Sunday, November 2, 2014


News Clips For The Day


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/31/1340696/-40kg-Of-Cocaine-Found-On-Mitch-McConnell-s-Father-In-Law-s-Boat?detail=email

"40kg Of Cocaine Found On Mitch McConnell’s Father-In-Law’s Boat"
By Man Oh Man
FRI OCT 31, 2014

James Chao, father of Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine, has a lot of questions to answer after 40 kilograms of cocaine (about $6.7 million worth) was found on the Ping May, a ship owned by the Foremost Group, a company James Chao founded and led to a tidy fortune. But was that fortune built on honest movement of legitimate bulk trade goods, or has Mr. Chao been trading in less than legal goods?

The cocaine, found in 40 separate packages, was discovered during a routine inspection hidden among a load of coal bound for Europe from the port of Santa Marta, Columbia onboard the Ping May, one of 15 ships Foremost currently operates, with another 8 under construction. The final destination for the ship was to be the Netherlands, likely one of the port cities surrounding Amsterdam. It is known that the Ping May has been witnessed at the port of Zaanstad, one of these cities, in the past.

Foremost Group is the source of most of Senator McConnell’s fortune through gifts and inheritance from his in-laws. It is a shadowy corporation, utilizing a complex scheme of shell companies to skip out on millions in taxes annually.

From The Nation:

Foremost acts as a shipping agent, purchasing vessels made primarily in China and coordinating shipment of commodities. Records reviewed by The Nation reveal that Foremost transports corn, chemicals and other goods to cities throughout the world. The company has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.

The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost’s website FMCNY.com is blank. Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost’s vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost’s ships work under Liberia’s maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian “flag of convenience” allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the US flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of “no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details—even to the United States government,” according to a report in World Policy Journal.
(h/t Mogolori)



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/mitch-mcconnells-freighte_n_6076374.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

Mitch McConnell's Freighted Ties To A Shadowy Shipping Company
The Nation
Posted: 10/30/2014

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about 90 pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.


http://www.thenation.com/article/186689/mitch-mcconnells-freighted-ties-shadowy-shipping-company

Mitch McConnell’s Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company
After drugs were found aboard the Ping May, a vessel owned by his wife’s family’s company, Colombian authorities are investigating.
Lee Fang

Photograph – Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, James Chao (second from right), at the christening of the Ping May in Shanghai (Image: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation)

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

McConnell’s ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James’s daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and former Reagan administration official who would later serve as secretary of labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately sixteen dry-bulk cargo ships in operation today.

Foremost acts as a shipping agent, purchasing vessels made primarily in China and coordinating shipment of commodities. Records reviewed by The Nation reveal that Foremost transports corn, chemicals and other goods to cities throughout the world. The company has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.

The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost’s website FMCNY.com is blank. Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost’s vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost’s ships work under Liberia’s maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian “flag of convenience” allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the US flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of “no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details—even to the United States government,” according to a report in World Policy Journal.

The recent seizure of cocaine on a Foremost coal ship came as authorities in Colombia have stepped up anti-drug trafficking enforcement in the region. The Nation spoke to Luis Gonzales, an official with the Colombian Coast Guard in Santa Marta, who told us that the Ping May’s crew were questioned as part of an ongoing investigation, but that no charges have yet been filed. His team found the cocaine in forty separate packages.

Contacted by telephone, a representative of Foremost said he is “obviously going to have no comment on this one.”

McConnell has benefitted in many ways from his relationship with his in-laws.

The Republican Senate minority leader’s personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.

The generous gift made McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth averaging around $22.8 million, according to The Washington Post’s review of his financial disclosures.

Following the gift, McConnell sent a letter of congratulations to an auditorium of Chinese officials in Shanghai who were gathered for an event honoring James Chao’s wife (McConnell’s mother-in-law, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, who passed away in 2007). The Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation, created in her honor, regularly hosts students from the University of Louisville, where McConnell has a leadership academy bearing his name that sends students on trips to China.

The ties between McConnell and his in-laws have come under scrutiny before. In 2001, they were probed in depth by The New Republic in an article that charged that McConnell led an effort to soften his party’s criticism of China. Through James Chao, who was a classmate of Jiang Zemin, the president of China in the ’90s, McConnell and his wife met with Jiang several times, both in Beijing and in Washington. McConnell subsequently tempered his criticism of Chinese human rights abuses, and broke with hawks like Senator Jesse Helms to support Most Favored Nation trading status with China. As Foremost established closer ties with mainland China, McConnell endorsed the position that the United States should remain “ambiguous” about coming to the defense of Taiwan. In 1999, McConnell and his wife appeared at the University of Louisville with Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. Li used the opportunity to bash congressional leaders for rebuking China over its repression of the Falun Gong religious sect. “Any responsible government will not foster evil propensities of cults by being over-lenient,” Li reportedly said at the event with McConnell and Chao. Rather than distance himself from the remarks, McConnell reportedly spoke about his “good working relationship” with Li.

Last Friday, McConnell dipped into his personal fortune to lend his own campaign $1.8 million for the final week before the election. Members of the Chao family and employees of Foremost have also given over $90,000 in contributions to McConnell over the years.

Requests for comment to the McConnell team about the Ping May cocaine incident have gone unanswered.

McConnell has positioned himself over the years as a tough on drugs politician. In 1996, McConnell was the sole sponsor of the Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act, a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for those caught with certain amounts of marijuana. A press release noted that his bill would make “penalties for selling marijuana comparable to those for selling heroin and cocaine.”

In recent weeks, McConnell has touted his role in calling for more federal money to be used for drug enforcement.




HUFFINGTON POST – “Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about 90 pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.”

DAILY KOS – “Foremost Group is the source of most of Senator McConnell’s fortune through gifts and inheritance from his in-laws. It is a shadowy corporation, utilizing a complex scheme of shell companies to skip out on millions in taxes annually.... Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.... The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost’s website FMCNY.com is blank. Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company’s vessels—with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May and Grain May—is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost’s vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost’s ships work under Liberia’s maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian “flag of convenience” allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the US flag.”

Several liberal and independent news sources have reported this story, but no major outlets such as CBS or even NPR have run it. The Baltimore Sun had an article on it, but when I clicked on the site this morning the Net reported it “unavailable.” It does look as though McConnell has put pressure on them to sit on the story. Of course, since NPR is in the group, it may be that the facts are in question, so I have simply reported it from the two most reliable sources.

No one has accused McConnell of knowing about the cocaine yet, or of having any control over the shipping company's activities. If political contributions have to come from fully vetted companies, there may be more comments in the press later. The Daily Kos statement that the website for Foremost is blank, and that the company is obscured within “a byzantine structure of tax entities” is typical for big businesses, unfortunately. McConnell is involved in a very tight race in Kentucky with Democrat Alison Lundergan-Grimes, and in one article he has been charged with attempting to keep minority voters from coming to the polls. So what's new?







Payments Start For N.C. Eugenics Victims, But Many Won't Qualify – NPR
ERIC MENNEL
October 31, 2014

Debra Blackmon was about to turn 14 in January 1972, when two social workers came to her home.

Court and medical documents offer some details about what happened that day. Blackmon was "severely retarded," they note, and had "psychic problems" that made her difficult to manage during menstruation.

Her parents were counseled during the visit, and it was deemed in Blackmon's best interest that she be sterilized.

Blackmon is among the more than 7,000 people in North Carolina — many poor, many African-American, many disabled — who were sterilized between 1929 and 1976 in one of the country's most aggressive eugenics programs.

North Carolina passed a law to compensate victims of the state-run program last year. This week, the state sent out the first checks to qualified applicants. But Blackmon, like many others who are fighting for restitution, is not among them.

Blackmon, now 56, has a hard time with the details of that day in 1972 — but she does remember a few things from her trip to Charlotte Memorial Hospital. "My daddy said, 'Don't hurt this baby.' And he was crying," she recalls.

