The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Obama administration launches $1 bln healthcare drive
- Yemen's Saleh says ready to step down in 90 days
- Syria faces growing world pressure to halt bloodshed
| Obama administration launches $1 bln healthcare drive Posted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday said $1 billion of federal funds allocated in last year's health reform law will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care.
The announcement is the administration's latest attempt to show that it is working outside of a deeply divided U.S. Congress to create jobs. The administration will award grants in March to people who come up with the best ideas to lift care and save money for those enrolled in the federal healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. However, the administration did not say how many jobs the measure would create. Don Berwick, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said a good example includes the Baylor Heart Hospital in Dallas which has worked to lower readmission rates for congestive heart failure. "With the healthcare innovation challenge, we're going straight to the source," Berwick said during a news conference for the announcement. "We want to find them, we want to help them, we want to spread what they know and what they've learned." The $1 billion of awards will cut into the $10 billion that Congress set aside in the Affordable Care Act to fund a new CMS Innovation Center. The center is meant to promote better care and health at reduced costs by identifying, testing and spreading new models of care and payment. To get a grant, projects must start within six months and the program will concentrate on those ideas that spur the most hiring and workforce training, the Department of Health and Human Services said. Awards will range from around $1 million to up to $30 million and be spread over three years. Applications are open to providers, payers, local government, community organizations and public-private partnerships. Separately on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide the legal fate of Obama's healthcare law, with an election-year ruling due by July. JOB POLITICS President Barack Obama has been aggressively promoting programs that hold potential to boost hiring, amid 9 percent U.S. unemployment which will hurt his re-election chances next year unless job creation improves. Republican lawmakers have held up passage of most of a $447 billion jobs bill that Obama proposed in September, and which Democrats want funded by a tax on millionaires. So far, only two modest proposals in the package have been approved by the Senate with Republican support. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have meanwhile passed a number of measures to boost jobs, but these have yet to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate. Asked how many jobs the grants would create, Dr. Rick Gilfillan, acting director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, said: "This is not about a specific number. This is about recognizing that there are going to be more people involved in healthcare" as the population ages. "The question is what are they going to be doing," he said, adding that the program would help identify high-value jobs in healthcare and help train people for them. Some Republicans have questioned the innovation center's approach. "We are concerned that at a time of significant uncertainty for the fiscal health of the U.S. government, funds are being expended by the Innovation Center with little to no actual value provided," three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee wrote to Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week. Senators Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the committee, Mike Enzi and Tom Coburn said the innovation center received $10 billion in federal funding but has not yet produced recommendations or implemented any reforms. (Editing by Mohammad Zargham) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Yemen's Saleh says ready to step down in 90 days Posted: SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Monday he was ready to step down within 90 days of reaching a deal on a formal process for implementing a Gulf initiative aimed at ending the nine-month-old crisis in his country. Saleh, who has so far refused to sign the accord proposed by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council in April, told France's Channel 24 television in an interview that he had given his deputy, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, authority to negotiate a deal with the opposition.
Asked when he would leave office, Saleh said: "When an agreement on the Gulf initiative is reached, and when it is signed, and (it is agreed) on the operational mechanism and when elections are held, the president will leave." Asked if there was a time frame for his departure, he said: "It is defined. It is within 90 days (of an agreement)." "I have 33 years of experience in power and I know the difficulties, I know the negatives and positives. The one who clings to power is mad," he said. An opposition official said on Sunday that Saleh was trying to thwart a mission by U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar to implement the U.N.-backed Gulf initiative, by insisting on staying in office until new elections are held. "Saleh wants to preserve all his powers until the election of a new president and that is rejected by the opposition and because of this the U.N. envoy's mission is going to fail," said the official, who declined to be identified. Benomar urged all Yemeni factions on Monday to reach an agreement "to save the Yemeni people from the sufferings of the current crisis," the Yemeni Defence Ministry's website said. "I am in nearly daily contact with all political sides in Yemen and efforts are continuing to reach a peaceful end to the crisis," he added. Under an "operational mechanism" proposed by Benomar, Saleh would step down immediately, triggering the formation of a national unity government ahead of early presidential elections. A body would be set up to restructure the armed forces. Saleh said he had no objection to restructuring the armed forces, which split after the protests against his rule began in February. "Restructuring the army, I have no problem with that. The army belongs to the homeland and is not a personal property," he said. Saleh also slammed the Arab Spring protests, calling the demonstrations "Arab anarchy". He said support for these protests had come from a "small and weightless state" -- an apparent reference to Qatar, a wealthy Gulf Arab state and home to the Al Jazeera satellite TV channel, which gave sympathetic coverage to the Arab Spring uprisings, particularly those in Libya and Syria. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa; editing by Tim Pearce) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Syria faces growing world pressure to halt bloodshed Posted: BEIRUT (Reuters) - Jordan's King Abdullah told Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Monday he should step down and the European Union added pressure with more sanctions after the Arab League's surprise suspension of Damascus for its violent crackdown on protests.
