Monday, March 31, 2014


News Clips Of The Day



Obamacare Website Down as Deadline Arrives – NBC
First published March 31 2014

People trying to apply and enroll for private health insurance through Obamacare before Monday's midnight deadline are discovering the website is "currently unavailable."

Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace bedeviled by bugs since its launch last fall, is down, a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services said. The statement said "the tech team is working now to bring the system online as soon as possible."

An HHS spokeswoman said she expected the site would be available again later in the morning, and said a version of a queuing system was open so that people could leave their information and get an email informing them when the system was back up.
"Consumers may also complete their application by calling the call center at 1-800-318-2596. The federal data services hub is working normally," HHS said.

Monday at midnight ET is the deadline to sign up for insurance in the online markets created by President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

Million of people have piled onto the sites in the last days, and the federal government said as of last week, 6 million people had applied for insurance.
The administration announced an extension for those who had started an application by Monday but didn't finish, perhaps because of errors, missing information or website glitches. HHS says as long as people have gotten in line by Monday, they will be allowed to finish their applications.

The government says it will accept paper applications until April 7 and take as much time as necessary to handle unfinished cases on HealthCare.gov.




Bummer! This is bad, especially since the deadline is upon us. I'm sure they'll have it fixed soon. It has been working fine until today. It's good that they have the queu for leaving your basic information and requesting an email to go back to later. There is also the call center and the opportunity to use a paper application. I would expect that some people who are not used to using computers would prefer the paper application anyway. I hope this site is up and running smoothly by later this morning.




Tour of Ukraine-Russia Border Finds No Signs of Military Buildup – NBC
By Jim Maceda
First published March 30 2014, 9:53 AM

All is not quiet on the Western Front, but the drumbeat of war along the long Ukraine-Russian border is nowhere near as loud as it sounds in Moscow.

According to dire warnings from U.S. military and intelligence officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his daring annexation of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula, has concentrated tens of thousands of his forces on the border with Ukraine. Camouflaged and concealed to throw off U.S. spy satellites, the warnings say, the heavily armed combat troops and special operations forces are coiled and ready to spring across the border into restive regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine such as Kharkov and Donetsk, where pro-Russian populations are eager to be annexed by Russia, just like Crimea.

Top Russian officials – including Putin himself – have denied any such troop concentrations near the Western border. One minor Ministry of Defense official, who didn’t want to be named because he wasn’t authorized to comment, told NBC News that there had been training exercises – war games – in the border region but, once ended, those troops and armor returned to their bases. “All of this international hype is completely unfounded,” he told us earlier in the week.

Still, the stream of YouTube video clips and photos seemed to tell a different story: long convoys of Russian armored personnel carriers on a highway headed toward Ukraine; tanks and artillery pieces moving by rail on dozens of train cars; squads of MI-24 combat helicopters perched on a hill near Belgorod, only 20 miles from Ukraine. Are these preparations for a Chechnya-like invasion, or just more maneuvers meant to intimidate Ukrainians and the West?

We went to look for ourselves. Cameraman Dmitry Solovyov, sound engineer Alexei Gordienko and I packed our bags, devices and news-gathering gadgets into the back of our grey, nondescript bureau minivan and began a journey along the 1,200 mile border between Russia and Ukraine – many segments of which give no indication that it’s an actual border between two countries.

Sudzha, a small town in the region of Kursk, site of the biggest tank battle of World War II, was our first destination. A tank column had been spotted there, 5 miles from the border, about a week before. But as we drove around the quaint town – equally proud of its freshly painted Orthodox Church and its bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin – we saw no tanks, or even armored personnel carriers. We did see ATM machines on almost every block. All was quiet. There was no tension in the air. Outside town, farmers were planting winter wheat.

We traveled some 500 miles along the border – sometimes right next to Ukraine, at other times 30 to 40 miles from it – before we came across any sign of military activity. As we passed Belgorod’s army base, near the airport, I recognized the same MI-24 choppers I’d seen on the Internet. We got lucky – a pair took off as we drove past. We turned back to see them banking within the base’s perimeter. Nearby, clusters of military vehicles, mostly heavy trucks, were out in the open, but where were the tanks and artillery?

In Belgorod – the Russian city adjacent to the restive Ukrainian city of Karkov – we were briefly detained by 2 officers of the Russian FSB security service after driving right up to the border gate and asking people about the rumors of impending war. (The taxi drivers said they were angry because the Ukrainian border guards weren’t letting any Russians into the country – fearing provocations – which had dried up their business.)

We had apparently wandered into a prohibited, 3-mile wide security zone. But the agents of the former KGB were polite, even willing to talk on background.
“Look over there, ‘’said the regional chief, pointing toward the border crossing. “The Ukrainians have tanks just inside. Can you imagine if a trained, Right Sector (Ukrainian ultra-nationalist militant) commandeers the vehicle and fires on us?”

Did he think that Kiev would give that order, I asked?
“No, I don’t. But we have no faith that Kiev can prevent such an incident,” he replied. After some two hours of discussion, we were let go, each with a photocopy of the law we’d broken. ‘’You’re not the first ones,’’ said the chief, seeing us off.
After the Belgorod confrontation, we spent the next two days traversing seemingly endless farmland on pot-holed roads, passing chicken coups and old ladies selling buckets of apples -- but no signs of brewing war.

"If Russians and Ukrainians on the other side unite, it would be better for everyone."
We found more army bases -- in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and Rostov, both near Ukraine’s southeastern border -- but the only activity we saw was some serious latrine duty and a band of conscripts enjoying a friendly wrestling match.

Russian villagers living just 5 miles from the border in Novoshakhtinsky -- one of the most likely invasion routes into Donetsk -- didn’t believe Putin would give the order.

“If Russians and Ukrainians on the other side unite, it would be better for everyone,” offered Vladimir Kasianov, an unemployed 30-something who echoed the sentiments of many Russians we talked to along the border. But Kasianov didn’t want a military solution. “Everything must be done through politics, not war,” he told us.
We ended our journey in Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian-Ukrainian land border melts into the Sea of Azov, after 1,000 miles and 80 hours. But were we any closer to knowing if a war between Moscow and Kiev had been averted, or was just around the corner? The answer seemed to beg still another question: Will Russia’s most popular and powerful politician listen to his own people?




“All of this international hype is completely unfounded,” says an unnamed Russian official. US military and security, however, claim “the heavily armed combat troops and special operations forces are coiled and ready to spring” near the border.

A Russian official at Bolgorod who spoke to the reporters about the situation when they were briefly detained for crossing the border said that he feared Ukrainian ultra-nationalist militant could commandeer on of the Ukrainian tanks and fire on the Russians, though he didn't expect Kiev to order an attack.

The heavy equipment and massive numbers of troops are gone from the border as the war games have been concluded, according to a Russian, and the reporters found no evidence of the troops. Vladimir Kasianov, a Ukrainian Russian speaker, is quoted as saying that he hopes that the Ukrainians and Russians will “unite” – it wasn't clear whether he meant under a Ukrainian or Russian flag – by “political” not military means. The reporter said that many Russians along the border shared this sentiment.

They also didn't believe that Putin would order troops into Ukraine. Putin himself has continued to state the same. There is no question that he wants to keep Crimea under Russian control, however, which Obama firmly opposes. Still, it looks, at least for the time being, as though the situation on the Ukrainian border has cooled down, while the US and Russia are talking diplomatically about reaching a solution. Russia has asked for an international presence to stabilize the situation within Ukraine. Putin remains concerned about spontaneous fighting between Russian and Ukrainian speakers, fearing that the Russians are being mistreated. If that, in fact, is happening it should be stopped, because it can only work to destabilize the country and give weight to Russia's claim that there is a need for Russian troops to cross the border.




Protest Over 'Killer Cops' Triggers Violence in Albuquerque – NBC
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- Alexander Smith
First published March 31 2014

A peaceful protest in the streets of Albuquerque, N.M., descended into a scene of "mayhem" on Sunday as demonstrators threw rocks and police used tear gas and mounted units to try to disperse a crowd of hundreds.

The 10-hour protest was in response to what critics say is an unacceptable number of police shootings in the city – 23 fatal incidents since 2012, according to the Associated Press. The most recent of these deaths was James M. Boyd, a mentally ill man who was shot dead by Albuquerque police on March 16, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

Mayor Richard Berry said one police officer was injured after demonstrators threw rocks and later trapped a police vehicle and tried to break the windows, the AP said.

"We respected their rights to protest, obviously," Berry said at a news conference. "But what it appears we have at this time is individuals who weren't connected necessarily with the original protest. They've taken it far beyond a normal protest."

Sunday's protests came after a YouTube video purporting to be from the hacktivist group Anonymous issued a call to action following Boyd's killing, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The incident also prompted an FBI investigation and the Department of Justice has been investigating claims of excessive use of force against the Albuquerque Police Department for more than a year, the AP said.

The newspaper said protesters blocked traffic, took over the city's University of New Mexico and held signs bearing slogans such as "Hey hey! Ho ho! Killer cops have got to go!"

At one point a man parked a van in front of the Albuquerque Police Department building and produced what he said was an AK-47 rifle, although his fellow protesters convinced him to put it away, the newspaper said.

An AP reporter saw gas canisters being thrown outside police headquarters and personnel from the Albuquerque Police and Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department charging at the protesters.




The first question that comes to my mind in this article is whether 23 killings over the span of a year and a half is a very high number. I found this article, a blog, which I highly recommend to readers about fatalities by city and state and general comments on the issue – http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/01/police-involved-shootings-2011-annual.html. Albuquerque is listed as one of the highest ranked cities for fatalities on a per capita basis.

There does appear to be an inflated number of protesters who found out about the gathering from the website Anonymous when the mentally ill man was shot, and one protester displayed what he said was an AK-47 rifle before his compatriots convinced him to put it down. An FBI and Department of Justice investigation has been underway “for more than a year” about “excessive use of force” in Albuquerque.

Every now and then people ask for police to use rubber bullets. It occurs to me they could also use tranquilizer darts if they aren't too expensive. Sometimes in riot situations rubber bullets are used effectively, but in cases of hot pursuit or confrontations with armed or otherwise aggressive criminals the police do often shoot. I have seen several times TV shows on the subject, when the police defend the practice of shooting at the core of the body – in other words a kill shot – when they are under assault.

Tactically, it makes sense – police officers in close interactions are very much in danger of being shot or knifed by the criminal, and often are killed, in fact. Still, some police forces don't try as hard as others to avoid deadly shootings. I suspect that local politics has a lot to do with which cities those are. We do need the police, however, and without them crime would truly be rampant. I am mixed in my feelings about the issue. If I see any articles later about the findings of the FBI I will clip them.







Utah boy finds human remains in backyard: "It was kind of eerie"
CBS/AP March 31, 2014,

SALT LAKE CITY -- A 14-year-old boy digging a trout pond in the backyard of his father's Salt Lake City home stumbled across a surprise: the remains of an American Indian who lived about 1,000 years ago.

Experts from the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts spent Friday removing the remains, which were confirmed by medical examiners as those of a person from a millennium ago, and investigating the site for archaeological clues after ninth-grader Ali Erturk's discovery earlier in the week.

"Humans have occupied this valley for up to 10,000 years," department spokesman Geoffrey Fattah told The Salt Lake Tribune. "We do run into situations where progress runs into the ancient past."

A forensic anthropologist will analyze the remains to try to learn more, including the person's sex and cultural affiliation. A report will go to the state Division of Indian Affairs, which will try to determine whether the remains are linked to current tribes, Fattah said. A tribe may claim the remains and perform interment rites.
Other private property in Salt Lake City has occasionally yielded Native American graves. The department typically receives about six reports of ancient remains statewide each year, Fattah said.

