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>>> Millions of Americans Using Food Stamps

>>> San Francisco’s Plastic Bag Ban Gets Mixed Reviews / San Francisco Plastik Poşet yasası karışıklıtığı

>>> Dang Ateşi için Aşı

>>> Millions Search the Web for Medical Information / Milyonlar Tıbbi Bilgi için İnterneti >>> Kullanıyor

>>> Natasha'nın Müzik Kariyeri

>>> Eating Fatty Fish / Yağlı Balık Yemek

>>> Guerilla Gardening: Şehir Bahçeciliği

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Millions of Americans Using Food Stamps

Millions of Americans Using Food Stamps





Times are tough. But Carrie Ray Black has a lot to be thankful for this Christmas.

She is a single working mother in the central state of Kentucky. She has two children and is going to school three days a week to earn a nursing degree.

Returning to school means she has a smaller monthly income. After paying her monthly bills, there was not enough money left to feed her family. So she applied for food stamps.

“Sometimes the food is the last part and you have to stretch the little money you get for food,” Ray said. “So, that is when I found out I needed assistance.

Food stamps are funded by the federal government. They provide food assistance to poor and low income families. Many recipients are single working mothers.

The stamps once resembled postage stamps, but today, the money is distributed on electronic cards.

The U.S. government says the number of Americans using food stamps recently rose over 30 million for the first time. In September, the number reached 31.5 million. Government figures indicate as many as 36 million people in America have difficulty putting food on the table.

Lexington Kentucky is a moderate-size city known for its horse farms and ties to the horse racing industry. God’s Pantry Food Bank in Lexington offers food assistance in 49 counties across the state.

It is one of 204 food bank systems that serve every county of the nation.

It receives its food supply from major U.S. cereal and other manufacturers. It offers food to those who do not receive federal help and to those who need more than the food stamp program provides.

Volunteer coordinator Mandy Brahuha says the food bank used to serve 800 families a month. This month, 1,900 families are requesting assistance.

Mrs. Brahuha says what they are seeing in Kentucky mirrors national trends. “It is a different type of client than we are use to seeing. It is not just people on disability or regular food stamp people,” she said. “These are people that have never had to reach out for help before.”

People like Michael Martin and his family. After working for 11 years for a utility company, he was laid off. He has been seeking work for four months. “I want to work. I have been looking for work. I will rake leaves and do anything for work,” said Martin. “I’ll even downgrade in pay. I just want to pay my bills; I don’t want people to help me.”

When his family had almost nothing to eat for two weeks, he applied for food stamps.

Michael said the worst part is the shame he feels. “I am just ashamed,” he said. “I mean, when I go into a grocery store and you pay for stuff [with food stamps], and people look at you like … they look at you different.”

Analysts predict that unemployment in the U.S. could rise to 8 percent by the end of 2009. And the number of people needing food assistance will also rise.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-12-17-voa21.cfm

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> San Francisco’s Plastic Bag Ban Gets Mixed Reviews / San Francisco Plastik Poşet yasası karışıklıtığı

San Francisco’s Plastic Bag Ban Gets Mixed Reviews





This is the Sunset Scavenger dump, home to the waste of some 820,000 San Francisco residents. Waste that is made up of hundreds of plastic bags. They are cheap to produce, but hard to recycle, and they often end up in places they should not be, says Robert Reed, spokesman for Sunset Scavenger Waste.

“They’re very lightweight. They blow into marshes, and onto farms. They wind up in the Bay, and in the current, and they wind up out in the ocean. They are a threat to marine life,” Reed said.

These hazards, and the fact that the city was trashing roughly 180 million plastic bags a year, are what prompted San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi to write a bill banning plastic carrier bags from all major chain supermarkets and pharmacies. But he hopes the law will inspire people to do more than that.

“The ban is also not just about not using plastic bags,” Mirkarimi said. “But it’s about not using paper as well, so that the goal and the thrust would be: hey, use neither paper nor plastic, bring your own.”

‘Bringing your own’ is a concept shopper Sabina Talia-Ferro was already familiar with.

“In Holland, they never give you a bag, you have to bring your own bags, so I was accustomed to that already,” she said.

Other shoppers have happily cooperated with the ban.

Grocers too. Store owner Sam Mogannam says he now pays 10 times more to provide paper bags to customers than he did with plastic.

