The Afghanistan war has cost the United States around $1 trillion and will consume billions dollars more in the future, after the 13-year war ends later this month, according to the Financial Times and independent reports.

The true cost of the war is difficult to pinpoint and the US government has never attempted to detail its expenditure in Afghanistan. America’s longest-ever overseas war, which began months after 9/11, is set to officially wind down at the end of this month, though 10,000 US troops will remain there through 2016.

The US has appropriated $765 billion for the war in Afghanistan since 2001, mostly for the US Defense Department’s purposes and the rest for the likes of the US State Department, according to the Financial Times.

In comparison, the Iraq war cost US taxpayers around $2 trillion, including benefits owed to veterans, with a price tag that could reach $6 trillion over the next 40 years counting interest, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Funds allocated for the Iraq and Afghan wars were borrowed, so interest will also add to the total cost. According to Ryan Edwards at City University of New York, the US has paid $260 billion – $125 billion from the Afghan war, according to the Financial Times – in interest on that total war debt.

Medical costs for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have reached $134 billion, according to Harvard economist Linda Bilmes, though the true healthcare costs of these wars is tough to calculate, she said. This is based on how many troops served in both theaters and the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder, and other ailments.

Given the hundreds of thousands of US troops who served in the two wars, military healthcare spending has risen dramatically and will stay high as troops age. Bilmes said future medical and disability costs for veterans of the two wars will hit $836 billion in the coming decades.

The wars have also burdened the Defense Department’s pension system, which has an unfunded liability of $1.27 trillion, a number expected to rise to $2.72 trillion by 2034.

Even though the official war is ending, the Pentagon has called for $120 billion for operations in Afghanistan over the next three years, the Financial Times reported, depending on mission demands.

Meanwhile, John Sopko, the government’s inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction funds has said “billion of dollars” of the more than $100 billion spent to rebuild the nation have been wasted or stolen.

“We simply cannot lose this amount of money again,” he said. “The American people will not put up with it.”

The amount the US has spent to reconstruct Afghanistan has, adjusted for inflation, cost more than the Marshall Plan that rebuilt western Europe after World War II.

“Time and again, I am running into people from USAID, State and the Pentagon who think they are in Kansas [not Afghanistan],” he said. “My auditors tell me things [about spending plans] and I say, ‘you have to be making this up, this is Alice in Wonderland’.”

Unless one is a health professional, one only gets to view the Emergency Room (ER) either by walking into one as a patient or, on a gurney while being transferred from an ambulance. Either way, the documentary film written and directed by first time filmmaker Dr. Ryan McGarry, MD, is a fascinating and eye-popping journey into work-shifts of ER doctors, and nurses of Los Angele County Hospital.

This is not a TV series episode or “ER”, although it looks like one. The “characters” in this documentary are the real McCoy. No “actor portrayals” here; just real life and real death situations and the aftermath. It’s is visual chronical of life in the ER from the doctors and nurses POV’s. Sometimes it’s heart-breaking. Sometimes it’s achingly poignant and uplifting. This engaging documentary film, however, is always a compelling screen journey of real dedicated medical professionals doing what they love and what they do best: putting into practice the Hippocratic oaths they signed years ago in medical school.

There are eight medical doctors and one registered nurse (RN) that are featured in the 88 minutes long film: Doctors Andrew Eads, Jamie Eng, Danny Cheng, Arash Kohanteb, William “Billy” Mallon, Ryan McGarry, Edward Newton, Dave Pomeranz, and RN Luis Enriquez (a 28 year ER veteran).

Although the film takes place in the present, it has its beginnings in Los Angeles during the 1970’s. There wasn’t any Emergency Room special unit back then. A group of doctors at LA County Hospital, sort of got together and began treating patients who would wander into the hospital seeking treatment for severe injuries, either in accidents at home or on the road. Gunshot wounds; survivors of fires, even for unknown symptoms of distress, in short, all manner of medical issues. One thing all the patients had in common was their inability to pay for their medical care. Under California law, no one is turned away because they are indigent.

The title of the film “Code Black”, is hospital-speak for a waiting room overflowing with all sorts of patients: young, old, male, and female, all with a compelling medical need. A 20 foot by 26 foot space in the hospital was provided by hospital officials and thus was born the country’s first “ER Unit”.

