As the world watches the Olympic Winter Games in South Korea, some American athletes in Washington are lacing up their skates to train for their own, major sporting event. Special in every way, these young people work to overcome their developmental obstacles to compete for gold — just like the world’s top athletes in Pyeongchang. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington.
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From: MeNeedIt
The world, some fret, is falling apart. Politicians spar viciously on social media. Leaders lie. Former heroes fall like dominoes amid endless scandals. Cruelty has come to feel commonplace.
But never fear: We have curling.
The sport with the frenzied sweeping and clacking rocks has rules that require players to treat opponents with kindness. Referees aren’t needed, because curlers police themselves. And the winners generally buy the losers a beer.
At the Pyeongchang Olympics, curlers and their fans agree: In an era of vitriol and venom, curling may be the perfect antidote to our troubled times.
“Nobody gets hit — other than the rock,” laughed Evelyne Martens of Calgary, Canada, as she watched a recent Canada vs. Norway curling match. “And there’s nothing about Trump here!”
Thanks, Scotland
In the 500 years since curling was conceived on the frozen ponds of Scotland, it has remained largely immune to the cheating controversies and bloated egos common in other sports. This is thanks to what is known as “The Spirit of Curling,” a deeply ingrained ethos that dictates that curlers conduct themselves with honor and adhere to good sportsmanship.
The World Curling Federation’s rules state: “Curlers play to win, but never to humble their opponents. A true curler never attempts to distract opponents, nor to prevent them from playing their best, and would prefer to lose rather than to win unfairly.”
Kindness is the baseline for what curling is all about, says Canadian Kaitlyn Lawes, who won the gold medal this week in curling mixed doubles.
“We shake hands before the game, we shake hands after. And if someone makes a great shot against you, we congratulate them because it’s fun to play against teams that are playing well,” Lawes says. “I think that spirit of curling can be used in the real world — and hopefully it can be a better place.”
Case in point: After losing the curling mixed doubles gold medal to Canada, Switzerland’s Martin Rios swallowed his disappointment during a press conference to say that the Canadians had deserved to win, declaring: “They were the better team.”
The Canadians returned the favor by heartily applauding their Swiss opponents not once but twice. And before the women’s round-robin match Thursday, the Korean team presented their Canadian competitors with a gift bag of Korean curling banners and pins.
A certain morality
Children new to the sport are coached about the spirit of curling from the very start, says Willie Nicoll, chairman of British Curling. Fair play is not an afterthought, he says. It is the heart of the game.
“It’s always been looked at as being a very gentlemanly sport,” says Kate Caithness, president of the World Curling Federation. “Where does that happen in sport, when you say to your opposition, ‘Good shot?’”
It’s not that curling isn’t competitive. Like every other Olympian in Pyeongchang, curlers all want the gold — just not at the expense of their integrity.
Perhaps the best example of this is the lack of referees. Officials rarely get involved in matches because players call themselves out for fouls. If a curler accidentally hits a stone that’s in motion with their foot or broom — a situation known as a “burned stone” — he or she is expected to immediately announce the mistake. Aileen Geving, a member of the U.S. Olympic curling team, says it would be unthinkable for her not to own up to such a goof.
“We all have to be true to ourselves and I know I would feel way too guilty not to say anything if I hit it!” she says, laughing. “I think there’s a certain morality behind that.”
On Friday, an exceedingly unusual controversy over a burned stone erupted that — unsurprisingly — meandered its way to a mild end. In a tense match against Canada, a Danish player accidentally hit a moving rock. Canada, which had the right to decide what happened, chose to remove the rock from play rather than allow it to remain.
The “aggression” stunned some observers. Canadian media covering the game launched into frenzied discussions, and some curling fans tweeted shock over what they considered unsportsmanlike behavior.
This, though, was the measured reaction from the Danish team’s skip a bit later: She wouldn’t have made the same choice, but she also wasn’t mad.
For the fans, seeing such displays of warmth — or, in the above case, lack of heat — can be a welcome respite from the harshness of the outside world.
