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people seek care under its new mandates?
• Most major pieces of the Affordable Care Act take full effect with the new year. That means people who had been denied coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition can book appointments and get prescriptions.
• Caps on yearly out-of-pocket medical expenses will mean people shouldn't have to worry about bankruptcy after treatment for a catastrophic illness or injury. And all new insurance policies must offer a minimum level of essential benefits, ranging from emergency room treatment to maternity care.
• The law's benefits apply to individual policies as well as those offered through employers.
• But one benefit didn't take effect as expected after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor late Tuesday night temporarily blocked the part of the law requiring some religious-affiliated organizations to provide their workers with insurance that includes birth control. Government officials have until Friday to respond to her emergency stay.
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• JERUSALEM (AP) -- The director of the hospital where the comatose former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being treated says he is in critical condition and his life is in danger.
• Zeev Rotstein of Tel Hashomer hospital said on Thursday that the functioning of "several essential organs" has declined but would not elaborate.
• Rotstein says Sharon's condition is "critical" and his "life is in danger."
• He said Sharon's family is at his bedside.
• The 85-year-old Sharon has been in a coma since 2006 when a devastating stroke incapacitated him at the height of his political power.
• ___

• JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Rwanda's former spy chief has been found dead in a hotel in South Africa, and police said Thursday they have opened a murder investigation. Opposition leaders immediately accused President Paul Kagame of ordering his assassination.
• The opposition coalition Rwandan National Congress said Patrick Karegeya, a

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