In the early years, the ER was referred to as the “C-Booth” run by the doctors and nurses with rules and regulations created by them based on the needs of the patients; ranking the care accordingly: Number one – heart attacks and similar traumas; Number 2 – life threatening injuries and situations; Number 3 – broken bones, etc. and Number 4 – coughs, colds, fevers, aches and pains, and the like. It is a fluid ranking and shifts according to the needs of the patients. In the C-Booth early scenes, it looks likes chaos reigns supreme. Doctors, nurses, and technicians work feverishly on patients on operating tables, sometime less than 1 or 2 feet apart. It looks more like a military mash unit in action. But it’s a controlled and organized chaos. Everyone knows his or her job and all perform as a well-oiled, calm, collected, and polite medical unit, despite the urgency of the medical procedures being administered.

Dr. McGarry’s camera also takes the time away from the ER action to interview, not only group meetings, but one-on-one interviews with the doctors to get a larger sense of the needs of the medical community as well as its patients. Certain elements of our US Congress keep claiming America’s healthcare system is broken, while others deny there is anything wrong at all.

When the new LA County Hospital opened a few years ago next to the old hospital, a new paradigm was implemented. The age of a computerized society now wags the tails of American society and business. Records are now computerized, infinitely more information for insurance purposes must be gathered on patients and procedures performed. It may be automated for business performance, but the result is a separating of the time spent and the relationship between doctors and patients.

According McGarry, ”… I hope the film will also provide some crucial perspective on the current healthcare debate. To see what it’s like to be on the front line of providing care in this country shows how difficult it is for physicians and nurses: try telling a patient that they need to see a specialist for their rotting foot, only to find out that the specialist will only accept a certain level of insurance. Or ask them to choose between being late for their night shift or wait yet another hour in the ER ( some spend up to 8 to 10 hours waiting to see a doctor or a nurse) in the hope that they will see a doctor, who may not have a permanent solution for their illness anyway.”

With an ever increasing proportion of patients using the ER unit as their only means of receiving medical help, the situations resonates with today’s viewers. Scenes in the film are being replicated in large urban cities all across America. “Code Black” is a visual wake-up call for America’s healthcare industry to come up with a fresh approach in serving the needs of its almost 320 million citizens.

Biopics of extraordinary people can be extremely moving and rewarding for movie audience. Biopics of extraordinary, living people, however, can be downright daunting and intimidating for the actors involved in creating and bringing the story to the screen.

Screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director James Marsh, of the romantic drama “The Theory of Everything”, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, as Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane Wlde Hawking, have fashioned, with great skill, a movie about Britain’s famous living physicist. Their focus is on the relationship and the love story of a brilliant mind short-circuited by a form of ALS disease in his early 20’s, and the highly educated young English woman who becomes his wife; placing her own literary career on hold in order to love and care for her husband over a twenty-five year period.

If you’re looking for the cerebral fireworks of quantum physics and discoveries, endlessly debated by colleagues and scholars, along with giant blackboards with complicated and esoteric equations plastered all over them, well you should elsewhere. “The Theory of Everything” is a character-driven movie. It’s lushly photographed by Benoit Delhomme, exquisitely crafted and directed by James Marsh, and superbly acted in the style of movies that we don’t see much anymore. It’s a most welcomed throwback to movies that were linear and compelling in their telling and captured a period with style and grace. All lives have a story to tell. Movies without a story to tell are films written and designed merely to technically assault the senses and sell popcorn.

One of the many strengths of British cinema and TV is in its depth of wonderfully classical trained actors available and eager to perform a wide range of roles – from leading men and women to supporting roles – which they perform without bruising their egos or stature. Celebrity status is not a consideration in selecting a role. The traditional adage of “there are no small parts in the theatre, only small actors”, applies to their work ethic. It’s a repertory system of sorts that has served audiences and them very well over the years.

The story set in 1960’s England revolves around Cambridge University student, twenty-one year old Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), who meets and falls in love with fellow student Jane Wild (Felicity Jones). Hawking, a brainy, introverted, and somewhat of an anti-social young man, meets Wilde at a university dance where a mutual attraction develops. Their courtship begins to flourish and grow. Then Hawking’s life completely changes as a result of a medical diagnosis of a rare form of ALS (commonly referred to Lou Gehrig’s disease) that is detected following a fall on the school campus.

