U.S. TB Infections Drop to Record Low: CDC

By  Julie Steenhuysen

United States - U.S. cases of tuberculosis fell 6.4 percent in 2011 to an all-time low, but missed a national target of eliminating the disease as cases among foreign-born individuals persisted, health officials said on Thursday.

Unless factors change significantly, the United States will not be able to eliminate TB - meaning fewer than one case per one million people - until the year 2100, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Addressing the increasing difference between TB rates in foreign-born and U.S.-born persons is critical for TB elimination," the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease, which was released ahead of World TB Day on March 24.

Overall, U.S. TB rates last year fell to 10,521 reported cases, or 3.4 cases per 100,000 people, the lowest level since national reporting began in 1953, the CDC said.

Despite these gains, the airborne infection is proving difficult to tame in some populations, especially among foreign-born individuals, blacks, Asians and people infected with HIV.

TB rates were 12 times higher among people born outside the United States. Of these infected individuals, more than half of the cases originated in just five countries: Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and China, the CDC said.

Compared with whites, TB rates were seven times higher for Hispanics, eight times higher for blacks and 25 times higher for Asians last year.

Four states - California, Texas, New York and Florida - account for nearly half of all TB cases in the United States, according to the report.

TB is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. It can be cured with antibiotics but they must be taken daily for months to be effective. Because people do not always take the drugs as directed, multiple drug-resistant strains have emerged.

Cases of TB that are resistant to at least two common treatments, known as multidrug-resistant TB, accounted for 109 of all U.S. TB cases in 2010, the most recent year for which there are data. Foreign-born individuals accounted for 90 of these cases.

There were 4 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB - an infection that resists the most highly effective drugs - reported in the United States in 2010, all among foreign-born people.

The World Health Organization estimates that a third of the world's population is infected with the bacteria that cause TB. Last year, TB made nearly 9 million people sick and killed some 1.45 million people, according to WHO.

Hostile Takeover: Parents Seek Control of Failing School in Education Reform

By Stephanie Simon

Adelanto, California - Desert Trails Elementary School in the impoverished town of Adelanto, California, has been failing local kids for years. More than half the students can't pass state math or reading tests.

On Tuesday, the school board will discuss a radical fix: a parent takeover of the school.
 
For the moms and dads, it's a local, and intensely personal, debate. But their little school at the edge of the Mojave Desert has also become a flash point in a high-stakes national struggle over the future of public education, one that pits powerful teachers unions against some of world's wealthiest philanthropies.

Desert Trails, with children in kindergarten through 6th grades or roughly aged 5-12, could be the first school in the country to invoke the concept known as "parent trigger."

A 2010 California law permits parents at the state's worst public schools to band together and effectively wrest control from the district.

The parents can enact dramatic changes, such as firing teachers, ousting the principal, or converting the school into a charter institution run by a private management company. Several other states are considering similar laws.

Desert Trails has had high turnover in the principal's office. Parents complain about difficulty getting their children extra help when they fall behind. Just 31 percent of third-graders are proficient in reading and 14 percent score in the lowest level, "far below basic," in state testing.

A determined group of Desert Trails parents is leading the charge, with substantial help from a well-funded activist group, Parent Revolution. The trigger advocates say they have collected signatures from a majority of families in support of closing down the school this summer and reopening it as a charter school in the fall, to be run by a partnership of parents, teachers and the school district.

An equally determined group of parents, supported by both state and local teachers unions, aims to stop them. They say Desert Trails can be improved without being destroyed.

The parent-trigger battle is perhaps the most dramatic yet in an intensifying fight over the nation's $500-billion-a-year investment in educating kids.

BIG NAMES, BIG MONEY

Over the past decade, several of the nation's wealthiest philanthropists, who see public schools as needing transformative change, have shifted the terms of the education debate. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Los Angeles developer Eli Broad and the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, have poured billions of dollars into promoting aggressive reforms.

Their prescriptions, many of which have been adopted by the Obama administration, include expanding charter schools, tying teacher pay to student test performance and making it easier to fire teachers.

Unions see many of those reforms as an existential threat not only to their members, but to the very nature of public education. Charter schools are free public elementary or secondary schools that operate independently from the local school district. They often do not employ union teachers, and are typically run by a private management company.

Critics note that some charters are run by for-profit companies that don't open their books to show the public how they're spending tax dollars.

"There's an agenda that basically wants to take apart public education," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Union leaders complain that the reformers have little research to prove their overhaul tactics will work -- and that existing data show less-than-stellar results.

One chain of charter schools heavily backed by foundation money, for instance, is Green Dot - which founded the predecessor to Parent Revolution. Many of the 14 Green Dot charter schools in California have shown impressive academic progress, but all still fall below the state median on standardized test scores. Half rank lower -- many far lower -- than Desert Trails.

Nationally, studies suggest that charter schools rarely outperform regular public schools of similar demographics.

"Too many people on the outside are advocating for things that don't change student learning," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which represents 3 million public-school employees.

But to the outside reformers, it's the unions who have their heads in the sand, blocking efforts to remake a public education system that for too long has left too many kids behind. Teachers unions spend tens of millions a year on campaign donations and state and federal lobbying, giving them considerable clout among politicians, especially their traditional allies on the Democratic left.

The Gates and Broad foundations continue to pour huge sums into improving existing public schools; the Gates Foundation, for instance, has pledged $100 million to revamp teacher training, evaluation and pay in Hillsborough County, Fla. Foundation officials say they have no intention of destroying teachers' union or privatizing public schools en masse.