Erturk told CBS affiliate KUTV that he "got the shovel and started digging and before I knew it - it got pretty deep."

Erturk said he had been working on the trout pond for a couple of weeks until he discovered what he initially thought was just an animal bone. Then he realized it was human remains.

The teen told KUTV "it was kind of eerie" that he may have stumbled on a crime scene. It "freaked him out" a bit and so they called others to check out the bones, together the group decided to call police.

Fattah urged the public to contact law enforcement authorities if human remains are unearthed so they can be removed professionally and respectfully. Erturk's father notified Salt Lake City police after his son's discovery.

Ali told KUTV that he was hoping to skip school Friday to watch archaeologist as they screen the dirt from his hole. They will be looking for the rest of the remains and any other important artifacts.




I can imagine the excitement that this teenager must have felt. That we live right on the same ground that was occupied by long forgotten Indian tribes has always thrilled me. I can imagine myself walking alongside their spirits, taking my turn in the flow of time. North Carolina has lots of American Indian findings, too. My father found a 6,000 year old grindstone in his garden in Eastern North Carolina. I hope young Erturk did stay home from school to watch the archaeologists work. That would be worth more than most daily lessons kids receive in school. Much of what we learn is not from a classroom.




U.S. and Russia fail to reach agreement on Ukraine – CBS
AP March 30, 2014

PARIS - The United States and Russia agreed Sunday that the crisis in Ukraine requires a diplomatic resolution, but four hours of talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov failed to break a tense East-West deadlock over how to proceed.

Sitting face to face but not seeing eye to eye on any of the most critical issues, Kerry and Lavrov advanced far-different proposals on how to calm tensions and de-escalate the situation, particularly as Russia continues to mass troops along its border with the former Soviet republic. As he called for Moscow to begin an immediate pullback of the troops, Kerry also ruled out discussion of Russia's demand for Ukraine to become a loose federation until - and - unless Ukrainians are at the table.
"The Russian troop buildup is creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine," Kerry told reporters at the home of the U.S. ambassador to France after the meeting, which was held at the Russian ambassador's residence and included a working dinner. "It certainly does not create the climate that we need for dialogue."

The U.S. believes the massing of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, ostensibly for military exercises, along the border is at once an attempt to intimidate Ukraine's new leaders after Russia's annexation of the strategic Crimean peninsula and to use a bargaining chip with the United States and the European Union, which have condemned Crimea's absorption into Russia and imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials.

Kerry noted that even if the troops remain on Russian soil and do not enter Ukraine, they create a negative atmosphere.

"The question is not one of right or legality," he said. "The question is one of strategic appropriateness and whether it's smart at this moment of time to have troops massed on the border."

U.S. officials said Kerry proposed a number of ideas on troop withdrawals from the border and that Lavrov, while making no promises, told him he would present the proposals to the Kremlin.

At a separate news conference at the Russian ambassador's house, Lavrov did not address the troop issue. Instead, he made the case for Moscow's idea of Ukraine as a federalized nation with its various regions enjoying major autonomy from the government in Kiev. Russia says it is particularly concerned about the treatment of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who live in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov said that Ukraine can't function as a "unified state" and should be a loose federation of regions that are each allowed to choose their own economic, financial, social, linguistic and religious models.

He said every time Ukraine has elected a new president, the country has adopted a new constitution, proving that "the model of a unified state doesn't work."
Ukrainian officials are wary of decentralizing power, fearing that pro-Russia regions would hamper its Western aspirations and potentially split the country apart. However, they are exploring political reforms that could grant more authority to local governments.

The U.S. has been coy about their position on a federation. Washington has encouraged ongoing political and constitutional reform efforts that the government in Kiev is now working on but U.S. officials insist that any changes to Ukraine's governing structure must be acceptable to the Ukrainians.

Kerry said the federation idea had not been discussed in any serious way during his meeting with Lavrov "because it would have been inappropriate to do so without Ukrainian input."

"It is not up to us to make any decision or agreement regarding federalization," he said. "It is up to Ukrainians."

"We will not accept a path forward where the legitimate government of Ukraine is not at the table," Kerry said, adding that the bottom line is: "No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine."

Lavrov denied that Moscow wants to "split Ukraine."
"Federation does not mean, as some in Kiev fear, an attempt to split Ukraine," he said. "To the contrary, federation ... answers the interests of all regions of Ukraine."

Lavrov said he and Kerry did agree to work with the Ukrainian government to improve rights for Russian-speaking Ukrainians and disarm "irregular forces and provocateurs."
Sunday's meeting was hastily arranged 48 hours after U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone in a conversation in which Obama urged Putin to withdraw his troops from the border with Ukraine. Putin, who initiated the call, asserted that Ukraine's government is allowing extremists to intimidate ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking civilians with impunity - something Ukraine insists is not happening.

That call did little to reassure U.S. officials that Russia is not planning to invade Ukraine after its annexation of Crimea that the West has condemned as illegal and a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States and Europe have imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials in response, sparking reciprocal moves from Moscow.

In the interview with Russian television, Lavrov called the sanctions a "dead-end" strategy that would not achieve results and accused the West of hypocrisy. He said it was inconsistent for the west to refuse to recognize Crimea's annexation, which followed a referendum on joining Russia that was overwhelmingly approved, while at the same time accepting the new government in Kiev, which was formed after the pro-Moscow president fled the country.

The idea for Sunday's meeting was for Lavrov to present Russia's responses to a U.S. proposal to de-escalate the tensions that covers Ukrainian political and constitutional reforms as well as the disarmament of irregular forces, international monitors to protect minority rights and direct dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, according to U.S. officials, who say it has backing of Ukraine's government.
U.S. officials said Russia appeared to show some interest in the Ukrainian reform program, but Moscow's insistence on a federated state left it unclear if they would support it.

Kerry and Lavrov have met several times in person and have spoken by phone almost daily since the crisis began but have not yet been able to agree on a way forward. The pair met last week in The Hague, where Kerry presented Lavrov with the proposal, which was a response to ideas Lavrov gave him at a March 14 meeting in London.
Kerry and Lavrov will continue their consultation at a distance. And Kerry was expected to travel to Brussels Wednesday and Thursday for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.




“Four hours of talks” is nothing in the diplomatic game. They always start with mutually exclusive demands and work inward. In the peace talks between the US and Vietnam I can remember long and heated discussions about the shape of the table which they would sit around. It seems there were symbolic reasons for that. That is how the fabled King Arthur got the idea for his famous Round Table – so every man sitting there would have equal status during discussions.

Russia is now asking for a breakup of Ukraine into a set of “federalized regions” which have considerable autonomy from Kiev. I would be afraid that Russia would continually try to interfere in the separate regions and bring them over to Russian domination. Kerry has stated firmly that no decisions about the structure of Ukraine's government would occur without Kiev's representatives at the table.

Lavrov denies that Russia wants to “split Ukraine,” though that sounds like exactly what he is saying. Lavrov has said, “he and Kerry did agree to work with the Ukrainian government to improve rights for Russian-speaking Ukrainians and disarm "irregular forces and provocateurs." I would not be at all surprised if there were gangs of “irregular forces” roaming the countryside and fighting. It is obvious that there is a great deal of anger between the peoples in this case. They fought for months in the streets of Kiev before they finally drove Yanukovich out of the country in fear for his life. Ukraine denies that there are any such groups intimidating Russian speakers.

In explanation for the idea of a Federation, Lavrov said that “every time Ukraine has elected a new president, the country has adopted a new constitution, proving that "the model of a unified state doesn't work." The Ukrainian government is said to be “exploring reforms” to grant more power to the different regions, so maybe there is some room for them to discuss possibilities together. However, it won't happen without the Ukrainians themselves being involved in the discussions. That's fine. It sounds like progress to me. I will be on the alert for more information in the near future.




­ Japan Must Halt Whaling Program In Antarctic, Court Says – NPR
by Bill Chappell
March 31, 2014

­ An international court has ordered Japan to revoke whaling permits in the Antarctic and stop granting new ones.

The country's government had argued that hunting whales was part of a research program, but the International Court of Justice ruled Monday that Japan hasn't generated enough scientific research to justify killing hundreds of whales. Critics said the hunts were instead a way to justify commercial hunting.

Under the whaling program, Japan had set annual "lethal sample size" limits of 50 per species for fin whales and humpback whales, in addition to approximately 850 Antarctic minke whales. But the court said the research program had generated only two peer-reviewed papers that together refer to nine whales.

"In light of the fact that [Japan's program] has been going on since 2005 and has involved the killing of about 3,600 minke whales, the scientific output to date appears limited," the court wrote in its judgment.

By a 12-4 vote, the court based in The Hague decided Japan must "revoke any extant authorization, permit or license granted in relation to" its whaling program, "and refrain from granting any further permits" related to it.

The court's ruling stems from a complaint filed by Australia in May 2010, when it accused Japan of being in breach of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by operating a system that produced whale meat for sale in Japan, rather than creating scientific data.

Japan contested the allegations, saying the meat was sold in order to fund research. International conventions allow whale meat to be sold commercially when it's a by-product of research efforts.

Japanese officials have said the whaling program, called JARPA II, is for research on whales' age, sexual maturity and pregnancy rates, according to court documents. Some elements of the program were slated to go on for six to 12 years.

But the court noted that an expert who was called on to testify — Nick Gales, chief scientist of the Australian Antarctic Program — said Japan's program "operates in complete isolation" from other Japanese and international research efforts into Antarctica's wildlife.

As Australia's ABC notes, "Japan signed a 1986 moratorium on whaling, but has continued to hunt up to 850 minke whales in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean each year."

The news agency adds, "The ICJ's ruling is final and there will be no appeal."
Japanese officials have said they will abide by the ruling. But the country could also simply end its participation in agreements that curb whale hunting, ABC says. And as The New York Times notes, "The court left open the possibility for future whale hunting if Japan redesigned its program."




A research program, or a way to justify commercial whaling? The International Court of Justice says that Japan hasn't produced enough research to justify the killings. Under this program Japan has reported on nine whales, while 3,600 minke whales have been killed. The complaint comes from Australia which states that Japan has been killing the whales for meat to sell inside their country. Japan claims that the whale meat was sold to fund their research, which according to this article is not against international law.

Maybe that's one law that needs to be changed, if that is the case. Killing is killing, and as more and more species go extinct the human animal continues to ravage much that nature has given us. However, the court has ruled against Japan which has said that it will comply with the demand. Unfortunately, according to the New York Times the court gave Japan leeway to change its program in order to regain the right to hunt. So whose side is the Court on?

To be fair to Japan, I will add that the Inupiat Eskimo tribe in Alaska also hold an annual whale hunt. It is a 1,000 year old tradition, and provides winter food stocks for the tribe. They are allowed to kill only 22 whales a year, which isn't nearly as many as the Japanese have been taking. Go to the following website to read a very interesting blog on the Alaska hunt by a man who has observed it in progress. http://thewhalehunt.org/statement.html, written by Jonathan Harris.

Sunday, March 30, 2014


News Clips For The Day



Limits to Development: When Should You Avoid Building at All Costs? – NBC
By Erik Ortiz
First published March 30 2014


Even before the massive mudslide mangled homes, residents and officials knew the risks of living in the shadow of an unstable hillside in rural Washington state. Yet they built, and continued to live in an area that 15 years ago was flagged for having a “potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

But avoiding building or uprooting people in Oso would have been a virtually impossible task, said J. David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

In a country where personal property rights are coveted, government can be hesitant to force people out or stop construction without an immediate, justifiable reason, he told NBC News.
“You don’t know when that mountain’s going to come down,” Rogers said. “So if you’re in the government, it’s politically dicey to start telling people they can’t be somewhere, especially if they already live there.


