News

Binge drinking increases risk of cognitive decline

(USA Today) Moderate drinking and binge drinking among older people increase the risk for cognitive decline and memory loss, according to two studies presented today at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2012 in Vancouver, Canada.

Adults ages 65 and older who reported binge drinking at least twice a month were 2½ times more likely to suffer cognitive and memory declines than similar-aged adults who don’t binge-drink. In this study, binge drinking is defined as four or more drinks on one occasion.

“It’s not just how much you drink but the pattern of your drinking,” says lead author Iain Lang of the University of Exeter in England. “Older people need to be aware, if they do binge-drink, of the risks and they should change their behaviors.”

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Sex scandal casts a pall over Lackland AFB

(USA Today) Those are some of the emotions roiling this sprawling base in San Antonio in the wake of the biggest U.S. military sex scandal in years. Investigators are looking into allegations of sexual assault by at least a dozen training instructors, six of whom have been charged.

So far, 31 women have come forward with claims ranging from inappropriate Facebook posts to dorm room rapes, and 35 instructors have been removed from their posts pending investigations.

More than 70 members of Congress have signed a letter calling for a House hearing on the allegations, and the Air Force has dispatched a two-star general to lead an inquiry in addition to the criminal investigations.

“There has never been a case like this before on this base,” says Collen McGee, a spokeswoman with the 37th Training Wing, tasked with training recruits.

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USDA partnering with Mexico to boost food stamp participation

(The Daily Caller) he Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.

USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

“USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” the USDA explains in a brief paragraph on their “Reaching Low-Income Hispanics With Nutrition Assistance” web page. “Mexico will help disseminate this information through its embassy and network of approximately 50 consular offices.”

The partnership — which was signed by former USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista in 2004

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N.C. Film Incentives Help Government-Favored Groups, Keep Taxes Higher For Others

(Carolina Journal) Less than a month after North Carolina legislators approved more money for the state’s film tax incentives program, a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight Report pans film incentives as a clear example of cronyism.

“The problem with these incentives is that the lower tax burden on film productions comes with the consequence of keeping tax burdens high on nonfavored businesses and industries,’” said report author Jon Sanders, JLF Director of Regulatory Studies. “When government chooses one industry or business for special deals and breaks, there’s a good chance that cronyism is at work.”

While detailing problems linked to film incentives, Sanders devotes another newly released Policy Report to the general problem of cronyism. Together, the two reports launch a new multipart series titled “Carolina Cronyism.”

“Cronyism is an umbrella term covering a host of government activities by which an industry or even a single firm or speculator is given favors and support they could not attain in market competition,” Sanders explained. “Examples include regulations that help favored businesses, laws that restrict new competitors from entering a market, government-sponsored cartels and monopolies, mandates requiring consumers to buy government-favored products, and tax breaks targeting specific businesses.”

State lawmakers added $60 million for film incentives in the final days of this year’s legislative session. Sanders’ report focuses on film incentives’ basic flaws.

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Bay Area Drivers Could Be Tracked By GPS, Taxed Per Mile Driven

(CBS San Fransisco) Bay Area drivers could one day be tracked using a GPS-like device in their cars and taxed per miles driven – a scenario which is part of a proposed long-range study aimed at finding ways to reduce traffic and pollution, while also raising revenues.

Members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments are scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether or not to authorize a study of the proposal. Under the plan, drivers would have to install trackers in their vehicle and officials would tax drivers for every mile they travel.

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Florida utility officials call Duke’s Rogers to testify

(Charlotte Observer) Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers’ testimony to N.C. regulators didn’t soothe Florida utility officials worried about the fate of a former Progress Energy nuclear plant that’s been shut down for nearly three years.

Now the Florida Public Service Commission wants to hear for itself. The commission on Tuesday called Rogers to testify Aug. 13 on how Duke’s merger with Progress will affect consumers there.

The focus will be on the 35-year-old Crystal River nuclear plant, which has been crippled since a project to replace key components, self-managed by Progress to save money, went wrong in 2009.

The Florida commission approved a settlement in February that outlines how Progress Energy Florida and its customers would share the costs of repairing the plant – estimated at up to $1.3 billion – or retiring it.

“Commissioners want to ensure that Florida customers will continue to benefit from the agreement under the merged company,” the commission said in a statement.

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The Supreme Court Is Being Urged To Force States To Allow Insanity Defense

(Business Insider) More than a dozen law and mental health professors asked the U.S. Supreme Court this week to take up the case of a paranoid schizophrenic convicted of second-degree murder in the hopes of overturning state laws barring the insanity defense.

Lawyers who prosecuted John Delling and the judge in the case agreed that his mental illness led to the crimes, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

But Idaho doesn’t allow you to argue you were insane when you committed a crime and therefore not responsible for your actions, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Only three other states bar that defense: Kansas, Montana, and Utah.

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Rush says ‘Dark Knight’ bad guy is a plot against Romney

(First Coast News) Radio conservative Rush Limbaugh has launched what looks like a marketing boon for the final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, out Friday: It’s another Hollywood pinko plot against Republican presidential soon-to-be nominee Mitt Romney.

As Robin might have once said, Holy cow, Batman! But pay attention, here’s Rush’s thinking:

The movie’s villain is a mask-wearing, gas-breathing terrorist named Bane. Bain Capital is the investment firm Romney used to run before he got into politics. Get it?

“Do you think it is accidental that the name of the really vicious firebreathing, four-eyed whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?” Limbaugh said Tuesday on his radio show. Limbaugh, who has never made a secret of his contempt for Hollywood liberals, did not explain why he’s giving publicity to a movie he suspects.