Latoya Adams, Blackmon's niece, grew up knowing her aunt had been sterilized. But, she says, "we didn't find out until recently the extent — exactly what all they did to her." After the compensation law passed, she went looking for documentation — and came back with a mother lode: a court order, names of social workers and the entire procedure, outlined from pre-op to discharge.

The doctor had labeled it a "eugenics sterilization." And while it was it relief to have the information, she says, it was also remarkably sad.

"They were telling my grandparents that the surgery was going to be minimally invasive. They told them it would be a tubal ligation. And they [wound] up doing a full abdominal hysterectomy — on a 14-year-old," Adams says.

With all this evidence, Adams and her family thought they had a case. They filed the paperwork, and waited to hear back. The news wasn't good.

"The denial letter, the only thing it really stated was that there were no records found and that her case was not approved by the North Carolina Eugenics Board," Adams says.

The problem lies in a technicality.

The new compensation law says, to be eligible, operations have to have occurred under the state's Eugenics Board. As it turns out, the board very likely wasn't aware of all the sterilizations taking place. Judges and social service workers were greenlighting sterilizations, as well.

"That's kind of become the fundamental problem here," says Bob Bollinger, an attorney representing Blackmon and a few other people who say they are victims.

"You have some old dusty filing cabinet in Raleigh that's full of Eugenics Board paperwork from decades ago, but yet you've got all these people who got sterilized involuntarily, where it was instigated at the local level and their paperwork didn't wind up being preserved in the eugenics files in Raleigh — if it was ever there to begin with," he says.

Graham Wilson, a spokesman for the North Carolina Industrial Commission, which decides who qualifies for compensation from the $10 million fund, says, "A lot of people may have had this done under the auspices of local county groups. They're not qualified," he says.

"They may think they're qualified, and obviously they had this procedure done to them," he says. "But if it was not done under the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, then they're not qualified."

Lawyers working with victims estimate hundreds of people — people like Blackmon — could fall into this category.

Blackmon's operation was ordered by a judge who was part of the state court system. That judge cited a state law.

When asked if that, then, makes the state responsible, Wilson says, "That's kind of hard to say. Again, it's just an unfortunate part of our history. It's just something that was done. So it's kind of hard to say that the state would be responsible when it was just kind of an accepted practice."

"It's frustrating sometimes. It really is," Blackmon says.

She's not the only one frustrated. Her niece, Adams, says the denial feels like a double blow.

"Everything is there, but because you can't find a piece of paper saying it got approved by the North Carolina board, you're not gonna be compensated. I think it's sad. I really think it's sad. It's like, you've hurt her once before, but then now I feel like you're turning around and hurting her once again."

There is an appeals process, and Adams and Blackmon are working through that right now. As for people who will be compensated, the first half of the money went out this week —220 checks for $20,000 each. The rest will be disbursed next summer, after the approval process is complete.




“North Carolina passed a law to compensate victims of the state-run program last year. This week, the state sent out the first checks to qualified applicants. But Blackmon, like many others who are fighting for restitution, is not among them. Blackmon, now 56, has a hard time with the details of that day in 1972 — but she does remember a few things from her trip to Charlotte Memorial Hospital. 'My daddy said, 'Don't hurt this baby.' And he was crying,' she recalls.... 'They were telling my grandparents that the surgery was going to be minimally invasive. They told them it would be a tubal ligation. And they [wound] up doing a full abdominal hysterectomy — on a 14-year-old,' Adams says.... 'The denial letter, the only thing it really stated was that there were no records found and that her case was not approved by the North Carolina Eugenics Board,' Adams says. The problem lies in a technicality. The new compensation law says, to be eligible, operations have to have occurred under the state's Eugenics Board. As it turns out, the board very likely wasn't aware of all the sterilizations taking place. Judges and social service workers were greenlighting sterilizations, as well.'... When asked if that, then, makes the state responsible, Wilson says, 'That's kind of hard to say. Again, it's just an unfortunate part of our history. It's just something that was done. So it's kind of hard to say that the state would be responsible when it was just kind of an accepted practice.'... There is an appeals process, and Adams and Blackmon are working through that right now. As for people who will be compensated, the first half of the money went out this week —220 checks for $20,000 each. The rest will be disbursed next summer, after the approval process is complete.”

I didn't hear about these eugenics cases until I got to college, and then heard that a large number of women of color and those who were considered “mentally deficient” were indeed sterilized. When I look back to the time period I lived through it seems sometimes like the Dark Ages in Europe. Our society simply hadn't developed beyond a primitive set of beliefs and practices. The poor were mistreated sometimes, and the laws didn't deal with it at all. “It was just kind of an accepted practice.'” Many things, from lynchings to wife beating to incest were simply not mentioned in polite society, so they went on unimpeded.

Though our modern culture is very open and therefore may be shocking at times, it is better than those dark secrets kept behind closed doors. In small Southern towns, from the family whose child was considered mentally deficient to the existence of black children born to white women were not acknowledged due to fear of the inevitable stigma, and were only mentioned by outsiders to the situation as they gossiped about everybody in the town as viciously as they could. It reminds me of a Tennessee Williams play, but it isn't a beautiful and elegant work of art.

The South is modernizing now, thank goodness. Even if not all who deserve a reparations payment will get one, at least some lawmakers have acknowledged the harm that such eugenics laws did in the past, and they will not I hope be enacted into law again by some misguided Tea Partiers. I hope we have grown beyond all that.





http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/26/millennials-godless-politics-religous-conservatives

The Guardian
Godless millennials could end the political power of the religious right
Adam Lee
October 26, 2014

The 2014 midterm elections are drawing near, and it appears that the Democrats may well lose the Senate, since they’re fighting on unfriendly territory – a large number of seats in red states are up for grabs.

But if you look deeper than the national picture, there’s a more interesting story. In southern states like Georgia and Kentucky – which in the past would have been easy Republican holds - the races are unexpectedly tight. In fact, the only reason that the questions of which party will control the Senate in 2015 is unsettled at all is that an unusual number of races in dark red states are toss-ups, despite an overall political climate that generally favors conservatives.

What we’re seeing may well be the first distant rumblings of a trend that’s been quietly gathering momentum for years: America is becoming less Christian. In every region of the country, in every Christian denomination, membership is either stagnant or declining. Meanwhile, the number of religiously unaffiliated people – atheists, agnostics, those who are indifferent to religion, or those who follow no conventional faith – is growing. In some surprising places, these “nones” (as in “none of the above”) now rank among the largest slices of the demographic pie.

Even in the deep South, the Republican base of white evangelical Christians is shrinking – and in some traditional conservative redoubts like Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky, it’s declined as a percentage of the population by double digits. Even Alabama is becoming less Christian. Meanwhile, there’s been a corresponding increase in the religiously unaffiliated, who tend to vote more Democratic.

While the effect on evangelicals is new, the general pattern isn’t. The Catholic church, the largest single religious denomination in America, was the first to feel the pinch. Church leaders and Catholic apologists have been fretting for years over the problem of aging and shrinking congregations, declining attendance at Mass and fewer people signing up to become priests or nuns – although their proposals for how to solve the problem all consist of tinkering around the edges, or insisting that they need to try harder to convince people to believe as they do.

America’s next-largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, held out a bit
longer but has now come down with the same affliction. Membership has been declining for the last several years – to the point where half of SBC churches will close their doors by 2030 if current trends persist. And as with the Catholic church, the SBC defenders with the biggest platforms have insisted that they don’t need to change anything if they just double down on their existing policies and pray harder for revival.

What’s driving the steady weakening of Christianity? The answer, it would seem, is demographic turnover.

The so-called millennials (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) are far more diverse, educated and tolerant than their predecessors. They’re also the least religious generation in American history – they’re even getting less religious as they get older, which is unprecedented – and the majority of them identify Christianity as synonymous with harsh political conservatism. 

As older, more religious generations fade away and younger generations replace them, the societal midpoint shifts. And this trend is going to accelerate in coming years, because the millennial generation is big. They’re even bigger than the baby boomers.