Sinking into her seat at the Gangneung Curling Centre, Crystle Kozoroski was still stressed from attending the previous night’s rough and rowdy hockey game. Watching curling, she said, was just the therapy she needed.
“I’m still tense from last night’s game — my body is literally sore,” said Kozoroski, of Manitoba, Canada. “It’s nice just to sit and relax.” Curling is, she says, a “very calming and soothing sport.”
A typical game
Here is how a typical game starts at Gangneung: Opponents turn to each other, share a handshake and wish each other “Good curling!” A bouncy organ tune blasts across the arena and the stadium announcer cheerfully bellows, “Good luck and GOOD CURLING!” The crowd whoops with glee. Even if you have no idea what is happening, it is almost impossible not to smile.
There’s a sense that everyone is welcome. And with curling, that’s kind of true. Both women and men compete in all three versions of the sport — traditional curling, mixed doubles and wheelchair — and members of curling clubs range in age from 7 to 90.
That feeling of inclusiveness is intertwined with a deep camaraderie that goes back to curling’s inception. Take “broomstacking,” named for the original practice of opponents stacking their brooms in front of a roaring fire after a game and enjoying a drink together.
These days, rivals still socialize after matches, with the winner generally buying the loser a round. The other day, Canadian gold medal curler John Morris posted a photo on Instagram of himself sharing a locker room brew with U.S. rival Matt Hamilton, their arms slung around each other and grins stretching across their faces.
Mae Polo, whose son Joe Polo is a member of the U.S. Olympic curling team, says she and her family have formed tight bonds with curlers across the globe. Those friendships have traversed any competitive or cultural divides, she says, with the curlers’ families all helping each other sort out travel logistics to the Olympics.
Curling is one big family, she says. And maybe, just maybe, curling could serve as a blueprint for us all.
“The world needs to take a lesson from it,” she says. “Let’s just love each other.”
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From: MeNeedIt
You may not be familiar with the name Kam Mak, but you’ve probably seen his work. In 2008, the Chinese-American artist was selected by the U.S. Postal Service to create an annual stamp through 2019 for its Celebrating Lunar New Year series.
The Year of the Dog stamp is his latest, and Mak says it highlights some of the holiday’s traditions.
“In the Year of the Dog stamp I decided to use three stalks of lucky bamboo. In Chinese tradition, three lucky bamboo symbolize first, blessing and luck, second is long life, and third is wealth. I also included the pasting of the Fu character, and that means blessing and luck.”
The Lunar New Year stamps date back to the 1980’s, when the Organization of Chinese Americans, now known as OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, began urging the postal service to issue a stamp honoring the contributions of Chinese Americans in the U.S.
Mak explains that Jean Chen, one of their members, led the way after she came across a book about the history of the Transcontinental Railroad with a photo showing only Caucasian workers celebrating the completion of the railroad in 1869.
“She was incensed to not see one Chinese American in any of those photos. And she felt that is not right. And she came up with the idea of lobbying the U.S. Postal Service to have some kind of stamp to pay honor to these Chinese Americans who helped build the railroad. That railroad transformed America and a lot of Chinese people gave their lives building that.”
The first Lunar New Year stamp, issued in 1992, was designed by Hawaii graphic artist, Clarence Lee. Due to its popularity, the U.S. Postal Service commissioned Lee to design a series depicting all 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. Mak’s series, which celebrates some of the holiday customs and traditions that have endured throughout time , incorporates Lee’s paper-cut designs.
His favorite, he says, features narcissus flowers, issued in 2010 for the Year of the Tiger. “It comes with lots of memory, because it was something that my grandmother would cultivate right before the lunar new year and as a little boy (I) always watch her doing it …And the fragrance from the flower always reminds me lunar new year is coming and always brings back, really fond memory being with my grandma.
Mak, who was born in Hong Kong, immigrated to America with his family in 1971, and grew up in New York City’s Chinatown. There, the 10-year-old faced language barriers and the challenge of adjusting to a new life.
“My Dad was a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant and he worked six days a week,” he said. “And my Mom was working in a sweatshop, six days a week, 12 hours a day. They struggled, because the pay’s really low … they struggled just to take care of us.”
