Daily Archives: May 15, 2011

Insurance gone, paralyzed athlete fights for his life – Who says we do not need healthcare reform? Reply

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Rocky Clark can do little but swivel his head. He can’t move his arms or legs. More than a decade ago, he was paralyzed from the neck down after being tackled in a high school football game. After nine months in rehab and a hospital bill approaching $1 million, he went home.

As a quadriplegic, his long-term prospects were slim. And over the years, there have been regular hospital stays and health scares — no surprise, considering Clark’s fragile condition. He has just one working lung. His right lung is partially paralyzed; certain infections could kill him.

And yet Clark has endured. His doctor credits top-notch, round-the-clock home health care paid for by the school district’s $5 million catastrophic health insurance policy. But that’s run out, so the nurses and money are gone, replaced by his mother, growing financial pressures and a new sense of foreboding.

On a warm September night in 2000 just four plays into the game, Clark — a high school junior and running back for Eisenhower’s Cardinals — was grabbed by the shoulder and tackled. His head hit the ground. At first, he recalls, there was silence.

“When I started coming around, I heard a bunch of ringing,” he says. “My whole body was vibrating, like a spring. I felt cold air. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t.”

Clark’s neck had been broken in two places.

He spent about nine months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, wondering if his injury was some sort of cruel payback for something he had done in his 16 years.

Clark finished high school, donning cap and gown and having a friend wheel him across the stage so he could accept his diploma. He took some college courses, but a full-time schedule proved too difficult. (He’d like to return, but can’t afford it.) He became a volunteer coach at Eisenhower, attending games.

All of it was made possible by the care provided through the district’s insurance policy. And Clark says when the $5 million policy ran out several months ago, he assumed it would be renewed.

But it was not.

“A limit on life? That’s crazy,” Clark says, his pencil-thin frame covered by a white sheet. “I thought I’d be being taken care of the rest of my life.”

“They’re facing unenviable decisions that balance life, death, financial security and poverty — meaning the choice they make is a choice no person ever wants to make,’” says Michael McRaith, director of the Illinois Department of Insurance.

Annual limits are being phased out and lifetime caps ended last September as part of the new health reform law, so the ranks of those exhausting their policies will drop sharply over the coming years, and will totally be eliminated by 2014, McRaith says.

Full story available on MSNBC or HuffPost Chicago

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Police attacking protestors outside Israel Embassy, Egypt Reply

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At least 120 people were injured after Egyptian security forces fired tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets at pro-Palestinian protesters who were trying to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Thousands of protesters had massed outside of the embassy in the capital on Sunday to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the “Nakba” or “catastrophe” – the day Israel declared its independence and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.

Witnesses said a group of demonstrators later tried to storm the entrance of the embassy. Police used rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd. At least 20 people were arrested.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Gilles, who was at the scene, said that some protesters responded by burning tires in the middle of the road and throwing stones.

“The security forces have made a charge outside the embassy to clear the street in front of it and most of the protesters are being forced back,” he said.

‘Determined protesters’

“They’ve sealed off the main area into it but there is still a determined presence here, they are determined not to move, spurred on by the images they’ve seen of the Nakba protests in other parts of the Middle East.

“We’ve seen a few people laid out on the floor mainly suffering from gas inhalation more than anything else.”

Activists had earlier called for marches to start on Sunday to reach the Rafah border crossing between Israel and Egypt.

The incident followed the visit to Egypt by a senior Israeli defence ministry official – the first trip by a top Israeli official since a popular uprising toppled former president Hosni Mubarak in February.

Amos Gilad was to hold talks with several Egyptian officials “to discuss the latest developments in the region, in light of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement”, MENA, Egypt’s state news agency reported on Sunday.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal ended a four-year feud at a reconciliation ceremony in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, earlier this month, which Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu termed “a tremendous blow to peace”.

The long-awaited accord, inked by the two rivals among 13 factions, aims to put a stop to the animosity which has split the Palestinian territories into opposing camps since 2007.

The agreement envisages Hamas and Fatah working to put together an interim government of candidates who are unaffiliated with either faction, who would govern until presidential and legislative elections within a year.

Is Big Brother in Chicago? Estimated 10,000 cameras survey the city Reply

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In what has been dubbed Operation Virtual Shield, thousands of public and privately owned security cameras have been put in place in Chicago and linked together, creating a capsule of surveillance over the entire city, more extensive than anywhere else in the United States. Chicago holds the record for number of surveillance cameras, estimated at up to 10,000. The network is said to have cost $60 million. Officials say it is worth the price, but privacy concerns are at a peak.

