Agency of Agriculture launches Capital Improvement Grant Program
The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (VAAFM) is now accepting applications for the new Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) Capital Improvement Grant Program. This program was created by the Vermont Legislature to provide matching grants for capital investments that will support Vermont agricultural producers in obtaining GAP certification. The goals of the GAP Capital Improvement Grant Program are to increase sales of Vermont fruits and vegetables and create or maintain jobs by enhancing market access and promoting food safety. Both GAPs-certified producers, as well as those who are looking towards GAPs certification are eligible to apply. There is a maximum cap among all GAPs Capital Improvements Program grants of $10,000 per farm, and farms must contribute a minimum of 50% of the total project costs. To be eligible for funding, the participant must be in good standing with the Agency of Agriculture regarding regulatory requirements and resulting penalties. A total of $100,000 is available. Funding will be disbursed in two grant rounds, with the first grant round open from July 1 to September 30, 2011. A total of $50,000 is available in the first grant round, and will be made available to producers for eligible expenses in the order that applications are received. Applications received after first round grant funds are fully expended will be automatically considered in the second round of funding. The second round will open on November 1, 2011. Please contact Chelsea Bardot Lewis, Agricultural Development Coordinator, at 802-828-3360 or chelsea.lewis@state.vt.us(link sends e-mail) for the full application packet or more information. Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, 7.21.2011
It’s Wednesday and the weekend is fast approaching, so that means there are some fantastic live shows to be seen all over the Southeast. The only questions I have are (a) How long does it take to get to each of these? And (b) Who is watching my kids?Here’s a Thursday through Sunday slate of shows from around the region that you should consider taking in if you find yourself in any one of these locales.Thursday, March 20th – Athens, Georgia/St. Paul & The Broken Bones.I’ve never been to the recently refurbished – but still iconic – Georgia Theater, but I can’t imagine a better way to complete my first visit than by dropping by to catch St. Paul & The Broken Bones, the vintage soul quintet out of Birmingham, Alabama. These guys are touring hard following the release of their debut record, Half The City, and you should catch them when you can. For more info, check out the Georgia Theater’s website at http://www.georgiatheatre.com/.Friday, March 21st – Johnson City, Tennessee/The Stray BirdsThis is a show I could actually make, as The Down Home – long one of East Tennessee’s premiere listening rooms – is just an hour or so down the road from my house. I discovered The Stray Birds when I visited the IBMA conference back in the fall and had the pleasure of meeting Oliver Craven, one of the members of the band. He handed me one of the band’s discs, which I poured over on the drive home the next day. Seeing them at The Down Home would be a nifty way to wrap up the week. For info, check out http://downhome.com/.Saturday, March 22nd – Raleigh, North Carolina/Jonathan Scales FourchestraFive bucks? Just five bucks to see the jazzy steel pan mastery of Jonathan Scales and his mates in the Fourchestra? This is too good to be true. A few years back, I named Character Farm & Other Short Stories my favorite record of 2011. Order your tickets online – or pay a couple more at the door – and catch JS4 at The Pour House, one of my favorite beer halls and music rooms in Raleigh, and you can see why. More information can be found at http://www.thepourhousemusichall.com.Sunday, March 23rd – Washington, D.C./Drive-By TruckersI’d like to tell you to make your way over to the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, to catch the first of a two night run by the Drive-By Truckers, but I’d be wasting your time. The show is already sold out. However, if you want to catch a rock show on a Sunday night, this is your chance. Tickets are still available for the Truckers’ second night at the 9:30, where you will surely hear some tunes off the band’s new record, English Oceans. Grab your tickets before they are gone at http://www.930.com.Of course, this is just a whiff of all the tasty shows taking place this weekend. If you can’t make one of these, find another one. Go listen to some live music. It’ll do you right.