The influence of the millennials showed in the (by historical standards) remarkably rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage, which in just a few short years has become legal in more than half the country. Millennials view religious demands for the oppression of LGBT people to be a bizarre and offensive anachronism. And as the major denominations vocally assert that opposing equal rights for LGBT people is a nonnegotiable condition of membership in the Church of Not-Gay, young people are driven away in greater and greater numbers. This may well be a self-reinforcing cycle, as people turned off by constant homophobic rhetoric leave the churches, which results in diluted power for religious conservatives, who then bear down even harder on the anti-gay message. The same arrogance and institutional blindness that got them into this spiral make it almost impossible for them to see the problem and pull out of it.

But even if this secularizing trend continues, it’s likely that there’s a hard core of believers who will persist no matter what: no one is forecasting the total extinction of the religious right in politics.

Still, for progressives, the eroding power of the churches is a most welcome development: the religions right can no longer claim to be the sole source of morality and virtue, nor can they expect to assert their will in political matters and be obeyed without question. Instead, they’ll have to muster evidence and make their case in the marketplace of ideas like everyone else.

In other words, the religious right will finally have to fight fair, and I’m willing to bet that, in the long run, that’s a fight they’ll lose.




“But if you look deeper than the national picture, there’s a more interesting story. In southern states like Georgia and Kentucky – which in the past would have been easy Republican holds - the races are unexpectedly tight.... America is becoming less Christian. In every region of the country, in every Christian denomination, membership is either stagnant or declining. Meanwhile, the number of religiously unaffiliated people – atheists, agnostics, those who are indifferent to religion, or those who follow no conventional faith – is growing.... Meanwhile, there’s been a corresponding increase in the religiously unaffiliated, who tend to vote more Democratic. ... The so-called millennials (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) are far more diverse, educated and tolerant than their predecessors. They’re also the least religious generation in American history – they’re even getting less religious as they get older, which is unprecedented – and the majority of them identify Christianity as synonymous with harsh political conservatism. ... And this trend is going to accelerate in coming years, because the millennial generation is big. They’re even bigger than the baby boomers.... Instead, they’ll have to muster evidence and make their case in the marketplace of ideas like everyone else. In other words, the religious right will finally have to fight fair, and I’m willing to bet that, in the long run, that’s a fight they’ll lose."

I am not a believer in the miracles scattered throughout the Bible, from the creation story to the dying and rising of Jesus. He did teach the Love doctrine, however, and he was in favor of helping the poor. He also saved a prostitute from being stoned to death by a righteous group of Jewish men. Life for women wasn't ideal under the Jews then, as it isn't now under Islam. I have always felt that Jesus would have welcomed government sanctioned poverty plans and he certainly didn't look down on the poor.

I feel when I vote Democrat that I am doing what I should be doing, and if I am not personally of the LGBT group, I empathise with them when they suffer discrimination and injustice. Likewise for other races and non-conforming religious groups. While I don't want Sharia Law to be enacted in this country, I don't want to see Islamic people treated badly or incarcerated either, unless of course they have committed a crime. (Honor killings and terrorist bombings are crimes.)

I am glad to see this trend in religious belief occurring, as the Evangelical Christian groups tend to disavow commonly accepted scientific information and sometimes things that I simply consider to be progress rather than reactionary thinking – like an end to the race war that is still going on in the South and other parts of the US. I welcome the millenials to our voting population. They will be an improvement.






Sen. Landrieu's remarks on race anger Republicans
AP
By MELINDA DESLATTE
October 30, 2014

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Republicans are calling on Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu to apologize after she suggested Thursday that President Barack Obama's deep unpopularity in the South is partly tied to race.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Landrieu was quoted as saying that the South "has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans."

The comments came after an NBC reporter asked the senator why Obama has such low approval ratings in Louisiana. Landrieu's first response was that the president's energy policies are deeply disliked by residents of the oil and gas-rich state.

She then added, "I'll be very, very honest with you. The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans. It's been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader."

Landrieu is locked in a tight re-election battle with Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, and is targeted by Republicans nationally in their efforts to retake control of the Senate. Republican and tea-party favorite Rob Maness is polling in a distant third place.

State Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere issued a statement late Thursday calling Landrieu's remarks "insulting to me and to every other Louisianian."

"Louisiana deserves better than a senator who denigrates her own people by questioning and projecting insidious motives on the very people she claims to represent," he said. "Senator Landrieu and President Obama are unpopular for no other reason than the fact the policies they advance are wrong for Louisiana and wrong for America."

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a statement calling Landrieu's comments "remarkably divisive" and Maness issued a statement calling on the senator to apologize.

Landrieu's campaign declined to comment Thursday night.




“Republicans are calling on Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu to apologize after she suggested Thursday that President Barack Obama's deep unpopularity in the South is partly tied to race.” Imagine her telling such a scandalous lie. It's the elephant in the room in Louisiana and she dared to mention it. I can only hope there are enough Democrats with all their picture ID cards in hand to vote those Republicans out of office.




"There is no ambiguity" on climate change, U.N. concludes
CBS/AP November 2, 2014, 8:49 AM

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Climate change is happening, it's almost entirely man's fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.'s panel on climate science said Sunday.

The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's giant climate assessment didn't offer any surprises, nor was it expected to since it combined the findings of three earlier reports released in the past 13 months.

But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous. Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with "irreversible" impacts on people, like altering the male-female ratio, and on the environment, the report said. Some impacts are already being observed, including rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.

"Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the report's launch in Copenhagen.

Climate scientists face an uphill battle convincing the American public of climate change's existence, let alone its urgency.

When asked if they agreed with the statement, "The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity," just 54 percent of Americans surveyed in a study this past summer said yes. Although this number indicates a majority, the United States still ranked last among 20 countries in the poll.

The U.S. number was ten points lower than the next lowest countries on the list, Britain and Australia, where 64 percent agreed that humans are causing climate change. China topped the list, with 93 percent of its citizens agreeing that human activity is causing climate change. Large majorities also agreed in France (80 percent), Brazil (79 percent), Germany (72 percent) and other countries.

Similarly, 91 percent of those from China agreed with statement, "We are heading for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly." Only 57 percent of Americans thought so -- again, last among 20 nations surveyed.

A recent report from an American research institute delivered stark warnings about the immediate health risks of inaction.

Coupled with worldwide marches demanding action on climate change, that study warned that rising temperatures and altered weather patterns in the United States may soon exacerbate many existing health risks.

Heat stroke, cardiac arrest and other heat-related illnesses are expected to increase as the number of extremely hot days rises, said lead author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

"Nearly every place east of the Rocky Mountains will see an increase in extreme hot days in the years to come," Patz said. "Urban areas like New York City and Milwaukee are expected to triple the number of extremely hot days they currently have."

For example, New York City by 2050 could experience as many as 39 days where the mercury tops 90 degrees, compared with the current average of 13 days, Patz said.

Respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, hunger and mental health problems also will likely increase in response to climate change, according to the analysis.

Amid its grim projections, the U.N. report also offered hope. The tools needed to set the world on a low-emissions path are there; it just has to break its addiction to the oil, coal and gas that power the global energy system while polluting the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas.

"We have the means to limit climate change," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. "All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change."

The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made.

Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.

Sleep-deprived delegates approved the final documents Saturday afternoon after a weeklong line-by-line review in Copenhagen that underscored that the IPCC process is not just about science. The reports must be approved both by scientists and governments, which means political issues from U.N. climate negotiations, which are nearing a 2015 deadline for a global agreement, inevitably affect the outcome.

The rift between developed and developing countries in the U.N. talks opened up in Copenhagen over a box of text that discussed what levels of warming could be considered dangerous. After a protracted battle, the delegates couldn't agree on the wording, and the box was dropped from a key summary for policy-makers to the disappointment of some scientists.

"If the governments are going to expect the IPCC to do their job," said Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author of the IPCC's second report, they shouldn't "get caught up in fights that have nothing to do with the IPCC."

The omission of the box meant the word "dangerous" disappeared from the summary altogether. It appeared only twice in a longer underlying report compared to seven times in a draft produced before the Copenhagen session.

