Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Artists Losing Healthcare Insurance Under Obamacare
2. Afghan Lawmaker: Christian Converts Must Die
3. Russia's Chief Rabbi Defends Putin
4. Global Warming Warnings Called 'Gravely Flawed'
5. New Video Game Costs Over $250 Million
6. We Heard: Charles Moore on Thatcher, Michelle Obama
1. Artists Losing Healthcare Insurance Under Obamacare
Artists,
photographers, writers, and other members of the "creative class" who
have access to health insurance through many professional organizations
will lose that coverage when Obamacare is implemented.
Professional organizations have offered reduced-rate insurance plans for their members, through insurance providers.
"But
thanks to the fine print in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act, on January 1, 2014, many of these plans will fail to pass legal
muster," The Weekly Standard reported.
One
professional organization, the College Art Association — a
13,000-member group for practitioners and scholars in art, art history,
and art criticism — posted this notice on its website: "The New York
Life Insurance Company recently informed CAA that it will no longer
offer catastrophic healthcare coverage previously available to CAA
members."
The notice disclosed that it "is no longer an
option" for "associations whose members reside in different states" to
provide coverage.
Instead, members will have to seek coverage from their home state's new Obamacare exchanges.
The
Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust's website stated: "All
individual and/or Sole Proprietor Health Insurance will terminate
January 1, 2014. This includes plans acquired as members of our
Affiliated Associations and their groups."
Those
associations include the American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists, the Dramatists Guild, the Graphic Arts Guild, NY Women in Film
and Television, and others.
In
most cases, freelance artists, designers, and musicians forced to enter
the state-run exchanges will see their insurance premiums rise,
according to The Weekly Standard.
Ironically, Nancy
Pelosi back in 2010 touted the benefits of Obamacare this way: "Think of
an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a
writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have
health insurance."
The
Weekly Standard notes: "Pelosi's vision of a world full of carefree
artists, musicians, and writers is a mirage and becoming fainter the
closer we get to January 1."
2. Afghan Lawmaker: Christian Converts Must Die
A prominent lawmaker in Afghanistan is calling for the execution of Afghans who convert from Islam to Christianity.
Mohabat
News, an Iranian Christian news agency, reported that Nazir Ahmad
Hanafi, head of the Afghan parliament's Legislative Commission, said:
"Afghani citizens continue to convert to Christianity in India. Numerous
Afghanis have become Christians in India. This is an offense to Islamic
law and according to the Koran, they need to be executed."
Thousands
of Afghan refugees have fled to India, and a small congregation of
Christian converts meets in New Delhi, according to CNS News.
Another
Afghan lawmaker, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, reportedly has demanded that the
Afghan government pressure Indian authorities to provide the names of
Afghans who have converted to Christianity so that the Afghan government
can arrest and punish them if they return home.
And
Afghan lawmaker Abdul Latif Pedram has blamed the increase in
conversions on the presence of American forces in the country. According
to Mohabat, he said: "The United States' long-term plan is to attack
Afghan culture. Converting Afghan citizens serves that purpose."
Barnabas
Fund, a charity that supports Christians in Islamic nations, reported:
"For 10 consecutive nights at the end of August, two TV channels
broadcast photos of the leader of the Afghan church in Delhi, calling
for him to be executed."
A U.S. State Department report
disclosed that while there are five Hindu temples and 13 Sikh places of
worship in Afghanistan, there are no Christian churches or schools.
The
report stated: "Under some interpretations of Islamic law, converting
from Islam to another religion is deemed apostasy and considered an
egregious crime. Male citizens over age 18 or female citizens over age
16 of sound mind who convert from Islam have three days to recant their
conversions or possibly face death by stoning."
Christians
are also under fire in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters
have begun forcing the 15,000 or so Coptic Christians in the village of
Dalga to pay a "jizya" tax, the Washington Times reported.
Jizya is the tribute "that conquered non-Muslims historically have to pay their Islamic overlords," a source explained.
The tribute ranges from 200 Egyptian pounds a day (about $29) to 500 pounds a day.
And
in Syria, Islamist rebels invaded a Christian man's shop "and gave him
three options," according to the Christian Science Monitor. "Become a
Muslim, pay $70,000 as a jizya tax, or be killed along with his family."
3. Russia's Chief Rabbi Defends Putin
Russia's
chief rabbi Berel Lazar tells American Jews not to criticize Russian
President Vladimir Putin, saying they don't understand "the soul of the
Russian people."
In an interview in New York with The
Jewish Daily Forward, Lazar applauded Putin's recent decision to
transfer the Schneerson Library — a collection amassed by the early
leaders of the Chabad Hasidic movement — to a new Jewish museum in
Moscow controlled by Chabad in Russia.
