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Tribune News Service
News Budget for papers of Sunday, February 9, 2020
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Updated at 2 p.m. EST (1900 UTC).
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These stories are recommended for weekend release, except where embargoes are noted. Please make sure you are adhering to embargoes on our stories in both your print and online operations.
This budget is now available at TribuneNewsService.com, with direct links to stories and art. See details at the end of the budget.
^TOP STORIES<
^Who's killing horses in Central Florida? A mystery terrifies owners<
FLA-HORSE-KILLINGS:PT _ The Rottweilers' barking woke Brena Kramer in the darkest part of the January morning, but it was when they fell silent that she got worried. They were chasing something.
She stepped onto the big screened porch and looked toward the barn. Across the yard, she heard an unusual sound _ one of the horses shuffling anxiously in his stall.
Five years earlier, Kramer had turned this property into her dream: a horse rehabilitation center.
They'd need to be fed soon, so she crossed the backyard. She kept the barn lights off _she could go by feel and save electricity. She worked her way around the stalls until she came to the last horse, Gus.
Kramer reached up to feed Gus and kicked a hay bag. Her senses lit up: She'd left the bag hanging on a hook in Gus' stall. She flipped on the lights, and the whole scene hit her at once: Gus was bound by ropes to two sides of his stall.
She called the Pasco County Sheriff's Office and told deputies what she thought had happened. Someone had tried to kill her horses.
2450 by Jack Evans in Zephyrhills, Fla. MOVED
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^WASHINGTON<
^Why many organic farmers 'didn't notice the trade war'<
TRADEWAR-ORGANICFARMERS:SH _ Michigan farmer Joel Layman hesitates before he just comes out with it. "I feel a little bad saying this: My farm didn't notice the trade war."
Layman grows certified organic vegetables, dry edible beans and grain crops on the organic portion of his 2,100-acre farm in Berrien Center, a township in southwest Michigan.
"We have a little more autonomy," Layman said of organic farmers. "I'm not reliant upon the world market. I'm relying on my neighbor who's my customer."
Layman's peers in one of the fastest-growing sectors of American agriculture generally agree: While President Donald Trump's trade war with China has dominated conversation among conventional farmers, organic farmers have had the luxury of focusing on other things.
1050 (with trims) by April Simpson in Washington. MOVED
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^POLITICS<
^In coal country, Trump holds sway despite failing to revive industry<
COALCOUNTRY-POLITICS:LA _ More than 600 feet underground in the Appalachian region of southwestern Pennsylvania, it's almost like John Morecraft, a 45-year-old history teacher turned coal miner, is back in a classroom.
Several of his former high school students work in the mine, still calling him Mr. Morecraft, or coach. Some of the older men who never got much of an education look to him to explain current events.
And when it comes to presidential politics these days, in the words of another miner, "It's pretty much Trump all the way."
In 2016, Donald Trump won a whopping 68% of the votes here in Greene County, compared with Hillary Clinton's 28%.
But as recently as 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain split the vote evenly in the county, which has a total of four working coal mines and a population of about 36,000. And before that, the area was a dependable Democratic stronghold in the state.
What lies beneath the enormous shift over the last decade _ and its endurance despite Trump's mostly failed promises to bring back coal _ contains a somber warning for Democrats, and not just in coal country.
1550 (with trims) by Don Lee in Waynesburg, Pa. MOVED
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^UNITED STATES<
^75 years after Auschwitz was liberated, she returned with her family for one last ritual <
HOLOCAUST-SURVIVOR:PH _ In the breath between before and after, Anita Lewinski saw this was the end, and searched for her small goodbye. Their train had stopped at the gate of death.
It was October 1944. They were Jews.
The rail car had a window, by chance. Outside, the vast camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau sprawled across more than 400 acres of Poland's southern countryside. Vacant eyes stared through barbed wire and barking dogs fought the leash. On the train, shock spread from face to face, reality replacing the long-whispered rumor.