Thankfully, the existing NEPA rules required public and scientific input for all of them. As a direct result of the NEPA process, around 5,000 acres of commercial logging and associated road construction were dropped because they would have impacted resources like old-growth forests, rare species habitat, scenic views, and pristine trout streams, according to the SELC analysis of Forest Service data. In the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest, at least 1 in 5 acres touched by Forest Service management were either added or removed from projects because of public input. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service proposed new loopholes to NEPA that would eliminate advance notice and comment for a host of potentially harmful projects, such as logging up to 4,200 acres at a time, building 5 miles of roads, or bulldozing 4 miles of utility corridors. It would allow the Forest Service to sell off your favorite places for timber, and you wouldn’t know about it until it’s too late. The explanation doesn’t hold water. Less than a year ago, Congress gave the Forest Service a special authority for projects that would prevent wildfires and created a new emergency fund so they’ll have the money to get them done. The proposed loophole is much broader than that: it would allow logging for any purpose—even if it actually increases fire risk by removing old, fire-resistant, and commercially valuable trees. Here’s how NEPA works: before making any decision that could harm the environment, government agencies must gather information, explain their thinking, and accept public feedback. Simple, but crucial. NEPA is especially important for an agency like the Forest Service, whose job is to balance a number of equally important values, including wilderness, water quality, timber harvests, and recreation. Projects like commercial logging, road construction, or clearcutting pipeline corridors, for example, can and do happen in national forests, and they can be extremely harmful if they’re in the wrong places, like backcountry recreation areas, habitats for rare species, and precious old growth forests. The Forest Service is proposing to eliminate public comment from most logging projects in Appalachia Photo by Steven McBride The Forest Service is proposing to gut the most important conservation law on the books. You’ve probably heard of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act—all of which are also under attack by the current administration. But none of them are as important as NEPA—the National Environmental Policy Act. It sounds wonky and boring, but NEPA is the unsung, unheralded hero of conservation in this country. It’s the workhorse that gets the job done, mostly behind the scenes—like a football guard protecting his quarterback, or R2D2, the robot from Star Wars, who doesn’t get a ton of screen time but almost singlehandedly saves the rebels and takes down the empire. The Forest Service’s proposal is not really about efficiency, wildfires, or bureaucracy. It is primarily an attempt to eliminate accountability from public lands management. Visit OurForestsOurVoice.org or southernenvironment.org to learn more. Evans sympathizes with the Forest Service’s predicament, but he says the data don’t support cutting out the public. “The Forest Service does struggle with timely project delivery, but its bottlenecks don’t come from its already-short 30-day comment windows. Its delays are caused by the lack of boots on the ground to look for things like rare species and design projects to protect them—what most of us would simply call doing a good job.” Unfortunately, Evans says, the agency’s proposed solution is to get rid of accountability. “If you get rid of public oversight, then nobody knows when you do a bad job. Nobody knows that you logged a stand on top of endangered salamanders.” “NEPA works, and the data show it,” says Sam Evans, public lands attorney at SELC. “Forest Service projects decisions are significantly improved by public and scientific input. If we let the Forest Service gut its NEPA rules, none of those improvements would happen in the future.” The Forest Service is staffed by people who love these lands as much as we do. But they already don’t have the resources to do their jobs without mistakes, and they’re under tremendous pressure to put more logs on trucks. According to records obtained through FOIA, the Forest Service is ratcheting up its timber quotas by 45%—levels of timber production our forests haven’t seen in decades. At the same time, the agency is proposing to cut 4,650 full time staff from its payroll. More acres + less staff = more mistakes. Why? The Forest Service says that the new loopholes will speed up their work. Without public comment and scientific input, they say they can conduct logging projects more quickly to help prevent wildfires. This isn’t just about tree-huggers having their say. Hunters, locals, recreational users, private landowners, historic preservationists, outdoor guides, city and county governments and tourism boards, Native American communities, and scientific experts will all be shut out of the Forest Service’s decision-making process. All of these groups provide important, on-the-ground insights about the landscape that the understaffed Forest Service cannot possibly gather on its own. The proposed NEPA-nixing rules will hit Southern forests harder than any other region. More timber harvests occur here than anywhere else in the country, and essentially all of the logging projects in Southern Appalachian national forests would fit into the 4,200-acre loophole. We own these lands, and the Forest Service is supposed to work for us. We don’t have to go along with this proposal, and the Forest Service needs to hear from you. So do your congressional leaders. Speak now—it could be your last chance to do so. Nevertheless, the Forest Service says that public input is just too time consuming. Its proposal argues that cutting out public input will shave up to 16 months from project timelines. An analysis based on Forest Service data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) shows that eliminating public and scientific input does not actually make the Forest Service operate more efficiently. Projects with public input and transparent analysis actually require less time per acre than projects developed behind closed doors. That’s because the public happens to know a lot about the places they love—information that helps locate projects in the right places for the right reasons. Losing public accountability means losing old growth, losing rare wildlife and habitats, losing backcountry solitude, and losing clean streams and rivers. Over the past 11 years, 71 major logging projects have taken place in the six Southern Appalachian national forests in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. All but one of these projects would have been exempt from public and scientific input under the proposed new rules. 
