WSCC Awards Convocation is May 3 - Ludington Daily News - News

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Thursday, April 25, 2013

West Shore Community College will be recognizing students? academic achievements and awarding scholarships on Friday, May 3.

The Student Awards Convocation will be held at 7 p.m. in the Center Stage Theater located in the Arts and Sciences Center and the public is invited to attend.

During the convocation, two students will be recognized as the outstanding nursing graduate and the outstanding graduate in liberal arts/sciences or career and technical education.

Approximately 100 students will be receiving over 170 scholarships offered through the college. The WSCC Foundation provides many of these scholarships through funds that are invested or raised by an annual fund drive or the major gifts campaign.

Service awards will also be presented to students who were active in various campus organizations during the 2012-13 academic year.

Along with students receiving their awards, WSCC alumnus Dr. Carolyn Brown, of the Manistee Veterinary Hospital, will be the distinguished alumni speaker.

Brown earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1998, with honors, from WSCC and she currently resides in Custer. She is a 1996 graduate of Mason County Eastern High School and the daughter of Philip and Ruth Sommerfeldt also of Custer.

Brown received her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine degree in 2004 from Michigan State University. She has also completed coursework and training for veterinary acupuncture through the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society.

Prior to taking her position in Manistee, Brown worked at several veterinary hospitals around the country as a small animal associate veterinarian. She has also started a home-based business providing acupuncture treatments for dogs and cats. In August 2002, she was a Miracle of Life worker at the Michigan State Fair.

The annual convocation is held the week prior to commencement which will take place on May 10, at 7 p.m. in the campus Recreation Center.

Source: http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news/70851-wscc-awards-convocation-is-may-3

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White House: Syria used chemical weapons

MADRID, April 25 (Reuters) - Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina said the 10-match ban given to his team mate Luis Suarez for biting an opponent was 'absurd' and 'excessive'. Uruguay international Suarez was punished on Wednesday by the English Football Association (FA) after he bit the arm of Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic at the weekend. "He knows he is in the wrong, and that it was a mistake, but the 10-game punishment seems absurd to me, excessive and unfair," Spanish international Reina was quoted as telling radio station Cadena Cope by sports daily AS on Thursday. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/white-house-says-syrian-regime-used-chemical-weapons-164620417--politics.html

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Republicans debate message, battle bad messengers

FILE - In this March 18, 2013 file photo, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus speaks at the National Press Club in Washington. National Republican leaders made waves recently with a dim view of the party?s future if it fails to expand its core support beyond white males and social conservatives. But weeks after Priebus unveiled the ?Growth and Opportunity Project? report, many party players maintain that the problem is more about communication _ bad messengers saying the wrong things at the wrong times _ than policy positions, immigration being the exception. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - In this March 18, 2013 file photo, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus speaks at the National Press Club in Washington. National Republican leaders made waves recently with a dim view of the party?s future if it fails to expand its core support beyond white males and social conservatives. But weeks after Priebus unveiled the ?Growth and Opportunity Project? report, many party players maintain that the problem is more about communication _ bad messengers saying the wrong things at the wrong times _ than policy positions, immigration being the exception. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

ATLANTA (AP) ? National Republican leaders made waves recently with a dim view of the party's future if it fails to expand its core support beyond white males and social conservatives. But weeks after GOP Chairman Reince Priebus unveiled the "Growth and Opportunity Project" report, many party players maintain that the problem often is more about flawed messengers saying the wrong things at the wrong times than the policy positions at issue.

The distinction between policy flaws and communication problems is at the crux of the GOP's soul-searching as the Republican National Committee convenes this week in Los Angeles for the first time since the report's release. And it's a discussion that won't end anytime soon as conservatives, moderates and pragmatists struggle for control of the GOP megaphone. The dynamic has been highlighted in the weeks since the chairman's call for outreach, with succession of conservative party figures voicing positions that may alienate the very voters national party leaders want to capture.

