants near Slavyansk left three of the men dead.
Kiev, in turn, suggested the shooting was staged by Russia or pro-Russian forces




"It's all nonsense, there are no special units, special forces or instructors there," Putin said. If he's so sure Russia has every right to be there, why is he denying it so vigorously? “Putin did, however, admit for the first time on Thursday that soldiers in the unmarked green uniforms who swept through Ukraine's Black Sea region of Crimea, laying the ground for its annexation by Moscow last month, were Russian troops.” He defends it by saying they were necessary to defend the Russian speakers and ensure the referendum.

Several Russian soldiers have been spotted in photos taken in the Eastern Ukraine region, “along with a pair of "family photos" said to be of the Russian special forces' "sabotage and reconnaissance" group.... It is unclear how the Ukrainian government obtained the photos, and CBS News could not independently verify their authenticity, or confirm they showed the same men. The U.S. government does believe they are authentic, and prove what U.S. officials have said all along; that Russia is fomenting the unrest in eastern Ukraine.” The pictures also confirm “that many of the unidentified, well-armed men patrolling the streets in the region, wear the same green camouflage and carry much of the same tactical gear as the Russian troops who Putin eventually admitted to having deployed to Crimea.” I expect the US will strengthen the sanctions against Russia soon.




Texas boy, 8, buys smoke detectors instead of PS4
CBS News April 21, 2014

GRAND PRARIE, Texas - An 8-year-old Texas boy had been saving for months to buy a new PlayStation 4, but a local tragedy changed his mind.

A mother and her 6-year-old child were killed by a fire nearby, and the story had a real impact on Hector Montoya. So he took the $300 he had saved and spent the money on smoke detectors.

"Saving a life is more important," Montoya said.
With the help of the Grand Prarie Fire Department, he installed more than 100 smoke detectors, mostly in the homes of elderly residents and people who reminded him of the tragedy he saw on the news.

His mother, Monty Montoya said: "Hector is passionate about things, and when he gets it in his mind to do something, then he's going to do it."




“With the help of the Grand Prarie Fire Department, he installed more than 100 smoke detectors, mostly in the homes of elderly residents and people who reminded him of the tragedy he saw on the news.” Some kids are selfish and thoughtless, but this boy is not. Indeed, he sounds like man and not a boy as he says simply, “Saving a life is more important.” His mother says of him, "Hector is passionate about things, and when he gets it in his mind to do something, then he's going to do it." This story is heartwarming and cheering. It's nice to see a piece of absolutely good news.





Smart pill bottle could help you take your meds on time
By Heba Kanso CBS News April 21, 2014

Getting patients to take their pills is a big problem in the medical field. With complex illnesses come multiple prescriptions and complicated instructions that patients can find hard to follow.

A pharmacy group reports that failing to take medications properly adds about $290 billion a year to healthcare costs, and it's estimated to cause 125,000 premature deaths annually in the U.S. alone.

"It's arguably the most costly problem in healthcare today," said Josh Stein, CEO and co-founder of AdhereTech. His New York-based company has invented a possible solution: a smart pill bottle with built-in cell phone technology that alerts you to take your medication when you are supposed to.

"Every time the patient opens the bottle, the bottle sends two pieces of data to our servers. Number one, the timestamp of the open and close of the cap, and number two a measurement of the amount of medication remaining in the bottle," said Stein.
AdhereTech's bottle flashes blue when a user should take their medication, and if they miss their dose it flashes red and beeps.

The patient also gets another alert with an automated phone call or text message.
Taking the right pill at the right time improves health and saves money in the long run.

"It is a huge problem in terms of cost because the more non-compliant that patients are, the more chronic their medical issues become, and the higher the costs," said Dr. Jon LaPook, CBS News chief medical correspondent.

Right now the device is being tested in clinical trials.
AdhereTech will be working with drug manufacturers to provide the bottle when patients fill their prescriptions. The company's business model is to distribute high-cost speciality medications in the bottle for diseases such as, HIV, hepatitis C and certain types of cancers.

The smart pill bottle could be available to the public next year.


AdhereTech is the name of the company which has produced a smart pill bottle. It records the time the pill bottle is opened and closed and how many pills are left in the bottle, sending this information to AdhereTech. The pill bottle then flashes to notify that a dose is due, then again along with a beep if the patient didn't take it. AdhereTech will work with the manufacturers of high-cost medications such as those for AIDS and cancer. I wonder if health care insurance will pay for that? I doubt it.




