The uninsured are clearly the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation, which would extend the health care safety net for the lowest-income Americans.

The legislation is meant to provide coverage for as many as 32 million people who have been shut out of the market — whether because insurers deem them too sick or because they cannot afford ever-rising insurance premiums.

For people already covered by a large employer — most Americans, in other words — the effect would not be as significant. And yet, just about everyone might benefit from tighter insurance regulations.

“We think it’s a big step forward,” said Bill Vaughan, a policy analyst at Consumers Union. “It’s going to provide a peace of mind that many Americans who really want or need health insurance will always be able to get a quality product at a reasonable price regardless of their health or financial situation.”

There would be costs to consumers, too. Affluent families would be required to pay additional taxes. Most Americans would be required to have health insurance and face federal penalties if they do not buy it. And it is still unclear what effect, if any, the legislation would have on rising out-of-pocket medical costs and premiums.

But there is no question that the legislation should benefit consumers in various ways. Beginning in 2014, for example, many employers — those with 50 or more workers — could face federal fines for not providing insurance coverage. Several of the other changes would take effect much sooner.

Six months after the legislation is wholesale jewelry enacted, many plans would be prohibited from placing lifetime limits on medical coverage, and they could not cancel the policies of people who fall ill. Children with pre-existing conditions could not be denied coverage.

And dependent children up to age 26 would be eligible for coverage under their parents’ plans — instead of the current state-by-state rules that often cut off coverage for children at 18 or 19.

And within three months of the necklace jewelry sets law’s taking effect, people who have been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition would be eligible for subsidized coverage through a new high-risk insurance program.

That special coverage would continue until the legislation’s engine kicks into a higher gear in 2014, when coverage would be extended to a wider part of the population through Medicaid and new state-run insurance exchanges.

Those exchanges, or marketplaces, are meant to provide much more competitive, consumer-friendly online shopping centers of private insurance for people who are not able to obtain coverage through an employer.

In 2014, people with pre-existing conditions could no longer be denied insurance, all lifetime and annual limits on coverage would be eliminated and new policies would be required to meet higher benefit standards.

Even sooner, in 2013, affluent families with annual pink pearl ring income above $250,000 would be required to pay an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income, while contributing more to the Medicare program from their payroll taxes. And eventually, the most expensive insurance policies would be subject to a new tax.

Here is a look at some of the main ways the health care overhaul might affect household budgets.

The Uninsured

Although most Americans who do not obtain health insurance would face a federal penalty starting in 2014, many experts question how strict the enforcement of that penalty would actually be.

The first year, consumers who did not have insurance would owe $95, or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater. But the penalty would subsequently rise, reaching $695, or 2 percent of income.

Families who fall below the income-tax filing thresholds would not owe anything. Nor would people who cannot find a policy that costs less than 8 percent of their income, said Sara R. Collins, a vice president at the Commonwealth Fund, an independent nonprofit research group.

EXPANDED MEDICAID More lower-income individuals under the age of 65 would be covered by Medicaid, the federal health insurance plan for the poor. Under the new rules, households with income up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $29,327 for a family of four, would be eligible.

EXCHANGES AND SUBSIDIES Most other uninsured people would be required to buy insurance through one of the new state-run insurance exchanges. People with incomes of more than 133 percent of the poverty level but less than 400 percent (that’s $29,327 to $88,200 for a family of four) would be eligible for premium subsidies through the exchanges.

Premiums would also be capped at a percentage of income, ranging from 3 percent of income to as much as 9.5 percent.

EMPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY The exchanges would also help people who lose their jobs, quit or decide to start their own businesses.

“If you lose your employer-related  black cultured pearl insurance, you will be able to move seamlessly into the exchange,” said Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law.

Moreover, people of any age who cannot find a plan that costs less than 8 percent of their income would be allowed to buy a catastrophic policy otherwise intended for people under age 30.

Those With Insurance

EMPLOYER COVERAGE People who receive coverage through large employers would be unlikely to see any drastic changes, nor should premiums or coverage be affected. But almost everyone would benefit from new regulations, like the ban on pre-existing conditions that would apply to all policies come 2014.

There might even be cases where people would be eligible to buy insurance through an exchange instead of through their employer, Professor Jost said: those who must pay more than 9.5 percent of their income for premiums, or those whose plans do not cover more than 60 percent of the cost their benefits.