At the same time, however, they say they are committed to experiments like parent trigger.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Trigger backers say the mechanism isn't intended to convert local schools into charters in every case. Parent Revolution is working with several parent groups in California that have used the threat of pulling the trigger as leverage to negotiate more modest changes, such as cleaning up filthy school bathrooms.

At Desert Trails, the trigger team is negotiating with the district in hopes of reaching a solution that stops short of moving to a fully independent charter school.

"When big decisions about schools are made, there typically are only two players at the table, the teachers union and the district," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution. "What we're saying is, we need a third seat at the table for parents. Before, when they complained, they'd be told to go do a bake sale. Parent trigger utterly changes the game."

Parent Revolution started small, reporting assets of just $91,000 at the end of 2009, the year it began pushing parent trigger in California. When the law passed in early 2010, major philanthropies, including the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations, pledged substantial donations.

Parent Revolution reported nearly $4 million in grants in 2010, the most recent year tax records are available.

The group has used the money to rally parents to consider using the trigger at low-performing schools across California. "At every step of this process Parent Revolution is here to support you," the group promises in a 12-page parent handbook.

Parent Revolution has also expanded to promote trigger laws nationwide. The group recently flew several parent activists from Buffalo, N.Y. to Houston, Tex., for a training session.

Members were also in Florida earlier this month, mixing it up in a bruising political battle over a trigger bill. The mostly Democratic activists at Parent Revolution teamed with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Republican, along with parents and lobbyists representing charter schools to promote the law.

They also worked with an aggressive new ally, StudentsFirst. Founded last year by Michelle Rhee, the former superintendent of Washington, D.C. public schools, the political advocacy group boasts 1.2 million members -- including Florida moms who flooded legislators with emails and rallied at the capitol. In other states, Rhee has run TV ads to push her agenda, which includes eliminating teacher tenure and supporting parent trigger.

Rhee says she is well on her way to raising $1 billion, though she will not discuss her funding sources.
Lining up against the parent trigger law in Florida were the teachers union, the Florida PTA and a rival group of fired-up moms, including Rita Solnet, a mother of three who says she distrusts charter schools. Solnet co-founded Parents Across America, an activist group that has received $25,000 from the nation's biggest teachers union, but says she spent her own money to fly to Tallahassee and knock on lawmakers' doors to lobby against parent trigger.

"These schools were built by the taxpayers of the past to support the taxpayers of the future," Solnet recalls saying. "You have no right to turn them over" to for-profit charter school corporations.
The Florida parent trigger bill narrowly failed.

In Adelanto, a fast-growing community of 32,000, Parent Revolution rented a house to serve as trigger headquarters and sent staff to help organize. Many parents were receptive to the campaign. Some said they had been trying for years, to no avail, to get improvements at the school, where nearly all the students are low-income minorities, mostly Latino and African-American.

BATTLE OVER PETITIONS

"We feel like we haven't been heard," said Doreen Diaz, a mother of two. "Unless we stand up and fight for our children's education, no one else will."

State law lets parents take over if they gather signatures from parents representing at least half the students at the school. Diaz and the trigger team did so.

But their opponents, backed by the teachers union, promptly challenged dozens of signatures as invalid. Some angry parents said they didn't want Desert Trails to become a charter. Others complained the trigger team had little to offer beyond vague promises that new management would make the school better.

"Where are their lesson plans?" asked Kimberly Smith, a former teacher at Desert Trails who now sends her two children there. "What is the curriculum?... How is it better?"

The school board has not yet ruled on whether the trigger petitions are valid. While the board will take public comment Tuesday, negotiations are continuing and no vote has yet been set on certifying the petitions.

Meanwhile, the daily routine continues at Desert Trails. Fifth graders are memorizing multiplication tables. Sixth graders are diving into "The Phantom Tollbooth." There are reading logs to complete and spelling lists to memorize.

Chrissy Alvarado, a mother of two students at Desert Trails, says she worries the bitter fight will be distracting. "That's what concerns me," she said -- "that our little school got brought into politics."

Flooding Feared After Storms Sock South-central US

By Katie Fretland

Oklahoma City - Residents and businesses from southeast Texas north through western Missouri braced for flooding Tuesday after a violent band of storms brought heavy rain, hail and at least one tornado, with more of the same forecast for the next several days.

The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down Monday evening about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio. The twister damaged several homes, trapping some people inside their mobile homes, but no fatalities were reported, according to The San Antonio Express-News.

The fresh crop of storms comes after two tornadoes damaged homes and railcars in North Platte, Neb., on Sunday. The EF3 twister with winds up to 165 mph injured four people.

Flooding remains a serious concern across the affected areas.

Eight inches of rain was expected in southeastern Kansas, which has been unusually dry for nearly a year. 

The area has had less than three-fourths of the precipitation it typically gets since last April, state climatologist Mary Knapp said.

The weather service said some low-lying areas experienced flash floods, including along the Marmaton River at Fort Scott, Kan. Forecasters said the river would likely exceed flood stage later Tuesday, but drop again Thursday when the rain subsides.

Emergency management officials said they're keeping an eye on the clouds but feel that southeast Kansas can handle several days of rain.

In Arkansas, however, emergency management officials readied teams to respond to flash floods, especially in the western part of the state where the heaviest downpour was expected. The U.S. Forest Service closed campsites preemptively Monday, exercising caution after 20 people died in a flash flood at a remote campground in 2010.

Forecasters in Tulsa, Okla., said the slow-moving storm was expected to stall over the area, dumping up to 12 inches of rain in isolated areas.

