Astrorisa ~ Peek into the Aries New Moon Forecast

Written by Iya Olusoga ~ Bisi Ade

For Astrorisa Moon Forecaster

March 27, 2017

Aries New Moon 7° in House 5

Aries Sun 7° in House 5

10:57 PM EST

Welcome to the Aries new moon, the official 1st moon of Spring! We’re still operating under the influences of the March 12th Virgo full moon whose lunar vibrations diminish April 10th, the day before the full moon. The Aries full moon’s vibrations and forecast messages lasts from March 27th – April 24th

Themes: New cycles, cycles ending, disruption, death of illusions, a need to salvage, count your blessings, stability, calmness after a storm, finances, position of power, and the grading of your performance.

Sun and Moon in Aries 7° brings out an outlandish and explosive character which wants to do and say what it wants. Don’t give it a platform and mic because you have no idea what will come out of its “mouth.” This outlandish, uncensored degree can create alienation or arguments…The Aries 7° will tell you uncomfortable truths in an uncomfortable way, this is the character of the archetype of Ogun for this moon time.

Have a self loving, danger free, clear sighted, and happy New Moon Time.

A new kind of doctor’s office charges a monthly fee and doesn’t take insurance – and it could be the future of medicine – TheBreakAway

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Source: BusinessInsider.com
March 19, 2017

Dr. Bryan Hill spent his career working as a pediatrician, teaching at a university, and working at a hospital. But in March 2016, he decided he no longer wanted a boss.

He took some time off, then one day he got a call asking if he’d be up for doing a house call for a woman whose son was sick. He agreed, and by the end of that visit, he realized he wanted to treat patients without dealing with any of the insurance requirements.

Then he learned about a totally different way to run a doctor’s office. It’s called direct primary care, and it works like this: Instead of accepting insurance for routine visits and drugs, these practices charge a monthly membership fee that covers most of what the average patient needs, including visits and drugs at much lower prices.

That sounded good to him. In September, Hill opened his direct-primary-care pediatrics practice, Gold Standard Pediatrics, in South Carolina.

Hill is part of a small but fast-growing movement of pediatricians, family-medicine physicians, and internists who are opting for this different model. It’s happening at a time when high-deductible health plans are on the rise – a survey in September found that 51% of workers had a plan that required them to pay up to $1,000 out of pocket for healthcare until insurance picks up most of the rest.

That means consumers have a clearer picture of how much they’re spending on healthcare and are having to pay more. At the same time, primary-care doctors in the traditional system are feeling the pressure under the typical fee-for-service model in which doctors are incentivized to see more patients for less time to maximize profits.

Direct primary care has the potential to simplify basic doctor visits, allowing a doctor to focus solely on the patient. But there are also concerns about the effect that separating insurance from primary care could have on the rest of the healthcare system – that and doctors often have to accept lower pay in exchange for less stress.

How direct primary care works

Courtesy Lauren Clark

Dustin and Lauren Clark, who operate Black Bag Family Healthcare.

For Brent Long and his family, paying for healthcare is now like paying a cellphone bill. Since they joined Black Bag Family Healthcare in Johnson City, Tennessee, about two years ago, the family has paid about $150 a month to belong to the practice.

Long joined around the time he was shifting his insurance to a high-deductible health plan. There were two reasons he decided to switch and start paying for all six members of his family to get direct primary care: the cost-effectiveness of not having to deal with copays or urgent-care visits, and the fact that it could easily fit his family’s busy lifestyle that doesn’t jibe with spending hours in waiting rooms.

Included in that monthly fee are basic checkups, same-day or next-day appointments, and – a big boon to patients – the ability to obtain medications and lab tests at or near wholesale prices.

Direct primary care also comes with near-constant access to a doctor – talking via FaceTime while the family is on vacation, or taking an emergency trip to the office to get stitches after a bad fall on a Saturday night. Because direct primary care doesn’t take insurance, there are no copays and no costs beyond the monthly fee.

Skye Gould/Business Insider

When Blythe Fortin went in for a recent visit at sparkMD, a direct-primary-care practice in Boise, Idaho, Dr. Julie Gunther spent an hour chatting with her before getting to the results of her blood test, which showed elevated blood-sugar levels.

“She listened when I said I can manage with diet,” rather than starting her on medication, Fortin said.

Fortin, who pays $60 a month for sparkMD, had used a different kind of subscription healthcare called concierge medicine. It has some similarities to direct primary care but often costs thousands per month and still incorporates health insurance. She says she prefers direct primary care because the quality of care she has received is better than concierge medicine, and she likes that it’s available to a wider base of patients.

At the 17 direct-primary-care practices Business Insider spoke with, the percentage of members who still had insurance varied. At some practices, all but a handful had some form of insurance, while at others a little more than half didn’t have insurance.

Courtesy of Dr. Julie Gunther

Dr. Julie Gunther of sparkMD with one of her newest patients.

To describe how coverage functions under direct primary care, doctors use the example of car insurance: You don’t use your car insurance for small transactions like oil changes, but it’s there for you if you get in a car accident. Likewise, health-insurance plans – especially those with high deductibles – can be there if you require healthcare beyond primary care.

For those who have insurance, the choice to pay for both makes financial sense, even if they can’t use it at their doctor’s office.

Fran Ciarlo has coverage through Medicare but decided to pay for sparkMD as well. One of the ways she’s seen an advantage is in prescriptions – like many direct-primary-care practices, sparkMD can provide prescriptions at wholesale prices, adding a 10% fee. On a recent visit, Ciarlo estimated she had saved at least $100 on prescriptions for standard steroids and antibiotics that in total cost her $6.

And for those with high health-insurance costs, it’s occasionally a choice between paying a monthly premium or the monthly membership fee for a direct-primary-care practice. For Rebekah Bennett, paying for direct primary care at sparkMD made more sense for her and her children than opting for insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, since for roughly the same cost, if not less, her family could see their doctor without any copays.

