(Akiit.com) Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed into law a controversial bill that makes the state the first in the nation to outlaw abortions performed on the basis of the race or gender of the fetus.

The move comes as anti-abortion groups across the nation try to seize on gains made by political conservatives during the November elections, seeking enactment of new state laws to further restrict abortions.

Under the new Arizona statute, doctors and other medical professionals would face felony charges if they could be shown to have performed abortions for the purposes of helping parents select their offspring on the basis of gender or race.

The women having such abortions would not be penalized.

State legislators have said no such law exists anywhere else in the nation.

Backers of the measure said the ban is needed to put an end to sex- and race-related discrimination that exists in Arizona and throughout the nation. They insist the issue is about bias rather than any broader stance on abortion.

“Governor Brewer believes society has a responsibility to protect its most vulnerable — the unborn — and this legislation is consistent with her strong pro-life track record,” a spokesman said.

But opponents have maintained that while such abortions may be happening in other countries like China, no clear evidence can found of it occurring in Arizona.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America also said the measure may erode a woman’s rights, fearing that doctors for the first time would feel compelled to ask their patients the reasons for seeking an abortion.

A Planned Parenthood official in Arizona condemned the governor’s action in a statement to Reuters.

“This law creates a highly unusual requirement that women state publicly their reason for choosing to terminate a pregnancy — a private decision they already made with their physician, partner and family,” said Bryan Howard, the group’s chief executive.
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(Akiit.com) As the New Yorker’s former press critic, A.J. Liebling, famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Perhaps that quotation is framed somewhere in a boardroom at the General Electric Corp., which owns NBC News.

In spite of robust profits of $14.2 billion worldwide, GE has calculated a corporate tax bill for 2010 that adds up to zero, via a creative series of tax referrals and revenue shifts. (This was, indeed, the second year running that the company—which has an enormous, and famously nimble, 975-employee tax division, led by former Treasury official John Samuels—paid nothing in U.S. taxes; indeed by claiming a series of losses and deductions, GE came up with a negative tax of 10.5 percent in the admittedly dismal business year of 2009, and realized a $1.5 billion “tax benefit.”)

The curious thing about this year’s tax story is that it turned up in many major news outlets, with one key exception: NBC News. As the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi notes, the network’s “Nightly News” broadcast, hosted by Brian Williams, has not mentioned anything about its corporate parent’s resourceful accounting, even though the story has been in wide circulation in the business and general-interest press for nearly a week. “This was a straightforward news decision, the kind we make daily around here” network spokeswoman Lauren Kapp told the Post.
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(Akiit.com) JOHANNESBURG — The text message arrives with life-saving discretion: a neutral “see you at the clinic tomorrow” to remind patients to pick up a fresh batch of anti-AIDS drugs.

The free texts from South Africa’s largest HIV treatment site are part of a push in Africa to boost health by targeting the continent’s 624 million mobile phone subscribers.

“I check my cellphone all the time — I think that’s why it [the drug regimen] is working so well,” said patient Emily Moletsane, 40, in a queue at Johannesburg’s Themba Lethu clinic which averages more than 450 people a day.

About 10,000 people have opted for the txtAlert reminders, which have proven a stunning success. Missed appointments at the centre from 15 percent fell from in mid-2007 to just four percent today.

“When I started seeing this, I was also impressed,” said medical manager Thapelo Maotoe.

Africa is poor in landlines and hospital beds but rich in cellphones, which is why mobile health — mHealth — offers opportunities for providing care at a low cost, say experts.

In west Africa, 2,200 doctors in Ghana and all of Liberia’s 143 doctors have signed on to anti-poverty group Africa Aid’s MDNet network, allowing then to call or text other physicians for free. In Ghana, a national directory helps find the number to call.

Ghanian paediatrician Frank Serebour recently used the system to find a specialist in the capital Accra for emergency surgery on a newborn baby who had been brought to his hospital in Kumasi, 270 kilometres (170 miles) away.

“All I did was pick up the directory, found the relevant specialist, arrangements were made and when the ambulance arrived they were waiting for the patient,” he said.

More than 2.5 million calls have been made so far on the network, which partners with major mobile operators.

“I wish it could be duplicated in every African country. If only they could hook up every single health worker — nurse, midwife — onto the system,” said Serebour.

With the value of the mHealth sector estimated at up to 60 billion dollars, mHealth companies are on the rise, said Adele Waugaman, who manages a partnership between the UN Foundation and Vodafone.

“The opportunities for mHealth in Africa are nearly limitless. The continent carries a disproportionate share of the world’s disease burden, and some of the lowest per capita doctor to patient ratios,” she said.

“Mobile phones are now being looked to as a tool to help overcome some of these entrenched global health challenges.”

Seventeen years after being torn apart by genocide, Rwanda is trailblazing the use of technology to overcome challenges in a country with one doctor for every 18,000 people.

