A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health tells The Florida Independent that budget authority was denied for a competitive grant “awarded to Florida beginning October 2010 for $175,000 yearly.”

The DP10-1017 “Demonstrating the Capacity of Comprehensive Cancer Control Programs to Implement Policy and Environmental Cancer Control Interventions” grant was a “five-year grant built on strengths of existing statewide Cancer Control and Research Advisory Council (C-CRAB) working with four regional cancer collaboratives to reduce the burden of cancer,” according to the Department of Health. The grant did not require any contributions from the state.

The grant was just one of many that has been rejected by the state. This week, health advocates in Broward County expressed their frustration with the millions of dollars Florida has turned away since the passage of the federal health care reform law.

According to a recent report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Florida is among many states that have “missed opportunities to enact laws and policies that could not only save money and generate revenue, but also save lives.” In the report, Florida was listed as one of the seven states that fell short in all “five priority areas.” Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee are the other states that are also falling short in every category.

Two of the priority areas the report focused on had to do with the funding of prevention and detection programs in the state.

According to a Department of Health spokesperson, the state’s joint advisory councils had recently “completed the revised 2010 Florida Cancer Plan and developed an accompanying Implementation Guide.” The plans would have built “on the cancer councils’ combined agenda of identified priorities” and the rejected grant would have “accelerated prevention and risk reduction policies and efforts.”

The department says the plans for the grant included:

• Assisting Moffitt Cancer Center to convene the four goal committees to implement strategies for cancer control.
• Assessing and implement initiatives to reduce tobacco use statewide.
• Promoting national food guidelines and other measures to reduce obesity in school aged populations.
• Developing and support community health workers to improve access to care for underserved populations.
• Creating a forum to enhance the continuum of care for cancer patients through improved medical record keeping including electronic medical systems.

The Department of Health spokesperson tells the Independent that “the work of these initiatives is being continued by other programs in the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, but in a smaller scope.”

Luján stood staunchly against the bill in his proposal.“You have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that their bill offers protection for the sacred, traditional, and cultural sites in the proposed area to be exchanged, but I don’t believe that to be true,” he said. “If it were true, then why is every major tribal organization in the country opposing this bill?”

Luján cited the National Congress of American Indians, the All-Indian Pueblo Council of New Mexico, the San Carlos Apache Tribe (whose 2,400 acres of land on the Tonto National Forest is most affected by the Act), and the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes of New Mexico, among many other U.S. tribes as having spoken out against the land swap. “We have a Trust responsibility to our tribal brothers and sisters, and those who oppose this responsibility will dismantle it piece by piece with a scalpel and not all at once with an axe,” he said.

Among those who voted against Luján’s proposed amendment were fellow New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce, who, according to MapLight, a website that tracks the voting records and campaign contributions of U.S. Congressmen, received $9,600 from mining interests. Similarly, Representatives Jeff Flake and Ben Quayle of Arizona also voted down the amendment, and received, respectively, $5,000 and $2,500 each from the mining industry.

Rep. Luján sent the New Mexico Independent this statement:

“It was unfortunate that my amendment to protect Native American sacred and cultural sites was not adopted.  Adoption of this simple amendment would have shown respect for the religious and cultural sites that are important to the many tribes in the region, in addition to recognizing that we have a responsibility to work with our tribal brothers and sisters on issues that impact their communities.  Opponents of my amendment will say that tribal consultation is part of the exchange, but frankly what is outlined in the bill is not sufficient to ensure protection of sacred sites.”

Previously, the Academy recommended testing only for those youth who admitted to sexual activity, but now the group recommends all teenagers ages 16-18 in areas of the country with prevalence rates of .1 percent or higher be tested regularly, reports CNN.

AAP also recommended that such testing be conducted through rapid testing. Rapid testing allows for results in 20 minutes, and while considered only a presumptive test which must be followed with a traditional blood test for the virus to prove infection, it is considered incredibly sensitive to infection. Some Michigan experts who use the test say the virus can be detected early in the infection process, often before traditional testing could identify the infection.

