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American Airlines to drop service to fourth city in September

American Airlines will drop service to Dubuque, Iowa beginning on Sept. 7, ending flights for the regional airport’s sole commercial airline.

The move adds a fourth city to the list of recent pullbacks by American Airlines as the company grapples with a pilot shortage, with the airline previously saying it will also drop service to Toledo, Ohio; Ithaca, N.Y.; and Islip, N.Y. following the Labor Day weekend. 

American informed the Iowa airport on Tuesday that it would drop service, an airline spokesperson and the Dubuque airport director said.

“The airport is not closed,” Dubuque Regional Airport Director Todd Dalsing said in a statement. “We have robust general aviation with multiple corporate and private aircraft, including the University of Dubuque.”

Dalsing noted that the airport also hosts various events and Sun Country Airlines charter flights. The airport has not yet announced if another commercial airline will replace American, but Dalsing said staff continue to meet with legacy and low-cost carriers.

The pullback is the latest fallout after American and other airlines shed millions of jobs at the height of the pandemic to cut costs. 

But now travel demand is surging, with daily passenger output regularly surpassing 2 million people at the nation’s airports at rates that approach pre-pandemic trends.

Airlines have struggled to keep up with that rising demand, facing issues like pilot shortages and higher fuel costs, driving prices higher.

Carriers like Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines have cut back on their schedules this summer, and thousands of flights were canceled or delayed this past weekend ahead of Father’s Day and Juneteenth.

“American Airlines has been a long-time partner for many years in Dubuque,” Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanagh said in a statement. “We fully understand this is a nationwide issue with multiple airlines and airports announcing air service cancellations and reductions.” 

Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who represents Dubuque, blamed the cut back on President Biden.

“I am disappointed that the pilot shortage has led to American Airlines canceling service to Dubuque,” Hinson said in a release. “The consequences of President Biden’s failed policies are reverberating throughout our economy and taking opportunities away from communities like Dubuque. I will continue to work on commonsense solutions to get our economy back on track and promote economic development in Iowa.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy and Scalise to vote against Senate gun deal

The top two Republicans in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), plan to vote against the Senate’s bipartisan gun bill.

McCarthy and Scalise told House Republican members during a House GOP conference meeting Wednesday that they plan to vote against the bill, GOP leadership staff said.

House GOP leaders have not said whether they will formally whip against the bill and ask its members to vote no.

Their position is a break from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was one of 14 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the legislation Tuesday evening. In a statement, McConnell called the bill a “a commonsense package of popular steps” to prevent gun violence.

A number of conservative Republicans, though, are voicing strong opposition to the bill.

The House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday announced its formal opposition to the bill, pointing to concerns about money going to implement “red flag” laws that keep those deemed a danger to themselves or others from keeping or obtaining firearms.

“Red flag laws permit the preemptive seizure of firearms from Americans without due process by allowing any person to report a gunowner to law enforcement and petition for the confiscation of that individual’s firearms, even before the gunowner has an opportunity to defend themselves,” the Freedom Caucus said in a statement. 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said that he spoke up in conference to ask the House GOP to whip against the bill.

“It seemed to get some applause,” Perry said. “So, I think that at least for many of the members in the room, they agree.”

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Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is changing its name — yet again

(NEXSTAR) – Kraft Macaroni and Cheese will no longer be known as “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” but rather the shortened, more colloquial “Kraft Mac & Cheese.”

Kraft announced the arguably negligible change Wednesday morning, explaining that the new name is meant to “reflect the way fans organically talk about the brand.”

Along with its new name, Kraft Mac & Cheese is also getting modest updates to its signature “blue boxes,” which will now feature only a “single-color hue of blue” rather than the light-blue-to-dark-blue gradient that its “Macaroni and Cheese” boxes previously featured.

Kraft believes the single-color box “amplifies the brand’s most recognizable asset — the noodle smile,” which now looks “even more delicious and dripping with creamy, cheesy goodness.”

“There is a familiar, craveable, positive comfort to Kraft Mac & Cheese that makes it so special and iconic to millions of people across the world and our new look is a reflection of what our brand means to our consumers,” said Victoria Lee, the brand manager of Kraft Mac & Cheese, in a press release.

The new packaging is expected to arrive on store shelves in August, according to Kraft.

