A1A South

By Arlene Satchell | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

March 11, 2008

Beef could soon be another big business for The Seminole Tribe of Florida.

On Monday, the tribe unveiled Seminole Beef, a commercial brand available now in South Florida at the Shake N Burger food court restaurant at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. The eatery serves hamburgers made from Seminole beef.

The beef deal has been a dream in the making for about seven years, Richard Bowers Jr., president of the tribe’s board of directors, said.

The venture is a natural extension of the tribe’s cattle operations, which have generated about $2 million in annual revenue, a drop in the bucket when compared with the tribe’s gaming revenue. That totaled $1.4 billion in Florida in 2006, according to the tribe’s audit.

Launching the beef brand is another move by the Seminoles to diversify their businesses, which also include citrus, sugar cane, tobacco and a number of craft shops. To that end, the tribe last year bought the Hard Rock International hotel and restaurant chain for $965 million.

The Seminoles expect to sell the beef in major Indian casinos and restaurants, hotel chains, U.S. military bases and major supermarkets. Besides the burgers, the brand will later include steaks and other cuts of beef.

“It’s going to benefit all cattle owners throughout Indian country,” Mitchell Cypress, the Seminole tribal council’s chairman, said Monday.

The tribe typically sold cattle through an auction service and the middlemen were the ones who often made the most money from the sales. Now the tribe is taking control “from pasture to plate,” said Don Robertson, the tribe’s natural resource coordinator.

While the Seminoles’ revenue from cattle operations will likely triple with the beef deal, other American Indian tribes also stand to benefit, Bowers said.

The beef venture is a joint agreement with The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe of Connecticut, owner of Foxwoods Resorts Casino, and the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development.

Nationwide, the Pequots and the Mohegan Tribe, also of Connecticut, run the No. 1 revenue-generating Indian casinos at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun, respectively. The two casinos together took in $2.5 billion in 2006, according to the Indian Gaming Industry report.

Cattle raised and processed nationally by American Indians also will contribute to the new Seminole beef brand.

Source:  South Florida Sun Sentinel

I also recommend clicking the link and watching a Seminole cattle drive and see how the term “Florida Crackers” came into being.

A University of Leicester ecologist is setting out to discover why flamingos are so in the pink of health - in the poo!

Dr David Harper, of the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester, has been studying lesser flamingos for nine years.

His research has been carried out in the lakes of East Africa but new investigations he has carried out for the first time in India have- by his own admission – given him ‘rather a shock.’

He said: “Lesser flamingos are graceful, majestic, birds. They are not the ones you can see at the zoo, because they are very difficult to maintain in captivity, but the ones that you see on television in their hundreds of thousands, crowded into a few specialist lakes in East Africa.

“I have been studying them, on these lakes in Kenya and Tanzania, but earlier this month I returned from India, having carried out a preliminary investigation of the population there, and I had rather a shock.

“In Africa the lesser flamingo, with its beautiful pink plumage, stands for everything that is pure and pristine. Many of the lakes where it feeds, occasionally with a million birds crowded together when the food is good, are almost untouched by man’s activities.

“In complete contrast to Africa, where lesser flamingos only live on inland soda lakes and are never seen at the coast, in India I watched 20,000 lesser flamingos happily feeding on tidal mudflats in front of an oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and creeks bringing untreated waste from millions of people in the slums of Bombay.

“In Porbandar, the city which is the birthplace of Mahatma Ghandi, in Gujarat to the north of Bombay, I watched 8,000 standing knee deep and happily filtering-feeding in the water alongside rubbish, cowpats and wastewater running in from surrounding houses and factories.

“In western India and Gujarat in particular, people love flamingos – it is the state’s national emblem.”

Dr Harper was funded by the Darwin Initiative and now plans to write a full grant proposal to link with Indian universities and conservation groups to better understand how flamingos can thrive in waste water and how the peoples’ love of these birds can be turned into a love of everything natural.

Dr Harper added: “Bombay is on very low-lying land that once was just a few islands in the estuary, but now about 20 million people are crammed into this city. They need the estuary and all its ecology to help clean up their wastes and even protect them against flooding. We are planning to use the flamingo to help people understand the benefits of mud and mangroves – less pretty but far more useful to them”!

In Africa, Dr Harper and members of his team have satellite-tagged birds to find exactly where they go, studied their feeding and their behaviour and why sometimes several thousand die suddenly. His wife, Maureen, has used them as a teaching theme in schools near their lakes and written stories about them for the pupils. They have been funded by the UK Darwin Initiative, part of the British Government, which sends specialists from this country to help other countries, richer in biodiversity, protect their priceless natural heritage.