Undaunted by the news of Hawking’s condition, the young lovers continue dating, and eventually marry, despite the advice from parents to wait a little while. The parents are solidly played by Emily Watson and Guy Oliver-Watts, as Jane’s parents and Abagail Cruttenden and Simon McBurney, as Stephen’s parents. Their concern is that Stephen has been told he has just two years to live.

Their romantic, but physically challenging lifestyle, produces four children and fame as Hawking, a promising English physicist now becomes a scientific celebrity and famous for his books and scholarly papers and speeches on quantum theories of black holes and the time/space continuum.

Over the years Hawking’s deteriorating health issue requires additional medical assistance, which comes in the form of therapist Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake). Elaine’s interest in Hawking ultimately grows beyond her therapist role to one of admirer, to would-be lover, to Hawking’s second wife. After twenty-five years of marriage Hawking divorces Jane to marry Elaine.

As Jane begins her new life, she seeks out the friendship of the children’s old piano teacher, sensitively played by Charlie Cox. He was always drawn to the Hawking family. First as a piano teacher, and now he returns as Jane’s suitor.

Not only is Redmayne’s incredibly difficult portrayal a marvel of nuance and intelligence, it’s a testament to the actor’s dedication and commitment in creating a full-blown, complicated and physically challenging portrayal. Stephen Hawking, at age seventy-two saw the film before its release and gave it his blessing. I cannot think of another actor who could play Hawking as convincingly as Eddie Redmayne. It’s a bravura performance, astonishing in its artistry, power, and inventiveness and is the type of performance that touches the hearts of Academy voters come Oscar nomination time.

Comparisons are odious at best, however, it’s hard not to compare Daniel Day-Lewis and his Academy Award turn as Christy Brown in “My Left Foot” with Redmayne’s Hawking portrayal. Both actors play similarly afflicted and physically challenged characters. I feel pretty safe in saying that Redmayne wouldn’t object to the comparison at all, especially if walks away with the Best Actor statuette like Day-Lewis did. Right now the early buzz on the street is that he has a lock on a nomination. The Oscar chatter also sees a nomination for Jones as Best Lead Actress.

As good as Redmayne is, however, he doesn’t do it all alone. The on-screen chemistry between the young English beauty Felicity Jones and Redmayne is solid, palpable, and appealing. Jones brings such inner strength to her character of Jane Hawking. Her performance is a study in unrequited loyalty and devotion as a wife, mother, and care-giver; all the while not falling into a character drowning in bathos or the “suffering wife” syndrome. It’s no wonder the hearts of the ladies in the audience go out to her.

The success of “The Theory of Everything” rests squarely on the strength of its two very talented stars: Redmayne and Jones. Be on the lookout for a Best Picture nomination as well come January 2015 when Oscar nominations are rolled out.

Aging is a human process that comes to most of us. And the longer one lives, the tougher it becomes in accepting the answer to the question: How did I get so old so quick? The answer is: it happens in the blinking of an eye which is why it’s so important to slow down, smell the roses, and pay immediate attention to the people you love. Forget pride. Pride is an assassin sent by the prince of darkness to kill what we all hold dear: our families; our memories. Dreams may be wonderful, but they’re ephemeral. Memories, on the other hand, are the beneficiaries of lives lived and they stay with us forever.

Playwright George Eastman has written a play rich in memory and in the memories of his two characters: eighty-three year-old Harry Townsend, and his forty-year-old married son Alan. Harry still lives in the get-away chalet he and Alan’s mother built in Vermont many years ago. Now he is just another widower living alone with his memories.

Alan is concerned that Harry is now at the age where “old people” begin to forget things, fall down, begin to need more medical attention, and can’t take care of themselves. In other words the dynamic of a concerned son versus a stubborn, proud, grumpy and widowed father is a situation in which many in the audience can easily identify.

“Happy Hour” written by Eastman and lovingly directed by CV REP founding artistic director Ron Celona, is a staged reading that is ready for the final steps in becoming a fully produced play in CV REP’s 2015/2016 season.

The poignant two-act comedy/drama stars TV and movie star Gavin MacLeod as Harry, and Michael Shaw, actor and founding artistic director of the Palm Springs-based Dezart Performs theatre company, as Alan.

The tender and humorous story of a father/son dynamic coming together to address the problems of aging in America is met head-on this wonderfully balanced and nuanced play. A good story enhanced with excellent writing, always inspires talented actors to transcend; with the result being an evening of resonating and enlightening theatre. That’s certainly the case here with “Happy Hour”.