CHANGES IN MEDICARE One of the biggest changes involves the Medicare prescription drug program. Its unpopular “doughnut hole” — a big, expensive gap in coverage that affects millions — would be eliminated by 2020. Starting immediately, consumers who hit the gap would receive a $250 rebate. In 2011, they would receive a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs.

HIGH-COST INSURANCE Starting in 2018, employers that offer workers pricier plans — or those with total premiums of $10,200 or more for singles and $27,500 for families — would be subject to a 40 percent tax on the excess premium, said C. Clinton Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte. Retirees and workers in high-risk professions like firefighting would have higher thresholds ($11,850 for singles, or $30,950 for families), pegged to inflation.

Although the taxes would be levied on the insurer, experts expect the assessment to be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher premiums or reduced benefits.

(CNN) -- An Aruban police dive team will search the site where an underwater photograph was taken that might show human remains, a spokeswoman for the Aruban prosecutor said Saturday.

The picture has renewed interest in the  Chinese pearl jewelry  nearly 5-year-old Natalee Holloway case.

Officials first heard of the picture, taken in October by a vacationing American couple, on Thursday, Ann Angela, a spokeswoman for Aruban prosecutor Peter Blanken, said

"We have received the picture, and the diving team of the Aruban police will start doing preliminary work at the spot where we 4-5mm pearl necklace believe it was taken," Angela told CNN.

She declined to identify the location, saying authorities want to avoid attracting onlookers during the search.

The picture has raised the notion that, if it shows human remains, they could be those of Holloway, an 18-year-old Alabama high school student whose 2005 disappearance while on a graduation trip to Aruba was widely publicized.

Holloway was last reported seen leaving a bar silver jewelry in the capital of Oranjestad on May 30.

CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the photo nor confirm whether it shows human remains.

Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, declined to comment on the photo.

The photo was taken by a Pennsylvania woman using a disposable film camera during the first stop on her Royal Caribbean cruise.

Three months after snapping what she said she thought were pictures of colorful fish, Patti Muldowney and her husband said they realized that one picture contained what they believe appear to be human remains.

"When I looked at that photo, I said, 'By darn, that certainly does look like a skeleton,' " John Muldowney told HLN's "Nancy Grace" on  earrings fittings Friday. "You can see the skull. You can see where the eye sockets were. You can see where the chin was.

"It's lying flat on its back. And its arms are cradled around. You can almost see fingers. And then on the one sleeve it looks like some kind of maybe clothing that's deteriorating."

The couple, who took the photo to police and the FBI, said it was taken near a shipwreck.

The FBI said Friday that it is investigating.

"The photo has been made available to all elements of the FBI that are involved in this foreign police cooperation case," Mike Kortan, assistant director of the FBI, said in a statement. "Investigative leads are being pursued and the wholesale shell strand effort is ongoing."

The main suspect in the Holloway case, Joran van der Sloot, remains free. Van der Sloot has made alleged confession-like statements in TV interviews, one of which involves dumping Holloway's body in the ocean after she suffered a seizure on the beach. Aruban judges have ruled there isn't enough evidence to arrest him.

Whether the object in the photo is human remains is still up for debate.

In underwater burials, it is typical for arms, legs and other extremities to be dispersed and for lighter bones to be carried away from heavier bones by fish, wildlife and water, according to Heather Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist.

"It looks as if there's something that may be on top of the skeleton," Walsh-Haney said of the image in the photograph. "That would certainly bode well for preserving the center of the mass of the body and keeping most of it there."

Dr. Marty Makary, a physician who serves on the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, said he sees mixed signs, some indicating the image may not be a skeleton.

"What I don't like about the photo is there's no spinal cord or vertebral column," he said. "In fact, below this roundish skull-type profile you see a curvature which doesn't really represent a normal spinal column."

If it works on a mass scale, the company, Calera, could turn that carbon into gold.

Cement production is a large source of carbon emissions in the United States, and coal-fired electricity plants are the biggest source. As nations around the world press companies to curb their greenhouse-gas emissions, a technology that makes it profitable to do so could be very popular. Indeed, Calera’s marketing materials may be one of the rare places where glowing quotes from a coal company and the Sierra Club appear together.