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Rand Paul Bids To Loosen Democratic Hold On African-American Vote – NPR
by Liz Halloran
April 21, 2014

For more than a year, GOP Sen. Rand Paul has been staking out positions on issues that resonate in the black community, including school choice and prison sentencing reform. And he's been showing up in some unexpected — for a Republican — venues, including historically black colleges.

It's stirred an unusual degree of curiosity about the freshman Kentucky senator — and 2016 GOP presidential prospect — among the Democratic Party's most reliable voting bloc.

"He's a different voice in the arena that we don't traditionally hear," says Lorraine Miller, acting head of the NAACP, who expects to invite Paul to speak at the organization's July national conference in Las Vegas.

"He's an engaging guy — that's why we want to talk to him," Miller says. Miller is not the only black leader who has been intrigued by Paul, whose father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, had three unsuccessful presidential runs and amassed a fervent Libertarian following.

Miller's predecessor, Benjamin Jealous, has previously hailed Paul's position on reforming drug and sentencing laws, which disproportionately affect African-American individuals and families. And Jealous has pointedly noted that while an NAACP poll last year showed that a majority of African-Americans believe that Republicans "don't care at all about civil rights," about 14 percent indicated they would vote for a GOP candidate if he or she were committed to civil rights.

Democrats have little worry about maintaining their vise-like grip on the African-American vote come 2016 — since 1964, no Democratic presidential candidate has gotten less than 82 percent of the black vote. But Paul is speaking both directly and indirectly to black voters in a way the community hasn't seen in decades from a prospective GOP presidential candidate.

"He's done what most conventional Republicans would be too fearful to do — dive into situations that would make them uncomfortable," says Ron Christie, an African-American lawyer and GOP commentator who worked in the George W. Bush administration.
"I find it fascinating that he has gone into communities where Republicans typically don't connect, and don't listen," Christie says.

Paul went into those communities with some baggage. After winning Kentucky's GOP Senate primary in 2010, he said in an interview on MSNBC that he believed, as a proponent of limited government, that private businesses should not be forced to adhere to the nation's civil rights law.

As criticism rained down, Paul quickly shifted gears, issuing a statement that said he supports the Civil Rights Act because, "I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws."

It was just over a year ago that Paul made a much-ballyhooed appearance at Howard University, one of the nation's top historically black colleges. His speech included a few stumbles — he drew groans when he asked those in the packed auditorium if they knew that black Republicans founded the NAACP. But Paul also elicited applause when he said that the nation has drug laws and court systems that "disproportionately [punish] the black community."

Miller, the NAACP chief, and other African-American leaders refer to the issue as "mass incarceration," and its prominence as an issue in the black community can't be understated.

"I've been traveling and talking to audiences about the effect of mass incarceration," Miller says. "There is hardly a person who hasn't been affected by it; what we do about it is the question."

"It is such a pervasive issue in our community, and, quite honestly, if we can get the ear of someone like Rand Paul, that helps us in trying to find solutions that make sense," she says.

Since that speech, Paul has — along with Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont — led legislative efforts on Capitol Hill to revamp mandatory sentencing laws.
Paul has likened the effects of such laws on black Americans to the racist policies of the nation's Jim Crow era, and has said that laws preventing felons from voting is tantamount to voter suppression.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Paul said this: "If I told you that 1 out of 3 African-American males is forbidden by law from voting, you might think I was talking about Jim Crow 50 years ago. Yet today, a third of African-American males are still prevented from voting because of the war on drugs."

"The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white," he said, "but three-fourths of all people in prison for drug offenses are African-American or Latino."

Paul has since promoted in Detroit what he calls his "Economic Freedom Zone" plan, which would lower taxes in economically devastated areas like the Michigan city. He spoke at Simmons College in Louisville for the historically black institution's biblical higher education accreditation event. He recently criticized the Obama administration's record on domestic surveillance, pointedly invoking the government's snooping on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of the perniciousness of the practice.

And this week, he's speaking in Chicago and Milwaukee about school choice and his support for vouchers. In anticipation of the trip, he posted last week on Twitter a video of an African-American teenager's struggle to seek an education better than one offered in her poor South Side Chicago neighborhood.