Wednesday’s announcement, meanwhile, is far from Kraft’s first foray into rebranding.

Upon its debut in 1937, Kraft’s boxed macaroni and cheese product — then called Kraft Dinner — was primarily yellow, with the exception of a few navy sections on the front of the box. This color scheme remained the standard for nearly two decades (the navy sections had all but disappeared by 1953) until Kraft switched to an earlier version of its now-recognizable blue boxes, which debuted in 1954.

In the years since, Kraft has toyed with other color schemes — namely blue and white, in both the ‘70s and ‘80s — but gravitated back to blue over the last several decades.

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Engaging the Saudis does not require Biden to forego our concern for human rights

American presidents wrestle with how to balance interests and values in our foreign policy. Internationally, we have long stood for democratic principles and the protection of human rights. Yet, we have also long maintained close relations with states that have been violators of human rights and are not democracies. Our presidents have to make choices and set priorities — and those choices, oftentimes, seemingly elevate interests over values. 

No one would question whether Jimmy Carter made human rights a centerpiece of his foreign policy.  Yet, he maintained strong support for a number of countries whose human rights records were not stellar, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. With Egypt, peace with Israel was understandably his priority.  With the Saudis, it was oil — especially, given the memory of the 1973 oil embargo, his fear of another one, and the gas lines that emerged along with the Iran-Iraq war in 1980.

President Biden now plans to visit Saudi Arabia when he travels to the Middle East next month. His visit is drawing criticism. His critics see him giving the Saudis a pass and rehabilitating its Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, without creating accountability for the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The murder was horrific. President Trump should not have dismissed it the way he did, and could have imposed a price without rupturing relations. 

However, those who criticize President Biden now for his upcoming visit, act as if there are no other considerations. There are.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a seismic event internationally. Imposing an unmistakable cost on Russia requires doing as much as we can to deny it the oil revenues that help sustain its war effort — one that Vladimir Putin acts as if he can win through attrition and outlasting Ukraine. But getting as much Russian oil off the market as possible also drives up the price and requires expansion of oil production to make up some of the loss. The only country in the world with any significant spare oil production capacity is Saudi Arabia. 

Russia’s war reminds us that there is no such thing as oil independence so long as there is one oil/ energy market globally and its disruption produces a much higher oil price for us and everyone else. Five dollars a gallon here is a testament to that. Yes, real independence will come when renewables take the place of fossil fuels, but we are decades away from that reality, with the peak of oil consumption probably still 10-15 years from now. Just as Jimmy Carter understood that Saudi Arabia was important to us, so, now we must be mindful of that as well.

Of course, there are other oil-producing states like Iran and Venezuela whose oil could be added to the market if sanctions were lifted against them. But just as we do not want to sustain Russia’s aggression with its oil revenues, both Iran and Venezuela are under sanctions for good reasons, including their support for terror and the threats they pose to their regional orders. Saudi Arabia is not a revisionist state, trying to upend the regional and international orders. Both Iran and Venezuela are. (In the case of Iran, when it is increasingly removing the IAEA’s ability to monitor its nuclear program, installing two new cascades of advanced centrifuges, enriching to near weapons grade, and reducing its break-out time, this is not the moment to give them an infusion of cash by permitting their oil back on the market.)

Precisely because we are in a longer-term competition now with Russia and China, we need to broaden the coalition of states that will work with us. Yes, we start with the other democracies, but we also need states that are not revisionist states, like the Saudis, to be part of the coalition. Their resources matter and alienating them is not smart, especially given what is at stake in this competition — whether we can preserve a rules-based system or Russia succeeds (with China’s tacit support) in redefining the international landscape so:

borders are not inviolate and force is legitimate to change them;

bigger nations can impose on smaller nations and have a right to a sphere of influence in which they dictate both the internal and external policies of the states and peoples within them; and

targeting civilians is deliberate with the aim of terrorizing, demoralizing, and depopulating. 

Preventing these from becoming the basis of a new international (dis)order is both an interest and a value. In a similar vein, when President Biden speaks of going to Saudi Arabia, he speaks of promoting peace. He clearly wants to foster a normalization process between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In discussions I just had in the Kingdom, it was very clear that Saudis believe relations with Israel are inevitable and not just because of their common fears of Iran but because the Saudis want to build a resilient, knowledge-based economy and see Israel as a natural partner. Such a partnership would be good for those who want to build a more hopeful Middle East. (It also could be part of a plan to break the stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians since for every public step the Saudis take toward the Israelis, they could ask the Israelis to take a step toward the Palestinians.)