The history of the direct-primary-care movement

Philip Eskew, who has tracked the movement through his website, Direct Primary Care Frontier, said direct primary care began at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. Around that time, three doctors had the idea to go insurance-free, charging monthly fees instead and freeing up time to enjoy practicing medicine. This way, patients who might not have insurance could have a clear idea of how much going to the doctor would cost.

One of the three founded Qliance, a direct-primary-care system based in Washington state that got its start in 2007. The company was backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Dell founder Michael Dell before the company leadership bought it to run it privately, without investor pressure. Qliance now has about 25,000 members visiting a handful of clinics around Puget Sound.

Cofounder Dr. Erika Bliss sees this movement growing in the future from its grass roots, rather than becoming big and national.

“It keeps the resolve and the drive toward independent primary care,” she said, which she described as a critical element. She says she envisions independent practices with maybe 10 to 20 providers at three to five locations being about as big as they’d get.

Getting off the ground

Dr. Matthew Abinante opened his practice in Huntington Beach, California, in September. Since then, he has had two people call his office to find out more about his practice. When he explained the system, he said, the callers thought it had to be a scam.

It’s one of the biggest hurdles doctors face when starting direct primary care – the “too good to be true” factor, the learning curve that comes with the understanding that “No, you won’t be using insurance here.” Even so, Abinante has signed up about 150 patients.

Going into direct primary care often means ditching the reliability of a salary. Because the practice relies on membership fees, the more patients who sign on, the more money that can be made. Practices cap their number of patients at anywhere from 300 to 1,000.

And it’s not exactly cheap to get started. Dr. Vance Lassey, who runs Holton Direct Care in Holton, Kansas, took out a loan to start his practice and spent time renovating a 750-square-foot space he rented from a friend at an industrial park. He picked up a lot of old equipment from a nearby nonprofit hospital and surplus stores. For his in-house pharmacy, Lassey took mismatched cabinets and refinished them so they matched.

Courtesy Dr. Vance Lassey

Dr. Vance Lassey in front of the pharmacy cabinets he built from a mismatched set.

Keeping his costs low helped Lassey break even within four months of opening his practice. Still, he’s not earning as much as he used to when he worked at a hospital and had only five to 10 minutes with a patient – a lot less time than he gets to spend with his patients now.

“I am making a profit, I have more free time, and I can practice properly,” he said. “It’s worth it to me.”

Others, like Dr. M. Chad Williamson in Fort Payne, Alabama, went upscale – he offers his patients a 24-hour gym as part of his practice’s $60 monthly membership fee. Williamson, who opened his practice in August, a few months after finishing his residency, currently has 215 members. He wants to bring that up to between 600 and 1,000 people, ideally.

And it’s not just building the office space – direct-primary-care doctors are also responsible for building referral relationships with other doctors in the area.

What’s holding direct primary care back

While doctors and patients using direct primary care might praise the model – it was hard to get anybody to suggest a group, geographic or otherwise, that they thought wouldn’t benefit from direct primary care – not everyone is sold just yet.

Carolyn Long Engelhard, a public-health expert and professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, broke down the main concerns with direct primary care:

It might give the false impression that it’s a kind of insurance, so people might not opt to also get a real insurance plan. But if a patient were to have a health issue outside the scope of primary care, they wouldn’t be protected financially. All the providers Business Insider spoke with said they recommended patients have some form of insurance, and there were many instances where most patients in a practice had insurance or took part in a healthcare sharing plan, a program that functions like insurance in which an amount is sent monthly to people who have medical expenses in the plan.
Because doctors at direct-primary-care practices take on fewer patients than doctors at traditional primary-care practices, it might add to the caseloads of primary-care doctors. There is a shortage of these doctors in the US, partly because many choose to go into specialty medicine. Some doctors, on the other hand, say that they would have considered leaving medicine outright if they hadn’t had the option to do direct primary care. “There are doctor shortages already, so I say, ‘Compared to what?’” Dr. Chad Savage, who runs YourChoice Direct Care in Brighton, Michigan, told Business Insider.
Direct-primary-care physicians could become isolated from other doctors, and because the only person the direct-primary-care doctor has to answer to is the patient, there are fewer insurance regulations in place, potentially putting patients at risk. This is one of the reasons that getting hard data on how direct primary care compares with traditional practices is difficult. But between direct-primary-care networks and the referral relationships doctors build in their communities, there might not be so much isolation from the rest of the system. Dr. Deborah Moore of AmarilloMD in Amarillo, Texas, said she has more time now to do research than she did when she worked at a clinic. “I can do what I really need to be doing,” she said.

Engelhard worries about the direct-primary-care model becoming the norm. Generally, she said, “I do think it has a place in our healthcare system.” Instead, though, she’d like to see more adoption of the “patient-centered medical home,” a model in which primary care is more of a team effort.

Medical organizations have had mixed reactions to the movement as well. The American Academy of Family Physicians supports it, while the American College of Physicians, which represents internal-medicine doctors, has chosen not to take a stance on direct primary care.

There are also logistical hurdles that present challenges. For example, Eskew said that in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, having a health savings account is illegal if you’re a member of a direct-primary-care practice. The IRS views the monthly fees as insurance payments, making the person ineligible for an HSA, he said. Patients also can’t use the funds from an HSA, flexible savings account, or Medicare savings account to pay their monthly membership bills.

But politicians have shown support for the business model. Libertarians see direct primary care as a free-market solution to healthcare, and legislation at the state level has gained support from Democrats and Republicans alike. And direct primary care is on the radar of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who while he was a member of Congress introduced a plan that would allow HSA funds to pay for direct primary care.

“Whoever is in power tries to take credit,” Eskew said. The ACA contains a paragraph about direct primary care that allows for the business model. It’s unclear what would happen to direct primary care under the American Health Care Act, the proposed bill to replace the ACA.