Alaska Rep. Don Young was forced to apologize after referring to Hispanic migrant workers as "wetbacks." Media titan Donald Trump, who flirted with a presidential run in 2012, warned against compromising with President Barack Obama on a citizenship path for anyone already in the country illegally, saying they'll just become Democratic voters.

Using social media, Republican National Committee member Dave Agema of Michigan redistributed controversial writings that were harshly critical of gay Americans. Agema dug in after many Michigan Republicans called for his resignation.

Days later, the head of the Georgia state party, Sue Everhart, said that if same-sex marriage were "natural," then gay couples "would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship." She predicted that if the Supreme Court allows federal employee benefits for gay couples, then individuals who are "straight as an arrow" will enter same-sex unions just for financial perks.

Comments like those have some Republicans reeling.

"It's extremely, extremely frustrating," said Gregory Steele, a University of North Carolina senior who leads his state's college Republican organization. "We want the party to have a serious policy discussion about all of these issues going forward, but it's hard to get to that point with all of these mistakes."

Former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who retired in January as one of the GOP's last elected New England moderates, deplored the "intolerance" that she says has driven a "slow and steady erosion of a strong political base."

"It's very exclusionary," Snowe said. "For anyone who isn't already a Republican, how are they going to be drawn in right now?"

At Log Cabin Republicans, a national group of gay GOP loyalists, Gregory Angelo said the flaps reinforce the image of an inflexible organization. But he also noted Ohio Sen. Rob Portman's recent embrace of same-sex marriage, and described the party right now as going through "growing pains."

"We are no longer walking in lock-step on these (social) issues," he said.

White House losing streaks ? like the one Republicans are in nationally ? aren't new. Democrats lost four out of five presidential elections ? all by wide margins ? from 1972 to 1988, before then-Arkansas Bill Clinton styled himself as a "New Democrat" to win the presidency in 1992 and 1996.

But current trends are foreboding for Republicans. They've lost the popular vote in five out of the last six presidential elections. In the last two, Obama has won overwhelming majorities of non-white voters and younger voters, while the anchors of Republican support ? older white voters ? have become an increasingly smaller share of the electorate. Neither Clinton nor Jimmy Carter ever drew popular vote majorities. Obama has twice cleared 51 percent.

Republicans also lost several winnable Senate races in 2012 after conservative nominees made controversial statements about women and abortion.

Top Republicans both acknowledge the damage such comments have caused and remain careful to defend the party's official positions as they call for a wider tent.

Republican Governors Association Chairman Bobby Jindal memorably called for the GOP to "stop being the stupid party," but the potential 2016 presidential candidate from Louisiana said in the same January speech to the RNC, "We do not need to change what we believe ... our principles are timeless."

Henry Barbour, a Mississippian who helped write the post-election analysis for Priebus, emphasizes that the document shouldn't be read as a call to change the Republican position on abortion, same-sex marriage or immigration. "In politics, you need to be what you're for," he said.

Louisiana Republican Chairman Roger Villere, a conservative who is also national party vice chairman, said, "To be Democrat-light will not win us elections."

Both Villere and Barbour said fixing the party starts with softening the way that Republicans talk about hot-button issues and emphasizing economic and fiscal policy.

In Georgia, Everhart makes the conundrum clear. She says the party should emphasize the economy, but added: "I don't like to refer to 'social issues' as much as I say that they're just my beliefs, and I'm going to talk about them," she said. "If you change your views for one group, you just lose another."

The one policy position where many Republicans are eager to give ground is immigration, where Senate Republicans are negotiating with Democrats on a comprehensive overhaul. Yet, they couch these policy shifts on immigration as more of a shift in message. Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went so far as to call Romney's arch-conservative position on immigration "impractical" and "offensive." He was referring specifically to Romney urging immigrants in the country illegally to "self-deport."

Perhaps the strongest call for policy shifts ? as opposed to tweaking the message ? comes from New England Republicans.

Snowe said that conservatives in Congress, she said, have gone from "original Republican principles (of) fiscal responsibility and economic opportunity" to "eviscerating government."