Mak recalls during that time, gangs that were rampant in Chinatown and trying to recruit new members. His friend joined a gang. “One day I heard that my friend got shot in a Chinese Theater,” Mak said. “And the whole scenario, really scared me straight. And I realized, ‘Oh boy, I want to make sure that I don’t end up being in that situation.’ And think from then on, I really started taking school very seriously. Because I think that was really my way out.”
Mak was not a good student, but he was good at making pictures. Before long, he got involved with the City Art Workshop, which allowed inner-city youth, like him, to explore the arts. Today, in his 50s, Mak is a professor at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, where he teaches painting. He’s also illustrated numerous books, including a retelling of an old Chinese folktale, The Dragon Prince, by renowned author Laurence Yep.
Eventually, Mak illustrated and wrote his own picture book called My Chinatown: One Year In Poems. It’s about a little boy growing up in Chinatown. Through an organization called Behind the Book, he shares his immigrant experience with New York City students.
“[They] are mostly Latinos and African American kids (from the) inner city. So besides reading them the book, I take them out to Chinatown and have them experience all the things that I experienced growing up … I just want to stir their imaginations and want them to learn about other cultures, besides what they only know in their own neighborhood.”
And he wants the people he meets to be proud of who they are, and not feel ashamed if they’re different. He recalled a talk at a public school in Chinatown.
“And so after my presentation to these group of kids, a bunch of Chinese kids came to me very emotionally (and said), ‘Kam, I’m so happy there’s a book that is about me.’ I say, ‘Yes, this book is about all our experiences, our similar experiences.’ So at that moment, I felt really emotional because, wow, the book itself had moved other kids, and they would not feel that they are isolated, that there’s actually a book that actually plays a very positive light about how they grew up and it’s something they can relate to. And so I think that’s a very positive thing.”
For Kam Mak, carrying on the legacy of the Lunar New Year stamps, and Chinese culture and heritage, is not only a huge responsibility, but a personal mission, as well.
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From: MeNeedIt
Shares in European plane maker Airbus flew higher on Thursday after the company reported improved earnings and was more upbeat about the future following problems to several of its key aircraft programs.
The company said that it surged to a net profit of 1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in the fourth quarter, from a loss of 816 million euros a year earlier, while revenue was stable around 23.8 billion euros. Airbus delivered a record 718 aircraft last year and expects that figure to rise further in 2018, to 800.
CEO Tom Enders credited “very good operational performance, especially in the last quarter.”
Shares in the company jumped about 10 percent on Thursday in Paris. Investors seem optimistic that the company is putting behind it the worst of its troubles with three airplane production programs.
Airbus, which is based in Toulouse, France, said it took another charge of 1.3 billion euros on its A400 military plane, which has had cost overruns for years. It said, however, that it had reached a deal with the governments that are buying the planes on a new delivery schedule that should rein in any new charges on the program.
The company also acknowledged that it had had more struggles with engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney for the A320neo, a narrow-body plane that’s popular with regional airlines. The supplier had had problems with the engines last year, which it fixed, but reported a new issue more recently that could affect 2018 deliveries, Airbus said.
Another of Airbus’ troubled plane models, the A380 superjumbo jet, now has a more stable outlook after the company reached a deal with Emirates airline that will cover the cost of production for years.
The various problems with these production programs risked overshadowing what was otherwise a strong year for Airbus in terms of earnings, as global demand for commercial aircraft grows. Airbus raised its dividend by 11 percent and said it expects one of its key earnings metrics — earnings before interest and tax — to rise 20 percent in 2018.
From: MeNeedIt
Lerone Bennett Jr., an African-American history author and former editor of Ebony magazine, has died at age 89.
A.A. Rayner and Sons Funeral Home in Chicago said Thursday that Bennett died Tuesday. Ebony magazine tells the Chicago Sun-Times that Bennett had vascular dementia.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday called Bennett an “activist historian” and said “a global force for justice he was, a mighty pen he had.”
Bennett grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and worked on his high school newspaper and edited the student newspaper at Morehouse College, where he went to school with Martin Luther King Jr. Bennett went on to work at the Atlanta Daily World before joining Jet and then Ebony. He worked at Ebony for about 50 years.
