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WASHINGTON (AP) — You might be pleased with the low monthly premium for one of the new health insurance plans under President Barack Obama's overhaul, but the added expense of copayments and deductibles could burn a hole in your wallet.
An independent analysis released Wednesday, on the heels of an administration report emphasizing affordable premiums, is helping to fill out the bottom line for consumers.
The annual deductible for a mid-range "silver" plan averaged $2,550 in a sample of six states studied by Avalere Health, or more than twice the typical deductible in employer plans. A deductible is the amount consumers must pay each year before their plan starts picking up the bills.
Americans looking for a health plan in new state insurance markets that open next week will face a trade-off familiar to purchasers of automobile coverage: to keep your premiums manageable, you agree to pay a bigger chunk of the repair bill if you get in a crash. Except that unlike an auto accident, serious illness is often not a self-contained event.
Avalere also found that the new plans will require patients to pay a hefty share of the cost — 40 percent on average — for certain pricey drugs, like the newer specialty medications used to treat intractable chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. On the other hand, preventive care will be free of charge to the patient.
"Consumers will need to balance lower monthly premiums against the potential for unpredictable, expensive out-of-pocket costs in plans with higher deductibles," said Caroline Pearson, a vice president of the private market analysis firm. "There is a risk that patients could forgo needed care when faced with high up-front deductibles."
Responding to the Avalere study, the Obama administration acknowledged the new plans aren't as generous as employer coverage, but said they nonetheless represent a big improvement over currently available individual policies, which can have gaps in coverage and even larger out-of-pocket costs.
Also on Wednesday, the administration unveiled premiums and plan choices for 36 states where the federal government is taking the lead to cover uninsured residents. Insurance markets that go live Oct. 1 will offer subsidized private coverage to people who do not have health insurance on the job, including the uninsured and those who currently buy their own policies.
Before new tax credits that work like a discount for most consumers, premiums for a mid-range "silver" benchmark plan will average $328 a month nationally for an individual, the administration report found. Beneath that average are wide differences for individuals, depending on where they live, how much they make, and other factors.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the average consumer will be able to choose among more than 50 plan options.
"For millions of Americans, these new options will finally make health insurance work within their budgets," Sebelius told reporters in a preview call Tuesday. The markets — called "exchanges" in some states — are the only place where consumers will be able to get a tax credit for health insurance.
HHS estimated that about 95 percent of consumers will have two or more insurers to choose from. And the administration says premiums will generally be lower than what congressional budget experts estimated when the legislation was being debated. About one-fourth of the insurers participating are new to the individual coverage market, a sign that could be good for competition.
But averages can be misleading. When it comes to the new health care law, individuals can get dramatically different results based on their particular circumstances.
Where you live, the plan you pick, family size, age, tax credits based on your income, and even tobacco use will all impact the bottom line. All those variables could make the system hard to navigate.
For example, the average individual premium for a benchmark policy known as the "second-lowest-cost silver plan" ranges from a low of $192 in Minnesota to a high of $516 in Wyoming. That's the sticker price, before tax credits.
In the three states with the highest uninsured population, the benchmark plan will average $373 in California, $305 in Texas, and $328 in Florida. Differences between states can be due to the number of insurers competing and other factors.
"One surprise is Texas," said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "That is a state that has put up roadblocks to implementation, but the premiums there are below average."
The second-lowest-cost silver plan is important because tax credits are keyed to its cost in local areas.
But consumers don't have to take silver. They can pick from four levels of coverage, from bronze to platinum. All the plans cover the same benefits and cap annual out-of-pocket expenses at $6,350 for an individual, $12,700 for families.
The big difference is cost sharing through annual deductibles and copayments. Bronze covers 60 percent of expected costs; silver, 70 percent, on up to platinum at 90 percent. Bronze plans have the lowest premiums and the highest cost sharing.
As the Avalere study showed, premiums aren't the only factor consumers should weigh.
The flurry of new reports comes as the White House swings into full campaign mode to promote the benefits of the Affordable Care Act to a skeptical public. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, refuse to abandon their quest to derail "Obamacare" and are flirting with a government shutdown to force the issue.
Starting Jan. 1, virtually all Americans will be required to carry health insurance or face fines. At the same time, the health care law will prohibit insurance companies from turning away people in poor health, or charging them more.


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Digital reading rises, while books fade
The tastes of the reading public are turning digital.
A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called statistically insignificant.
Those owning an e-book device or tablet jumped from 18 percent to 33 percent, with much of that increase coming from last year's holiday season, when millions received Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers as gifts.
Awareness that libraries offer digital texts grew from 24 percent to 31 percent.
The telephone survey of 2,252 people aged 16 and older was conducted from Oct. 15 to Nov. 10. It has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

subset: commoncrawl


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Share your worship confessionals, recaps, and setlists for the week of: Sunday, May 12, 2013 – Happy Mother's Day!!
Welcome to the 251st consecutive week of "Sunday Setlists!"
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text: Drilling on public lands There's no doubt this country needs energy. But the development of that energy often comes at a cost to hunters and anglers. Trout Unlimited supports responsible drilling, but we also acknowledge there are some places that are simply too important and too special to develop. Places such as the Wyoming Range in Wyoming, or the Thompson Divide in Colorado are critical fisheries and important big game areas and need to be protected from unnecessary drilling and the infrastructure that comes with them. Over the years, TU has been an outspoken advocate for responsible drilling, keeping wild habitat intact, but also working directly with industry to find the best solutions to achieve that balance. Fracking and our fishing Clean water is one of our greatest natural resources and it's up to us to keep it that way. The concern over fracking and water supplies is something we take seriously. To that end, Trout Unlimited is working to increase transparency in chemicals used in the fracking process up front, not after a well is fracked. We also are supportive of improving the well integrity standards. Often the issues with contamination of water supplies result from poor well integrity allowing chemical to reach ground water or waterways. We also want to ensure that drilling fluids are appropriately handled on the site and disposed of in the proper manner.


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When you know yourself, you can plan your career and education based on what's important to you: your interests, abilities, values and experiences.
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XUnmapSubwindows(display, w)
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Window w;
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The XUnmapSubwindows function unmaps all subwindows for the specified window in bottom-to-top stacking order. It causes the X server to generate an UnmapNotify event on each subwindow and Expose events on formerly obscured windows. Using this function is much more efficient than unmapping multiple windows one at a time because the server needs to perform much of the work only once, for all of the windows, rather than for each window.
XUnmapSubwindows can generate a BadWindow error.