By Lois Beckett, ProPublicaThe executive actions on guns unveiled last week by President Obama drew predictable praise from gun control advocates and bile from gun-rights supporters and Republican lawmakers, including some who called his actions “unconstitutional.”But, as some have noted, the actions themselves are extremely modest, raising questions about how much they will really do to stem gun violence.Obama’s most significant step is an attempt to expand the number of gun sellers who conduct background checks on buyers. To do this, he is not changing the requirements for who is required to conduct a background check and who is not. Instead, he is giving a very high level of publicity to new “guidance” from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that simply explains what the current law is.Under federal law, licensed firearm dealers have to comply with a set of regulations, including conducting background checks on prospective purchasers to make sure they are not prohibited from owning a gun because of a criminal record or other disqualifying factor. More occasional sellers of guns—one private individual selling to another private individual—do not have to follow these rules.For decades, gun control advocates have decried this gaping loophole in the nation’s federal background check law. After a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, Congressional Democrats tried and failed to close this loophole by passing legislation to require background checks on more gun sales.Obama is now approaching the problem from a different angle: He is focusing on gun sellers who may be operating in a gray area between being an occasional seller and a licensed dealer.According to the ATF, its new guidance breaks down how federal courts have interpreted the somewhat fuzzy line between occasional gun sellers, who are not required to conduct background checks, and people who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms, who must have a federal license, conduct background checks, and comply with other federal regulations on dealers.A father selling off part of his personal collection of high-end firearms to finance his son’s college education does not need a federal firearms license, the ATF explained. But a man who lost his job and is now “buying firearms from friends and reselling them though an internet site” does need a license.Experts say there’s some indication that gun sellers operating in this gray area are a problem, and that they play a role in supplying guns to people with criminal records.Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said sellers whose livelihoods don’t depend on gun sales may exercise prudence beyond what’s required by law when making transactions. When he conducted focus groups with gun owners in Texas, he said, many said they would not sell a gun without voluntarily checking whether a potential buyer had a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon, so they could be sure they were selling to a person who could legally own a gun.But private sellers who are trying to make a profit may be less scrupulous about whether the person who is buying their gun could pass a background check, Webster said.“If you are, on a regular basis, buying and selling a whole lot of guns and are doing that to make money, I think that probably clouds judgment,” he said.Webster cited a November 2015 study by the gun control group Everytownfor Gun Safety, which analyzed a year’s worth of ads posted by unlicensed sellers on Armslist.com, an online gun marketplace. The report found that a small proportion of unlicensed sellers were selling a very large number of guns on the site: “Those offering 25 or more guns accounted for 1 in 500 sellers but offered 1 in 20 guns,” the report found. These private, high-volume sellers should be required to be licensed, the report concluded.It’s not clear how the findings of this one study might reflect the larger online marketplace for guns—or the broader patterns of offline unlicensed sales.“The bottom line: we don’t know how big this is, but we have enough evidence to know that thousands of guns are being sold by individuals who are selling a lot of guns in fairly risky kinds of ways,” Webster said.The Everytown report also concluded that the vague legal definition of who should be a licensed gun seller had undermined efforts to prosecute people for dealing in firearms without a license.Webster said it would be interesting to see if the White House’s attempt to clarify the law resulted in more cases targeting people for selling guns without a license. “Time will tell,” he said, noting that simply putting a spotlight on these sellers should also have “some deterrent effect.”Even if the president succeeds in shrinking this gray area of the gun market, it’s not clear what effect that