MacLeod, usually remembered for his impeccable comedy timing (the Mary Tyler Moore show) and his appealing, on-screen easy manner (The Love Boat), will surprise you with his Harry Townsend portrayal, especially in his dramatic moments while reminiscing the highlights and memories of his forty plus years spent with Alan’s mother. It’s a new side of Captain Stubing/Gavin MacLeod, the star of TV’s “The Love Boat” series. It’s been said that inside every comedian lurks a dramatic actor eager to bust out and share his drama chops with an audience. MacLeod tugs real hard on your heart strings as the grumpy father too proud to share his inner feelings with his son.

Shaw’s guarded and grounded Alan characterization is a study in anxiety, concern, and love by a middle-age son, worried about his aging octogenarian father living alone. No matter how persuasive Alan is when it comes to Assisted Living communities, Harry turns a deaf ear. There is one scene where Shaw tears up when he feels he’s losing the assisted living argument with his father. One can see and feel the frustration and the thoughts going through his mind. What can one do when the parent keeps on saying “Absolutely Not!” It’s an exquisite and sublime dramatic moment.

But it’s not all “sturm and drang”. Eastman provides plenty of hilarious dialogue and situations that MacLeod and Shaw have a ball with. It’s a play that speaks to everyone regardless of age.

CV REP is an intimate 88-seat Equity Theatre company located in Rancho Mirage, CA. Valley residents will want to be on the lookout for this impressive production when it opens next year as part of CV REP’s seventh season.

Desert Hot Springs, December 14, 2014: The Desert Hot Springs Neighborhood Group is thrilled to be hosting a Beach Party for the dedication of the Orca Family Mural.

“We are excited to have put this together through our FB group,” said organizer Donna Poyuzina. “Volunteers responded in a way that was very encouraging, offering to help, both with time and donations. Doing, whatever it took to make this happen, and a pointed ‘thank you’ to the Family Services of the Desert for supplying the power,” she continued.

The Beach Party will begin at 12:00 PM and run until 4:00 PM, with a ribbon ceremony by the DHS Chamber of Commerce at 1:30 PM, at the Desert Hot Springs Town Center.

Musical entertain will be provided by Radio 60, Jerry Steelfox, James St. James and the hip-hop singing and dancing family, The Young Fly Billionaires.

The food selection will range from burgers and fries (Dillon’s,) to corn dogs and gyros (Sidewinder Grill) to Sushi (Domo).

“There will be face painting and a bounce castle for the kids and volley ball for the older kids,” added Poyuzina. “With the Ballet Folklorico and the Mariachis also joining the fun, there will be something for everyone at our Beach Party,” she concluded.

LOCATION: Desert Hot Springs’ Town Center (Von’s)

14200 palm Drive, DHS, CA, 92240

CONTACT: Donna Poyuzina

760.580.5352

A massive fire has engulfed an apartment building under construction in downtown Los Angeles.

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), firefighters were battling the blaze at the corner of Temple and Fremont streets, the Los Angeles Times reports. The LAFD has subsequently tweeted the exact location of the incident.

From the latest reports, it appears they are finally getting it under control. However, according to the LA Times, two adjacent buildings have been damaged in the blaze as the heat being emitted has burst their windows.

“When they came out of the quarters they could see it was fully engulfed,” fire department spokeswoman Katherine Main told the paper. “It was a building under construction in the framing phase. Almost 1 million square feet and a city block.”

The fire apparently broke out in an apartment complex under construction near the four-level freeway interchange junction on the northern edge of downtown. A picture of the site is available on Google. The building was intended to be an upscale residential building with commercial space on the lower level.

LAFD spokesman David Ortiz told the LA Times that some 250 firefighters had been dispatched to extinguish the blaze, which he characterized as “huge.”

Due to the size of the fire and the logistical issues necessary to put it out, the 101 Freeway nearby is closed in both directions, he said. The California Highway Patrol says that transition lanes between the 110 and 101 have also been shut down. No injuries have been reported.

Social media users in the city have been quick to post pictures of the pillar of fire reaching up into the night sky, with some taking a more ominous interpretation of the blaze.

Several trashcans in the vicinity of the building have also been set on fire, according to social media reports.