But the less loaded word "risk" was mentioned 65 times in the final 40-page summary.

"Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification, increase the risk of severe, pervasive, and in some cases irreversible detrimental impacts," the report said.

World governments in 2009 set a goal of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) compared to before the industrial revolution. Temperatures have gone up about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since the 19th century.

Meanwhile, emissions have risen so fast in recent years that the world has already used up two-thirds of its carbon budget, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to have a likely chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming, the IPCC report said.

"This report makes it clear that if you are serious about the 2-degree goal ... there is nowhere to hide," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "You can't wait several decades to address this issue."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the report "another canary in the coal mine."

"The bottom line is that our planet is warming due to human actions, the damage is already visible, and the challenge requires ambitious, decisive and immediate action," Kerry said in a statement. "Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids."

Pointing to the solution, the IPCC said the costs associated with mitigation action such as shifting the energy system to solar and wind power and other renewable sources and improving energy efficiency would reduce economic growth only by 0.06 percent annually.

And Pachauri said that cost should be measured against the implications of doing nothing, putting "all species that live on this planet" at peril.

The report is meant as a scientific roadmap for the U.N. climate negotiations, which continue next month in Lima, Peru. That's the last major conference before a summit in Paris next year, where a global agreement on climate action is supposed to be adopted.

"Lima should be the place where we put the pieces together so we can move toward success" in Paris, said Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.

The biggest hurdle is deciding who should do what, with rich countries calling on China and other major developing countries to take on ambitious targets, and developing countries saying the rich have a historical responsibility to lead the fight against warming and to help poorer nations cope with its impacts. The IPCC carefully avoided taking sides in that discussion, saying the risks of climate change "are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development."

Over the summer, business leaders also decried inaction on climate change.

In a report called "Risky Business," business leaders including billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Henry Paulson compare climate change to an interest-only loan, a risky form of borrowing that helped trigger the housing crisis.

Future generations "will be stuck paying off the cumulative interest on the greenhouse gas emissions we're putting into the atmosphere now, with no possibility of actually paying down that 'emissions principal,'" the report says.

Those costs will be significant, according to the study's calculations. By 2050, as much as $106 billion worth of coastal property will be below sea level, while extreme heat could reduce average crop yields by as much as 70 percent in some states.

"Damages from storms, flooding and heat waves are already costing local economies billions of dollars -- we saw that firsthand in New York City with Hurricane Sandy," Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, said in a statement. The study "details the costs of inaction in ways that are easy to understand in dollars and cents -- and impossible to ignore."




“Failure to do so, which could require deployment of technologies that suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, could lock the world on a trajectory with "irreversible" impacts on people, like altering the male-female ratio, and on the environment, the report said. Some impacts are already being observed, including rising sea levels, a warmer and more acidic ocean, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice and more frequent and intense heat waves.... Respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, hunger and mental health problems also will likely increase in response to climate change, according to the analysis.... The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess global warming and its impacts. The report released Sunday caps its latest assessment, a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95-percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made. Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.... The reports must be approved both by scientists and governments, which means political issues from U.N. climate negotiations, which are nearing a 2015 deadline for a global agreement, inevitably affect the outcome.... Meanwhile, emissions have risen so fast in recent years that the world has already used up two-thirds of its carbon budget, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be emitted to have a likely chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming, the IPCC report said.... By 2050, as much as $106 billion worth of coastal property will be below sea level, while extreme heat could reduce average crop yields by as much as 70 percent in some states.”

“Climate change is happening, it's almost entirely man's fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century, the U.N.'s panel on climate science said Sunday.” Unfortunately, I don't believe it's possible even with the best international efforts to reduce the world emissions to zero. I am also depressed about the continuing battle by the Republican Party against science in general, and global warming in particular. The US is run by money – especially coal and oil – and Republicans control most of the money. I was unhappy to see that the US public, according to poll takers, are behind 19 other countries on belief that global warming is real, is present and is dangerous.

I am saddened by this article, as I imagine species dying out and famine, drought, dangerous storms and coastal flooding becoming the norm. I won't live to see it all, of course. I will simply continue to blog against the Republicans and try to choose enlightened news articles and other interesting research subjects as a daily project. It's fun, and I hope it does some good for the world.





IRAN AND WOMEN 2014

Iranian-British woman gets prison for going to volleyball game
CBS/AP November 2, 2014, 7:39 AM

TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian-British woman detained while trying to attend a men's volleyball game has been sentenced to one year in prison, her lawyer said Sunday.

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei told The Associated Press that a court found Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, guilty of "propagating against the ruling system."

Tabatabaei said he was shown the text of the verdict but is still waiting to officially receive it. He declined to immediately comment further.

Ghavami was detained in June at a Tehran's Freedom Stadium after trying to attend a men's volleyball match between Iran and Italy. Women are banned from attending male-only matches in Iran and Ghavami tried to enter the match with other women to protest the ban, according to Amnesty International.

Women who sought to attend the World League match in June were reportedly turned away from the stadium. Female photographers inside the complex were ordered to leave though none were arrested.

Ghavami was held for a few hours and then released but she was detained again a few days later. She stood trial last month.

National police chief General Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said it was "not yet in the public interest" for men and women to attend sporting events together, reports Agence France Presse.

"The police are applying the law," he said at the time.

Women are also barred from attending soccer matches in Iran, with officials saying this is to protect them from lewd behavior among male fans.

Since her detention, Ghavami has been held in solitary confinement at Tehran's Evin prison, according to Amnesty, which has criticized her detention. She began a hunger strike earlier this month over her detention, Amnesty says.

A statement on a popular Facebook page supporting her freedom that was posted after the verdict reads: "Ghoncheh has been in temporary detention for the past 126 days and her temporary detention expired 6 days ago and it is not clear to her family and lawyer as to what the current legal basis of her detention is. A fair and just legal process according to Iran's legal framework is the basic right of every Iranian citizen."

Iran's judiciary spokesman, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, has criticized reports linking Ghavami's arrest to volleyball, saying last month: "Her case has nothing to do with sports."



After Acid Attacks And Execution, Iran Defends Human Rights Record – NPR
By Peter Kenyon
November 02, 2014

Iranian officials attacked the latest United Nations report on its human rights record Friday, blasting what they called efforts to impose a Western lifestyle on the Islamic republic.

But for Iranians and others who hoped President Hassan Rouhani would begin to turn around his county's human rights record, the U.N. report provided a depressing but not surprising answer. It said executions in Rouhani's first year in office had increased to what U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed called "alarming" levels.

Coming days after a woman was executed for killing her alleged rapist, and after several acid attacks against women in the city of Isfahan, Shaheed's report portrayed Iranians as suffering from an opaque justice system, regular oppression of women and religious persecution.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, attacked Shaheed for including in his report people who had been charged as terrorists. He told state television that someone with "the high-flown title of U.N. rapporteur shouldn't act as a Voice of America showman."

"I think such words in this report devalue the entire report," Larijani says. "I strongly advise him to resign from this post conclusively, because his background as a rapporteur is very poor."

Shaheed and other rights advocates say Rouhani, who promised human rights reforms during his election campaign, is hampered by the country's fractured political system. With hardliners well-placed in parliament, the judiciary, the security services and religious establishment, Rouhani and his supporters can only try for improvements on the margins.

Faraz Sanei of Human Rights Watch says one good example is the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a well-known defense attorney who formerly worked with the exiled Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sotoudeh was arrested on what Sanei calls trumped-up national security charges and given a six-year prison term. After Rouhani took office, she was released halfway through her term. Then came the backlash: Sotoudeh was barred from practicing law, then briefly arrested again at a demonstration on behalf of the acid attack victims from Isfahan.

Sanei says it was as if security forces wanted to impress upon her that having Rouhani in the presidency would make no difference whatsoever.

"Since Rouhani's inauguration, things haven't actually gotten better in Iran, and in several areas we can argue that things have actually gotten worse," he says. "The acid attack issue, I think, is a good example to look at the state of freedom of expression in Iran, and also the situation of women in Iran, which has not improved since Rouhani's administration."

