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Serb War Crimes Fugitive Ratko Mladic Arrested In Serbia

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Thursday, May 26, 2011|

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Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries Are Engaged

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Senate just defeated Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing Budget : 57 - 40.

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'American Idol' picks a winner: Is it Scotty McCreery or Lauren Alaina?

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The Chicago Code: FOX Drama on the Bubble; To Be Cancelled or Renewed?

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Wednesday, May 11, 2011|

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Several weeks ago, FOX unveiled their latest cop drama called The Chicago Code. The series has the enviable position of following the network’s popular House series. How have the ratings been? Strong enough to get it renewed or will it be cancelled?

The Chicago Code follows officers of the Chicago Police Department as they fight crime while also trying to expose political corruption within the city. Veteran Chicago Police Detective Jarek Wysocki (Jason Clarke) leads the special unit fighting against the corruption. Others in the cast include Jennifer Beals, Matt Lauria, Devin Kelley, Todd Williams, Billy Lush, and Delroy Lindo.

The series debuted to a decent 2.4 rating in the all-important 18-49 demographic and 9.43 million total viewers. In week two, it dropped 17% in the demo which isn’t very good but isn’t horrible either. Since then, the ratings have been slowly eroding. The last three original episodes have registered a 1.8 in the demo with an average of 6.16 million viewers. That’s not very good and puts the series squarely “on the bubble.” It could be easily renewed or cancelled.

FOX has three shows that are basically in the same boat — Chicago Code, Lie to Me, and Human Target.

Of the three, Human Target seems the most likely to be cancelled. It got the lowest ratings and the network already renewed it once in hopes that the numbers would improve. They didn’t. It’s also been off the air for months.

Whether they decide to renew Chicago Code and/or Lie to Me will likely have a lot to do with how much faith the execs have in their pilots for the new season. Depending on available timeslots, they could choose to renew one, both, or neither.

As a result, Chicago Code’s ratings over the next couple weeks will likely play a big role in the decision to cancel or renew the show. Including tonight’s episode, the series only has two airings before the FOX schedule is unveiled for 2011-12 on Monday, May 16th. (You can watch this list to stay updated on what’s renewed or cancelled.)

The Kansas City Star Political Blog Attempts To Solve Funky Dishware Mystery!!!

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The former Mayor and his wife should know that TKC was never this petty and much funnier . . . Prime Buzz: "The staff of Kansas City's new Mayor, Sly James, says there's no evidence of the fancy dishware that was purchased shortly after former Mayor Mark Funkhouser took office."

TOPEKA | The state of Kansas violated a Jehovah’s Witness’ constitutional right to exercise her religious faith when it denied her request for an out-of-state liver transplant, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge appeals court panel overturned a lower-court ruling and ordered the Kansas Health Policy Authority to grant Mary Stinemetz’s request to undergo a Medicaid-funded liver transplant in Nebraska.

“We are very happy,” said Corinne Petrik, the lawyer representing Stinemetz.

Stinemetz, 64, had refused to undergo a liver transplant at the University of Kansas Hospital because she would need a blood transfusion — something she could not accept as a Jehovah’s Witness.

She said Jehovah’s Witnesses follow biblical directives to abstain from blood, pointing to passages in the books of Acts, Genesis and Deuteronomy, according to court records.

Church doctrine leaves it to the discretion of members to accept certain blood fractions and donor organs.

Stinemetz wanted the state to approve a liver transplant in Nebraska, where she could undergo a bloodless procedure, but her request was rejected because the procedure would be done out of state.

For 20 years, the Hill City, Kan. woman has suffered from primary biliary cirrhosis, a chronic disease that causes the liver to deteriorate and malfunction over time.

Stinemetz, who has known since last year she would need a new liver, isn’t on a waiting list for an organ, and her eligibility for a transplant hasn’t yet been evaluated.

Repeated efforts to reach the Kansas Health Policy Authority for comment on Wednesday’s ruling were unsuccessful. It is not known whether the agency plans an appeal to a higher court.

While the Kansas Court of Appeals found that state Medicaid rules didn’t focus on Stinemetz’s faith, it did note that state regulations allow for exceptions to the general rule barring Medicaid funding for out-of-state services.

Because the rules allow for exceptions, the state under the First Amendment could not deny Stinemetz’s request unless it had a compelling reason, something that judges had trouble pinpointing during oral arguments.

The state “has failed to suggest any state interest, much less a compelling interest for denying Stinemetz’s request for prior authorization for the out-of-state liver transplant,” Judge Thomas E. Malone wrote for the appellate court.