"That scares people," Snowe said.

Steve Duprey, a Republican National Committeeman from New Hampshire, said any meaningful shift on policy issues ultimately must come from Republican presidential candidates. Nominees always have that power, he said, noting that Romney's march to the right on immigration and other issues helped define the party in 2012.

Snowe agreed, but noted that Democrats' resurgence in 1992 came only after Clinton had spent years building a centrist anchor for the party through his Democratic Leadership Council.

Duprey offered one more ingredient: "It usually takes a few elections of losing before you figure out that singing to the choir isn't the way to grow a party."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-09-Republican%20Struggles/id-76910bb845ba4573804318b7f7b20806

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TV-streaming service Aereo wins latest court battle, but broadcasters call it piracy

Nidhi Subbaraman , NBC News ? ? ? 3 hrs.

A startup called Aereo is promising customers access to live broadcast television on their computers for $12 a month ? or just $80 per year. Not everyone is happy about that.

If you're used to watching Netflix, Aereo's Web browser interface may seem familiar, but the content doesn't come from on-demand libraries. Instead, Aereo streams live television channels. If you want to watch a show later, you can record it, like you would on a home DVR.

"We are making an alternative to cable at a very attractive price point," Chet Kanojia, Aereo's CEO explained to NBC News.

But it's the source of Aereo's content that has landed the company in court, even before it could gather a sizable audience: It is essentially capturing over-the-air television broadcasts ? remember, the kind that come in free through antennas, instead of via cable boxes?

When Aereo first launched in March 2012 in New York City, two groups of major television broadcasters filed separate suits alleging copyright infringement, since Aereo retransmits without a license. Plaintiffs included ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS and NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.

But a federal district court denied the broadcasters' request for a preliminary injunction against Aereo, and that decision was affirmed by the federal court of appeals on April 1.

Aereo's defense is based on its hardware. The company ? which counts media bigwig Barry Diller among its backers ? uses tiny dime-sized antennas to pick up the over-the-air broadcast channels. When a customer is using the service, the company says, two antennas are assigned "dynamically" to that person, one each for viewing and for recording.

Content creators generally collect license fees from groups that retransmit their work to the public. Yet Aereo says that since each antenna is assigned to a single subscriber when they watch a program, "transmissions made by consumers using the Aereo technology are not public performances under the Copyright Act."

The company argues that, effectively, instead of erecting your own TV antenna on top of your home, you are paying Aereo to loan you one when you need it.

"It is not a public performance if every single performance is to one person only," Ben Depoorter, a copyright expert at Stanford's Center for Internet Society and Culture and professor at University of California's Hastings College of the Law, told NBC News.

The networks' current argument, Depoorter explains, is that functionally Aereo is reaching a broad audience and therefore breaking the law.

The April 1 ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the previous federal district court ruling, coming out in Aereo's favor by a 2-to-1 vote. However, dissenting circuit judge Denny Chin called Aereo's technology a "sham" and added that the system was "a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law."

In Aereo's April 1 statement, Kanojia is quoted as saying, "Today's ruling ? sends a powerful message that consumer access to free-to-air broadcast television is still meaningful in this country and that the promise and commitment made by the broadcasters to program in the public interest in exchange for the public's spectrum, remains an important part of our American fabric."

NBCUniversal and ABC issued a joint statement saying they are "confident that when the record is fully developed, the rights of content owners will be protected and the courts will conclude that Congress never intended to allow services like Aereo to retransmit our programming for profit without our authorization."

News Corp, which owns Fox, issued this statement: "We believe that Aereo is pirating our broadcast signal. We will continue to aggressively pursue our rights in the courts, as well as pursue all relevant political avenues, and we believe we will prevail."

"NAB is disappointed with the Second Circuit's 2-1 decision allowing Aereo to continue its illegal operations while broadcasters' copyright actions are heard," read a statement from the National Association of Broadcasters. "We agree with Judge Chin's vigorous dissent and, along with our members, will be evaluating the opinions and options going forward."