When Iranians look for a ray of hope, however, they say the reaction to the acid attacks against women and girls shows the kind of grassroots shock and revulsion that may someday force the conservative political establishment to rein in hardliners.

Reza Haghighatnejad, who left Iran to pursue a journalism career with the online news outlet Iranwire and other media, says major reforms right now are a "political dead end," but change isn't always visible on the surface.

In an Istanbul cafe, Haghighatnejad says at the street level in Iran, there are signs of change in perhaps surprising places.

"The people in Iran are engaged in a daily struggle on these issues," he says. "You can even see it in the kindergartens. The state is trying to implement Islamic rules in kindergartens, but mothers prefer to send their children to other schools, where they can learn English, they can be happy and they can dance."

For now, however, rights advocates say Tehran continues to ignore calls for the release of detainees such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. While Iran has arrested a number of suspects in the Isfahan acid attacks, it has also arrested a number of journalists covering the public protests to those attacks.




CBS – Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei told The Associated Press that a court found Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, guilty of 'propagating against the ruling system.'... Since her detention, Ghavami has been held in solitary confinement at Tehran's Evin prison, according to Amnesty, which has criticized her detention. She began a hunger strike earlier this month over her detention, Amnesty says.”

NPR – “Iranian officials attacked the latest United Nations report on its human rights record Friday, blasting what they called efforts to impose a Western lifestyle on the Islamic republic. But for Iranians and others who hoped President Hassan Rouhani would begin to turn around his county's human rights record, the U.N. report provided a depressing but not surprising answer. It said executions in Rouhani's first year in office had increased to what U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed called 'alarming' levels.... Shaheed and other rights advocates say Rouhani, who promised human rights reforms during his election campaign, is hampered by the country's fractured political system. With hardliners well-placed in parliament, the judiciary, the security services and religious establishment, Rouhani and his supporters can only try for improvements on the margins.... When Iranians look for a ray of hope, however, they say the reaction to the acid attacks against women and girls shows the kind of grassroots shock and revulsion that may someday force the conservative political establishment to rein in hardliners. Reza Haghighatnejad, who left Iran to pursue a journalism career with the online news outlet Iranwire and other media, says major reforms right now are a "political dead end," but change isn't always visible on the surface.... 'The people in Iran are engaged in a daily struggle on these issues,' he says. 'You can even see it in the kindergartens. The state is trying to implement Islamic rules in kindergartens, but mothers prefer to send their children to other schools, where they can learn English, they can be happy and they can dance.'”

Where they can learn English, be happy and dance – this is not a great deal of progress, but if individual mothers are today able to send their girls to some alternative schools like this maybe it's a beginning. I am surprised that they have that choice open to them in a place like Iran. Rouhani is either unable to abide by his campaign pledges of improved human rights, or he is another evil man with a pleasing facade. The entire Middle East is beginning to seem like a wasteland to me. The charge that has been levied against Ghoncheh Ghavami is astounded to my US bred ears – “propagating against the ruling system.” Those people simply have no concept of human rights. Might makes right is their only rule of law.

I wish there were a country made up totally of women and girls who are refugees from these unspeakable environments, where they can go to live a free and peaceful life, absolutely able to attend sporting events if they want to, play sports and be a “tomboy,” even, and study any subject they choose. We could call it Amazonia after the ancient Greek stories. If they want to leave the island at some point and come to the US, France or Britain where they will not be subject to Sharia Law, they can do so. Maybe they can even find a moderate, enlightened and benign man with whom to share the rest of their days in peace, and rear happy and gentle children of both sexes.

Saturday, November 1, 2014


News Clips For The Day


HOUSING SHIFTS – TWO ARTICLES


Younger adults choosing to rent, not to own
By JIM AXELROD CBS NEWS
October 31, 2014, 7:10 PM

NEW YORK CITY -- Owning a home has long been the American dream. But a report this week from the Census Bureau says home ownership has fallen to a near 20-year low of just over 64 percent. For many Americans, owning a home has become a dream deferred.

Forty-five-year-old Matt Purdue has a 10-year-old daughter and a good job in public relations. What he doesn't have is a house, which is just how he likes it.

"I never have to deal with maintenance, broken pipes, cleaning the gutters, mowing the lawn," said Purdue.

But this isn't just a question of convenience, Purdue had his eyes open the last half dozen years.

"I have so many friends who own homes that are still underwater since the financial crisis," said Purdue. They "can't sell their home, can't move, don't want to rent it out, and they're just miserable."

Purdue isn't alone. Home ownership is down across the board, but it's fallen most among Gen X-ers -- those between 35 and 44 -- dropping from nearly 67 percent before the recession to 59 percent today.

Ownership among millennials -- those under 35 -- fell as well, from 41 to 36 percent.

"It's hard for them to believe that owning a home is the best way to build wealth anymore," said Realtytrac's Daren Blomquist. "They've seen in some markets, home prices went down 30, 40, 50 percent during the housing bubble and the burst.

Blomquist expects those rates to rise if a sustained economic recovery generates more security for millennials and X-ers. If not, they'll join Matt Purdue as members of home ownership's lost generation.

"To me, the American Dream is freedom and having flexibility to go when your lease is up," said Purdue. "Maybe upgrade to a better place, and not be stuck in debt to a bank."
Blomquist said there's been a flip when it comes to lending. It's the government, he said, that's now pushing for a loosening of lending rules hoping to jump start home ownership. And it's the banks asking for tighter requirements, not wanting a repeat of a burst housing bubble.



Why housing rents have skyrocketed – CBS
By KIM PETERSON MONEYWATCH
October 31, 2014, 5:30 AM

The economy has been volatile and bumpy since the recession ended in 2009, but one market has seen remarkably consistent growth: housing rents.

The average rent is 15.9 percent higher than at the end of 2009. And rents have risen for 23 quarters straight, according to data from real estate research firm Reis (REIS).

By the fourth quarter of 2009, a few months after the recession officially ended, tenants were paying an average of $964 a month. Since then, rents have risen -- sometimes by as much as 3.2 percent a quarter -- to $1,117 at the end of the third quarter.

Other aspects of the economy haven't seen anywhere near that kind of improvement. Wage and job gains have been unstable, the housing market has been erratic and consumer prices have fluctuated.

Inflation has been nearly nonexistent and appears to be cooling further as gasoline and energy prices continue to drop. The Labor Department's consumer-price index rose by just 0.1 percent in September from August. Prices for food commodities have been falling as well.

Economists now expect a modest uptick in inflation over the next year, led by one category: Rents. "Shelter and rent played a big role this month in supporting prices," economists at Bank of America (BAC) wrote in a September report. Without those increases, the economists said, growth for the month would have been flat.

Why have rents surged so much even amid shaky overall growth? The reasons mostly revolve around the fact that demand has only strengthened while supply has remained tight. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, more than 5 million foreclosures have been completed, according to data from CoreLogic.

That's a lot of former homeowners who don't qualify for mortgages and are forced to rent.

Another boost for the apartment market is that many younger people coming out of college haven't found jobs -- or, at least, not the kind that make them feel confident about buying a home, said Brad Doremus, senior analyst for Reis. After the recession, banks set strict standards for qualifying for a home loan and were asking applicants for higher down payments. It forced people to rent for longer than they normally would, Doremus told CBS MoneyWatch.

Finally, the job market rebound has often been strongest in urban pockets of the country -- areas that generally have the highest concentration of apartments. That also served to push people into apartment living.

You'd think the supply of apartments would quickly respond to rising demand from renters. But that wasn't the case. The years leading up to the recession didn't see a huge buildup of apartments in metropolitan areas, Doremus said. In fact, the trend was to convert existing apartments into condos.

After the recession, builders took their time shifting into apartment mode. It really wasn't until the past year, that a strong flow of new apartments began to kick in. Developers are now bringing so much new supply onto the market that the vacancy rate increased in the third quarter for the first time since 2009.