might have on gun violence overall.Phil Cook, a Duke University gun policy expert, was one of the researchers who recently surveyed 99 inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago about how they obtained their guns. Very few of them described getting their guns from licensed gun dealers, or by stealing them.For people with criminal records, “most of these transactions are not with people who are in the real business of selling guns, licensed or unlicensed. It’s much more casual transactions involving acquaintances, family members, street sources,” Cook said.The White House emphasized both gun shows and Internet sales as places where it was easy to conduct risky sales with no background check requirements.But Cook said that, according to surveys, neither the Internet nor gun shows were places were “the typical gang member or robber” goes to buy a gun.“Nobody in the jail survey mentioned they had gone online,” Cook said. “I wonder if they would trust that arrangement. What they were telling us about the transactions they were involved with—on both sides, it was important that they either knew the other person or that they had somebody who would vouch for them. There was very little dealing going on among strangers.”The 2015 Everytown study, which “analyzed every federal prosecution of ‘engaging in the business’ of dealing guns without a license in 2011 and 2012” also found “defendants relied on gun shows, online markets, or print ads to buy or sell their wares” in “approximately 10 percent of cases.”At the same time, Cook said, that did not mean that gun shows and the Internet did not play a role in illegal trafficking. It’s extremely hard to track the movement of guns between their sale by a licensed dealer and the moment they are recovered at a crime scene or from someone not legally allowed to own them. Gun shows and the Internet might play a role in a chain of sales between these points, he said, and “might be supplying the pipeline of guns that are being trafficked into Chicago or New York.”The ATF has no estimate for how many additional people, if any, may decide to get licensed and start conducting background checks as a result of its new guidance, though “it is reasonable to believe that there will be some increase in the number of new applications for firearms licenses,” ATF spokesman Corey Ray wrote in an e-mail.Will the ATF start cracking down on gun sellers in the gray area that the guidance deals with? “Because this really isn’t new regulation, the requirements are already in place and enforcement is ongoing,” Ray wrote.ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter. Sign up for our COVID-19 newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest coronavirus news throughout New York 
Tax filing season is of course a busy time of year for accountants. However, it’s also a bust time of year for scammers, as well.According to a recent Federal Trade Commission report, of the $1.48 billion total reported fraud, consumers lost nearly $488 million to imposter scams in 2018. Fraud schemes range from debt collector calls or emails claiming you haven’t paid your taxes, to someone posing as an official from the IRS or local law enforcement agency threatening arrest, suspension of your driver’s license or some other penalty if you don’t immediately wire funds to pay your taxes. The scams have become increasingly sophisticated and hard to detect.Here is what you need to know about the IRS:The first contact from the IRS is through regular mail delivered by the United States Postal Service.The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text message or social media channels. Even if they call to set up appointments or discuss an audit, you would first receive notification by mail. Only after mailing an official notification of an audit can an auditor/tax examiner follow up by phone. Forward any suspicious emails to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov. Alleged IRS or tax-debt collection calls should be reported to (800) 366-4484. Payments to the IRS are only payable to the United State Treasury. They do not accept payment in the form of prepaid debit cards, gift cards or wire transfers.IRS agents will NEVER demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or dispute the amount they say you owe.They have to advise you of your rights as a taxpayer. They CANNOT threaten to bring in local police, immigration officers or other law enforcement to have you arrested for not paying your taxes. The IRS also has zero authority to revoke your driver’s license, business license or immigration status.If an IRS representative calls or comes to a home or business unannounced to collect a tax debt or as part of an investigation, they will always provide two forms of official credentials: a pocket commission and a HSPD-12 card. You have a right to see the credentials and can call the IRS to verify the identity/information on the representative’s HSPD-12 card. 607SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr,Myriam DiGiovanni After writing for Credit Union Times and The Financial Brand, Myriam DiGiovanni covers financial literacy for FinancialFeed. She is also a storytelling expert and works with credit unions to help … Web: www.financialfeed.com Details