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This is SCIENCE FRIDAY; I'm Ira Flatow. We've all been there, sitting at the computer late at night, clicking on those websites that offer medical opinions, trying to convince ourselves that our headache must be caused by a brain tumor, right? Yeah, that dry skin you've had for the last couple of months, of course it's due to a thyroid disorder because that's what you're finding out on the Web. Recognize yourself?
You may be a cyberchondriac, convinced by advice and opinions you get online that your benign symptoms are really a cause for finishing up your last will and testament. And while the Web may sometimes mislead you into thinking you have a rare, unpronounceable disease, what's really more interesting to me is all those search queries can actually be helpful to doctors and drug companies, giving them clues about the side effects of drugs, for example.
Or when two drugs have a bad interaction with each other, something that may have slipped by researchers in the clinical trials - your searching can help scientists and doctors diagnose the spread and causes of disease.
My next guest is combining through those search results to do just that. Let me introduce him now. Eric Horvitz is a distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research, co-director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond, Washington. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Horvitz.
ERIC HORVITZ: Hi, Ira, it's good to be back again.
FLATOW: Thank you. Tell me about - this new study that you did, you looked through the search results of Web users to find drug interactions.
HORVITZ: Yeah, so in general - well, a Pew study showed a few years ago that two-thirds of folks working with the Web are interested in health care. They're looking for health care information, they're doing self-diagnosis. We thought this would be a really interesting place to look for new kinds of medical knowledge to help the more traditional approaches to monitoring, for example, adverse side effects of drugs and drug interactions, post-marketing phase.
And this is typically a very complicated thing to study. So it's a collaborative work with close friends at Stanford. I'm working very closely with Ryen White, who's a fabulous collaborator at Microsoft Research. We looked at six million Web searchers and actually looked at - we're basically considering large-scale statistics with automated tools that are looking at queries made by people who consented to share their search activities with Microsoft for R&D purposes.
And we looked at 82 million queries, people querying on drugs and symptoms and so on, and we recognized an interaction between two drugs in the top 100 for U.S. - for the United States population. Paroxetine, which is a common antidepressant, and Pravastatin, known as Pravachol, a popular cholesterol-lowering drug, and found signs that these two drugs, when they interact, when they're both taken by the same person, in this case searched on by the same person, can cause a rise in blood sugar. Now - or hyperglycemia. Now to say...
FLATOW: And that was not known by the drug companies or published by the drug companies, let me put it that way.
HORVITZ: Well, here's the background, and let me frame this story a bit. So a team at Stanford had - going through an FDA database called AERS, A-E-R-S, the Adverse Event Reporting System, which is used by the FDA to collect and track side effects and interactions among drugs in the post-marketing phase - the team had recognized through statistical analysis previously unknown effects of those two drugs, Pravastatin and Pravachol - excuse me, Paroxetine and Pravastatin interacting to cause hyperglycemia, and they actually confirmed their finding statistically - this is a very intensive analysis - with electronic health records at three different medical sites and then working with actually even a mouse model.
And this was published, this work was published in 2011. We said let's go back, working with our Stanford colleagues, let's go back to 2010, before this was published, before this was known, and look at 12 months of logs, search logs of these people who consented to share their logs and see if we can actually build a tool that would automatically recognize this side effect of these two drugs when they're both searched on, are linked to people who also search on terms you would search on if you were experiencing a variety of symptoms of hyperglycemia.
And we found a significant bump compared to any - to people who were searching on one of the drugs.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. So what you're saying in a larger scheme is that when people go online and search for things, you can use what they're searching for, by the logs that they leave behind in all those millions of searches, and you can find out stuff about the actions of drugs that we may not know of by...
HORVITZ: Exactly, and this is pretty exciting in a number of ways. Number one, obviously these are noisy signals. Not everybody searching on Paxil or Pravastatin are taking those drugs. But quite a few people who take them likely do search, sooner or later, especially when they might have side effects.
And on the large scale, large-scale statistics, which we find signal in the noise, you might call it, and not just that but the large-scale statistics is what we're interested in, and this actually is also great for protecting the privacy of any particular person.
FLATOW: Let's talk about how you could expand this. How could you expand this out into other health care?
HORVITZ: Well, this is a very good question, Ira, and we're very excited about a number of directions here. So for example, if you just take the same line of reasoning, you can imagine looking at medical devices post-marketing, and picking up clues or evidence that there is something going amiss for users. You know, does that CPAP machine cause tinnitus, for example?
This is really a nice way to look at drug interactions, new drug side effects, potentially, people are complaining about the rise of illness, interactions between illnesses. Do people who have - who search on sleep apnea a bunch - later search on heart disease and high blood pressure, for example?
So you can imagine a whole number of directions here where we make the large-scale Web, which is a place where human being do lots of things these days, a central network for health care.
FLATOW: Or you could do it, I would imagine, even with nutrition, with food additives, things like that, you know?
HORVITZ: Absolutely.
FLATOW: I'm just thinking out loud here, people who take melatonin - are they sleeping more?
HORVITZ: You know, but even back to the adverse drug events, it's just impressive how little we can study with formal clinical trials before we actually market, a drug company puts a drug in the marketplace. It's - the scale at which we can automate, even with noisy clues, on a very, very large scale - we can automate the search for signals given hypotheses - is enormous and wonderful.
Now, one thing I'd like to say is when we do this work, and if you want to look at the paper, it's on our website, we try to characterize how well the tool works. We want to get what we call a noise model so we know how to apply this to understand the false positives and the false negatives. And that's part of the research.
How do we take this big, noisy, crazy world of Web search and normalize it into a powerful tool?
FLATOW: Is it accurate, yeah. 1-800-989-8255. Two questions for you: One, in your study you got permission, right, from the people who you studied to put a little toolbar on their Web browser, right, so they could - you could follow them.
HORVITZ: Right.
FLATOW: What about all the people who are listening to us today saying uh-oh, they're looking at my - where I'm going, and you know, I don't have that thing on my toolbar, but are they still going to be using my data and where I'm searching for?
HORVITZ: You know, this is a - I think the directions in privacy are critical for the Web and for the era that we're in, the revolution we're in with computing. And we need, as the computer science community, to come up with fabulous controls to make sure that we protect the privacy of users.
Our company, Microsoft, it takes this very, very, very seriously, as do other companies and competitors of ours. And so we're pursuing with, you know, vigorously ways to protect users. In this case we not only got consent, but we actually have a number of methods that anonymize the inputs so we can't track back, you know, who this was.
And the third part here, I think, which people like to hear, is that human eyes don't touch these queries. It's an automated crawler of sorts that goes over much, much bigger data than any human beings could ever have time to look at.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about if these data-mining techniques could be used in hospitals or health care settings to improve patient care.
HORVITZ: Absolutely. In fact, in another arm of our research at Microsoft and other places and working with colleagues, we're working with actual electronic health care record data that hospitals are now collecting with higher and higher fidelity. So, for example, about a year ago, we fielded, commercially, classifiers, automatic systems that can learn from thousands of patient visits, and tens of thousands of variables about patient symptoms and lab tests and histories to predict, for example, that this patient being discharged today would be readmitted in 30 days, have a probability available to the discharging physician at discharge time to guide decision-making about what else they might do to keep that from happening.
