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A friend told me a co-worker and her family lost TriCare Coverage without notice in early January. When she investigated, she was told a “glitch” in the interface between DEERS and TriCare caused the problem and a quarter-million families were affected. There was no projected date for the problem to be resolved. I have heard squat about this in the media.Looking to my FreeRepublic family to report if you know of anyone caught up in this latest guberment snafu. It is being pursued through Congressional and American Legion contacts.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently issued a travel warning for 14 Latin American nations and Caribbean territories that have exposed to Zika virus, a mosquito-borne virus connected to the increasing rate of birth defects in Brazil. The alert was issued late Friday and it includes Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.

SCIENTISTS are set to test freeze-dried pills containing the faecal matter of healthy and lean donors in a bid to tackle the obesity crisis. Twenty obese volunteers will be taking part in the research and each will be receiving capsules that include several grams of stool from slim donors. The pills will be taken every week for six weeks without making any changes to their normal diet and exercise habits while researchers track any changes. These health and weight recordings will be taken at three, six and 12 months, with the potential to continue further depending on the success of...

Sierra Leone's government on Saturday urged the public not to panic as it announced that more than 100 people had been quarantined following a new death from Ebola just as the country seemed to have overcome the epidemic. The World Health Organisation on Friday confirmed that a 22-year-old woman who died after falling ill near the Guinean border last week had tested positive for the tropical fever. The announcement came a day after west Africa was celebrating the end of the outbreak after Liberia became the last of the three worst-hit countries in the region to be declared Ebola-free. Sierra...

Birds from nine more commercial turkey farms in Indiana have tested positive for bird flu. [...] Authorities confirmed Friday that a commercial flock in Dubois County Indiana was infected with the H7N8 strain, which is different than the H5N2 virus that led to the deaths of about 48 million turkeys and chickens last summer. ...

Olympus Corp., whose specialized medical scopes are among those linked to a series of deadly "superbug" outbreaks around the country, said Friday that it will voluntarily recall and redesign the devices in an effort to prevent future infections. The company produces the vast majority of duodenoscopes used in the United States, followed by two other firms, Pentax and Fujifilm. The devices are used in hundreds of thousands of procedures annually in this country to drain fluids from pancreatic and bile ducts blocked by tumors, gallstones and other conditions. But in recent years, they also have been linked to numerous outbreaks...

A team at Yale School of Medicine have identified a hormone, produced by the thymus glad, extends lifespan by 40 per cent. Their findings reveal increased levels of the hormone, known as FGF21, protects the immune system against the ravages of age. Researchers said the study could have implications in the future for improving immune function in the elderly, for obesity, and for diseases such as cancer and type 2 diabetes. When it is functioning normally, the thymus produces new T cells for the immune system. But with age, the gland becomes fatty and loses its ability to produce the...

Heads up

Vice President Joe Biden launched a "moonshot" initiative Friday to hasten a cure for cancer, aiming to use his final year in office to break down barriers in the medical world he says are holding back progress on eradicating the dreaded disease. Biden chose Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia as his venue to call attention to the institute's pioneering efforts on immunotherapy, in which a patient's own immune system is deployed against cancer cells. After touring the facility's Center for Advanced Cellular Therapeutics, Biden sat down with doctors, researchers and academics to discuss recent advances. "You're on the...

Channel 2 Action News has learned that the Cobb County Police Department will discipline a police officer accused of telling an African-American driver he didn't care about "your people." During a Nov. 16 traffic stop, Officer Maurice Lawson traded words with a driver. According to police, at the end of the traffic stop, Lawson could be heard saying, “Please go away to Fulton County. I don’t care about you (or your) people.” Community activists have made it clear that they wanted nothing less than Lawson's firing for this incident. The Cobb County Police Department announced Lawson will be suspended 80...

(CBS SF) -- The pilot who smoothly ditched a disabled passenger jet in the frigid Hudson River in New York, saving all passengers and crew and becoming a national hero today marked the seventh anniversary of the "Miracle on the Hudson." Danville resident Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger took to his Twitter page Friday to remark: "7 yrs later, w/ pride + hope, I still see good coming from the remarkable events of #Flight1549"

Imagine having an operation without anaesthetic. Before 1846, when the first procedure using pain-numbing drugs was carried out, this was was the norm. Hamfisted and brutal, surgeons cut patients open, cracked bones and tied up arteries while they were completely conscious. Not for the squeamish, a new book contains detailed images from rare surgical textbooks discovered from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The gruesome images show eyeballs pierced, brains being sliced and feet being hacked off – and all without anaesthetic. The book, called Crucial Interventions, was drawn from The Wellcome Collection’s library, and narrated by medical historian Richard...

