It's not health care that will be the hottest issue in Congress when lawmakers return Sept. 8 from their summer vacation. Far more incendiary is the U.S. Postal Service plan to shutter as many as 4,800 neighborhood post offices and other mail facilities nationwide.
Already, communities are up in arms, signing petitions and writing their congressmen to demand that their branches remain open. So far, the Postal Service has showed it's willing to reconsider at least some of its targeted sites, though it also insists that drastic action is needed to keep the postal system afloat.
In the House, one bill awaits that would force the Postal Service to hold hearings and supply detailed justification for any proposed closing or consolidation, much like the military services must do before they are allowed to close a base. Another would free the agency from the yoke of pre-funding future retirees' health benefits.
Don't be surprised if the outcome is that the Postal Service keeps most of the branches open in exchange for cutting delivery from six days a week to five.
The U.S. State Department is not having much success in helping nearly 150 Turkmen students -- recipients of scholarships from the U.S. government and other American donors -- who are being barred by the authoritarian regime in Turkmenistan from leaving the country to return to college.
The students were studying at the American University of Central Asia, located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and returned home to their nearby nation of Turkmenistan for summer break. When they got ready to go back to school, Turkmen officials refused to let them leave.
The justification, according to supporters of the shanghaied students: those with liberal-arts degrees are useless in helping build a better Turkmenistan. The supporters say the real reason is that the government, considered one of the most repressive on the globe, doesn't want its minions to get so much unfettered education that they might spawn an opposition movement.
The State Department, which classifies Turkmenistan as a police state, has quietly tried to help the students, but to no avail, supporters say.
Kudzu, the invasive imported vine that has overgrown nearly 10 million acres across the southeastern United States, is about as quintessentially Southern as sweet tea and fried whatever.
So it's perhaps appropriate that scientists from Alabama and Iowa are finding evidence that an extract from kudzu root shows promise as a dietary supplement to help curb metabolic syndrome, a perfect storm of cholesterol, blood pressure and other symptoms that makes 50 million Americans -- including many Southerners -- more prone to heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
BTW: People in Asia, where the weeds came from in the first place, have used the roots as a health food for hundreds of years.
Your tax money at work: The city of Memphis this past week got about $1 million in federal bucks to spruce up "Elvis Presley Boulevard" outside The King's Graceland mansion as a way to enhance the tourist experience, the Commercial Appeal newspaper reports.
And you're also now going to be paying between $39 and $64 a day for meals for each federal government employee who's on the road on official business, according to an announcement from the U.S. General Services Administration, which sets the "per diem" rates for lodging, meals and incidental expenses allowed when traveling.
The old rates -- between $31 and $61 -- hadn't been increased since 2006, GSA said. The variation comes from the differing costs-of-living nationwide.
(SHNS science and health correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com and Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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