FLATOW: Wow, wow. You've also studied what I began this section with, something called cyberchondria, for example...
HORVITZ: Yes.
FLATOW: ...when you come up with search results, you search - let's say, for example, chest pain. When you search for chest pain, what do you get? You think you have a little chest pain, maybe you came home from the gym and used the weights a little too much or something, and then suddenly your chest is - you've got a chest pain. If you search for it, you're going to come up with a whole bunch of stuff, aren't you?
HORVITZ: Yes. So we actually studied this phenomenon where - it's a very common activity, which we've all done. I would imagine most listeners in their cars or at home right now have done this. You have a few symptoms. You want to find out what's going on, so you do an online search, and you basically are using the Web as kind of a medical expert system.
FLATOW: Right.
HORVITZ: And, sure, it brings up movies, and the Web brings up news. Why can't it diagnose my symptoms, if you put one or more symptoms in? And what we found was, in the general case, there's a very high likelihood that this - that putting in very common symptoms - chest pain actually is quite common, and it rarely means heart attack, even in men my age, so - that haven't had a previous history, for example, of heart disease. But you can be led astray very quickly to rare, scary, fatal illnesses because of several factors, including the notion that there's more written about the scary things.
They're clicked - those scary items are clicked on more, giving the search engine feedback to bring those results up higher on the list. And you end up with what we call escalation. Looking at Web content will escalate people to thinking that their common symptom is not really common at all and they have a rare, fatal illness. I mean, nobody out there should ever put into a Web browser that they have a twitch in their hand or an eyelid is twitching, because in no time at all, you'll be thinking about a wheelchair for your - the onset of ALS, a terrible disease that is very scary to people.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. But these searches - but you're saying in general that these searches are useful in the long run for people who can study what people are looking for...
HORVITZ: Right. So the Web is an incredibly valuable place for health care information. It's also a valuable sensor network for the studies that I talked about that we've done with our colleagues at Stanford. We also - in studying how prominently the Web is in people's lives these days for how they manage their own health, there - it has some rough edges on it, as well. One of the rough edges is the way indexing and crawling works when you mix the way content is indexed with cognitive biases, one of which is called the availability bias, the scary - this - the - when you see a bunch of scary things, the probability that you have that scary thing goes up in your mind. There are some rough edges that lead people astray at times. And we - I think people who - a certain set of the population that dwells on, for example, these scary things can really spend lots of time.
In fact, we actually found - you know, sort of, we could actually see automatically that many times, people came back again and again and again to the same search, with the same concerns, because of clear anxiety about the way the Web was answering their queries when they input very common symptoms. I mean, putting in the symptom headache, severe headache, way up on the list, as you said earlier on the show, brain tumor...
FLATOW: Yeah.
HORVITZ: ...appears, and all about brain tumors. It turns out one of the most common causes of a very severe headache, the worst in your whole life, is when you forget to have your coffee for a couple of days.
FLATOW: Yeah.
HORVITZ: And this is a very common situation, even at ambulatory health care clinics, people - patients will come in and say: My God. I think something is wrong. It's a hemorrhage of some kind or a tumor. And the doctors always check, what about your coffee? And that's very common...
FLATOW: But on the Web, they're just going to - not check. There's no one to check it. You're just going to get reassurance that you have a tumor.
HORVITZ: Well, caffeine withdrawal as a cause of headache is at the same - appears at the same rate in search results as brain tumor, and one's a lot more common.
FLATOW: Wow. Let me get a quick call in from Andy in Denver. Hi, Andy. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
ANDY: Oh, thanks for taking my call. I was just curious about the study you were talking about earlier, where they had prior knowledge of this drug conflict that led to hypoglycemia. Has that same data-mining approach been used to find something without prior knowledge, to find some kind of other drug interaction that was not known ahead of time?
HORVITZ: So we actually - there's two parts to that - to the answer to that question. One is we actually took 60 pairs of drugs with known interactions, and two negatives and two positives for hyperglycemia. And this data was not well-known. It was basically sequestered away in special resources for physicians, and could test how well our methods work on these knowns. It turns out we can then build what we call an error model that tells us how well this will work on future combinations we haven't seen yet.
Now, let me tell you a quick, exciting bit of directional news. Ryen White and I created a system we called BLAERS, for Behavioral Log-based AERS. AERS is the FDA term for the Adverse Event Reporting System. And we've been now exploring many combinations as it - with a general tool, and we're seeing all sort of interesting interactions. And we're in touch with the FDA about this, and with our Stanford colleagues.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And so there's a whole constellation of different drugs you might be able to see interaction for.
HORVITZ: You can imagine. We can just take the top 100 and look at all combinations.
FLATOW: Oh. Quite interesting. Can you stay with us a few more minutes, doctor?
HORVITZ: Yes.
FLATOW: We're going to take a short break and talk more with Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft. Our number: 1-800-989-8255 if you'd like to talk about drug interactions and talk about how using the computer, maybe, or cyberchondriac, something that I think we all suffer from. We used to call it med student syndrome or science reporter syndrome. We had everything that we were looking at in the New England Journal. 1-800-989-8255. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.
FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about using the Internet to help diagnose drug interactions and other diseases. As you search for symptoms on the Internet, scientists are able to use what you're searching for and find out about how diseases are spreading or how - let's talk about that. Eric Horvitz is here. Let's talk about early uses of this. Wasn't it used, though, originally way back when, to - the Google Flu Trends, to find out how the flu was spreading?
HORVITZ: Yes. Some folks at Google did a really nice job around 2009; I guess they actually built a system in 2008, that were looking at flu-related search terms, coupling that with data from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, and building up a model that could actually provide advance warning, within a day, much faster than could be done by the CDC with the standard reporting done through a network of hospitals, of stats on flu around the United States. This work was very interesting and visionary. And the system was in the news again just recently, when it kind of messed up a bit, and it was kind of an interesting story.
FLATOW: It messed up. It got overloaded?
HORVITZ: Well, what happened was, when you build a model or a predictive system that's trained up and that's working on the data that it's seen in the past, if something anomalous happens, if that system isn't updated very quickly, you might get erroneous predictions. And so the Google Flu Trends system was in the news recently, when it was noted that it predicted - I think it was about twice the amount of flu that - than there was occurring, because of several anomalous factors.
For example, this year, the flu season started quite early, in November. I think it was the earliest since 2003. There was a predominant strain this year called H3N2. This is the most virulent of the three seasonal strains of influenza.
And because there were more deaths than usual, unfortunately - in this case particularly the elderly - and more serious illness because of this strain, coupled with the early rise of that flu, it became newsworthy, and there was quite a bit of news on it. And the media can actually stimulate searches - anxiety, interest - and that could overload a signal with new kinds of activity that the system was not used to. And so this - the message here is that these systems need to always be alive and active and learning and understanding even things like the influence of the news media on what people search on.
FLATOW: Speaking of searching, we have time for, I think, one more tweet. It comes in from David O'Leyar, who says: Do you have any sites that you feel are authoritative? Which ones should we be looking at, when it comes to health issues, for info?
