Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/465892
Newsfeed FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. Floridahaseclipsed California to become the state with the high- est number of consum- ers buying health cover- age through new insur- ance markets under the Affordable Care Act, ac- cording to federal statis- tics released Wednesday. Florida's roughly 1.6 million enrollees include both first time enrollees and some of the nearly 1 million Floridians who enrolled last year. Cal- ifornia led the country last year with 1.2 million consumers, but lagged behind this year with a total of 1.4 million — 300,000 fewer than the state's goal. The state has struggled to target hard-to reach popula- tions including Latinos. Florida's enrollment win comes despite sig- nificant Republican op- position in the state and a much smaller popu- lation than California, which has embraced the law, spent millions on outreach efforts, and es- tablished its own state exchange. AFFORDABLE CARE ACT Floridahashighest number of enrollees under health law UPPER ARLINGTON, OHIO Too busy to stop in for an Ash Wednesday ser- vice? Some churches are offering drive-by ashes. Clergy at Advent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Upper Arling- ton, Ohio, applied ash to the foreheads of anyone who stopped in the park- ing lot of the church for two hours Wednesday. It's the first time the church offered the drive- by service, said the Rev. Aaron Layne. The con- gregation supported it, he told The Columbus Dispatch, although some comments on Facebook criticized him for cheap- ening the observance that marks the begin- ning of Lent for Chris- tians. Layne reasoned that it could be a first step back for some people who haven't been to church in years. ASH WEDNESDAY Churches offer drive-by ashes for busy Christians PHOENIX A watch col- lector spotted a rare Swiss timepiece in a Phoenix secondhand store, bought it on sale for $5.99 and then sold it for $35,000. Zach Norris said he went to a Goodwill store in January to look for a golf cart but took some time to peruse the watch section. Norris said he was ex- cited when he recog- nized the 1959 Jaeger- LeCoultre diving watch, he told KTVK-TV. PHOENIX Man sells watch he found at secondhand store for $35,000 By Josh Lederman The Associated Press WASHINGTON Muslims in the U.S. and around the world have a responsibil- ity to fight a misconcep- tion that terrorist groups like the Islamic State speak for them, President Barack Obama said Wednesday in his most direct remarks yet about any link between Is- lam and terrorism. For weeks, the White House has sidestepped the question of whether deadly terror attacks in Paris and other Western cities amount to "Islamic extremism," wary of offending a major world religion or lending credibility to the "war on terror" that his predeces- sor waged. But as he hosted a White House summit on countering violent extrem- ism, Obama said some in Muslim communities have bought into the notion that Islam is incompatible with tolerance and modern life. "We are not at war with Islam," Obama said. "We are at war with people who have perverted Islam." While putting the blame on IS and similar groups — Obama said the militants masquerade as religious leaders but are really ter- rorists — the president also appealed directly on prom- inent Muslims to do more to distance themselves from brutal ideologies. He said all individuals have a duty to "speak up very clearly" in opposition to violence against innocent people. "Just as leaders like my- self reject the notion that terrorists like ISIL genu- inely represent Islam, Mus- lim leaders need to do more than discredit the notion that our nations are deter- mined to suppress Islam," Obama said. Issuing such a direct challenge to Muslims marked a clear departure from the restrained, cau- tious language Obama and his aides have used to de- scribe the situation in the past. In the days after last month's shootings at a sa- tirical French newspa- per that had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, Obama avoided calling the attack an example of "Is- lamic extremism," and in- stead opted for the more generic "violent extrem- ism." Recently, the White House also struggled to ex- plain whether the U.S. be- lieves the Afghan Taliban to be a terrorist organization. That refusal to directly assess any Islamic role in the terrifying scenes play- ing out in Europe, the Mid- east and Africa has drawn criticism — especially from national security hawks, who argued the Obama counterterrorism strategy couldn't be successful if the president was unable or unwilling to confront what they considered the true nature of the threat. White House aides said they were avoiding associating the attacks with Islam for the sake of "accuracy" and to avoid lending credence to the terrorists' own justifica- tion for violence — a strict interpretation of Islam. "These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at the time. Yet the argument over terminology has increas- ingly become a distrac- tion, including this week as Obama gathered law en- forcement officials, Muslim leaders and lawmakers for a three-day summit on vi- olent extremism. In his re- marks Wednesday, Obama acknowledged it was a touchy subject but insisted it was critical to tackle the issue "head-on." "We can't shy away from these discussions," Obama said. "And too often, folks are understandably sensi- tive about addressing some of these root issues, but we have to talk about them honestly and clearly." WASHINGTON, D.C. Ob am a: U S no t at w ar w it h Is la m President says Muslim leaders need to do more to discredit notion of suppressing religious freedom THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Barack Obama pauses while speaking at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism. By Matthew Daly The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is desig- nating three new national monuments for protection as historic or ecologically significant sites, including the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago where African- American railroad workers won a historic labor agree- ment. The White House said Obama will be in his hometown Thursday to announce the Pullman Na- tional Monument. The neighborhood on the city's South Side was built by industrial- ist George