Sunday, February 9, 2020

In the news, Friday, January 31, 2020


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JAN 30      INDEX      FEB 01
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from BBC News (UK)

Coronavirus: how quarantine has fought disease through the ages
In China's Hubei province, over a dozen cities are in lockdown in the hope of preventing further cases of the new Coronavirus. And Western countries are putting people returning from Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, into enforced isolation for up to two weeks. Quarantine has long been used to prevent the spread of diseases. The term itself comes from the first known example of the isolation method. As the Black Death raged through Europe in the 14th century, Venice enforced a rule where ships had to anchor for 40 days before crew and passengers were allowed to come ashore. The waiting period was named "quarantino", which derives from the Italian for 40.

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from The Heritage Foundation
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED  American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Sacrificing Public and Private Health Insurance for "Medicare for All"
Medicare for All poses a very big question: Is the promise of universal health insurance under a new government health program worth the deliberate destruction of all other public, private and employer-based coverage? A majority of House Democrats are co-sponsoring legislation to outlaw virtually all Americans’ public and private health insurance and replace it with a new government plan. In the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s "Medicare for All” bill (S. 1129) would accomplish the same objective. Americans must fully grasp the necessary trade-offs—the sacrifices—they would have to make if Congress were to create and run such a massive program. Congress can—and should—take a different approach. It should enact policies that will give individuals and families much greater control over their health care dollars and decisions, and compel health insurers and medical professionals to compete and deliver high quality care at competitive prices.

Democrats Plan to Tax Savings; Republicans Should Do the Opposite
While the first Trump tax cut raised savings rates for families, helping them build bigger nest eggs would give them better protection. The left's proposed remedy to the savings crisis is to charge even higher taxes on private savings and make Americans even more reliant on government programs. Universal Savings Accounts are a natural fit for Trump's populist, pro-growth agenda.

America Should Help Transform Central Europe
Americans looking to keep our nation free and prosperous should do everything they can to assure that our global “neighborhoods” remain stable and secure. Our transatlantic neighborhood includes Central, as well as Western, Europe—from Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia westward. Once again, it’s the time for the U.S. to take a creative step to better its transatlantic neighborhood. It would make a big difference in Europe's future—and ours.

A Brexit from Government Schooling: Toward Education Freedom in the United Kingdom
Freed of the shackles of the EU, Brexit offers a valuable window of opportunity for the United Kingdom, America’s closest friend and ally, to reassess and rethink existing policy in a whole range of areas, from defense and foreign policy to immigration and cybersecurity. Brexit offers tremendous opportunities for innovation not only in the security and intelligence arenas, but also in the vital field of education. The British government, as well as the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, can take significant steps toward education freedom, adopting market-based ideas that advance educational access for students and greater parental choice, as well as increased local control over schools. Restructuring the financing of education in the U.K. to allow for education choice is consistent with a broader desire for more locally determined policy. British officials should harness the enthusiasm for local control that catalyzed Brexit and pursue an education savings account for every single child in the U.K. The principles of education savings accounts—subsidiarity, competition, and parent-directed accountability—are the framework of a family-centered education system.

At $23 Trillion, the U.S. National Debt Already Exceeds the Size of the U.S. Economy
The Congressional Budget Office—Washington’s trusted fiscal watchdog—expects the federal government to hit $1 trillion-dollar mark in deficit this year. Growing benefit spending is the core driver of America’s deficits and debt. Federal debt that’s too high and rising compromises income growth, leaving us all poorer. That $23 trillion figure fails to account for massive unfunded obligations facing the U.S. government through programs such as Social Security and Medicare.. This so-called fiscal gap, which measures the difference between projected revenues and spending over the long-run, threatens future generations with ten times the current debt burden. All of this is happening while America is experiencing one of the longest economic expansions in the country’s history with unemployment at historic lows, wages rising (especially for those with lower incomes), and an economy that continues growing and expanding despite headwinds. That’s exactly the problem. It is simply unprecedented for the American nation to shoulder such high levels of deficits and debt at a time of relative peace and economic prosperity.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Chemical disinfection has helped to reduce child mortality, improve life expectancy and dramatically change our collective standard of living. Inexpensive and ubiquitous, chemical disinfectants preserve and prepare our food, clear and clean our water, notably improve our hygiene, and help to eliminate infectious bacteria and viruses that would otherwise shorten and immiserate life. Modern disinfectants hold at bay the illnesses that historically killed half of all children.

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from The Lancet
International family of medical journals, founded in 1823

Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study
Since Dec 31, 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan has reported an outbreak of atypical pneumonia caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Cases have been exported to other Chinese cities, as well as internationally, threatening to trigger a global outbreak. Here, we provide an estimate of the size of the epidemic in Wuhan on the basis of the number of cases exported from Wuhan to cities outside mainland China and forecast the extent of the domestic and global public health risks of epidemics, accounting for social and non-pharmaceutical prevention interventions.

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from NBC News (& affiliates)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS

New DNC debate rules open door for Mike Bloomberg to make stage
For the Feb. 19 debate hosted by NBC News/MSNBC in Las Vegas, the party scrapped requirements that candidates have tens of thousands of individual donors.

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from Psephizo  (blog)

Why is Franklin Graham being turned away?
Paul Eddy writes: Franklin Graham’s UK Tour sought to reach eight cities with the gospel in 2020.  As of today, three out of the eight venues, the O2 in London, Liverpool and now Sheffield have refused to sign contracts with Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA,) and others may well follow. Is this an attack on the Gospel and free speech in our country?  Or, are there simpler, but significant lessons to learn from this for the Church, and indeed, for itinerant evangelists working with churches in the UK and further afield?

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from Reuters
International news agency headquartered in London, England

Billionaires bombard U.S. presidential campaign with hundreds of millions in cash
Two billionaire Democratic presidential hopefuls, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, collectively spent about $389 million last year on their campaigns, more than the rest of the remaining Democratic field combined, according to disclosures filed on Friday.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

After 103 years watching over Otis Orchards, 60-foot tower comes crashing down
At 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Pierre Soffe awoke to the loudest noise he had ever heard. A thunderous avalanche shook his house, broke a window and terrified both him and his cat. When he put on his coat and went outside to see what had happened, he found that a 60-foot-tall river-rock tower that had watched over Otis Orchards for more than a century had collapsed.

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from VICE

Europe Just Voted in Favor of Making iPhone and Android Use the Same Charger

The move makes it more likely the iPhone will have to use USB-C, and would cut down on lots of charging cable waste.

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