HORVITZ: Well, if you look at our paper in 2008 on cyberchondria, we explored the difference between general Web search with any search engine, doing a focus search on a well - an authoritative health care site, and then looking at just Web crawl more generally, the statistics of correlation between these rare illnesses and kind of symptoms, for example. We found that going to an authoritative website - like a Mayo, for example, MSN Health - these sites would provide much better information than general Web search because of these factors we explored in that paper.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Well, Doctor Horvitz, I want to thank you very much for taking time to be with us today.
HORVITZ: It's been great to be here, thanks.
FLATOW: And this is just - this stuff is just in its infancy, is it not? I mean, there's a long way to go in...
HORVITZ: Yeah. And it's a very exciting path to go on, I think.
FLATOW: All right. Eric Horvitz is a distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research, co-director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Redmond, Washington. And we're happy he was with us today. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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The numbers on women in the tech industry are so out of whack that ladies register in the single digits: Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And a New York Times count found that only 8 percent of venture-backed startups are founded by women.
As NPR's Tell Me More host Michel Martin put it in our Facebook chat on this topic Thursday, "You can debate the why but not the what." The disparity of women in science and technology is real, and among girls in high school or younger, the numbers don't seem to be improving.
Meritocracy Vs. Privilege
One of the most prevalent defenses against claims of gender bias and sexism in the tech industry is that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, where the smartest, most skilled engineers and the best ideas rise to the top. Following this logic, the people with the most merit just happen to be almost all white men.
The reality is far more complex. Reuters recently analyzed the venture capital funding of startups in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and found they had one thing in common: a privileged pedigree. Reuters reports that the startup founders generally came from the traditional Silicon Valley "cohort":
"That means the founders had held a senior position at a big technology firm, worked at a well-connected smaller one, started a successful company already, or attended one of just three universities — Stanford, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The analysis ... generally supports academic research showing that tech entrepreneurs are substantially wealthier and better educated than the population at large."
The data also supported other claims of race, gender and class bias. But the myth of meritocracy prevails. "This mythology ... denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success," writes Alice Marwick, a professor at Fordham University. "If, for example, women (or people of color, or gay people) are not getting venture-capital funding at the same rate as men, the myth maintains, it is due to their lack of ability rather than institutional sexism. It also justifies immense wealth as the worthy spoils of the smartest and best."
Without Diversity, Consequences
It's a rich topic to mine as the tech industry continues to be such an economic driver and influence on society. And the danger of such a dearth of diversity in any industry, much less this one, leads to real questions about what America's tech engine is exporting.
A lack of diversity means fewer ideas, perspectives and pushback that come with a varied and eclectic group of folks at the table. It can lead to the perpetuation of " brogrammer culture," where it's an accepted norm for "booth babes" to hawk your products while wearing a few strips of clothing, to have no shame in presenting a "Titstare" app designed to show you different sets of breasts, or to anonymously swarm women on the Internet with rape threats and beyond.
And the consequence of starting a pattern of white males-only rooms is that patterns tend to repeat themselves — after patterns and norms are well-established, it would take a lot of imagination for some of the boardrooms and lunchrooms in Silicon Valley to try to look or feel drastically different.
The Conversation Continues
If the people solving tech problems are mainly white, male and privileged, then what problems aren't they solving? Should one of the most influential forces of the global economy be driven by only the perspectives of a certain slice of our population? How can individuals and institutions support more systemic change?
Tell Me More is devoting the month of March to talking about women in tech, and we would love your ideas via Twitter @NPRAllTech or @TellMeMoreNPR. Or you can email Tell Me More, send me a message on Facebook or leave a comment. We're looking for personal experiences that might shed light on this complex issue, or questions you'd like to see the show and blog dive deeper into in the coming months.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Long before Chinese food starting delighting our taste buds,at a time when restaurant outings and takeaways were not so popular,we had(and loved) this fried rice.I do not know from where amma learned to make this,but she has been making this ever since we were kids and to this day I prefer her way of fried rice to any restaurant's.When paired with a Paneer dish,the whole meal becomes a delicious package in itself.
I know,Fried rice is made with Chinese sauces & co,but amma makes it with Indian spices and hold your breath,without onion,ginger and garlic.Now I got your attention,didn't I?Then why don't we just name it Pulao or Biryani,well it is made just like fried rice substituting Chinese sauces with Indian spices,then why can it not be called Indian style Fried rice?
Ajay was aghast when I told him during one of our telecon's that my favorite meal would be fried rice with PBM.He sure hid his amusement,but I chuckled when he was silent for a while after that.Anyone would think I was insane.But believe me,for this fried rice,paneer is THE combination.Try it for yourself!
Indian style Fried rice
Basmati Rice - 1 cup
Carrot - 1 medium,chopped
Beans - 3-4,chopped
Baby corn - 1,chopped
Capsicum - 1/2 of 1 big,chopped
Cashewnuts - a handful,chopped(optional)
Ghee/Oil(or a mix of both) - 1 tbsp
Garam masala - 1 tsp(preferably homemade)
Salt to taste
Wash basmati rice well under running water in a shallow pan till the water runs clear.Soak for 10-15 minutes.
In a pan,add water and when it boils add the soaked and drained rice and cook till just done(the rice should break when you press it between your fingers,do not cook further as it would make the rice mushy).Drain and keep aside.
In a thick bottomed kadai,add ghee/oil(or both) and fry the cashewnuts till they turn golden brown,drain and keep aside.
Saute the vegetables starting with carrots,beans and baby corn.Cook on low flame(do not add water) till the vegetables are just cooked.Mix in the capsicum and the fried cashews.
Add garam masala and enough salt to taste.Mix well and do a taste check.
Switch off the flame and slowly mix in the cooked and cooled rice.
Warm the rice a little just before serving.
- You could add any vegetables of your choice.I usually add tender leaves of cabbage and some times even broccoli too.Red and yellow capsicums too could be added to make the rice more colourful.
- If you overcook the rice,wash it well under cool tap water and keep it refrigerated for half an hour or so.It would be easier to handle.
Recipe source - Manjula's Kitchen
I couldn't believe a north Indian gravy would taste this good without the usual onion-garlic masala paste.This is a mildly spiced curry perfect with rotis and rice and delicious when paired with Indian style Fried rice!
Paneer - 200 gms
Cashewnuts - 12
Tomatoes - 2,chopped
Green chilly - 1,chopped
Ginger - 1/2' piece
Oil - 3 tbsp
Jeera - 1 tsp
Asafoetida/Hing - a pinch
Bay leaf - 1
Coriander powder - 1 tsp
Red chilly powder - 1/4 tsp
Turmeric powder/haldi - 1/4 tsp
Curd - 1/2 cup,beaten well
Sugar - 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Garam masala - 1/4 tsp
Coriander leaves - 2-3 tbsps,chopped
Kasoori Methi - 1 tsp,crushed
Slice paneer into small cubes and shallow fry in a sauce pan with 1 tbsp oil till it starts turning golden brown.Flip and cook the other side too.Drain into a paper towel and keep aside.
Grind the cashews to a fine powder,keep aside.
Grind together tomatoes,green chilly and ginger to a smooth paste,keep aside.
In the same pan,add the remaining oil and when it turns hot,splutter jeera.Mix in hing and bay leaf and saute for a minute.
Add the tomato paste,coriander powder,red chilly powder and haldi and mix well.Cook the mixture,stirring occasionally till it reduces in volume(about4-5 minutes).
Mix in sugar,cashew powder and yogurt.Cook for a minute and then add the fried paneer pieces,a cup of water and salt to taste.Let it boil.
Cover the pan and simmer for a few minutes till the gravy starts turning thick.
Add garam masala,chopped coriander leaves and kasoori methi and turn off the heat.Mix gently and keep it covered for a few minutes.
Serve hot.