“The only impact was the increase in cost, and it wasn’t a cost we were opposed to taking,” he said.

Not all grocers feel that way. The California Grocers Association, which represents about 500 members, does not support the ban, says spokesman Dave Heylen.

“The intention of the ordinance was to move consumers away from bags and to begin to have them look at alternative ways of shopping,” he said. “But we don’t think that this accomplishes that all that it has done is that consumers have just shifted from a plastic bag to a paper bag.”

The next step? To extend the ban to small grocers and retailers. Supervisor Mirkarimi also says he’s working on a bill to ban plastic bags on newspapers.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-12-31-voa35.cfm

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Dang Ateşi için Aşı

Vaccine for Dengue Fever Near





It seemed like an ordinary fever, but after Sarapee’s son was given medication to reduce his temperature, his nose began to bleed. “The other hospital gave me the medicine and told me to take him back home,” she said. “No blood-test even if he has a high fever. They might have known if they did a blood test.”

The doctors did not realize Sarapee’s son had dengue fever, also known as “breakbone fever,” because victims feel intense joint and muscle pain. Its symptoms are often confused with influenza. But many patients develop a deadly complication called dengue hemorrhagic fever or DHF.

The World Health Organization says more than 20,000 people around the world, mostly children, die each year of DHF, most of them in the tropical developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“This kind of disease is endemic in Thailand , so it is like a cycle,” Dr. Annutaraskdi Ratchatatat, Thailand-CDC explains. “When the epidemic year comes, the cases rise to more than 100,000 cases per year.” Dr. Ratchatatat hopes that one day dengue will be prevented by a vaccine like the one that helped contain polio.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Thomas, MD, U.S. Army
The United States Army medical corps has been studying dengue for 100 years.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Thomas heads the U.S. Army’s Dengue Vaccine Development program, in Bangkok. “It was really during World War II when we began to experience dengue virus infection that had a huge impact on the ability of the troops to do their job,” he stated. “It was at that time when dengue research in the military and the idea of developing dengue vaccine started to really take off and to blossom.”

In this Royal Thai Army building, scientists at the U.S. Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science, or AFRIMS, study thousands of blood samples, trying to conquer dengue.

But with four types of virus, it is not an easy task.

“We’ve had vaccine candidates that we’ve given to U.S. adults and we said this does not generate any immune response, so we have to throw them away,” Thomas said.

Scientists in this facility, the largest U.S. Army medical research laboratory outside the United States, have worked for decades battling dengue.

For Thomas, a physician, the motivation to persevere comes from meeting its victims.
“All you need to do is just walk across the street at the Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health during dengue season and the dengue ward is filled with children that are suffering from this disease,” he said.

The Queen Sirikit Institute is Thailand’s foremost dengue treatment center. It is here Dr. Suchitra Nimmannitya developed the dengue diagnostics and treatment manual adopted by the WHO. She works closely with the U.S. Army laboratory, getting early confirmation of her diagnoses. “Our long term collaboration led to more knowledge and understanding of the disease,” she said.

Suchitra shares her expertise with other medical professionals. They have confirmed that Sarapee’s son has indeed developed DHF, and is in the most deadly stage, called dengue shock syndrome.

Patients in this condition succumb to massive internal bleeding and organ failure if not properly treated. Providing the status on one patient she states: “He received two blood transfusions to correct the nose bleeding. And now his bleeding stopped. He seems to be all right now.”

Sarapee is happy that her son is recovering. But doctors say more lives could be saved if only there were a vaccine.

“The disease is increasing everywhere, not just in Southeast Asia. It’s a global problem. I think we need the vaccine,” Dr. Nimmannitya asserted.

The U.S. Army is testing a possible vaccine in the U.S. and Thailand. But Thomas thinks many questions about how the virus behaves and spreads globally will remain unanswered even with a vaccine, which he says will spur more research and discovery involving the deadly disease.

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Millions Search the Web for Medical Information / Milyonlar Tıbbi Bilgi için İnterneti Kullanıyor

Millions Search the Web for Medical Information





40 year-old Stacey Vaselaney was enjoying a glass of wine when she first felt intense pain.

“It was in my neck and it was this excruciating, stabbing sharp pain like nothing I had ever experienced before,” she explained.

