James' World 2

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Whatever it is, you feel it in your shoulder muscles, in your gut. It’s not the usual anxiety, the strain we’ve absorbed into our DNA since Sept. 11. (Since Watergate? Since Antietam?) Hit from all sides by surreality — swamped by outrage and mystery and irony and hypocrisy — we have moved on to fatalism.

Nuclear war with North Korea? The chances are “increasing every day,” says the president’s national security adviser. Conflict and climax are the only options in a reality-TV world in which the president of the United States reportedly watches four hours of cable news a day, at least. In that kind of routine, everything is always BREAKING.

2017 was a year of both resignation and resistance, of special counsels and witch hunts, of flint striking steel. You thought America was either restored or remanded. It was a year that, in hindsight, will mark either the start of something or the end of something. Eventually we’ll look back and say, “We should’ve seen it coming then.”

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Clockwise from top left: The Women’s March on Washington; Sen.-elect Doug Jones; Jordan Horowitz, producer of “La La Land,” shows the envelope revealing “Moonlight” as the true winner of best picture at the Oscars; Harvey Weinstein; people in the District watch the solar eclipse; Daniel Kaluuya “Get Out.” (Clockwise from top left: Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post; John Bazemore/Associated Press; Chris Pizzello/Invision/Associated Press; Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images; Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post; Universal Pictures)

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Click link below for article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/was-2017-the-end-of-something-or-just-the-beginning/2017/12/28/c3537c4c-e4fc-11e7-a65d-1ac0fd7f097e_story.html?utm_term=.c7cb56a1d668

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Three months ago, these two Rohingya brothers had a loving family, a little house near a river, a worn soccer ball to play with and 15 cows for fresh milk.

It’s all gone now: The family killed. The house torched. The cows stolen.

More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims from Burma fleeing a military crackdown have entered Bangladesh since late August, one of the most rapid exoduses in history. This month, the United Nations human rights chief suggested that the Burmese military deliberately targeted civilians belonging to the minority Rohingya in “acts of appalling barbarity” that may have included “elements of genocide.”

The ordeal began Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked Burmese police posts. Five days later, the boys’ village was inundated with soldiers who — human rights groups allege — killed, raped and burned villagers in their homes. Shamsul, 8, and Jafar, 11, followed a stream of people to Bangladesh, two of about 1,800 children who made the terrifying days-long journey to safety without their immediate caregivers, according to UNICEF. Many have been taken in by neighbors or extended families, authorities say, but face dangers such as child traffickers, diseases and malnourishment.

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Shamsul, left, and Jafar stand outside their home in the Thaingkhali Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

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Click link below for article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2017/12/29/feature/these-orphaned-brothers-escaped-a-massacre-now-they-have-to-survive-a-refugee-camp/?utm_term=.2c9ca89fa059

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The Washington Post

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For politics, global relations and the climate, 2017 was a year of turmoil. Partisan divisions in Washington, escalating threats from North Korea and historic natural disasters left many Americans hoping they’ll be dealt a better hand in the coming year.

But on Wall Street, everything came up aces.

Seemingly indifferent to the chaos and belying many experts’ predictions, stock markets had their best year since 2013, with the closely watched Dow Jones industrial average ending 2017 up a staggering 25 percent.

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U.S. stocks closed out their best year since 2013 on a down note, with losses in technology and financial stocks. (Reuters)

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Click link below for article and video:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/stock-markets-wrap-up-best-year-since-2013-as-investors-shrug-off-bad-newsthe-dow-jones-industrial-average-alone-surges-25-percent/2017/12/29/5bf67932-ecae-11e7-8a6a-80acf0774e64_story.html?utm_term=.5cc240c133d1

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People across the United States rushed this week to pay their 2018 property taxes early, hoping to take advantage one last time of a federal deduction that will be scaled back under the tax-code overhaul signed by President Trump.

On Wednesday, however, the ­Internal Revenue Service announced that those prepayments could be deducted only in limited circumstances, a decision that appeared to invalidate many taxpayers’ efforts and raised the prospect that local governments could come under pressure to refund millions of dollars.

The announcement stoked confusion surrounding one of the most controversial elements of the tax law — a $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes that will disproportionately affect higher-tax, Democratic-leaning states. It also offered a glimpse of the kind of hiccups that could arise in coming weeks as the IRS releases guidance on other facets of the bill, the largest overhaul of federal tax law in three decades.

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Roughly 60 people stood in line midday at Montgomery County’s Department of Finance in Rockville, Md., to prepay their 2018 property taxes. (Rachel Siegel/The Washington Post)

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Click link below for article and video:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/tax-bill-spawns-new-holiday-ritual-waiting-in-line-to-pay-taxes/2017/12/27/1e7ea59a-eb12-11e7-b698-91d4e35920a3_story.html?utm_term=.fa40f358d18c

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In the search for ways to bring down American health-care spending, there are certain ideas that are close to dogma. Chief among them: If you provide health insurance to people, they will stop overusing the emergency room.

“A lot of people just didn’t bother getting health insurance at all. And when they got sick, they’d have to go to the emergency room,” President Obama said in a 2016 speech. “But the emergency room is the most expensive place to get care. And because you weren’t insured, the hospital would have to give you the care free, and they would have to then make up for those costs by charging everybody else more money.”

The idea that uninsured people are clogging emergency rooms looks more and more like a myth, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs. Uninsured adults used the emergency room at very similar rates to people with insurance — and much less than people on Medicaid. Providing insurance to people can have many benefits, but driving down emergency room utilization doesn’t appear to be one of them.

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The emergency room entrance at a hospital in Santa Clarita, Calif. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

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Click link below for article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/27/the-uninsured-are-overusing-emergency-rooms-and-other-health-care-myths/?utm_term=.c87d0a5626b0

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