“He was the guiding light for the editorial vision of Ebony,” Ebony CEO Linda Johnson Rice said Wednesday. “Lerone was not just essential in the formation of Ebony’s historic trajectory, he was a pillar in the black community.”
Bennett chronicled the civil rights movement. Among his books was “What Manner of Man, a Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” along with “Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America” and “The Shaping of Black America.”
Bennett took on national roles, including as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and as an early adviser to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. His footprints are in pavement at the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame in Atlanta.
Bennett’s wife, Gloria, was a Jet journalist. She died in 2009. He is survived by three children.
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From: MeNeedIt
After finishing her fourth Winter Games in Sochi, Kikkan Randall decided: It was time to have a baby. But the cross-country skiing champion wasn’t ready to give up her Olympic goals.
So, at 32, she looked at the calendar and plotted her window: 2016, a gap year. No World Cup circuit and no Olympics. If things worked out as planned, Randall could get pregnant, give birth and be back in competition and qualify for Pyeongchang.
It’s the kind of calculation many ambitious career women are forced to make. For the three-time World Cup Sprint Champion regarded as a pioneer of American women’s skiing, there was one more challenge ahead before retirement: Pushing herself to a fifth and final Olympics after having a child.
“I’d worked really hard to get the pinnacle of skiing … I knew I couldn’t wait another four years to start a family,” said Randall, now 35, whose record-setting resume has earned her the nickname “Kikkanimal.”
“I’d had an amazing career up to that point,” Randall said. “I just felt like, in a sport like cross-country, where it takes so many years to develop to your top potential, I didn’t want to have to make the choice of career or family. I had a feeling I would be able to come back to skiing stronger, but it was definitely an unknown. If I had to pick one season to miss, it was a good one.”
Randall did get pregnant in 2015. Her son, Breck, was born the following spring . She is the only mother on the U.S. Olympic Team, which also has 20 fathers this year.
When Randall returned to competition in 2016, she wasn’t the only new mom on skis. Randall and her friend and competitor, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen of Finland, gave birth within two weeks of each other. Marit Bjoergen of Norway — regarded as the best woman in the sport — had her child four months earlier. French skiers Aurora Jean, Anouk Faivre-Picon and Caroline Hugue, and Slovenia’s Katja Visnar had new babies, too.
Most are competing in Pyeongchang, and have had to balance the challenges of parenthood and career with the help of fellow athletes, friends and family — and not always with the support of their workplace.
“It’s a sport that requires so much time,” said Randall’s husband, former Canadian race skier Jeff Ellis . “It’s impressive what they’ve done as moms.”
For Randall, skiing has often come first. When she married in 2008, there was training season to consider — along with the Alaska spring. She and Ellis wed at the beginning of May, shortly after both seasons began. One of her coaches officiated the ceremony.
After a couple of tries, Randall conceived in August 2015. She trained throughout her pregnancy, sticking to a shortened version of her twice-a-day routine, including running through her seventh month, interval training to keep her heart rate up, and weight training — which got her some funny looks in the gym as her belly grew.
Randall delivered Breck in April and , like many moms, was back at work after six weeks, missing only a month of the training season. She would pump breast milk between workouts, time feedings around her training, and bring Breck along in a baby jogger for hikes and runs. Easing the transition was a supportive husband, who works only in the winter, and Randall’s parents, who live close by in Anchorage.
“In today’s world it’s kind of the only way you can do it,” said her father, Ronn Randall, 68. “This is just a little bit on steroids here. But when she discussed it with us, I thought it was a completely natural thing to do. I knew it could have an impact on her career, but you don’t want a career to have an impact on your life, either.”
When Randall returned to the World Cup circuit in 2016, Breck was also in tow, along with both sets of grandparents. With several moms competing, race organizers set up a baby room at venues for breastfeeding or changing diapers. Extra credentials were made available for caretakers, who were also able to take advantage of the team rate for accommodations.
“It was the first time they’d ever done something like that,” Randall said.