“It’s like you’re putting a gun to their head — people don’t react well to that,” he added.

As a geological engineering consultant in California, Rogers said he noticed that residents were quick to seek lawyers in landslide cases.

“You don’t know when that mountain’s going to come down."

In Oso, with no government officials seeking to condemn the land along the Stillaguamish River where the slide hit, residents could stay.

However, local zoning laws ensured there could be no housing boom. Such low-density rural areas in the county don’t typically allow for more than 1 unit every 5, 10 or even 20 acres, said Mike Pattison, of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

“The zoning is highly restrictive, and you would never have seen subdivisions or cul-de-sacs and neighborhoods built out,” Pattison said.

“While Seattle has a very dense, urbanized core, it’s not that far of a drive to get to the middle of nowhere,” Pattison added. “That’s how people like it.”

A pioneering spirit has survived in these rural communities, Pattison said, precisely because there are limits to development, ensuring that farmland and open space are preserved.

It’s an idea that other places across the United States that are prone to natural disasters must consider when there’s an outcry to rebuild.

Historically, the government has bought out communities in low-lying areas prone to floods, and they’ve stopped people from trying to build in designated flood zones.
But some people will put up a fight when it comes to losing their homes — their investments, said Dan Dolan, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Washington State University.

Local and state governments also try to help their residents. On the heavily populated East Coast, New Jersey and New York officials fought to secure federal funds so that people ravaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 could rebuild.

In a country where personal property rights are coveted, governments can be hesitant to force people out or stop construction without an immediate, justifiable reason.
To ensure building didn’t get out of hand, Washington state passed the Growth Management Act in 1990 that identifies natural resource lands, while setting other places aside for urban growth.

“You can’t take a farm and split it up and build houses,” Dolan said.
Still, he added, there remains a fierce attitude in rural areas that “it’s my land, and I ought to be able to do what I want.”

Dolan said that Americans will need to decide whether building — and having government footing the bill — is worth the greater expense to society.
But in Oso, observers say, that won’t be an issue anymore after the monster landslide destroyed about 49 homes and killed at least 17 people.

“You could give away the land, and you won’t get anyone to take it,” Rogers said. “They’re all pretty spooked.”




Residents and officials knew the risks, says this article. Fifteen years before, the hillside was deemed as having “a potential for a large catastrophic failure.” Catastrophic is a big word, but it is not overstating the case. Mt. Vesuvius eruption covering Pompeii and Herculaneum was catastrophic, and like that event, today teams are searching through the mud with dogs to find the dead. Luckily they did find some people alive at the beginning of the search, but the last voices crying out were heard just a few days after the slide, and now of course there are none.

According to this article, the land was known to be in danger of a slide when many of the houses were built there. Why did anybody purchase such property and risk their death by building there? “A pioneering spirit has survived in these rural communities, Pattison said, precisely because there are limits to development, ensuring that farmland and open space are preserved.” The Growth Management Act of 1990 prohibited large subdivisions being built, according to this article, but still 49 homes were there to be destroyed last week. Speaking of the current land value J. David Rogers said that you can't give the land away now. So much for the value of investments.

This article mentions that the many of the New Jersey residents who were wiped out by Hurricane Sandy are trying to rebuild. Maybe that was a one time thing, but I doubt it, and the trouble with a hurricane in that area is that there are so many people living there to be ruined financially and possibly killed. It's one of those sad things. New Orleans has yet to recover from Katrina. I'm glad I got to visit New Orleans in the 80s when it was still exotically beautiful. Those are good memories – the music, the food and being part of the vast crowd of onlookers for the Mardi Gras parades. It was very exciting.




McFaul: Focus of U.S.-Russia Tension Shifts to Moldova, Donetsk – NBC
By Tom Curry
First published March 30 2014

Former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Mike McFaul said Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to make the future of eastern Ukraine and Moldova points of contention in the wake of Russian forces’ seizure of Crimea.

Putin and President Barack Obama spoke by phone Friday. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are going to meet Sunday in Paris to discuss the Crimea crisis and the rift in American-Russian relations.

McFaul, an NBC News analyst who served as Obama’s ambassador to Moscow until last month, said the Russians are now in effect saying, “OK, Crimea’s done. We’ve taken that. Now let’s start negotiating about the Ukrainian constitution. Let’s start negotiating about the autonomy of places like Donetsk (in eastern Ukraine).’ As President Kennedy said very famously during the Berlin crisis, he was not going to negotiate about the freedom of Berlin under the guise of ‘what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.’ This feels a little but like that: they (the Russians) are changing the subject to talk about what they want, not what we want to talk about.”

Another question is the future of the separatist Transdniestria region of Moldova, populated largely by Russian speakers. Putin is going to make Moldova “an issue that we’re going to have to now negotiate. And we’re going to negotiate in, I think, a weak position given where he is right now.”

McFaul added “there’s no doubt in my mind that if Russia goes into eastern Ukraine some Ukrainians will fight in a guerrilla struggle.” But he said he did not foresee a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine “any time soon.”




Mike McFaul was until the last month and a half Obama's ambassador to Russia. Why was he replaced? According to http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-us-mcfaul-reaction/25253305.html, McFaul failed to keep Russian and US relations from deteriorating. From that article, “His presence in the capacity [of U.S. ambassador to Russia] coincided with the period in which the Russian government, true to its ideological considerations, adopted a radically anti-American stance. On top of that, of course, this entire unbridled [Russian] propaganda campaign [against U.S. policies] was given a major push by the fact that Michael McFaul is the author of a number of books on transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, which the Russian government has taken personally.”

This article blames the present and recent past of Russia's attitude to the US, and I assume the West in general, on “its ideological considerations,” in other words Russia is again seeking totalitarian control over a large chunk of Europe. Putin is not cooperating with the West, as Russia appeared to be after Glasnost, and that has been going on for a time before this land grab in Crimea. It's like the old story “A snake, after all, is a snake.”





Nonsurgical Fix Could Replace Open-Heart Surgery, Study Suggests – NBC
The Associated Press
First published March 30 2014

WASHINGTON — A new study gives a big boost to fixing a bad aortic valve, the heart's main gate, without open-heart surgery. Survival rates were better one year later for people who had a new valve placed through a tube into an artery instead.
The results were reported Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Washington and prompted some doctors to predict that in the near future, far fewer people will be having the traditional operation.

"It's going to be very hard to tell a patient that if they need an aortic valve, surgery is going to be their best option," said one of the conference leaders, Dr. Prediman K. Shah of Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

Several hundred thousand Americans have a bad aortic valve, which can stiffen and narrow with age, keeping blood from passing through as it should. Until a few years ago, the only solution was a major operation to open the chest, cut out the bad valve and sew in a new one.

That changed in 2011, when Edwards Lifesciences Inc. won federal approval for an expandable valve that could fit in a catheter into a leg artery, guided to the heart and placed inside the old valve. Studies showed survival was comparable to or a little better with it than with surgery, but strokes were more common after the catheter approach, making some leery of it.

Earlier this year, a rival device — Medtronic Inc.'s CoreValve — was approved for treating people at too high risk to have surgery. The new study tested it in nearly 800 people less sick — eligible for the operation but still with elevated risks.
One year after treatment, 19 percent of the surgery patients but only 14 percent of those given a CoreValve had died.

"It's a great leap forward" for fixing valves through blood vessels, said Dr. David Kandzari of Piedmont Heart Institute in Atlanta.
The study was paid for by Medtronic, and many study leaders consult for Medtronic, Edwards or other heart device makers. Results also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.




It seems difficult, to me, to run a device up through an artery and place it in the heart valve, but doctors apparently are having a great deal of success with it. Open heart surgery, on the other hand, is very traumatic to the body and apparently many people die afterward. This is like the operation on organs in the abdomen which is done now through the navel. Women who had hysterectomies by the old method had scars covering about a third of their tummy which were unsightly, and there was a long period of recuperation from the operation. Medicine and dentistry have both improved two or three hundred percent since I was young. It's amazing, really.




Horrific Taboo: Female Circumcision on the Rise in U.S. – NBC
By Annabel Roberts
First published March 30 2014

When Marie was two years old, a woman in her village in Africa cut off her clitoris and labia. Now 34 and living thousands of miles away in New York, she is still suffering.

“I have so many problems, with my husband, with sex, with childbirth,” she told NBC News, withholding her real name to protect her identity. “The consequences on my life are all negative, both physically and psychologically."

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation is common across much of Africa, where it is believed to ensure sexual purity before marriage. But Marie says FGM is also “very common” in some communities in America.

“The pressure to get daughters cut is great,” she said.
“We need to make it something that can be discussed.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 150,000 to 200,000 girls in the U.S. are at risk of being forced to undergo cutting. The CDC says “at risk” because there are no actual records of the practice, only estimates – and old estimates at that. Its latest data date to 1997, the year after it was banned in the U.S.

But experts who work with victims and their communities say FGM is on the rise.
"It is hard to believe this is the real number because of how much [FGM-practicing] communities are growing, especially in the last two or three years," said Mariama Diallo, African community specialist at Sanctuary for Families, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to helping domestic violence and trafficking victims. Her organization could only extrapolate using census data when it issued a report on the growing problem last year.

Immigration to the U.S. from countries in Africa quadrupled between 1990 and 2011 from 360,000 to 1.6 million according to a recent report released by New York City’s planning department.

“The numbers need to be updated – but this needs funding and no one is interested,” said Dr. Nawal Nour, founder of the African Women’s Health Practice at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Lack of Prosecutions
There are different degrees of FGM, the most severe form being the narrowing of the vaginal opening by repositioning the labia and stitching up the opening, sometimes leaving a hole the size of a matchstick for the passing of urine and menstrual flow.
The cutting is often carried out without anesthetic on girls between infancy and the age of eight. Victims can suffer numerous physical and mental health problems: severe abdominal pain, vaginal and pelvic infections, pain during sex, complications during childbirth.

In Phoenix, Arizona, a staggering 98 percent of Somali women being treated at the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic have been circumcised, founder Dr. Crista Johnson said. She estimates the Somali community is at least 12,000-strong.

Johnson has supported such victims all over the country – from Washington,D.C., to Michigan to California – and says the spike in immigration from such communities has been astonishing in recent years.

“The number has easily quadrupled because of migration patterns,” she added.
So with such numbers, why has there only been one successful prosecution in the U.S.?
“People won't report against their families,” Marie said. Since the mutilation is usually organized by the child’s mother or grandmother and supported by the father, many cases go unreported, case workers say.

“Even if there is protection from the government, it is difficult for a victim to disclose it through fear of retaliation from their family, and fear of losing their family,” she said.

Still, experts believe the law is a useful deterrent. Johnson says there is a sense of resignation among the families that they must abide by U.S. laws. Nour agreed, saying: “Parents are afraid to do anything that will get them deported.”

Taboo Topic
For Americans on the outside of communities where it is practiced, FGM is such an unknown that many medical workers, law enforcement and child protection officers are not informed on how to proceed when confronted with it.

“This has been such a taboo topic, we [haven’t been able to] take it out from under the table. We need to make it something that can be discussed,” said Shelby Quast, senior policy adviser of Equality Now, an international women’s rights NGO.
“There has to be a huge shift so that we identify this as a form of violence against girls – and not something that's protected as a cultural and religious tradition,” she said.

