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While overall health care spending slowed in 2009, it is the underlying trend that is more troubling: the continuing decline in private coverage and the steady increase in government health care. These trends will only accelerate under Obamacare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), total health care spending grew by 4 percent in 2009 to reach $2.5 trillion. This represents a slower rate of growth from 2008, but the slower increase still outpaced spending as an overall percentage of GDP. The 3.2 percent decline in private coverage and the slowing of out-of-pocket spending by consumers are...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Adoring fans have flocked to see him on visits around the world, but Barack Obama should expect a far cooler reception in Russia next week.

By Sgt. Jeff Lowry124th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment The first full Iraqi Army division will soon be operating without the mentoring of U.S. advisors, a U.S. Army official who oversees Iraqi security forces’ training said Monday in Baghdad.Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard discussed the formation of the Iraqi National Police and security concerns throughout Iraq in a briefing to reporters.Pittard, commander of the Iraqi Assistance Group, said that after Sept. 3, the 8th Iraqi Army Division will be operating independently.Coalition forces will provide only guidance going forward to what will become the first Iraqi Army division to reach such...

Bird flu heading towards West, says Turkey By Kate Connolly in Ankara (Filed: 11/01/2006) Officials in Turkey admitted yesterday that the deadly strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus was marching across the country and had infected poultry in 25 cities. The virus appeared to be spreading westwards. Four people were hospitalised in the town of Aydin, near the Aegean coast in the south-west of the country. The area is one of Turkey's biggest tourist magnets and popular with British holidaymakers. A health official struggles to catch a chickens that may be infected Bird flu was detected in fowl in...

Man dies in tractor-trailer wreck From Staff Reports Thursday, December 1, 2005 Guilford County EMS personnel and a firefighter work at a wreck involving an 18-wheeler on West Market Street in Greensboro. GREENSBORO - A middle-age man was killed in an early-morning wreck Thursday on West Market Street after he pulled his car into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer, police said. The wreck occurred at the intersection West Market and Landmark Drive. The impact pushed both vehicles about 50 yards east of the collision, where they came to a rest on the side of the westbound lanes of West...

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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has taken another step towards unilateral withdrawal, or the plan he calls "disengagement," by appointing IDF Maj.-Gen. Giora Eiland to head the team that will develop the plan. Sharon announced ten days ago that if the Palestinian Authority continues to refrain from fighting terrorism and the Road Map plan thus fails, he would initiate a unilateral withdrawal from some areas in Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza). "At the same time," Sharon said, "in the framework of the Disengagement Plan, Israel will strengthen its control over those same areas in the Land of Israel which will constitute...