There was also a new camaraderie among the ski moms, who set up a Facebook group for support and updates.
Randall had hoped to bring Breck to Pyeongchang for her final Games, but the cost of family housing proved too expensive. The 22-month old is with her husband’s parents in Canada.
Randall said she sees an opportunity for the International Olympic Committee to do more to support athletes who are also parents.
“I haven’t experienced it from the men’s side, but there are unique challenges when you’re a mother,” she said. “We’re not talking about 500 athletes here; we’re talking about maybe 10 mothers, more if we include fathers, and not everyone’s going to take advantage of it. It allows families to be close.”
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said assistance for athletes is typically provided by their national Olympic committees.
Still, Ellis said after watching his wife over the past two years, it’s doable.
“You don’t have to choose one or the other,” he said. “If anything, she’s a more balanced athlete than she was prior to [having Breck].”
While she is hopeful for her Olympic prospects this year, as she heads into retirement, Randall said she already considers her decision “a really successful experiment.” She wants to encourage other women athletes who may also find themselves at this point.
“I’m blending the two most important things in my life: My family and my skiing,” Randall said. “It’s great to have another thing turn out so well.”
From: MeNeedIt
Human Rights Watch has said world soccer’s governing body must tackle rights abuses in Russia’s Chechnya region now that one of the teams in this year’s World Cup in Russia has chosen Chechnya as the location for its base camp.
Rights groups and Western governments allege that the authorities in Chechnya repress their political opponents, discriminate against women and persecute sexual minorities, all allegations that Chechnya’s leaders deny.
The region is not hosting any World Cup matches, but the world governing body, FIFA, said that the Egyptian national team will use the Chechen capital, Grozny, as their base between matches.
“This suddenly makes Chechnya, which was not on the list of Russia’s World Cup regions, one of the World Cup sites,” Tatyana Lokshina, Russia Program Director for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters Television.
“Chechnya has been run by Ramzan Kadyrov, a ruthless strongman who with the blessing of the Kremlin has been ruling it with an iron fist through brutal repression for over a decade,” said Lokshina.
“FIFA must understand that the situation with human rights in Chechnya is indeed so dire that unless something gets done without delay it’s going to cast an ominous shadow on the World Cup,” she said.
Contacted by Reuters on Wednesday, a spokesman for Kadyrov said the stance adopted by Human Rights Watch was unfounded.
“These conclusions are not based on anything, they are not grounded in the real situation in the Chechen Republic,” said the spokesman, Alvi Karimov.
“I can state with full responsibility that the Chechen Republic is a more worthy location than all the places where World Cups have been conducted up to his point.”
FIFA said in an emailed statement to Reuters that “there should be no doubt that in line with its Human Rights Policy, FIFA condemns discrimination of any form.”
“When FIFA was confronted with the incidents in Chechnya last year, we strongly condemned them,” it added. FIFA confirmed it had received a letter from Human Rights Watch over the matter and said it would respond shortly.
The Egyptian team manager, Ihab Leheta, said that the choice of Grozny was endorsed by FIFA, and that the city had the right facilities for the squad.
He told Reuters any reservations about Chechnya as a venue should be addressed to FIFA and not to the Egyptian team. “For us the place is good and calm, the people are welcoming us,” Leheta said of the Chechen capital.
According to FIFA, the Egypt squad will stay in a newly built hotel in Grozny and train at the nearby stadium, Akhmat Arena. It is named after Chechnya’s former leader, and Ramzan Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a 2004 bomb attack.
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From: MeNeedIt
Ride-hailing giant Uber’s full-year net loss widened to $4.5 billion in 2017 as the company endured a tumultuous year that included multiple scandals, a lawsuit alleging the theft of trade secrets and the replacement of its CEO.
The results also showed that Uber cut its fourth-quarter net loss by 25 percent from the third quarter as new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi moves to make the company profitable ahead of a planned initial public stock offering sometime next year.
The full-year loss grew from $2.8 billion in 2016, a year with results skewed by a gain from the sale of Uber’s unprofitable business in China. Uber also said its U.S. ride-hailing market share fell from 82 percent at the start of last year to 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Uber said the share has now stabilized.