Courtesy of Dr. J. Bryan Hill

Hill with a patient.

Where does direct primary care go from here?

As one of the first pediatricians to go into direct primary care, Hill has had the additional challenge of figuring out how the service works with children. Unlike many direct-primary-care physicians, he offers one-time visits to nonmembers. He said he also spends a lot of time listening to what parents want and sets his prices accordingly, offering discounts to families with three or more kids.

Doctors who are part of the movement tend to be the first in their area to have a direct-primary-care practice, and patients the first of their friends to use direct primary care. But all said they had positive experiences with the model.

“This is a niche, but a niche that makes sense,” Long said.

If direct primary care continues to gain traction, it could lead to new kinds of insurance plans – ones that don’t necessarily factor in primary care. Already, patients with high-deductible healthcare plans are using this. But direct-primary-care doctors also said they’d prefer to recommend catastrophic health insurance plans, which have deductibles as much as $10,000 or $30,000 and aren’t allowed under the ACA.

Even with the growth in the last few years, Bliss said the market is still slow, and a lot of unknowns would come with the AHCA should it become law. And it will be hard to get fully insured employers to use it in the same way self-insured employers and unions have picked it up.

Either way, those in direct primary care are optimistic about the movement’s future.

“In 10 years, we’re going to be an overnight success,” Eskew said jokingly.

Antarctica: NASA Images Reveal Traces Of Ancient Human Settlement Underneath 2.3K Of Ice – TheBreakAway

AntarcticaCivilization
WorldNewsDailyReport.com

WASHINGTON | Recently released remote sensing photography of NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission in Antarctica led to a fascinating discovery when images revealed what some experts believe could be the existence of a possible ancient human settlement lying beneath an impressive 2.3 kilometers of ice.

The intriguing discovery was made during aircraft tests trials of NASA’s Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) lidar technology set to be launched on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) in 2017, that aims to monitor changes in polar ice.

“There’s very little margin for error when it comes to individual photons hitting on individual fiber optics, that is why we were so surprised when we noticed these abnormal features on the lidar imagery,” explains Nathan Borrowitz, IceBridge’s project scientist and sea ice researcher with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“As of now we can only speculate as to what these features are but the launching of ICESat-2 in 2017 could lead to other major discoveries and a better understanding of Antarctica’s geomorphological features” he adds.
A human settlement buried under 2.3 km of ice

Leading archeologist, Ashoka Tripathi, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calcutta believes the images show clear evidence of an ancient human settlement beneath the ice sheet.

“These are clearly features of some sort of human-made structure, resembling some sort of pyramidal structure. The patterns clearly show nothing we should expect from natural geomorphological formations found in nature. We clearly have here evidence of human engineering. The only problem is that these photographs were taken in Antarctica under 2 kilometers of ice. That is clearly the puzzling part, we do not have any explanation for this at the moment,” he admits.

“These pictures just reflect a small portion of Antarctica’s total land mass. There are possibly many other additional sites that are covered over with ice. It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements,” says Dr Tripathi.

Remnants of a lost civilization

Historian and cartographer at the University of Cambridge, Christopher Adam, believes there might be a rationnal explanation.

The map of Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513 AD shows the “ice less” coastline of Antarctica

“One of histories most puzzling maps is that of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513 AD which successfully mapped the coastline of Antarctica over 500 years ago. What is most fascinating about this map is that it shows the coastline of Antarctica without any ice. How is this possible when images of the subglacial coastline of Antarctica were only seen for the first time after the development of ground-penetrating radar in 1958? Is it possible Antarctica has not always been covered under such an ice sheet? This could be evidence that it is a possibility” he acknowledges.

« A slight pole shift or displacement of the axis of rotation of the Earth in historical times is possibly the only rational explanation that comes to mind but we definitely need more research done before we jump to any conclusion.”

ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2), part of NASA’s Earth Observing System, is a planned satellite mission for measuring ice sheet mass elevation, sea ice freeboard as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics, and is set to launch in may 2017.

Dana Perino: How I reset my heart (after a brutal election) — My visit to Mercy Ships | Fox News

By Dana Perino

Published March 16, 2017

FoxNews.com

Last October, after an intense, bizarre and exhausting day covering the election, I came home and told my husband Peter I needed to regroup.

I was suffocating from superficiality. I needed to reset my heart, reconnect with him, and do something together as a couple to the benefit of other people.

So we booked a five-day trip. Our destination: Cotonou, Benin in West Africa, to visit Mercy Ships.

Mercy Ships is a surgical hospital ship whose mission is to bring health and healing to the forgotten poor. We’ve been involved with the group for several years. For this visit, we brought along Erin Landers, the sole employee of Dana Perino and Company. She’d never been to Africa, and it was fun to watch it through her eyes. “Did you see that?!” She loved it. And then some.

I wrote this on the long flight home:

The trip to Benin was our second visit to Mercy Ships. The first was in August 2013 when the ship was in Pointe Noir, Congo. We were there for the screening day, before the surgeries even started, when 7,500 people lined up hoping to be a candidate to be cured of what ailed them.

Some problems are not fixed by surgery, like cerebral palsy. Watching the gentle way the nurses turned non-surgical cases away was heart wrenching. But they were also able to say yes to many, and we shared their relief and joy as they moved on to scheduling. (As an example of how much need there is in this part of the world, Mercy Ships filled up all nine months of goiter surgeries before noon on screening day.)

That day, a little boy, two-years-old, was in and out of consciousness and the people in line raised up their arms and passed him to the front. His name was Emanuel.

A doctor looked at him and couldn’t see anything wrong — until she asked him to open his mouth. There was a tumor growing on his palate that was obstructing his breathing. The doctors got him stable, and Emanuel was the first to be operated on during the ship’s stay in Congo.

The surgeon was a friend we made on the ship, Dr. Mark Shrime (Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology and of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School). Dr. Shrime volunteers two months a year on the ship, which he has that written into his contract (note to self).

