Author: Cali Scribe

Great-Grandmother Gives Birth at 62

Feb. 20, 2006 — Janise Wulf is 62-years-old and the mother of 10, grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of three. But she decided that she wanted to have more children, and on Friday gave birth to a new baby boy through in vitro fertilization.

Adam Charles Wulf weighed six pounds, nine ounces and was born via c-section.

Adam already has a three-year-old brother, Ian, also conceived via in vitro fertilization. His oldest half sibling is 40-years-old. Wulf lost two other children, one at birth and another in his 30s.

Wulf’s baby grandson, Quinten Myers, is just months older than Adam. She said that to cut down on confusion, all the children in the family will simply call each other cousins.

Wulf, of Redding, Calif., wanted to raise a family with her second husband, Scott Wulf, who was not able to have children during his previous marriage.

“I am no longer working; I have a lot of time to devote,” said Janise Wolf. “I had raised all my together children and remarried.

“My husband is retired from the service, and he was there to help me,” added Wulf, who is blind. “I have always loved children, obviously.”

On Satellite Radio, Bob Edwards’s Orbit Keeps Expanding

His audience is no longer measured in the millions, but even if only some mysterious number of thousands listen to “The Bob Edwards Show” these days, the gentle baritone of morning radio is taking them into some unusual territory.

In 2004, after National Public Radio clumsily pushed Edwards out of his post as host of “Morning Edition,” he moved to XM Satellite Radio, which gave him an hour-long weekday interview program and built a public radio-style channel around him.

NPR executives said they forced Edwards off the morning show after a quarter-century run because he wasn’t comfortable doing the quick interviews and updates that the network wanted in a program increasingly oriented to breaking news.

But in the 17 months since he jumped to pay radio, Edwards has displayed more range and reportorial chops than some at NPR had given him credit for. As Howard Stern is learning from his new home at Sirius Satellite Radio, speaking to a much smaller audience takes some adjusting. But it’s also liberating: On XM, Edwards has produced full-hour documentaries, long-form profiles and lyrical tributes to musicians and other artists, along with the newsier interviews that were his coin on “Morning Edition.”

Mardi Gras Crowds Small but Celebratory

NEW ORLEANS Feb 18, 2006 (AP)– The first of the major Mardi Gras parades with marching bands, brightly decorated floats and flying plastic beads rolled down New Orleans’ streets Saturday, greeted by small but celebratory crowds.

Despite the widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina, officials decided to allow a scaled-back Mardi Gras celebration this year. New Orleans parades, put on by private groups, were restricted to one corridor to help cut the cost of police protection and trash pickup.

Five parades rolled back-to-back in New Orleans on Saturday under cloudy damp skies through neighborhoods left mostly unscathed by the Aug. 29 storm. More were scheduled for Sunday and next weekend, leading up to Fat Tuesday on Feb. 28.

Capt. Juan Quinton, a police spokesman, said no major problems were reported along the route and that crowds, though small, were having fun.

Many of the residents attending the parades said Mardi Gras is an important part of the city’s heritage. Children and families often gather on the same street corners year after year.

New Orleans Locals Think Katrina’s Toll Is Still Rising
Surge in Deaths Blamed On Storm-Related Stress

NEW ORLEANS — The official death toll of Hurricane Katrina is more than 1,300. The unofficial toll of the storm may take that a lot higher.

Though not quantifiable in the orthodox fashion, because so many area health agencies are still in disarray, a belief exists among many here that the natural mortality rate of New Orleanians — whether still in the city or relocated — has increased dramatically since, and perhaps because of, Katrina.

The daily newspaper has seen a rise in reported deaths. Local funeral homes are burying just as many people as they did last year, though the population has decreased. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.

It is too early for state officials to have statistics for last year, said Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And epidemiologists are reluctant to draw conclusions based on anecdotal information.

Still, stress here is palpable, and it is overwhelming people of all ages, said psychiatrist James Barbee, director of an anxiety clinic at Louisiana State University. “People are struggling terribly.”

Concern Over Soil Content As Levee Repairs Continue

BAYOU BIENVENUE, La. — It will take a staggering four million cubic yards of soil to repair the levee system around New Orleans, and nearly half of it will go here, a battered 12-mile stretch along the navigational canal, east of the city, known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

Yet critics of the Army Corps of Engineers say the new construction is likely to fail again. The sandy local dirt being used for levee construction is too weak, they say, and not enough thick clay is being imported by barge from Mississippi to strengthen it.