Gross revenue for the year rose 85 percent over 2016, to $37 billion.
For the fourth quarter, Uber’s net loss was $1.1 billion, down from $1.46 billion it lost in the third quarter. Bookings from fares rose 14 percent to just over $11 billion for the quarter.
While the losses are significant, the results still are positive for Uber with revenue rising and losses falling in three of four quarters in 2017, said Rohit Kulkarni, managing director of SharesPost, a research group focused on privately held companies.
The numbers show that Uber under Khosrowshahi is on a path toward profitability and a sustainable economic model, Kulkarni said. “If you draw that out further, a year from now, this could be a significant IPO waiting to happen,” he said.
Uber considers adjusted earnings before taxes as a better indicator of its financial performance rather than net earnings based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which include losses for accounting purposes. On an adjusted basis, excluding stock-based compensation, legal costs, taxes and depreciation, the company lost $2.2 billion for the full year. The fourth-quarter adjusted loss was $475 million, down from $606 million to in the third quarter.
San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc.’s results are difficult to report because only pieces are released. Khosrowshahi detailed them on a conference call with investors Tuesday, and the company made some results public by giving them to a website called The Information.
A person briefed on the results provided some numbers and confirmed the accuracy of The Information’s story to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The person didn’t want to be identified because Uber remains a private company.
Last year was a particularly bad one for Uber with its reputation tarnished by the company’s acknowledgement of rampant sexual harassment within its ranks, a yearlong cover-up of a major computer break-in, and the use of duplicitous software to thwart government regulators.
CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted in June and replaced by Khosrowshahi in August.
Earlier this month Uber ended the autonomous vehicle trade secrets lawsuit filed by Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo for a payment of Uber stock valued by Waymo at $245 million.
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From: MeNeedIt
Two babies, born 15 months apart to the same young woman overcoming opioid addiction. Two very different treatments.
Sarah Sherbert’s first child was whisked away to a hospital special-care nursery for two weeks of treatment for withdrawal from doctor-prescribed methadone that her mother continued to use during her pregnancy. Nurses hesitated to let Sherbert hold the girl and hovered nervously when she visited to breast-feed.
Born just 15 months later and 30 miles away at a different South Carolina hospital, Sherbert’s second child was started on medicine even before he showed any withdrawal symptoms and she was allowed to keep him in her room to encourage breast-feeding and bonding. His hospital stay was just a week.
“It was like night and day,” Sherbert said.
The different approaches highlight a sobering fact: The surge has outpaced the science, and no one knows the best way to treat the opioid epidemic’s youngest patients.
Trying to cope with the rising numbers of affected infants, hospitals around the United States are taking a scattershot approach to treating the tremors, hard-to-soothe crying, diarrhea and other hallmark symptoms of newborn abstinence syndrome.
“It’s a national problem,” said Dr. Lori Devlin, a University of Louisville newborn specialist. “There’s no gold-standard treatment.”
With help from $1 million in National Institutes of Health funding, researchers are seeking to change that by identifying the practices that could lead to a national standard for evidence-based treatment. A rigorous multi-center study comparing treatments and outcomes in hard-hit areas could start by the end of this year, said Dr. Matthew Gillman, who is helping lead the effort.
“When there’s so much variability in practice, not everyone can be doing the very best thing,” Gillman said.
Once the umbilical cord is cut, babies born to opioid users are at risk for developing withdrawal symptoms. By some estimates, one infant is born with the condition in the U.S. every 25 minutes. The numbers have tripled since 2008 at a rate that has solid medical research comparing treatments and outcomes struggling to keep pace.
Not all opioid-exposed babies develop the syndrome, but drug use late in a pregnancy increases the chances and can cause dependence in fetuses and newborns. These infants are not born with addiction, which experts consider a disease involving compulsive, harmful drug-seeking behavior. But the sudden withdrawal of opioids from their mothers may cause increased production of neurotransmitters, which can disrupt the nervous system and overstimulate bodily functions. Symptoms can last for months.