In a recent NAB talk in Las Vegas, News Corp chief operating officer Chase Carey said that if the courts ultimately sided with Aereo, Fox network would consider taking its shows off the air and making them available only to viewers who paid for cable.

Meanwhile, in California, an Aereo-like copycat service called "Aereokiller" was ordered to shut down by a district court judge in December of last year, a decision which the company has appealed.

Nevertheless, Aereo has plans to expand to 22 cities in the U.S. this year. For now, those in the New York vicinity can experience the service.

"The picture on the mobile device is extremely watchable if you're looking at anything but sports," HD Guru's Gary Merson told NBC News, adding that he was able to stream live TV while on the train and at the doctors' office. Fades to and from black and video with a lot of motion show off artifacts because of the way the signal is encoded, he explains, but the viewing experience overall is fairly comfortable.

Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her onTwitter or Google+.

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Rick Santorum: Gay Marriage Support "Suicidal" For GOP

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Consumption Junction: Childhood Obesity Determined Largely by Environmental Factors, Not Genes or Sloth

In looking for ways to fight childhood obesity, an emerging consensus of literature points to the need to reengineer kids? environments to change what and how they eat

By Tara Haelle

Although kids can typically adjust their energy intake by regulating their food, Temple University public health professor Jennifer Fisher says, their surroundings and options may change that equation for kids in the same way that it does in adults. Image: Flickr/The Familylee

New evidence is confirming that the environment kids live in has a greater impact than factors such as genetics, insufficient physical activity or other elements in efforts to control child obesity. Three new studies, published in the April 8 Pediatrics, land on the import of the 'nurture' side of the equation and focus on specific circumstances in children's or teen's lives that potentially contribute to unhealthy bulk.

In three decades child and adolescent obesity has tripled in the U.S., and estimates from 2010 classify more than a third of children and teens as overweight or obese. Obesity puts these kids at higher risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and bone or joint problems. The variables responsible are thought to range from too little exercise to too many soft drinks. Now it seems that blaming Pepsi or too little PE might neglect the bigger picture.

"We are raising our children in a world that is vastly different than it was 40 or 50 years ago," says Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. "Childhood obesity is a disease of the environment. It's a natural consequence of normal kids with normal genes being raised in unhealthy, abnormal environments." The environmental factors in these studies range from the seemingly minor, such as kids' plate sizes, to bigger challenges, such as school schedules that may keep teens from getting sufficient sleep. But they are part of an even longer list: the ubiquity of fast food, changes in technology, fewer home-cooked meals, more food advertising, an explosion of low-cost processed foods and increasing sugary drink serving sizes (pdf) as well as easy access to unhealthy snacks in vending machines, at sports games and in nearly every setting children inhabit?these are just a handful of environmental factors research has linked to increasing obesity, and researchers are starting to pick apart which among them play bigger or lesser roles in making kids supersized.

Size matters in "obesogenic environments"
In one of the three new studies dishware size made a big difference. Researchers studied 42 second-graders in which the children alternately used child-size 18.4-centimeter (7.25-inch) diameter plates with 237-milliliter (8-ounce) bowls or adult-size 26-centimeter (10.25-inch) diameter plates with 473-milliliter (16-ounce) bowls. Doubling the size of the dishware, the researchers found, increased the amount of food kids served themselves in a buffet-style lunch line by an average of 90 calories. They ate about 43 percent of those extra calories, on average.

Although kids can typically adjust their energy intake by regulating their food, Temple University public health professor Jennifer Fisher says, their surroundings and options may change that equation for kids in the same way that it does in adults. "This notion that children are immune to the environment is somewhat misguided," says Fisher, who headed up the study. "To promote self-regulation, you have to constrain the environment in a way that makes the healthy choice the easy choice."

