Month: February 2014

By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A month after Republicans rallied around offering an alternative to President Barack Obama's healthcare law in an election-year move to broaden their appeal to voters, divisions are surfacing over the issue in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Speaker John Boehner has not committed to voting this year on legislation to replace Obama's landmark Affordable Care Act. Majority Leader Eric Cantor brought together committee chairmen and other Republican leaders, who have controlled the House since January 2011, to discuss healthcare legislation on Friday. "The goal is to develop consensus along healthcare policy," said Camp, whose committee is one of a few with oversight of healthcare legislation.

By Jared Ferried YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar has ordered Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to halt all its work in the country, leaving tens of thousands of people without vital care, the medical aid group said on Friday. MSF did not give a reason for the suspension, but local media reported government officials had been angered by the charity's public comments on the western strife-torn state of Rakhine. The Nobel Prize-winning aid group has been giving care there to both ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, a mostly stateless minority who live in apartheid-like conditions and who otherwise have little access to healthcare. The United Nations and human rights groups say at least 40 Rohingya were killed by security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist civilians in a restricted area of the state in January.

By Victoria Cavaliere WHITE PLAINS, New York (Reuters) – It took a jury less than hour to find the daughter of slain U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy not criminally liable for sideswiping a tractor-trailer while driving on a suburban New York highway, after mistakenly taking a sleeping pill. After a four-day trial, the six-member jury quickly found Kerry Kennedy not guilty of driving while impaired by drugs. On July 13, 2012, she took the sleeping pill zolpidem, known by the brand name Ambien, rather than her usual thyroid medication before getting behind the wheel of her silver Lexus. “I’m incredibly grateful to the jury for working so hard on this case, and to my lawyers, and to my family and friends and so many other people who supported me,” Kennedy, 54, told reporters after the verdict was read at Westchester County Court in White Plains, New York.

One Florida man died after he was bitten by a rare bug.

Dawson Barnett is the class comedian – an unlikely role for the boy born unable to smile. But thanks to surgery that rerouted a nerve and “borrowed” muscle from his thigh, the “happy-go-lucky” first grader finally has a fitting grin.

Dawson Barnett has Moebius syndrome, which paralyzes facial muscles.