Expert highlights health disparities

KEVIN XIAO / The Dartmouth The United States must take steps to address health care disparities between white and minority groups, Chidi Achebe DMS '96, the president and CEO of the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in Boston, said in a lecture in Chilcott Auditorium on Tuesday. While minority groups have made significant progress since the civil rights movement in the 1960s, many members of these groups still do not receive the same level of health care as non-Hispanic white Americans, Achebe said. Black males die more frequently of diseases that do not comparably affect the white population, Achebe said. "We are looking at third world pathologies that shouldn't have made their way to the first world countries," Achebe said. Achebe said that approximately 49 out of every 100,000 black men die of prostate cancer annually.

Gov.'s veto of marijuana bill upheld

THE GRANITE STATE

Number of influenza cases has stabilized

CURIE KIM / The Dartmouth The number of Dartmouth students with influenza-like illness has stabilized over the past three weeks, according to College Health Services director John Turco.

Alumni reflect on LGBT history

Tilman Dette / The Dartmouth Senior Staff In what event organizers said was an effort to show alumni that support for the LGBT community at the College has increased in the past 25 years, the Dartmouth Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Alumni/ae Association held its 25th anniversary all-class reunion this past weekend. The reunion included lectures and panel discussions, as well as social events, including an awards dinner on Saturday night. "Looking back and celebrating 25 years is a great opportunity for older alums to see Dartmouth as open and welcoming and warm from the administration and students," Kamil Walji '03, a member of the DGALA board of directors, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Activist works to protect Lake Baikal

Experts criticize policy on Cuba

JON ERDMAN / The Dartmouth Staff Half a century after the Cuban Revolution, the United States' embargo of the island and the Castro regime's restrictions on free speech continue to impede the country's economic and political development, according to a panel of experts who discussed post-revolutionary Cuba on Thursday in the Haldeman Center. "Freedom of expression as Americans know it does not really exist in Cuba," said Associated Press Havana bureau chief Anita Snow, who is also a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. While Cubans complain about non-political issues, including food rations and inefficient public transportation, nobody protests the government openly, Snow said. "As a journalist working in Cuba, we have a lot of problems with officials who would not answer us," Snow said. Controversial news articles are immediately censored, Snow said, adding that an article that criticized the way the official Cuban press distributed news to the public "disappeared" an hour after it was published. Snow said she believes the advancement of technology on the island, including the increasing prevalence of cell phones with Internet access, will help Cubans break through barriers of expression. "I think Pandora's box is open, and there's no closing it now," Snow said.

DMS alum. leads H1N1 response

Courtesy of The Associated Press U.S.