Chris Havens – More fruits and veggies on convenience store shelves, tobacco-free college campuses and a new physical education curriculum for White Bear schools.

Those are three goals the St. Paul-Ramsey County Department of Public Health hopes to accomplish with the help of a $3.6 million state grant, which was accepted by the County Board on Tuesday.

It is the biggest grant the department has received in the past 20 years, department director Rob Fulton told commissioners.

The money comes from the Statewide Health Improvement Program, a chronic disease prevention initiative that aims to promote exercise and healthful eating, and reduce tobacco use. It was signed into law in 2008 and provides $47 million in grants for Minnesota communities over the next two years.

It is estimated that the cost of medical treatment for lack of physical activity in the state was about $5 million in 2000.

The St. Paul-Ramsey County department will focus on community, school, work and health care settings. It will hire five employees to help administer the program, which is supposed to concentrate on policies, systems and environmental changes.

Some of the planned projects for the grant money include:

•Developing a healthy food portions program with restaurants.

•Improving mapping of trails and parks.

•Increasing access to parks and rec programs for low-income families.

Assessment will be important, and 10 percent of the grant will be spent on tracking the effectiveness of the various programs.

Fulton told the board he is not sure that he’ll be able to say how many pounds will be lost in Ramsey County, but he is confident that more people will shift their thinking.

French virologists on Sunday said they had found a new subtype of the AIDS virus that appears to have jumped the species barrier to humans from gorillas. The new strain, found in a woman from Cameroon, West Africa, is part of the HIV-1 family of microbes that account for the vast majority of cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), they said.

Until now, all have been linked to the chimpanzee. The new subtype has been called P, adding to three established HIV-1 subtypes — M, by far the most prevalent, and O and N, which are rare. There is also an HIV-2 which is a minority viral family and is also suspected to have origins in non-human primates.

The virus was sequenced from a blood sample taken from an unnamed 62-year-old woman who moved to Paris from Cameroon, according to a letter published by the journal Nature Medicine. In 2004, shortly after moving to the French capital, the woman was tested for HIV. She responded to diagnostic tests for HIV-1 but further tests failed to pinpoint the viral subtype.

The virus was genetically decoded and then put through a computer model to compare its evolutionary past against known viruses, both HIV and its equivalent in apes, called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). The strain was a “significant” match with SIVgor — an immune deficiency virus found in gorillas. “The most likely explanation for its emergence is gorilla-to-human transmission of SIVgor,” the letter says.

The research was headed by Jean-Christophe Plantier at a national referencing laboratory for HIV at the Rouen Hospital Centre, northwestern France. HIV is believed to have jumped from humans from their closest animal relatives more than a century ago, in west-central Africa.

Analysis of tissues preserved by doctors in the colonial-era Belgian Congo shows that HIV-1 began spreading among humans at some point between 1884 and 1924, according to an investigation published last October.

But until now, the known vector has been the chimpanzee. Some experts have suspected that the gorilla may have been implicated in the N subtype, but this is the first time that a link has been so clearly defined. “A gorilla origin is highly likely” in the new P subtype, Marie Leoz, one of the research team, told AFP. “For the time being, it’s the closest source. What is still quite difficult, though, is to date when the first transmission of the virus took place, because there are still very few gorilla strains that are available.”

Leoz also said subtype P was probably rare among humans, but further work was needed to confirm this. The Cameroonian woman has no sign of AIDS, is receiving treatment and has a stable count of viruses and of CD4 cells, a key benchmark of immune-system fitness, said Leoz.

There are several theories that seek to explain how SIV entered humans. An infected animal bit a human, or a SIV-infected ape was butchered and sold for bushmeat, and the virus entered the bloodstream through tiny cuts in the hand, according to these hypotheses.

AIDS first came to public notice in 1981, when alert US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York. It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or HIV, the virus that destroys immune cells and exposes the body to opportunistic disease.