"When rain falls in those terrain areas" — especially the hills and valleys — "it's quickly funneled into small rivers and streams," said B.J. Simpson, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "Those are the most dangerous areas."

Still, even flatlands could see the potential for runoff and flash floods if the rain comes too fast for the ground to absorb it.

"There's really no amount of dry ground that can take up to 10 inches of rain in a couple day timeframe," Simpson said.

Thousands of customers lost power in San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth, where strong winds and rain pelted the area, and power outages were reported in Oklahoma City and Tulsa County. Flights were stopped temporarily Monday night at Love Field airport and some 35 flights were canceled Tuesday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Voter ID Becomes Law in Pennsylvania, Opponents Vow Legal Fight

By David Warner

Pennsylvania - A requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls became law in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of Republican-led efforts to impose stricter controls at the ballot box.


Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed the act into law, saying it set a "simple and clear standard to protect the integrity of our elections."

"I am signing this bill because it protects a sacred principle, one shared by every citizen of this nation," the Republican governor said. "That principle is one person, one vote."

Opponents, who say the measure seeks to suppress voter turnout, vowed to challenge it in court.

Pennsylvania joined several Republican-governed states, including Texas, Kansas and Wisconsin, that have adopted stricter voter identification laws, arguing they were needed to prevent ballot box fraud.

Supporters say the laws are no different from needing identification to board an airplane or obtain a library card.

But some civil rights groups say such laws discriminate against the poor who may not be able to pay fees for copies of legal documents such as birth certificates, and that they could suppress minority votes.

Democrats say voter identification measures are aimed at squeezing out university students and senior citizens who tend to vote for Democrats.

Andy Hoover, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union's Pennsylvania branch, said there was no evidence of voter impersonation fraud in the state.

Other states have encountered setbacks trying to impose voter identification requirements. A judge issued an injunction earlier this week against Wisconsin's law, and the U.S. Justice Department blocked a new voter identification law in Texas.

The Justice Department, which also blocked a voter identification law in South Carolina from taking effect, said the Texas law could harm Hispanic voters who lack identification documents.

"Our legal team is currently mapping a strategy for overturning this voter suppression bill," ACLU of Pennsylvania Executive Director Reggie Shuford said in a statement. "The evidence is clear. Some citizens will lose the vote if this becomes law."

Corbett said 99 percent of Pennsylvanians already had valid identification, and those who did not could get one for free at state Department of Transportation driver license centers.

Under the Pennsylvania law, photo identification will not be required for the state's April 24 primary, but will be required for the November 6 general election.

UK Abortion Clinic Targeted by US Religious Group

By Meera Selva

London - One of Britain's main abortion providers said Wednesday that a campaign run by a U.S.-based religious group is intimidating women who use its services.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said activists from the 40 Days for Life group have been holding vigils outside one of their central London clinics and had on occasion filmed people coming in and out of the building. A spokeswoman said she asked the activists to stop filming but they refused.

The spokeswoman, who requested anonymity because she said she had received hate mail, said the protests were bigger than many other anti-abortion protests.

"We've always had sporadic outbursts down the years, but I think we are seeing something, seeing protest on a scale we haven't seen before," she said.

Robert Colquhoun, a campaign director of 40 Days for Life's London campaign, said its members are carrying out a peaceful Christian prayer vigil outside BPAS's central London clinic.

The 40 Days for Life movement began in Texas in 2004, and has now spread around the world. Its members hold vigils outside abortion clinics for a 40-day period.

"It's totally unfounded to say we want to intimidate women," Colquhoun said. "We are there to pray and to show there is love in the community out there."

Colquhoun said the group did not intend to film people using the BPAS clinic but some activists did have cameras to film passers-by who were insulting them.

Britain's debate over abortion has become louder in recent years. A number of young, socially conservative lawmakers were elected to the House of Commons after the last election, including many who support more restrictive abortion laws.

Lawmaker Nadine Dorris tried unsuccessfully last year to bar abortion providers such as BPAS from counseling women about their decisions on whether to terminate their pregnancies. She wanted the counseling services to be provided by an independent body.

Dorris's campaign failed but it drew attention to providers such as BPAS and Marie Stopes International, which between them carry out around half of Britain's 200,000 annual abortions.

Last week, a man was arrested for hacking into the BPAS website and stealing sensitive data, but police did not indicate that the man is linked to those holding the vigil.

Britain's Abortion Act, first drafted in 1967, allows surgical abortions up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. It also permits abortions after 24 weeks if doctors believe the mother's life is in danger or there is strong evidence that the fetus would be born with a severe disability. Two doctors must approve every referral to an abortion clinic.

AT&T Seeks to Settle, Quietly, With iPhone User

By Peter Svensson

New York - AT&T is offering to discuss a settlement with an iPhone user who won a small-claims case that alleged the company was slowing down his "unlimited" data service.

A law firm retained by AT&T Inc. also threatened in a letter dated Friday to shut off Matthew Spaccarelli's phone service if he doesn't sit down to talk.

The phone company doesn't say if the settlement would involve money beyond the $850 award the Simi Valley, Calif., resident won from the company in small claims court on Feb. 24.

AT&T has about 17 million smartphone customers on "unlimited" plans, and has started slowing down service for users who hit certain traffic thresholds. Spaccarelli maintained at his Feb. 24 small-claims hearing that AT&T broke its promise to provide "unlimited" service, and the judge agreed.

Spaccarelli has posted online the documents he used to argue his case and encourages other AT&T customers copy his suit. Legal settlements usually include non-disclosure agreements that would force Spaccarelli to take down the documents.