The move is being implemented to address the continued crisis in teen cases of HIV.

In 2006, there were more than 1.1 million HIV-positive people living in the United States. Of that population, the CDC says 5% were adolescents and young adults, ages 13 to 24 years old. That may seem like a small overall percentage but consider this: Upwards of 70% of new HIV infections are caused by people of all ages who are unaware of their HIV-positive status. Roughly one of every two HIV-infected adolescents don’t know they’re positive.

Recent studies have found that those who do not know they are infected with the virus are more likely to infect others. This is because the virus is more active in their system without the intervention of anti-retroviral medications. The medications have been proven to reduce the infectiousness of those with the virus by reducing the amount of virus in the blood. But, other studies have found that starting HIV medications before minor immune system problems are caused has no benefit for the infected individual.

MLive.com reports that the disease Leptospirosis has been identified in 20 dogs in Detroit. The disease is caused by the bacteria leptospira. Once the bacteria infects an animal, it lodges in the kidneys. Some animals do not become sick from the infection, but spread the bacteria through urine, while other animals develop fevers, vomiting, and ultimately the shutdown of organs.

The disease is usually found in stray dogs, but in this outbreak experts from Michigan State University say it has been found in animals that are family pets. Ten of the dogs have died or been euthanized as a result of the infection.

Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, wrote a letter announcing that the organization was turning “95 years young” this week. In it, she wrote:

When we say Planned Parenthood is 95 years young, we aren’t kidding. And we had better stay young – because even as millions of people count on Planned Parenthood, there are some politicians working to turn the clock back when it comes to women’s health. They are working to take away women’s access to birth control, cancer screenings and other essential health care.

But we are here to stay.

Last year we provided birth control services to more than 2.3 million people. We provided more than 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections. We served young women and young men. And when the going got tough, young women and men stood up for the health care provider they depend on.

Planned Parenthood was founded to make sure women could plan their pregnancies. Ninety-five years later, we are still committed to a world where all people are empowered to live healthy lives, without fear of unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, a world where young people can delay pregnancy until they are ready to support a family.

In short, a world with Planned Parenthood.

Ninety-five years ago, life really began to change for American women and we haven’t looked back. Together, stronger-and younger – than ever, we have the power to shape a healthier future.

The organization is currently facing political pushback from all angles. The group is preparing for a congressional investigation launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-FL, at the request of Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group that wants to see Planned Parenthood defunded as part of its strategy to end abortion in the United States.

Planned Parenthood clinics provide low-cost services such as birth control, which is embraced by most of the population — including religious women. However, the organization is frequently under attack by anti-abortion groups because some of the clinics provide legal abortions.

Coupled with persistent economic troubles in the country, anti-abortion groups are using the fact Planned Parenthood offers abortions to gather support for defunding the chains on a federal level. The House GOP recently unveiled a spending bill that would “eliminate the Title X family-planning program, ban federal funding to Planned Parenthood Federation of America (unless the organization ends its abortion services), redirect teen-pregnancy-prevention programming funds to abstinence-only sex-education programs and ban private insurance companies from covering abortion,” according to our sister site, The American Independent.

The GOP-led House attempted to do the same this past spring, but failed because of significant opposition from Democrats in the Senate and the White House.

Richards wrote in her letter that “when Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide health care was under grave attack from congressional leaders this past spring, more than 1 million people stood up to defend the essential health care provided by nonprofit Planned Parenthood health centers in communities throughout this country.”

“Their motivation was clear,” she wrote. “One in five women in the United States has relied on a Planned Parenthood center for quality health care.”

The Blackpool Gazette reports:

The meetings followed the British Geological Survey’s (BGS) conclusion two recent earth tremors felt nearby were most likely to have been caused by fracking.