This brings back memories of the Red Squad in Chicago back during the cold war….

The arm of Chicago’s law enforcement known alternately as the Industrial Unit, the Intelligence Division, the Radical Squad, or the Red Squad, had its roots in the Gilded Age, when class conflict encouraged employers to ally themselves with Chicago’s police against the city’s increasingly politicized workforce. Following the Haymarket bombing, Captain Michael J. Schaack orchestrated a vicious campaign against anarchism, resulting in 260 arrests, bribed witnesses, attacks on immigrants and labor activists, and convoluted theories of revolutionary conspiracy. Continuing its use of both overt and covert tactics, such as surveillance, infiltration, and intimidation, Chicago’s Red Squad in the 1920s under Make Mills shifted its attention from anarchists to individuals and organizations who the Red Squad believed to be Communist. Casting a wide net, the squad by 1960 had collected information on approximately 117,000 Chicagoans, 141,000 out-of-towners, and 14,000 organizations. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Red Squad expanded its targets from radical organizations like the Communist and Socialist Workers Parties to minority and reform organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Lawyers Guild, and Operation PUSH.

After 11 years of litigation, a 1985 court decision ended the Chicago Police Department’s Subversive Activities Unit’s unlawful surveillance of political dissenters and their organizations. In the fall of 1974, the Red Squad destroyed 105,000 individual and 1,300 organizational files when it learned that the Alliance to End Repression was filing a lawsuit against the unit for violating the U.S. Constitution. The records that remain are housed at the Chicago Historical Society. The public requires special permission to access them until 2012.

IMF Chief arrested in NYC for allegedly forcing hotel maid to give him oral sex Reply

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UPDATE MAY 16, 2011: Click here

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), was arrested in New York on allegations that he forced or attempted to force a maid at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan to perform oral sex on him.

The New York Post was first to break the news that the IMF chief was hauled off an Air France flight two minutes before it was due to take off, and taken into custody by the NYPD.

Here’s its description of the events that transpired in the hotel:

The trouble began around noon today, when a housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel on West 44th Street.

Strauss-Kahn was in his bathroom, said sources. He emerged from the bathroom naked, said the sources, and grabbed her.

Then, Strauss-Kahn allegedly threw the housekeeper on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said the sources.

The New York Daily news puts it a different way, saying that the maid escaped:

Strauss-Kahn, 62, allegedly crept up behind a maid after she entered his room and forced her to perform oral sex on him, sources said.

The woman broke free and ran out of the room. Strauss-Khan quickly headed for the airport, sources said.

He has been seen as a potential future candidate for Prime Minister of France.

This is not the first time he’s been involved in a sex scandal. Back in 2008 there was a story of the IMF investigating an improper sexual relationship with a subordinate.

And approximately a year ago, a book described his string of extra-marital affairs.

The Telegraph wrote this almost exactly one year ago:

The leader French Socialist and former finance minister is considered perhaps the only politician in a position to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy should he run against him in elections in 2012. But according to the book – said to be written by a close female aide – his penchant for the opposite sex could knock him out of the race even before it starts.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has a story — actually dated tomorrow — about how Strauss-Kahn is suing a French newspaper that made claims about his super-rich lifestyle, such as buying expensive, tailored suits.

He was due to meet with Angela Merkel this weekend on Euro-crisis matters.
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Here are the details of the allegations:

The 32-year-old woman told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s suite at the luxury Sofitel hotel not far from Manhattan’s Times Square at about 1 p.m. Eastern time (1600 GMT) Saturday and he attacked her, Browne said. She said she had been told to clean the spacious $3000-a-night-suite suite, which she had been told was empty.

According to an account the woman provided to police, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he began to sexually assault her. She said she fought him off, then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.

When detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his cellphone, Browne said. “It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne said.

The NYPD discovered he was at the airport and contacted Port Authority officials, who plucked Strauss-Kahn from first class on the Air France flight that was just about to leave the gate.

The maid was taken by police to a hospital and being treated for minor injuries.
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Update: With the news about 12 hours old, here’s a bit more of what has been learned.

Already many in France are raising questions about whether there is some kind of plot by the far-right. He had been riding high in the polls, and it seems his people were expecting more and more smears.