In its letter, AT&T asked Spaccarelli to be quiet about the settlement talks, including the fact that it offered to start them, another common stipulation. Spaccarelli said he was not interested in settling, and forwarded the letter to The Associated Press.

Spaccarelli has admitted that he has used his iPhone to provide Internet access for other devices, a practice known as tethering, which violates AT&T's contract terms. AT&T says that means it has the right to turn off his service.

Spaccarelli says he doesn't care — the important thing to him was defeating AT&T in court, he said.

Dallas-based AT&T has said it will appeal the Feb. 24 decision. Appeals in California small claims court are similar in format to the original hearings, except that lawyers may attend.

AT&T did not comment further on its offer.

Late last year, AT&T started "throttling," or slowing down data service for "unlimited" subscribers once they reached the top 5 percent of data users in their area. The slowdown, which makes a phone difficult to use for anything but calls, texts and some emails, lasts until the end of the subscriber's billing cycle.

Subscribers complained that they hit the limits at unexpectedly low levels, and that they had no idea what they levels were before getting warning messages from the company that they were approaching the limit.

Two weeks ago, AT&T said it would stop throttling the top 5 percent, and instead apply the slowdown after 3 gigabytes of data consumption. Customers on a "limited" AT&T plan get 3 gigabytes of data for $30 per month, the same price paid by "unlimited" users.

Spaccarelli's victory in small-claims court is similar to that of Heather Peters, a California woman who won $9,867 from Honda last month because her Civic Hybrid did not live up to the promised gas mileage. She, too, is helping others bring similar cases.

Governor to Cut Texas Women's Health Funds Over Abortion

Texas - The federal government will withdraw funding for a Texas program providing more than 100,000 poor women with birth control and other health services because Planned Parenthood clinics are not allowed to participate, a Health and Human Services spokeswoman said on Friday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the decision in Houston on Friday, prompting a furious response from Texas Governor Rick Perry, who called it an "egregious federal overreach."

At the heart of the dispute between the administration of President Barack Obama and Texas is the divisive issue of abortion.

The Texas legislature last year voted to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood because the network of women's health clinics performs abortions. The federal government says that this violates rules of Medicaid, the health program for the poor.

Some 130,000 low-income Texas women who get free exams and contraceptives through Medicaid could lose those benefits as a result of the dispute.

The program provides free birth control and annual exams to women of reproductive age who do not qualify for the regular Medicaid program for the poor. The federal government pays 90 percent of the cost and Texas puts up about $4 million a year.

Wisconsin, North Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana all have joined Texas trying to block Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer money in the last year. Several other states, including Ohio, Oklahoma and New Hampshire, are considering similar moves.

While public funds do not pay for abortions, critics of Planned Parenthood argue that hiring the organization to provide family planning to poor women helps the organization stay afloat and thus indirectly supports abortion services.

The Texas funding cut prompted Planned Parenthood to shut down 11 clinics in the state.

Perry said the decision by the Obama administration was "politically motivated," and said it was an affront that Sebelius had not informed the state of Texas before announcing the move to the press.

A spokeswoman for Sebelius had no comment beyond confirming the decision to cut off funding to Texas.
The abortion fight is the latest of a string of disputes between Obama's Democratic administration and the Republican-dominated Texas state government. The two sparred last year over disaster aid for Texas after devastating wildfires and environmental regulations Texas opposes.

Rare Movie Posters Found in Pa. Attic are for Sale

By Johann Loviglio

Philadelphia - A rowdy band of bloodsuckers, gunslingers, wily wise guys, jaded private eyes, hardboiled reporters and good girls gone bad, stuck in an attic together for 80 years, is going its separate ways.

Nearly three dozen movie theater posters from the Golden Age of Hollywood found in a Pennsylvania attic are expected to fetch $250,000 at auction in Texas this month. They were stuck together with wallpaper glue when they were purchased for around $30,000 at a country auction last fall in Berwick, near Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The buyer, who chose to remain anonymous, consigned them to Heritage Auctions in Dallas, where the stack of 33 Depression-era posters were painstakingly steamed and gingerly separated over the course of several weeks.

"As we started to peel them apart, it was one of the greatest treasure troves from a beautiful period of poster printing," said Grey Smith of Heritage Auctions, where the posters go on the block March 23.

The separated posters underwent minor touch-ups and were backed with linen at a restoration house, he said.

"A number of them were in very, very nice shape. ... The colors had not seen the light of day in 80 years," Smith said. They were glued, one atop the other, apparently as each new release came to town. The find most likely came from one of the three big movie houses in Berwick during that era, Smith said.

From what the auction buyer was able to ascertain, the valuable stack of Hollywood history was inside a home whose contents were being liquidated as part of an estate sale, he said.

The trove includes extraordinarily rare original posters from the 1931 films "The Public Enemy," ''Cimarron," ''The Front Page" and "Little Caesar." Some are versions never before seen, while others are among only one or two other known copies. All measure roughly 27 by 41 inches, known in movie parlance as a one-sheet.

James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Barbara Stanwyck are among the matinee idols gracing several posters but Bela Lugosi, bug-eyed and menacing in the 1931 ad for horror classic "Dracula," counts as the star of the auction with a starting bid of $200,000.

An identical poster owned by actor Nicholas Cage sold at auction in 2009 for $310,000.

The films in the posters date from 1930 and 1931, a uniquely permissive time for filmmaking that came after the adoption of sound but before the enforcement of stringent moral guidelines popularly known as the Hays Code. Movies from the "pre-Code" era of roughly 1929 to 1934 include sex, violence and social commentary that vanished as the Hays Code censored everything from religious criticism to "suggestive postures."

