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Showing posts from January, 2018

Commentary: Utahns should be able to buy cheaper drugs from Canada

January 31, 2018

With an average starting price of $329, millions of Apple Watches have been purchased by Americans since the product was released. If you knew that you could buy the same Apple Watch for $23 from Canada, would you? I’m not talking about a counterfeit, or a generic knock-off, but the same genuine Apple Watch, manufactured in America and simply sold in Canada. Of course you would! And, if so, would you perhaps question the ethics of a company that could get away with charging Americans roughly 14 times more for the same product than it was charging Canadians? Though this question may sound hypothetical, it is not. It is precisely what occurs in the complex world of pharmaceuticals. Take a 10 ml vial of Humalog, a drug that people with diabetes use to treat blood sugar spikes. The U.S. list price is $329 — the same as the starting price of an Apple Watch. That same vial of Humalog in Canada has a list price of only $23. Keep in mind that we are not talking about a cheaper generic versi...

Commentary: God will watch the Super Bowl — not because he is a fan of a particular team, but because he is a fan of us

January 31, 2018

Twenty years ago this month I had a public theological disagreement with Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers. In addition to his significant role as defensive end for the Packers, who were soon to play in the Super Bowl, White was a Pentecostal preacher. Both of us — along with several other players and theologians — were interviewed for the Sports Illustrated cover story, “Does God Care Who Wins the Super Bowl?” Several of my theologian friends took the negative position on this. One of them even doubted that God cared about the game at all, and a couple of others were wary of any suggestion that God had anything to do with deciding who wins. Reggie White was a strong supporter of the idea of an active divine role in determining the outcome. What basis do the scholars have for thinking that God does not take sides? he asked. After all, he observed, “God intervened in David’s fight with Goliath.” And then there was the clear case of divine intervention “in Jesus’ victory over deat...

Pope Francis sends sex crimes expert to Chile to investigate bishop

January 31, 2018

Vatican City • After coming under excoriating public criticism, Pope Francis decided Tuesday to send the Vatican’s most respected sex crimes expert to Chile to investigate a bishop accused by victims of covering up for the country’s most notorious pedophile priest. The Vatican said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna would travel to Chile “to listen to those who have expressed the desire to provide elements” about the case of Bishop Juan Barros. The move marks the first known time the Vatican has launched a full-blown investigation into allegations of sex abuse cover-up, and it comes after Francis was harshly criticized by the media, survivors of abuse, his fellow Jesuits and some of his top advisers for his unwavering defense of Barros. The Barros controversy dominated Francis’ just-ended trip to Chile and Peru and exposed his blind spot about clerical abuse. Even the head of his abuse advisory panel, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, publicly rebuked him for his dismissive treatme...

American twins will have some sisterly company at Olympics

January 31, 2018

Just call it a sister thing. Whenever another hockey team has sisters on the rosters, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando take notice. Well, the U.S. Olympians are twins themselves. Combine that with how few sisters play hockey or reach national teams playing internationally, it's easy enough to notice whenever sisters are dressing up for another country. "It's just cool to see," Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson said. The Lamoureux sisters will have some sisterly company at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. Teammate Hannah Brandt's sister, Marissa, plays for the unified Korean women's team, and Switzerland has two sets of sisters on the roster with Nina, Isabel and Monika Waidacher, plus twins Laura and Sara Benz. Canada nearly had its own sister act with Sarah and Amy Potomak, though neither made the Olympic team. Being sisters definitely can provide an edge in hockey. "When we get the opportunity to be on the ice together, there's a ...

Commentary: No, thank you; I don't want to insure my pizza

January 31, 2018

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of quality time this past month on the couch, endlessly watching football games and losing the remote with every first down. So you ended up seeing a lot of ads with the sound on, and for the first time in a while you remembered just how dumb they are. The winner of my personal stupid prize: Domino’s “pizza carryout insurance,” which offers a free replacement if you somehow manage to destroy your pizza on the way home. This is just the latest in a long line of products that distort people’s understanding of what insurance should be. Somebody has to put their foot down, and that somebody is me. Let’s remind ourselves what insurance actually is. It’s protection against calamity. It’s something that pays out only in unusual circumstances — and sometimes never — but definitely only when you would not be able to afford the loss. If you can buy a pizza, pretty much by definition you can afford the loss of a pizza. You don’t need insurance. The same is...

