When Kwagne Elian came down with a high fever, the young woman in Cameroon did what many of us would do in the United States: She went to a private health clinic in her neighborhood.
But unlike the clinic at the local CVS here in the U.S., the one Elian goes to is illegal. And it's the target of a crackdown by the government.
The countries who send large contingents to the Olympics love to watch the "medal count" tally. But at the Sochi Winter Games, the countries with the most medals don't have the most gold medals. That's why by some counts, Germany and Norway are leading the way, while the Netherlands, U.S. and Russia all trail.
In keeping with a trend that began early in Sochi, the U.S. has collected more bronze medals than any other country at the Winter Games. The U.S. is currently tied with the Netherlands for most medals, with 20 apiece. The Americans' 10 bronze medals represent half the team's total.
We don't mean to suggest that an Olympic medal of any type is anything less than extraordinary. One of the most striking stories to emerge from these games was the U.S. skeleton silver medal that thrilled Noelle Pikus-Pace – and the bronze that painfully eluded Colorado's Katie Uhlaender in the same event.
But interesting patterns in the distribution of medals have taken shape as the Sochi Games enter their final days. The U.S. athletes have proven to be adept at either finishing third – or winning it all. In addition to the 10 bronze medals mentioned above, Americans have collected six gold medals in Sochi; they've finished second only four times.
With 435 seats up for grabs every two years, House candidates typically raise more money overall than those running for the Senate, where only about one-third of the chamber's 100 seats are contested every two years.
But according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the fundraising gap is especially wide this year: Data show that House candidates have raised more than twice as much as Senate hopefuls at this point in the election cycle. The last time the discrepancy was this pronounced was in 2008, and before that, in 2002.
So far in the 2013-14 cycle, the 866 candidates for the U.S. House have raised $404 million in individual and political action committee donations. The 145 Senate candidates have raised $204 million.
Why the wider-than-usual disparity? It's still early in the campaign year, so there's no single answer. But there are lots of clues.
Here are a few possible explanations:
There were six special elections in 2013 for House seats and two Senate special elections. The House races included a high-profile matchup in South Carolina won by former GOP Gov. Mark Sanford, whose Democratic opponent was Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, the sister of popular comedian Stephen Colbert. In the Senate, Democrat Cory Booker cruised to victory in New Jersey, and Democrat Ed Markey won in Massachusetts.
So far, the election cycle hasn't seen huge-money, self-funded Senate candidates — like Connecticut Republican Linda McMahon, who spent about $100 million of her own money for losing Senate efforts in 2010 and 2012. Republicans David Perdue in Georgia and Terri Lynn Land in Michigan, for example, have each put about $1.6 million of their own money into their current Senate campaigns. But those numbers pale in comparison to the McMahon-level self-financing.
The Senate race map may also be playing a role. In 2010, more than $50 million was raised in three separate Senate races alone — California among them. But this time around, in the four most populous states — New York, California, Texas, and Florida (all home to lots of expensive media markets) — only one of the eight Senate seats is being contested: Republican John Cornyn is running for re-election in Texas.
Sarah Bryner, CRP's research director, notes that while House fundraising is far outpacing that for the Senate, the overall money flowing to individual campaigns continues to shrink as a result of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United campaign finance decision.
That ruling prohibited restrictions on political spending by corporations, associations and labor unions.
"There's now three times as much in independent expenditures than there were at this point in 2010," Bryner says. "Since Citizens United, a lot of money that would have previously gone to the party and to candidates is going to outside spending groups."
Secretary of State John Kerry is continuing a push to move climate change to the top of the global agenda, telling an audience in the archipelago nation of Indonesia that rising global temperatures and sea levels could threaten their "entire way of life."
"When I think about the array of global climate, of the global threats, think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Kerry said in a speech to students in the capital, Jakarta. "All challenges that know no borders. The reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them."
He stressed that 97 percent of scientist agree that climate change is "unequivocal" and that those people who deny the facts "are simply burying their heads in the sand."
"Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is ... one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth," Kerry said.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk," he added.
Reuters says:
"Kerry derided skeptics of the view that human activity causes global warming as 'shoddy scientists' and 'extreme ideologues' and he said big companies and special interests should not be allowed to 'hijack' the climate debate.
"Kerry, who faces a politically tricky decision at home on whether to allow Canada's TransCanada Corp to build the Keystone XL pipeline despite the opposition of environmental groups, had little patience for such skeptics in his speech."