The Humphrey Bogart-John Huston version of "The Maltese Falcon," for example, was a remake of the 1931 original, which was later deemed lewd under the Hays Code for nudity and sexual references and banned from re-release. A poster for the earlier "Falcon," featuring smooching leads Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez, is also part of the sale and the auctioneers say it's the only one known to exist.

"They were purely a product to be disposed of. ... They're not something anyone would have thought to save," Smith said in explaining the scarcity of movie ephemera of the era. Berwick had three large movie houses in the early 1930s and the posters likely came from one of them, he said.

For collectors, a find like the Berwick posters is "like a dream come true," said Bob King, editor of Classic Images, an Ohio-based periodical devoted to pre-1960s film and television.

"When (a discovery like) this happens, it's a big deal because you never know when or if it'll happen again," he said. "Are they ever going to find another one like this? Maybe not."

States Slash Birth Control Subsidies as Federal Debate Rages

United States - Even as a national debate rages over contraception insurance, tens of thousands of low-income women and teenagers across the United States have lost access to subsidized birth control as states slash and restructure family planning funds.

Montana and New Jersey have eliminated altogether their state family planning programs. New Hampshire cut its funding by 57 percent and five other states made more modest program trims.

But the biggest impact, by far, has been in Texas.

State lawmakers last fall cut family-planning funds by two-thirds, or nearly $74 million over two years.

Within months, half the state-supported family planning clinics in Texas had closed.

The state network, which once provided 220,000 women a year free and low-cost birth control, cervical cancer tests and diabetes screenings, will now serve just 40,000 to 60,000, officials said.

Another 130,000 low-income Texas women who get free exams and contraceptives through Medicaid could lose those benefits by month's end, due to a dispute between the state and federal governments over whether Planned Parenthood should be allowed to serve women on that program.

At the People's Community Clinic in Austin, the cuts mean that many low-income patients, except the very poorest, are now charged for contraception that used to be free: $5 for a dozen condoms; $10 for a month of birth control pills; $225 for an IUD.

"I have no clue what I'm going to do," said Rhetta Pope, 22, of Austin. A stay-at-home mother of two, she lives off disability payments of less than $1,500 a month.
Pope said after paying basic living expenses, she has so little left she scrimps on electricity by keeping the lights off and takes her laundry to an aunt's house. She can't imagine how she would pay for birth control.

"I guess I'm going to have to stop using it because I don't have the money," Pope said. "I'm pretty shook up. I really am."

SAVINGS IN DOUBT

Texas legislators who backed the 66-percent family planning cuts say they had no choice - the state budget was in crisis and many worthy programs suffered.

But a budget board analysis concluded the cut would actually cost Texas taxpayers more than it saved.

The board projected that women unable to get low-cost birth control would deliver 20,500 additional babies - costing state and federal taxpayers $231 million in prenatal, maternity and infant care. The state's share would be close to $98 million - significantly more than the family planning cut savings.

State Representative Wayne Christian, a Republican, acknowledged that the cuts might be counterproductive "if you look at it from a financial cost, perhaps."

But he disputed the notion that additional babies were a cost burden. "We value a human life more than just the cost," he said.

In general, he said, the state should not try to deter births by widely distributing free contraception. If women who want birth control cannot afford it, he said, they should first seek help from families or communities.

"I'm sorry," Christian said, "but there's this thing called individual responsibility."

Some women have found ways to pay for the care they once received free, but many have not.
After losing much of its state family-planning grant, the Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas in January began charging most patients a flat $25-per-visit fee.

In the first two weeks of the policy, 362 women cancelled appointments because they could not make the co-pay. Only 20 percent found the money to get care within a week or two, hospital officials said.

Another 20 percent were referred to one of the two Parkland locations still providing free services. Those sites are now so busy, the first available appointment at the Irving Women's Health Center is August 21.

Most of the remaining women never came back for care after learning about the co-pay, said Paula Turicchi, a Parkland senior vice president.

BLOCKING TAXPAYER DOLLARS

In several states, including Texas, questions about birth control access are now entangled with the politically explosive abortion debate.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion provider, with about 330,000 procedures a year. It also runs a network of urban and suburban clinics offering birth control, gynecological exams and care for sexually transmitted diseases.

The organization gets about a third of its revenue, $360 million in 2009, from government grants to provide those services to poor women.

In the past year, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and Texas all have moved to block Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer money. Several other states, including Ohio, Oklahoma and New Hampshire, are considering similar moves.

While public funds don't pay for abortions, critics of Planned Parenthood argue that hiring the organization to provide family planning to poor women helps the organization stay afloat and thus indirectly supports abortion services.

The Texas funding cut prompted Planned Parenthood to shut down 11 clinics. It also has jeopardized a $40 million family-planning program run as a Medicaid extension.

The program provides free birth control and annual exams to 130,000 low-income women of reproductive age who don't qualify for regular Medicaid. The federal government pays 90 percent of the cost; Texas puts up just $4 million a year.

About 40 percent of women in the Texas program get subsidized care from Planned Parenthood clinics, but a new state law blocks those clinics from participating. The Obama administration has said that violates federal Medicaid rules. If neither side compromises, the program will likely close by the end of March.

That infuriates Jonee Longoria, a single mother in Houston who relied on the program for free services for several years as she put herself through college. "I had one child living in poverty and I didn't want another," Longoria said.

