March 1, 2014

A Call to Arms on a Vermont Heroin Epidemic

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/us/a-call-to-arms-on-a-vermont-heroin-epidemic.html

RUTLAND, Vt. — Block by block, this city in central Vermont has been fighting a heroin epidemic so entrenched that it has confounded all efforts to combat it.

On Cottage Street, the foot traffic is heavy in and out of No. 24 ½, a red two-story cottage set back from the street, where visitors stay less than a minute.

“We know what they’re doing in there,” Victoria DeLong, a longtime neighbor, said of the house, which the police say is owned by an absentee landlord and is a haven for drug dealers. “It’s like shopping at the Grand Union,” Ms. DeLong said. “In and out, in and out.”

Long visible at the street level in towns and cities across the country, the extent of the opiate scourge in rural Vermont burst into the national consciousness last month, when Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State message to what he said was a “full-blown heroin crisis.” Much of New England is now also reporting record overdoses and deaths.

March 1, 2014

New Health Fix Offers Subsidies for Insurance Policies Bought Outside Exchanges

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/new-health-fix-offers-subsidies-for-insurance-policies-bought-outside-exchanges.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would allow some people to receive federal subsidies for health insurance purchased in the private market outside of health insurance exchanges. The sudden shift was the latest in a series of policy changes, extensions and clarifications by federal officials trying to help beneficiaries and minimize political damage to Democrats in this election year.

Federal officials said they had agreed to provide such assistance retroactively because technical problems had prevented consumers from using online exchanges to obtain insurance and financial aid in some states.

Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon, a Democrat, had specifically asked the federal government to allow financial assistance, in the form of tax credits, for people buying insurance outside the state’s troubled exchange. Other states running their own exchanges, including Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota, have also experienced technical difficulties, creating political problems for their governors.

The Obama administration’s decision came as a surprise because the Affordable Care Act is clear: Federal subsidies are available only to people who enroll in a “qualified health plan” through an exchange.

March 1, 2014

U.S. Spies Said No Invasion—Putin Disagreed

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/28/u-s-spies-said-no-invasion-putin-disagreed.html

On Thursday night, the best assessment from the U.S. intelligence community—and for that matter most experts observing events in Ukraine—was that Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine. Less than 24 hours later, however, there are reports from the ground of Russian troops pushing into the Ukrainian province of Crimea. It’s hardly a full-blown invasion. But it’s not quite the picture U.S. analysts were painting just a day before.

There was good reason to think Putin wouldn’t do it. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov told Secretary of State John Kerry that Russia respected the territorial integrity of the Ukraine. U.S. intelligence assessments concluded that the 150,000-man Russian military exercises announced by Putin on Wednesday were not preparations for an invasion of Ukraine because no medical units accompanied the troops. And Russian and U.S. diplomats were still working on Iran and Syrian diplomacy. All of this followed a successful Winter Olympic games for Putin’s Russia.

Yet private security contractors, working for the Russian military, seized control of two airports in Crimea on Friday. And Ukrainian border officials said that Russian cargo planes had landed inside the province, and that 10 military helicopters flew into Ukrainian airspace.

U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence on the fast moving situation in Ukraine tell The Daily Beast that analytic products from the intelligence community this week did not discount the prospect of Russian provocations and even light incursions in the Russian majority province of Crimea, the home of Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea.

March 1, 2014

State Department warns Americans on Ukraine travel

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is warning U.S. citizens to put off all nonessential travel to Ukraine, and particularly Crimea.

The department cited "the potential for instability" following the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych as president and the establishment of a new government.

Groups have staged protests, set up roadblocks and occupied government buildings in several cities throughout Ukraine since November 2013. The State Department warned all U.S. citizens in Ukraine, and those considering travel there to be aware of the possibility of violence.

President Barack Obama spoke of "reports" of military movements inside Ukraine, and officials said the U.S does believe that Russia is intervening.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/state-department-warns-americans-ukraine-travel

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No surprise here.

March 1, 2014

President Obama at Democratic National Committee Meeting 2-28-2014

http://www.c-span.org/video/?318040-1/president-obama-addresses-dnc

I don't know how to get this to display at DU.