Utah Rep. Chris Stewart tells MSNBC host that they ‘see the world differently’ because ‘men are from Mars and women are from Venus’

January 31, 2018

During an interview Tuesday on MSNBC, host Katy Tur asked Republican Rep. Chris Stewart whether President Donald Trump could be trying to purge FBI and Justice Department officials while his campaign is under investigation. The Utah congressman quickly dismissed her questions, suggesting that the two just “see the world differently.” “And this is one of those cases,” he went on, “where it’s just men are from Mars and women are from Venus.” Tur, cutting him off, appeared stunned. “I’m sorry. Hold on,” she said. “You think we see the world differently? I just laid out a number of facts.” “Well, let me respond to them,” Stewart countered. “People can say or look at things and claim facts or claim their interpretations of facts, but clearly they have different views on that.” The congressman, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, took heat for the reply on social media. “So her point was irrelevant bc she doesn’t understand your point bc she’s a woman?” asked one man. Someone...

On Basketball: Griffin trade shows NBA's current direction

January 31, 2018

The East is open for business. The West is closed until further notice. There's the takeaway from the deal where Blake Griffin got sent from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Detroit Pistons, and it may be a theme for the next week or so until the NBA trading deadline. The Pistons see opportunity to contend in the Eastern Conference, while the Clippers know the Western Conference is out of their reach and a full reboot is needed. They're both right. Other teams are surely thinking the same way. No rational person would look at the NBA right now and see a logical scenario where the champion this season is anyone besides Golden State or Houston. What Brad Stevens has done in Boston, especially after losing Gordon Hayward on opening night, is coach-of-the-year stuff. Toronto is better than most fans may realize. Cleveland has LeBron James, still the best player alive. Yet would anyone other than Celtics, Raptors or Cavaliers fans pick those teams to beat the Warriors or Rockets...

Utah Royals select three former Boston Breakers, plus the rights to a retired fourth in NWSL dispersal draft

January 31, 2018

The Utah Royals selected goalkeeper Abby Smith, forward Katie Stengel, defender Brooke Elby and the rights to retired midfielder Amanda DaCosta out of the pool of former Boston Breakers players available in the NWSL dispersal draft Tuesday. “You’re looking for players who can really impact your roster straight away,” Royals coach Laura Harvey told The Salt Lake Tribune. “...We’d identified three players we really wanted, and those are the three players that we got. So we were super happy about it.” When the Breakers ceased operations Saturday, the draft was launched to reassign the defunct team’s players to clubs around the league. The NWSL will continue with nine teams for the 2018 season. Utah, which acquired the rights to the FC Kansas City players when that team folded in November, was one of just three teams to make four or more selections in the dispersal draft. The Royals selected Smith with the No. 5 overall pick. Smith, 24, recorded three shutouts in 19 matches last season...

Tribal leaders slam Utah Rep. Curtis’ bill to redraw of Bears Ears, say management plan is tribal ‘in name only’

January 31, 2018

Tribal leaders are blasting Rep. John Curtis over a bill he contends would empower them to manage the new Shash Jaa National Monument, the 130,000-acre preserve President Donald Trump carved out of the former Bears Ears National Monument. Appearing before a House committee Tuesday, Navajo President Russell Begaye said his tribe was never consulted about Curtis’ proposal, which seeks to write into law Trump’s Dec. 4 action dismantling Bears Ears into two smaller monuments covering just 15 percent of the 1.35 million-acre monument that President Barack Obama designated in southeast Utah at the request of five Indian tribes. Despite that, Begaye told members of Congress, the bill uses the Navajo word for “bears ears” in its title: “Shash Jaa.” “In addition to providing a misleading bill name to suggest the Navajo nation supports the bill, HR4532 also misleadingly states its purpose is to create the first tribally managed national monument,” Begaye told the House Natural Resources Com...