“With this technology, coal can be cleaner than solar and wind, because they can only be carbon-neutral,” said Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley billionaire. His venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, has invested about $50 million in Calera. On Monday, Calera is set to announce that Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest coal company, has invested $15 million.

Although Calera has a pilot project up and running, it is still not clear that the process can be used on a large scale or that anyone will buy the cement it makes.

Some climate scientists and cement experts turquoise necklace are dubious that Calera can produce large quantities of cement that is durable and benign for the environment.

“People have been looking for ways to do this for 15 years,” said Ken Caldeira, an expert on the carbon cycle who is a senior scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford. “The idea that they’re going to come up with something that’s both economic and scalable? I’m highly skeptical.”

Major carbon emitters and green technology companies have been trying to figure out ways to capture and store carbon, such as injecting it into the ground, in case Congress begins to regulate carbon emissions.

Calera says that by turning carbon into a building material, it will make carbon reduction economically attractive even in places where there are no government subsidies or carbon taxes. “In this case, it’s actually a profit center,” said Brent Constantz, Calera’s founder and chief executive.

Mr. Constantz, who is a consulting professor pearl mountings at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, has spent his career studying and creating different kinds of cement. As a graduate student, he studied how corals in the Caribbean use carbon dioxide to make their skeletons. He started two companies, Norian and Skeletal Kinetics, that make a calcium phosphate cement that surgeons use to repair broken bones.

In 2007, he and Mr. Khosla hatched plans for Calera. Today, Mr. Khosla is effectively part of the management team, involving himself in  earrings accessories  details and speaking with Calera executives daily.

While the company declines to share precise details of its process, it does say it combines carbon dioxide with seawater or groundwater brine, which contain calcium, magnesium and oxygen. It is left with calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, which are used in making cement and aggregate. It plans to sell it to concrete companies for use in pavement.

To make its cement more acceptable to manufacturers of traditional Portland cement, it is also making concrete blends of 20 percent Calera cement and 80 percent Portland cement, the calcium silicate binder used in concrete for buildings, highways and bridges.

In Moss Landing, on the shore of Monterey Bay, a huge natural gas power plant owned by Dynegy spews dirty gray smoke, called flue gas. It is full of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Today, big, rusty pipes snake from the power plant to Calera’s demonstration cement plant. Calera pumps the flue gas into a big blue container, in which sea water from the nearby ocean is sprayed through the gas, producing a milky white liquid.

The liquid is then pumped into a giant strainer, which separates the solids from the water and spits out a white substance that looks like toothpaste. In a spray dryer, hot air — the waste heat from the flue gas — transforms the paste into akoya pearl bracelet little particles of cement and aggregate. Calera plans to desalinate the leftover water and sell it.

Calera’s cement plant is capturing 86 percent of the carbon dioxide in the flue gas from the Dynegy plant, according to a study by R.W. Beck, a consulting firm hired by Calera.

Much of the skepticism about the project stems from the acid created in Calera’s chemical process. It has to find a way to dispose of it or neutralize it by adding alkaline materials, without creating more environmental problems or raising costs. Either would be difficult to do on a large scale, Mr. Caldeira said.

Mr. Khosla said that Calera has many sources of alkaline materials and many ways to dispose of acid.

Climate scientists have raised other questions as well. “The chemical processes are known to exist, but if what you’re looking for is something that can be scaled up in order to actually mitigate CO2 emissions, it’s just a big problem,” said Ruben Juanes, assistant professor in energy studies at M.I.T.

Growing beyond the demonstration plant will be coloured glaze jewelry Calera’s next challenge, and it is a step that has stumped many clean technology start-ups.

“People have the impression that the energy sector is like the I.T. sector and you just have to build an iPhone and suddenly it will be everywhere, which is simply not the case,” said Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and editor of Climate Progress, an influential blog. “You have to build up so much infrastructure.”

Calera, which has worked with Bechtel to design and build cement plants, plans to open its first commercial plant next year. The company is in talks with Dynegy and a utility in Pennsylvania and has received grants from the Australian government to build a cement plant next to a coal plant in the state of Victoria.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to believe us until we’re up and running,” Mr. Constantz said.

(CNN) -- Not to put a damper on your weekend, but could this be the beginning of the end?

The beginning of the end of daily, reliable, relatively inexpensive mail service?