The BGS said the correlations between the earthquakes and the time of fracking operations and the proximity of the quakes to the site, all pointed towards the earthquakes being a result of the fracking process.

The magnitude of the earthquakes was very small and they did little damage, but the British government is considering shutting down the local fracking operations if they can’t avoid similar incidents in the future.

United Press International reports that while the jury believed the man had disclosed his HIV-positive status to his partner, it was obligated to find him guilty of the attempted assault charge. The man’s attorney has said he will challenge the guilty verdict.

“Because he didn’t use any protection, it didn’t matter if he told or not,” [defense attorney Landon] Ascheman said. “Reading the statute exactly as it is, they were told they essentially had to convict him.”

The law has two parts. The first addresses the situation with the HIV-positive man, while the second addresses assaults against police and peace officers.

Subdivision 1.Great bodily harm. Whoever assaults another and inflicts great bodily harm may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.

A legitimate series of questions were not addressed by the UPI story. Specifically, there is no indication if the man was on successful anti-retroviral treatment. Successful treatment has been shown to dramatically reduce the transmission of the virus from the infected to uninfected. Additionally, there are questions about consent involved in this case. If a person consents to harmful behavior, can the state come back and charge one of the partners with assault for consensual behavior?

As previously reported, Manatee County addressed a significant rise in teen pregnancy in the county last year by opening up its sex education policy to include a curriculum that moved beyond “abstinence-only” information. At the time, county officials blamed the limited curriculum, among other factors, for the sharp rise in teen pregnancy rates.

Abstinence-only sex education curriculum typically does not teach students about contraception and STD prevention, whereas more comprehensive sex education programs do.

The Manatee Tiger Bay Club is a “non-partisan organization formed to present exciting, stimulating and thought provoking programs,” according to the group’s website. The site also says the topics covered by the group “range from, but are not limited to, political, social, local, state or national issues.”

The group’s topic last week was the role sex education plays in the county’s teen pregnancy rates.

According to the Bradenton Herald, guest panelists in the discussion “included Daniel Manassa, Care Net community education director; Lynette Edwards, Manatee County’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction; and Barbara Zdravecky, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Central Florida.” The basis of discussion was the county’s recent reduction in “in the number of middle schoolers getting pregnant.” The Herald reports that “last year there were 30 [and] this year there are nine” girls who got pregnant while in middle school.

Edwards credits the county “offering students ‘abstinence-based, not abstinence only’ education” for the improvement.

The Herald reports:

“Didn’t we learn decades ago that ‘Just say no’ — Nancy Reagan’s mantra — doesn’t work?” one member said.

Zdravecky said years ago the school district had one of the most progressive sex education programs, which included Planned Parenthood. However, many parents asked for the organization to be removed. Today, Planned Parenthood exists in Sarasota County, but not Manatee.

“Manatee County has been one of the worst for teen pregnancy and particularly for repeat teen pregnancy,” Zdravecky said.

Care Net, Manassa said, has stressed abstinence in the community for 13 years.

“Abstinence is the surest way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease,” he said. “It’s important to be … voluntarily choosing not to engage in sex.”

One member told Manassa that he respects his beliefs, but he didn’t believe it would work for students today.

Zdravecky added, “With all due respect to Daniel, ‘Just say no’ is not a negotiation skill. Fear has kept our kids in the dark. We haven’t been truthful to our kids. Kids are still having sex.”

As previously reported, Planned Parenthood remains shunned from Manatee County schools, despite the county’s change in policy.

Nan Gould, a sex education specialist with Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central, has said that representatives from her organization are still not invited to speak at the schools, while Care Net remains in the system. In the past, Gould has said that Planned Parenthood, unlike the Manatee Care Net affiliate, does not rely on volunteers. She says Planned Parenthood only hires people with bachelor’s degrees and sex education training to teach at schools. “We are the ones that know this information,” she said.