"I think we've kind of reached the low point in the cycle in terms of vacancy," Doremus said. At the end of 2009, the average apartment vacancy rate was 8 percent. That fell to a 4.1 percent earlier this year before rising to 4.2 percent in the third quarter.

Banks are now so jazzed about apartment living that they're throwing loads of cash into the market. Lenders handed builders nearly $173 billion in new mortgages last year for apartment complexes with five or more units, according to a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's an 18 percent increase from 2012.

At some point, rental increases have to slow down. More apartments are coming online now, and wage growth isn't rising fast enough to support further large rent spikes.

"There are only so many rent increases that landlords can inflict on tenants that keep within their budget," said Doremus. But that doesn't mean tenants can expect any rent relief soon. Rents will probably still go up, but the rate should pare back a bit.

Meanwhile, large cities are struggling with how to provide affordable housing to growing populations. In San Francisco, the average monthly rent has jumped 25 percent since 2010 to $2,444. The city has seen intense protests from renters who say they're getting evicted by landlords hoping to attract high-earning employees of Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and other technology companies.

In New York's Harlem neighborhood, 50,000 people applied for an affordable-housing building that offered studios for as little as $349 a month. In Boston, officials say 53,000 more housing units are needed by 2030 to keep up with the city's strong population growth. "There is movement by a lot of people into great 24-hour cities, and Boston is certainly one of those," Michael Roberts, senior vice president for AvalonBay Communities Inc., told The Boston Globe.




“But this isn't just a question of convenience, Purdue had his eyes open the last half dozen years. 'I have so many friends who own homes that are still underwater since the financial crisis," said Purdue. They 'can't sell their home, can't move, don't want to rent it out, and they're just miserable.' Purdue isn't alone. Home ownership is down across the board, but it's fallen most among Gen X-ers -- those between 35 and 44 -- dropping from nearly 67 percent before the recession to 59 percent today.... Ownership among millennials -- those under 35 -- fell as well, from 41 to 36 percent. 'It's hard for them to believe that owning a home is the best way to build wealth anymore,' said Realtytrac's Daren Blomquist. 'They've seen in some markets, home prices went down 30, 40, 50 percent during the housing bubble and the burst.... 'To me, the American Dream is freedom and having flexibility to go when your lease is up,' said Purdue. 'Maybe upgrade to a better place, and not be stuck in debt to a bank.' Blomquist said there's been a flip when it comes to lending. It's the government, he said, that's now pushing for a loosening of lending rules hoping to jump start home ownership. And it's the banks asking for tighter requirements, not wanting a repeat of a burst housing bubble.”

If I remember correctly, it was a government effort to make home ownership easier that put so many people who really didn't have enough money to pay for their mortgages in danger of homelessness in the Great Recession. I have been a renter all my life, and I don't think it's really a disadvantage. At this point in my retirement I have to stick within my Social Security payments and budget accordingly, but I don't owe any money to anybody. If I get some high medical bills that may change, but I feel safe in my HUD housing situation from an inability to eat three meals a day. Luckily I am not one who wants a huge television set, a new smart phone every year, a new car and precious jewels. I don't even crave more personal space. It is possible to live fairly comfortably on my income.

If young people are choosing to rent rather than buy, more power to them. Every family has to set up financing in the best way they can, and not owning a home should not have a stigma attached to it. If they don't have enough money to rent, or if rental has become totally unaffordable, there is HUD housing, which is not miserable and filled with drug addicts as people tend to claim, at least not in my building. I live in housing for seniors and the disabled. Of course states like Florida, which has no income tax at all, has to derive all of its financing from the same home owners who keep having to pay more every year, and most of them are middle class, not wealthy. Many of them have lost their homes when one or both of them becomes unemployed. For the government of Florida, it would be better if every citizen bought their dwelling rather than renting, but house prices are too high for people with only two part time jobs, so they have to rent.





Military sex survey too "invasive" for some
CBS/AP October 31, 2014, 4:12 PM

WASHINGTON -- Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were "intrusive" and "invasive."

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

The survey questions, which were obtained by The Associated Press, ask about any unwanted sexual experiences or contact, and include very specific wording about men's and women's body parts or other objects, and kinds of contact or penetration.

Here is a sample question, one of a series of 11 graphic questions out of 34. Some are even more detailed:
"Before 9/18/2013, had anyone made you insert an object or body part into someone's mouth, vagina or anus when you did not want to and did not consent?"

"We've had a number of complaints," said Jill Loftus, director of the Navy's sexual assault prevention program. "I've heard second- and third-hand that there are a number of women, officers and enlisted, who have gotten to the point where they've read the questions and they've stopped taking the survey. They found them to be either offensive or too intrusive - 'intrusive, invasive' - those are the words they used."

About 560,000 active duty, National Guard and Reserve members were invited to fill out the questionnaire - about five times the number the survey was sent to two years ago. Officials will not say how many responses they have received so far.

Early last year, a report on the 2012 anonymous survey results set off a furor when it estimated that 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures.

In May, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CBS News' Charlie Rose that he has tried to reassure parents worried that their children might face possible sexual harassment in the military.

"Yes, we've had problems, we haven't fixed sexual assault harassment in the military but we are fixing it," Hagel said. "We are getting to where we need to be - that is, no sexual assault, no sexual harassment."

In addition to the Rand questions, Loftus said the Navy sends its own survey to sailors and Marines that doesn't get as specific. She added, "We think we've done a very good job of trying to make people aware of what sexual assault is."

But Rand analysts say the more detailed questions are necessary. So does Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's sexual-assault prevention office.

"This is a crime of a very graphic nature," Galbreath said. "For us to improve our understanding, it sometimes requires asking tough questions."

He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that the more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.

"Research has told us, if I ask someone, 'Have you ever been raped?' they will say, 'No,'" Galbreath said. "If I ask that same person, 'Have you ever been forced to engage in sexual activity against your will?' they might say 'Yes.' It's because of the loaded terms like rape and sexual assault, that it's not very clear to a lot of people what we may be asking about."

The survey begins with questions about sexual harassment, asking about jokes, "sexual gestures or sexual body movements," requests to take or share sexually suggestive pictures or videos or efforts to establish "an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship."

Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a "relatively small" number of complaints.

She said research suggests that "the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons."

Andrew Morral, the other project leader, said the questions were based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"If you don't use precise language to describe different types of sexual assault and harassment, people define those terms for themselves in different ways, which leads to ambiguous results," he said.

The report on the 2012 survey, which was released early last year, showed sexual assault incidents rose from about 19,000 in the 2010 survey to 26,000.

Those totals far outdistance the number of sexual assaults that are actually reported by members of the military.

According to the latest report, the number of sexual assaults jumped by 50 percent last year as the military worked to get more victims to come forward.

Over the past two years, the military services have tried to increase awareness. Phone numbers and contact information for sexual assault prevention officers are plastered across military bases, including inside the doors of bathroom stalls. And top military officers have traveled to bases around the world speaking on the issue.

In the 2012 anonymous survey, about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men. There are vastly more men in the military; so by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men.



RAND Corporation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development[2]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is financed by the U.S. government and private endowment,[3]corporations[4] including the health care industry, universities[5] and private individuals.[6] The organization has expanded to work with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations on a host of non-defense issues. RAND aims for interdisciplinary and quantitative problem solving via translating theoretical concepts from formal economics and the physical sciences into novel applications in other areas, that is, via applied science and operations research. Michael D. Rich is presidentand chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation.

RAND has approximately 1,700 employees. Its American locations include: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Arlington, Virginia;Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts.[7] The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute has offices in New Orleans, Louisiana, andJackson, Mississippi.[8] RAND Europe is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Brussels, Belgium.[9] RAND Australia is located inCanberra, Australia.[10]

RAND is home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, one of the eight original graduate programs in public policy and the first to offer a Ph.D. The program aims to have practical value in that students work with RAND analysts on real-world problems. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility. The Pardee RAND School is the world's largest Ph.D.-granting program in policy analysis.[11] Unlike many other universities, all Pardee RAND Graduate School students receive fellowships to cover their education costs. This allows them to dedicate their time to engage in research projects and provides them on-the-job training.[11] RAND also offers a number of internship and fellowship programs allowing students and outsiders to assist in conducting research for RAND projects. Most of these projects are short-term and are worked on independently with the mentoring of a RAND staff member.[12]

RAND publishes the RAND Journal of Economics, a peer-reviewed journal of economics.