The court noted that cost was not an issue in denying Stinemetz’s claim, finding that the bloodless procedure costs less than one that requires a transfusion.

“There is no question that the (state) would authorize a bloodless liver transplant if a medical facility was available in Kansas to perform the technique,” Malone wrote in the 40-page opinion.

Given that the bloodless procedure is less costly, the state is “unable to argue that the agency is being fiscally responsible as the steward of Kansas’ tax dollars” by rejecting Stinemetz’s request.

Stinemetz’s appeal was based partly on a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case involving a Seventh-day Adventist who was let go from her job because she wouldn’t work on Saturday, the Sabbath of her faith.

That woman was denied state unemployment benefits when she couldn’t find a job because of her unwillingness to work on Saturdays.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Seventh-day Adventist, finding that government needed a compelling state interest to justify infringing on someone’s right to freely exercise religion.

The Kansas Health Policy Authority, meanwhile, contended the case involving the Seventh-day Adventist didn’t apply any more. The agency instead, relied on a 1990 Supreme Court case involving two workers in Oregon who were fired for ingesting peyote for sacramental purposes and were denied unemployment compensation.

The Supreme Court eventually upheld the denial of benefits, ruling that the government can uniformly enforce laws that might impinge on someone’s religion as long the law doesn’t focus on one’s faith.

But the Kansas appeals court distinguished between the two cases, noting that the Oregon case involved illegal activity and the case with the Seventh-day Adventist related to unemployment benefits.

The Supreme Court ruled in the Oregon case that in situations where the state might have a system of exemptions in place, it must have a compelling reason not to extend those exemptions in cases of religious hardship.

Inside the Panthers: More on Panthers' other Auburn pick-up

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Bora Bora's Society Islands Threatened Reefs

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Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia – I dove last week in the beautiful lagoon that surrounds the tall island to have a first hand look at how the coral reef is doing in this South Pacific resort island. The report is not good.

Descending to 90 feet, it was immediately clear that the reef has been hammered in the past few years. I’ve come here every year for the past decade and have seen incredible change.

I spent most of the morning observing the still-growing reef system just 10 to 30 feet below the surface. Although the waters are warm and magnificently clear, invasive predators and natural disaster have both taken big tolls.

Populations of acanthaster -- also known as the crown-of-thorns starfish – mysteriously arrived in Polynesia in 2006. No one is sure exactly how they got here or where they originated, though invasive species are well known for hitching rides on cargo ships and jumping off far from home. Here in the shallows surrounding Bora Bora – as they have done to reefs on nearby Moorea, Raiatea-Tahaa, Huahine and Maupiti – the predatory starfish have devoured hundreds of acres of coral.

The aforementioned natural disaster occurred in February 2010, when Cyclone Oli whipped the nearby seas to a froth of 18 to 21 feet, pouring over the protective reef and across the lagoon. The impact on the corals was devastating, as deep as 100 feet below the surface.

At 20 feet below, the coral was ripped off at its base and forever destroyed. Rather than coral, today much of the shallows of the lagoon floor are covered instead by a fine pale yellow algae mat. The deeper you dive, the less destruction you see, but the powerful storm – the first cyclone to hit here in fourteen years -- still managed to break, mangle and kill coral. The only slight upside is that it was also hard on the starfish population.

My dive corresponded with having just read a new report from the World Resource Institute – “Reefs at Risk Revisited” – which suggests that 75 percent of the world’s coral reefs are currently threatened by local and global pressures, including climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, coastal development and pollution.

Around the globe more than 275 million people live in the direct vicinity (within 18 miles) of coral reefs. In more than 100 countries and territories reefs protect over 93,000 miles of shoreline, helping defend coastal communities and infrastructure against storms and erosion.

The reef encircling Bora Bora helps protect the island from typical weather and seas. In the past decade the human population has swelled to 9,000, thanks to tourism. But the pressure of development is having a direct impact on the very thing – its amazing natural beauty – that attracts visitors in the first place.

To try and resuscitate reefs, the Global Coral Reef Alliance is building unique domes out of rebar which they flip over and sink to the lagoon floor. The metal rusts very quickly and the chicken-wire mesh covering it is soon grown over by calcium-rich marine life. Coral is transplanted onto the faux reef and within a year it is nearly completely covered with colorful, living coral.

To encourage fast-growing coral a low-voltage current courses through the metal structure, usually created from solar, wind or tidal sources. This system is just one of a variety of man-made attempts being made around the world to encourage new coral growth, including concrete forms and, around the coast of the U.S., purposely dumped buses, tanks and aging military boats.