Pullman in the 19th century for workers to manufacture luxurious railroad sleeping cars. The neighborhood was crucial in the African-American labor movement. Obama also is expected to announce designation of Honouliuli National Monument in Hawaii, the site of an internment camp where Japanese-Ameri- can citizens and prisoners of war were held during World War II; as well as Brown's Canyon National Monument in Colorado, a 21,000-acre site along the Arkansas River popular for whitewater rafting. The White House said the three new monuments "help tell the story of sig- nificant events in American history and protect unique natural resources for the benefit of all Americans." The three sites will bring to 16 the number of national monuments Obama has created under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which grants presidents broad authority to protect historic or ecologically sig- nificant sites without con- gressional approval. Some Republicans have complained that Obama has abused his authority, and they renewed their complaints over the new designations, especially the Colorado site, the larg- est by far in size among the three new monuments. Obamashould"cutitout," said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. "Heisnotking.Nomoreact- ing like King Barack." Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., said he was out- raged by what he called "a top-down, big-government land grab by the president that disenfranchises the concerned citizens in the Browns Canyon region." Designating Browns Canyon as a national mon- ument could have a devas- tating on grazing rights and water rights in the area, Lamborn said. The 203-acre Pullman site includes factories and buildings associated with the Pullman Palace Car Company, which was founded in 1867 and em- ployed thousands of work- ers to construct and pro- vide service on railroad cars. While the company employed a mostly white workforce to manufacture railroad passenger cars, it also hired former slaves to serve as porters, wait- ers and maids on its iconic sleeping cars. The railroad industry — and Pullman in partic- ular — was one of the larg- est employers of African- Americans in the United States by the early 1900s. HISTORIC SITES Obama to designate national monuments By Jeff Karoub The Associated Press The circumstances were horrific, but Zahra Billoo was greatly encouraged by the vigil marking the slay- ings of three young Mus- lims near the University of North Carolina. More than 150 people — Muslims and non-Mus- lims — attended the can- dlelit gathering at a busy intersection in Fremont, California. Similar events were popping up across the country — "glimmers of hope," said the Muslim activist, that in the wake of this tragedy her people were finding a stronger voice in American civic life. "Idon'tknowthatI'veever seen this many vigils come together this quickly and be so well attended," said Bil- loo, executive director of the CouncilonAmerican-Islamic Relations' San Francisco Bay Area chapter. "It gives me re- lief that the three young peo- ple in Chapel Hill inspired so much mobilization and love and activism." Being Muslim in America has always posed challenges — now more than ever. Scru- tiny and suspicion of Islam and its followers spiked af- ter the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and persist more than a dozen years later with backlash from subse- quent attacks and ongoing wars, chaos and instability throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Yet experts and advo- cates say Muslims are more organized and vocal in the wake of last week's tri- ple shootings, which have spurred scores of vigils and generated messages of sup- port from many quarters, including the White House. They credit the life stories of the victims and a connec- tion with movements that grew out of racially charged incidents of police force in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City and elsewhere. That's evident on social media, where widely used hashtags include #Chapel- HillShooting, #OurThree- Winners and #MuslimLives- Matter — the last inspired by the #BlackLivesMat- ter tag common in tweets about of unarmed black men at the hands of police. "There's a galvanizing over Ferguson — the civil rights issues have really kind of laid a roadmap for American Muslims to fol- low," said Dr. Muzammil Ahmed, a Detroit-area phy- sician who chairs the Mich- igan Muslim Community Council. The organization held a vigil last week for the North Carolina victims — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Moham- mad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 — as well as Christian aid worker Kayla Mueller, who died in Syria. Barakat and Abu-Salha met while helping to run a university Muslim group and planned to travel to Turkey this summer to pro- vide free dental care for Syr- ian refugee schoolchildren. In an interview broadcast last week by North Carolina Public Radio, Yusor Abu- Salha called growing up in the United States "such a blessing." "Although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hi- jab I wear on my head, the head covering, there's still so many ways I feel so em- bedded in the fabric that is our culture," she said. The fact that the victims were easy to relate to has amplified the reaction to their deaths, Billoo said. Zeinab Chami, a high school teacher in the heavily Arab-Muslim Detroit suburb of Dearborn, first learned of the slayings from one of her students, who shared a tweet about it before the story received widespread media attention. The news, she said, provided a "teach- able moment" and a time of shared grief for victims they didn't know but could none- theless recognize. "They look like the kids I went to college with at the University of Michigan- Dearborn, the kids I teach — not just because they're Muslim but they have that bright, shiny innocence kids that age have," Chami said. "This was a moment for (my students) to pause and try to comprehend the reality they're going to be stepping into." A grand jury this week indicted Craig Hicks on three counts of murder in what authorities have said was a dispute over park- ing spaces. Police say they haven't uncovered evidence Hicks acted out of hatred for his neighbors' faith, but the investigation contin- ues. 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