Gov emits the new review of the oil Chukchi Sea lease (AP)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - the Federal Government has published a revised environmental review Friday for oil leases, in the sea of the Chukchi to off the northwest coast of Alaska but the environmentalists, said that it always contains critical gaps.

The revised draft environmental review by the Bureau of ocean energy management, regulation and enforcement of the law responds to a federal judge for decision that the Government did not follow the law of the environment before having sold leases.

The review is "woefully incomplete", said Erik Grafe, a spokesman for Earthjustice, which represents 15 Alaska Native and environmental groups in a trial that led to the decision of July 2010. "It still concludes that the Agency does not have to collect a single piece of literally hundreds of instances of missing information on whales, fish, walruses, birds and other species in the sea of the Chukchi deciding to commit the region to oil drilling leases".

Sale 2008 sold leases on more than 4 300 square miles of Arctic Ocean waters for almost $ 2.7 billion, including $ 2.1 billion in bids high by Shell in the Gulf of Mexico Inc.

Spokesman for the Alaska Shell Curtis Smith does not immediately return calls for comment. Shell hopes the year next offshore of the Chukchi and Beaufort drilling.

In the decision of last year, U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline stated that the Minerals Management Service, as the Agency was formerly known, has failed to analyze the environmental effects of the gas natural development despite the interest of the industry and specific lease incentives such a development. The Agency analyzed only the 1 billion barrels of oil field development although it recognizes that the minimum level of development that can occur on the leases.

Beistline prohibits any activity in the sale of lease pending another examination, ordering the Agency to analyse the environmental impact of the exploitation of natural gas and to determine if the missing information were essential.

The management of the ocean Office said it will take the comments of the public on May 27 draft to 11 July.

Director of the Agency Michael Bromwich said that the revised document provides environmental, scientific and technical analyses further.

"Because what is at stake, it is extremely important that we continue to make a transparent process that encourages the maximum amount of the participation of the public," Bromwich said in a statement.

The project has no important data, said environmentalists. For example, it does not incorporate a report soon to be published by the U.S. Geological Survey that identifies missing information on the Arctic Ocean. The analysis also indicates, it was not possible to predict the impact on marine mammals of disturbances caused by development, but he says that "sufficient information is available in support of the scientific judgments solid and principled approach to the decisions of managers at the stage of the sale of lease."

Environmental and Alaska Native groups have long argued that it would be impossible to clean up an oil spill in Arctic waters, especially during periods of broken ice. The nearest coast guard base is Kodiak Island more than 1 000 kilometres. The review includes an analysis of a large hypothetical oil spill which shows the potential of ecological disaster.

"He considers that any drilling in the Arctic Ocean - as one that provides Shell - BOEMRE must insist on adequate oil spill plans and the development of a technology that can clean up oil in icy waters, stormy and remote Arctic Ocean"Grafe said.""

As is the case, the revision "makes a mockery environmental review process,", said attorney Rebecca Noblin of the Center for biological diversity.

"BOEMRE rushed"environmental review"seems to be an early rationalisation of a decision already made, and not more" she said. "" "". The Agency should return to the drawing on the Board. ?

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PA. former Governor dumbfounded by a review of abortion lax (AP)

Philadelphia - former Governor Ed Rendell, said Friday he was "speechless" when he discovered last year that the State Health Department didn't that its power extended to abortion as Philadelphia clinics where prosecutors say that a physician used scissors to kill viable babies.

Rendell, a Democrat, whose second term of Governor ended last week, said in a statement that he ordered an increase of inspections after a raid of clinic early last year gave horrific accounts of bloody floors and baby parts in jars. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who led the clinic, was charged with killing seven babies and a woman who went to him for an abortion this week.

"I was flabbergasted to learn that the Health Ministry did not have their power to protect the public health extended to providing services of abortion clinics," Rendell, also a mayor of Philadelphia two terms in the 1990s, said in a statement issued through a spokeswoman.

"When I found this, from the press about the case of Gosnell, I immediately for them to inspect these installations," said Rendell. "It was simply absurd that the Department has adopted this position, never."

An indictment 261-page grand jury published this week against Gosnell and other details of the clinical staff a macabre litany of failures and failure to comply with even the most basic guidelines for public health. It sets out a long list of regulatory failures by the Department of health and other agencies.

In its report, the grand jury, said the Department and other agencies - including the Department of State, whereby the Board of Directors of medicine falls - allowed clinic Gosnell to operate virtually unhindered since the end of the 1970s. He had not been inspected since 1993.

A spokesman for newly installed Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, said Thursday there are 22 suppliers registered abortions in Pennsylvania, and each of them have been inspected in September and November.

Given that the grand jury report was published on Wednesday, the Health Ministry did not comment and referred inquiries to the Office of Corbett.

The grand jury said political plays a role in monitoring of abortion issues.