Some of the blunt and dirty tools used to carry out female circumcision in Tanzania, where 15 percent of women and girls are cut. The rate is far higher in other parts of Africa: In Burkina Faso, where Marie was cut, the rate is 73 percent. Somalia has the highest rate at 98 percent.

Support for victims is also comparatively poor in the U.S., health workers say. Nour in Boston and Johnson in Arizona run the only two clinics dedicated to supporting FGM victims in the U.S.

Comparatively the U.K. – with only a fifth of the population of the U.S. – has 15 specialist clinics. British midwife Comfort Momoh, who runs one such operation, recently visited the U.S. to research American facilities.

Coming from Europe, where campaigners are making strides in turning FGM into a mainstream issue, Momoh was shocked to see “no proper coordination and hardly anywhere for girls to go for support,” she said. “The situation is well, well behind the U.K.”

Campaigners say reaching out to practicing communities and educating them about the risks and consequences is critical to ending FGM.

"If the police are called and told a child is at risk, what will the policeman do if he does not know what FGM is? We need to tell them about it, tell them it's a violation,” Diallo said. "Every single professional needs to know they have an obligation: doctors, nurses, school teachers.... Everyone has to see it as their responsibility to protect children."

'Shame and a Prison Term'
In France, which is also home to significant communities which traditionally practice FGM, experts say enforcing the law and outreach to practicing communities must go together.

In stark comparison to the single American case, there have been over 100 successful prosecutions in France, with prison sentences for those found guilty of cutting or of allowing their daughters to be cut.

"I don't want my kids to undergo the same fate as me."
There, FGM is prosecuted using existing child protection laws – there is no specific anti-FGM legislation.

“There was no need for a special law that would amount to pointing the finger towards immigrants,” said French lawyer Linda Weil-Curiel, who has spent years bringing cases against suspected perpetrators to court.

“We had enough legal provisions in the penal code to prosecute and punish the 'mutilation of minors,' and the penal code is applicable to everyone on French soil, without discrimination.”

She believes these prosecutions helped reduce the practice. “The large publicity in the media of the trials sent a clear message to the families: This is what you are going to get – shame and a prison term – if you do not respect the law.”

There are no further prosecutions on the horizon in America – although there has been some progress.

Legislation was strengthened in January 2013 with a federal law making “vacation cutting” illegal – when girls are taken during their school vacations to countries where FGM is widely practiced to be cut there.

"They have passed the law. Now they need to enforce it," Diallo said.
But for Marie it's too late. "My organs were removed for my whole life, I can't change it; psychologically that is very difficult," she said. "But I don't want my kids to undergo the same fate as me."




This article is very informative about a subject that is not commonly known in this country. I had heard of it several times over the last five years or so, but I didn't realize it was occurring in the US, and especially in such numbers. The worst thing I had heard was about “honor killings,” which are still occurring in this country in some Islamic households. It has hit the news several times in the last five years or so.

This article makes plain that our police officers and the criminal justice system need to be educated and urged to be active in these cases. The laws have been updated by a January 2013 law making “vacation cutting” illegal. This article doesn't say what the penalty for it is, and it only takes care of a segment of the cases of FGM that are undoubtedly occurring at this time.

There is a strong feeling in the US against laws that limit or prohibit the free exercise of religion, but in this kind of case we should be standing up for the human rights of these women. I looked for articles on the Net about criminal prosecution of religious groups for denial of medical attention and was shocked to find none that defined the law in the case of children in need of care. Instead there were numerous articles about a religious defense if parents are prosecuted for it, and there are differing situations from state to state, so there apparently needs to be a federal law that requires that minors be given scientific medical care. If consenting adults wish to die without medical attention, that is their choice. This is the kind of ignorance-based situation that I particularly hate. Faith should not be a cover for evil, and I do think these types of actions are evil. There is no good in them.




Putin seeks diplomatic leverage with troop buildup, intel experts say – CBS
By Rebecca Kaplan Face The Nation March 30, 2014

Russian president Vladimir Putin has bolstered his troops on the eastern border of Ukraine not in the hopes of taking over more of the country, but to bolster his hand in diplomatic talks, former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Putin called President Obama Friday to discuss the U.S. push for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are scheduled to meet in Paris Sunday for further discussions.

In an interview with CBS News' Scott Pelley, Mr. Obama said that Putin has "been willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union," suggesting Russian nationalism and a desire to reverse the impression that the West has taken advantage of Russia are at play.

Morell, who is a CBS news contributor, added that Putin is likely looking to ensure that Ukraine does not become part of NATO or the European Union.

"The capabilities of [Russian] troops would be to take perhaps a third of Ukraine if Putin wanted to, but it would be very difficult for him to hold," Morell said, adding it would be a very "nasty" situation. "What [Putin]'s trying to do is maximize what he gets out of this diplomatically. He thinks he's in a strong position, he wants us to come to the negotiating table," Morell said.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Michael Hayden said that it was also likely Putin is looking for ways to ensure Russia is able to keep Crimea, even though several other world leaders have said that they do not accept the region's secession from Ukraine and subsequent annexation by Russia to be legal.

"We need to be concerned about this, but frankly I think [Putin] wants to pocket the Crimean victory, make that a fact beyond contradiction," Hayden said, predicting that the status of Crimea would not even be a part of talks between Lavrov and Kerry this weekend.

Putin's "tools" of power do not include the attraction of the Russian political system or economy, Hayden said, but merely "that threat, that danger, that presence of force along the Ukrainian border. I think we'll see them here for a long time which will be troubling and potentially destabilizing."

Hayden added that what "fundamentally matters" in any resolution is that the Ukrainian government and people have a say in the future of their state, and that negotiations are not just conducted between the U.S. and Russia.

The two intelligence officials also said that Mr. Obama's reforms to the way the NSA queries data will make Americans both safer and less concerned about government infringement on their privacy. The president announced Wednesday that the "workable" proposal from the intelligence community is to have phone companies rather than the government hold onto bulk data that is collected, and to reform judicial oversight of the way the agency queries the data. House lawmakers are crafting a bill that would follow the same basic principles to reform the system.

"We've arrived at a solution that actually makes us more safe and gets people higher comfort," Hayden said.

Morell, who served on the panel commissioned by the president to recommend reforms to the collection of telephone records, said he expected the final product would be a compromise between what the president and the House want. He said having the telephone companies hold the data - as the panel recommended - is the best path forward.

"There is a difference between the government holding the data, which creates a possibility for abuse by the government, and the government not holding the data, which obviously doesn't create that possibility," he said. "The phone companies have held this data for so long that there's no additional risk in them taking this on."




“Mr. Obama said that Putin has been willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union," suggesting Russian nationalism and a desire to reverse the impression that the West has taken advantage of Russia are at play.” Morell said that if Putin were to take a greater part of Ukraine, “it would be very difficult for him to hold," Morell said, adding it would be a very "nasty" situation.” The Ukrainians were successful after all in driving Yanukovich out and temporarily took over from the Russian speaking people, before Russia sent in troops to Crimea. Director Michael Hayden gave the opinion that Russia's main goal is to hold Crimea, and predicted that Kerry and Lavrov probably won't discuss Crimea – that it is a fait accompli.

Morell stated that Russia also wants to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO country or EU member. I wonder if they would fight a war to prevent that, though. I has seemed to me that one of the first things that the Western powers should do is bring Ukraine into NATO. If we were playing the same kind of game that Russia is, we would send troops into Ukraine and some other nearby states to provide a presence just off Russia's border, and then have talks.




­ ­ No-Kill Caviar Aims To Keep The Treat And Save The Sturgeon – NPR
by Alastair Bland
March 30, 2014

­ Caviar was once the food of kings and czars — and for a sturgeon, it meant death.
But a new technique of massaging the ripe eggs from a female sturgeon — without killing or even cutting the fish open— could make caviar more abundant, more affordable, and more accessible to all.

Best of all, says Angela Köhler, the German scientist who has spent nine years developing the new production system, "no-kill caviar" — also being called "cruelty-free caviar" and "correct caviar" by the people marketing it — could help reduce demand for black market caviar and save endangered wild sturgeon from being hunted to extinction.

The idea is to turn the caviar farming industry into something more akin to the commercial production of poultry, eggs or milk. The new method, being practiced at a small farm in Loxstedt, Germany, called Vivace GmbH, involves first viewing a sturgeon's eggs by ultrasound. If they are deemed ready, a signaling protein is administered to the sturgeon several days before the egg harvest.

This, Köhler says, "induces labor" and releases the eggs from a membranous sack in the belly cavity. At that point, the eggs can be pumped from the belly with gentle massaging. Köhler says the process can be repeated every 15 months or so throughout a sturgeon's lifetime, which may last decades.

The method is considered by some an improvement over so-called "C-section caviar" production, which requires making a small incision in the female fish to access her eggs. The operation allows the producer to harvest the roe without using any chemicals to induce egg-laying. But C-sections subject a sturgeon to the risk of fatal infection and can damage the fish's ovaries, reducing future roe yields.
"[The Vivace method] will make caviar production more financially reasonable," Köhler says. "It doesn't make much sense to take a fish that needs seven or eight years to mature and then, when it has its first eggs, kill it."

The Vivace farm in Loxstedt produced only about 1,100 pounds of caviar last year, Köhler says. If demand grows, output could eventually rise to 10 tons per year.
That's still just a tiny fraction of current global output. But if enough other caviar farms adopt her method — which would involve paying money for proprietary information about the process — Köhler says caviar farming could become a relatively cheap endeavor. Supply could increase as prices dive. In the end, low-priced no-kill caviar could undercut the market for illegally produced wild sturgeon caviar.
But some skeptics doubt that no-kill caviar will catch on.

Geno Evans, owner of Anastasia Gold Caviar, in Pierson, Fla., has tried making caviar without killing his fish. He wasn't impressed. In order to massage the roe from the fish's body cavity, he explains, you have to wait until a sturgeon is nearly ready to lay her eggs. For Evans, this resulted in overly oily, soft caviar.

"[The eggs] were mushy," he tells The Salt. "It was gross. It wasn't caviar."
Köhler's method addresses this texture issue by rinsing the tender, overripe roe immediately in a calcium-water solution. This makes the oil-rich pearls durable enough to undergo salting and curing without breaking.

It also improves the texture, according to Deborah Keane, owner of the California Caviar Company, in Sausalito, Calif., currently the only American importer of Vivace no-kill caviar.

"You get what chefs call the 'Caspian pop' — a very firm snap in your mouth as you bite each egg," says Keane.

Wesley Holton, the executive chef of Rose. Rabbit. Lie. in Las Vegas, is among several American chefs using the product. He says Vivace caviar tastes about the same as traditional caviar, but withstands heat better. (The traditional stuff tends to wilt when cooked.)

The Salt sampled the Vivace caviar alongside more traditional styles at Keane's tasting room. The traditional caviar from Acipenser baerii, the Siberian sturgeon, was creamy and buttery, with a pronounced flavor of brine, sardines and smoked salmon.
A similar product made from the eggs of A. transmontanus, the white sturgeon of Western North America, was also buttery smooth, with a salty flavor and an interesting finish of pond water and river fish.

The Vivace A. baerii caviar was entirely different. The tiny black eggs did not melt in the mouth but, rather, popped. Flavor was faint and subdued, with quiet hints of salt marsh and catfish. It was not our favorite of the three.
And then there's the question of price.

For now, an ounce of Vivace will run you $125 to $135 in Keane's shop, compared to $105 an ounce for conventional caviar of the same species. A custom-packed jar of Vivace "golden caviar," taken from albino fish, will fetch up to $800 per ounce.
But Keane argues that if more farms adopt the Vivace method, no-kill caviar could eventually become "an everyday indulgence," bringing costs down to $20 or $30 per ounce.

