COLUMBIA — The South Carolina house has given key approval to a bill that would require women seeking abortions to view an ultrasound first. The bill passed a second reading Wednesday. A third, usually formality third reading will take place later. If this bill is passed, it would be the first of its kind in the nation. Rep. Greg Delleney (R-Chester and York Counties), is the bill’s key sponsor. ‘I’m just trying to save lives and protect people from regret and inform women with the most accurate non-judgemental information that can be provided,’ he says. Currently, there is already a South Carolina law requiring women to pass prerequisites before abortions, including reviewing abortion information and undergoing a waiting period. Still, Delleney says women need more information to make a final decision. ‘From the calls I’ve gotten, I think some people wished there was an ultrasound requirement at the time they underwent the abortion procedure,’ he said. But Delleney’s ideas are meeting a lot of opposition from several organizations, as well as other lawmakers, such as Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-Orangeburg County). She says it’s too extreme. ‘I see it as some kind of emotional […]
As leaders of the Anglican Communion hold meeting after meeting to debate severing ties with the Episcopal Church in the United States for consecrating an openly gay bishop, one of the unspoken complications is just who has been paying the bills. The truth is, the Episcopal Church bankrolls much of the Communion’s operations. And a cutoff of that money, while unlikely at this time, could deal the Communion a devastating blow. The Episcopal Church’s 2.3 million members make up a small fraction of the 77 million members in the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest affiliation of Christian churches. Nevertheless, the Episcopal Church finances at least a third of the Communion’s annual operations. Episcopalians give tens of millions more each year to support aid and development programs in the Communion’s poorer provinces in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At least $18 million annually flows from Episcopal Church headquarters in New York, and millions more are sent directly from American dioceses and parishes that support Anglican churches, schools, clinics and missionaries abroad. Bishops in some foreign provinces that benefit from Episcopal money are now leading the charge to punish the Episcopal Church or even evict it from the […]
CHICAGO — U.S. hospitals have improved the care they offer for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, according to a report released Tuesday by a hospital accrediting group. The Joint Commission report examines how well more than 3,000 hospitals follow guidelines for care of the potentially deadly conditions. It found that quality improved consistently from 2002 to 2005. Ninety-six percent of heart attack patients were given aspirin when they arrived at the hospital in 2005, which can save lives, the report found. That represented an improvement of 3.6 percentage points from 2002. But about 40 percent of heart-failure patients left the hospital in 2005 without specific instructions about follow-up care. That was an improvement of 28 percentage points since 2002, but still too high, said Dr. Dennis O’Leary, president of the Joint Commission. The biggest improvement was in providing advice to pneumonia patients on how to stop smoking. In 2002, pneumonia patients got the advice from hospital staff only 37.2 percent of the time. In 2005, that measure had climbed to 80 percent. Joint Commission inspectors visited more than 1,500 hospitals in 2005 and found that 38 percent had not standardized abbreviations for easily […]
A new report shows Americans are actually getting worse at eating their vegetables. This is hardly the first study to document dismal diet habits. Last week, the CDC gave U.S. adults poor marks for fruit and vegetable consumption. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins University confirm that Americans aren’t getting better at eating fruits and vegetables — even though public health officials urge them to do so. The Johns Hopkins study shows that, among U.S. adults, fruit consumption is holding steady, but vegetable consumption is headed down — even if you count french fries. The study appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Fruit, Vegetable Consumption Johns Hopkins University’s Tiffany Gary, PhD, and colleagues reviewed data from two national health surveys. The first survey, conducted from 1988 to 1994, included nearly 15,000 U.S. adults. The second survey, done between 1999 and 2002, included about 8,900 U.S. adults. In both, participants reported everything they had eaten during the previous 24 hours. Then researchers checked how many people met these goals: * Two or more servings of fruit, including fresh fruit, dried fruit, and 100% fruit juice […]
Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. ‘Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back,’ Barbero said. The general said it was the first time he had seen a report of insurgents using children in suicide bombings. But he said Al-Qaeda in Iraq is changing tactics in response to the tighter controls around the city. A US defense official said the incident occurred on Sunday in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, a mixed neighborhood adjacent to Sadr City, which is predominantly Shiite. After going through the checkpoint, the vehicle parked next to a market across the street from a school, said the official, who asked not to be identified. ‘And the two adults were seen to get out of […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