Dr Harper said: “The deaths of lesser flamingos in East Africa over the past 15 years have sometimes been blamed on poisoning from mankind’s industries or the consequence of too much fertiliser or human wastes in the lakes.

“But people who blame human wastes should go to India to see how well lesser flamingos thrive and how pink they grow, when they are surrounded by heavy industry and by water so polluted I could smell it a mile away!”

Source: University of Leicester

Perhaps wildlife is hardier and more able to adapt than people give them credit for.

On Web sites touting the mind-blowing powers of Salvia divinorum, come-ons to buy the hallucinogenic herb are accompanied by warnings: “Time is running out!” and “stock up while you still can.”That’s because salvia is being targeted by lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously.

“As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one,” said Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, who has introduced a bill to make possession of salvia a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Some say legislators are overreacting to a minor problem, but no one disputes that the plant impairs judgment and the ability to drive.

Native to Mexico and still grown there, Salvia divinorum is generally smoked but can also be chewed or made into a tea and drunk.

Called nicknames like Sally-D, Magic Mint and Diviner’s Sage, salvia is a hallucinogen that gives users an out-of-body sense of traveling through time and space or merging with inanimate objects. Unlike hallucinogens like LSD or PCP, however, salvia’s effects last for a shorter time, generally up to an hour.

It is not the same as the ornamental garden plant known as Salvia.

No known deaths have been attributed to salvia’s use, but it was listed as a factor in one Delaware teen’s suicide two years ago.

“Parents, I would say, are pretty clueless,” said Jonathan Appel, an assistant professor of psychology and criminal justice at Tiffin University in Ohio who has studied the emergence of the substance. “It’s much more powerful than marijuana.”

Salvia’s short-lasting effects and fact that it is currently legal may make it seem more appealing to teens, lawmakers say. In the Delaware suicide, the boy’s mother told reporters that salvia made his mood darker but he justified its use by citing its legality. According to reports, the autopsy found no traces of the drug in his system, but the medical examiner listed it as a contributing cause.

Mike Strain, Louisiana’s Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner and former legislator, helped his state in 2005 become the first to make salvia illegal, along with a number of other plants. He said the response has been largely positive.

“I got some hostile e-mails from people who sold these products,” Strain said. “You don’t make everybody happy when you outlaw drugs. You save one child and it’s worth it.”

An ounce of salvia leaves sells for around $30 on the Internet. A liquid extract from the plant, salvinorin A, is also sold in various strengths labeled “5x” through “60x.” A gram of the 5x strength, about the weight of a plastic pen cap, is about $12 while 60x strength is around $65. And in some cases the extract comes in flavors including apple, strawberry and spearmint.

Web sites such as Salviadragon.com tout the product with images like a waterfall and rainbow and include testimonials like “It might sound far fetched, but I experience immortality.”

Read the rest in the  Miami Herald.

Is this something that should be banned for the “good of the children”?  Hard to say.  Certainly we don’t want anybody experiencing mortality while attempting to experience immortality while at the wheel of a vehicle.  We also do not know what the side effects could be, if any.

On the other hand, I haven’t noticed that making something illegal has succeeded in making it more difficult to obtain.  Just ask ol’ Governor Spitzer about that.

The medical records of some Central Florida Regional Hospital patients were sold last month at a Salt Lake City surplus store for about $20, a newspaper reported.”I find it inexcusable,” said Susan Mezzoni, a Lake Mary, Fla., woman whose husband’s records were among those sold. “I don’t like that they’re out there.”

The Deseret Morning News of Salt Lake City reported in a copyright story for Monday editions that the records of 28 patients were sold to a local school teacher looking for scrap paper for her fourth-grade class.

The mixup is being blamed on a shipping problem, and UPS told The Associated Press on Monday it is investigating.

The box lost its label, said Atlanta-based UPS spokesman Norman Black. After its arrival at a vendor facility responsible for trying to determine who owned the package, it appears a worker failed to open and catalog all the contents properly.

“It appears the box was classified as scrap paper of no value,” Black said. “That’s where we believe there was a break down in our process - if this is what actually happened.”

Some of the people whose records were sold or whose loved ones’ records were sold want answers and assurances it won’t happen again.

“I’m aghast,” said Marcy Lippincott, a Lake Mary attorney whose father’s records were among those lost. “I’m wondering who to sue. It’s a complete invasion of privacy. It’s appalling to think your records can be out there somewhere like that.”

In December, the box was one of three shipped to a Las Vegas company for a Medicare audit, said Kelly Ferrell, the hospital’s risk manager. Hospital officials had been tracking the box since it was reported missing in Phoenix but did not contact the affected patients, she said.

