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(KGTV) - California regulators are considering a plan to charge a fee for text messaging on mobile phones to help fund programs that make phone service accessible to the poor.The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is set to consider the proposal in a vote scheduled for next month, according to The Mercury News. It's not clear how much mobile phone users would be asked to pay under the proposal, but it would likely be billed as a flat surcharge, not a per-text fee, according to the paper.And wireless industry and business groups are not "LOLing." The groups are reportedly already trying to defeat the proposal before it makes its way to the commission.¡°It¡¯s a dumb idea,¡± Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council business-sponsored advocacy group, told the Mercury News. ¡°This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it¡¯s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.¡±The new surcharges could generate a total of about .5 million a year, according to business groups. The same groups warned that under the proposal's language, the charge could be retroactively be applied for five years, totaling more than 0 million for consumers, the paper reported.Click here for a look at the proposal.The proposal argues that the state's Public Purpose Program budget has increased from 0 million in 2011 to 8 million in 2016, while revenues funding the program from the telecommunications industry saw a "steady decline" from .5 billion in 2011 to .3 billion in 2017.The report calls this "is unsustainable over time."In a statement to the Associated Press, CPUC spokeswoman Constance Gordon said, "from a consumer's point of view, surcharges may be a wash, because if more surcharge revenues come from texting services, less would be needed from voice services." 1845

(KGTV and CNN) - Rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are climbing in San Diego and the nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and San Diego County Health officials announced Tuesday.At the National STD Prevention Conference in Washington, the CDC reported nearly 2.3 million US cases of these sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed in 2017, according to preliminary data.That's the highest number ever reported nationwide, breaking the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000 cases, according to the CDC."Sadly, it's not a surprising trend," said Rob Stephenson, a professor and director of the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new CDC research.CHLAMYDIASan Diego County health officials reported the rates of chlamydia rose roughly 8 percent from 2015 to 2016, to 18,904 cases total.  Chlamydia, which remained the most common STD reported to the CDC, is easily transmitted during any form of sexual activity. If not treated, chlamydia can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease in women, which can cause permanent damage to the reproductive system. In men, the infection can spread to the tube that carries sperm from the testicles, causing pain and fever.SYPHILISSyphilis cases were up almost 7 percent from 2015 to 2016, with a total of 523 cases. Syphilis can affect the heart, nervous system and other organs if left untreated. Syphilis is most often transmitted through sexual contact.GONORRHEAGonorrhea cases had the highest local increase over one year, up 35 percent to 4,992. If not treated, gonorrhea can cause severe and permanent health issues, including problems with the prostate and testicles in men or problems with pregnancy and infertility in women. Gonorrhea is typically treated with a dual therapy of the antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin.The threat of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea persists nationwide. If gonorrhea becomes resistant to all such combinations of antibiotic therapies, it could become an untreatable STD.WHERE ARE THE CASES?San Diego County health officials released maps detailing where the STD cases were reported in 2016."I think over the last five years, we've seen a rapid increase in the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections in the US, and we're also starting to see a plateau in our fight against the HIV epidemic, as well," Stephenson said.The University of Michigan's Stephenson said that prevention is key to reducing the number of new STD cases -- such as practicing safe sex and getting tested regularly."Yet I think, when we think about sexually transmitted infections, we think of them through a curative lens, not a preventative lens," Stephenson said."We need to switch the dial on this in people's minds to think more about prevention rather than a too-late curative response," he said. "There's many ways we could do this. We could teach primary care providers and physicians to talk more about prevention with a client. We could start very early on in sex education by talking about the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases at young ages by giving people the behavioral skills they need to protect themselves."At the same time, there have been declining resources for the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, said Dr. Edward Hook, endowed professor of infectious disease translational research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's School of Medicine and scientific committee chair of the National STD Prevention Conference."The purchasing power of the CDC's budget for sexually transmitted disease prevention has declined 40% in the past 15 years," Hook said. "The CDC and the public health clinics, where most of this reporting comes from, represent the safety net for Americans, for people who may not have access to primary care providers or other sources of care. So the decline and the limited availability of resources for that is no doubt part of the contributor."In recent years, state and local STD programs have seen budget cuts, too. In 2012, 52% of such programs experienced budget cuts, amounting to reductions in clinic hours, contact tracing and screening for common STDs, according to the CDC.Additionally, the direct medical costs of treating STDs in the US are not cheap. The 19.7 million cases of sexually transmitted infections that occurred in 2008 in the US equaled about .6 billion in total lifetime direct medical costs, according to a study published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases in 2013."I do think we've seen significant funding cuts in prevention efforts around sexual health in general," Stephenson said. "It's not a difficult jump to see how that's actually preventing us from winning the fight against negative sexual health outcomes." 4804

(KGTV) ¡ª A magnitude 6.6 earthquake shook parts of the Southern Philippines Tuesday morning local time, weeks after another deadly quake struck the region.Tuesday's quake hit just after 9 a.m. on the island of Mindanao near the town of Tulunan in North Cotabato, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.Damages and aftershocks were expected, CNN reported, and several evacuations were reported.The earthquake comes about two weeks after a 6.3-magnitude quake killed seven people and injured dozens in the same town in North Cotabato, CNN reported. 583

(KGTV) - Does a video really show a 10-month-old with amazing drawing ability?Unlikely.At 10 months, most children are still working on grasping an object, let alone drawing detailed pictures.Judging by the backpack in the background, the girl in this video is likely pre-school age. 291

(CNN) -- We've all been tempted to bring a little bit of paradise home from our holidays. But the urge has backfired on a French couple, who are facing up to six years in prison for removing sand from a beach in Sardinia, where they had been on vacation.The Italian island's white sand is protected, and tourists face fines and even jail time for removing it from local beaches -- but the couple say they did not realize they were committing a crime.Police in the northern city of Porto Torres found the sand while making routine checks on cars waiting to board a ferry to Toulon in southern France.They spotted some bottles filled with sand through the window of the car, and arrested the couple, a man and woman in their 40s, police told CNN.Overall, 14 plastic bottles containing around 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of white sand were seized, police said.The couple were reported to a court in the city of Sassari for aggravated theft and they risk a fine of up to €3,000 (,300) and between one and six years' imprisonment.Police told CNN that the tourists said they were unaware of the laws about removing sand, but noted that the island's beaches have signs in several languages informing visitors.Theft of white sand and rocks from Sardinia's beaches is very common, a police officer said, and there is an illegal market for them on the internet."The people of Sardinia are very angry with tourists that steal shells and sand, because it's a theft (from) future generations that also puts at risk a delicate environment," the officer told CNN.Sand thieves are usually picked up at airports, in bag searches and by scanners.A Facebook page, "Sardegna Rubata e Depredata" -- "Sardinia, robbed and plundered" -- which was set up by a group of security officials from the island's airports, campaigns against the depletion of Sardinia's beaches."The purpose of the page is to raise public awareness about this problem," one of the page administrators previously told CNN Travel."During the last 20 years of activity we have seized tens and tens of tons of material ... Every year we take care to bring everything back to the places of origin at the end of the summer season." 2183

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