Utah State guard Sam Merrill is happy to be a stopper, but it is his offense that is helping carry the Aggies this season

January 31, 2018

Leadership comes naturally to some on the basketball court ,and Utah State fans are gradually starting to understand that Sam Merrill might just be one of those guys. The Bountiful native didn’t come to Logan with McDonald’s All-America accolades, and it wasn’t through speaking his mind that Merrill has emerged as a player teammates look for direction. Only a sophomore for the Aggies, Merrill’s initial value was as a defensive player — one who could put the clamps on the opposition’s best perimeter scorer. But this season, when times have been tough for almost every Aggie when it comes to putting the ball in the hoop, Merrill has been the most consistent scorer on the squad and has kept the 12-11 Aggies from going into prolonged offensive slumps. “He’s really a servant-leader. I mean that is Sam Merrill to a tee,” Utah State coach Tim Duryea said. “He helps everybody else and guys see that. And that’s what makes him a leader,” Duryea said. “You know, he’ll jump up and be vocal whe...

Salt Lake City man charged with murder in stabbing death of his stepfather

January 31, 2018

Charles Anthony Petrie of Salt Lake City was charged Tuesday with murder for allegedly stabbing his stepfather to death Saturday afternoon. John Richard “Johnny” Postlethwait was found on his bed in a large pool of blood with a knife in his hand, according to a probable cause statement. Postlethwait removed the knife from his chest after Petrie’s brother pulled him off Postlethwait, their stepfather. According to the statement, Petrie, 30, and Postlethwait, 54, got into a verbal altercation the night before. Afterward, Petrie made a comment to his brother, Nathan Petrie, about “shanking” or “sticking” Postlethwait. Charles Petrie had been released from jail the day before the stabbing and was on probation for an aggravated assault charge from 2016, stemming from an altercation where he allegedly choked his brother’s girlfriend. According to the brother, Nathan Petrie, Charles Petrie exhibited normal behavior Saturday morning following the Friday altercation. He was joking around a...

'Person of interest' redacted from Vegas shooting records

January 31, 2018

Las Vegas • Search warrant records unsealed Tuesday show that in the first hours after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Las Vegas police and FBI agents identified two people of interest along with the lone gunman, Stephen Paddock. The name of one of those people is blacked out in the court records released to The Associated Press. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, citing police documents, identified that person as Douglas Haig. He could not immediately be reached by the AP. The other person is Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley. She was in the Philippines at the time of the attack and is cooperating with investigators. Authorities have said she’s not likely to face criminal charges. Authorities previously said an unnamed person could face unspecified charges in the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and injured more than 800 others on the Las Vegas Strip. The records were obtained after media organizations including the AP sued to unseal court records and aut...

Sex trafficking will continue until underlying economic causes are identified, expert says at Utah symposium

January 31, 2018

The trafficking of young people for sex is something that goes mostly unspoken, yet it is prevalent worldwide and in Salt Lake City. Without identifying the underlying causes, human trafficking will continue unabated, said Claude d’Estree at the 4 th Annual Human Trafficking Symposium Friday at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney School of Law. Traditionally, law enforcement has approached the phenomenon with prosecution, protection and prevention — the three Ps — said d’Estree of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. And often, the discussions focus on international trafficking. But localities should be considering causes and conditions that lead to trafficking, d’Estree said, as well as cures for the prevailing attitudes and economics that underwrite it. He dubbed them the three Cs. “The causes and conditions are often unique to a community and therefore the cures are different,” he said. “The cure for trafficking in Albania, India and ...

Utah man gets prison time for setting up cameras in LDS church bathrooms

January 31, 2018

A Utah man will spend up to five years in prison for setting up cameras in bathrooms at two Magna Mormon churches and secretly recording underage girls. James Steven Larsen, 40, also recorded family members at their Salt Lake County homes, according to court documents. Larsen told police a female relative was his “target,” but that he also wanted to “just catch whomever.” He pleaded guilty to three counts of voyeurism, a third-degree felony, in December and was sentenced Tuesday by 3rd District Judge Richard McKelvie to up to five years in prison for each count, according to court documents. The prison terms will run concurrently. Larsen was arrested in February 2017 in St. George after people renting a home in the city found a camera hidden behind a toilet and another hidden behind a trashcan in an upstairs bathroom and called police. The cameras were arranged so they could record someone as they got into the shower and while they showered, according to court documents. When the ...