Syria looks ever more isolated, but still has the support of Russia, which said the Arab League had made the wrong move and accused the West of inciting Assad's opponents. Despite the diplomatic pressure, there was no let-up in violence and some 40 people were killed in fighting between troops and insurgents and army defectors near the Jordanian border, Syrian activists said. The anti-Assad unrest, inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere, has devastated Syria's economy, scaring off tourists and investors, while Western sanctions have crippled oil exports. Jordan's King Abdullah said Assad should quit. "I believe, if I were in his shoes, I would step down," he told the BBC. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said the League's decision, due to take effect on Wednesday, was "an extremely dangerous step" at a time when Damascus was implementing an Arab deal to end violence and start talks with the opposition. Syria called for an emergency Arab League summit in an apparent effort to forestall its suspension. Nabil Elaraby, the organisation's secretary general, said he had delivered the request to rulers of Arab League states and 15 members would have to approve in order to hold a summit, according to Egypt's state news agency MENA. The League's suspension is a particularly bitter blow for Assad who has always seen himself as a champion of Arab unity. But adding to the injury, the Cairo-based League plans to meet Syrian dissident groups on Tuesday. Even so, Elaraby said on Sunday it was too soon to consider recognising the Syrian opposition as the country's legitimate authority. Elaraby met representatives of Arab civil society groups on Monday and agreed to send a 500-strong fact-finding committee, including military personnel, to Syria as part of efforts to end the crackdown on demonstrators and dissenters. "Syria agreed to receive the committee," said Ibrahim al-Zafarani, of the Arab Medical Union. Moualem said Syria had withdrawn troops from urban areas, released prisoners and offered an amnesty to armed insurgents under an initiative agreed with the Arab League two weeks ago. Yet violence has intensified since then, especially in the central city of Homs, pushing the death toll in eight months of protests to more than 3,500 by a U.N. count. Damascus says armed "terrorist" gangs have killed 1,100 soldiers and police. Syria's ban on most foreign media makes it hard to verify events on the ground. SHOOTING, TANK FIRE In the latest violence, army defectors attacked a security police bus at a highway intersection near Khirbet Ghazaleh, 20 km (12 miles) north of the border with Jordan, activists said, one of the first reported major armed clashes. Government troops, backed by armour then launched an assault on Khirbet Ghazaleh, on the Hauran Plain an area of flat farmland that also borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and killed 20 insurgents, the activists said. A similar number of troops were killed, they said. "Members of the (defectors') brigade fought back when the army attacked and Bedouin from nearby villages also rushed to help Khirbet Ghazaleh," said one of the activists, who gave his name as Abu Hussein. Security police also shot dead activist Amin Abdo al-Ghothani in front of his nine-year-old son at a roadblock outside the town of Inkhil in southern Syria, a grassroots organisation known as the Local Coordination Committees said. In Homs, residents said renewed tank shelling killed a teenager and wounded eight people in the restive Bab Amro district. Students in the Damascus suburb of Erbin chanted "God is greater than the oppressor," according to a YouTube video. Moualem described Washington's support for the Arab League action as "incitement", but voiced confidence that Russia and China would continue to block Western efforts to secure U.N. Security Council action, let alone any foreign intervention. "The Libya scenario will not be repeated", he said. It was the Arab League's decision to suspend Libya and call for a no-fly zone that helped persuade the U.N. Security Council to authorise a NATO air campaign to protect civilians, which also aided rebels who ousted and killed Muammar Gaddafi. Syrian state television said millions of Syrians protested at the League decision in Damascus and other cities on Sunday. Crowds also attacked Saudi, Turkish and French diplomatic missions in Syria after the Arab League announcement. Moualem apologised for the assaults, which have worsened already tense ties between Syria and its former friend Turkey. "We will take the most resolute stance against these attacks and we will stand by the Syrian people's rightful struggle," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the Turkish parliament, saying Damascus could no longer be trusted. Non-Arab Turkey, after long courting Assad, has lost patience with its neighbour. It now hosts the main Syrian opposition and has given refuge to defecting Syrian soldiers. EU SANCTIONS The European Union extended penalties to 18 more Syrians linked with the crackdown on dissent and approved plans to stop Syria accessing funds from the European Investment Bank. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was in touch with the Arab League to work on an approach to Syria, but the 27-nation body appears set against military intervention. Syria, which borders Israel, is Iran's main Arab ally and has strong ties with Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and the Islamist Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country joined China to block a U.N. resolution critical of Syria in October, criticised the Arab League's decision. Russia, an arms supplier to the Syrians, has urged Assad to implement reforms but opposes sanctions and has accused the United States and France of discouraging dialogue in Syria. "There has been and continues to be incitement of radical opponents (of Assad) to take a firm course for regime change and reject any invitations to dialogue," Lavrov said. The Arab League also plans to impose unspecified economic and political sanctions on Syria and has urged its members to recall their ambassadors from Damascus. Assad still has some support at home, especially from his own minority Alawite sect and Christians, wary of sectarian conflict or Sunni Muslim domination if he were to be toppled. Despite some defections, the Syrian military has not emulated its counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia in abandoning long-serving presidents faced with popular discontent. The government has acknowledged that sanctions are hurting, but it is not clear whether this will force any policy change. Chris Phillips of the Economist Intelligence Unit in London said Syria's economy was "slowly bleeding to death". (Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Dominic Evans in Beirut, Ayman Samir in Cairo and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Jon Hemming) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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