Two children rescued from pond improving
MINNEAPOLIS – A family spokesman says two of the children rescued from a pond after a car veered off a suburban Minneapolis highway ramp are improving.
Attorney Rick Petry said Friday the two are now responding to health workers’ commands. He calls that “a huge improvement.”
Petry says a third child remains in stable but critical condition.
They were among five children, ages 1 to 7, who were trapped in the car after it plunged into 9 feet of water. Authorities confirm two of the children died.
Petry says the 23-year-old woman driving the car was taking the children to her mother’s to finish getting them ready for school when the accident happened.
Officials now upbeat about health website
WASHINGTON – There won’t be a magic moment, but the Obama administration’s much-maligned health insurance website should be able to weather an expected year-end crush of customers, officials asserted Friday.
A combination of software fixes, design changes, added hardware and new wiggle room should provide the right combination to finally deliver a workable website, White House troubleshooter Jeffrey Zients said in an upbeat assessment. Zients is a management consultant parachuted in by the White House to extricate President Barack Obama from a technology debacle that has sent his poll ratings into a nose dive.
“We think this gives us the capacity we need to reach everybody we need to reach across this period of time,” said Zients.
The added leeway comes in the form of an extra eight days this year for consumers to sign up and still get insurance by Jan. 1. A previous Dec. 15 deadline was stretched to Dec. 23. Policyholders must pay their premiums by Dec. 31.
More time could prevent some people from having a break in coverage on account of the balky enrollment website.
Associated Press