Anneliese Winterberg was just 15. Anita was a few days shy of 30, more a beloved big sister than an aunt. Anneliese watched her dig into a bag, looking resolute.
Seconds ticked by, then she found it.
Anita had been saving it for when this day came. She gave a piece to her older sister, Irmgard Winterberg, another to Anneliese, Irmgard's daughter. She kept one for herself.
Before SS guards ordered them out, yelling "Raus! Raus!" and before Auschwitz-Birkenau, the dreaded taker took them in, a rare piece of chocolate held back the chaos.
3000 by Jason Nark in Philadelphia. MOVED
PHOTOS
^Good rehab is hard to find<
ADDICTION-REHAB:KHN _ Pattie Vargas saw with frightening clarity that her son Joel, 25 at the time, had a life-threatening drug problem. He came home one day in 2007 "high as a kite," went to bed and slept four days straight, Vargas, now a 65-year-old resident of Vacaville, Calif., recalls.
As Joel lay listless, a terrified Vargas realized her son needed help, but she didn't quite know where to start. She searched online and dialed the number of a treatment center she found.
The person who answered said reassuring things, walked her through the options, then sent a man to lead an intervention at the family's home in Escondido, Calif. The intervention ended with Joel reluctantly climbing into the guy's car and being whisked away to residential treatment in Laguna Beach, about 60 miles away.
Vargas was relieved to see her middle child head off to treatment _ even though the 30-day program cost $39,000. Little did she suspect it was only the beginning of an ultimately fruitless cycle of rehab and relapse.
1250 (with trims) by Bernard J. Wolfson. MOVED
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^BEST OF NEWSFEATURES<
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These stories moved earlier in the week and are suitable for weekend publication.
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^When aid-in-dying is legal, but the medicine is out of reach<
AIDINDYING:KHN _ The call came the last week of September, when Neil Mahoney could still stagger from his bed to the porch of his mobile home to let out his boisterous yellow Lab, Ryder.
Rodney Diffendaffer, a clinical pharmacist in Longmont, 45 miles away, had left a message.
Your prescription is ready, it said.
Mahoney, a once-rugged outdoorsman now reduced to bones, his belly swollen with incurable cancer, sighed with relief. After months of obstacles, the frail 64-year-old finally had access to lethal drugs under Colorado's 2016 End of Life Options Act, one of a growing number of U.S. state laws that allow terminally ill patients to obtain medications to end their lives.
Even as an increasing number of U.S. states have legalized aid-in-dying laws, exercising that option is challenging for patients in a country where most large hospital systems have deep religious ties and the religious right is powerful.
2150 by JoNel Aleccia in Golden, Colo. MOVED
PHOTOS
^Conceived through 'fertility fraud,' she now needs fertility treatment<
MED-FERTILITY-TREATMENT:KHN _ When Heather Woock was in her late 20s, she started researching her family history. As part of the project, she spit into a tube and sent it to Ancestry, a consumer DNA testing service. Then, in 2017, she started getting messages about the results from people who said they could be half siblings.
"I immediately called my mom and said, 'Mom, is it possible that I have random siblings out there somewhere?'" said Woock, of Indianapolis. She recalled her mom responded, "No, why? That's ridiculous."
But the messages continued, and some of them mentioned an Indianapolis fertility practice that she knew her mom had consulted when she had trouble conceiving.
Woock researched and finally learned the truth. Dr. Donald Cline, the fertility doctor her mother saw in 1985, is her biological father.
For Woock, as the story of her parentage sunk in, it was distressing for another reason: She wanted to start her own family and was having trouble conceiving. And now she needed to turn to the fertility industry that had so badly betrayed her mom.
1550 by Lauren Bavis and Jake Harper. MOVED
PHOTOS
^He says his mass shooting threat was a joke. His case may answer whether such posts are a crime<
FLA-SHOOTING-THREAT:FL _ David Puy headed out to meet friends for dinner in West Boca. "On my way! School shooter," he wrote in a Snapchat post with his photo.