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- This event has passed.
AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Civil & Human Rights Conference
January 12, 2018 - January 15, 2018
Hundreds of social justice professionals, activists and community leaders will join together in Houston for the AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference.
This year's theme: Reclaiming the Dream: Strategize, Organize, Mobilize! Is about shifting the rules and building power so that working communities can thrive and families can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Too many of our family members, friends, loved ones and neighbors are overworked, underpaid and underemployed. And far too many are barely making it from day to day.
"There is nothing new about poverty," Dr. King said in 1964 during his Nobel Peace Prize address. "What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it."
We are the resources, and when we join together January 12–15, 2018, to celebrate the legacy and dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we will explore how we can better advocate for racial and economic equity, and honor those who work day-in and day-out to advance our rights and help lift up people from poverty's grasp.


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2011 Emmy Award Winners – 'Modern Family' Cleans Up
'Modern Family' ruled the 2011 Emmys — the ABC comedy took home the first four awards of the evening, including Outstanding Supporting Actor and Actress in a Comedy Series and, later in the night, winning Outstanding Comedy Series.
Taking home the other top prize was — no surprise here — AMC's 'Mad Men,' with its fourth win in as many years in the Outstanding Drama category.
See all the Emmy winners in the major categories below:
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Julie Bowen, 'Modern Family' – WINNER
Jane Krakowski, '30 Rock
Jane Lynch, 'Glee'
Sofia Vergara, 'Modern Family'
Betty White, 'Hot in Cleveland'
Kristen Wiig, 'Saturday Night Live'
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Ty Burrell, 'Modern Family' – WINNER
Chris Colfer, 'Glee'
Jon Cryer, 'Two and a Half Men'
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, 'Modern Family'
Ed O'Neill, 'Modern Family'
Eric Stonestreet, 'Modern Family'
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Alec Baldwin, '30 Rock
Steve Carell, 'The Office
Louis C.K., 'Louie'
Johnny Galecki, 'The Big Bang Theory' – WINNER
Matt LeBlanc, 'Episodes'
Jim Parsons, 'Big Bang Theory'
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Edie Falco, 'Nurse Jackie'
Tina Fey, '30 Rock'
Laura Linney, 'The Big C'
Melissa McCarthy, 'Mike & Molly' – WINNER
Martha Plimpton, 'Raising Hope'
Amy Poehler, 'Parks and Recreation'
Outstanding Reality-Competition Series
'So You Think You Can Dance'
'Top Chef'
'Project Runway'
'The Amazing Race' – WINNER
'American Idol'
'Dancing With the Stars'
Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special
'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart' – WINNER
'Saturday Night Live'
'The Colbert Report'
'Real Time With Bill Maher'
'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon'
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Christine Baranski, 'The Good Wife'
Michelle Forbes, 'The Killing'
Christina Hendricks, 'Mad Men'
Kelly Macdonald, 'Boardwalk Empire'
Margo Martindale, 'Justified' – WINNER
Archie Panjabi, 'The Good Wife'
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Andre Braugher, 'Men of a Certain Age'
Josh Charles, 'The Good Wife'
Alan Cumming, 'The Good Wife'
Peter Dinklage, 'Game of Thrones' – WINNER
Walton Goggins, 'Justified'
John Slattery, 'Mad Men'
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Kathy Bates, 'Harry's Law'
Connie Britton, 'Friday Night Lights'
Mireille Enos, 'The Killing'
Mariska Hargitay, 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'
Julianna Margulies, 'The Good Wife' – WINNER
Elisabeth Moss, 'Mad Men'
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Steve Buscemi, 'Boardwalk Empire'
Kyle Chandler, 'Friday Night Lights' – WINNER
Michael C. Hall, 'Dexter'
Jon Hamm, 'Mad Men'
Hugh Laurie, 'House'
Timothy Olyphant, 'Justified'
Outstanding Drama Series
'Boardwalk Empire'
'Friday Night Lights'
'Game of Thrones'
'The Good Wife'
'Mad Men' – WINNER
Outstanding Comedy Series
'30 Rock'
'Modern Family' – WINNER
'The Office'
'Parks and Recreation'