She now works for a social service agency and refers many clients to the program for contraception. Without it, she said, "where would they go?"

Advocates of defunding Planned Parenthood say they regret any service disruptions for poor women. But they call it a necessary price to pay to take a moral stance on abortion.

"We're just doing what we think is best," said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, which opposes abortion.

Texas Rice Farmers Won't Get Water for Irrigation

Houston - Thousands of Texas rice farmers won't get water for irrigation this year because lakes and rivers remain low after more than a year of drought.

The Lower Colorado River Authority said Friday it won't release water from two Austin-area lakes into the rivers and canals the farmers use for irrigation. The announcement was expected, but notable as the first time in the authority's history that it won't provide the water.

Texas is one of the six largest rice producers in the country, and the farmers in the Colorado River basin make up almost three-quarters of the state's total rice acreage. But without irrigation, many farmers will be able to plant only a fraction of the rice they usually grow, and some won't plant any.

"Farmers were prepared for the almost inevitability of this ... but things came so close at the end, there were some who thought we might get it," said Ronald Gertson, who grows rice in Lissie, about 60 miles southwest of Houston.

Conditions have eased in recent weeks with some significant rains, but two-fifths of the state remains in a severe drought. As of Friday morning, lakes Travis and Buchanan were about 3,200 acre-feet, or more than 1 billion gallons, short of the level they'd need to reach for the farmers to receive water.

A small percentage of farmers, those with senior water rights along the river, will get about 20,000 acre-feet of water. The rest will not get any.

LCRA spokeswoman Clara Tuma had said Thursday that the authority did not expect to reach the 850,000 acre-feet needed to provide water to all farmers.

But even if the lake levels had hit that mark, farmers would have received only 25 percent of the water they needed for their crops for this season, Gertson said. They would have had to break up big fields into smaller ones and do a lot of other improvising to make that work, he said.

"It would not have been the most efficient use of resources," said Gertson, whose family has grown rice in the area for five generations. "So while I'm not happy not to get water, I wouldn't have been jumping for joy to get only 25 percent."

He has estimated he can grow about a third of his rice with groundwater. If he pushes it, he might get about 45 percent of the acres he normally plants. Like many farmers, he had already been looking at what he could do to cut costs and make it through what's clearly going to be a hard year.

The three counties that won't get irrigation water — Wharton, Colorado and Matagorda — are some of the poorest in the state, with poverty levels above the national average. Many farmers in the region alternate between growing rice and ranching, but those with cattle sold off much of their livestock last year as the drought parched rangeland and pushed up hay prices.

Seven Accused of Bilking $375M from Medicare, Medicaid

By Juan A Lozano and Nomaan Merchant

Dallas - A Texas doctor has been charged with running a massive health fraud care scheme with thousands of fraudulent patients and intermediaries allegedly offering cash, food stamps or free groceries, to bilk Medicare and Medicaid of nearly $375 million.

A federal indictment unsealed Tuesday charges Jacques Roy, a doctor who owned Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, and six others in an alleged scheme to bill Medicare for home health services that were not properly billed, not medically necessary or not done.

The scheme was the largest dollar amount by a single doctor uncovered by a task force on Medicare fraud, authorities said.

U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana accused Roy of "selling his signature" to home health agencies that rounded up thousands of patients' names and billed Medicare and Medicaid for five years.

The indictment alleged that from January 2006 through November 2011, Roy or others certified 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries for more than 500 home health service agencies — more patients than any other medical practice in the U.S. More than 75 of those agencies have had their Medicare payments suspended.

Roy, 54, is charged with several counts of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts. He appeared briefly in court Tuesday and is scheduled to have a detention hearing Wednesday. Authorities also moved to seize cash in Roy's bank accounts, cars and two sailboats.

His attorney, Patrick McLain, said authorities had contacted Roy months ago. McLain said it was too soon to comment on the case because prosecutors hadn't provided him with most of the evidence yet. Phone messages and emails left with Medistat, located just south of Dallas, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

The attorney for one of the home health agency owners, Cynthia Stiger, alleged to be part of the scheme called the charges and the dollar amounts listed overblown. Stiger pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

"They're not anywhere close to accurate," said Jeffrey Grass, Stiger's attorney.

Investigators for the U.S. Health and Human Services department noticed irregularities with Roy's practice about one year ago, officials said.

Roy had "recruiters" finding people to bill for home health services, said Saldana, the top federal prosecutor in Dallas. Some of those alleged patients, when approached by investigators, were found working on their cars and clearly not in need of home healthcare, she said.

Medicare patients qualify for home health care if they are confined to their homes and need care there, according to the indictment.

Saldana said Roy used the home health agencies as "his soldiers on the ground to go door to door to recruit Medicare beneficiaries."

"He was selling his signature," she said.

For example, authorities allege Charity Eleda, one of the home health agency owners charged in the scheme, visited a Dallas homeless shelter to recruit homeless beneficiaries staying at the facility, paying recruiters $50 for each person they found. A message was left Tuesday at Eleda's Dallas-based company, Charry Home Care Services, Inc.

Others indicted are accused of offering free health care and services such as food stamps to anyone who signed up and offered their Medicare number.

Roy would "make home visits to that beneficiary, provide unnecessary medical services and order unnecessary durable medical equipment for that beneficiary," the indictment alleged. "Medistat would then bill Medicare for those visits and services."

The indictment says Roy's business manager — identified only by his initials — recorded conversations between the two in January 2006. The business manager heard Roy describe his alleged scheme and refuse to market for patients in a legitimate way, the indictment said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced the suspension of an additional 78 home health agencies associated with Roy. The agencies were collecting about $2.3 million a month, said Peter Budetti, CMS' deputy administrator for program integrity.