Brian Doherty, who chronicled Ron Paul's rise in the book Ron Paul's rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired, says it is too early to tell how or whether the younger Paul's efforts will resonate with the "new coalitions" he's trying to build. Paul is also courting young voters — another demographic Democrats dominate — by highlighting his opposition to government surveillance programs.

"Rand Paul is openly attempting some fresh policy entrepreneurship with the Republican Party," Doherty says, "trying to appeal to big and important constituent groups where the party pretty much has nowhere to go but up."

"So anything he can do that's both true to his party's supposed dedication to liberty and constitutionally limited government — and appeal to a classic American sense of self-reliance and self-help — isn't likely to hurt," says Doherty, a senior editor at the libertarian publication Reason, "even if we can't be sure it's going to work in a big way."

In the meantime, says Christie, the former Bush staffer, Paul has "shaken up what purports to be conventional wisdom and thinking in targeting voters."
Those voters aren't a monolith, and, like most, aren't typically single-issue voters, says the NAACP's Miller.

"This issue, sentencing and mass incarceration, doesn't make him the civil rights Republican candidate, in my humble opinion," she says. "But we're in no position not to hear from other voices out there in the public venue."

"Let's talk," she says. "People are rational and can make up their own minds about whether he's selling wolf tickets, or really has something we can work with."




Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky is making a bid for the White House in 2016, and courting the black vote, going to black colleges, talking about school choice and recommending sentencing reform. Lorraine Miller of the NAACP is planning to invite him to speak at the national conference of the group. According to this article, “about 14 percent [of African Americans] indicated they would vote for a GOP candidate if he or she were committed to civil rights.”

That, despite the fact that he is quoted as saying he does not believe private businesses should be forced to adhere to the Civil Rights Law. He then, however, quickly back-pedaled and said “I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws." At least he's not – if this statement truly reflects his views – a rabid racist. He has been cooperating with Sen. Leahy to change the Mandatory Sentencing laws. He has said that laws preventing felons from voting is “tantamount to voter suppression.” Florida has such a law. Technically, the felon can petition to have his voting rights restored, but if he doesn't know this is possible and may not know how, he will remain off the voters rolls.

Paul also said, “The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white," he said, "but three-fourths of all people in prison for drug offenses are African-American or Latino." It is hard to get a really fair judge and jury in the more “conservative” parts of the country because there is still so much racial bias out there among whites who consider themselves to be moral individuals.

Could it be that Paul is not so conservative? He has recommended the lowering of taxes in “economically devastated” areas, specifically Detroit. He has advocated more vouchers for students to go to better schools. He is also speaking against government surveillance of Americans, hoping to attract young people away from the Democrats.

He does seem to be someone to watch in the next couple of years. I still think he's a Republican and probably has more viewpoints that I would dislike than like, but if he sticks to those principles stated in this article he wouldn't be so very bad for our country compared to some, at least in those ways. My father was of the opinion that if you vote for one Republican – Eisenhower in that case – you end up with the whole party. Well, that's politics in the USA.

See the wikipedia article below. I didn't see anything in either this news article or Wikipedia about his stand on the necessary entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicaid, Affordable Care and Medicare. The Tea Party in general is always seeking to eviscerate them. Also, he was one of those who shut down the government last year. I think that's absolutely radical and very irresponsible.


Rand Paul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Randal Howard "Rand" Paul (born January 7, 1963) is the junior United States Senator for Kentucky. He is a member of the Republican Party and the son of former U.S. Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas. He first received national attention in 2008 when making political speeches on behalf of his father, who was campaigning for the Republican Party's nomination for president.

A graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine, Paul began practicing ophthalmology in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1993 and established his own clinic in December 2007. He remained active in politics and founded Kentucky Taxpayers United in 1994, of which he is still chairman.[2]

In 2010, Paul ran as the Republican candidate for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, defeating Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson in the primary. He subsequently defeated Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway in the general election. A member of the Tea Party movement, he supports term limits, a balanced budget amendment, the Read the Bills Act, and widespread reduction in federal spending and taxation. Unlike his more stridently isolationist, or "non-interventionist", father, Paul concedes a role for American armed forces abroad, including permanent foreign military bases.[3][4] He has garnered attention for his positions, often clashing with both Republicans and Democrats.[5]