As you undoubtedly have heard, the U.S. Postal Service wants to do away with Saturday delivery. Regulators are being asked to approve the request.

The Postal Service is bleeding -- all right, hemorrhaging -- money. It reported a loss of $3.8 billion last year. Its leaders are saying that nature pearl beads unless something dramatic is done, it will face deficits of $238 billion over the next 10 years.

Last summer, when I wrote a column here about the theoretical elimination of Saturday mail, there was an opportunity in conjunction with the story to register a quick vote on the issue. More than 397,000 people voted, and the overwhelming majority said they didn't care whether they got Saturday mail.

Sixty-eight percent said they wouldn't miss it. Only 32 percent said they would.

Here's the problem:

If mail delivery goes from six days to five, more and more Americans may decide they just don't need it. People have available to them, as pendant jewelry sets none of us needs to be reminded, computers with e-mail capability. You can correspond with friends and family and business associates; you can pay bills; you can send greetings.

Using the U.S. mail already means accepting that letters will be held up for a day between Fridays and Mondays. Elimination of Saturday mail would extend the bottleneck. And this is a country that increasingly demands speed; you'd think that someone, if only in an effort not to fall further behind, would be suggesting a seventh day of delivery be added.

Last year, the volume of U.S. mail fell by 26 billion pieces -- from 203 billion to 177 billion.

The Postal Service, in gambling that cultured pearl brooch doing away with a day of delivery will help heal its financial wounds, may be risking a lot.

There's not much of a track record in American business for cutting back on services and then seeing the long-term bottom line grow. Companies that boldly announce they are going to cut their way to prosperity often cut their way to death.

If delivery is reduced to five days, and the number of letters mailed each year plunges further, the Postal Service could find itself in the position of having to eliminate even more services. Five days could conceivably go to four, or three; and if that didn't stop the plummet in available funds, what would be the next step?

Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, recently wrote a letter to The New York Times (I'm hoping it was a traditional letter, and not an e-mail; if he isn't using the U.S. mail, we're really in trouble). He's hardly a disinterested party; he wants his members to keep their jobs.

Still, what he wrote deserves our attention:

"No business ever bounced back to health by rushing to offer slower service and turning customers away. ... Eliminating Saturday delivery would send the wrong message to both citizens and businesses, that this public service is about to get a lot worse. ... The worst thing Congress could do is allow it to drop Saturday delivery."

Once you try to convince people that they can live without you a little bit, they begin to realize that perhaps they can live without you a lot. The great American passenger railroads, in the face of jet air travel and dwindling revenues, started to provide less frequent service to fewer places. They blamed it on cost factors. They hoped they could slash their way back to success. But as you may have noticed, the 20th Century Limited doesn't come around here anymore.

Why does this matter? Earlier in today's column, I referred to "relatively inexpensive mail service." You may have smiled at that; the price of akoya pearl bracelet stamps keeps going up and up.

But, if you didn't know about America's tradition of universal mail delivery, what would you think if someone told you:

There's a service available to you. A federally designated courier will come to your home every day but Sunday, and pick up whatever you would like to have hand-delivered to someone else in the country, no matter how far away. The courier and his colleagues will then take your envelope to that person in a matter of days. You don't need to leave your house for this service, and neither does the person on the other end.

You might ask: How much does this service cost?

If you were told that the answer is 44 cents, you might think you were getting a pretty good deal.

But if fewer and fewer people use the U.S. mail, and thus provide fewer and fewer dollars to the U.S. Postal Service, that 44-cent price tag is purper south sea pearl going to climb like never before.

And if the bet by the Postal Service fails -- the bet that doing away with Saturday delivery won't make people depend even less on using the mail. ...

Well, maybe somewhere there's an example of how giving customers less makes them more loyal and appreciative. Makes a business thrive.

But as someone very wise once said:

Is this any way to run a railroad?

The opinions expressed in thi

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of immigrants and activists rallied here on Sunday, calling for legislation this year to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants and seeking to pressure President Obama to keep working on the contentious issue once the health care debate is behind him.

Demonstrators filled five lengthy blocks of  wholesale shell pearl  the Washington Mall, down the hill from the Capitol where last-minute negotiations were under way on the health care bill. The immigrant activists, chanting Mr. Obama’s campaign slogan of “Yes we can” in Spanish and English, tried to compete with their numbers for public and media attention which were mainly focused on the climactic health care events in the House of Representatives.