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MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A Swiss Emmentaler has won the title of 2014 World Championship Cheese in Wisconsin.
Cheesemaker Gerard Sinnesberger took top honors for his Original Schweizer Rohmilch Emmentaler, a large format, big wheel Swiss cheese.
Out of possible 100 points, the Emmentaler scored 97.85 in the final round of judging Wednesday. The cheese scored top honors out of 2,615 entries from 22 countries.
An Austrian entry, called Erzherzog Johann, was second. Another Swiss entry, Gruyere AOP, was third.
U.S. cheesemakers scored big in the competition, winning gold medals in 59 of the total 90 categories judged. Switzerland came in second with seven gold medals, while the Netherlands had five.
Among U.S. entries, Wisconsin dominated with 33 gold medals.
More from MBTMag.com
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New Mexico Tries To Lure Tesla Battery Factory


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Norman Fischer's first talk, "Background to The Precepts," of the April 2014 Dharma Seminar on The Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts.
Dogen took the ten basic precepts that he had received as a Tendai monk, and he added to them the three refuges and the three pure precepts. The refuges and the pure precepts are very old in Buddhism. He didn't construct them. They were there from the very, very beginning of Buddhism. So he ended up with sixteen, adding those six to the ten. When he did that, I don't think that he felt like he was making a big innovation. I think he felt that he was taking the most basic and fundamental precepts of ancient Buddhism and making them the central ritual of his whole tradition.
These ten precepts were not considered to be monastic training rules. They were thought of as metaphysical principles, like the ultimate right conduct. This way of looking at it is really in keeping with the whole of the Mahayana tradition. In Mahayana Buddhism, these things seem to go together: an emphasis on love and compassion, an emphasis on lay life and practice everywhere in the world, and an emphasis on emptiness. In other words, the oneness of things, the non-separation, the non-existence of any separate people, things, elements. Everything swimming in one, big soup, and an emphasis on the immense vastness of the practice. All these elements are typical Mahayana elements, so when the Mahayana mind looked at the precepts, it saw the precepts in the light of all this.
Here is what it says in the Brahmajala Sutra, which says, "The Vajra-brilliance-jeweled precepts are the original source of all buddhas, the original source of all bodhisattvas, and the seed of buddha nature." Very different from, These are good rules to follow, and it will help your practice. It's a bigger deal than that. "All living beings posses the buddha-nature, all with intent consciousness form in mind, be it sentient or thoughts, are included in the precepts of buddha-nature. Definitely, for every occasion there is a cause, and absolutely within every instance it is within the permanently dwelling dharma body."
This is very different from training rules. Dogen was following this tradition in his practice and understanding of precepts. When you think about it, precepts as training rules diminishes the importance of ethical conduct, in a way, because it implies that ethical conduct is just a practical thing. It is just a means to an end. It is just tidying up your mind, so that you can get down to the really important work of becoming awakened, transcending, going beyond human limitation and imperfection.
For Dogen, as we know, ends and means, practice and goal, process and goal, was far too limited an understanding of what practice is. Way too linear. Way too small-minded. And for Dogen, basically incorrect. When Dogen complains about teachings or other teachers, which he sometimes does, he is crabby about: they are making the teachings too small. They are limiting, and that is really destructive.
For Dogen, following the Mahayana sutras, in which he was steeped, awakening was all-encompassing. There was no boundary or limit to awakening. Awakening was a kind of metaphysical reality, not a mere psychological achievement. Awakening existed in its fullness, always, and everywhere. It was not something produced by a little person's little activity. It was bigger than that. So practice for Dogen was equally all-encompassing. Practice for Dogen was, already, awakening. For Dogen all these things are one thing: zazen, morality, conduct, awakening, practice. These are all one thing.
Over the years, after many decades of reflection for me, to realize that all of our deepest rituals – in every one of them, from jukai, to shukke tokedo, to lay entrustment, to shiho – all of our most profound rituals are all about the precepts. Receiving the precepts is the central act of all these rituals. The precepts as the deepest of all koans, the ineffable and profound and ungraspable teachings of our tradition.
The meaning of any one of the precepts is considered to be inexhaustible. You don't know what it means. You don't know the full measure of it. Whatever you understand that it means is only your understanding until now. There is always more.
Dogen's commentary to the sixteen bodhisattva precepts, he says something like, You cannot kill. There is no such thing as killing. There is no way that anybody could kill. It's impossible. If you really understand your life, it's obvious. There is no way to kill. Also, on another level, the reverse is just as true. There is no way to be alive and avoid killing. You are killing every minute. You breathe in a breath, you are killing. Take a step on the earth, you are killing. So there is no way to avoid killing.
So there is no such thing as killing, and there is no escape from constant killing. Given this, how are you going to practice the precept of "Don't kill?" Is it impossible? No, it is not impossible. It is absolutely essential, and you have to do it. And you have to know how to do it on this occasion, with all its complexities, as the person you are right now, with your understanding of your life right now, under the circumstances right now that you are living in, with your intentions, your limitations, your conditions. You have to make the effort to practice that precept your whole life's work.
Something like that is the way Dogen understands and transforms the precepts for us. Precepts is about our dynamic understanding of our lives, expressed through all of our actions of body, speech, and mind. Life is practicing precepts, one way or the other.
That's why Dogen felt like he had to add the triple treasure as the first of the three precepts of the sixteen precepts. In his commentary on the precepts, he talks about the Triple Treasure, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha…he says there are three aspects to each one, three takes on the Triple Treasure: the triple treasure of oneness, the triple treasure maninfested, and the triple treasure maintained. The three refuges of oneness is complete awakening itself – the true and fundamental and full nature of reality. Purity, vastness, peace, harmony that exists even if nothing exists. The triple treasure exists endlessly, no matter what. The triple treasure manifested is this vastness, when it is manifested in actual life in this world – in people, in things, and what happens. Buddhas, teachings, and communities that learn. The maintained triple treasure is temple buildings, individuals who come and go, taking care of the practice, sutras written on paper, and the effort to help suffering beings in this sad world.


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Washington-The United States Helsinki Commission will hold a briefing on a broad range of human rights issues in Romania, including the status of ethnic minorities, the growth of civil society, the fight against corruption and progress in democratic development. Such issues are likely to influence the political scene in the run up to the 2004 national elections in Romania.
Romania: Moving Toward NATO and the EU
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
2212 Rayburn House Office Building
Dr. Renate Weber, Chair, Open Society Foundation, Bucharest, Romania
Livia Plaks, Executive Director, Project on Ethnic Relations
Dr. Vlad Tismaneanu, Director, Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, University of Maryland
Romania has made significant strides in its first decade free from the yoke of Ceausescu's repressive regime. Yet much remains to be done in promoting respect for human rights and consolidating democratic institutions and the rule of law.
The United States Helsinki Commission is mandated to monitor the implementation of Human Rights and other provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords among signatory States to the Helsinki Final Act. The Commission has engaged the Government of Romania on specific issues relating to freedom of speech and the press, religious liberty, anti-Semitism, religious and ethnic minorities including Roma, property restitution and combating corruption.
Romania began its transition from communism in 1989 with the overthrow of former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Today, Romania is a constitutional democracy with a multiparty, bicameral parliamentary system. President Ion Iliescu was re-elected in 2000 along with Prime Minister Adrian Nastase's Social Democratic Party (PSD) in elections viewed to be generally free and fair. The country emerged in 2000 from a punishing three-year recession, maintaining an annual growth rate above four percent; however, widespread poverty persists while corruption and red tape hinder foreign investment.
Romania is a candidate for European Union accession. On May 8, 2003 the United States Senate ratified the NATO Protocols of Accession for Romania and eight other countries. Romania is a strong ally of the United States and provides steadfast support for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan where an Army battalion serves on the ground. Romanian military personnel also provide logistical support for U.S. efforts in Iraq.
In 2001, Romania's Foreign Minister Mircea Dan Geoana successfully led the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as its Chair-in-Office.


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We offer a Free quote and UK design service, get in touch today.
We specialize in a huge range of different products and services including rubber wetpour playground surfaces in Portballintrae BT57 8 to help ensure that all of our clients have access to everything they need. Children need to have a playground that is exciting for them to use, but also has to be safe to ensure they don't get injured if there is an accident. This is why wetpour playground surfaces are so popular for schools and nurseries as they offer a colourful and engaging surface for children to play on safely at reasonable costs and prices. For more details regarding the various different products and services that are available on the market then please feel free to use the contact form to get in touch and we will talk you through the many designs and specifications we have on offer and how they will effect the costs.
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Educative graphic designs can be applied to the wetpour to provide interesting educative games for the kids. A lot of educative graphics are made available, including alphabet and number games in Portballintrae BT57 8 such as hopscotch. A popular playground design would be road-ways and traditional games. Several establishments decide to go off their particular academic program and also have different varieties of animal designs put in, the different design will effect the costs and price of the job.
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The Scariest Fish Ever Has Been Caught in New Jersey
As it turns out, the cast of 'Jersey Shore' may not be the most frightening thing you can find in New Jersey.
In what is surely the first fish tale to live up to the hype since 'Moby Dick,' some lucky soul named Doug Cutler managed to catch the creature in the above photo with a bow and arrow while in the waters of the Garden State. It's called a sea lamprey and, yes, it's as tough as its horror movie-looking-like mug makes it appear.
The sea lamprey, which usually grows to about three feet long, is a parasite that ravages all kinds of fish through a "bloodsucking orifice," making it the second breed of species to do that, along with ex-wife. This particular sea lamprey is now terrorizing Reddit, where it has generated 1.2 million views. Apparently, this type of parasite has recently been spotted frequently in New Jersey because old dams have been destroyed due to safety concerns.
Next stop: landing an agent and fielding offers to star in Michael Bay's next blockbuster, which, since it will feature a sea lamprey, is bound to suck.