Just now arriving in showrooms, the 2010 Outback turns out to be an excellent redesign of Subaru’s popular crossover SUV, as well as the latest chapter in an extraordinary automotive story. Back in the early ’90s, when SUVs were in full bloom, the Japanese automaker wanted desperately to get into this large and lucrative game. Unfortunately, the Subaru cash drawer, like the company itself, was rather Lilliputian. There just wasn’t enough money to develop an off-road burly boy from scratch.

So, Subaru’s Cherry Hill-based North American arm persuaded the company to get into the SUV business by making do with what it had by converting its all-wheel-drive Legacy station wagon into a new kind of SUV. They jacked up the AWD Legacy wagon with bigger tires and suspension spacers, added some macho SUV styling cues, and presto, America’s first crossover SUV was born. Subaru initially called this new genre a “sport utility wagon,” and early on dubbed it the Legacy Alpine. It became the Outback in 1995.

The Outback resonated with customers essentially because it was car-based rather than truck-based like the traditional SUVs. This meant a better ride, better handling, and, because of its lighter weight, better mileage. The fact that it was thousands of dollars cheaper than its traditional midsize competitors didn’t hurt, either.

True, it lacked the low-range gearing needed for serious rock hopping, but it got the job done on icy, snowy roads, and that’s all most buyers care about. The bottom line is that crossovers have now spread throughout the industry, and are much hotter sellers than truck-based SUVs. Tiny Subaru has sold 803,00 of them, according to Tim Mahoney, the company’s high priest of marketing.

“It [the Outback] saved this company,” said Mahoney, one of the principal players in the vehicle’s genesis. “Well, maybe that’s too strong, but it certainly helped us redefine ourselves and have an effect on other companies.”

Among the early chores, Mahoney said, was to give it a name and an image. Outback served the rugged, outdoorsy identity he was looking for, and so did the use of Australian actor Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) as spokesman.

From the beginning, the Outback’s advertising has reflected Mahoney’s light touch. (One of the print ads for the new Outback shows a doleful dog in the front seat with the caption, “Be kind to animals: Don’t sing along with the radio.”)

If canine consideration prevents you from singing along with the radio, you still have lots to enjoy in the new Outback. The upmarket 3.6R Limited that I drove proved a pleasant, refined piece of machinery. It rode as well as it handled, which was darned good. It was also well-powered, exceptionally quiet, and seemed absolutely immune to thunks, clunks, and rattles, even on the roughest roads.

The Outback is built off the same platform as the recently introduced Legacy Sedan. In addition to the architecture, it shares engines and some sheetmetal with the Sedan.

Despite those commonalities, the Outback is a markedly different ride. It has higher ground clearance (a substantial 8.7 inches) than the Legacy, and, of course, a very different silhouette. I think the Outback got the longer end of the styling stick. This is a good-looking crossover. Its stance and sculpting result in a stylish SUV with just the right mixture of aggression and civility.

The new Outback is a wider, longer wheelbase vehicle. The result is an 8 percent bump in interior volume and more rear seat legroom, even though the new car is almost an inch shorter than the old one. There are more than 34 cubi
c feet of storage behind the rear seat, and 71 with it folded down.

The Outback is offered as two models: the 2.5i and 3.6R. The former is powered by a 2.5-liter four rated at 170 horsepower, while the latter gets its gumption from a 3.6-liter, 256-horse six. Both engines boast improved mileage for 2010. The 3.6R I drove had EPA ratings of 18 city and 25 highway.

The 2.5i models are available with either a six-speed manual or a new continuously variable automatic. The 3.6R comes only with a conventional five-speed automatic. Both models are offered in three grades: Base, Premium, and Limited. Base prices start in the low $20s and go up to $30,995 for the heavily equipped 3.6R Limited that I tested.

Will Weissert – Raul Castro announced Saturday that Cuba will cut spending on education and health care, potentially weakening the building blocks of its communist system in a bid to revive a foundering economy.