The rally brought the return to major street action by immigration activists, who turned out hundreds of thousands of protesters in  turquoise necklace marches and rallies in 2006. After an immigration overhaul measure was defeated in Congress in 2007, the pace of enforcement raids picked up and many immigrants, especially those without legal status, preferred to lay low.

But immigrant advocates decided to gamble by calling the march, to give a show of force that might impress Mr. Obama and also to vent the frustration of many immigrants who have taken to heart his repeated promises that he would move an immigration bill in Congress by early this year.

Mr. Obama addressed the crowd via a crystal necklace videotaped message displayed on huge screens, promising to keep working on the issue but avoiding a specific time frame.

“I have always pledged to be your partner as we work to fix our broken immigration system, and that’s a commitment that I reaffirm today,” Mr. Obama said.

He expressed his support for the outline of an immigration bill presented last week by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. While pledging to help build bipartisan support, Mr. Obama warned, “You know as well as I do that this won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight.”

But speaker after speaker rose to demand immigration legislation sooner rather than later, leaving aside any mention of the acrid political environment in Washington in the aftermath of the health care battle.

“Every day without reform is a day when 12 million hard-working immigrants must live in the shadow of fear,” said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a Democrat from New York who is the chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“Don’t forget that in the last presidential election 10 million Hispanics came out to vote,” she said. She told the crowd to tell lawmakers “that you will not forget which side of this debate they stood on.”

Representative Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois, a Democrat who has been a leader of the immigrants’ movement, said he was optimistic that Mr. Obama would try to get an immigration bill this year.

“I see a new focus on the part of this president,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “That’s why we are here to say we are not invisible.”

The urgency was echoed by church leaders who spoke, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, and Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, the leader of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the largest organization  freshwater wish pearl of Latino evangelical churches.

“The angst and trepidation in our communities is unprecedented,” Mr. Rodriguez said. He compared the mood among Latinos to the hard days of the civil rights movement. “This is our Selma,” he said.

Echoing that thought were an array of African-American leaders who turned out for the event. Speakers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Benjamin T. Jealous, president of the N.A.A.C.P; Cornel West, a Princeton scholar, and Marc H. Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans and the president of the National Urban League.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and a leading organizer of the event, said that rallies were planned in several cities on April 10, the last day of the Congressional recess. On May 1, Mr. Noorani said, immigrant groups would release a report card of every lawmaker and where they stand on the immigration overhaul.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said he thought an immigration bill could pass at the end of the year, after the storm of the November elections had passed.

The crowd, overwhelmingly Latino immigrants, arrived on buses from California, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Colorado and many other places. Unions brought thousands of members, including dozens of workers from a meat-packing plant in Tar Heel, N.C.

While a few demonstrators waved flags from other countries, most flew American flags overhead, recalling the negative reaction from American voters to earlier protests where Mexican flags dominated. Farm workers from Florida held one billowing flag overhead and propped it with sticks, forming a tent.

In the crowd, frustration with Mr. Obama was strong. Rudy Romero, 19, and Andrea Rentaria, 23, said they boarded buses early Friday in Colorado with 54 other people, and 36 hours later, arrived in Washington. They said they were disappointed with the pace of progress on immigration.

“We’ve been waiting for so long,” Mr. Romero said. “I know it takes time, but a promise is a promise. We are demanding it today.”

Ms. Rentaria added, “We want to step up and freshwater pearl ring say, ‘Hey, wake up. We’re here. We’re still waiting. We’ve given you time to settle in. When is this going happen?’ ”

“I understand you have to take care of health care,” Ms. Rentaria said. “As soon as we’re done with that,” she said, immigration should be next.

Although there were a few jeers for Mr. Obama during a morning rally, the crowd roared when he appeared on video.

Adrian Vasquez, 32, held up a sign reading “Support Our President, Immigration Reform Now!” Mr. Vasquez, who has been in the United States for 20 years and is now an illegal immigrant, admitted that the push for an overhaul “could not come at a worse time” for Mr. Obama.

But he said, “I’m eager for change. I think we can get it done.”

Theo Emery contributed reporting.

