The Man Pope Francis Should Meet In Washington

The Man Pope Francis Should Meet In Washington, When Pope Francis arrives in Washington Tuesday night, he will set his suitcase down at the Apostolic Nunciature, informally known as the Vatican Embassy. It’s an unassuming mansion along a highly trafficked stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, directly across the street from the Naval Observatory and the vice president’s mansion.

When Francis looks out onto the locked-down avenue, however, closed to all but the southbound buses and a trickle of cars, he probably won’t see a 72-year-old, white-haired Polish immigrant named John Wojnowski, who has become as much a part of that sidewalk as the blistered concrete.

And that’s a travesty, because it means that Francis will not see his embassy in quite the same way that many Washingtonians have glimpsed it through the years. He will not understand the lonely sacrifice of one broken, belittled man, or the depth of despair that exists in some quarters of the American church.

Wojnowski’s story has no clear beginning or end; rather, it replays itself every day, in the same endless loop, and probably will for as long as he’s alive. So let’s just start it here:

One day in 1997, Wojnowski read an in item in the newspaper about a sexual abuse scandal roiling a Catholic diocese in Texas, where the victim had killed himself. An Army veteran and longtime ironworker, Wojnowsk­i had just taken early retirement because of failing knees. Separated from his wife and emotionally estranged from his two children, he was living alone with his regrets in the working-class suburb of Bladensburg, Md., getting by on Social Security and a small pension.

Something about this story jolted him. It unearthed, he says, the shards of an adolescent memory he had blocked from his mind for 40 years.

When he was 15, Wojnowski will tell you, he was tutored by a middle-aged priest in Milan, where his father was a university librarian. The priest touched him and asked him to masturbate. Wojnowski, embarrassed and confused, asked if the priest was going to show his genitalia, too. The rest he has never remembered, or can’t.

“I just remember standing outside the building,” he says. “The feeling was so terrible. So final. I ruined my life.”

His first thought after reliving this memory, though he would be embarrassed to admit this later, was that maybe he could make some money off it. He needed money. Maybe the church would give him $20,000.

So he entered a confessional and told a priest, and the priest sent him to a church therapist, and the therapist told him to write a letter to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington. The therapist told him exactly what the letter should say.

An embassy official wrote Wojnowski back, asking for more details. Wojnowski, who has an eighth-grade education but a natural gift for language, provided more details in another letter, but no one at the embassy replied further. Nor did anyone answer his next several letters.

“They were ignoring me,” Wojnowski says. “They were sure I would do nothing else.”

Clinton Proposes $250 Monthly Cap On Prescription Drug Costs

Clinton Proposes $250 Monthly Cap On Prescription Drug Costs, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday will propose a $250 monthly cap on prescription drugs for patients with chronic or serious medical conditions in a drive against what she calls “excessive profiteering” by pharmaceutical companies.

At a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton will outline a plan to encourage the development and use of generic drugs and also would end drug companies’ ability to write off consumer-directed advertising as a business expense.

Under Clinton’s plan the monthly cap would limit what insurance companies could ask patients to pay for drugs.

On Monday, Clinton vowed during a campaign stop in Little Rock, Arkansas that, “It is time to deal with sky-rocketing out-of-pocket costs.”

Shares of biotech companies such as Immunogen and Gilead Sciences on Monday dropped after Clinton tweeted that steep prices for specialty drugs were “outrageous.”

Critics of marketing drugs to consumers say it encourages the use of costly brand names over generics and can be confusing or misleading. A series of court decisions has determined the practice cannot be banned outright because it is a form of commercial speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Clinton says the government could save billions of dollars by no longer allowing pharmaceutical companies to deduct what they spend marketing drugs to consumers and those funds could be redirected into encouraging research and development.

The largest pharmaceutical companies are collectively earning $80 billion to $90 billion per year at higher margins than other industries, while average Americans struggle to pay for medicine, Clinton’s campaign said.

While Clinton has maintained her front-runner status, she has been under pressure to take more populist stances to widen her lead over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, her second-place rival for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton’s plan would encourage the development and use of generic drugs. Her plan would redirect funds to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration office with a backlog of generic drugs awaiting approval.

She would also prohibit what the campaign called “pay-for-delay agreements,” in which the company of a brand-name drug pays a generic competitor to keep its product off the market for a period of time, usually as part of a litigation settlement.

Clinton wants Medicare, the U.S. government’s health insurance program for the elderly, to be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices and require more generous rebates, driving down overall costs.

Consumers would also be allowed to purchase drugs from other countries, where medicine is often less expensive, so long as there are sufficient safety standards in place, Clinton’s campaign said.

Search For Body Of Killed US Teacher

Search For Body Of Killed US Teacher, Dahlia Yehia, 25, was killed in Pokhara, a city famed for its lakeside views of mountains, and her body dumped in a river, said Hari Bahadur Pal, a police superintendent in the town.

Yehia, a teacher from Austin, Texas, arrived in Pokhara on Aug. 4 to help victims of twin earthquakes that devastated the Himalayan nation this year, but was murdered three days later.

Police have detained Narayan Paudel, 30, who played host to Yehia. Paudel had confessed to killing her for her money, in an attack with a hammer, Pal said. He then threw the body into the rocky gorge of the nearby Seti river.

“We are searching for the body for the past five days,” Pal said, adding that the search only began after the U.S. embassy in Nepal informed police of the incident.

Police were using ropes to descend into waters at the bottom of the deep, narrow gorge, to look for the body, he said.

Paudel jumped out of a window at the police station after being detained and is being treated for a broken leg. He has yet to be charged, and could face life in prison if convicted.

Reports: ‘El Chapo’ Spotted In Mexico Car Crash

Reports: ‘El Chapo’ Spotted In Mexico Car Crash, Escaped Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán could be back in Mexico after media outlets reported he fled federal agents after a car crash.

The Latin Times reported that Guzmán was taken to the Hospital Regional de Macuspana in Macuspana following a car crash in Tabasco, near the Mexico-Guatemala border.

Witnesses at the scene claimed that Guzmán, who escaped from a maximum-security prison in July, was present at the scene and had been taken to the hospital for treatment.

A medical report obtained by the Times show that the patient, possibly Guzmán, asked to be released from the hospital and subsequently left before federal law enforcement officials arrived.

The hospital’s director later denied that sequence of events took place, but refused to share details about the patient believed to be Guzmán.