The former defense minister who took over the presidency last year called state spending “simply unsustainable” and said the cash-strapped government would reorganize rural schools and scrutinize its free health care system in search of ways to save money.

But he vowed that the island will not see fundamental change even after he and his older brother and predecessor, Fidel Castro, are gone.

“I wasn’t elected president to return capitalism to Cuba,” Raul Castro said, “or to surrender the revolution” — the armed uprising that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista a half century ago.

“I was elected to defend, build and perfect socialism, not destroy it,” he said to a standing ovation from lawmakers in Parliament.

He framed those remarks as a response to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has said Washington wants to see economic and social reforms in Cuba before doing more to improve relations.

Castro reiterated his willingness to negotiate better relations with the United States and acknowledged a “decline in the aggressiveness and anti-Cuban rhetoric” during the Obama administration.

He said he was ready to talk about “everything here in Cuba, but also everything there in the United States,” referring to Washington’s 47-year-old trade embargo.

Castro said Cuba “won’t negotiate our political or social system and we won’t ask the United States to do so. We should mutually respect our differences.”

Raul was Fidel Castro’s hand-picked successor for decades and took power from his brother without an election in February 2008.

Cuba argues its system is democratic because voters ratify a slate of official parliament candidates, and lawmakers in turn choose the Council of State, the supreme governing body. The parliament list is drawn in part from municipal leaders who are picked during neighborhood gatherings where participants vote by show of hands.

Raul Castro made an unusual mention of the mortality of his ailing, 82-year-old brother — something top officials almost never do in public — scoffing at those who think Cuba’s political system will crumble after “the death of Fidel and all of us.”

“If that’s how they think, they are doomed to failure,” Castro said.

Defiant guarantees for the future came only after a heavy dose of grim economic news. Without mentioning specifics and while insisting education will not suffer, he said some students and teachers in rural areas will be reassigned to nearby cities, saving time and money needed to transport 5,000 educators long distances between home and work.

He also said cuts were in store for the universal health care system, which, along with free education through college, subsidized housing and food provided on a monthly ration system, forms the basis of the communist way of life that the Castro brothers have spent 50 years building.

Before Castro spoke, lawmakers established a new office of government finances to crack down on corruption and keep better watch on the state’s often mysterious spending patterns.

The new comptroller’s office is a break from the past, when Fidel Castro lorded over the national treasury. Cuba’s former “Maximum Leader” often raided it for pet projects after taking power in 1959 and continued to micromanage minuscule spending details in subsequent decades.

Taking scrutiny of Cuba’s economic books away from the presidency reflects the businesslike, mil
itary mentality of the younger Castro, an army general who has demanded better accountability from all leaders.

Cuba’s government dominates well over 90 percent of the economy and pays an average salary of about $20 a month, meaning some employees steal food, electronics and anything else they can at work and sell them on the black market to make ends meet.

While it may help limit graft, the new office likely will do little to fill sparse state coffers. Three hurricanes last summer caused more than $10 billion in damage and wiped out grain that the government had stockpiled to protect against rising commodity prices. The global recession has since cut into export earnings and caused budget deficits to soar, leaving Cuba short of cash.

Things are so dire that on Friday, authorities postponed a Communist Party congress that would have been the first of its kind in 12 years.

At the same time, the government decreased the projection for 2009 growth to 1.7 percent. As recently as December, central planners boasted Cuba would grow 6 percent this year, but they count as output government spending on social programs.

Tourism has remained strong, with the number of foreign visitors on pace to slightly exceed last year’s record 2.35 million, which generated $2.7 billion. Still, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said revenue from those visitors is down about 10 percent in 2009.

“Tourism is growing, tourists keep coming, but they have changed the way they travel,” Marrero said outside the parliament meeting. “They are coming for less time, trying to come with a lot of discounts, and that has caused a decline in profits.”