Which brings us to the ultimate question, as raised by Sacramento, California-area sturgeon farmer Michael Passmore.

"Why would producers of caviar want prices to continue to drop?"




I have only tasted caviar a few times. It is not only expensive, it's an oddity to me, interesting every now and then but not something I would want very frequently. I have been opposed to it on the grounds that sturgeons were becoming endangered, and killing a whole fish just to get its eggs seems cruel. I did spot several recipes for sturgeon on the Net, so maybe they send the meat to the fish market after they get the eggs. Still, they're killing too many of them. This farm process and chemically inducing the eggs looks good to me. The article also says it will reduce the price. That's good. There are too many things that are being killed off today due to the fact that some part of their body is highly desired and expensive – elephants and rhinos in particular.

Saturday, March 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Girls 'Treated as Cattle': Child Brides Divide Pakistan – NBC
By Wajahat S. Khan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A proposed law seeking tough new penalties for marrying children has triggered intense debate in Pakistan.

At the moment, females can legally tie the knot at 16 while males must wait until they are 18. However, it is customary for younger teen girls to be married by their families in some parts of the country. Girls are also sometimes offered as compensation to end feuds between families.

Anyone involved in underage wedlock currently faces a $10 fine, possibly accompanied by up to a month in jail. But lawmaker Marvi Memon is fighting for this to be increased to $1,000 - which is about a month's wage for a recent graduate working at a bank -- and a possible jail sentence of two years.

"These girls are being treated as cattle," Memon told NBC News. "They are dying. We cannot have little girls being married off at 15 and 16 and being forced to produce kids. It doesn’t make sense medically, and it doesn’t make sense economically."
According to UNICEF's State of the World's Children Report 2014, seven percent of Pakistani girls are married under the age of 15.

“Our prime objective is to ensure that our women are productive members of society,” Memon added. “For that to happen the injustices that are meted out to these child brides have to be curbed.”

Her bill in the country's National Assembly has been met with fierce opposition from Pakistan’s conservative religious parties, including her own. And some clerics want the penalties scrapped altogether. Pakistan's government does not track the issue or keep statistics on child marriage and few cases are reported to police.

Memon's battle has been dubbed by some as "Marvi vs. Mullahs" and #mullahsvsmarvi trended briefly on Twitter, a rare religious debate on the country's social-media scene.

Arguing that even the current laws forbidding child marriage contradict the Koran, the influential chair of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has spoken out against the proposals.

Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani believes that parliament could not legislate laws which are against the teachings of the Quran. He did not return repeated calls seeking comment from NBC News.

Gibran Peshimam, the political editor of Pakistan’s influential Express Tribune newspaper, highlighted that Sherani's advisory body wields considerable power.
“The CII’s edicts may not be legally binding, strictly speaking, but they have enough value to affect legislation," he said. “Basically, the CII is meant to interpret laws and legislation by done by parliament to ensure that the basic provision in Pakistan’s Constitution, that 'no law shall be made repugnant to the Quraan and Sunnah (the Muslim way of life),' is followed.'"

Under Islamic tradition, any person is free to marry after reaching puberty, according to Werner Menski, a professor of South Asian laws at SOAS, University of London.

After the Islamic contract of marriage has been agreed upon and a dowry paid, if the bride consents to marriage the argument has traditionally been that God has heard the offer. That makes it binding under Islamic law and sex would be permitted, Menski added.

"They are not physically and mentally ready"
Once married, young girls can become isolated and they are often forced into early sex, according to Ann Warner, a senior gender and youth specialist at the International Center for Research on Women.

“This leads to early pregnancy and very high risk pregnancy,” she said. “Younger girls are at a much higher risk of death and disability during pregnancy and their children are also at much higher risk of not surviving and dying as young children."
Warner said that early marriage "has an extremely negative impact on their lives."
She added: “They are not physically and mentally ready. They are almost always pulled out of school so their potential for education is cut off and with that, their potential to work and contribute to their societies both economically and socially.”
Marilyn Crawshaw, who is involved with a non-governmental organization that works with women in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan, said such marriages put girls' health and welfare at risk.

“If you children as some sort of bargaining chip or commodity that has a value attached to it, that is always bad for them," said Crawshaw, who is chairwoman of the UK Friends of Khwendo Kor. "The price is paid by the child."

Memon, who launched the bill, says she plans to turn the tables on clerics opposing the tougher penalties by using Islamic doctrine to justify it.

“Islam is the religion which is the most progressive for women,” she said. “We are looking forward to the committee hearing where we will give Islamic arguments and data from Islamic countries to prove that the amendments we are suggesting are Islamic, democratic and progressive.”




Child marriage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the 2005 American film documentary, see Child Marriage (film).

Child marriages were common in human history. Above is the portrait of Princess Emilia of Saxony, in 1533, at age 16 married George the Pious, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, then 48 years old.

Child marriage is defined as a formal marriage or informal union entered into by an individual before reaching the age of 18.[1] While child marriage is observed for both boys and girls, the overwhelming majority of those affected by the practice are girls, most of whom are in poor socioeconomic situations.[2] It is related to child betrothal and teenage pregnancy.

In many cases, only one marriage-partner is a child, usually the female, due to importance placed upon female virginity. Child marriages are also driven by poverty, bride price, dowry, cultural traditions, laws that allow child marriages, religious and social pressures, regional customs, fear of remaining unmarried, illiteracy, and perceived inability of women to work for money.

Child marriages were common throughout human history. Today, child marriages are still fairly widespread in some developing areas of the world, such as parts of Africa,[3][4] South Asia,[5] Southeast and East Asia,[6][7] West Asia,[8][9] Latin America,[8] and Oceania.[10] The incidence rates of child marriage have been falling in most parts of the world. The five nations with the highest observed rates of child marriages in the world, below the age of 18, are Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh and Guinea.[11] The top three nations with greater than 20% rates of child marriages below the age of 15 are Niger, Bangladesh and Guinea.[12]

As many as 1 in 3 girls in developing areas of the world are married before reaching the age of 18, and an estimated 1 in 9 girls in developing countries are married by age 15. One of the most commons causes of death for girls aged 15 to 19 in developing countries was pregnancy and child birth.[13] To protect vulnerable children from exploitation, various age of consent and marriageable age laws have been made.





Age 16 for girls and 18 for boys is the minimum age for marrying in Pakistan except for “some parts of the country,” where the age is younger. Also, young girls may even be given in marriage to resolve a feud. All this sounds downright primitive to me, like clitoral circumcision. Feuds have ceased to exist in the US. One of the last, or the most famous at any rate, was between the Hatfields and the McCoys, two families who were killing each other off in large numbers in the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky. Wikipedia gives the dates of the feud as 1863 to 1891.

Mountain girls were also married off sometimes as young as 13. Edgar Allen Poe the famous American writer's love match and marriage was with a thirteen year old girl. Sex is probably the most irrational thing that humans are ever involved with, giving rise to an amazing number of odd practices. If you take an anthropology course you will learn about various kinds of group marriages and “kinship” systems that often don't involve blood relationships, but marriage between them are considered incest. That particular anthropology course was one of the most interesting subjects I ever took in college. These things occur in mainly in tribal societies around the world, even up to modern times.

A $10 fine, possibly accompanied by up to a month in jail is the current penalty for participating in an underage marriage. Lawmaker Marvi Memon is attempting to get the fine raised to $1,000 with a jail sentence of up to two years. “It doesn’t make sense medically, and it doesn’t make sense economically, she said. Her bill “has been met with fierce opposition from Pakistan’s conservative religious parties.” The world needs religion to form a basic moral code and to give people hope for the future, but it is all too often responsible for the very worst of social customs. Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani, who chairs the Council of Islamic Ideology, opposes her bill as being against the teachings of the Koran. Gibran Peshimam, a newspaper editor, said that Sherani “wields considerable power.”

“Islam is the religion which is the most progressive for women,” said Memon. I had heard before that the most stringent rules against the freedom of women come from the norms of the local culture rather than from the teachings of Islam. Memon is going to use, as her argument, the teachings of the Koran to prove the case against child marriage.

It is also true of the Bible that you can, by “cherry picking” your verses, prove any number of arguments by their quotation. When I was young and we would visit my mother's parents we would have long and intricately reasoned discussions after dinner on what the Bible actually says. My grandfather was a largely self-taught, but intelligent, Scotch believer in the Presbyterian Church and the doctrine of predestination. My father, a Methodist, who was equally fond of arguing the Bible, believed that people are saved by faith and good works. I learned from it all that, though each of the Christian faiths stick firmly to their own set of ideas, if you compare them you can see that individuals come to their own beliefs. Partly as a result of that I am a Unitarian Unversalist. I believe that all people will be saved and all spiritual paths are worthy.




Boxing Champion Klitschko Withdraws from Ukraine Presidential Race – NBC
Reuters

Former Ukrainian heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko said on Saturday that he was pulling out of the race for president and would his weight behind billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko.

Klitschko's withdrawal, and an announcement by Poroshenko late on Friday that he would stand in the May 25 election, sets up a battle between the man known as the 'Chocolate King' and Ukraine's fiery former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
"The only chance of winning is to nominate one candidate from the democratic forces,'' Klitschko told a meeting of his UDAR (Punch) party, saying he backed Poroshenko.




Poroshenko, who stands against the annexation of Crimea by Russia and is the more popular candidate, and Tymoshenko who is in favor of “Ukrainian unity” and “direct action” according to the website http://www.euronews.com/2014/03/29/tymoshenko-and-poroshenko-plan-to-run-for-ukrainian-presidency/, will compete for President on May 25. Whoever wins will likely be in opposition to Russian future moves against Ukraine.

Putin called Obama yesterday to discuss a “diplomatic solution” to the problem which Kerry had proposed earlier. Let's hope there is some truth to that avowed desire on Putin's part. His actions seem to speak louder than his words, however. The world is watching his amassing of Russian troops in Crimea, with a possible eye to entering another part of Ukraine Transnistria and from there on to Moldava. That comes from the New York Times article yesterday of the phone call. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/europe/putin-calls-obama-on-Ukraine.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0 for the full article.

Obama continues to insist on Putin's pulling his troops out of Crimea, and Putin is complaining of “extremists” causing trouble inside Ukraine and called for “the global community” to intervene to establish more stability. Putin is to send a written proposal to Washington, and both men pledged to send representatives – Kerry and Lavrov – to discuss the plans for a diplomatic solution. I am a little more hopeful now, but am continuing to watch the news closely.





Diet Drinks Linked With Heart Disease, Death – NBC
By Maggie Fox

Women who drink the most diet sodas may also be more likely to develop heart disease and even to die, according to a new study published Saturday.
Researchers found women who drank two or more diet drinks a day were 30 percent more likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular “event,” and 50 percent more likely to die, than women who rarely touch such drinks.

The findings, being presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, don’t suggest that the drinks themselves are killers. But women who toss back too many diet sodas may be trying to make up for unhealthy habits, experts say.
“Our study suggests an association between higher diet drink consumption and mortality,” said Dr. Ankur Vyas, a cardiovascular disease expert at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinic, who led the study.

“It’s not an extreme risk,” he added.
Research has long shown that artificially sweetened drinks are not health drinks. While they may help people avoid more dangerous sugary sodas, studies show they don't help people lose weight.

Vyas’s team studied nearly 60,000 middle-aged women taking part in a decade-long study of women’s health. They filled out a questionnaire on food and drinks as part of the study, including detailed questions on diet sodas and diet fruit drinks.
After just under nine years, the researchers checked to see what happened to the womens’ health. They found that 8.5 percent of the women who drank two or more diet drinks a day had some sort of heart disease, compared to 6.8 percent of those who drank four or fewer drinks a week and 7.2 percent in those who drank none or just a couple a month.