The condition can result from a mother’s use of illicit drugs, but it also can stem from mothers being prescribed methadone or other anti-addiction medicine. Doctors believe the benefits of that treatment for the mothers outweigh any risks to their infants.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t routinely track the condition, but the agency’s most recent data — from 2014 — indicates that the syndrome affects nearly 11 in every 1,000 U.S. births. The CDC said it is working with the March of Dimes and several states to get a better picture of the number of affected infants and how they fare developmentally and academically into childhood.
Some studies have suggested possible increased risks for developmental delays and behavior problems, but no research has been able to determine if that’s due to mothers’ drug use during pregnancy, infants’ treatment after birth or something completely unrelated. And there’s no definitive evidence that these children fare worse than unexposed youngsters.
“It’s very, very frustrating” not knowing those answers, Devlin said. “It’s such a difficult population to go back and do research on. They’re people who often don’t trust the system, often people who have had lots of trauma in their lives.”
Treatment aims to reduce or even prevent symptoms. Some hospitals use morphine drops, while others use methadone and sometimes sedatives. Some send the babies straight to newborn intensive care units and some focus on comfort care from moms, allowing them to room-in with their infants. A recently published Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center analysis linked rooming-in with less medication use and shorter hospital stays for infants, but it can be difficult if mothers are still in the throes of addiction.
A Florida hospital is even testing tiny acupuncture needles on affected infants.
Many hospitals use a 40-year-old scoring system to measure 21 symptoms and frame diagnosis and treatment length, but some have created their own scales.
The Government Accountability Office’s health care team has called for federal action to address the issue, saying the current recommendations from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department amount to a half-baked strategy lacking priorities and a timeline for implementation.
The department’s recommendations include education for doctors and nurses to teach them how to manage affected infants, along with an emphasis on non-drug treatment.
Katherine Iritani, director of the GAO’s health care team, said government officials have since indicated that they are convening experts to develop and finalize a plan by March 15.
“We’ll review it and make sure it’s responsive to our recommendations,” she said.
A separate GAO report released last week recommended beefed-up government guidance to help states implement programs that ensure safe care for opioid-affected infants and treatment for parents still struggling with drug use.
Medicaid pays for more than 80 percent of costs for treating affected babies, totaling about $1 billion in 2012, the GAO has found.
At Greenville Memorial Hospital, where Sarah Sherbert’s son was delivered two years ago, babies born to methadone users are given that drug before symptoms start and are sent home with a supply to continue treatment.
Clemson University research has showed that approach could reduce hospital stays by nearly half, to an average of eight days costing $11,000 compared with the state average of 15 days at a cost of $45,000.
“The baby has already been exposed to methadone for nine months so adding four to five weeks and making weaning gentle instead of quitting cold turkey we think won’t have any additional effect on babies’ brain development,” said Dr. Jennifer Hudson, who developed the treatment approach.
Sherbert, 31, said her drug use began eight years ago after she was prescribed opioid painkillers for injuries from a car accident. She was on methadone prescribed by her doctor when her daughter, now 3, was born.
She later lost custody after relapsing and her parents are caring for the children. Sherbert said she has been sober for a year and recently was promoted to supervisor at her job. She said she’s determined to get them back.
“I’ve worked so hard and come such a long way,” she said. “Seeing their little faces — that’s worth every bit of it.”
From: MeNeedIt
Is that love in the air or french fries? White Castle, KFC and other fast-food restaurants are trying to lure sweethearts for Valentine’s Day.
It’s an attempt to capture a bit of the $3.7 billion that the National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend on a night out for the holiday. Restaurant analyst John Gordon at Pacific Management Consulting Group says it appeals to people who don’t want to splurge on a pricier restaurant. And some customers enjoy it ironically.
White Castle, which has been offering Valentine’s Day reservations for nearly 30 years, expects to surpass the 28,000 people it served last year. Diners at the chain known for its sliders get tableside service and can sip on its limited chocolate and strawberry smoothie. KFC is handing out scratch-and-sniff Valentine’s Day cards that give off a fried chicken aroma to diners who buy its $10 Chicken Share meals or a bucket full of Popcorn Nuggets.