Putin's decision
was denounced by lawyers for the umbrella organization of the
international Chabad-Lubavitch movement based in New York. That group
maintains that the library, which was nationalized during the Russian
Revolution, belongs to Chabad in America.
But Lazar said pressuring Russia would not succeed and he had advised the American group to drop its legal action.
He
offered similar advice to the Anti-Defamation League, which has called
for action by the U.S. Congress in response to Russia's new anti-gay
law.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director, seeks
to punish Russia for a recent bill that he maintains violates gay
rights. He suggested legislation similar to the 2012 Magnitsky Act,
which imposed sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the death of
whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
Lazar told The Forward
that legal and political pressure does not work with Russia, pointing
out that Russia responded to the Magnitsky Act by making it illegal for
Americans to adopt Russian children.
The new Russian law bans "propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships."
Lazar
said in support of the bill that the Jewish community did not want its
children to see people "marching through the streets with the wrong
message."
He added that street demonstrations are viewed more negatively in Russia than in the United States.
"There
is a different mentality, a different social understanding of what
demonstrations are," he said. "I think the American negative criticism
against Russia is really because they don't understand the soul of the
Russian people."
4. Global Warming Warnings Called 'Gravely Flawed'
Six years ago, the BBC cited climate scientists in predicting that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by 2013.
Instead,
Arctic ice this August covered nearly a million more square miles of
ocean than in August 2012 — an increase of 60 percent.
This
has led Britain's Mail on Sunday to report: "Some eminent scientists
now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not
end until the middle of the century — a process that would expose
computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously
misleading."
The newspaper also asserted that global warming had paused since the beginning of 1997.
The
pause is "important," the Mail stated, because predictions of
ever-increasing global temperatures "have made many of the world's
economies divert billions of pounds into 'green' measures to counter
climate change. Those predictions now appear gravely flawed."
Arctic
ice now extends from Canada's northern islands to Russia's northern
shore, blocking the Northwest Passage, and more than 20 yachts that had
planned to sail it from the Atlantic to the Pacific have been left
ice-bound.
Professor Anastasios Tsonis of the University
of Wisconsin, who has investigated ocean cycles, said: "We are already
in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at
least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has
stopped."
The Mail article, which has been criticized and
even dismissed by some global warming proponents, points to evidence
that Arctic ice levels are cyclical. There was a massive melt in the
1920s and 1930s, followed by an intense re-freeze that did not end until
1979 — the year the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
says the shrinking of Arctic ice began.
5. New Video Game Costs Over $250 Million
Does it make economic sense to spend $266 million to produce a video game? According to the numbers, yes indeed.
“Grand
Theft Auto V,” the fifth installment in the video game franchise, hits
stores on Sept. 17 with a development and marketing budget that not only
surpasses every other game, but is also greater than the estimated
production budget (without marketing) for nearly every Hollywood
blockbuster movie, adjusted for inflation.
The lone exception is "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which cost an estimated $300 million.
The
only video game that comes close to matching “GTA V” would be “Star
Wars: The Old Republic,” which was said to cost $200 million, Business
Insider reported. “GTA IV” cost $100 million.
Last year
the video game industry was worth some $67 billion, according to Forbes,
and it is expected to top $80 billion in four years.
Compare
that to domestic movie ticket sales in 2012, which totaled $10.8
billion — and that was a record year, USA Today reported.
Last year, the video game "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" grossed $1 billion within 15 days of its release.
"Avatar," the highest grossing movie of all time at more than $2.7 billion, took 17 days to earn $1 billion worldwide.
6. We Heard…
THAT journalist Charles Moore has won GQ's 2013 Writer of the Year award for his official biography of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Moore's
work "Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography. Vol. 1: Not For
Turning" was published in April, shortly after Thatcher's death.
"Margaret
Thatcher is arguably the most divisive Prime Minister the country has
ever had, so being brave enough to take on the task of writing her
official autobiography — 'Not For Turning' — is no mean feat in itself,"
GQ stated.
"However, managing to put together a tome on
such a person that stays balanced and receives almost universal praise
from all sides of the political spectrum? That's what makes a GQ award
winner."
Moore is
the former editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He was
hand-picked by the Iron Lady to write her biography and had
unprecedented access to her papers and interviews.
THAT first lady Michelle Obama has helped launch a new health crusade to encourage Americans to drink more water.
The
goal of the "Drink Up" campaign is to "replace a Coke with a bottle of
Aquafina, or any of the other 14 water brands her campaign is
endorsing," the Washington Examiner reported.
On
Thursday, Mrs. Obama joined the Partnership for a Healthier America and
actress Eva Longoria to announce the new campaign in — where else? —
Watertown, Wis.
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