“We only found an association, so we can’t say that diet drinks cause these problems,” Vyas said.

And that’s a fairly low risk, given that heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States and is very, very common.

The women who drank the most drinks were also more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to have diabetes and to have high blood pressure, Vyas noted.
About one in five people in the U.S. consume diet drinks on a given day, according to federal survey data.




Women who drink two or more diet drinks a day can have 30% greater chance of heart attack and are 50% more likely to die. That is bad news to me. I have a good friend who does drink many diet sodas. Personally, I don't like the taste of them, and just go ahead and use sugared drinks. Even with those I don't often drink a soda of any kind. I had a Coke habit when I was in my twenties, but stopped due to my doctor's recommendation. I don't miss them now. If I want caffeine I drink coffee and most of what I drink is water or milk.




U.S. Cyber Defense Force to Hit 6,000 by 2016, Hagel says – NBC
By Courtney Kube
First published March 28 2014

The U.S. cyber defense force will grow to 6,000 people by 2016, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday in his first major cyber policy speech.

After his predecessor, Leon Panetta, repeatedly warned of the possibility of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" and extolled the importance of deterring threats against U.S. infrastructure, Hagel emphasized that the U.S. military's main priority is deescalation and restraint.

“That is DoD's overriding purpose in cyberspace as well," Hagel said at the retirement ceremony for Gen. Keith Alexander, the chief of the National Security Agency and head of the U.S. Cyber Command.

"Consistent with these efforts, DoD will maintain an approach of restraint to any cyber operations outside of U.S. government networks. We are urging other nations to do the same," Hagel said.

But Hagel announced that the size of the U.S. cyber defense workforce will grow to more than 6,000 by 2016, and a senior defense official said that the fiscal year 2015 cyber budget will exceed $5 billion.

The speech at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., comes just days before Hagel travels to China, the epicenter of many cyberattacks against the U.S. — even though the U.S. can rarely prove whether those attacks are state-sponsored or not.
Hagel also said that U.S. reliance on cyberspace "outpaces our cybersecurity," and noted that during the course of his brief speech, Defense Department "systems will have been scanned by adversaries around 50,000 times."

A senior defense official explained that those "scans" are the equivalent of someone rattling the doors and shaking the windows when trying to break into a house.
This was the first live broadcast from the NSA/CYBERCOM headquarters, a fact that the senior defense official said demonstrated an effort for greater openness on U.S. defense cyber activities.

Gen. Alexander was the longest-serving NSA director in the agency's history, and he was the first director of CYBERCOM, formed in 2010. Alexander will be replaced by Adm. Michael Rogers.




What is the US Cyber Defense Force? From the following website http://defensesystems.com/articles/2014/02/13/cyber-framework.aspx, comes this concerning the US Cyber Defense Force:
“The cybersecurity framework was released Feb. 12 by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in response to a February 2013 executive order focusing on improving the cybersecurity of critical U.S. Infrastructure.... The Framework focuses on using business drivers to guide cybersecurity activities and considering cybersecurity risks as part of the organization’s risk management processes,” the NIST report states. …. Industry groups praised the effort but noted that security professionals still aren’t equipped to cope with rapidly evolving cyber threats. 'The lack of qualified information security professionals with the skills and knowledge to create, understand and implement such programs remains an area of improvement that must be further addressed,' W. Hord Tipton, executive director of the information security group (ISC)2, said.”




Christian school pressures 8-year-old 'tomboy' to transfer – CBS
AP March 28, 2014

FOREST, Va. - Eight-year-old Sunnie Kahle likes to keep her hair short, wear boys' clothes, collect hunting knives and shoot her BB gun.

"She's a pure, 100 percent tomboy," said her great-grandfather Carroll Thompson, who along with his wife Doris adopted their granddaughter's child.

But to Timberlake Christian School administrators, the second-grader's boyish ways warranted an ultimatum: Start acting like a girl or find another school.

The Thompsons found another school, but they didn't go quietly. After being told by lawyers that they have no grounds for a lawsuit because Timberlake is a private school, the Thompsons have gone public with their complaints, reported by CBS affiliate WDBJ earlier in the week.

"I don't see nothing Christian about it," 66-year-old Carroll Thompson said in an interview at the family's house just outside Lynchburg, home of Liberty University, the Christian school founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Doris Thompson holds the letter she received from Timberlake Christian School in Forest, Va. on March 26, 2014 asking her great grand daughter Sunnie Kahle to either dress and act more feminine or not enroll again because she looked too much like a boy.

Doris Thompson, who's 69, said she was stunned when she received a letter last month saying the school can deny enrollment to applicants for condoning "sexual immorality," homosexuality or alternative gender identity.

Principal Becky Bowman wrote that "we believe that unless Sunnie as well as her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained identity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education."

Doris Thompson said Sunnie knows she is a girl and has never, to her knowledge, wished she were a boy.

Other disputes over gender expression at school have made headlines recently, including a demand, later rescinded, that a 9-year-old North Carolina boy cease carrying a My Little Pony backpack to school. But that case and others involved public schools rather than private religious academies that are not subject to anti-discrimination laws.

After a television news report about the Thompsons created a social media frenzy, the school retained the legal arm of Liberty University to tell its side. Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said there is more to the situation than the Thompsons are saying.

"This is not at all about how she is dressing or she is going through a phase," Staver said in a telephone interview.

However, he said confidentiality laws prevented him from being more specific and school officials would rather not try to rebut the Thompsons' allegations. Earl Prince, an administrator at the school, also declined to discuss what prompted Bowman's letter.

Doris Thompson said she is unaware of anything, other than Sunnie's appearance and tomboy ways, that would prompt the school's action. She said Sunnie made good grades, was well-behaved and got along with the other children. New classmates would sometimes ask if she were a boy or a girl, but she would answer and that would be the end of it, Thompson said.

Bowman acknowledged in her letter that the school's position doesn't stem from Sunnie's grades or "general cooperation with school rules."

Staver said school officials were dismayed that the Thompsons chose not to resolve the issue with them privately. He said school officials would like to have Sunnie back.




Christianity has become so politically active that it sometimes forgets the central doctrine of love above all other things. That includes many in both the Catholic and the Evangelical Protestant churches. As Sunnie's great grandfather Carroll Thompson said, “I don't see nothing Christian about it." Mat Staver, of Liberty Counsel implied that there was some sexual behavior involved as well, but declined to be specific due to confidentiality issues.

Doris Thompson her great grandmother said that new classmates would sometimes ask if she were a boy or a girl, “but she would answer and that would be the end of it,” so apparently she looks enough like a boy that some people are confused. I noticed from her photograph that she is quite a bit overweight, which would compound the problem. Girls are generally more lightly built than boys.

It is a well-known fact that girls often “go through a phase” of being Tomboys, but usually that is a matter of interests and activity preferences rather than sexual involvement, and when the girl reaches sexual maturity she magically likes boys and begins to dress and act in a more feminine fashion. Whatever the case with that, though, I have never heard of a school issuing such a demand as this school did. Schools generally accept the idiosyncrasies of the child and if bullying occurs the school will try to protect the victim. I can't help thinking that Sunnie is better off in a less restrictive learning environment anyway.

The other case mentioned in this article of the boy who was using the My Little Pony backpack was, again, very unusual. The school in that case told him and his parents not to bring the backpack to school anymore because he was being bullied. This girl has not been bullied, makes good grades and conforms in her other behavior. Some schools make rules mandating that all girls are to wear skirts. When I was going through we were not allowed to wear pants of any kind to school. Of course, adult women wearing pants was very unusual then, too. It was the 1950s.




­ Custom Chromo: First Yeast Chromosome Built From Scratch – NPR
by Richard Harris
March 27, 2014

­ Using the labor of dozens of undergraduate students, scientists have built a customized yeast chromosome from scratch.

It's a milestone in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, where organisms can be tailored for industrial use. In this case, the near-term goal is to understand the genetics of yeast, and eventually the genetics of us.

This was quite an undertaking. Yeast have about 6,000 genes packed in 16 tidy bundles called chromosomes. Each chromosome is an enormous molecule of DNA packed in proteins.

The story started about 15 years ago, when Ronald Davis, a prominent Stanford University geneticist, stood up at a science meeting and declared that someday someone would build a yeast chromosome from scratch.

"I remember saying to myself, 'Why on Earth world anyone do that?' " says geneticist Jef Boeke, who was then working at Johns Hopkins University.

About 10 years later, Boeke bumped into a Hopkins colleague, Srinivasan Chandrasegaran, at a coffee shop and they started talking about huge molecules they could synthesize. Boeke suggested they could build a yeast chromosome from scratch, "and he looks at me incredulous and said, ' Really? We've got to do it! We've got to do it,' " Boeke recalls. Chandrasegaran "was practically jumping up and down with excitement," Boeke says.

At first, Boeke tried to buy some of the DNA strands they wanted to use from a commercial outfit. But the first small batch took nearly a year to arrive.
“ The students are learning techniques that are transferable to many other organisms and, because you have this fantastic power to modify DNA, it comes with responsibilities.

- Debra Mathews
"I realized I would be dead long before the project could ever be completed," he says. "So it suddenly hit me that there were all these students on the undergraduate campus who would be dying for a great research opportunity."

Boeke and his colleagues put together a class, called Build-A-Genome, and got undergraduates at Hopkins to do the painstaking labor of constructing long strings of DNA. These would eventually become segments of their yeast chromosome.

They published evidence of their success Thursday in Science. The team built yeast chromosome No. 3 from scratch. (More precisely, they assembled the DNA strand that's the core of the chromosome, and put it in a yeast cell, which then proceeded to package it up in proteins and coil it into the compact structure of a chromosome.)
To make the chromosome useful for research, they've deleted some parts of the DNA that they believe are not essential, "and then we add a number of bells and whistles to the chromosome, that we think will make for a more interesting version that we can play evolutionary games with in the laboratory," Boeke says.

They're interested in going after big questions, such as what is it in the DNA that keeps one species separate from the next.

Of course, this deep manipulation of DNA also raises ethical questions — about everything from patenting life-forms, to the potential misuse of biotechnology for weapons or other nefarious purposes. So part of the class involved an ethics discussion, led by Debra Mathews, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins.

"It's not just this particular project," Mathews says, noting that yeast aren't likely to be the starting point for anything that might harm humans. But, she adds, "the students are learning techniques that are transferable to many other organisms and, because you have this fantastic power to modify DNA, it comes with responsibilities."

Ronald Davis, who long ago suggested that someone would eventually do this, says he's impressed with the result. He says you might be tempted to dismiss this as a stunt, "but when it's with yeast, it's not a stunt. It's a milestone event in my opinion."

If scientists can build all 16 yeast chromosomes from scratch, they'd have an entire set of yeast genes to tinker with. That could be a big advance for understanding how genes work, in yeast — and by extension in humans. We have similar chromosomes.
"You can look at a car and you think you understand a car," Davis says. "But if you really understand a car you should be able to build one."

Jef Boeke is now working to build other yeast chromosomes. He recently became director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at New York University's Langone Medical Center, and he's become part of an international consortium that aims to build the remaining 15 yeast chromosomes from scratch. So far, people were working on all but one of them.

"If there's a millionaire out there who would like chromosome 16 named after them, tell them to get in touch!" Boeke says, and smiles.