“These tools solve problems specific to developing countries, such as a lack of specialists and specialized services in rural areas that are only be available in urban areas,” Rwanda’s eHealth coordinator, Richard Gakuba, told AFP.

“Investment is still needed because this technology does not come cheaply and we still face infrastructure challenges.”

One project is TRACnet, developed by American firm Voxiva, which tracks HIV data but also sends reminders for reports to be filed, monitors drug stocks and delivers test results.

Diagnosis of HIV in babies has been slashed from four months to two weeks.
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(Akiit.com) On the evening of March 23, 2011, Jacob Lusk had his Moment.

In just one minute and fifty-six seconds–the length of his compact, impassioned rendition of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1968 soul classic, “You’re All I Need To Get By”– Lusk, a 23 year-old church boy from Compton, California, had the kind of moment every performer dreams of.

Like many young singers today with chops, he tends to oversing. But on this night, Lusk, who, on occasion, sounds uncannily like gospel singer Rance Allen, exhibited the artful, stylistic restraint of a gifted veteran.

He turned on his vocal ingenuity in just the right places (like the crowd-pleasing ad-lib cadence toward the song’s end that tossed gas on the fire), the whole time seducing the TV viewing audience with subtle facial antics that exuded everything from wistful sentimentality and sheer joy to sexy flirtation.

Lusk’s Moment, arguably one of “Idol”‘s greatest performances ever, left the studio audience in stunned shambles. They and millions more watching at home knew that whether or not Lusk wins “Idol,” they’d just witnessed a star.

Then again, there are more than a couple of potential stars on this year’s “Idol.” Breathing down Lusk’s back is 16 year-old Lauren Alaina from Rossville, Georgia, a big-voiced singer in the tradition of past “Idol” winners Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

Alaina, like Lusk, could take it all. She has a penchant for pop/country, but can sing other stuff just as well and possesses an aw-shucks sassiness that is infectious. And, she hails from the South. Statistically, most “Idol” winners and front-runners come from the South.

However, that’s the thing with “Idol”–you never know in what pattern a fickle public might vote. In any case, in its tenth season, the world’s greatest amateur music competition has found redemption.

Who would’ve thunk it, considering the hideous talent pool that was season nine? If two big, nattily dressed men with broad shoulders grabbed me at gunpoint, drove me to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town, tied me up in a chair and told me the only way I’d see tomorrow would be to give them the name of the winner of last season’s “Idol,” I’d be one dead MF. The lineup was that ho-hum.

When the program’s star judge, the inimitable Simon Cowell, left to helm the American debut of his competing TV talent creation, “The X-Factor,” critics put the final nail in “Idol”‘s coffin.

However, the departure of Cowell, dreaded by “Idol” producers, only served to make it clear that a talent show’s success is not about judges but ambitious, budding talent. This year’s “Idol” has plenty, including 22 year-old Pia Toscano, a Big Ballad belter from Howard Beach, New York; dreamy-eyed, pop/R&B singer Stefano Langone, 22, from Kent, Washington; raspy-throated Haley Reinhart, 20, of Wheeling, Illinois and screaming rocker James Durbin, 22, from Santa Cruz, California.

And, turns out, the unlikely appointment of new judges Jennifer Lopez and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, joining show stalwart Randy Jackson, give “Idol” new life. I don’t recall ever hearing a Lopez recording all the way through, but she actually has some good advice for the performers, while Tyler’s funky charisma and zest for keeping it real has made the rock star a TV star.

Why, you ask, am I all up into this corny TV show? To me, the inclination is natural: I grew up watching pop music on TV. Back in the latter 20th Century, before the advent of the music video and MTV, popular recording artists reached their public exclusively through top 40 radio, concert tours and network television.

It was during weekly ’60s TV variety programs belonging to legendary entertainers and impresarios such as Ed Sullivan, Mike Douglas, Andy Williams, Carol Burnett and Sonny and Cher, among others, that America tuned in to see, sandwiched between comedy skits and post Vaudeville performances, the Beatles, the Supremes, James Brown, the Rolling Stones, Lil’ Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Aretha, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone and the Jackson 5. Influential icons today, back then these acts were all scratching for their own TV Moments.

Meanwhile, hip rock and roll network shows of the era–”American Bandstand,” “Shindig,” “Hullabaloo,” “Where The Action Is” and “Music Scene”–paved the way for “Soul Train,” “The Midnight Special,” “In Concert” and “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” in the ’70s. An ardent pop music lover, I lived for all these shows. Today, it seems surreal that songs which debuted on those old programs are now cultural classics performed by “Idol” contestants who never heard of the original version or the act who made it famous.
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Well my tarheels lost and there will be no Final Four this year… Still I’m proud of the guys…. Elite 8 not bad after all… Hope all starters return so we can make a run at the Title in 2012… Another Acc Regular seasons champs will due also… Well this 50th birthday gifts for men flyer was sent my way earlier this afternoon… Will have to see If I can get one made for my dad… One needs to celebrate their birth day…

Written By CTA