there’s battle lines being drawn
nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
young people speakin there minds
getting so much resistance far behind
Co-Payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
USA
Global warming has a new battleground: coal plants
Environmental lawyers make a concentrated effort to stop new ones from being built; a coalition claims 65 victories in the last year. But industry groups are fighting back.
WASHINGTON — Every time a new coal-fired power plant is proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary.They might frame the battle as a matter of zoning or water use, but the larger war is over global warming: Coal puts twice as much temperature-raising carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as natural gas, second to coal as the most common power plant fuel.
The plant-by-plant strategy is part of a campaign by environmentalists to force the federal government to deal with climate change. The fights are scattered from Georgia to Wyoming, from Illinois to Texas, but the ultimate target is Washington, where the Bush administration has resisted placing limits on carbon dioxide and Congress has yet to act on a global warming bill.
A surge of new voters in Pennsylvania is likely to help Obama
BRISTOL, Pa. – Sandra Jones, an unemployed transit worker, and college student Christy Race are part of 2008’s biggest electoral phenomenon – an army of people who’ve never voted but are swarming to the polls this year.
Jones, 48, is under no illusion that an election can instantly get her a good job, but at least it offers hope. “Barack Obama reminds me of John F. Kennedy,” she said. “There’s something about his demeanor and the way he speaks.”Race, 19, finds Obama unusually inspiring, too – and, she said, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is simply unacceptable. “She’s too into politics, and I think Bill Clinton’s controlling her,” Race said.
Asia
Japan fleet misses whaling target
For the first time in 20 years protest action has prevented Japan’s whalers from meeting their quota, the country’s Fisheries Agency says.
The fleet caught only 60% of the whales they planned to – for what they say is scientific research purposes.The ships are due to return to port in the next few daincreasingly bitter disputeys.
Japan’s fleet was followed around the Antarctic by anti-whaling protesters from several different groups in an increasingly bitter dispute.
Former Maoist guerrillas on brink of historic Nepal election victory
· Rebels upstage political rivals as royal dynasty ends
· We are committed to democracy, says leader
Former communist rebels in Nepal appear to be on the brink of a historic sweep in elections that will decide the political future of the Himalayan nation and end the rule of its 239-year-old royal dynasty.The Maoists’ party has won 42 seats and is leading in 58 constituencies, the election commission said in a statement on its website. The traditional politicians, who had expected to win the polls, have been reduced to bit-part players.
The country’s oldest and biggest political party, the Nepali Congress, has so far won 13 seats and the Unified Marxist-Leninists, the traditional communist party, had just 14 seats in the latest count.
Africa
Election recount allows Mugabe to step up violence, says opposition
· Results likely to stay secret for another week
· Southern Africa leaders fail to pressure Zanu-PF
Zimbabwe’s official presidential election results may remain secret for at least another week while substantial numbers of votes are recounted in a move the opposition says is designed to fraudulently overturn Robert Mugabe’s defeat and his Zanu-PF party’s defeat in parliament.The Movement for Democratic Change says that the continuing delay in making public the results of the ballot held more than two weeks ago, and the breathing space given to Mugabe by a weekend summit of regional leaders, is permitting Zanu-PF to widen its campaign of violent intimidation in rural areas
Somali militants kill two Britons
Somali Islamist militants killed two Somalis holding British passports and two Kenyans at a school in the central town of Baladwayne overnight, local residents said toay.
“Al Shaabab fighters entered the town and suddenly attacked houses of government officials,” resident Ahmed Elmi told Reuters. “Then they attacked a school where they killed two Kenyans, a British woman and a Somali man with a British passport.”Al Shabaab is a militant Islamist group that the United States put on its list of foreign terrorist organisations in late February, for what Washington says is links to al Qaeda.
Middle East
‘Betrayed’ Iraqi staff in test case over UK’s refusal to offer asylum
By Robert Verkaik in Damascus
Monday, 14 April 2008
Iraqi interpreters, clerical staff and labourers who face death threats and persecution after risking their lives working for British forces are challenging the Government’s refusal to grant them sanctuary in the UK.A test case in the High Court will accuse the Government of abandoning former Iraqi staff who have fled their homes after being branded “spies and collaborators” by the Shia militias. Many have seen their homes bombed, family members killed or have received death threats.
Arabs and Jews work together to make drama out of a crisis
In a hillside hamlet beside a forest, Jewish and Arab teenagers from the Holy Land are living together in a pioneering experiment to overcome racial prejudice.
There will be no debating their divisive histories, no lighting candles for peace, no lectures on the brotherhood of man. Instead, they are being instructed to dress as warriors, wood-cutters and sorcerers.The Asha Centre, a retreat in rural Gloucestershire, has been converted for four weeks into a drama boot camp where the 16-year-olds will stage an adaptation of Grimm’s fairytales.
Europe
Berlusconi’s return in the hands of Rome as Italians go to the polls
If there was a last-minute swing back to the centre-left in Italy’s general election, it certainly had not reached the elegantly coiffed lady who emerged from a polling station just by Rome’s Milvian bridge.
Jenni Puccini had put her “X” firmly on Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom, the media tycoon’s new party which includes Gianfranco Fini and his “post-fascists”.“We’re not happy about all these immigrants, and with all the crime,” she said. “We don’t feel safe any longer.”
Berlusconi’s rival for the office of prime minister, Walter Veltroni, is the former mayor of Rome. But after a string of violent murders in the city last year, many Romans blame the centre-left leader for not doing enough on law and order.
Key Bulgarian minister steps down
Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Rumen Petkov has resigned amid increasing criticism of the government’s failure to tackle organised crime.
The resignation follows a scandal in which two senior police officers have been accused of passing official secrets to alleged crime bosses.There have also been a spate of contract killings in recent months.
Latin America
Colombian clam diggers’ livelihoods under siege
Environmental pollution and encroaching narcos have taken their toll on Narino state’s Afro-Colombians. The community’s unique, altruistic culture is in peril.
TUMACO, COLOMBIA — After a lifetime spent digging for black clams in the swamps that line the coast here, Clojilda Velasco remembers when she could count on finding 400 a day. Now she’s lucky if she gets 100. But she still shares when one of the other women comes up salado, or unlucky.Oil spills, industrial pollution, drug traffickers and over-harvesting are quickly reducing the clam population in the mangroves of Tumaco and snuffing out the livelihoods of Velasco and other extremely poor families who depend on the mollusks for their subsistence.
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