FARGO, N.D. – The good news was all about things that didn't happen: No floodwaters pushing aside hastily built sandbag walls, no neighborhoods evacuated, no panicked residents wondering if they'd ever see their homes again.

The Red River crested in Fargo on Sunday without doing major damage, and city officials all but declared victory.

A year after record flooding forced thousands in the area to evacuate and damaged about 100 homes, officials and residents used a host of lessons learned to prepare for this year's less intense — but still potentially destructive — rush of water.

Thousands of volunteers, including young children, stacked more than 1 million sandbags and crews built miles of clay levees to keep the multi-strand necklace waters away. Officials gave residents tips on building better sandbag dikes, including clearing the ground of snow and ice that could be melted by floodwaters. And the city held exercises to map out the best routes for trucking sandbags to neighborhoods.

The Red River crested Sunday afternoon at just under 37 feet — 19 feet above flood stage — and was on its way down as evening approached. Only some baseball fields, a golf course and backyards were submerged in Fargo. Some homes in  silver pearl pendant more rural areas were surrounded by water.

Residents of Fargo and its neighbor across the river, Moorhead, Minn., felt both better prepared and luckier than they did last year, when the river crested nearly 4 feet higher.

"The sense is we've made it. We're thankful and let's have a party," said Bob Ona, senior pastor at Fargo's First Assembly of God church in Fargo, where volunteers gathered over the past week before heading out to the city's so-called Sandbag Central.

Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said he would pop the champagne later this week to celebrate his city's success in fighting the flood. On Saturday he helped pass out cigars to other city officials.

Walaker noted that while most floods have at least "one day of chaos" that didn't happen this year.

"The big thing is relief," he said. But he added, "We need at least another week here before we get it to the level we wanted it to be. There's still a lot of water down south."

The forecast over the next few days was favorable to speeding up the north-flowing river's fall: freezing temperatures overnight and only a akoya pearl jewelry small chance of rain.

"We're bobbling downward," National Weather Service spokesman Greg Gust said.

That was good news to residents here, who worried that the Red could stay at its crest for several days, straining temporary levees and sandbag dikes.

Fargo residents already have begun cleaning up the debris in low-lying neighborhoods, and highway crews were out measuring clay levees in preparation for removing the temporary barriers over the next week.

Elsewhere, residents went about their daily Sunday routines — walking their dogs, reading newspapers, going to church — without much worry over the Red.

At a coffee shop in Moorhead less than a block from the river, Fargo resident Terry Ziegelmann leisurely read the paper while eating a bagel.

"I don't see the nervousness in people you would normally see when you talk flood," said Ziegelmann, who has lived in the area since 1972. "We were prepared this year."

The weather also helped. Though the river initially rose faster than expected because of unseasonably warm weather, below-freezing temperatures over the pearl mountings past several days slowed the melting of snow and skies were free of major rain storms.

Flooding this year has been limited mostly to areas just along the Red River in Fargo and Moorhead, where 3-foot-high piles of sandbags have prevented water from reaching homes. In rural areas outside Fargo, more widespread flooding from Red River tributaries submerged several fields and washed out a few roads.

One small northwestern Minnesota town, Oslo, was cut off from the outside world as the swollen Red swamped highways leading into it, leaving it like a virtual island encircled by dikes.

The National Guard helped mend a private levee that breached around nearby Harwood early Sunday before lending its muscle to a sandbagging effort southwest of Fargo in tiny Kindred along the rising Sheyenne River, which feeds into the Red, Cass County sheriff's Capt. Bruce Jorgensen said. But there were no serious problems or emergencies.

Back in Fargo, Pastor Ona invited several families whose homes were damaged in last year's floods to pray during Sunday services.

"We want to publicly give thanks to shell strand God — he has helped us, we have been spared," Ona said. "Amen! Hallelujah!"

Church member Albert Frisinger, 54, said last year's flooding submerged his basement and parts of the first floor of his home. Frisinger had been recovering from gallbladder surgery at local hospital at the time and was evacuated because of the floods.

This year, Frisinger was able to watch the sunset on the eve of the river's crest from his new home near the Sheyenne River. Water crept to within about 30 feet of his home but wasn't a threat.

"A year ago I was crying," Frisinger said. "Today I'm happy."