Thirty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize, primarily in the fields of economics and physics, have been involved or associated with RAND at some point in their career.[2][13][14]


http://www.rand.org/about/history.html

Our Commitment to Dissemination and Education

RAND disseminates its research findings as widely as possible to benefit the public good. More than 20,000 RAND publications and commentary are available for free at www.rand.org.

RAND also operates the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the largest public policy analysis Ph.D. program in the United States and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization.

Our History

On May 14, 1948, Project RAND—an organization formed immediately after World War II to connect military planning with research and development decisions—separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, nonprofit organization. Adopting its name from a contraction of the term research and development, the newly formed entity was dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States.




“Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete. The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts. Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were 'intrusive' and 'invasive.'... The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help. ... 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures. … He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that the more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.”

“Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a 'relatively small' number of complaints. She said research suggests that 'the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons.'” There were several news articles a couple of years ago about both women and men being sexually assaulted, sometimes by superior officers, with threats of retaliation if the victim reported the crime. Also, it was necessary to report the crime to a superior officer, and sometimes the victims were discouraged from complaining – much as they were when they had developed mental health disorders resulting from war. Men especially were intimidated and ridiculed by superior officers for their depression or panic disorder. The problem, I think, was that the military at that time trying to run a cover up on the nature and the extent of the problems. That is probably why the matter was taken out of the hands of the Pentagon.

The rates of about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men doesn't sound very high to me. It is a problem, though, that in the military an individual can't just leave the base to avoid the abuser and can't fight back without possibly getting into trouble, and if a superior officer is the attacker, the military system may tend to believe his word over the victim's. Hopefully this study will help the Pentagon improve the sexual environment in the military, and officers who retaliate against those who have complained will be drummed out of the service or demoted. That might tend to limit the abuse of power that I think is involved in some of these cases, and perhaps sensitivity training might decrease the number of attacks. A type of group therapy for men who had abused children was on the news five or six years ago, and they were being taught to develop compassion for their victims rather than seeing them as sexual objects.






How you react to this photo reveals your political beliefs
By ELIENE AUGENBRAUN CBS NEWS October 31, 2014, 11:32 AM

When researchers showed disgusting images of snakes, roaches, garbage, vomit, mutilated bodies and open wounds to participants in a Virginia Tech study, they found significant differences between the way liberals and conservatives reacted, on a neural level.

Though the volunteers didn't report feeling any more or less grossed out by the images, brain scans told a different story. The more strongly a person's brain reacted to seeing disgusting images, the more likely they were to hold conservative views.

The same discrepancy did not exist in their responses to positive images.

The authors point out in the paper, published in the journal Current Biology, that this is the first brain study to find multiple points of differentiation in activity when comparing the emotional processing of images in liberals versus conservatives. Several parts of the brain lit up in conservatives, while others were activated in liberals.

P. Read Montague and his coauthors wrote in the study that their results "invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion)."

Indeed, watching the brain's reaction to a single disgusting image was sufficient to guess each subject's political orientation. Montague said in the press release, "I haven't seen such clean predictive results in any other functional imaging experiments in our lab or others."

The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to track how the brains of 83 volunteers reacted to viewing emotionally charged but politically neutral images. The volunteers were then asked to rate how disgusting, threatening, or pleasant they thought each image was, and then answer a standard questionnaire about political ideology.

The study did not determine exactly how or why liberal brains differ from conservative ones, only that the two types of brains lit up in two different patterns when viewing the same images.

But the researchers theorize that conservatives, compared to liberals, have greater "negativity bias," a psychological sensitivity to unpleasant or disturbing things. This supports the findings of an eye-tracking study published earlier this year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which found that conservatives reacted more intensely to disgusting images.

"Across research methods, samples and countries, conservatives have been found to be quicker to focus on the negative, to spend longer looking at the negative, and to be more distracted by the negative," the authors of that study wrote.

"The results do not provide a simple bromide, but ... if we can begin to see that some 'knee-jerk' reactions to political issues may be simply that -- reactions -- then we might take the temperature down a bit in the current boiler of political discourse," Montague said.




“Though the volunteers didn't report feeling any more or less grossed out by the images, brain scans told a different story. The more strongly a person's brain reacted to seeing disgusting images, the more likely they were to hold conservative views. The same discrepancy did not exist in their responses to positive images. The authors point out in the paper, published in the journal Current Biology, that this is the first brain study to find multiple points of differentiation in activity when comparing the emotional processing of images in liberals versus conservatives. Several parts of the brain lit up in conservatives, while others were activated in liberals.... The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to track how the brains of 83 volunteers reacted to viewing emotionally charged but politically neutral images. The volunteers were then asked to rate how disgusting, threatening, or pleasant they thought each image was, and then answer a standard questionnaire about political ideology.... But the researchers theorize that conservatives, compared to liberals, have greater 'negativity bias,' a psychological sensitivity to unpleasant or disturbing things.”

“This supports the findings of an eye-tracking study published earlier this year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which found that conservatives reacted more intensely to disgusting images. 'Across research methods, samples and countries, conservatives have been found to be quicker to focus on the negative, to spend longer looking at the negative, and to be more distracted by the negative,' the authors of that study wrote.” Montague is quoted as saying this finding may help “take the temperature down” on the raging political battlefield that our country has become. It could explain why some political conservatives want to avoid black people entirely, in that they react negatively to differences. Many people are actually afraid of black people, rather than merely hating them, and many of the far right group of militia members and neo-Nazis advocate for an all-white society. The uber-wealthy, likewise, may want their environment to be “uncontaminated” by the poor or the sick, viewing the needy as being highly objectionable. They don't have the desire to help them, as a liberal would tend to. That's why the Nazis of Germany wanted the Jews, mentally disabled and non-white racial groups to be exterminated. Hopefully we won't go through anything like that in this country, though the current increase in right wing groups here and also in Europe is very disturbing.




Police use new tool to ID domestic violence victims most at risk
By ANNA WERNER CBS NEWS October 30, 2014, 8:16 PM

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. -- Oklahoma City police officer Brandi May answers domestic violence calls nearly every day.

"I'm gonna ask you some questions so you can answer 'Yes,' 'No' or you can choose not to answer at all," May tells a victim.

But now May has a new tool, one police here say is simple but effective: a checklist of 16 questions (PDF) designed to help officers identify victims who are likely to be killed.

"Do you think that Shane might try to kill you?" May asks the victim.

"After tonight, probably," the woman responds.

The more times a victim answers "Yes," the more likely domestic violence may lead to her death.

"He said he was going to kill me, he says it every time but I just thought it was an empty threat, and tonight it made me believe that he would," the victim says.

Captain Kim Flowers heads the domestic violence unit, which has been using the checklist for 3 years.

"A lot of them cry and say, 'Oh my god, I can't ... I can't believe I am letting this happen,'" Flowers says.

The questions were developed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University. For example, number 5: "Has he/she ever tried to choke you?"

Research found men who choked their partners were 10 times more likely to eventually kill them.

"He wants you to know that he's in control, and he can snap your neck in half whenever he feels like it," Flowers explains.

Officer May found this woman was in serious danger.

"Do you just want to speak with them or do you want to seek shelter?" May asked.

So she took the next step in the new protocol by putting the woman on the phone with the domestic violence hotline, right there at the scene.

"It offers them support, it makes them feel stronger, it gives them the opportunity to take back ahold of their life," May says.

This victim told us, it made a difference for her.

"I didn't know, I just thought it was normal," the woman says through tears. "And it's not -- It's not normal and it's not okay."

Starting Saturday, the checklist will be used across the state of Oklahoma. Authorities in Maryland say fatalities have dropped 30 percent since they started using it.