So we have a new field of biology, “synthetic biology.” It's a little scary to me for scientists to be building DNA and maybe eventually a life form. Scientists make mistakes sometimes. I think the nuclear bomb was a mistake. I hope the new yeasts don't end up being geared to use in “germ warfare,” or simply becoming a harmful organism by some accident. Did you read The Andromeda Strain? That was a great book. The strain was made in the laboratory and, through mismanagement, was introduced to the outside world to became a new plague. That was really a page turner!

Friday, March 28, 2014


News Clips For The Day


U.S. and Europe Need a New Rulebook for Russia: Baltic Leader – NBC
First published March 28 2014

The United States and Europe need a new rulebook to deal with Vladimir Putin, according to the leader of one of the Baltic countries on Russia's doorstep.

Writing an op-ed in the Washington Post Friday, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that Russia's annexation of Crimea signaled that the post-Cold War order had "collapsed."

"International treaties no longer hold, and the use of raw force is again legitimate," he said. "In its annexation of Crimea, Russia has thrown the rulebook out the window."

He called on NATO countries to "act decisively" and "get back in business," ensuring a presence within all member states.

The Estonian leader also said that Russia's actions in Crimea cannot be allowed to become a "cost-free successes" for Moscow, and that Western states should pledge "political support, economic assistance and practical know-how" to the rest of Ukraine.

"The lights of liberty are being extinguished in parts of Europe," he wrote. "We must take decisive and united steps to ensure that future generations do not question why nothing was done and why we didn't act when so much was at stake."




"The lights of liberty are being extinguished....” Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves calls for NATO to take “decisive and united” steps. I couldn't agree with him more. Russians, like most schoolyard bullies, will do whatever they can get away with. After all, they have never at any time during the last century espoused democratic government, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the right to “pursue happiness.” They are right now cracking down on gays within their population and were as bad as Nazi Germany about persecuting the Jews. I thought up until this situation in Ukraine and Crimea occurred that Russia had given up its bad old ways and was being cooperative with the West. It turns out that is a highly conditional response on their part. I do want to see European nations back us up on making a strong front against them. After all, it is their freedom which is at stake. I would like to see articles about more Eastern and Central European countries saying the same things Ilves has said, and as soon as possible.




What’s the least valuable college degree in the U.S.?
By Aimee Picchi Money Watch March 27, 2014

With high school seniors and their families now deciding where to enroll for college next fall, they might want to take a gander at research showing the best -- and worst -- values for a degree.

The shocker in a survey by PayScale, a research firm that focuses on compensation, is that there are schools where students would have been better off not attending. Why? The 20-year net return on their college investment amounts to a financial loss, even when financial aid is included. Taking the time to get and spend money on a degree, in short, means you might actually find yourself in a financial hole.

The survey may add to parents' doubts about the value of a college degree, especially given that rising tuition costs have far outpaced the pace of inflation and the tough job market for some majors (think liberal arts). Those trends have saddled graduates with a combined $1 trillion in debt.

The worst off? Arts, humanities and education majors at more than a dozen institutions -- including respected school such as Ohio State University and Indiana University -- where the 20-year net return falls lower than -$100,000.

"With student loan debt spiraling out of control, it's more important than ever for prospective college students to be armed with information that will not only help them decide where and what to study but how much debt they can afford based on their likely career prospects," Lydia Frank, the editorial director of PayScale, wrote in a report about the findings.

The college offering the worst overall 20-year ROI is Shaw University, a private liberal arts school in Raleigh, N.C. A bachelor's degree from Shaw will set you back almost $81,000, which is less than many other colleges. But the 20-year ROI is a stunningly low -$121,000, according to PayScale

Shaw University said it found PayScale's methodology "seriously flawed." In an emailed statement, the university noted, "Their survey does not include the many Shaw alumni who earn substantial income as business owners or our graduates who later earned advanced degrees that could help increase their earning potential. Incredibly, PayScale makes no mention of their survey's sample size where respondents self-reported their income."

Another North Carolina college, Fayetteville State University, registered the second-worst return on a diploma, with graduates earning a 20-year ROI of -$95,700, PayScale notes.

To be sure, there are some caveats to keep in mind. PayScale is basing its estimates on self-reported income, which isn't always accurate. The study also doesn't consider the socioeconomic demographics for the schools or, for instance, how a college degree might change the projected 20-year earnings for student who comes from a low-income family. Without that degree, is it possible that student's 20-year earnings would have been even lower?

On the positive side, the schools with the strongest ROI were a mix of Ivy League names and the not-so-familiar, with Harvey Mudd College taking the No. 1 spot. Its students can expect a 20-year net ROI of almost $1.1 million. Harvey Mudd, while not a household name, focuses on so-called STEM topics, or science, technology engineering and mathematics.

That's a common theme among the colleges that offer the biggest bang for the buck. MIT, known for alumni including Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke, was No. 2 on PayScale's list, with a 20-year ROI of $973,700. Caltech -- the workplace setting for CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" -- is in third place, with a 20-year ROI of $968,500.




The article says that current costs “may add to parents' doubts about the value of a college degree,” and I have to agree. Some kind of technical training might be better for many people. I went through when it didn't cost so much. I will never be sorry I took the liberal arts coursework that I did, because that was my main interest area at the time, and I got a number of social science courses as well. It gave me a much better background of knowledge than I would have had if I hadn't attended. It also forced me to upgrade my vocabulary so that I can read non-fiction works on subjects that interest me, thereby continuing to learn as I grow older.

I do not think, however, that my English Lit major has really improved my employability, unless it was to make me seem “brighter” to some employers. I really should have majored in something like psychology, which is one of my main interest areas now. Anthropology also would have been good. They both point toward different employment areas than merely some form of office work or teaching. I could have worked in a laboratory or, if I majored in anthropology, studied the cultures in Third World countries, maybe working for the World Bank or other such organization. I thoroughly enjoyed my English Lit coursework, but it wasn't as practical as journalism would have been, for instance. At this point I accept my life as it has been, however, and continue forward as I can. I do think that young people who want to pursue higher learning should look closely at what jobs they want to qualify for and choose their coursework accordingly. If they can avoid heavy student loans it would be better.




What's behind Americans' negative attitude toward Obama on Ukraine?
By Fred Backus CBS News March 28, 2014

As the Obama administration responds to Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, the latest CBS News Poll shows that more Americans disapprove (46 percent) than approve (38 percent) of the way President Obama is handling the situation between the two countries. But when looking more closely at the public's views on the Crimean situation, the negative attitude toward the president handling of the situation raises questions.

Fifty-six percent of Americans approve of the sanctions enacted against Russia by the U.S. and other European countries, the first concrete action the Obama administration has taken in response the annexation. Nor does it seem most Americans think the Obama administration should take some other more aggressive steps - 65 percent of Americans do not think the U.S. should provide military aid and weapons to Ukraine. What's more, majorities of Americans think the situation in Crimea is both beyond the control of the U.S. (57 percent) and that the U.S. does not have responsibility to do something about it (61 percent). What, then, do Americans disapprove of, and why?

Although Americans tend to pay less attention and have less knowledge of events overseas than domestic concerns, lack of knowledge does not seem to be the main factor. Sixty-nine percent of Americans have heard or read at least something about the situation between Russia and the Ukraine, including more than a third who say they have heard or read a lot (36 percent). More importantly, those who have heard or read a lot about the situation are more likely (56 percent) to disapprove of the president's handling of the situation than Americans overall (46 percent).

Not surprisingly, partisanship probably plays a role. There is a clear break along party lines when it comes to how the president is handling the situation between Russia and Ukraine: 59 percent of Democrats approve of Mr. Obama's handling of the situation, while 69 percent of Republicans disapprove. But more independents also disapprove (48 percent) than approve (35 percent) of the president's handling of the situation between Russia and Ukraine, so party identification is not the only factor.

Disapproval of the president's handling of the situation between Russia and Ukraine may also be a reflection of disapproval of his overall job performance. In the same poll, 50 percent of Americans said they disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, while just 43 percent approve. Americans have held a net negative rating of Mr. Obama's job performance since September of last year, and they similarly express a net negative view of his handling of the economy, health care, immigration, Afghanistan, and foreign policy in general.

In fact, the only measure in the most recent CBS News Poll that Americans approve of is his handling of terrorism (53 percent approve). Reaction to the president's handling of the situation between Russia and Ukraine is likely part of this overall trend.

But there may be another factor as well: American pessimism about the scope of U.S. power and its standing in the world. Fifty-nine percent of Americans think the U.S. is less powerful as a world leader than it was 10 years ago, and the percentage that thinks that the United States' image in the world has gotten better since Mr. Obama became president has been declining steadily - from 59 percent in April 2009 to just 32 percent today. This pessimism can perhaps be seen in Americans' views of sanctions against Russia: while 56 percent approve of sanctions, 58 percent don't think those sanctions will be very effective.

How Americans view America's power as a world leader is directly related to how they feel about Russia and Ukraine: Most Americans who think that U.S. power has increased in the past year both approve of Mr. Obama's handling of the situation between Russia and Ukraine (58 percent) and think the U.S. can do something about it (53 percent). In contrast, most Americans who think U.S. power has declined both highly disapprove of Mr. Obama's handling of the situation (63 percent) and think the situation is beyond the control of the U.S. (61 percent).

For many Americans, their disapproval of the president's handling of the situation between Russia and Ukraine may not from an unwillingness to do more, but because they don't think that he has the power to do anything about it.




I am surprised that 65% of Americans think we should not provide military aid to Ukraine or that 61% think we have no “responsibility” to intervene. After all, providing military aid doesn't necessarily mean sending in soldiers. Those numbers sound like they include Republicans as well as Democrats, too, or they wouldn't be that high. I expect Democrats to be “dovish,” but not Republicans. I've seen numbers like that before, though, in particular when Rwanda was engulfed in genocidal turmoil. I think many people in the US are comfortable in our relative safety here and willingly choose to avoid upsetting that balance by playing guardian to the world's downtrodden. There is also the fact that our economy is still weak from the recession and even a limited war effort will cost billions of dollars. Besides we are still involved in Afghanistan.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, but I think we do owe allegiance to Western democracy where it is threatened, now as we did then. It is truly our way of life that is at stake. It is possible for the forces of good government to be overwhelmed by power hungry and totalitarian societies, large and small. Germany and the other fascist states almost did that. We mustn't become complacent about it in today's world.

I think, from the figures mentioned in this article, that many people in the US lack the impulse to help others if they seem to be only a minor part of our world scene, and want to take the easier way out – to let them go under if they can't fight for themselves. We need smaller players as well as our major allies on the side of free and peace-loving peoples. That is the way to build world peace, it seems to me – one country at a time.





3,000-year-old skeleton found riddled with cancer
CBS News March 28, 2014

When archeologist Michaela Binder dug through a tomb of skeletons in Sudan, in northeastern Africa, she found one that looked different.

The PhD student from Durham University in England unearthed bones infested with lesions and holes. Right away, she suspected cancer.

"At first, I wasn't sure if this is actually a disease because we have a lot of termites in the area, who tend to eat bones or tend to make a lot of small holes in the bones," she told CBS News' Alphonso Van Marsh.

Scientists in the archaeology lab at the British Museum used x-rays and high-powered microscopes to confirm the skeleton's cancer.

"This represents the earliest and most complete skeleton of this type of cancer," said Daniel Antoine, the museum's curator of physical anthropology. Only three other examples have ever been found of malignant cancer deaths dating before the year 1000 B.C., LiveScience reports.

Antoine worked with Binder to examine the remains. They determined the man died of metastatic cancer that started in an organ and spread to his bones. They estimate he was between 25 and 35 years old when he died.