Panera Bread wants couples to get engaged at its cafes; those who do can win food for their weddings from the soup and bread chain. And Wingstop sold out of its $25 Valentine’s Day kit, which came with a gift card and a heart-shaped box to fill with chicken wings. The company says 1,000 of the kits were gone in 72 hours.
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From: MeNeedIt
The U.S. on Wednesday reported its biggest increase in consumer prices in a year, pushing stocks lower in early trading.
The consumer price index, which follows the costs of household goods and services, advanced by a half percentage point in January, up from two-tenths of a point in December.
The January increase pushed the year-over-year inflation rate up by 2.1 percent. It was the same 12-month rate recorded in December, increasing fears among investors that firming inflation, along with increasing wages paid to American workers, could lead policymakers at the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, to boost interest rates at a faster pace.
The Labor Department said consumer prices, minus the volatile changes in food and energy costs, rose three-tenths of a percentage point in January, the largest increase since January 2017. Analysts had been expecting an increase of 0.2 percent.
Stock indexes were lower at the start of Wednesday, with the key Dow Jones industrial average falling about a third of a percentage point after a string of recent days with massive swings between losses and gains.
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From: MeNeedIt
As a student, Leah Wangari imagined a glamorous life as a globe-trotting flight attendant, not toiling in dirt and manure.
Born and raised in Kenya’s skyscraper-filled capital, Nairobi, the 28-year-old said farming had been the last thing on her mind. The decision to drop agriculture classes haunted her later, when her efforts in agribusiness investing while running a fashion venture failed.
Clueless, she made her way to an unusual new reality TV show, the first of its kind in Africa. “Don’t Lose the Plot,” backed by the U.S. government, trains contestants from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and gives them plots to cultivate, with a $10,000 prize for the most productive. The goal: Prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable.
“Being in reality TV was like the best feeling ever, like a dream come true for me,” Wangari said. But she found it exhausting. As callouses built up on her hands, her friends made bets that she wouldn’t succeed.
“Don’t Lose the Plot” is aimed at inspiring youth in East Africa to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship. Producers said the show wants to demystify the barriers to starting a small business and challenge the prejudices against farming-related careers, even as many youths flee rural areas for urban ones.
“What we hope to achieve … is first to show people that you can make money out of farming, to change the age profile of farmers in Africa from 60 to the youth. And the next thing we want to do is to show farmers, young farmers, that they can use their mobile and technology in order to farm and achieve their goals,” producer Patricia Gichinga said. The show also offers training via online platforms and text message.
Attracting people to agriculture is no small challenge in Africa, where a booming young population is often put off by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers.
“Most young Africans think of farming as back-breaking labor that pays peanuts,” former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the committee chair for the $100,000 annual Africa Food Prize and a farmer himself, wrote in the New African magazine last year. “This view, though largely inaccurate, is to some extent understandable.”
If Africa’s youth, who make up about 65 percent of the population, don’t venture into agribusiness, “then there is little chance that agriculture will have a transformative impact on the continent’s fortunes,” Obasanjo wrote.
Most experts agree that farming growth can boost African economies by increasing trade, creating more jobs and improving food self-sufficiency on a continent with the highest occurrence of food insecurity in the world.
But much of the potential remains untapped. Africa has over 60 percent of the world’s fertile but uncultivated land while importing $35 billion to $50 billion in food per year, the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa says . Weak or corrupt land governance is a challenge, as well as conflict.
Yields for major crops remain low compared to other regions of the world. Change must come by empowering the smallholder farmers who produce 80 percent of the food consumed on the continent, the organization says.
Now Wangari is one of them. After placing second in “Don’t Lose the Plot,” she became a full-time mushroom farmer.
In a damp structure of mud and clay on the outskirts of Nairobi, she has harvested her first crop and is preparing for her second. She had expected to make a $2,500 profit but took in $1,000 instead after mites from a nearby chicken house invaded and lowered her yield.
“When I see young men in the village now sitting idle I feel disappointed because there is a lot of idle land and they can use it to make ends meet,” she said. “They don’t require a lot of capital but they don’t have the information.”
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From: MeNeedIt