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Telephone companies are quietly balking at the idea of changing how they collect and store Americans' phone records to help the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. They're worried about their exposure to lawsuits and the price tag if the U.S. government asks them to hold information about customers for longer than they already do.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce Friday what changes he is willing to make to satisfy privacy, legal and civil liberties concerns over the NSA's surveillance practices. One of the most important questions is whether the government will continue to collect millions of Americans' phone records every day so that the government can identify anyone it believes might be communicating with known terrorists.
The president's hand-picked review committee has recommended ending the phone records program as it exists. It suggested shifting the storage of the phone records from the NSA to phone companies or an unspecified third party, and it recommended new legal requirements before the government could search anyone's phone records.
The phone companies don't want the job. Executives and their lawyers have complained about the plan in confidential meetings with administration officials and key congressional intelligence and other committees, according to interviews by The Associated Press. Two phone executives familiar with the discussions said the cellular industry told the government that it prefers the NSA keep control over the surveillance program and would only accept changes if they were legally required. The executives spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the private discussions. But there have been public complaints, too.
"Our members would oppose the imposition of data retention obligations that would require them to maintain customer data for longer than necessary," said Jot Carpenter, vice president of government affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, the trade group for the cellular phone industry.
Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies was expected to discuss the dilemma over the phone records program Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The committee will play an important role in any new legislation on the issue. Executives and industry lawyers said phone companies would reluctantly agree to become the stewards of the phone records only if current laws were changed relieving them of legal responsibilities and paying their costs. The industry is also wary of NSA insistence that the records would need to be standardized and probably held for longer periods than most firms now keep them.
Liability is a key concern for phone companies, which could be sued if hackers or others were able to gain unauthorized access to the records. Under the Patriot Act, which governs the NSA's phone collection program, the phone companies are free of legal responsibility for disclosing customer records to the government in counterterrorism investigations. Industry lawyers say similar protections could be broadened to cover phone companies holding customer data for the NSA, but it's unclear whether Congress would pass them.
A former top NSA lawyer and Bush administration national security official who has represented phone firms, Stewart Baker, said Congress only grudgingly granted legal protections to the phone companies in the immediate years after the 9/11 attacks.
"The phone companies were seared by their experience in Congress and can't be enthusiastic about a return engagement," Baker said.
Even with broader legal protections, the companies would expect to cope with a surge in demands for business records from local prosecutors, private lawyers, insurance firms and others. Companies already retain some customer records, but the duration of their storage and the kinds of records they keep vary. While T-Mobile keeps records for seven to 10 years, according to a recent Senate Commerce Committee study, other major firms — including Verizon, US Cellular and Sprint — keep them less than two years.
The government keeps Americans' phone records for at least five years before destroying them. Obama's review committee said phone companies could hold the same data for two years before destroying them. NSA officials have said they could compromise no lower than three years but want all the data to be standardized.
"The data has to be provided or kept in a way that allows it to be integrated" by the NSA, said the agency's general counsel, Rajesh De, during a November hearing of the semi-independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, another task force examining the surveillance program.
Currently, phone companies differ in what they keep on file. For example, according to Justice Department records, Verizon maintains calling-detail records over a rolling year, disposing of them once a year passes. Sprint and Nextel keep them 18 to 24 months, while T-Mobile and AT&T divide the records into pre-paid and post-paid categories, with different durations.
Standardizing such a variety of reporting and storage requirements and holding so much more data would cause phone companies to expand their collection infrastructure and hire more lawyers and technical staff to respond to the NSA's needs.
"It would be enormously costly and burdensome to set up and implement," said Michael Sussmann, a Washington attorney who specializes in technology and national security issues. "However you change the system, they would have to handle a greater set of data than they collected before. And more people— of all sorts— will come looking for it."
The cost could be high. Last week, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said it would cost at least $60 million to shift the records for the NSA program to phone providers. Feinstein opposes such a shift.
Keeping the records at phone companies so they could be readily searched by the government won't satisfy privacy advocates, either.
"The government would just be outsourcing the data collection to the companies," said David Sobel, a lawyer for the Electronic Freedom Foundation who met last week with administration officials on the issue. "From a privacy perspective, the result will be the same."
Many of the 46 recommendations urged by the president's review group could be carried out by Obama himself, said Benjamin Powell, former general counsel to the Director of National Intelligence.
But some of the report's key points, including amending the Patriot Act to expand the role of phone companies, could not go forward without congressional action, Powell said.
AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2013 Capitol Hill Blue
Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.


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Jaxon Smith-Njigba Seattle Seahawks Nike Youth Game Jersey - Navy
Jaxon Smith-Njigba Seattle Seahawks Nike Youth Game Jersey - Navy
Regular price
Regular price
Sale price
Unit price
Ensure your youngster is outfitted properly ahead of the next Seattle Seahawks kickoff with this Jaxon Smith-Njigba Game jersey from Nike! Featuring the name and number details of their favorite gridiron star this jersey is exactly what they will want to rock when it's time to watch some Seattle Seahawks football. So throw on your favorite jersey and spark a new game day tradition between the two of you.
- Product ID: 200184361
- Brand: Nike
- Imported
- Stitched NFL Shield at collar
- Mesh side panels for extra breathability
- Screen print name numbers and team details
- Designed for movement
- Side splits at hem
- Satin woven jock tag
- Short sleeve
- Loose fit
- Short sleeve
- Material: 100% Polyester
- Machine wash with garment inside out tumble dry low
- Jersey Color Style: Team
- Officially licensed
- Nike Game