Today, cancer is one of the world's leading causes of death, often considered a byproduct of modern living linked to diet, pollution, smoking, and increased longevity. The 3,000-year-old skeleton provides new evidence that the disease has been killing humans since antiquity.

Researchers say the discovery will help to provide insight into cancer's evolution. They explain that if archaeologists can find more ancient remains with cancer, they could better understand how the disease has changed over time.

For now, they do not know exactly how the cancer formed, but speculate that it may have had something to do with smoke from wood fires, bad genes, or an infectious disease.




“Only three other examples have ever been found of malignant cancer deaths dating before the year 1000 B.C., LiveScience reports.” So maybe cancer is a fairly new disease. Or, on the other hand, it always was a rare disease and we find so few skeletons from such an early period that those we do find can't be expected to reflect all the causes of death that were existent at the time. This article does mention that many people suspect that the high incidence of cancer in today's world is due to environmental causes and, surprisingly, to our modern longevity. In other words, in prehistoric times there were probably more early deaths such as violent deaths, heart attacks, or even things like malnutrition and infectious diseases, while cancer tends to develop in later life.

It was interesting that Binder said she first suspected termites as the cause of the holes. I had no idea that termites ate anything except wood. This was a good article, but it's a bit short. I would like to have seen some more information, maybe about the culture she was examining. So be it. Archaeologists most often don't have much information in their finds. After thousands of years there is little left at the site to find.





Obama seeks to reassure Saudi King Abdullah on Iran, Syria
CBS/AP March 28, 2014

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- President Barack Obama paid a visit Friday to the desert oasis of wary ally King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, hoping to reassure the aging monarch who is nervously watching Washington's negotiations with Iran and other U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Obama's Marine One helicopter kicked up clouds of sand in his arrival at the king's desert camp outside the capital of Riyadh for a meeting and dinner with Abdullah. The president walked through a row of military guards to an ornate room featuring a massive crystal chandelier and took a seat next to the 89-year-old king, who was breathing with the help of an oxygen tank.

Secretary of State John Kerry sat at Obama's side for the visit that is the president's third official meeting with the king in six years.

Despite its decades-long alliance with the United States, Saudi's royal family has become increasingly anxious in recent years over Obama's nuclear talks with Iran and his tepid involvement in the Syrian civil war. During his evening meetings with the king, Obama's task was to reassure Saudi Arabia that the U.S. is not abandoning Arab interests despite troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, greater energy independence back home and nuclear talks with predominantly Persian Iran.

White House officials and Mideast experts say the Saudi royal family's main concern is Iran. They fear Iran's nuclear program, object to Iran's backing of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria and see the government of Tehran as having designs on oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One on the flight to Saudi Arabia that the issues at the heart of Obama's meetings with Abdullah include Gulf security, Middle East peace, Syria, Iran and Egypt.
On Syria, Rhodes said Obama did not plan to make any specific announcements about additional assistance to opposition forces. He said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been working together closely to coordinate their assistance to the rebels.

Rhodes said that coordination has helped put the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia "in a stronger place today than it was in the fall when we had some tactical differences about our Syria policy."

"We are in a better place today than we were seven months ago," Rhodes said.
Obama angered Saudi officials by scrapping plans to launch a military strike against Syria, choosing instead to back a plan to strip Syrian President Bashar Assad of his chemical weapons.

Still, in a move that could smooth over the disagreement between the two countries, the Obama administration is considering allowing shipments of new air defense systems known as "manpads" to Syrian rebels, a U.S. official said Friday.

Allowing manpads to be delivered to Syrian rebels would mark a shift in strategy for the U.S., which until this point has limited its lethal assistance to small weapons and ammunition, as well as humanitarian aid. The U.S. has been grappling for ways to boost the rebels, who have lost ground in recent months, allowing Syrian President Bashar Assad to regain a tighter grip on the war-torn nation.

The actual manpad shipments could come from the Saudis, who have so far held off sending in the equipment because of U.S. opposition.

The president is not expected to announce a final decision on the matter during his overnight trip to the Gulf kingdom. U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials have been discussing the possibility of injecting manpads into the crisis for some time, including during a meeting in Washington earlier this year.

As recently as February, the administration had said Obama remained opposed to any shipments of manpads to the Syrian opposition. The U.S. has been concerned that the weaponry could fall into the wrong hands and possibly be used to shoot down a commercial airliner.

Among the reasons for Obama's shift in thinking is the greater understanding the U.S. now has about the composition of the Syrian rebels, the official said. However, the official added, the president continues to have concerns about escalating the fire power on the ground in Syria, which has been torn apart by more than three years of civil war.

The official wasn't authorized to discuss the internal deliberations by name and insisted on anonymity.

Rhodes said Obama would also update the king on the nuclear talks with Iran. He said Obama would also make the point that those negotiations do not mean U.S. concerns about other Iranian activities have lessened, including its support for Assad and Hezbollah, as well as its destabilizing activity in Yemen and the Gulf.

"Those concerns remain constant and we're not in any way negotiating those issues in the nuclear talks," he said.

Rhodes said human rights, including women's rights, would be on the agenda for Obama's meetings. But he said the U.S. has a broad range of security interests with Saudi Arabia that would be most prominent on the agenda.

"We've raised concerns around human rights issues, issues related to women's rights," Rhodes said, adding that the U.S. has to maintain "the ability to cooperate" with the Saudis on other issues.

The Saudi anxieties have been building over time, according to Simon Henderson, a fellow at The Washington Institute, a think tank focused on Middle East policy.
"Ever since Washington withdrew support for President (Hosni) Mubarak of Egypt in 2011, Abdullah and other Gulf leaders have worried about the reliability of Washington's posture toward even longstanding allies," Henderson wrote this week. "President Obama's U-turn on military action against Syria over its use of chemical weapons last summer only added to the concern, which has likely morphed into exasperation after recent events in Crimea, where the Saudis judge that President Obama was outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin."

The technological advances that have increased oil and gas production in the United States have also made Gulf states nervous, said Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Saban Center on Middle East Policy
"A lot of people in the region, I think, are naturally asking themselves what America's energy independence means for America's willingness to invest in the security of energy and supply from the Gulf," she said.

Friday's talks also come in the aftermath of Saudi Arabia's refusal to grant a visa to the Washington bureau chief of The Jerusalem Post who had sought to cover Obama's trip. Rhodes told reporters that the U.S. government reached out to Riyadh to intervene but to no avail.




Obama's visit to “wary ally King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia” is to assure him that the US is not abandoning “Arab interests.” I have a tendency to think that everybody in the Middle East are, in one way or another, Arabs. No. Iran is Persian and is a rival of Saudi Arabia, so our involvement with Iran over reducing their nuclear program is suspicious to King Abdullah.

He also is no longer as trusting about our loyalty to Saudi Arabia, along with some other Middle Eastern allies, who saw the US' withdrawal of support for Mubarak as a sign that we are no longer reliable. Our emphasis on developing more of our own oil resources is also suspect, along with our stance on Saudi Arabia's policy toward women. They are modern in some ways, but not in that instance. So far, unless it has changed in the last couple of months, women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive cars. I assume there are other restrictions on them, too.

The truth is that culturally the West is very different from the Middle East in general, and we are all involved in a struggle for power because of the presence of the oil reserves there. It's an unstable and dangerous place. World relationships are not in most places as stable as they are between the present-day Western European powers, and even that is a temporary condition. The year 1945 ended a huge struggle over land, dominance and freedom of religion, with the West coming close to being overtaken by Hitler. There are still groups in Europe and the US that hate Jews and blacks, and you sometimes hear of a quarrel between European countries over some piece of land that is in dispute. I will probably never feel really safe when I view these problems, as they don't go away. They just get better from time to time. I hope we can keep a strong country like Saudi Arabia on our side, and come to smoother relationships in general over there. I'm like Rodney King. I want us all to get along.




Obamacare hits enrollment target - sort of
CBS/AP March 27, 2014


WASHINGTON - Back on track after a stumbling start, President Barack Obama's health care overhaul reached a milestone Thursday, with more than 6 million Americans signed up for coverage through new insurance markets.

Obamacare deadline extension
Paige Winfield Cunningham, Health Care Reporter for POLITICO, discusses who will be eligible for an extension to sign up for health insurance.

The announcement - four days before open enrollment season ends Monday - fulfills a revised goal set by the Congressional Budget Office and embraced by the White House.

Like much else about Obama's health care law, it comes with a caveat: The administration has yet to announce how many consumers actually closed the deal by paying their first month's premium. Some independent estimates are that as many as 10 percent to 20 percent have not paid, which would bring the total enrollment to between 5 million and 6 million people.

The White House said the president made the announcement during an international conference call with enrollment counselors and volunteers, while traveling in Italy. Administration officials, focused on signing up even more people over the weekend, played down the occasion. Others said it was unmistakably a promising sign.

"I think the program is finally starting to hit its stride in terms of reaching the enrollment goals the administration set," said John Rother, CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, a nonpartisan coalition of businesses, health care industry groups and consumer organizations. "It still has a ways to go in terms of achieving public acceptance."

To put the 6 million sign-ups in perspective, consider that the HealthCare.gov website didn't work when it was launched in October. Millions of people trying to access online marketplace exchanges that offer subsidized private insurance were met with frozen screens. Nonetheless, the administration's achievement is still short of the original target of covering 7 million people through the exchanges.

Several million more people have gained coverage through Medicaid. That safety net program was also expanded under the law, but only about half of states have gone along.

Nonetheless, ongoing measurements by Gallup show that the number of Americans without coverage has been slowly dropping since coverage under the law took effect in January.
Monday is the deadline to enroll in the new insurance exchanges, but potentially millions of people will still be able to take advantage of extensions announced this week.

Although the national number is important, what really counts is state-by-state enrollment. That's because each state is a separate insurance market. To help keep premium increases in check, each state market must have a balance between young and old, healthy and sick.

"The national number only gets us so far," said Caroline Pearson, who is tracking the rollout for the market analysis firm Avalere Health. "The fair measure of success is whether you have set up a market that is sustainable into the future. So you can then go out and find the rest of the uninsured people, and bring them in over the next couple of years."

As of just a couple of few weeks ago, it seemed like it would take a miracle of sorts for the administration to hit the 6 million mark. Enrollment in February was lackluster. But this week especially has seen a resurgence of consumer interest with the enrollment deadline approaching. The administration said HealthCare.gov got 1.5 million visits on Wednesday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been traveling constantly to promote sign-ups. Obama himself joined in reaching out to Hispanics, a large and relatively young population that has been sitting on the sidelines.

Achieving the 6 million level was a relief to congressional Democrats. The law remains unpopular with the public, and Republicans are making its repeal their rallying cry in the upcoming midterm elections.

"The Affordable Care Act is working," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "Republicans should abandon their reckless pursuit of new milestones in the number of votes to repeal or undermine this historic law."
The GOP-led House has voted more than 50 times to repeal, defund or scale back the law.

Celebrations are premature, suggested market analyst Pearson, who cited the uncertainty over how many people have actually secured coverage by paying their premiums.

"It matters politically," she said. "It doesn't matter from a market perspective."




“...it comes with a caveat: The administration has yet to announce how many consumers actually closed the deal by paying their first month's premium.” I feel sure they will, though. I doubt that many people would go to the effort of signing up without intending to pay. This article mentions that some millions of people are covered through the extension of Medicaid, though “only about half of the states have gone along.” The most discouraging comment in here is that the GOP lead House has voted more than 50 times to repeal or defund the law. Is that mainly the Tea Party group, I wonder, or mainstream Republicans, too? If they've voted 50 times and still not won the vote, they must be outnumbered. I'm not terribly worried.