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Iraqi troops and militia fighters are reportedly inside the city of Tikrit, the city that has been held by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS, since last June. Officials and witnesses say the Iraqis now control part of northern Tikrit.

Tikrit is the capital of Salahuddin province, between Baghdad and ISIS-controlled Mosul. Citing state-run television, The Associated Press quotes Salahuddin police Brig. Kheyon Rasheed as saying Wednesday, "The terrorists are seizing the cars of civilians trying to leave the city and they are trying to make a getaway."

The push to retake Tikrit began nine days ago, with thousands of Iraq's military troops bolstered by Kurdish fighters and both Sunni and Shiite militia groups. Despite the apparent progress in the city's northern district of Qadisiyya, troops have been slowed by sniper fire and hidden bombs.

Reuters reports: "The army and militia fighters raised the national flag above a military hospital in the section of Qadisiyya they had retaken from the militants, security officials said."

Word of the advance comes after the Iraqi force pushed ISIS fighters out of the town of al-Alam, on the northern outskirts of Tikrit, on Tuesday.

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On a hillside on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, about 50 red-haired refugees are learning how to be orangutans once again. The country's booming palm oil industry has encroached on their habitats, leaving many of them homeless and orphaned.

Palm oil is hard to avoid. It's in cookies, soap, doughnuts and lipstick. It's so common that it's found in about half of all the items in an ordinary supermarket. As a result, it's in high demand, and environmentalists blame it for deforestation, climate change, social conflict and animal extinction in Indonesia.

Sumatra's orangutans are among the victims.

"The definition of a refugee is someone whose homeland is no longer available to them, and that's exactly the case with these orangutans," says Ian Singleton, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program. "These are the survivors of this annihilation of the forest, and everything that lives in it."

Environmental groups' publicity about the plight of orangutans has helped to increase public pressure on the palm oil industry to stop destroying forests. But the primates are already endangered, with fewer than 7,000 believed to be surviving in the Sumatran wilds.

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A truck passes the barren land of a former palm oil plantation that is to be replaced by forest in Aceh Tamiang, an area inside Sumatra's Leuser Ecosystem. The 6.5 million-acre area is an important part of the orangutans' habitat. But it is threatened by palm oil plantations, mining and logging. Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images

A truck passes the barren land of a former palm oil plantation that is to be replaced by forest in Aceh Tamiang, an area inside Sumatra's Leuser Ecosystem. The 6.5 million-acre area is an important part of the orangutans' habitat. But it is threatened by palm oil plantations, mining and logging.

Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images

The orangutan project, located about an hour's drive outside Medan, the capital of Indonesia's North Sumatra province, is set among lush foliage in the only forest land in the area that's not palm oil plantation.

Singleton's program rescues orangutans displaced by palm oil plantations, or whose families were killed so humans could keep them as illegal pets. Most of the orangutans are released back into the wild, but not all.

Take Leuser, a large adult male who cannot return to the forest because he is blind. He was rescued, taken to the center and then released back into the forest.

Ian Singleton, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, also campaigns to stop the illegal clearing of forests for palm oil, which continues despite a moratorium on destroying primary forests and peat land. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anthony Kuhn/NPR

Then, he wandered too close to a village.

"Three farmers there carrying air rifles to shoot squirrels and monkeys found him and decided to take potshots at him as well," Singleton says. "They put 62 air rifle pellets into him, including his eyes. He's still got 48 inside him. But otherwise, he's perfectly healthy and fit."

A female named Tila plays nearby. Singleton, a former zookeeper in Britain, says she's one of the saddest cases so far.

"She came here as a youngster, tested positive for ... human hepatitis B, which means we can't release her to the forest because there's always a risk she'll infect wild primates," he says.

How did she contract the human disease? Almost certainly by biting the people who captured her, Singleton says.

The animals who make it to the conservation project are the lucky ones — and the tough ones.

"The orangutans that make it this far are the real survivors. Everybody else is dead," he says. "The ones that get here are the ones that are hard to kill."

An adult orangutan in a cage at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program. It's one of four that remain at the program, either because they are disabled or because they pose a risk to people and animals outside the program. Anthony Kuhn/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anthony Kuhn/NPR

When they first arrive, the orangutans are quarantined for 30 days and given thorough health checks. After they're confirmed to be healthy, and before they're released back into the wild, the orangutans spend time in "socialization" cages.