When I talked to him in the fall of 2016, he said he’d be back on the ship in March, so we booked our trip to overlap with his.

At dinner one night, I asked how Emanuel was. Unfortunately, no one knows. They haven’t heard anything since he was treated.

We know he was a healthy and happy boy when he left the ship, and that he was loved by his mom and dad who were there by his side. But it’s also Africa — follow up is difficult, though technology will help the ship try to stay in contact with patients in the future.

We agreed that we must find out how Emanuel is doing. Someone at the table had a friend who was still there, and they knew someone who worked at the port where Emanuel’s dad worked. Six degrees of separation applies in Africa, too. I bet Dr. Shrime that he and Emanuel would be reconnected by April.

There were several volunteers still on the ship that we’d met on our first trip. Some of them stay for many years. All of them raise money from their churches and communities, including online ones, and they pay a ship’s fee to cover their expenses.

Some people, like Keith Brinkman, have spent 28 years on the ship — what a career he’s had (and one of his financial supporters follows me on Twitter. How about that!).

Others, like Dr. Shrime, come when they can. Surgeons, dentists, anesthesiologists and ophthalmologists, for example, can come for as little as two weeks, while other jobs require a longer commitment due to training requirements or for teachers.

One of the full-timers that works in the operating room says he loves having visiting surgeons on the ship, but if they are there for two weeks they want to work 24/7 and get as much done as possible, which means the others don’t get a day or two to recharge. And one of the reasons they brought their families on the ship was to have more time with them. There’s a lot of what we used to call “forced family fun!”

In Benin there’s a cultural custom that family members wear the same pattern of traditional African clothing. The ship knows a few tailors who come on and make special outfits for everyone.

When we went out one night, several of the couples dressed in matching clothes. When in Benin! (Though Peter, Erin and I had a bit of a uniform, too – khakis and blue shirts. “YOBOS!”, we learned, is the nickname for white people — it wasn’t an insult; rather more playful and we laughed, too).

We made some new friends, too — including a young woman named Renee Joubarne from Canada who is relatively new to Mercy Ships and works in the communications office.

She patiently drove us everywhere and served as our interpreter. Her first service was in Madagascar. Next stop, Cameroon. We told her that back in the States, they’d call her a “Girl Boss.” She isn’t prideful, but I think she kind of loved that title.

We met nurses from Michigan. One of them is going back at the end of this field service to work as a travel nurse and pay down her student loans. Her girlfriend opted to stay on and will work in Cameroon as a ward nurse.

The head operating room nurse is from Holland and such a great leader — I’d follow her anywhere.

The galley staff is amazing — they make so much food, buying local when they can, cooking birthday cakes for celebrations, making sure anyone with a food allergy has some options, and being so cheerful about it all.

The captain is John Barrow from Australia. Quite a character.

When we were touring the ship’s bridge, I said “What’s it like to be captain of a ship that stays in port for nine months at a time?”

He was a good sport and laughed.

Captain Barrow and his wife are raising two boys on the ship.

“What’s the hardest part about that?” I asked.

“Boys want to run. But there’s no running on the ship. And as the rule enforcer for everyone on the ship, I’m always telling them to stop running!” he said.

Captain Barrow said that recruiting for non-medical staff was really important, because without the support staff (both on and off the ship), the medical team can’t do their work.

For example, he said that they really needed a car mechanic for their fleet of vehicles. I asked if they’d tried to tap into returning veterans who want to continue doing good work with organized, meaningful missions, and he thought that sounded like a good idea.

So that night during a live hit with “The Five,” I made an appeal for a car mechanic. Well, the next day there was an application in from a 25-year-old veteran with the required skills who said he was interested in the job.

The night we left, he caught me in the hall and said, “You’re a woman that’s good for your word.”

Well, it’s better than being good for nothing!” I said.

I hope I see him again one day.

There was also Timmy Baskerville, who started as a mechanic and ended up on the communications team as a photographer. Remember his name — his art is powerful. He started on the ship doing one job and ended up realizing he had a hidden talent and has a future as an artist.

I loved talking with the dentist from Peru, and the couple from Pennsylvania who sold everything and decided to give this a go because retirement felt like a death sentence.

I also enjoyed a couple from Oklahoma that is raising their three kids on Mercy Ships. The father is an anesthesiologist who could make a big salary in the States, but they wanted this experience for their family.

Their 11-year-old son agreed to do an interview for my package on Fox News, but he had a question for me, too. I said, go ahead ask me anything. But he got too shy and looked to his mom for help.

It turns out he wondered if I knew anyone in the States that might be willing to donate some AstroTurf that can be rolled or folded up and put away to be stored on the ship. The only place for them to play is on the dock and he wants to play “American football” (not just soccer and frisbee).

“Who’s your team?” I asked.

“The Seahawks,” he said.

“Is that allowed when you’re from Oklahoma?”

“Well, I don’t want to support the Cowboys!”

“How about the Broncos then? That’s my team.”

He scoffed.

“Ok, the Seahawks it is.”

I told him I didn’t know any company off the top of my head that made that kind of AstroTurf project but that I would ask. I posted it on Facebook with a photograph of the cement dock where the kids play. The first response came immediately from a man who works for Shaw and said, “I think we can do that.” Lesson: don’t be afraid to ask.

The kids living on board attend a school called The Mercy Ships Academy. There are thirty-five students, from nursery school to 11th grade. The classes are taught in English. On my tour, I met fifth graders learning synonyms and eighth graders building apps.

I talked with a social studies teacher that was creating lessons about different forms of government.

One of my favorite teachers is Miss Beth Kirchner, who used to work for Disney and can draw Mickey for her students to color in. Dave is their principal — he’s from Australia. Wonderful chap. He’s leaving in a couple of months and the school needs a new principal ASAP (hint hint) so that the kids can keep attending the school on the ship with their parents. Otherwise they’d have to go to boarding school. “Do not want” is an understatement.