In its report, the Commission said the Health Ministry "decided, for political reasons, to stop the inspection of all abortion clinics the."

Counsel for the Department of health has changed their views and advice "according to the political preferences of various Governors", said the report. The Department has dropped its policy of annual inspections in the mid-1990s under Governor Tom Ridge, who supported abortion rights, said the report.

A lawyer from the Ministry of health testified about a meeting of the State of high level officials, 1999 "which has been decided not to accept a recommendation to reinstate regular inspections of the abortion clinics""," citing a concern that the routine inspections would lead to "less the installationsmoins women of abortion access abortion."

Rendell said Thursday that he "had no knowledge that has been the policy of the administration of the Ridge, nor that the policy was being sued." "The Ministry of health never reached me to discuss what policy should be."

Ridge did not comment the report. The Associated Press sought his comment through its representatives.

Gosnell, 69, a family practice physician not certified to perform abortions, was arraigned Thursday on charges of murder of seven babies and a patient. His lawyer declined to comment on.

Authorities allege Gosnell and overloaded his - sometimes untrained - unsanitary equipment of workers used to induce the labor very late-term pregnancies, born viable babies alive and killed with scissors to the spine and the parts of the body left in jars.

___

Associated press writers Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Mark Scolforo Harrisburg, PA., have contributed to this report.

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Meaningful use Workgroup to review Timing Options

(click the image for a larger view)
Slideshow: Top 10 stories of health care 2010Faced with comments that its meaningful use stage 2 draft recommendations and their associated timelines were too onerous, the meaningful use workgroup, a Sub-Committee of the CNO HIT Policy Committeewill examine how it can enhance the timing of the program, requirements, or both.

Even if it is not at all certain the group will take such action, comments by Paul Tang, MD, VP and CMIO at Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Chairman of the meaningful use work group, said he was interested in exploring all options.

Distilling the feedback from the public, Joshua Seidman, Director of the Division of significant use in the Office of the supplier Adoption Support of CNO, said, "the slope of the curve in terms of raising upward movement bar and chronology," have been expressed as problematic. "There are concerns about the time where, in terms of suppliers and vendors, be able to prepare systems." So if there is new functionality that must be implemented, and the final rule out in mid-2012 as HHS has indicated, how long does allow the implementation of these features? ?

Seidman said some comments recommended that sufficient time be built in the process ONC could inject step 1 lessons learned in step 2.

Another group of letters said that some measures of phase 2 lacked sufficient specificity to comment on informed and asked that more detail be added before the proposals could be properly assessed.

Seidman said that not all comments urged caution. Some, in fact, asked that the momentum of the program continue apace.

Before exploring options to address the question of timing, Tang put the table passing in review the elements of the program which were cooked in statue and, therefore, not subject to Amendment ONC and CMS. He noted, for example, penalties of program constituted an incitement towards compliance in off-years, somewhat compensate for the fact that the lion's share of of incentive money is highly attractive entrance fees. Nevertheless, it is concerned to push too many objectives of significant use in the future.

But the desire to keep the strong Stage 2 as is currently may be difficult, given the effects of training associated with the addition of actions not supported by the current software. "There is the time required of seller-development and implementation of provider and the training time, which are both important and significant.". They must be performed in sequence, they are additive, "Tang told."

However, not all the requirements of MU, require vendors to change their code and, therefore, be recertifié. Measures which called to increase the current thresholds or tapping dormant functionality already incorporated in the products, the time required for compliance would be greatly reduced.

In addition to temper the requirements, Tang suggested ways the timeline could be adjusted.

In a scenario, it has been suggested that it was possible to change the period of Stage 2 of a full year to 90 days (step 1). "This would give a period of nine months to get things done downstream before having to be operational with a fully certified step 2-this is a way to ease the timetable," he said.

Another option, Tang said, was to delay stage 2 in total, perhaps 12 months; While a third option (the one recommended by CHIME) could be behind stage 2 until a certain percentage of hospitals and eligible suppliers reached step 1.

These solutions, Tang said, were not without their disadvantages. "A consequence of the [delay] is that it supports the reform of the health and, as the ACO rules out, suppliers will need an EHR with great care and coordinating exchange functionality, to delay step 2 would affect the whole program [health reform]"he says. ".

Next meeting of the Working Group will be an event in person on April 5, when it will be "go through a list of criteria on the objectives of step 2, and in some way incorporate a discussion of the timeline." The Working Group will then its recommendations to political success Committee on 13 April. On 2 may, Tang said that the Working Group would convene to discuss feedback, that he had received of the political Commission, refining its proposals from step 2. 11, The Working Group will present its stage 2 "package" policy for a second review Commission. "We will then finalise our proposal after this meeting in the preparation of a presentation to the June 8 meeting of the Policy Committee, where we will ask for approval.".

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