President Bush’s $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.

Award recipients include a Christian relief organization famous for its televised appeals to feed hungry children, a well-known Catholic charity and a group run by the son of evangelist Billy Graham, according to the State Department.

Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes. The Bush administration provided more than 560 million condoms abroad last year, compared with some 350 million in 2001.

Secular organizations in Africa are raising concerns that new money to groups without AIDS experience may dilute the impact of Bush’s historic three-year-old program.

“We clearly recognize that it is very important to work with faith-based organizations,” said Dan Mullins, deputy regional director for southern and western Africa for CARE, one of the best-known humanitarian organizations.

“But at the same time we don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming faith-based groups are good at everything,” Mullins said.

The New Partners Initiative reserves $200 million through the 2008 budget year for community and church groups with little or no background in government grants. Some may have health operations in Africa but no experience in HIV work. Others may be homegrown groups in Africa that have not previously sought U.S. support.

“The notion that because people have always received aid money that they’ll get money needs to end,” Deputy U.S. global AIDS coordinator Mark Dybul said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The only way to have sustainable programs is to have programs that are wholly owned in terms of management personnel at the local level.”

Large nonprofit groups involved in health and development projects typically enlist local religious groups because of their deep community ties.

For prevention, Bush embraces the “ABC” strategy: abstinence before marriage, being faithful to one partner, and condoms targeted for high-risk activity. The Republican-led Congress mandated that one-third of prevention money be reserved for abstinence and fidelity.

Condom promotion to anyone must include abstinence and fidelity messages, U.S. guidelines say, but those preaching abstinence do not have to provide condom education.

The abstinence emphasis, say some longtime AIDS volunteers, has led to a confusing message and added to the stigma of condom use in parts of Africa. Village volunteers in Swaziland maintain a supply of free condoms but say they have few takers.

“This drive for abstinence is putting a lot of pressure on girls to get married earlier,” said Dr. Abeja Apunyo, the Uganda representative for Pathfinder International, a reproductive health nonprofit group based in Massachusetts.

“For years now we have been trying to tell our daughters that they should finish their education and train in a profession before they get married. Otherwise they have few options if they find themselves separated from their husbands for some reason,” Apunyo said.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said that on a tour of Uganda in January he saw pro-abstinence rallies and skits praising Bush, and U.S.-supported groups conducting house-to-house testing, care and counseling.

“The good news about the faith-based groups is not only the passion they bring to the work but it is the moral authority and the extended numbers of volunteers they can mobilize to get the word out,” Smith said.

But Smith believes the administration is wrongly supporting some nonprofit groups. He and several other congressional conservatives wrote to Bush and the U.S. Agency for International Development, contending that several large grant recipients were pro-prostitution, pro-abortion or not committed enough to Bush’s abstinence priorities.

The letters followed a briefing last year by Focus on the Family, run by Christian commentator and Bush ally James Dobson. The group’s sexual health analyst, Linda Klepacki, said even some religious groups emphasize condoms over abstinence.

“We have to be careful that the president’s original intent is being followed where A and B are the emphasized areas of the ABC methodology,” she said.

HappyNews is the brainchild of Byron Reese, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based PageWise Inc., which publishes several how-to and advice Web sites. He decided the world needed a refuge from all the unpleasantness served up by newspapers and television news shows, so he launched HappyNews in July.

“This is asking the question, what is news?” Reese said. “News is supposed to give you a view of the world. The news media, the way it has evolved, gives you a distorted view of the world by exaggerating bad news, misery and despair. We’re trying to balance out the scale.”

Almost all political stories are rejected. Coverage of the war in Iraq has been limited to things such as Marines celebrating Thanksgiving and volunteers sending teddy bears to Iraqi children.

The 30,000 jobs cut by General Motors Corp. last month? You won’t read it in HappyNews, but stories about hiring are welcome. Even sports stories are mostly out of bounds, “because one team wins and one team loses,” Reese explained.

Sam Stapp, a security officer in Louisville, Ky., stumbled across it while Web surfing a few weeks ago. He enjoyed the story about the Marines’ Thanksgiving observation and was appalled by the mainstream media’s heavy coverage of the 10 Marines killed in one attack this month.

“It’s strongly tilted negative,” he said of the mainstream media. “They won’t tell you what those same 10 Marines were doing that helped the Iraqi people because nobody cares about that. I’m just sick of it.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Internal Revenue Service has threatened to revoke the tax-exempt status of a Los Angeles Episcopal church because a priest implied to parishioners before the 2004 presidential election that Jesus would not have voted for George W. Bush.