“But now May has a new tool, one police here say is simple but effective: a checklist of 16 questions (PDF) designed to help officers identify victims who are likely to be killed. 'Do you think that Shane might try to kill you?' May asks the victim. 'After tonight, probably,' the woman responds.... The questions were developed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University. For example, number 5: 'Has he/she ever tried to choke you?' Research found men who choked their partners were 10 times more likely to eventually kill them.... So she took the next step in the new protocol by putting the woman on the phone with the domestic violence hotline, right there at the scene. 'It offers them support, it makes them feel stronger, it gives them the opportunity to take back ahold of their life,' May says. This victim told us, it made a difference for her.... Starting Saturday, the checklist will be used across the state of Oklahoma. Authorities in Maryland say fatalities have dropped 30 percent since they started using it.”

'I didn't know, I just thought it was normal,' the woman says through tears. 'And it's not -- It's not normal and it's not okay.' Many women are brought up in a family or a community in which violence against women is commonplace. In some cases they are even taught to blame themselves – they were slugged because they spoke their opinion, for instance. Some people talk about divorce as though it were a horrible thing, but in many cases it is exactly what should happen, and the woman should get protection from further contact by the man. I am talking, of course, as though women are never the aggressors, which shockingly is not the case, but just as a matter of numbers, they are far more likely to be a victim than an aggressor. One of my housemates from the 1980s said that her husband beat her until she took a martial arts course. The next time he came in and tried to hit her she threw him up against the brick wall of the garage where they were standing. He never hit her again. The same happened to a young girl I know who verbally defended a friend of hers from a bully, and the bully slapped her. She “went blank” and the next thing she knew she had driven him up against the wall in the cafeteria using both fists. Likewise he never so much as spoke to her again.

The list of questions being used by police is available at this website – http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/lethality_assessment_oklahoma_city.pdf. The questions ask about weapons, choking, jealousy, stalking, suicidal tendencies, children, substance abuse, and interference with an attempted 911 call. When I was a young woman, police officers often wouldn't intervene in a domestic abuse situation, and in conservative rural places often the neighbors or family wouldn't help either. It was considered to be “their business,” and men were expected to “handle” or discipline their women. Now police forces have become much more sophisticated about such matters. A man barricaded in a house with his wife or family, whether or not he has a gun, will find a SWAT team negotiator trying to intervene , and if that doesn't work, breaking down the door. This is definitely a change for the better. Now if the abusers would simply be punished with a prison term of ten years or so, rather than a small fine and a few days in jail, I would feel better yet,





Virus Sleuths Chip Away At Ebola Mysteries – NPR
By Nell Greenfieldboyce
October 31, 2014

Vincent Racaniello, who studies viruses at Columbia University, says Ebola has recently become his obsession.

"I find myself reading incessantly about Ebola when I should be doing other things," says Racaniello, host of the online showThis Week in Virology, which has devoted several recent programs to Ebola.

The unprecedented Ebola outbreak probably has more virologists thinking about Ebola than ever before. And while scientists have learned a lot about this virus since it was discovered almost four decades ago, there's still a lot left to wonder about.

Racaniello and his virologist buddies wish they knew some really basic things — like, how does the virus actually slip into cells? What part of the cell's surface does it latch onto to get access? Knowing that might let scientists figure out ways to block it.

And how do outbreaks of Ebola actually start? "This is a really important question," says Racaniello,"because if we could figure out where the virus comes from we might be able to take measures to stop that."

Scientists believe the virus circulates in fruit bats, which seem to carry Ebola without getting sick. But no one knows the details of how bats pass it to humans or other species.

"We know for sure that gorillas and chimpanzees and some antelope have been infected with Ebola in the past," says veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonathan Epstein of EcoHealth Alliance, an organization devoted to understanding and predicting the emergence of diseases. "But the mechanism for spillover isn't totally clear, and so that's an area where more study needs to be done."

Here's another issue that needs more study: Once the virus finds its way into people, why is it that some people get very sick, others seem to get less sick, and others may not get sick at all?

Angela Rasmussen, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says we don't yet know of any genes that might influence someone's response to this virus.

"Prior to this outbreak in West Africa, there really haven't been that many human patients with Ebola, so these studies haven't really been conducted in people," Rasmussen says.

She and some colleagues have started to study this aspect of Ebola infection in mice. In a secure lab, they infected dozens of genetically diverse mice with the same Ebola virus. And in this week's issue of the journal Science, they report that they saw a wide range of disease outcomes, all the way from mild to severe illness — suggesting that the genetic makeup of individual mice played a huge role in how sick they got.

Rasmussen says there were key differences in genes that affect blood vessels. "We think that those genes may be implicated in Ebola pathogenesis," she says, "but we're still in the process of conducting studies on enough mice to be able to say that definitively."

Besides genes, scientists wonder what else might affect who lives and who dies. Robert Garry, a microbiologist at Tulane University, is part of a team that published an analysis Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine that looks at people who got Ebola in Sierra Leone. He says it turns out that a person's age really mattered — with people under 21 having a much better chance of survival than people over 45. The researchers are not sure why — it may have something to do with differences in their immune systems.

And even though Ebola is known as a hemorrhagic fever, bleeding appears to be rare in this outbreak — the team only saw it in one patient in this study. That means it looks like this West African variant of the virus is different from the ones that have been seen in Central Africa in the past. "It's something that we need to examine further to try to see what these differences are in terms of the viral biology," says Garry.

Another big question is how the virus might mutate as it moves through large numbers of people, as it is now doing in West Africa. Could it become more or less deadly? Racaniello says there are examples of other viruses that changed over time to cause milder illness.

"But for the most part, most of the major viruses we know — AIDS/HIV-1, influenza, polio, measles — they all keep their virulence at pretty much the same level," Racaniello says. "Although you could argue we've only been studying them a short time."




“Vincent Racaniello, who studies viruses at Columbia University, says Ebola has recently become his obsession. 'I find myself reading incessantly about Ebola when I should be doing other things,' says Racaniello, host of the online showThis Week in Virology, which has devoted several recent programs to Ebola.... Racaniello and his virologist buddies wish they knew some really basic things — like, how does the virus actually slip into cells? What part of the cell's surface does it latch onto to get access? Knowing that might let scientists figure out ways to block it. And how do outbreaks of Ebola actually start? 'This is a really important question,' says Racaniello,'because if we could figure out where the virus comes from we might be able to take measures to stop that.'... In a secure lab, they infected dozens of genetically diverse mice with the same Ebola virus. And in this week's issue of the journal Science, they report that they saw a wide range of disease outcomes, all the way from mild to severe illness — suggesting that the genetic makeup of individual mice played a huge role in how sick they got. Rasmussen says there were key differences in genes that affect blood vessels. 'We think that those genes may be implicated in Ebola pathogenesis,' she says, 'but we're still in the process of conducting studies on enough mice to be able to say that definitively.'... And even though Ebola is known as a hemorrhagic fever, bleeding appears to be rare in this outbreak — the team only saw it in one patient in this study. That means it looks like this West African variant of the virus is different from the ones that have been seen in Central Africa in the past.”

Could a mosquito bite start the first case? Why is this epidemic showing a virus that causes very little bleeding, as opposed to those in Central Africa. How does the patient's age act to make his illness more or less dangerous? If fruit bats are the vector, is it eating them that causes human infection, or eating a fruit that the bat sampled beforehand and contaminated with his saliva. The reason scientists are looking at fruit bats is that the virus has been found in their blood, but the bats don't get sick. Another set of animals that catch Ebola is the great apes, specifically gorillas and chimpanzees. Their connection with fruit bats would probably be eating the fruit itself. Finally, some Africans eat chimpanzees, and if they were sick at the time, their blood and bodily fluids would contaminate the human's hands and clothing. It seems to me that eating “bush meat” is probably the main cause of outbreaks. This article said that some antelopes – very good human food – contract Ebola. First we need a foolproof vaccine that can be given to a healthy person and would protect them against infection,Whole populations of people could then be vaccinated against it. Then, stop killing “bush meat” for food.