Fisher says much recent research in nutrition has focused on the "obesogenic" environments of today's society: a dietary environment offering widespread access to highly palatable foods in large portion sizes. "If we look at adult studies on dieting and weight loss, we know that the prospect of maintaining self-control in this environment is fairly grim," Fisher says. "I think most scientists believe our bodies have evolved to pretty staunchly defend hunger and prevent weight loss, and maybe are not so sensitive in preventing overconsumption."

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=1ff668ed3589e0d2caf189fe6fc9001f

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Gas prices falls to $3 a gallon in some markets

Paul A. Eisenstein , The Detroit Bureau ? ? ? 3 hrs.

If your wallet is still hurting from the painfully high fuel prices much of the country experienced over the winter there?s some good news next time you head to the pump.

The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas has dipped to just $3.58, a three-cent dip since late last week, 15 cents from a month ago, and 36 cents off of what the typical American motorist was spending this time in 2012.

That?s a sharp turnaround from February when some states saw gas surge to near or all-time records, particularly along the West Coast.

The Detroit Bureau: Are Wagons Ready for Revival?

Buyers are still paying an average $4.359 in Hawaii and $4.027 in Washington, D.C., but California is back under the $4 mark, at $3.998, according to GasBuddy.com, a fuel price tracking service. And it?s down to $3.286 in Montana ? where motorists are paying just $3.261 in Billings.

Some reports indicate that the price has dropped below the $3 mark in a few Rocky Mountain communities near major refineries. And GasBuddy is forecasting still ?more markets? will dip under that break point in the coming days.

The Detroit Bureau: Fisker Fiasco Worsens

While crude prices posted some gains in early Monday trading, petroleum futures have been in sharp decline for several weeks. One key reason, reports the federal Energy Information Administration is that the country?s inventories are now at a 22-year peak.

The U.S. has been rapidly ramping up oil production for several years and is expected to actually be a larger producer than Saudi Arabia and other OPEC providers by mid-decade. That doesn't necessarily translate into lower prices, as petroleum is traded as a global commodity. But despite concerns about Mideast instability ? notably reductions in production in war-torn Syria ? there appears to be a good supply, if not a glut of the black gold now available around the world.

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According to Tom Kloza, chief analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, only a major ?disruption in the Mideast? would likely provoke a sharp spike in fuel prices around the world.

That said, analysts warn that Americans can?t be complacent. Traders continue trying to push up the price of crude. And as U.S. motorists have been seeing, regional spikes are becoming more common. That can follow the changeover from summer to winter fuel blends designed to reduce regional air pollution problems. It can also result from maintenance and other issues, such as those that affected large swaths of the Midwest and Pacific Coast over the last year.

Even in areas where prices top the national charts today, the figures are significantly down from year-ago levels ? when California stood at $4.28 a gallon, for example.

The Detroit Bureau: Ford Reveals Alternatives for F-150

The sudden decline in gas prices may be fueling a shift in the U.S. new car market, meanwhile. Sales of pickups, in particular, surged during March and light trucks outsold passenger cars on the whole, despite recent trends moving in the opposite direction.

Copyright ? 2009-2013, The Detroit Bureau

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Pentagon struggles with high cost of health care

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The loud, insistent calls in Washington to rein in the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare ignore a major and expensive entitlement program ? the military's health care system.

Despite dire warnings from three defense secretaries about the uncontrollable cost, Congress has repeatedly rebuffed Pentagon efforts to establish higher out-of-pocket fees and enrollment costs for military family and retiree health care as an initial step in addressing a harsh fiscal reality. The cost of military health care has almost tripled since 2001, from $19 billion to $53 billion in 2012, and stands at 10 percent of the entire defense budget.

Even more daunting, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that military health care costs could reach $65 billion by 2017 and $95 billion by 2030.

On Wednesday, when President Barack Obama submits his fiscal 2014 budget, the Pentagon blueprint is expected to include several congressionally unpopular proposals ? requests for two rounds of domestic base closings in 2015 and 2017, a pay raise of only 1 percent for military personnel and a revival of last year's plan to increase health care fees and implement new ones, according to several defense analysts.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel insisted this past week that the military has no choice as it faces a $487 billion reduction in projected spending over the next decade and possibly tens of billions more as tea partyers and other fiscal conservatives embrace automatic spending cuts as the best means to reduce the government's trillion-dollar deficit.