Manassa, who works in the Care Net affiliate’s Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program, has said that the program’s volunteers only speak by request of the individual school. As part of the Christian group’s belief in abstinence before marriage, the group says it does not teach students about contraception.

Florida policy-makers have continued to place a statewide focus on abstinence-only education over comprehensive sex education. This year the Legislature rejected millions in federal grants that would have gone to struggling communities to help them educate students on contraception and STD prevention. The Legislature, however, has continued to accept federal grants for abstinence-only programs, which have been shown to place little emphasis on health-related information.

According to the most recent data on teen pregnancy in the state, over 60 percent of the counties in Florida with the highest birth rate among teens who are between the ages of 15 and 19 did not manage to decrease their rates in 2009. That same year Florida was also sixth in the nation for teen birth rates.

Ron Thomas will be Senior Advisor for South Carolina and Guy Short will become National Political Director based in Des Moines. Short has a reputation as an aggressive lobbyist to such a degree that Republicans in Colorado considered giving him the boot, and Thomas’ stint as a staffer for the South Carolina Republican Party involved promises of federal faith-based funds to churches for electoral support.

According to a release by the Bachmann campaign, Thomas served as President George W. Bush’s appointee as deputy assistant secretary for policy in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and as the designated federal official for the Secretary’s Advisory Committee of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families.

Thomas has also worked for the Republican Party of South Carolina, including during a contentious gubernatorial and senatorial campaign in 2002, where the GOP and Thomas hosted pastors from about 100 African-American churches at a “seminar on faith-based and community initiatives” which was assisted by the Bush Administration’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Steve Benen, writing for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, described the situation as “the first and most blatant example of mixing White House faith-based efforts and partisan politics.”

The seminar was sponsored by the state Republican Party as part of its self-described “outreach program.” The main topic of the event, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, was information on how pastors could “get their part of $30 million in federal money” through the Compassion Capital Fund.

After the event, clergy participants were contacted, not by the White House office, but the state Republican Party. Ron Thomas, political director of the South Carolina GOP, sent acknowledgements to participants on party letterhead with additional information about how religious groups can apply for federal grants through the president’s faith-based initiative. In other words, any lines that may have existed between official White House educational efforts and state GOP political outreach to African-American voters were blurred to the point of non-existence.

Bachmann has also hired Guy Short as her national political director.

Short has a history of down and dirty politics. In Colorado, he was a lobbyist for anti-union efforts, and was so voracious in his attacks on unions that Republican legislators considered having him banned from the Capitol last decade.

Short is a veteran of Bachmann’s campaigns and even her Congressional office. He’s been an advisor to her presidential and congressional campaigns, and as Roll Call reported earlier this year, Short was inexplicably paid out of Bachmann’s congressional office starting in June 2010. Short dropped off Bachmann’s congressional payroll when he formed C&M Strategies, which received about $150,000 in payment from MICHELEPAC and her campaign.

Asked about Short’s duties in the Congressional office, Bachmann spokesman Doug Sachtleben said in an email, “With six years of hill experience as a Chief of Staff, Guy Short worked with every member of the Congresswoman’s staff to ensure that they worked as effectively as possible to serve the constituents of Minnesota’s sixth district.”

Short should be a good asset for Bachmann’s lagging campaign, which has been trying to shore up the conservative Christian base. He’s worked with the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, and he’s on the board of the Colorado Family Institute, a group that opposed rights for LGBT Coloradans.

In Colorado and southern Wyoming alone, more than four million acres of forest are already under siege by beetles.

It’s a cycle that may be starting to spin out of control, reports today’s New York Times.

From The New York Times:

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.

The Times reports that scientists have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic global deforestation, but that funds and political will are lacking.

“Like any other scheme to improve the human condition, it’s quite precarious because it is so grand in its ambitions,” said William Boyd, a University of Colorado law professor working to salvage the plan.

Boyd is involved in several global initiatives to combat deforestation and global warming.