Credit unions in states where marijuana is legal won’t be sanctioned for providing services to cannabis-related businesses as long as they follow money laundering, Bank Secrecy Act, safety and soundness and other rules, NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood said Friday.“It’s a business decision for the credit unions if they want to take the deposits,” Hood told CU Times, in a wide-ranging interview at NCUA headquarters in Alexandria, Va.He added, “We don’t get involved with micro-managing credit unions.”He said that credit unions that provide services to cannabis-related businesses must comply with FinCEN rules, file Suspicious Activity Report and must strictly adhere to other rules.Then, they will not be cited for merely doing business with cannabis firms, Hood said. continue reading » ShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr
Sep 16, 2005 (CIDRAP News) – US officials this week promoted international efforts to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, announcing an international flu surveillance partnership and promising aid to Vietnam for avian and human flu surveillance.President George W. Bush announced the international partnership when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly Sep 14. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt followed up yesterday by announcing plans to go to Southeast Asia next month to discuss the pandemic threat with leaders there.Also yesterday, the US ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Marine, said the United States would give Vietnam—the country hit hardest by H5N1 avian flu—$2.5 million over the next 5 years for flu surveillance. The aid will begin with a $500,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.International partnershipIn his UN speech, Bush said, “If left unchallenged, this [avian flu] virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century. We must not allow that to happen. Today I’m announcing a new international partnership on avian and pandemic influenza. The partnership requires countries that face an outbreak to immediately share information and provide samples to the World Health Organization (WHO).”By requiring transparency, we can respond more rapidly to dangerous outbreaks and stop them on time. Many nations have already joined this partnership; we invite all nations to participate. It’s essential that we work together, and as we do so, we will fulfill a moral duty to protect our citizens, and heal the sick, and comfort the afflicted.”Yesterday Leavitt announced he would lead a US delegation to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam next month to meet with heads of state and health ministers concerning flu issues. “I will be seeking their critical involvement and personal commitment to preparedness and response,” he said in a prepared statement discussing the new partnership.”In Southeast Asia, I will be negotiating agreements with the most-affected nations to offer assistance to build their capacity to identify outbreaks and respond rapidly when needed,” Leavitt said. “We feel a common and genuine sense of urgency.”He also said, “On the international front, we must have complete transparency. We must have joint rapid response capabilities. We must conduct cooperative surveillance. We must share epidemiological data and samples with each other and with the World Health Organization. We must have commitment from the highest political levels in countries around the world to adhere to these principles.”An AFP report today said the WHO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and at least 16 countries already have agreed to join the partnership. The countries listed were Argentina, Australia, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky told AFP, “In the coming weeks, we plan to hold a senior officials meeting of all partners in Washington to identify steps to achieve transparency, to improve donor coordination, to build capacity and develop containment strategies.”The WHO welcomed the partnership, according to AFP reports. WHO spokesman Iain Simpson said the agency strongly endorsed the group’s goals, but he was waiting for more information on how countries could be required to share samples.”As with any international agreement, the question is enforcement,” he said.Aid to VietnamCommenting on the aid to Vietnam, Marine