The next day, when detectives asked about the reported threat, he admitted: "I wasn't thinking."
Just three months after the Parkland massacre, it also wasn't smart, Puy's lawyer concedes. But did the 19-year-old really commit a crime?
The case promises to have widespread implications beyond Puy's felony prosecution. It's become the first major test of a law strengthened partly in response to the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
At issue: Just what makes a written threat illegal? And are all young people and others who make fake threats about mass shootings _ it happens on a fairly regular basis _ in serious trouble?
1900 (with trims) by Marc Freeman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. MOVED
PHOTOS
^Beyond burnout: Doctors decry 'moral injury' from financial pressures of health care<
MEDICALWORKERS-BURNOUT:KHN _ Dr. Keith Corl was working in a Las Vegas emergency room when a patient arrived with chest pain. The patient, wearing his street clothes, had a two-minute exam in the triage area with a doctor, who ordered an X-ray and several other tests. But later, in the treatment area, when Corl met the man and lifted his shirt, it was clear the patient had shingles. Corl didn't need any tests to diagnose the viral infection that causes a rash and searing pain.
All those tests? They turned out to be unnecessary and left the patient with more than $1,000 in extra charges.
The excessive testing, Corl said, stemmed from a model of emergency care that forces doctors to practice "fast and loose medicine." Patients get a battery of tests before a doctor even has time to hear their story or give them a proper exam.
The shingles case is one of hundreds of examples that have led to his exasperation and burnout with emergency medicine.
1700 (with trims) by Melissa Bailey. MOVED
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^Analysis: A big issue voters might be missing<
HEALTHCARE-POLITICS-ANALYSIS:CON _ Democrats who say they are determined to keep voters focused on health care this year were hoping that the Supreme Court would hand them a ready-made campaign ad and a potential courtroom win.
Instead, the court recently punted on a major decision over whether to kill the 2010 health care law that expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans. Now, Democrats hope that by shifting their attention to high prescription drug prices they might still mobilize voters and help the party maintain its edge on health care, the public's top domestic concern, although Republicans also are focused on drug prices.
850 by Mary Ellen McIntire in Washington. MOVED
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^SPECIAL REPORT: IMPAIRED SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS<
^Drunken school bus drivers put kids' lives at risk<
IMPAIRED-SCHOOLBUS-DRIVERS-1:SH _ Nationwide, more than 1,620 schoolchildren in 38 states have been placed in harm's way since 2015 by bus drivers arrested or cited for allegedly driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs _ a situation that despite its dangers goes largely untracked by government officials, a Stateline investigation has found.
School transportation groups point out that school buses are the safest means for students to get to school, and most drivers would never put children at risk. None of these incidents resulted in a bus driver or passenger fatality, and most of the students were not injured.
But highway safety advocates say officials need to do a better job monitoring drivers entrusted with children's lives.
2750 by Jenni Bergal in Dayton, Tenn. MOVED
PHOTOS, GRAPHIC
^The danger of impaired school bus drivers _ and what states are doing about it<
IMPAIRED-SCHOOLBUS-DRIVERS-2:SH _ After school bus driver Carole Ann Etheridge dropped off 31 middle and high school students in Walton County, Ga., one August morning in 2017, she was summoned to the principal's office.
A worried parent had contacted the school system after getting a text from her child on the bus, who said Etheridge was driving erratically and had crossed the center line into oncoming traffic.
The school resource officer, Walton Sheriff's Office Lt. Charlie Rodriguez, gave Etheridge an initial breath test that showed she had a blood alcohol level of .089 _ more than twice the legal limit for commercial drivers.
The Etheridge case was one of 118 since 2015 that Stateline identified in which a school bus driver was arrested or cited by police on suspicion of driving a bus impaired by alcohol or drugs. Hundreds of other drivers have failed random testing while on duty.
Government officials and transportation safety advocates have considered a variety of strategies to tackle the issue of impaired school bus drivers.
2850 by Jenni Bergal. MOVED
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