March 1, 2014

Obama frames populist theme for Dems in 2014

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/speech-obama-seeks-unify-democrats-2014



WASHINGTON (AP) — Striking a decidedly partisan tone, President Barack Obama sought Friday to define this year's elections as a stark choice between Republicans pushing failed policies from a bygone era and Democrats advocating freedom and opportunity for all Americans.

Rallying the party faithful at a Democratic National Committee summit, Obama rattled off a list of issues where he said Republicans were stuck in the past: gay rights, women's equality, wages and health care, to name a few. Driving the midterm election campaigns across the country this year, he said, is a fundamental disagreement between the parties about the best way to secure America's future.

"What they are offering is not a new theory," Obama said, asserting that Republicans had advocated the same policies in the run-up to the Great Depression, the recent recession and the 2012 election. "And the American people said, "No, thanks.'"

In a boisterous speech, Obama seized the opportunity to mock Republicans — to the delight of the Democratic officials, donors and activists who packed a hotel ballroom near the White House. While acknowledging early setbacks in rolling out his health care law, Obama ridiculed his political foes for trying time and again to repeal the law.

February 28, 2014

Ukraine crisis live: UN Security Council to hold emergency meeting on Ukraine crisis

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10666893/Ukraine-crisis-live-UN-Security-Council-to-hold-emergency-meeting-on-Ukraine-crisis.html

February 28, 2014

Ukraine says Russia follows pre-Georgia war scenario in Crimea

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/ukraine-crisis-turchinov-idUSL6N0LX4JU20140228

Feb 28 (Reuters) - Ukraine's acting president accused Russia of open aggression on Friday and said it was provoking his country in the same way as it had Georgia before going to war in 2008.

Urging President Vladimir Putin to stop "provocations" in Ukraine's Russian-speaking Crimea, Oleksander Turchinov recalled Russia's intervention in Georgia over breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have large ethnic Russian populations.

Russia's Black Sea fleet has a base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

"Russia has sent forces into Crimea ... they are working on scenarios which are fully analogous with Abkhazia, when having initiated a military conflict, they started to annex the territory," Turchinov said in televised comments.

February 28, 2014

Ukraine: Russian military blocking airport

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/report-armed-men-take-airport-in-ukraines-crimea/2014/02/27/12bcc158-a01e-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Ukraine’s interior minister says the Russian military are blocking an airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea near the Russian naval base.

Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post that the Belbek international airport in Sevastopol is blocked by military units of the Russian navy. Avakov called the blockade “military invasion and occupation.”

Separately, dozens of armed men in military uniforms without markings were patrolling the airport in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea on Friday as tensions in the country’s Russian-speaking southeast escalated. It was not immediately clear who they were.

February 28, 2014

Is the BBC becoming the UK version of Fox News on global warming?

Yes, that is the actual title of the Guardian article.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/feb/27/bbc-false-balance-fox-news-global-warming

False balance in media reporting on climate change is a big problem for one overarching reason: there is a huge gap between the 97 percent expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and the public perception that scientists are evenly divided on the subject.

This can undoubtedly be traced in large part to the media giving disproportionate coverage to the opposing fringe climate contrarian views. Research has shown that people who are unaware of the expert consensus are less likely to accept the science and less likely to support taking action to address the problem, so media false balance can be linked directly to our inability to solve the climate problem.

The BBC is one such culprit, having repeatedly given climate contrarians disproportionate air time on its programs. Frequent recent BBC guests include blogger Andrew Montford and politician and founder of the anti-climate policy think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation, Nigel Lawson. The former was recently interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live's Stephen Nolan show, together with climate scientist Paul Williams from the University of Reading. The latter was invited onto the BBC Radio 4 Today program alongside climate scientist Brian Hoskins from the Imperial College London and Royal Society.

As climate experts, Williams and Hoskins were excellent choices to discuss the subjects at hand – climate science, models, and the link between climate change and the extreme weather causing flooding in the UK. On the other hand, Montford and Lawson are not climate scientists, nor even scientists of any sort. Williams and Hoskins are entirely capable of discussing the knowns and uncertainties in their areas of expertise, which calls into question the BBC's motives for inviting non-scientist climate contrarians onto the shows alongside these experts.