The greatest fiscal threat to the military is not declining budgets, Hagel warned, but rather "the growing imbalance in where that money is being spent internally." In other words, money dedicated to health care or benefits is money that's not spent on preparing troops for battle or pilots for missions.

Hagel echoed his predecessors, Leon Panetta, who said personnel costs had put the Pentagon on an "unsustainable course," and former Pentagon chief Robert Gates, who bluntly said in 2009 that "health care is eating the department alive."

In his speech last past week, Hagel quoted retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the former Navy chief, who offered a devastating assessment of the future Pentagon.

Without changes, Roughead said, the department could be transformed from "an agency protecting the nation to an agency administering benefit programs, capable of buying only limited quantities of irrelevant and overpriced equipment."

The military's health care program, known as TRICARE, provides health coverage to nearly 10 million active duty personnel, retirees, reservists and their families. Currently, retirees and their dependents outnumber active duty members and their families ? 5.5 million to 3.3 million.

Powerful veterans groups, retired military officer associations and other opponents of shifting more costs to beneficiaries argue that members of the armed forces make extraordinary sacrifices and endure hardships unique to the services, ones even more pronounced after a decade-plus of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Members of the military have faced repeated deployments, had to uproot their families for constant moves and deal with limits on buying a home or a spouse establishing a career because of their transient life. Retirement pay and low health care costs are vital to attracting members of the all-volunteer military.

"If you don't take care of people, they're not going to enlist, they're not going to re-enlist," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Resistance in Congress to health care changes was evident in the recently passed spending bill to keep the government running through Sept. 30. Tucked into the sweeping bill was a single provision stating emphatically that "none of the funds made available by this act may be used by the secretary of defense to implement an enrollment fee for the TRICARE for Life program."

The program provides no-fee supplemental insurance to retirees 65 and older who are eligible for Medicare. The Pentagon repeatedly has pushed for establishment of a fee, only to face congressional opposition.

The provision in the spending bill blocking an enrollment fee had widespread support among Republicans and Democrats, according to congressional aides. The Pentagon, nonetheless, is expected to ask again in the 2014 budget for an enrollment fee.

The department also is likely to seek increases in fees and deductibles for working-age retirees and try again to peg increases in them to rising costs as measured by the national health care expenditure index produced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That index rose 4.2 percent in 2012 and is projected rise by 3.8 percent this year.

In recent years, Congress has agreed to tie any future increases to the typically smaller percentage increase in military retirees' cost-of-living adjustment, which this year is 1.7 percent.

Either way, a military retiree under age 65 and their family members pay a far smaller annual enrollment fee than the average federal worker or civilian ? $230 a year for an individual, $460 for a family. There is no deductible.

Lawmakers' other response was to establish the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission to study the issue of benefits and offer recommendations on how the Pentagon can address the problem. The commission was created in this year's defense authorization bill.

"Nobody wants to touch it because people are confused about who it impacts," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant defense secretary and now a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. "It's not going to impact people on active duty. It's not going to impact veterans because they're taken care of by the VA. Basically (it's) working-age retirees."

Korb said he wished Hagel has been more explicit in his warning about the impact of benefit costs.

"He did lay it out that we're going to have to do something or we're going to end up like General Motors and spending everything on people not working for us anymore."

Gordon Adams, a professor at American University who was a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, said limited savings in the short term from changes in retirement rules or other benefits present a challenge in making the case for change.

"The savings are downstream, but you only get downstream if you get in the boat now," Adams said. "Otherwise you never get downstream, you're just waiting at the dock all the time because you don't think it'll save you money up front."

_____

Follow Donna Cassata on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DonnaCassataAP.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-struggles-high-cost-health-care-075320388--politics.html

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