Officials at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena said on Monday they would fight the IRS action, which is based on regulations forbidding churches from taking sides in political campaigns if they want to retain their tax-exempt status.

In a sermon on Oct 31, 2004 titled “What if Jesus were to debate John Kerry and George Bush?” a retired rector, Rev. George Regas, condemned the war in Iraq and suggested that the president did not share the church’s peace-loving values.

Thank you for contacting my office to express your views on the IRS’s investigation of the All Saints Church in Pasadena.  Last year, a guest minister delivered a sermon at this church that criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration’s policies.  He explicitly stated that he was not telling the parishioners how to vote or endorsing a specific candidate.  However, the IRS decided to investigate whether the church violated its tax-exempt status by interfering in an election.  All Saints Church, which has a long history of opposing war, is now fighting the IRS audit as an attack on its First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  I have always fought to protect these rights and freedoms, and I believe they are vitally important to our nation.  Rest assured, I will continue to monitor this situation closely.    

I believe that all citizens should become involved in the legislative process by letting their voices be heard, and I appreciate the time and effort that you took to share your thoughts with me.  One of the most important aspects of my job is keeping informed about the views of my constituents, and I welcome your comments so that I may continue to represent California to the best of my ability. Should I have the opportunity to consider legislation on this or similar issues, I will keep your views in mind.  

For additional information about my activities in the U.S. Senate, please visit my website, http://boxer.senate.gov. From this site, you can access statements and press releases that I have issued about current events and pending legislation, request copies of legislation and government reports, and receive detailed information about the many services that I am privileged to provide for my constituents. You may also wish to visit http://thomas.loc.gov to track current and past legislation.  

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.  I appreciate hearing from you.  

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Please visit my website at http://boxer.senate.gov

Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and “have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option,” Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

A rule imposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April requires Illinois pharmacies that sell contraceptives approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Pharmacies that do not fill prescriptions for any type of contraception are not required to follow the rule.

Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Ill., put the four on leave Monday, Bruce said. She would not identify them. They will remain on unpaid leave “until they either decide to abide by Illinois law or relocate to another state” without such a rule or law. For example, she said, the company would be willing to help them get licensed in Missouri and they could work for Walgreen there.

Walgreen policy says pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions to which they are morally opposed except where state law prohibits but they must take steps to have the prescription filled by another pharmacist or store, Bruce said.

In his sermon, Regas, who from the pulpit opposed both the Vietnam War and 1991’s Gulf War, imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Regas said that “good people of profound faith” could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.

But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, “Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster.”

On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that “a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … ” The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

The letter went on to say that “our concerns are based on a Nov. 1, 2004, newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times and a sermon presented at the All Saints Church discussed in the article.”

The IRS cited The Times story’s description of the sermon as a “searing indictment of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq” and noted that the sermon described “tax cuts as inimical to the values of Jesus.”

After the initial inquiry, the church provided the IRS with a copy of all literature given out before the election and copies of its policies, Bacon said.

But the IRS recently informed the church that it was not satisfied by those materials, and would proceed with a formal examination. Soon after that, church officials decided to inform the congregation about the dispute.

In an October letter to the IRS, Marcus Owens, the church’s tax attorney and a former head of the IRS tax-exempt section, said, “It seems ludicrous to suggest that a pastor cannot preach about the value of promoting peace simply because the nation happens to be at war during an election season.”

Owens said that an IRS audit team had recently offered the church a settlement during a face-to-face meeting.

“They said if there was a confession of wrongdoing, they would not proceed to the exam stage. They would be willing not to revoke tax-exempt status if the church admitted intervening in an election.”

Edward R. Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow), (April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American journalist, whose radio news broadcasts during World War II were eagerly followed by millions of listeners. Mainstream historians consider him among journalism’s greatest figures; Murrow hired a top-flight cadre of war correspondents and was noted for honesty and integrity in delivering the news. A pioneer of television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that countered the Cold War hysteria of the 1950s, and led to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Though seen as a controversial figure by many, Murrow left a legacy that stands as one of the cornerstones of broadcast journalism.

In 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was made an honorary knight of Great Britain and received similar honors from the governments of Belgium, France, and Sweden.

Would that Murrows populated our landscape now or that the original one might still be with us to say this, instead of me.  Good night and good luck.