The IMF now faces a leadership vacuum. It’s not clear what his future is at the organization — regardless of the outcome in this particular case. Per this WSJ article, his #2 John Lipsky had planned to leave this August. Strauss-Kahn has been a forceful defender of the current bailout approach in Europe, for better or worse.

And the IMF has put out this brief statement:

“IMF Managing Director Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York City. Mr. Strauss-Kahn has retained legal counsel, and the IMF has no comment on the case; all inquiries will be referred to his personal lawyer and to the local authorities.

“The IMF remains fully functioning and operational.”

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Article from Business Insider

Meet the microbes which will be aboard the next Shuttle Endeavour LIFE Reply

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Oh, sure, human astronauts will be on board Space Shuttle Endeavour’s STS-134 mission set to launch Monday. But so will five microscopic life forms: Water Bears, also known as Tardigrades (shown above); the bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans and Bacillus subtilis; and the archaea Haloarcula marismortui and Pyrococcus furiosus.
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Water Bears
 (or Tardigrades)

Members of the animal kingdom, the Water Bears are “huge” microorganisms compared to the other LIFE travelers. Their bodies are composed of four segments, each with two legs ending in claws. Water bears are extremophiles, which means they can adapt to some pretty hostile environments — from 150 degrees Celsius (302 Fahrenheit or hot enough to bake biscotti) to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Plus, they’re radiation resistant.

The tardigrades had already been coaxed into an anhydrobiotic state, during which their metabolisms slow by a factor of 10,000. This allows them to survive vacuums, starvation, dessication and temperatures above 300 degrees Fahrenheit and below minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once in orbit, the tardigrade box popped open. Some were exposed to low-level cosmic radiation, and others to both cosmic and unfiltered solar radiation. All were exposed to the frigid vacuum of space…

Just how the invertebrate astronauts protected themselves “remains a mystery,” wrote the researchers.

… personally, I think it looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie….


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Conan the Bacterium
 (common nickname for Deinococcus radiodurans or "terrifying berries")

This strain of bacteria is so hardy it has the nickname, Conan the Bacterium. Whereas 10 Gy (Grays) of radiation would kill an average human, Deinococcus radiodurans can survive a whopping 5000 (five thousand) Gy. More than a third of the cells will even survive a dose of 15,000 Gy! That’s an ideal trait for long journeys through the dangerous radiation of outer space.

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The Average Joe of Bacteria
 (Bacillus subtilis)

Bacillus subtilis is a “model organism,” a standard bacteria used over and over again in many different biological experiments. tThe MW01 strain will fly on Shuttle LIFE. Bacillus subtilis is also quite radiation resistant and has a long history of space biology missions, going back to the days of Apollo. That will allow a good comparison point between Shuttle LIFE and some of the other space flights of this bacterium.

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Poison Lover
 (Halomonadaceae sp. GFAJ-1)

These rod shaped bacteria from the family Halomonadaceae made headlines as the first known microorganisms that are apparently able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical, arsenic. The bacteria appear to substitute arsenic for phosphorus in their cell components. If these results are confirmed, they may imply a separate biochemistry for life. And that means that life might arise in planetary conditions we never before thought suitable.

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Old Salty
 (Haloarcula marismortui, an archaeon)

Many archaeons — a type of single-celled organism — are extremophiles that thrive under conditions that would destroy other organisms. Haloarcula marismortui lives in extremely salty environments. Why are we testing an organism that seems to enjoy high salinity? If ancient Mars had water on its surface at some point in the past, it was in all likelihood very salty and briny. Any life existed that there would probably have lived in those salty seas. It’s important to learn if such a salt-loving organism can survive a long journey through space.

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Fire Eater
 (Pyrococcus furiosus, an archaeon)

These extremophiles love heat. Pyrococcus furiosus was discovered in 1986 in volcanically heated ocean sediments off the coast of Italy, and it thrives in temperatures between 70 and over 100 degrees Celsius (158 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit). But interplanetary space isn’t hot; nor is the surface of Mars or Phobos. So why send a heat-seeking extremophile on the journey? There is always the small risk that somewhere in processing the payload, some mistake would cause the payload to overheat. In that case, Pyrococcus furiosus will serve as a kind of temperature control. If it is the only LIFE organism to survive the trip, this will indicate that overheating rather than conditions in space caused the loss of the other organisms.

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