said, as quoted by AFP, “This network focuses on systematic collection of information about influenza, information about what viruses are causing it, how they are being spread, and how fast.”The CDC has signed an agreement with Vietnam to provide $500,000 for equipment and laboratory reagents to help improve lab-based surveillance for flu and to develop a flu surveillance network in Vietnam, Dr. Tim Uyeki of the CDC’s influenza branch in Atlanta told CIDRAP News.This is not the first time the CDC has helped Vietnam in its battle with avian flu, “but it’s the most substantial amount of funding,” Uyeki said. He said the CDC has assisted Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi with human flu–related activities since 1998, providing training, reagents, and specimen testing. The CDC has also collaborated with the institute on avian flu activities since 2001, he said.Marine said the funding is expected to total $2.5 million over the next 5 years but is subject to availability, according to AFP. He said the assistance plan was not directly related to the partnership announced by Bush.See also:Text of President Bush’s speech to the UNhttp://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050914.htmlLeavitt statement on the international partnership
The Batam administration in Riau Islands has quarantined 15 locals who were identified as having close contact with three Singaporean residents who tested positive for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) after visiting the city.On Sunday, Singapore’s Health Ministry announced that three people, two Singaporean citizens and one Myanmar national, had tested positive for the disease after visiting Batam from Feb. 21 to Feb. 23.Riau Islands Health Agency head Tjeptjep Yudiana said the agency had been notified by Singapore health authorities regarding the three cases, who have been identified only as Case 101, Case 103 and Case 104. “We’ve found the people who were in close contact with the Singaporean residents yesterday. They will be observed for a week,” Tjeptjep said during a press conference on Monday.He said that according to the notification, Case 103, a 37-year-old Singaporean woman, visited a property she owned in Batam on Feb. 20 and returned to Singapore on the 23rd.Her husband and two children, as well as her assistant – a 25-year-old Myanmar woman identified as Case 104 – went on to visit her in Batam on the 21st. Three days after her return from Batam, Case 103 and 104 were put under home quarantine as they had been in close contact with a 38-year-old male Singaporean who tested positive for COVID-19, identified as Case 93. The two women themselves tested positive on Sunday.“To follow up on the notification, we traced back the Singaporeans’ steps – the locations they visited and the people they interacted with during their time in Batam. They met with around 100 people. But for now we’ve only put 11 of them under observation at the Haj Dormitory, and four others in their homes. The administration will tend to their needs,” Tjeptjep said.Those currently being quarantined have been identified as 33-year-old P, along with his wife and two children, and 39-year-old CSS, along with 10 of her relatives and close acquaintances. P acted as Case 103’s driver during the Singaporean’s visit, while CSS worked as her domestic helper.“We ask the public to remain calm because we have them under observation,” Tjeptjep said.He went on to say that the agency had also coordinated with the local police to track down the ferry that had carried the three people to Batam.“We’re now actively searching for fellow ferry passengers,” he said, adding that the ferry manifest showed 26 Indonesian passengers and 82 foreigners.Tjeptjep added that the 15 people under observation had appeared healthy and that the agency had sent their samples for testing at the Health Ministry’s laboratory in Jakarta.“Even if they test negative [for coronavirus], they will still be observed for a week,” he said.Batam Port’s Health Office head Achmad Farchanny said the thermal scanners that had been installed at the entrance to the region did not detect any signs that showed VP or her family had carried the virus when they crossed over to Batam.The management will bolster safety and security measures at every port in the region, making it mandatory for ferry passengers to fill out health alert cards accurately, he said.“If they don’t fill out the cards, they won’t be able to pass through immigration. It’s mandatory; they have to be filled out truthfully,” he added.Cases 101, 103 and 104 are the latest of seven cases in which patients tested positive for COVID-19 after visiting Indonesia. Previously, four other patients – in China, Japan, New Zealand and Malaysia – tested positive shortly after returning from Indonesia.Earlier on Monday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that two Indonesians had tested positive for COVID-19, the first two confirmed cases of the disease in the country.Jokowi said that the two people, a 64-year-old and her 31-year-old daughter, had been in contact with a Japanese citizen who tested positive in Malaysia on Feb. 27 after visiting Indonesia in early February. (rfa)Topics :