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Absence of Voters Leads Experts To Call For Runoff Alternatives

(Carolina Journal) As North Carolina voters avoided the voting booth by the millions on Tuesday, election officials and academics called on the General Assembly to scrap the state’s expensive, no-show runoff elections.

Voters chose finalists in five races for Council of State, three congressional contests, a handful of legislative tilts, and numerous local runoffs.

“All indications are we are probably going to have the lowest turnout ever” in a second primary, Gary Bartlett, N.C. State Board of Elections executive director, said early Tuesday afternoon, lamenting that the voter turnout might not even reach the 2.5 percent of the 6,175,111 eligible voters he had predicted earlier.

“We’re having places in North Carolina that haven’t even hit a half of a percent yet. In fact, at 10 a.m., Tyrell County had only voted 10 people in the whole county. In Durham County, only 50 had voted,” Bartlett said. Camden County had 14 votes. Union County led the state at 10 a.m. with 1,600 votes.

Bartlett adjusted his prediction upward by late afternoon, and final turnout clocked in at around 3.5 percent.

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NC state House member, indicted on federal charges

(Winston Salem Journal) A Republican state House member was indicted Tuesday on charges that he took hundreds of thousands of dollars loaned to his company through a federal program and gave it to another company he owned for transactions that helped family members.

A federal grand jury indicted Rep. Stephen LaRoque of Kinston on four counts of theft through converting federal loan proceeds and another four counts of engaging in monetary transactions with criminally derived funds.

LaRoque, 48, is accused of taking $300,000 from his East Carolina Development Co., which served as an intermediary for issuing loans through a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan program, and putting the money in another one of his businesses, LaRoque Management Group.

The management group then wrote checks in 2009 and 2010 to help pay for an ice skating rink in Greenville for his wife and a stepdaughter and to purchase a house for a second stepdaughter to rent, according to the indictment. The activities violated USDA policies and the bylaws of East Carolina Development, the indictment said.

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Despite court victory, Obama contraception rule faces fresh challenge

(The Washington Times) A federal judge has dismissed a state-led challenge to the mandate to cover birth control and contraception costs in President Obama’s health care law, even as Wheaton College, one of the nation’s leading evangelical universities, said Wednesday it was going to court with its own suit over the requirement that employers must provide contraception insurance coverage to their workers.

U.S. District Judge Warren K. Urbom said seven Republican attorneys general from Nebraska, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas failed to show that a religious accommodation added by the Obama administration wouldn’t apply to them, ruling that they had no standing to challenge the mandate.

“In short, the individual plaintiffs have not shown that their current health plans will be required to cover contraception-related services under the rule, and therefore their claims must be dismissed,” Judge Urbom said in the ruling.

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County adds high-tech tool to find tax delinquents

(Charlotte Observer) Mecklenburg County is turning to a new tool to catch vehicle tax delinquents: cameras that detect license plates of vehicles parked in lots and decks across the county.

Two sheriff’s office vehicles have been equipped with cameras and software designed to read license plates and match them against a database of delinquent taxpayers.

When deputies spot a vehicle with unpaid taxes, they’ll put a fluorescent yellow sticker on the driver side window. Owners must pay delinquent taxes within two days or the vehicle could be seized.

A one-week test of the equipment in June got hits on 61 vehicles and 62 percent of those owners have already paid $5,576 in taxes and penalties, said Tax Collector Neal Dixon.

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Mercury emissions from coal power plants drop 70 percent

(Winston Salem Journal) Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in North Carolina have gone down 70 percent over the past decade, according to a new study released by the state.

The N.C. Division of Air Quality presented the findings to the state Environmental Management Commission on Thursday.

“We knew that scrubbers and other controls would reduce mercury emissions, but the actual reductions were larger than we expected,” Sheila Holman, director of the air quality division, said in a news release.

State officials attribute the decreased presence of the emissions to the 2002 Clean Smokestack Act that forced the state’s 14 coal-fired power plants to reduce their nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions by about three-fourths over a period of 10 years.

Mercury is a highly toxic metal that can permeate ecosystems and food supplies. High levels of mercury in waters can cause fish to become unhealthy to eat, especially for children and pregnant women.

“This is a reminder that mercury is a huge problem in the state and, when you look across the state and definitely in the coastal plains, most waters have mercury problems,” said Geoff Gisler, staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

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Asheville Trader Joe’s won’t need Council approval

(Mountain Xpress) Since news broke last week that Trader Joe’s is coming to Merrimon Avenue, reactions have ranged from enthusiastic support to criticism over its location. But there won’t be any showdown in the halls of government: Due to city rules, the grocery chain’s proposed location won’t go before Asheville City Council or the Planning and Zoning Commission for a vote.

“It’s a level I site plan, which means there’s no public process,” Planning Director Judy Daniel tells Xpress. “It’s 13,000 square feet and the threshold for a Level II project — which would go to Planning and Zoning — is 45,000 square feet in that zoning district.”

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Utility officials expected to hire investigators in Duke Energy review

(Raleigh News Observer) As the N.C. Utilities Commission’s investigation of Duke Energy enters its second week, the six political appointees who regulate the state’s electric utilities are expected to bring in outside investigators.

The complexity of Duke Energy probe is beyond the scope of the utilities commission’s routine work, which involves issuing certificates and reviewing rates of ferry operators, moving companies and utility companies.

“They don’t have expertise in investigations of corporate malfeasance,” said Robert Gruber, who directs the state’s Public Staff consumer advocacy agency. “Aggressive cross-examination is not something they are accustomed to doing.”

The last time the commission turned to outside auditors – a decade ago in a case that also involved Duke – the review took 10 months, resulted in a $25 million order against the company for fudging its books, and led to a lengthy federal probe.

The current Duke investigation is doubly complicated for its tangle of personal relationships.

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