Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - January 2014 | Page 28

2013, The Year in Review - p4 During the shutdown, approximately 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely laid off, and another 1.3 million were required to report to work without known payment dates. Only those government services deemed "excepted" under the An -deficiency Act were con nued; and only those employees deemed "excepted" con nued to report to work. 2. The 2013 Acqui al of George Zimmerman for the Travon Mar n killing SANFORD, Fla. — George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Mar n, an unarmed black teenager, igni ng a na onal debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty of second-degree murder. He was also acqui ed of manslaughter, a lesser charge. A er three weeks of tes mony, the six-woman jury rejected the prosecu on's conten on that Mr. Zimmerman had deliberately pursued Mr. Mar n because he assumed the hoodie-clad teenager was a criminal and ins gated the fight that led to his death. Mr. Zimmerman said he shot Mr. Mar n on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense a er the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head repeatedly against the sidewalk. I n fi n d i n g h i m n o t g u i l t y o f m u rd e r o r manslaughter, the jur y agreed that Mr. Zimmerman could have been jus fied in shoo ng Mr. Mar n because he feared great bodily harm or death. However juror B29, the lone Hispanic juror in the George Zimmerman murder trial flatly said that she thought Zimmerman was guilty. Yet she s ll voted to acquit. 28- Nu Vibez Magazine - January 2014 1. Obamacare The fumbled debut of the Affordable Care Act, o en dubbed Obamacare was 2013's top news story. The President and his team had high expecta ons for the health-care reform package, but technical glitches on the HealthCare.gov website prevented all that. Out of the millions of uninsured who stood to benefit from wider access to health insurance coverage, just six were able to sign up for such benefits on the day of the website's Oct. 1 launch. Now according to one report: Those numbers didn't rise much higher un l far into November, when technical crews went to work on the troubled site, o en shu ng it down for hours for repairs. Republicans opposed to the Affordable Care Act pounced on the debacle, and a month a er the launch Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Americans, "You deserve be er, I apologize." Also apologizing was President Barack Obama, who in November said he was "sorry" to hear that some Americans were being dropped from their health plans due to the advent of reforms -- even though he had repeatedly promised that this would not happen. By Dec. 11, it was announced that nearly 365,000 consumers had successfully selected a health plan through the federal- and state-run online "exchanges," although that number was s ll far below ini al projec ons. And a report issued the same day found that one new tenet of the reform package -- allowing young adults under 26 to be covered by their parents' plans -- has led to a significant jump in coverage for people in that age group.