The alleged fraud went unnoticed for several years. After CMS suspended Medicare provider accounts belonging to Roy and Medistat last July, Medistat's employees allegedly started billing Medicare under a different provider number under Roy's supervision, authorities said.

Until recently, HHS could not effectively track data to identify the kind of fraud now linked to Roy, who was billing beneficiaries "off the charts" for more than five years, officials said. The department's inspector general, Dan Levinson, told reporters the department's technology "has not come online as quickly as we'd like to see."

The department is now beefing up its data analysis and tracking other cases, Levinson said. It has also established task forces in several U.S. cities to track Medicare fraud, officials said.

"We're now able to use those data analytic tools in ways — in 2012 and 2011 — that no, we really could not have done in years past," Levinson said.

A spokesman for Trailblazer Health Enterprises, which paid home health claims through a contract with federal authorities, did not return a phone message Tuesday.

Health care fraud is estimated to cost the government at least $60 billion a year, mainly in losses to Medicare and Medicaid. Officials say the fraud involves everything from sophisticated marketing schemes by major pharmaceuticals encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs for unauthorized uses to selling motorized wheelchairs to people who don't need them.

"These are public programs, and we must protect them for future generations," Saldana said.

Odd Stories: Cop Charged With Stealing From Co-Workers

Justices Will Review Racial Preference for College

By Mark Sherman

Washington - The Supreme Court is setting an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action programs.

A challenge from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court's first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor.

This time around, a more conservative court could jettison that earlier ruling or at least limit when colleges may take account of race in admissions.

In a term already filled with health care, immigration and political redistricting, the justices won't hear the affirmative action case until the fall.

But the political calendar will still add drama. Arguments probably will take place in the final days of the presidential election campaign.

A broad ruling in favor of the student, Abigail Fisher, could threaten affirmative action programs at many of the nation's public and private universities, said Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick.

A federal appeals court upheld the Texas program at issue, saying it was allowed under the high court's decision in Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003 that upheld racial considerations in university admissions at the University of Michigan Law School.

But there have been changes in the Supreme Court since then. For one thing, Justice Samuel Alito appears more hostile to affirmative action than his predecessor, Sandra Day O'Connor. For another, Justice Elena Kagan, who might be expected to vote with the court's liberal-leaning justices in support of it, is not taking part in the case.

Kagan's absence probably is a result of the Justice Department's participation in the Texas case in the lower courts at a time when she served as the Obama administration's solicitor general.

Fisher, of Sugar Land, Texas, filed a lawsuit along with another woman when they were denied admission at the university's Austin campus. They contended the school's race-conscious policy violated their civil and constitutional rights. By then, the two had enrolled elsewhere.

The other woman has since dropped out of the case. The state has said that Fisher is a Louisiana State University senior whose impending graduation should bring an end to the lawsuit. But the Supreme Court appeared not to buy that argument Tuesday.

The Project on Fair Representation, which opposes the use of race in public policy, has helped pay Fisher's legal bills. "This case presents the Court with an opportunity to clarify the boundaries of race preferences in higher education or even reconsider whether race should be permitted at all under the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection," said Edward Blum, the group's director.

The project also issued a statement in Fisher's name. "I hope the court will decide that all future UT applicants will be allowed to compete for admission without their race or ethnicity being a factor," she said.

Most entering freshmen at Texas are admitted because they are among the top 10 percent in their high school classes. Fisher's grades did not put her in that category.

The Texas Legislature adopted the Top Ten Percent law after a federal appeals court ruling essentially barred the use of race in admissions.

But following the high court ruling in 2003, the university resumed considering race starting with its 2005 entering class. The policy at issue applies to the remaining spots beyond those filled by the top 10 percent and allows for the consideration of race along with other factors

Texas said its updated policy does not use quotas, which the high court has previously rejected. Instead, it said it takes a Supreme Court-endorsed broader approach to enrollment, with an eye toward increasing the diversity of the student body.

"We must have the flexibility to consider each applicant's unique experiences and background so we can provide the best environment in which to educate and train the students who will be our nation's future leaders," said Bill Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin.

Before adding race back into the mix, Texas' student body was 21 percent African-American and Hispanic, according to court papers.

By 2007, the year before Fisher filed her lawsuit, African-Americans and Hispanics accounted for more than a quarter of the entering freshman class.

Fisher's challenge says the Top Ten Percent law was working to increase diversity and that minority enrollment was higher than it had been under the earlier race-conscious system.

Fitzpatrick said two other states, California and Florida, use similar "top 10" plans, although California law 

explicitly prohibits the consideration of race.

"But the vast majority of schools that are selective are using affirmative action, though they don't like to advertise it for fear of being sued," he said.

The case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 11-345.

Man Who Got House for 16 Dollars Forced Into Leaving

Flower Mound, Texas - A man who gained some face for getting a $340,000 house for $16 has been evicted, or more accurately willingly left his house.

Kenneth Robinson moved into the house, formerly owned by William Ferguson for $330,000 who abandoned three years later due to his inability to pay for the house. Now however, in a move that's all-too-familiar with people across the country, Robinson lost the house - which he acquired under Texas' adverse possession law - to Bank of America.

The finance giant is seeking possession of the house and asked a judge to give Robinson until February 13th to appeal or leave the house. Instead of appeal he took the option to unceremoniously leave.

