“Human welfare” on The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON (AP) — Months after they hammered Democrats for cutting Medicare, House Republicans are debating whether to relaunch their quest to privatize the health program for seniors. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is testing support for his idea to replace Medicare with a fixed payment to buy a private medical plan from a menu of coverage options. (more)

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A disgraced Air Force sergeant will spend up to eight years in prison for exposing multiple sex partners to HIV at swinger parties in a sentence that the prosecution hopes will send the message that the military values the integrity of its service members. (more)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A trip to Hollywood for appearances on “Dr. Phil” and “Entertainment Tonight” got off to a rough start for an Ohio homeless man whose golden voice has made him an Internet sensation. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s teens are using more marijuana and less alcohol, according to an annual government study of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders across the country. (more)

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Al Golden led a turnaround at Temple. He now has a chance to engineer another at Miami. (more)

BOSTON (AP) — A United Nations refugee official says no single country wants to take all the Iraqi Mandaean refugees who seek to resettle, and acknowledges that’s putting the tiny religious group at risk. (more)

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The U.N.’s refugee agency says the first wave of Congolese refugees living in Burundi will be repatriated this week. (more)

GENEVA (AP) — Sixty-thousand civilians in Somalia have fled their homes over the past week as fresh fighting between Islamist insurgents and a government-allied militia claimed the lives of at least 10 people, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday. (more)

DENVER (AP) — Poor medical marijuana patients in Colorado won’t have pay state marijuana registration fees or sales tax on the pot they buy. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — As if voters don’t have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in their monthly benefits. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — The male-female orgasm gap. The sex lives of 14-year-olds. An intriguing breakdown of condom usage rates, by age and ethnicity, with teens emerging as more safe-sex-conscious than boomers. (more)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The tip about a backyard marijuana-growing operation set the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force in motion. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. (more)

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — A homeless man who called 911 from the hot tub of a suburban Portland home and asked for towels, hot chocolate and a hug got arrested for trespassing instead. (more)

PORTIMAO, Portugal (AP) — A 14-year-old Dutch sailor departed in secrecy from Gibraltar Saturday on her quest to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world — avoiding the media because, her manager said, she didn’t want the attention. (more)

EIN EL-HILWEH REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon (AP) — Mohammed al-Amin spends his days doing little more than playing billiards and smoking cigarettes in this sprawling Palestinian refugee camp, where gunmen roam narrow alleyways dotted with tin-roofed, cement-block homes. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — No one should be too poor to buy pot if they live in Washington, at least if the marijuana is for a medical condition. That’s the conclusion of a new medical marijuana law enacted in the nation’s capital. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new health overhaul law is starting to produce savings for Medicare and will eventually add more than a decade of solvency to the program’s trust fund, the Obama administration said in an upbeat report released Monday. (more)