“We worry about wrongful disclosure. That information is very personal,” she said.

The packages were certified and sent by UPS, Ferrell said. When one of the boxes didn’t arrive, a Las Vegas auditor on Feb. 4 contacted hospital officials who, in turn, contacted UPS two weeks later.

Officials said they’re unsure how the box made its way to Utah, though the package containing the records also had a document indicating it was sold because the shipping company could not deliver it or find its owner.

Shipping companies often sell off packages that cannot be delivered. Another UPS spokesman told the Deseret Moring News his company keeps packages for at least three months before liquidating them.

“UPS has developed a very extensive and technologically advanced system for trying to identify and locate missing packages,” Dan McMackin said. “And yes, we do inspect every shipment deemed to be overgoods. All sensitive shipments are treated with confidentiality and disposed of properly.”

But the package containing the records was eventually sold as scrap paper at National Product Sales.

“UPS is not trying to pretend it has no responsibility here,” Black said. “This a mistake that was made at all levels in terms of handling this thing, and we’re going to get the bottom of it and see what we have to do to improve.”

He would not identify the vendor.

Hospital officials said they were waiting up to eight business days to hear from UPS before alerting patients, Ferrell said.

The records from Central Florida Regional contained detailed medical histories, phone numbers, addresses, Social Security numbers and insurance information.

Several of the patients whose information was lost in Salt Lake City are dead, and some relatives said they were not concerned about the missing box.

“They’re no good now,” said Henry Humphrey of Sanford, Fla. His mother, Hattie Humphrey, was a patient at the hospital in 2004. “It may contain her (Social Security) number, but that’s no good neither.”

However, Kirk Torgensen, Utah’s chief deputy attorney general, said the deceased are prime targets for identity theft.

“Dead people, they’re not typically looking at their credit file,” he said. “What better person to use their identity?”

Hospital spokesman Craig A. Bair said officials were in contact with the shipping company and were looking at ways to ensure they did not have this problem again.

“Boxes of that type are shipped like that by hospitals all over the country all the time,” he said.

Source:  Miami Herald

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy about how secure my medical records are. Maybe I’ll pay cash and go under an assumed name.

I thought everybody knew that medical records were confidential.  Perhaps “confidential” has a new, improved meaning that I was not aware of.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — In twenty years of trucking, Jerome Gibson has never seen these diesel prices.

At $3.99 a gallon, Gibson says he’s barely hanging on.

As an independent truck driver, he owns his own rig and pays for his own gas and maintenance.

“If something happens to my truck right now, I can’t afford to get it fixed!” said Gibson.

Regular drivers may not think Gibson’s gas prices matter, but they depend on it because as Gibson’s price climbs, the cargo he carries gets more expensive.

While many people may not think about how merchandise reaches its destination, independent trucker Clarence Spanier does.

In recent weeks, his weekly income has been cut in half.

“I was spending about 700 bucks in fuel when I first started so I went from spending $700 to $2500 dollars a week,” said Spanier.

Many truckers are paid by the mile, but many companies aren’t raising their pay-per-mile so the rising gas costs eat right through a trucker’s pocket.

Spanier said, “If it keeps going up and up, I’ll just have to sell the truck.”

Source:

That REALLY sucks.  The companies receiving the freight are probably being charged a fuel surcharge which they are passing on to their customers.  The people getting screwed are the independent truckers (as per usual).

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Two women face felony theft charges, but police said the woman forced their children — one as young as 6 — to do the dirty work.

Police said Jessica Diaz, 30, and Luz Gimenez, 29, and their five children were caught in the act of stealing $1,100 worth of clothing and jewelry from the JC Penney store at Regency Square Mall.

“Absolutely deplorable,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Melissa Bujeda said. “There’s no other words that can state why a parent would do this and would put their own children in this type of position.”

According to the arrest report, Diaz and Gimenez had each of their children carry empty purses into the department store on Sunday. While the women were shopping, they were handing off jewelry and clothes for their children to take into a dressing room.

Store employees got suspicious when they saw the children go in and out of the dressing room about 10 times, each time bringing items in, but never taking anything out.

“Employees actually heard these women telling the children to conceal the items in the bags and purses,” Bujeda said.

The children apparently resisted participating in the scheme. The report said that employees heard Diaz yelling and cursing at the children, demanding that they conceal the items.

“They were definitely facilitating this crime,” Bujeda said. “It’s sad. These parents are supposed to be raising them as good kids.”

The two women were arrested and charged with grand theft and contributing to the delinquency of a child. They were released on bond.

Police said the Department of Children and Families was notified of the incident and the children were released to other family members.

Source: News4Jax, FirstCoastNews.

Like they’re actually going to show up for trial.