None of this requires us to forego our concern for human rights.

The Saudis should know what will trigger public responses from us. We should establish boundaries in the relationship and a “no surprises” understanding with them. Today’s international challenges give us a stake in Saudi Arabia — a stake that involves both our interests and our values.

Dennis Ross is counselor and the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as special assistant to President Obama, as Special Middle East Coordinator under President Clinton, and as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the first Bush administration. He is the author, with David Makovsky, of “Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny.” Follow him on Twitter @AmbDennisRoss

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State Department adviser: Conditions are different from when Obama called gas tax holiday a ‘gimmick’

A State Department official defended President Biden’s decision to urge Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for the summer as a measure of relief for the public. 

Amos Hochstein, the senior adviser for global energy security in the department, told CNN’s John Berman on Wednesday that current conditions are different from when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama called a gas tax holiday a “gimmick” when running for president. 

Obama said in April 2008 as the Great Recession was underway and gas prices soared that approving a temporary relief period is not the answer to rising costs. 

“We’re arguing over a gimmick to save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say that they did something,” Obama said at the time. 

Hochstein said Biden’s act on Wednesday calling on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax for three months is what the federal government can do to give “breathing room” to the American people. 

The federal government currently levies an 18.4-cent tax on gas and 24.4-cent tax on diesel fuel. Biden’s announcement comes as gas prices have risen sharply as a result of lingering supply disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the embargos that countries have put in place in response. 

Hochstein said the cost of a gallon of gas has increased by about $2 since Russian forces amassed on Ukraine’s border and invaded in the country in February. He said these conditions put the country in “unprecedented times” and Biden has said he would do what he can to reduce the price of gas. 

Hochstein added that Biden is also urging governors to do what they can to suspend state-level gas taxes or turn to other measures like partial refunds. He said the average state tax on gasoline is about 30 cents, so consumers could see a 50-cent cut in the price if states act as Biden is urging the federal government to.

The gas tax holiday proposal received criticism from a member of the president’s party as Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) posted on Twitter that he’s happy that Biden to looking for ways to lower the cost of gas but that suspending gas taxes, which he said pays for infrastructure projects, is a “shortsighted and inefficient way to provide relief.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Why Latinos need sensible gun safety legislation

It was just last week that senators agreed on a bipartisan framework for gun safety. Republicans and Democrats came together to support a narrow series of reforms including enhanced background checks for gun buyers under age 21, funding for mental health resources, and provisions to help states create red-flag laws (aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who are deemed a danger to themselves or others).

While the fate of the bill seemed unclear, it passed a procedural hurdle yesterday with 14 Republican votes.

There is no doubt that Latinos need gun reform measures.

Latino communities know too well the horror and trauma of gun violence, and we are uniquely positioned to play a role in this debate. Majorities of Latinos favor increased gun safety regulations, and such measures are supported by Latino civic and advocacy groups. To continue to thrive as the country’s largest racial/ethnic minority group, Latinos need meaningful gun safety reform.  

Collectively and individually, Latinos have been subjected to gun violence. The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, took place in a predominantly Mexican American town. In 2019, a white supremacist concerned about what he saw as the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” carried out the massacre in an El Paso Wal-Mart. In 2016, most of the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., were Latino. In 2020, a gunman targeted a Latina federal judge, killing her son and wounding her husband.  

As if these incidents were not horrifying enough, consider the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as analyzed by the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Each year, over 4,100 Latinos die from gun violence in the U.S., an average of 11 per day, while 13,300 Latinos are shot and wounded annually. Latino children and teens are three times more likely to be killed by gun homicide than their white peers. In short, our communities are disproportionately affected by our nation’s lack of common-sense gun measures. 

That’s why most Latinos are ready to change our gun laws. A June Quinnipiac survey found that 58 percent of Latinos support stricter gun laws, while 96 percent of Latinos favor requiring background checks for all gun buyers. The Pew Research Center reported last year that 81 percent of Latinos say that gun violence is a big problem. Latinos are rejecting the empty sentiment of “thoughts and prayers” for victims of gun violence; instead, our communities are saying “Enough is enough.” 

