| Google aids Va. on public-records searches
Virginia is partnering with Internet search company Google Inc. to make it easier to search for information in the thousands of state documents available online in public databases. Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to announce the partnership today at 2 p.m. at the Library of Virginia. Google is providing free consulting and software to Virginia and three other states - Arizona, California, Utah - as part of a pilot program that is expected to make public records that are now unavailable or hard to find online easily accessible to Web surfers. Google software will remove technical barriers that had prevented its search engine, as well as those of Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., from accessing tens of thousands of public records dealing with education, real estate, health care and the environment.
Church Community Organization optimistic about children's health ...
Church Community Organization members and supporters joined about 400 in Washington in mid-March to rally support for the Missouri health insurance plan that aids poor and uninsured children.The plan is part of the federal program called State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The program is up for renewal this year and speculation is a reduction in poverty guidelines could eliminate hundreds of thousands of children nationally from the program and at least 40,000 Missouri children could lose coverage.Long-time CCO leader, the Rev. Rayfield Burns, Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 2310 E Linwood Blvd., said he joined 75 other clergy as part of the People Improving Communities through Organizing national network. Then about another 325 active community members joined."We did not know how we would be received because it was a pretty big task," Burns said.
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Summarizes Recent Medicare Op-Eds
Two newspapers recently published opinion pieces related to Medicare pay-for-performance measures and the drug benefit. Summaries appear below.Stuart Guterman, Baltimore Sun: Requiring doctors to report quality data to receive an increase in their Medicare payments is a "step in the right direction," Guterman, senior director of the Commonwealth Fund's Program on Medicare's future, writes in a Sun opinion piece. Quality and efficiency of care are "two aspects of health care performance [that] must be considered together rather than separately" because "[q]uality without efficiency is not sustainable, and efficiency without quality is of no use," he adds. Guterman writes, "If we don't start to measure and pay for both" quality and efficiency, "we'll end up with neither." He concludes, "And that would be a tragedy, not only for Medicare but for its doctors and other providers, and -- most important -- for its beneficiaries" (Guterman, Baltimore Sun, 2/16).
VIRGINIA TECHS.C. men helped ease first responders
Thirty-six hours after a gunman rampaged through Virginia Tech, USC campus police Capt. Campbell "Cambo" Streater was in a church fellowship hall in Blacksburg, helping first responders cope with the horrific images swirling in their minds. What the police officers saw when they first broke through the chained doors of Norris Hall, the bloody devastation wrought by a deranged killer, will remain with them for a long time, Streater said. But Streater and his partner, the Rev. Eric Skidmore, hope the sessions they conducted Tuesday — formally known as critical incident stress debriefings — will help Blacksburg area officers tread a path toward normalcy. "It is the embodiment of compassion," said Skidmore, an ordained Presbyterian minister and director of the S.C.
Maneka Gandhi advocates ban on killing of dogs
HYDERABAD: An inquiry by the State Human Rights Commission into the dog bite problem here on Monday witnessed heated arguments between animal rights activists led by MP Maneka Gandhi and bureaucrats who were accused of killing dogs indiscriminately by using poison or attacking them with rods. Ms. Gandhi and several other animal lovers, including actor Amala Akkineni, strongly protested against the action of municipal authorities in hiring dogcatchers and giving them targets for each operation. The teams caught dogs that were already sterilised and vaccinated and subjected them to trauma. They lassoed the dogs and swung them in the air several times before finally dumping them in vans, they said. Some activists even alleged that the teams took bribes from people to let dogs out of their clutches.
Chemical found in state hogs
The chemical linked to cat and dog deaths on two continents has made it into pig feed and perhaps onto California tables, with state agricultural officials announcing late Thursday they've quarantined a Ceres hog farm where lab tests showed melamine in pig urine. "The farm is cooperating with us to determine the disposition of all animals that have left the premises since April 3," Richard Breitmeyer, the state veterinarian, said in a prepared statement. That's the first time melamine-tainted food is known to have been shipped to the farm. He said the 1,500-animal American Hog Farm was quarantined "out of an abundance of caution." .
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