____

Iquitos, Peru (CNN) -- Nearly 21 years ago, Patty Webster landed her dream job as an adventure tour guide in the Peruvian Amazon. But as she shared the area's beauty and culture with tourists, she realized there was a darker side to the rainforest paradise.

"I saw how poor they were and realized that wholesale shell jewelry people were dying because they didn't have medical care," Webster said.

She started sharing her supplies with the locals and soon began waking up to find people waiting outside her mosquito net to ask her for medicine. At one point, Webster -- who had no medical training -- gave someone stitches, following instructions from a book.

"It was kind of scary," she cubic zircon jewelry recalled. "If they're depending on me for their health care ... we're all going to die."

That's when she decided to stay and do something more.

Since 1993, Webster has been bringing medical relief to some of Peru's poorest and most remote areas through her nonprofit, now known as Amazon Promise.

Webster -- described by a visiting doctor as "sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and Mother Teresa and Susan Sarandon" -- and her volunteers have provided free health care and education to more than 55,000 people.

Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2010 CNN Heroes

It's hardly the life one could have predicted for this bridal hair jewelry Detroit, Michigan, native, but she's never followed an "ordinary" path.

The daughter of postal workers, Webster headed to New York after high school graduation and worked as a model, a Radio City usherette and an ASPCA adoption counselor before going to Peru for a wildlife internship.

When she was offered a job as an adventure tour guide, she jumped at the chance and has never looked back.

Today, she runs Amazon Promise from Iquitos, considered the most populous city in the world that can't be reached by road. It's in the northeastern corner of the country, in the middle of the rainforest, and is the capital of Peru's largest and most remote region.

Nearly half of the area's population lives in poverty, and one-third of residents lack access to basic medical care, according to Peru's National Institute for Statistics and Information Technology. Some might go their entire lives without seeing a doctor.

That's what Webster is working to change. She organizes several expeditions to these underserved areas every year. Each trip is staffed by adventure-seeking medical volunteers from the West -- often from U.S. medical schools -- and Peruvian health professionals. A traditional shaman, or healer, frequently accompanies them.

Dr. John Glick met Webster while on a cubic zircon jewelry trip to the slums of Belen, near Iquitos, for the Gesundheit! Institute, Dr. Patch Adams' health organization.

"She's an amazing person. She is sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and Mother Teresa and Susan Sarandon," Glick said. "She is a unique and focused individual who is serving the health needs of some of the (poorest) people in the world."

Financed largely by the volunteers' trip fees, Webster's teams travel around the region for up to four weeks at a time, holding free clinics for the local people.

Getting to these remote areas is Webster's biggest challenge. Many of the villages take days to reach, often requiring travel by bus, helicopter and boat. Large portions of these trips are made on the area's winding rivers -- no easy feat when traveling with 30 to 40 containers of medical supplies.

"Sometimes we're in dugout canoes ... and we'll encounter major rapids," Webster explained. "When that happens, you just need to get in and close your eyes."

In the villages, the volunteers provide preventive services such as prenatal checkups and general exams, but most of their time is spent treating a wide range of ailments like malaria, TB, pneumonia, diarrhea, animal or snake bites, and parasites. Teams usually see several hundred patients during each expedition.

Webster also strives to empower the local population by training village health workers and educating villagers about HIV prevention, hygiene and sanitation.

The group also works in some of the region's most destitute urban areas.

"We often see people that are even sicker right in the wholesale jewelry set city than in the jungle," she said.

Webster hopes to build a permanent clinic in Belen, a slum on the outskirts of Iquitos. She envisions providing services to the city's poor, training for health workers and housing for villagers who come to the city for treatment.

The government has donated land for the project, and Webster is working to raise the funds for construction. In the meantime, the group has built a simple structure where it will hold clinics twice a month.

After 17 years, Webster still has yet to collect a salary for her work, and she lives in the group's offices in Iquitos. But while life on a shoestring budget isn't always easy, knowing that she's having an impact keeps her motivated.

"Regardless of whether it's getting to one person or 30 people or 300 people, you make a big difference," she said. "Anything I can offer them that is going to help them ... it's just a real gift."

It's a gift she plans to keep giving for as long as she can.

"I've found my purpose," she said. "It certainly wasn't what I had planned for my life, but you can't go against these forces of nature."

Want to get involved? Check out the Amazon Promise Web site and see how to help.