I met a William Wolfenberger from Kansas in his early 20’s who works in the engine room on the ship – before this job he’d never been on a boat or seen the ocean. The second youngest on board, he’s grown a beard and seems to always be in a good mood, even when we were talking about the cabin he had where his towels never completely dried.

He is friends with Tyler Shroyer, a young man from Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Tyler spent his time on the ship studying business and will be going back this year, the oldest of seven boys, to help his father grow his concrete company. He also has a blog called “From the Barnyard to Benin.”

For Christmas this year, he sold his beard at an auction — they get creative with gifts. Whoever won got to dye the beard purple or pink (he has red hair). The cost of this item? $25.

“So, if I put up $26, I could get you out of it?” I asked.

“Yes, I suppose you could,” he said, a bit hopeful.

“Not that I’m going to,” I said. “I don’t want to spoil the fun.”

There was a girl named Anna Psiaki. Tall and willowy, long blond hair. She’s from upstate New York, one of nine children. She’s a writer on the ship — a poet, too.

Her team says she’s the first to get to know all the locals and has amazing stories of how people just invite her in for a meal, ask her to babysit their children and make her special gifts.

We saw her off the ship, too, at the French Institute where a jazz concert was playing. She was wearing a red sweater despite the heat. It was hideous and I said so.

“It’s meant to be!” she said.

It was an ugly Christmas sweater a friend had left behind on the ship. She wore it with no inhibitions. Anna is fully herself. I admire and envy that.

“What number were you out of the nine?” I asked her.

“I was the fifth,” she said.

“So no one paid attention to you?”

“I don’t think anyone even knows I’m in Africa.”

That was one of the funniest things I heard on the ship.

Then there was nine-year-old (almost 10!) Harry. His dad is the second engineer who served in the Navy for New Zealand. Harry, according to his dad, “loves the ladies.” He was not shy about saying hello and telling me all sorts of things.

“You are quite something!” I said. “You have a way with words.”

“Well, my mom says I can be about as diplomatic as a starving rhinoceros.”

“Can I use that line back home on ‘The Five’?”

Permission granted. I started wondering who’d that best describe back in the States.

We met a British couple that really should have their own reality show. Ally and Amy Jones. He’s the human resources director and she’s the Nurse and Medical Capacity Building Manager. Everyone loves these two and their great senses of humor.

Ally even took Peter surfing one morning. Well, Peter said it wasn’t really “surfing.” It was more like “fell off a short board over and over again.” The waves are rough in West Africa, but the temperature was perfect.

The night before, Amy was the designated driver to get me back to the ship in time to do my Fox News TV hit. We had to leave early, and our vehicle was blocked in. The parking attendants shrugged and looked around without meeting our eyes. But Amy was determined to get me back to the ship. The guys got one car moved. That left about 14 feet of space for a 15-foot long vehicle. She started maneuvering the vehicle. The men were all yelling instructions at her in different languages (she speaks English, French and some of the local language, Fon). The French military guard across the street came over to assist – these guys seemed bemused by this red headed woman driving a big SUV. She was confident. When she gunned it, the military guy jumped out of the way and the others all were shocked into laughter and a little bit of cheers. We made it with about a centimeter of space on each side. I kept saying, “Don’t worry, Amy. If I miss my hit, this will be the best reason EVER.” She was another Girl Boss. And one with a huge heart.

They’ll be leaving the ship soon for Amy to give birth to their first baby. Ally told me her condition upon agreeing to marry him was that he had to be comfortable living out of a suitcase. She loves to get off the ship and work in the village, while he likes being on board (with air conditioning and showers). A perfect match.

“Is the baby going to have to live out of one suitcase, too? I asked.

“Yes,” Ally said. “Well, ok, maybe two.”

They’ll be great parents.

Besides meeting new people, we got to see a lot more this time as the ship has been in port for about nine months and is preparing to leave this summer.

The hospital wards were full. Dr. Shrime performed four surgeries our first morning (Peter and Erin went in and filmed, while I shied away and dealt with motion sickness that morning — which is not the same as having morning sickness, so let’s not start any rumors).

We went to a celebration of sight where seventy patients that very week had gone from blind to seeing in just a couple of days. They danced and told their entire stories – no one summarized (we had to duck out or we’d have been there all day).

Then we visited patients in the outpatient tents who were having physical therapy to make sure everything was going well after their surgeries. It’s not of much use to have a skin graft to repair a burn if you don’t do the exercises to ensure range of motion. I was impressed by the care — from start to finish. No one is urged to go home before they’re ready.

The most powerful event was a New Dress ceremony held for three women who had their fistulas repaired on the ship. I am particularly interested in helping to heal women who have a fistula after their pregnancies.

I first became aware of it at the Aberdeen Clinic in Sierra Leone where women there stayed for three weeks and got to attend classes. The day I was there, they were learning to count to ten. Pause. Think of that. Learning to count to ten after you’ve already had at least one baby, probably more.

The patients get a new dress after their fistula surgery to celebrate the fact that they’re now healed. That morning on the ship, it was standing room only. The chaplain led the worship, the band played songs, and the patients and volunteers sang and danced. One of the songs lasted for twelve minutes — it had a good beat, and I was kind of bummed when it finished.

I was amazed that each of these women felt confident and strong enough to stand up in front of all of us, with no inhibitions, and give a speech — many fistula sufferers are ostracized for their condition and withdraw from society. Often they have their children taken away from them. They become broken, just shells of their former selves.

The first patient said she’d suffered from the condition for nineteen years — more than half of her life. She’d been shunned and no medical care was able to address her problem. Until the ship.

“Hallelujah!” she said. Indeed.

Then she led everyone in another song. I didn’t know the words, but I clapped and danced next to the patient who had beat me in Connect Four twice the day before.

“Rematch?” he said with his eyes.

