Teen Drug Use Up, Alcohol Use Down

A team of smokejumpers parachuting into a fire in the mountains of Southern Oregon landed in an illegal marijuana garden being prepared for growing season. The six smokejumpers from a base in Redmond found the site Monday evening, when there was a rash of lightning strikes. Jackson County sheriff's spokeswoman Andrea Carlson says the smokejumpers notified authorities, who hiked into the remote site in the Rogue River-Siskiyou (SIS'-kee-yoo) National Forest. They seized two guns and more than 1,000 little pot plants. Carlson says the site near the community of Applegate was being cultivated by growers for Mexican drug gangs, and it's been used before. She says the smokejumpers saw some people but weren't sure whether they were pot growers, so no one was arrested. The smokejumpers extinguished the fire after it burned less than an acre.

House Republicans are willing to give President Barack Obama a rare win, the chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee said Thursday in outlining a deal that would let college students avoid a costly hike on their student loans.

Thousands of students and teachers staged a strike across Spain on Thursday to protest government austerity measures and a planned new education reforms.    

PhysBizTechStudy Finds Expanded Medicaid Increases Health Care UseNew York TimesWASHINGTON — Come January, millions of low-income adults will gain health insurance coverage through Medicaid in one of the farthest-reaching provisions of the Obama health care law. How will that change their finances, spending habits, use of Medicaid has mixed record on improving health for poor, study saysLos Angeles TimesMedicaid Expansion May Not Improve Health of Poor in USBloombergMedicaid Expansion Enhances Financial and Mental Well-Being, Study SaysU.S. News & World ReportWashington Post -ModernHealthcare.com -NPR (blog)all 57 news articles »

New study: debt limit deadline likely extendedMinneapolis Star TribuneWASHINGTON - The likely deadline for Congress to prevent the government's first default will be later than earlier thought, a Washington think tank has found. The Bipartisan Policy Center said Friday that the government probably won't reach the brink of and more »