A few days later it happened again -- with a sip of beer. Then, she searched the Web, typing in “pain in lymph nodes after drinking alcohol.” The search produced sites about Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Vaselaney lamented, “Hodgkin’s lymphoma, that’s cancer… I don’t have that.”

Soon after, Stacey felt a small mass in her neck. Her doctor guessed it was an infection. But then oncologist Alan Lichtin was called in.

“When I heard Stacey’s story, I presumed it was going to turn out to be Hodgkin’s disease because alcohol-induced pain in lymph nodes is a rare presentation, but it happens,” he said.

A biopsy proved Stacey in fact had Hodgkin’s disease. But it was caught early and treated with chemotherapy and radiation. She is now in remission and celebrating.

According to Internet World Statistics nearly one-and-a-half billion people around the world search the Internet regularly. Millions have gone online seeking medical information. Dr. Kelli Harding is with Columbia University.

“I sort of think of the Internet as the cutting edge of hypochondria,” Harding said. “Because now… there is so much information and just because you have a headache doesn’t mean it’s a brain tumor.”

The problem is the information can be incomplete or wrong. But doctors recognize the benefits of good information as long as their patients read reliable sources. Some of those include WebMd and sites attached to well-respected hospitals and research institutes.

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Natasha'nın Müzik Kariyeri

Singer-Songwriter Natasha Bedingfield Finds Love in America





Natasha Bedingfield has become one of the most popular female singers in the last few years. She spent all of 2008 on tour promoting her latest CD, Pocketful of Sunshine.

Natasha found love last year when she became engaged to California businessman Matt Robinson. “He stole my heart! I was holding out. My first song was called “Single”, it was about being solo and proud of it and independent,” she said. “I really did not fall [in love] for just any person … yeah, he won my heart.”

With three Top 10 Billboard chart singles from her latest album, Natasha says the thrill starts before the record is even released. “It is amazing. When you are in the studio and you are writing things (songs), and you get that excitement just after you have written something good. You feel like a kind of buzz and you kind of want to test it out because that is the next stage really,” she said. “You might like something, but do other people like it? It is the best compliment when other people hear something you wrote, and they take it as a personal song. When someone comes up to me and goes, ‘This is our song, or my song’, that is very special.”

Not only is Natasha expanding as a performer, her new CD also demonstrates her songwriting ability.

“My love first, actually, [is] the writing process,” she says, “that is what I like the most. It (songwriting) gets me going and makes me tick.”

Natasha’s most recent hit, “Angel,” has a special meaning for her. “I was in the studio with (producer) Rodney Jerkins. He is someone I grew up really admiring. He is an amazing producer, and he showed me the song ‘Angel’, and I went crazy over it. I was like, ‘Please give me that song,’ and he said, ‘I think [it is for] another artist like Beyonce or someone else singing it’ and I said, ‘No, you have to give it to me. This is my song and I am singing it!’”

“Mainly the thing that stood out to me is the title, “Angel.” My mom (Molly) has a charity that is all about kids. It’s called Global Angels. So, it was the first thing that attracted me to that song,” she recalls. “It was like, ‘I could sing a song that is a bit about protecting the person they love’, and that is what the charity is all about.”

Natasha Bedingfield is one celebrity using her fame for good cause. Not only is she involved with her mother’s organization “Global Angels”, she is also working with another charity group.

“Stop The Traffik is about stopping the slave trade,” she explains. “Even though we celebrate that we are free from slavery, there are actually so many, like thousands and thousands of people in that situation (slavery) all over the world. This is an amazing coalition of organizations which is about putting a stop to that.”

With her successful music career and involvement with charity, Natasha Bedingfield has maintained a positive image and is honored to be called a “role model” by other celebrities. “I was at the Teen Choice Awards (2008) and Miley Cyrus said I was a role model,” she said.

Natasha is in New Zealand seeking inspiration for her next album. She will be working with producer Brian Kennedy who created “Disturbia” for Rihanna. Natasha hopes to have the new CD ready by the end of 2009.

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Eating Fatty Fish / Yağlı Balık Yemek

Eating Fatty Fish



*** İhtiyaç doğrultusunda çeviri yapılacaktır.

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Videolar >>> Güncel Haberler >> Guerilla Gardening: Şehir Bahçeciliği

Guerilla Gardening (Simple English News)






*** İhtiyaç doğrultusunda çeviri yapılacaktır.

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