“You bet,” I nodded. He was good though. A Connect Four ringer.

Despite those bits of humor, I cried for the entire ceremony — for their suffering, for the guilt of not being able to do more for them, and for the women who will not get this chance of a surgical remedy.

But mainly, mine were tears of joy. And maybe some tears of relief that my heart wasn’t as hard as it felt by the end of the election season. Then more guilt because with that thought I was making this about me. Is there no end to our self-absorption?

One of the African volunteers (a full-timer on the ship) who saw my tears stepped out to get me a tissue, a sweet gesture that, guess what? Made me cry even more.

As I tried to pull myself together, I was surprised to be called up to present one of the women with a gift. As self-conscious as I was since I really didn’t do anything to make her repair a reality, I wanted her to know how I felt.

I gave her an enthusiastic hug and she hugged me back as women who just understand each other.

“I’m so happy for you,” I said.

She didn’t speak English, but she knew what I meant.

She kissed my cheeks four times. Four is better than two in Benin.

At the end of the ceremony, the nurse in charge of the women’s clinic said to them. “All we ask is that when you leave here today, let God walk with you. You are not alone.” Yes, please do that. Don’t walk alone.

On Saturday, the ship held a party for kids from a local orphanage called Arbre de Vie, which means “tree of life”. The young couple that runs the orphanage is from Ohio. Ashley and John Reeves.

Ashley wore a black sleeveless dress, wedged sandals and a red straw hat. I liked her style. She held a toddler boy named Codjo. He called her mommy.

I wondered if they all did, but no, Ashley and John are adopting him.

He was brought to the orphanage when he was twenty days old. His mother had had a C-section and was sent home. But the placenta was still inside. Oh. Oh dear. What a tragic end to her young life. Story after story like this in Africa.

The orphanage has about thirty children under its care at any one time. They live way outside the city. I hear the place is joyous. They do all they can with what they have. They just got electricity last summer and a new kitchen, but their staff still prefers to cook outside over a fire. It probably does taste better anyway.

One of Ashley and John’s other kids is ready to go to university and wants to study medicine. They’ve done so many great things so far in their life, and being around people like that can make you really question your contribution to the world.

As we walked together after an interview, she thanked me for spreading the word.

“Well, none of us ever feels like we do enough,” I said.

She stopped walking, we shifted the babies we were holding from one hip to the other.

She said gently, “But you’re here. And not everyone can be here. You have unique talents that will help us be able to stay behind and do even more.”

I nodded, speechless, and was glad I was wearing sunglasses.

THE HOPE CENTER

Martha Rodriguez runs the Hope Center. She changed her name badge with a pen to go from public service to public servant. She grew up in Michigan and then worked for a chemical company in Houston.

She retired but wasn’t ready to settle. She was ready to do. And doing ended up being taking the lead at the Mercy Ships Hope Center. When she took us on a tour, she was full of joy and energy. “Can you believe I get to live here and do this?”

She loved every bit of it — the local day crew she hired all greeted her with big smiles. The children ran to her. The mamas met her gaze that to me said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The cooks make over 300 meals a day out of an outdoor kitchen, and they were washing beautiful lettuce leaves and had a huge bowl full of avocados (I kind of wanted one but I didn’t dare).

At one table, patients ready for surgery in the coming week were eating with their fingers, some with gigantic tumors on their faces that would be gone by Friday. In the heat, in their discomfort, they all stood to greet her, smiling. (Can you believe I got to come and see this?).

At the laundry area, several kids — some patients, others siblings or children of patients — played with whatever was handy — a stick, a broken race car.

I gave one little girl Felt Jasper to hold and she rubbed the soft material all over her face, put his pink Barbie stethoscope in his ears. Then the children saw Erin and the camera equipment and in unison they asked for what kids the world over want – a selfie! It turns out even little babies in Africa know how to swipe a phone.

Martha is an attractive woman. She has a long pony tail, letting her hair turn a lovely grey.

I thought I’d like to do that one day. Run a Hope Center and have pretty hair I don’t have to worry about coloring. And to have a heart that big.

As we were leaving to go back to the ship, an older couple came to the door. The husband was blind, walking with a cane and being led by his wife. They’d traveled from up country and said they were there to be pre-screened for his surgery. The problem was they were a day early and the center was full. It was only 2 p.m., and Martha said she’d figure it out, not to turn them away yet.

In the car, she called someone and explained that they’d come a long distance and needed a bed. But she was told there wasn’t a room that night and that they believed couple had a place to stay, perhaps with family.

Martha said good-bye and then, to no one in particular, said, “But they’ve traveled so far. There has to be a way. How could we turn them away?”

“I could never. Ever,” I said from the back seat, admiring and wanting to be more like her.

She was here and she was doing.

What was I doing?

A word about Benin. I’ve traveled to many countries in Africa, and to me Benin felt the most hopeful. It has a new president with a business background who is focused on the economy and expects results.

“But I am wearing the helmet, officer!”

I kind of appreciate the mix of compliance and defiance. But I do hope they start to wear their helmets.

With a stable government and a young population (65 percent of the country is under 35), and decent infrastructure in the main cities (that’s all relative in Africa), the city feels alive. And fairly safe.

Cotonou is the economic capital, and we ate at an Indian restaurant, Shamiana, whose pappadam were better than any I’ve had in the States.

Ouidah is the cultural city where millions of slaves died or passed through the Gate of No Return before the terrifying trip over the Atlantic.

When we were there, busloads of schoolchildren were there on field trips. They were colorful, loud, and funny.

Looked to me just like kids look anywhere. I got a photograph from behind as they all gathered at the sea, many of them seeing the ocean for the first time. And I wished them well — that they’d have peace and opportunity and that they’d keep giggling like that.

Finally, we met the U.S. Ambassador, Lucy Tamlyn and her husband Jorge Serpa, wonderful representatives of the USA in a country that aligns with America’s interest for freedom and opportunity. They are wonderful people who have both dedicated their lives to foreign service.