Robinson, who states on his website he isn't a lawyer, gave Texas citizens tips on how to stay on adverse possession, some of which was used by people to keep their houses in the face of foreclosure. He says he started a paradigm shift by helping people keep their own or claim abandoned homes, which if they go into disrepair, can bring down the property value of surrounding homes. The website, he says, is to minimize the likely damage the media and others - such as some of his unsympathetic neighbors - would bring to him.

""They think some bum off the street came and paid $15 to get a $300,000 house by filing a piece of paperwork. That is not the case. That is the sum of what happened."

Adverse possession statutes can be found in most states, Brian C. Rider, a real estate lawyer and professor at the University of Texas. Someone who has openly taken charge of abandoned land for an extended period of time — using a driveway on a neighbor's property, for example — could try to claim that land later, he said.

Robinson hasn't been charged with a crime but police said they responded to several calls from his neighbors. One neighbor attended Monday's hearing and was smiling after the eviction was ordered.

"We're going to throw a party," he said.

Georgia Takes Top Two Spots for Worst Polluting Power Stations

By Matt Bewig

 

Georgia leads the nation for dirty power plants, which are the primary source for greenhouse gases like CO₂, methane and nitrous oxide. To put things into perspective, for cars to produce as much planet-baking CO₂ as U.S. coal-fired power plants do in a year, Americans would have to drive at least twice as much as they currently do.

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released an online Greenhouse Gas Database that allows consumers to find out which power plants are polluting the most. The database, which includes the 6,700 power plants and heavy industrial sites responsible for 80 percent of all emissions in the US, shows that Georgia is home to the two worst polluting plants in the country—Scherer coal plant in Juliette and Bowen coal plant in Cartersville. Neighboring Alabama has the third worst offender, the Miller coal plant in Quinton, Alabama, while yet another Southern state, Texas, is the locale of the fourth worst plant, the Martin Lake coal plant in Tatum, Texas.

Florida Mayor Seeks to Privatize Water

Tampa - Does anybody remember the movie “Tank Girl” starring Lorrie Petty? The movie is about a woman who is looking for water in a world where it's the most precious thing in the world. If you haven't seen it I don't recommend you buy it, as it's pretty bad. Instead I suggest the graphic novel, which is hilarious on many levels. If it helps any the animation was done by the same guy who animates The Gorrillaz.

Now that you're hyped up it's time for me to bring bad news. It seems Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn and state representative Dana Young want to privatize water under the guise of expanding its reclaimed water system. Buckhorn claims doing so would help lower water rates without a regulation agency taking away the water, but it seems like it's really just going to send the water down a one-way street to whichever company is picked to clean and then sell it at whatever price they choose. The process is named “toilet to tap” by some, which is probably as disgusting to say as it is to swallow.

Charles Van Zant, a Florida state representative, says about the process “Day by day by day this will destroy the Florida aquifer. ”

Not to say probably destroy you from the inside. It's not like you can just go without water, especially if you're poor.

So far water privatization hasn't worked well for Texas residents. The Stateman reports:

“Across the state, a growing number of suburban Texans are getting their water from large, private corporations owned by investors seeking to profit off the sale of an essential resource. State figures show private companies are seeking more price increases every year, and many are substantial. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates water and sewer rates for nonmunicipal customers, doesn't keep numbers, but "their rate increases tend to be 40 and 60 percent," said Doug Holcomb, who oversees the agency's water utilities division. “

This is sure to be step one in privatizing water across the nation. If it can happen in Texas and Florida with hardly a peep, how far do you think it will go before a huge amount of people wake up to contaminated water flowing from their sinks unless they pay an obscenely high water bill.

Texas Teen Soon to Return Home

El Paso - Jakadrien Turner, the teenager who was deported to Colombia after giving ICE officials – who never took the time to confirm her identity nor find out she was unable to speak Spanish – a false name, is likely to return to her Texas home soon.

Jakadrien's release comes after the U.S. embassy provided the needed documents to Colombia. It also states she was working in a call center before she American and Colombian officials were alerted about her true citizenship status. Between that time and now Colombia claims she was in a welfare program.

Update: Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin announced Jakadrien Turner is on the way to being returned to the United States.

Holguin said they are looking into how she was deported into Colombia and allowed entry into the country.

Turner is presently five months pregnant.

Update: She is now back with her family.

Lost Girl Pops Up in Colombia Compliments of ICE

Dallas – Somehow an African-American girl who spoke no Spanish at all was deported to Colombia by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, also known as ICE.

Jakadrien Turner, who was missing since April of 2010, was sent to the country after she gave Houston authorities a false name of an acual illegal immigrant who had warrants for her arrest.

According to News 8, ICE took Jakadrien's fingerprints but didn't confirm her idetity for some reason before deporting her to Colombia. Upon arrival the country gave her a work card and released her.

Her grandmother Lorene found out her location thanks to her Facebook messages.

"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," the elder Turner said.

Jakadrien ran away from home when she felt under too much stress brought on by the death of her other grandmother and her parents' divorce. After making her way to Houston, she was arrested for theft and gave the fake name. Along with the social media site and Dallas police, Lorene foun her grandaughter.

However all is not settled for the Turner family. Along with being pregnant, the Colombian government is refusing to return the girl to her family.

ICE has released a statement:

ICE takes these allegations very seriously. At the direction of [the Department of Homeland Security], ICE is fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case.

ICE claims it is aware of cases when people claim to be someone else in order to avoid being deported.

Despite it all however Lorene is confident her grandaughter's case will be resolved saying “I feel like she will come home. I just need help. And I need prayer. ”