Day: May 19, 2013

We’ve been talking about high unemployment for a few years now, and we have different ideas of what that means. Although the unemployment rate has been as high as 12.4 percent between the start of the Great Recession in December, 2007 and the present, the actual number of people who have been continuously idle for all of those years is relatively small. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in January 2013, the latest month for which they have numbers completed, there were 3.7 million jobs available in different fields across the nation. That might not seem like a lot when there were 14.3 million people categorized as unemployed.

When her grandfather died in 1992 from a sudden heart attack, Joyce Malaskovitz went through the expected sadness and grief. But she also recalled memories as a child, those of him checking his urine for sugar and using special tablets to sweeten his coffee. Malaskovitz’s grandfather was a diabetic, and these moments clearly made an impression on her.

New evidence is rapidly unfolding linking repetitive blows to the head obtained in some contact sports to a fatal condition identified as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly referred to as CTE. These contact sports include football, boxing and hockey, and others including skateboarding, baseball and soccer.

They affect 12 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and many experts today say migraines are underdiagnosed. For those who suffer from them, the pain is intense and sometimes debilitating and can put added pressures on employment and the personal life.

Big dollars are being spent at hospitals throughout the Las Vegas Valley on large-scale expansions and improvements to the medical campuses.

A pristine waiting room greets patients and guests of Lee’s Oriental Medical Clinic on Maryland Parkway. Health and lifestyle reading materials abound on a coffee table while informative brochures fill a shelf lining the wall. The quiet, almost staid, atmosphere is periodically punctuated by cheerful greetings to patients by a man clad in a hospital scrub suit.

You’ve heard it and read it everywhere: Health care is where the greatest job growth is, health care has created jobs every month for 20 consecutive years , health care has many of the fastest-growing occupations in America (registered nurses, home health aides and personal care aides, to name three).

Casey and Melissa Laub never expected to be without the safety net of health insurance but that’s what happened about five years ago when, because of the recession, Casey lost his job as a heavy-equipment operator.

Choosing health care plans is challenging enough for young employees uncertain about which program is best suited for their future medical needs.

Derek Graff was just like the rest of us at one point.

Americans are living longer, but our health is not improving, a ccording to the Centers for Disease Control . Its 2011 report, which reflects the most recent data, shows the rates of dying from ailments such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are increasing, and we as a nation continue to become more obese, across all ages and ethnicities. These are telling statistics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior coalition partner says that reaching a final peace agreement with the Palestinians is unrealistic at the current time and the sides should instead pursue an interim arrangement.

Some lucky person walked into a Publix supermarket in suburban Florida over the past few days and bought a ticket now worth an estimated $590.5 million — the highest Powerball jackpot in history.

The police officer who accidentally killed a Long Island college student along with an armed intruder faced perhaps the most harrowing decision in law enforcement: choosing the split-second moment when the risk is so high that you must pull the trigger.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans scrambled to stock up on toilet paper Thursday as fears of a bathroom emergency spread despite the socialist government’s promise to import 50 million rolls.

Officials in Washington state took their first stab at setting rules for the state’s new marijuana industry Thursday, nearly eight months after voters here legalized pot for adults.

BOSTON — Federal prosecutors asked the court Thursday to allow criminal background checks on potential jurors in the racketeering trial of reputed gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

VISTA, Calif. — The lawyer for a California heavy metal singer accused of trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife says the singer’s mind has been ravaged by steroid use.

Alaska’s remote Pavlof Volcano was shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume was thinning Saturday and no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.

An Ohio man was found guilty Thursday of fatally shooting a man who authorities say identified his assailant by blinking his eyes while paralyzed and hooked up to a ventilator.