When I realized my hair was turning orange under the white dye goo, I finally hit send on the text I was hoping to avoid: “EMERGENCY. I’m getting something really stupid done to my hair.” My friend Nicole left work and rushed to join me. But first, I had to send her the address of the cheap chain salon, embarrassing enough all on its own. Nicole has lustrous hair and healthy self-respect. I saw her eyes bug as she clocked my goopy head, the indifferent stylist already wandering away to shampoo another customer. “This morning, I ran the numbers,” I...

I was really looking forward to being dumber than my daughter. For the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy, my husband and I spun a collective daydream about our wise little girl: We pictured her walking through life with confidence and long, wavy hair, a perfect combination of my curly and my husband’s straight. She'd be his willing partner at museums, so gifted in math she could do her homework without my help. The dumbest, basest jokes, our favorite kind, would make her roll her eyes. The afternoon of my 20-week ultrasound, I left work early and got on the...

Antonio Cromartie has made a career out of shutting down wide receivers. But it seems nothing can shut down the Jets cornerback’s off-the-field game — not even a vasectomy. The father of 10 — who once struggled to name all of his children on TV — has impregnated his wife with twins despite undergoing the sterilization procedure in 2011. “The failure rate can depend on how you do the procedure,” says Dr. Harry Fisch, a clinical professor of urology at Weill Cornell. SNIP A vasectomy can also fail soon after surgery.

The researchers had shown that fragmented sleep - which is sleep interrupted by frequent awakenings or arousals — was linked with an increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline, Lim told Live Science. "However, there were gaps in what we knew about underlying brain changes that may link sleep fragmentation with these neurological outcomes," he said. In the new study, the researchers looked at the brains of 315 people who underwent autopsies after they died. The people were 90 years old, on average, when they died, and 70 percent were women. At some point before they died, the people in...

The World Health Organization declared an end to the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever on Thursday after no new cases emerged in Liberia, though health officials warn that it will be several more months before the world is considered free of the disease that claimed more than 11,300 lives over two years. Thursday's success comes after a harrowing toll: Nearly 23,000 children lost at least one parent or caregiver to the disease. Some 17,000 survivors are trying to resume their lives though many battle mysterious, lingering side effects. Studies continue to uncover new information about how long Ebola can last in...

The live-in girlfriend of Pennsylvania abortionist Eric Yahav has filed an order of protection against him for abusing her and attempting to force her to abort their child. Yahav is known for having been involved in an illegal abortion business – with abortionist Steven Chase Brigham – which was shut down in 2013. Operation Rescue reports that the woman, “Mary” (whose real name has been withheld for privacy), took video of some of the incidents before Yahav was able to turn off her cell phone. She also stated in her petition for a protective order against Yahav: Since becoming pregnant,...

"As strip malls go, the one you seek is nondescript, all brick exterior and maroon awnings, but there's safety in this disguise, a sense of legitimacy that comes with this out-in-the-open location. ***snip*** According to a 2014 study by the liberal-leaning think tank Urban Institute on the underground commercial sex industry in eight U.S. cities, the total industry--inclusive of Asian massage parlors, brothels, street-level prostitution and other sources--fetched between $39.9 and $290 million in 2007, depending on the city. This demand led to the opening of nearly 600 new illicit massage parlors in the U.S. from 2011 to 2013, pushing...

Israel's 92-year-old former President Shimon Peres suffered a "mild" heart attack Thursday but was in "excellent" condition following a heart procedure, his personal physician said. Peres was rushed to a hospital near Tel Aviv from his home on Thursday morning after he fell ill with chest pains and a check-up found an irregular heart rate, his spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch told Israeli Army Radio. His personal physician Raphi Walden said Peres had a "mild heart attack" but that "his condition is excellent" following a successful cardiac catheterization. ...