A weekend roundup of key links on Asheville-area breaking news. This week: Naturopaths seek licensing; Bolton bolts from the Citizen-Times; Shuler in the “OpenCongress”; Anti-warriors get ready to rally; a very Fitzgerald anniversary.
• Naturopaths seek licensing: The Charlotte Observer reports on a new “push for licensing law” by some naturopaths. “As it is now in North Carolina, anyone can claim to be a naturopath (say NAY-chur-o-path) — a healer who uses natural remedies to promote well-being and prevent illness,” the newspaper says. “But they are all technically practicing medicine without a license.”
Advocates often cite the case of an “Asheville-area practitioner was found guilty in 2002 of involuntary manslaughter in the death of an 8-year-old diabetic whose parents discontinued her insulin on [the practitioner’s] advice.” The practitioner hadn’t gone to a four-year naturopathic school, as some have.
Some opponents, however, are worried that licensing by the state would put other practitioners out of business — a concern that might loom large in alternative-medicine meccas like Asheville.
• Shuler in the “OpenCongress”: Keeping up with up-to-the-minute news about Congressional representatives may have just gotten much easier. The Sunshine Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation have launched OpenCongress.org, a Web site that “brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress.”
The site is debuting in a beta version that will be tweaked based on user input. To see what it offers, here’s the page that profiles WNC’s newest member of Congress, Rep. Heath Schuler.
• Anti-warriors set to rally: Local anti-war activists are gearing up for nationwide student protests against the war in Iraq come March 20, three days after a march on the Pentagon.
To set the scene, Z Magazine has posted an interview with Kati Ketz, a UNCA student activist with Students for a Democratic Society.
• A very Fitzgerald anniversary: Librarians at UNC-Chapel Hill focus on the demise of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, in their online feature This Month in North Carolina History. Zelda, you may or may not recall, was one of nine people who perished in a fire at Asheville’s Highland Hospital on March 10, 1948.
— Jon Elliston, news editor
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