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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:49:58 GMT -8
Get Ready for Another Government Shutdown This Fall
U.S House of Representatives Republicans on Thursday adopted government spending targets for the next fiscal year below the level agreed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic President Joe Biden, setting up a fight with the Democratic-led Senate that could again risk a government shutdown.
The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee voted 33-27 along party lines to adopt a discretionary spending level of $1.47 trillion for fiscal year 2024, which starts on Oct. 1.
That is about $120 billion below the $1.59 trillion set out in the debt ceiling bill negotiated by Biden and McCarthy.
The targets would maintain defense spending at the $866 billion level agreed in the debt ceiling legislation. But the plan would slash spending for the environment, public assistance and foreign aid.
It would also increase spending for border security, drug enforcement and countering China.
Democrats say that the lower levels renege on the debt-ceiling agreement. Republicans counter that the deal only capped spending.
"The debt ceiling bill set a ceiling, not a floor, for fiscal year 2024 bills. The allocations before us reflect the change members on my side of the aisle want to see," said Appropriations Committee chair Kay Granger.
Congress will try to pass 12 appropriations bills before October, covering everything from law enforcement to scientific research.
On Wednesday, the panel adopted a bill that would cut spending on agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration by 30% from current levels.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:51:14 GMT -8
With the Thoughts He'd Be Thinkin' He Could Be Another Lincoln, If He Only Had a Brain
A former manager at the Harvard Medical School morgue, his wife and three other people have been indicted in the theft and sale of human body parts, federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania announced Wednesday.
Cedric Lodge, 55, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, stole dissected portions of cadavers that were donated to the school in the scheme that stretched from 2018 to early 2023, according to court documents. The body parts were taken without the school's knowledge or permission, authorities said, adding that the school has cooperated with the investigation.
Lodge sometimes took the body parts — which included heads, brains, skin and bones — back to his home where he lived with his wife, Denise, 63, and some remains were sent to buyers through the mail, authorities said. Lodge also allegedly allowed buyers to come to the morgue to pick what remains they wanted to buy.
Bodies donated to Harvard Medical School are used for education, teaching or research purposes. Once they are no longer needed, the cadavers are usually cremated and the ashes are returned to the donor’s family or buried in a cemetery.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:54:14 GMT -8
A New Recipe?
The COVID-19 vaccines are on track for a big recipe change this fall.
Today’s vaccines still contain the original coronavirus strain, the one that started the pandemic — even though that was long ago supplanted by mutated versions as the virus rapidly evolves.
Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisers reviewed whether the next round of shots in the U.S. should only include protection against the newest variants that are now dominant worldwide — a branch of the omicron family tree named XBB.
While infections have declined, the virus could be a real concern next winter, FDA's vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said as the daylong meeting began.
“We’re concerned that we may have another wave of COVID-19 during a time when the virus has further evolved, immunity of the population has waned further, and we move indoors for wintertime,” he said.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:55:58 GMT -8
Is This Really a Good Use of Resources of the Criminal Justice System?
A 28-year-old woman in Louisiana posed as a teenager and enrolled in high school because she wanted to learn English, officials said.
Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano, 28, enrolled in Hahnville High School in June 2022 and attended the entire 2022-2023 school year, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
School officials notified the sheriff’s office in May they had received a tip that a student on record as being 17 was in fact an adult in her mid-20s, the release said.
Detectives determined Gutierrez-Serrano and her mother, 46-year-old Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarado, used a fraudulent passport and birth certificate to enroll Gutierrez-Serrano in school, the sheriff’s office said.
Both were arrested this week and charged with one count each of injuring public records, the release said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether they have an attorney.
Gutierrez-Serrano told investigators she enrolled in school to learn the English language, St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said during a news conference Wednesday.
“The young woman wanted to become proficient in English and perhaps further her education, which I think we can all be sympathetic with,” Champagne said. “She was in school, she minded her own business, she did her schoolwork. She caused no trouble, she was not a disciplinary problem.”
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:57:17 GMT -8
Don't Blame Canada. Blame Beyoncé
She can sing. She can dance. She can cause unexpectedly high inflation in Sweden.