Recognizing this, leading Latino civic and advocacy groups have called for Congress to pass gun safety legislation. Groups like UnidosUS, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and the Hispanic Federation have demanded action from lawmakers in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy. These groups understand the toll that gun violence has taken on Latino families and communities. As a statement by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus noted, “To our colleagues against common sense gun violence prevention reform, how many more lives until you act?” 

True, not all Latinos favor tightening our gun laws. In 2020, CNN reported that some Latinos were buying guns to feel safer, and the gun industry has been marketing to Latinos, stressing the defensive use of firearms. But the Violence Policy Center reports that having a gun in the home is actually more likely to lead to homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. And lawmakers can uphold the Second Amendment as well as the regulation of the militia that is mentioned in the amendment. An individual’s constitutional right to bear arms must be balanced with the public’s need for safety. 

If there are objections to the Senate gun safety bill, they should be over what the bill does not include: There are no provisions for expanded background checks for all gun buyers, or for banning possession of a military-style assault weapons. To counter the GOP’s pro-gun messaging and make these reforms possible, Democrats need to engage in more outreach on gun safety geared towards Latinos. 

We know that Congress can act quickly when it wants to. On Thursday, President Biden signed a bill into law that bolsters protection for Supreme Court justices and their families. Don’t children deserve protection too, so that they — and the nation — don’t have to dread another school shooting? 

For too long, Latinos and other Americans have been harmed by our country’s epidemic of gun violence. If the current attempt at passing gun safety legislation passes, it deserves to be seen as a first step towards addressing an American public health crisis.

Raul Reyes is an immigration attorney and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, he is also a contributor to NBCNews.com and CNN Opinion. You can follow him on Twitter at @RaulAReyes, Instagram: raulareyes1.

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Watch live: Biden to call for suspending federal gas tax

President Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks Wednesday on suspending the federal gas tax as a means of helping consumes with high gas prices and inflation.

His remarks will begin at 2 p.m. ET.

Watch the live video above.

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What a simple balance test may say about your overall health

A simple balance test may be a reliable indicator of a person’s overall risk of death and could be useful to include in routine health checks for middle-aged and older men and women, according to new research. 

A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine this week suggests the inability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds in middle to later life is associated with a higher risk of death from any cause within the next decade, leading the study’s authors to call for the test to be included in routine physical exams for people starting in their fifties, when balance begins to wane. 

Balance tests are typically not included in yearly examinations, even for older adults, as there aren’t any standardized tests and few data linking it to clinical outcomes other than falls, according to the study. 

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The study looked at 1,702 people from Brazil — about two thirds of whom were men — aged 51 to 75 between 2009 and 2020 with stable gait. Participants were asked to balance unsupported on one leg during an initial check. To standardize the test, researchers then asked participants to place the front of their free foot on the back of the standing lower leg while keeping their arms by their sides and eyes fixed straight ahead. Up to three attempts on either foot were allowed. 

Overall, 1 in 5 participants failed to pass the test and the inability to do so unsurprisingly increased with age. More than half of participants aged 71-75 were unable to complete the test. 

Those who failed the balance test generally had conditions such as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. 

Over a seven year monitoring period, 123 participants died from causes including cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and COVID-19 complications, and researchers found 4.5 percent of those who could successfully stand on one leg died, compared with more than 17 percent of participants who failed the test. 

The inability to successfully complete the test was associated with an 84 percent heightened risk of death from any cause within the next decade, when accounting for age, sex and underlying health conditions. 

Researchers note that the study was observational and doesn’t demonstrate cause and effect, but said the test “adds useful information regarding mortality risk in middle-aged and older men and women.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

ARPA-H must think differently and leverage technology

The Biden administration has announced the formation of the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an organization that will be housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the mission of bringing to medicine the kind of breakthrough research ideas and methods that led to the advent of the internet and GPS. 

While innovation is desperately needed in medical care — and DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense agency that ARPA-H is modeled after, offers a compelling model — the past two years of the pandemic have revealed that the focus of ARPA-H should be radically different than what is being proposed. 