Peter and I feel lucky to know them – they have the best stories! (Like when Jorge was evacuated in Chad…TWICE). I finished my trip feeling like Benin had a hopeful future.

And not to be left behind on the ship, I took Caleb Biney with me. Caleb is fourteen and lives on the ship with his family. He’s a part of Scholastic’s young journalism program, and was able to interview Amb. Tamlyn for an article for Scholastic’s News Kids magazine. He was also taller than both of us.

As we left the ship, I told Peter I want my obituary to say, “Loved hellos. Hated goodbyes.”

Humans can make friends easily, if they are open to it and are interested in other people. There’s so much cultural and language diversity on the ship, but we all bonded over something that means a lot more than anything else I do every day — to serve others who need our help, and to do it selflessly and joyously.

It’s actually rather simple. It just took traveling halfway around the world for me to be reminded of it.

We accomplished what we set out to do — reset our priorities and reconnected with each other.

And now…back to our previously scheduled program, but with lighter hearts and renewed enthusiasm for the things that really matter.

Dana Perino currently serves as co-host of FOX News Channel’s “The Five” (weekdays 5-6PM/ET). She previously served as Press Secretary for President George W. Bush. She is the author of the new book “Let Me Tell You about Jasper : How My Best Friend Became America’s Dog” (October 25, 2016). Ms. Perino joined the network in 2009 as a contributor. Click here for more information on Dana Perino. Follow her on Twitter@DanaPerino.

Source: Dana Perino: How I reset my heart (after a brutal election) — My visit to Mercy Ships | Fox News

Scandal: MRI brain-imaging completely unreliable ‹ Jon Rappoport’s Blog ‹

Fake news on a grand scale.

By Jon Rappoport

Over the years, I’ve exposed a number of medical diagnostic tests. For example, the antibody test was once taken as a sign of good health when it registered positive, but then it was turned upside down—a positive result was read as a signal of illness.

Now we have the vaunted MRI brain-imaging system.

From sciencealert.com (7/6/16): “There could be a very serious problem with the past 15 years of research into human brain activity, with a new study suggesting that a bug in fMRI software could invalidate the results of some 40,000 papers.”

“That’s massive, because functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the best tools we have to measure brain activity, and if it’s flawed, it means all those conclusions about what our brains look like during things like exercise, gaming, love, and drug addiction are wrong.”

“It’s fascinating stuff, but the fact is that when scientists are interpreting data from an fMRI machine, they’re not looking at the actual brain. As Richard Chirgwin reports for The Register, what they’re looking at is an image of the brain divided into tiny ‘voxels’, then interpreted by a computer program.”

“’Software, rather than humans … scans the voxels looking for clusters’, says Chirgwin. ‘When you see a claim that “Scientists know when you’re about to move an arm: these images prove it,” they’re interpreting what they’re told by the statistical software’.”

“To test how good this software actually is, Eklund and his team gathered resting-state fMRI data from 499 healthy people sourced from databases around the world, split them up into groups of 20, and measured them against each other to get 3 million random comparisons.”

“They tested the three most popular fMRI software packages for fMRI analysis – SPM, FSL, and AFNI – and while they shouldn’t have found much difference across the groups, the software resulted in false-positive rates of up to 70 percent.”

“And that’s a problem, because as Kate Lunau at Motherboard points out, not only did the team expect to see an average false positive rate of just 5 percent, it also suggests that some results were so inaccurate, they could be indicating brain activity where there was none.”

“’These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results’, the team writes in PNAS [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences].”

“The bad news here is that one of the bugs the team identified has been in the system for the past 15 years, which explains why so many papers could now be affected.”

“The bug was corrected in May 2015, at the time the researchers started writing up their paper, but the fact that it remained undetected for over a decade shows just how easy it was for something like this to happen, because researchers just haven’t had reliable methods for validating fMRI results.”

40,000 scientific papers invalidated. And from what I gather, not everyone is sure all the problems with MRI have been corrected.

Think about the bloviating—“We now know what the brain is doing when people are running and sleeping and eating…” No reason to have believed any of this.

And then there is Obama’s so called Brain Initiative, a program kicked off and funded after the Sandy Hook School catastrophe. At least some of the scientific work has been relying on MRI imagining. How much of that work needs to be thrown out?

In case you think invalidating 40,000 research papers isn’t a gigantic scandal, consider how many times these worthless papers have been cited as evidence in other studies. The ripple effect creates a tsunami of lies.

And for each one of those lies, there has been a researcher who, quite sure of himself and his reputation, made statements to the press and colleagues and students, promoting his findings.

Fake news? Now here is awesome fake news.

Source: Scandal: MRI brain-imaging completely unreliable ‹ Jon Rappoport’s Blog ‹ Reader — WordPress.com

Astrorisa Moon Forecaster ~ The Virgo Full Moon

By Iya Olusoga ~Bisi Ade

Welcome to the full moon of Virgo, and its vibrations spanning 29 days, March 12th – April 10th.

Message from Astrorisa Moon Forecaster

Themes: Finances, actions, plans, business, burning the candle at both ends, treading water, feeling your way, attention to detail, and overworked vs.rest.

This Virgo moon time challenges our collective consciousness to determine how best to maneuver through our experiences and to know when to rest or to push forward. Whatever the case maybe, we’ll have to be careful of over taxing our resources (funds, health, time, etc.) With the sun in Pisces and moon in Virgo (water, mind, and earth), we can feel as though we’re dredging through a marsh. As we’re between solid ground and a large body of water. Which way should we go? To the left near solid ground or to the right near open water? Do we want to walk or swim? Which avenue and experience will get us there quicker? Which ever direction we take, will determine our experiences and impact our destiny.