The kick-off of superstar Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour in Stockholm last month may have contributed to a spike in that country's May inflation rate, according to an analysis by an economist at Danske Bank.
The findings were posted Wednesday on social media by Michael Grahn, chief economist for Sweden at the major European retail bank. The Scandinavian country reported higher-than-expected inflation of 9.7% in May.
Grahn calculated that Beyoncé's much-hyped concert likely accounted for about 0.2 of the 0.3 percentage points added to inflation by hotels and restaurant prices in Sweden's capital as fans flocked to her concert.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 8:58:07 GMT -8
Also, Blame Drug Makers
In less than three months, the federal government is set to announce the initial 10 drugs subject to first-ever price negotiations in Medicare.
Pharmaceutical companies and their supporters want to stop that from happening.
Last week, Merck and the US Chamber of Commerce filed separate lawsuits against the government, arguing that negotiating drug prices in Medicare is unconstitutional in a variety of ways.
The Biden administration is pushing back against those claims, saying that the Constitution does not prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug prices. And legal experts think it will be tough for the challengers to win their cases.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 9:02:30 GMT -8
Also, Blame Ticketmaster
Live events and ticketing companies are taking steps to no longer surprise customers with fees at checkout and instead include those fees upfront in the total price.
The White House, Live Nation and SeatGeek announced the voluntary moves Thursday morning. President Biden is scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon with officials from those companies, as well as representatives from ticketing companies that had been using transparent, or “all-in,” pricing for years.
Adding fees toward the end of a purchase can be deceptive and harmful to consumers, experts say. In his State of the Union address in February, Biden called them out as “junk fees.”
“They add up to hundreds of dollars a month. They make it harder for you to pay the bills or afford that family trip,” he said. “I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.”
The change does not mean that companies will eliminate the surcharges, but simply that they will be made clear to the consumer. It would apply only to tickets sold at the 200-plus venues owned by Live Nation — which is owned by the same company that controls Ticketmaster — but not necessarily every ticket offered by Ticketmaster.
My Experience:
We have season tickets for the Pantages Theater. We sold tickets for a recent show for $986.40. We received $626.40. Ticketmaster took $360, which is over 36% of the proceeds.
Ticketmaster also charged the buyers of the tickets a fee on top of that.
We are not renewing our season tickets.
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Post by mhbruin on Jun 15, 2023 9:04:34 GMT -8
Speaking of TIckets ...
Cash-strapped Taliban selling tickets to ruins of Buddhas it blew up
The three Taliban soldiers gazed down at the gaping hole in the 125-foot cliff where one of Afghanistan’s two great Buddha figures once stood and wondered aloud who was to blame for its destruction 22 years ago.
“This is the identity of our country,” said Kheyal Mohammad, 44, wearing a camouflage cap as he bent over a railing at the top of the giant cavity. “It shouldn’t have been bombed.”
The soldiers, taking a rare day off from military training to visit the site, agreed that the people who had destroyed the work were “careless,” and it should be rebuilt. “If God wills,” Mohammad exclaimed.
In 2001, Taliban founder Mohammad Omar declared the Buddhas false gods and announced plans to destroy them. Ignoring pleas from around the world, Taliban fighters detonated explosives and fired antiaircraft guns to smash the immense sixth-century reliefs to pieces.
The attack on the treasured ancient monument stunned the international community and cemented the Taliban’s reputation as uncompromising extremists.
With the group now back in power, Bamian holds new symbolic and economic importance to the cash-strapped region: Officials see the Buddha remnants as a potentially lucrative source of revenue and are working to draw tourism around the site. They suggest their efforts are not only a gesture to archaeologists, but also reflect a regime that’s more pragmatic now than when it first ruled from 1996 to 2001.
“Bamian and the Buddhas in particular are of great importance to our government, just as they are to the world,” Atiqullah Azizi, the Taliban’s deputy culture minister, said in an interview. He said more than 1,000 guards have been assigned to protect cultural heritage across Afghanistan, restricting access and overseeing ticket sales. Staffers at Kabul’s national museum were surprised last month to see senior Taliban officials at the inauguration of a prominent museum section dedicated to Buddhist artifacts.
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