While nascent, the current plans for ARPA-H are to invest in research for cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, among other illnesses. This disease-oriented approach may yield new drugs, detection methods, and therapeutics for conditions that already have significant research funding and investigation underway at the NIH. It would not change the sobering fact that the United States ranks 42nd in life expectancy worldwide, has the highest suicide,  infant and maternal mortality rate among industrialized nations, and has alarming disparities in health among Blacks, Hispanics, Indigenous Americans, and other marginalized communities, with a 20-year longevity gap based on where you live — your zip code, not your genetic code. In fact, as we saw with the groundbreaking COVID-19 vaccines, medical innovations on their own — without the public health infrastructure in place to effectively deploy them — risk leaving vulnerable communities behind and worsening health inequities. 

Instead, ARPA-H must fund breakthrough public health technologies that can improve health outcomes and equity today and modernize our public health infrastructure for decades to come. Here are five such examples: 

1. Pandemic response and surveillance: A key to mitigating COVID-19 was “last-mile” delivery innovations such as drive-through testing and pop-up vaccine clinics, but we could go much further. Right now we lack accurate COVID case counts because at-home tests are costly and lack connectivity to public health departments. ARPA-H could fund second-generation at-home tests that are far less expensive to produce and are connected. It could also fund new vaccine delivery modalities such as vaccine patches that could be self-administered, simplifying their administration and potentially decreasing vaccine hesitancy. 
2. Mental health crisis: Less than half of people with mental illness receive appropriate treatment ), and deaths of despair including drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism are leading causes of mortality in the United States, with alarmingly high rates in young people. The PHQ-9, the most widely used screening tool for depression developed over two decades ago, fails to diagnose 12-15 percent of people with this illness and requires a healthcare professional to administer, a barrier for at least one-quarter of Americans. ARPA-H could fund breakthrough technologies to analyze data collected from smartphones, voice calls and text messages and generate signals that people may be depressed, anxious or at risk for suicidal or homicidal behavior. It could also fund new interventions that improve mental health resilience and help address mental illnesses such as depression, PTSD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using technologies such as digital avatars and mental health coaches trained with evidence-based best practices to help augment our depleted mental health workforce. 
3. Disease prevention and behavior change: The tripling in obesity rates over the past two decades may result in the first generation of Americans who are not as healthy as their parents. ARPA-H could address obesity and type 2 diabetes at a population level by funding artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for health designed for and by vulnerable communities and, for individuals on the other side of the digital divide, community health workers who support people in their homes and neighborhoods using advanced decision support software. 
4. Social determinants of health: Forty percent of health outcomes in America are driven by social determinants of health — factors such as education, housing, transportation and food security that are upstream of the traditional healthcare system. The problem is multifactorial, but one challenge is matching an individual’s needs with available social services. During the pandemic, we learned that we can program mRNA into vaccines but can’t help people figure out where to get vaccinated or tested in their neighborhoods. The same kind of information gap exists for finding housing and legal aid, food banks, low-cost transportation, and medication assistance programs. ARPA-H could invest in mapping community resources digitally so accurate data is available to any healthcare provider or person looking to address an individual’s social needs and help overcome barriers to healthcare.  
5. Public health communication: COVID-19 exposed how mistrust and misinformation can hinder the most advanced medical breakthroughs. ARPA-H could invest in harnessing new social media tools and advanced analytics to help public health professionals identify and break chains of transmission and contain “outbreaks of misinformation” while delivering effective prevention messages at scale. Additionally, there is an estimated 17-year science-to-service gap in the dissemination of research findings into clinical practice. In the Digital Age, this should be a nanosecond. ARPA-H can develop innovative strategies to speed the adoption of best practices.  

ARPA-H holds tremendous promise but as COVID-19 has laid bare, we can’t afford to keep doing more of the same. NIH should adopt more of DARPA’s high-risk, high-reward strategies for transformative solutions in funding some of its disease-oriented research. However, by focusing on underfunded problems that impact health across multiple diseases and require cross-agency as well as cross-sectoral collaboration, we can put the “H” in ARPA-H and advance health for all. 

Shantanu Nundy, MD, is a primary care physician in the safety net and Chief Medical Officer of Accolade. She is the author of “Care after Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It.”  

Susan J. Blumenthal, MD, MPA, is the senior policy and medical advisor at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, a senior fellow in health policy at New America, a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab, and a clinical professor at Georgetown and Tufts University Schools of Medicine. She is a former U.S. assistant surgeon general and a retired rear admiral.  

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