BLM Set to Wage War on Wyoming’s Wild Horses, AGAIN! | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Sources: Multiple

“Using poor science and bad numbers the BLM continues to ensure that the wild horses of Wyoming will have no families, freedom or future. Unedited, propaganda article posted below. (Herds do not double in size every four years – Fake News)” ~ R.T.

Adobe Town ~ photo by Carol Walker

ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. — The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to remove about 1,000 wild horses from three herd management areas, including Adobe Town, in southwest Wyoming in order to meet population level objectives.

Kimberlee Foster, field manager for the Rock Springs BLM field office, said there are too many horses on the land, and rules require them to remove horses when they are above management levels.

Foster said the gathered horses will go to the Rock Springs Holding Facility where they will be put up for adoption.

The BLM plans to remove 210 horses from Adobe Town, 584 from Salt Wells Creek and 235 from Great Divide Basin.

There are many reasons the BLM must carefully maintain certain population ranges for wild horses in Wyoming. For one, there are no natural predators for horses in the state and equines can be prodigious breeders.

“Typically a herd management area can double in size every four or five years,” Foster told the Rawlins Daily Times (http://bit.ly/2mayVKA ).

If wild horse populations become too large, the natural forage on the land won’t be able to support them.

Herd management is based around the usage of the land, Foster said, as well as the amount of available forage for the animals. Additionally, the BLM has agreed to act to reduce herd sizes should population levels reach a certain point.

The BLM is accepting public comment until April 4 on its horse roundup plan.

Source: BLM Set to Wage War on Wyoming’s Wild Horses, AGAIN! | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Yellowstone & Montana Can Stop the Bison Slaughter Today | The Buffalo Field Campaign

This winter’s Yellowstone buffalo death toll has breached one thousand, and continues to climb. Counting the few hundred still trapped inside Yellowstone’s Stephens Creek capture facility and the continued hunting pressures just outside the park, the government agencies will likely surpass their goal of killing 1,300 ecologically extinct wild, migratory buffalo. This does not even include the significant number of buffalo deaths due natural causes from the severe winter. Hundreds of thousands of people are seeing and sharing BFC’s stories and images of Yellowstone’s shameful crimes against wild buffalo. These actions are being conducted with your tax dollars on behalf of Montana’s livestock industry.

This morning BFC will be attending a second “media tour” inside the trap. The atrocious actions we’re witnessing and documenting continue despite thousands, if not tens of thousands, of calls, emails, and letters to Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk and Montana Governor Steve Bullock. Most people who reach these decision-makers are meeting with frustration; being told lies in condescending tones by the governor’s office that Yellowstone is responsible for the slaughter while Yellowstone officials say that it’s all Montana’s fault and there is nothing they can do to stop it. As the number of slaughtered buffalo climbs due to their actions, these same decision-makers toss up their hands in mock helplessness. However, they are both responsible and they can both take immediate and necessary actions today to end this senseless war against wild buffalo. These decision-makers work collaboratively within the Interagency Bison Management Plan to devise and carry out agreed upon management schemes, and their deceptive, pass-the-buck strategy of shirking of responsibility is pushing the country’s last continuously wild buffalo herds towards the brink of extinction.

Please continue to make these calls! If you are outside of the U.S., send letters and emails. Be relentless and don’t accept their excuses.
Phone calls are the most effective because they cannot be ignored.

Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk, #307-344-2002
Montana Governor Steve Bullock #406-444-3111

Here are some important points to consider – No agency’s hands are tied!

Read the article in its entirety at its Source: The Buffalo Field Campaign

House Leadership Renews Push to Reinstate Horse Slaughter in US | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Source: Equine Welfare Alliance PR

Chicago (EWA)– EWA has learned that Mr. Douglas A. Glenn, Director, Office of Financial Management, Department of the Interior, has notified his department in a letter dated 22 February, that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) has been tasked to study any changes in the state of equine welfare in the US from 2010 to the present.

The request to the GAO was made by the Chair of the House Agriculture Committee and the Chair of House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration.

Attached to the letter was a statement of the scope of the work to be performed, including addressing four questions:

What is known about changes and trends in the U.S. horse market since 2010?
What impact, if any, has the prohibition on USDA funding for horse slaughter inspection had on horse welfare and on states, local governments and Indian tribes?
What is known about the number of abandoned and unwanted horses in the U.S. and associated environmental impacts?
What is the current capacity of animal welfare organizations and shelters to accept and care for unwanted and abandoned horses?

Source: House Leadership Renews Push to Reinstate Horse Slaughter in US | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Animal Protection Groups Commend Bill to Ban Dog and Cat Meat in the United States | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Source: International Humane Society PR

“This story walks hand-in-hand with our discussion on Wild Horse and Burro Radio last night” ~ R.T.

Bill also shines a light on brutal trade in China and South Korea

Little Ricky, a dog rescued from the Yulin dog meat festival in 2015, plays in U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings’ office in Washington, DC. Kevin Wolf/AP Images for HSI

U.S. Representatives Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., Dave Trott, R-Mich. and Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., have introduced legislation to ban the dog and cat meat trade in the United States, earning applause from Humane Society International, The Humane Society of the United States and the Humane Society Legislative Fund. The bill, the Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act of 2017, would amend the U.S Animal Welfare Act to prohibit the slaughter and trade of dogs and cats for human consumption, and would provide penalties for individuals involved in the dog or cat meat trade.

HSI is one of the leading organizations campaigning across Asia to end the dog meat trade that sees around 30 million dogs a year killed for human consumption. It’s a trade that subjects dogs to horrifying treatment and raises serious human health concerns for traders and consumers alike, all for a type of meat that relatively few people eat on a regular basis. Similar problems face an untold number of cats. In the United States, the dog and cat meat industry is limited. The new bill will prevent domestic trade and imports, and serve as an important symbol of unity with countries and regions such as Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Taiwan that have dog meat bans in place. […]

The entire article at its Source: Animal Protection Groups Commend Bill to Ban Dog and Cat Meat in the United States | Straight from the Horse’s Heart