Stuff co.nz 24 August 2018Family First Comment: A balanced commentary on cannabis medicine – as opposed to dope or pot. “Nonetheless, if medical cannabis works, it should be prescribed. This drug, like all others, should be in the toolbox of medical professionals. The ethical obligation to ensure that no citizens are in unnecessary pain is the reason that civilised countries distribute high risk and otherwise illegal drugs for medical reasons, such as opium and its derivatives, relatively easily, albeit within strict protocols to stop any potential abuse.”www.saynopetodope.org.nz/medicinalOPINION: As we move towards the third reading of the medical cannabis bill in Parliament, the current debates about this illegal drug as a medical issue as opposed to a liberty issue are getting hopelessly confused.Cannabis as a liberty issue will be answered by referendum, whereas cannabis as a medical issue needs to be answered with the existing frameworks with which we deal with similar questions.Here are the problems that need to be navigated.First, many of the people using cannabis in New Zealand will be self-medicating. Some of these people will be doing it right, others will be doing it wrong.In some instances, medicinal cannabis will probably be effective. In other instances, it may actually be damaging the person taking the drug, or making no difference at all. Indeed, although there are at approximately 80 conditions for which cannabis has been claimed to be effective, there is only 3 in which there is conclusive or substantial evidence of it delivering the desired results.Nonetheless, if medical cannabis works, it should be prescribed. This drug, like all others, should be in the toolbox of medical professionals.READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/106431792/Medicinal-cannabis-drugs-should-be-in-doctors-toolbox
Following Senate’s decision to reject the amendment on the revenue sharing formula by majority whip Irungu Kang’ata on Tuesday, it is likely counties will share revenue on basis of previous formula which aimed at minimizing development gap.Get breaking news on your Mobile as-it-happens. SMS ‘NEWS’ to 20153 This, however, will happen if they adopt the amendment on the Finance Committee’s Report sponsored by Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja seeking to retain the status quo until county revenue share increases.Also Read Uhuru extends curfew ahead of his address Tuesday next weekBut as counties await the Senate’s decision, proponents of the one man one shilling formula are working on a comeback as well punitive measures against those believed to have betrayed their cause.Also Read President Uhuru to make remarks in the 75th Session of UNGAThe Senators who voted against the Bill include Kakamega’s Cleophas Malala whose county was to get an additional Ksh 1 billion, Nairobi’s Johnson Sakaja whose county was to get an additional Ksh 1.2 billion, and Kipchumba Murkomen of Elgeyo Marakwet.Other senators who rejected additional monies include Kajiado’s Senator Philip Mpayie, Lamu’s Anwar Loitiptip and Kisii’s Prof Sam Ongeri.25 Senators in total voted against the amendment while 22 Senators voted in support of the same.The House will now reconvene on 4th of August to continue with debate on Sakaja’s amendment on the report of the Finance Committee.Also Read PSC to challenge Maraga’s advice to dissolve Parliament over gender ruleSakaja wants to retain the current revenue allocation formula for Counties saying they are all in agreement that Counties shouldn’t lose money.He said the narrative that some Counties in this Country are getting money than they don’t deserve shouldn’t even exist saying as Senator for Nairobi, the County would rather lose the extra Ksh 100 million it would have gotten had they adopted the report of the Finance Committee than see other Counties lose cash. Senate Majority Whip Irungu Kang’ata is threatening to turn the tide against Senators whose counties were bound to benefit from the 3rd Basis Revenue Allocation Sharing Formula but voted against his proposal.Kang’ata threatened to do this by touring their respective regions and informing the electorate that they will be missing additional funds as a result of acts and omissions by their Senators.At least 7 senators voted against Kangata’s Bill which sought to provide a two-year window before counties begin receiving funds based on population density.