"This is where they really learn how to be an orangutan again," Singleton explains, as young orangutans swing on ropes and open coconuts nearby. "They need to know how to protect their food, and fend off attack, and you find out who are the bullies and who are the wimps, so they've really got to figure out their place in orangutan society, and that happens here."

Out in the wild, if an orangutan puckers up, kiss-like? It's a sign of annoyance, he says, signaling unease.

Singleton is planning to build a haven for Leuser and Tila and other apes who can't return to the wild. The haven will serve as an educational facility for visitors, including many Indonesians, who have never seen orangutans and know little about them.

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Besides caring for these primates, Singleton also campaigns to stop illegal clearing of forests for palm oil. He's fighting to protect an important part of the orangutans' habitat, a 6.5 million acre swathe of Sumatra called the Leuser Ecosystem.

"It's probably the biggest single contiguous forest bloc in the whole of Southeast Asia now," he says. "And it's the only place in the world where you get Sumatran orangutans, tigers and rhinos living together."

On the positive side, in 2011, Indonesia's president declared a moratorium on destroying primary forests and peat land.

But local officials in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra have drafted a development plan that will dole out large swathes of the Leuser Ecosystem for mining, logging and palm oil plantations in violation of that moratorium. The matter is now before Indonesia's Supreme Court.

Recently, major palm oil companies, under pressure from environmental groups and consumers, have issued pledges not to destroy forests in the making of their products.

But as permits to legally clear forest for palm oil become scarce, Singleton says, an unregulated layer of middlemen and local elites continues to do it illegally.

"Middle-class, well-connected people — the cousin of the police or the nephew of the governor — are just going into areas and clearing forests for palm oil without any permits, totally against the law," he says.

For now, Sumatra still has enough forests into which Singleton can release his orangutan refugees. But if illegal deforestation continues, that could change.

"Where do you put them?" Singleton wonders. "You keep them alive, but at what cost?"

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Sumatra

orangutans

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Indonesia

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it is prepared to reopen all 144-thousand insurance claims that resulted from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The move comes after months of questions over whether insurance companies contracted by the National Flood Insurance Program fraudulently altered engineering reports.

After thousands of homeowners said their insurance claims were systematically lowballed, FEMA began negotiations in an attempt to regain the trust of policy holders. While no agreement has yet been signed. FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre says, "There will be a process set up so that everyone who filed a claim will have an opportunity to go back and have their case reviewed if they feel they did not get every dollar they are legitimately owed."

FEMA also says the head of the flood program, David Miller, has resigned.

Under the health law, large employers that don't offer their full-time workers comprehensive, affordable health insurance face a fine. But some employers are taking it a step further and requiring workers to buy the company insurance, whether they want it or not.

Many workers may have no choice but to comply.

Some workers are upset. One disgruntled reader wrote to Kaiser Health News: "My employer is requiring me to purchase health insurance and is automatically taking the premium out of my paycheck even though I don't want to sign up for health insurance. Is this legal?"

The short answer is yes. Under the federal health law, employers with 100 or more full-time workers can enroll them in company coverage without their say as long as the plan is deemed affordable and adequate. That means the employee contribution is no more than 9.5 percent of the federal poverty guideline and the plan pays for at least 60 percent of covered medical expenses, on average.

"If you offer an employee minimum essential coverage that provides minimum value and is affordable, you need not provide an opt out," says Seth Perretta, a partner at Groom Law Group, a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in employee benefits.

If a plan doesn't meet those standards, however, employees must be given the opportunity to decline those company plans, under the health law. They can shop for coverage on the health insurance marketplaces and may qualify for premium tax credits if their income is between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Those premium subsidies aren't available to workers whose employer offers good coverage that meets the law's standards.

Not that many employers are expected to strong arm their workers into buying health insurance. Those that do may be confused about their responsibilities under the health law, mistakenly believing that in order to avoid penalties they have to enroll their workers in coverage.

"That is just dead wrong," says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who's an expert on the health law.

"Nothing in the Affordable Care Act directs employers to make their coverage mandatory for employees," says a Treasury Department spokesperson. The law requires large employers "to either offer coverage or pay a fee if their full-time workers access tax credits to get coverage on their own in the marketplace."

Employer penalties for not offering insurance that meets the health law's standards can run up to $3,000 per employee.

For employers, forcing coverage on their workers could be counterproductive. "Do you really want to limit employees' ability to select whether they get this coverage?" says Amy Bergner, managing director at human resources consultant PwC. "What impact does that have from talent management perspective?"

employer coverage

Affordable Care Act

Health Insurance