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Statue Of Famed Penn St. Coach Paterno Taken Down
The famed statue of Joe Paterno was taken down from outside the Penn State football stadium Sunday, eliminating a key piece of the iconography surrounding the once-sainted football coach accused of burying child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant.
Workers lifted the 7-foot-tall statue off its base and used a forklift to move it into Beaver Stadium as the 100 to 150 students watching chanted, "We are Penn State."
The university announced earlier Sunday that it was taking down the monument in the wake of an investigative report that found the late coach and three other top Penn State administrators concealed sex abuse claims against retired assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
Meanwhile, the NCAA said that that it would levy "corrective and punitive measures" against Penn State in the wake of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The organization announced Sunday that it would spell out the sanctions on Monday but disclosed no details.
NCAA President Mark Emmert hasn't ruled out the possibility of shutting down the Penn State football program in the wake of the scandal, adding that he had "never seen anything as egregious."
The statue, weighing more than 900 pounds, was built in 2001 in honor of Paterno's record-setting 324th Division I coaching victory and his "contributions to the university."
A spokeswoman for the Paterno family didn't immediately return phone and email messages. Sue Paterno and two of the Paternos' children visited the statue Friday as students and fans lined up to get their pictures taken with the landmark.
Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence then concealing the statue with a blue tarp.
Penn State President Rod Erickson said he decided to have the statue removed and put into storage because it "has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing."
"I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse," Erickson said in a statement released at 7 a.m. Sunday.
He said Paterno's name will remain on the campus library because it "symbolizes the substantial and lasting contributions to the academic life and educational excellence that the Paterno family has made to Penn State University."
The statue's sculptor, Angelo Di Maria, said it was upsetting to hear that the statue had been taken down.
"It's like a whole part of me is coming down. It's just an incredibly emotional process," Di Maria said.
"When things quiet down, if they do quiet down, I hope they don't remove it permanently or destroy it," he said. "His legacy should not be completely obliterated and thrown out. ... He was a good man. It wasn't that he was an evil person. He made a mistake."
The bronze sculpture has been a rallying point for students and alumni outraged over Paterno's firing four days after Sandusky's Nov. 5 arrest - and grief-stricken over the Hall of Fame coach's Jan. 22 death at age 85.
But it turned into a target for critics after a report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh alleged a cover-up by Paterno, ousted President Graham Spanier and two Penn State officials, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz. Their failure to report Sandusky to child-welfare authorities in 2001 allowed him to continue molesting boys, the report found.
Paterno's family, along with attorneys for Spanier, Curley and Schultz, vehemently deny any suggestion they protected a pedophile. Curley and Schultz await trial on charges of failing to report child abuse and lying to a grand jury but maintain their innocence. Spanier hasn't been charged. Sandusky was convicted last month of 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys.
Some newspaper columnists and former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden have said the statue should be taken down, while a small plane pulled a banner over State College reading, "Take the statue down or we will."
But Paterno still has plenty of fans, and Penn State's decision to remove the monument won't sit well with them. One student had even vowed to "chain myself to that statue" if there was an attempt to remove it, but there was no attempt to stop the work Sunday.
University officials had called the issue a sensitive one in light of Paterno's enormous contributions to the school over a 61-year coaching career. The Paterno family is well-known in the community for philanthropic efforts, including the millions of dollars they've donated to the university to help build a library and fund endowments and scholarships.
This program aired on July 22, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.


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NEW YORK — U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.
But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.
"It may be that the effect of the recession is slowly coming to an end," said Carl Haub, a senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.
Most striking in the new report were steep declines in Hispanic birth rates and a new low in teen births. Hispanics have been disproportionately affected by the flagging economy, experts say, and teen birth rates have been falling for 20 years.
Falling births is a relatively new phenomenon in this country. Births had been on the rise since the late 1990s and hit an all-time high of more than 4.3 million in 2007.
But fewer than 4 million births were counted last year, according to the new report. That's about 360,000 fewer kids born than in 2007 — equivalent to the population of Miami proper. It's also the lowest number of births since 1998.
Among the people who study this sort of thing, the flagging economy has been seen as the primary explanation. The theory is that many women or couples who are out of work, underemployed or have other money problems feel they can't afford to start a family or add to it.
The economy officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009. But well into 2011, polls show most Americans remained gloomy, citing anemic hiring, a depressed housing market and other factors.
The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a first glimpse at 2011 birth certificate data from state health departments. More analysis comes later but officials don't expect the numbers to change much.
Early data for 2012 is not yet available, and it's too soon to guess whether the birth decline will change, said the CDC's Stephanie Ventura, one of the study's authors.
Highlights of the report include:
—The birth rate for single women fell for the third straight year, dropping by 3 percent from 2010 to 2011. The birth rate for married women, however, rose 1 percent. In most cases, married women are older and more financially secure.
—The birth rate for Hispanic women dropped a whopping 6 percent. But it declined only 2 percent for black women, stayed the same for whites and actually rose a bit for Asian-American and Pacific Islanders.
—Birth rates fell again for women in their early 20s, down 5 percent from 2010 — the lowest mark for women in that age group since 1940, when comprehensive national birth records were first compiled. For women in their late 20s, birth rates fell 1 percent.
—But birth rates held steady for women in their early 30s, and rose for moms ages 35 and older. Experts say that's not surprising: Older women generally have better jobs or financial security, and are more sensitive to the ticking away of their biological clocks.
—Birth rates for teen moms have been falling since 1991 and hit another historic low. The number of teen births last year — about 330,000 — was the fewest in one year since 1946. The teen birth rate fell 8 percent, and at 31 per 1,000 girls ages 15 through 19 was the lowest recorded in more than seven decades.
"The continued decline in the teen birth rates is astounding," said John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health.
Did the economy have anything to do with a drop in teen births?
Yes, indirectly, Santelli said. Teenagers watch the struggles and decisions that older sisters and older girlfriends are making, and what they see influences their thinking about sex and birth control, he said.
"Teens tend to emulate young adults," Santelli said. "They are less influenced directly by the economy than by people."
Studies show that since 2007, larger percentages of sexually active teenage girls are using the pill and other effective birth control. Studies also show a small decline in the proportion of girls ages 15 through 17 who say they've had sex, Santelli noted.
The new birth report also noted a fourth straight decline in a calculation of how many children women have over their lifetimes, based on the birth rates of a given year.
A rate of a little more than 2 children per woman means each couple is helping keep the population stable. The U.S. rate last year was slightly below 1.9.
Countries with rates close to 1 — such as Japan and Italy — face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders.
Officials here aren't as worried.
The U.S. replacement rate is still close to 2. And it has dropped in the past and then bounced back up again, said Ventura, an official at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
"And we haven't seen any studies that show couples want to have fewer children or no children," she added.
One more report highlight: The U.S. C-section rate may have finally peaked at just under 33 percent, the same level as last year.
Cesarean deliveries are sometimes medically necessary. But health officials have worried that many C-sections are done out of convenience or unwarranted caution, and in the 1980s set a goal of keeping the national rate at 15 percent
The C-section rate had been rising steadily since 1996, until it dropped slightly in 2010.
"It does suggest the upward trend may be halted," said Joyce Martin, a CDC epidemiologist who co-authored the new report. But CDC officials want a few more years of data before declaring victory, she added.


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PHOTO: Scott Koehler, the sales director at Fast Signs, takes a sheet of anti-Senate Bill 1062 signs that read "Open For Business To Everyone" off the printer, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014 in Phoenix. Arizona.
NEW YORK (AP) — When an important social issue intersected with business in Arizona, Corporate America decided it was time to take a stand.
Voicing concern for their employees, customers and bottom lines, prominent companies from American Airlines to Verizon used threats of reduced business to help convince Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto legislation that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gays based on the owner's religious beliefs.
Companies have long spoken out about certain issues they felt threatened their bottom lines, such as taxation and the minimum wage. The strong opposition to the Arizona bill signals an acknowledgement by businesses that it's not just economic policies that can be harmful to their profits. They need to be more willing than ever to wade into social issues.
Companies also recognize that many of their employees and customers are gay and try to foster an open and inviting corporate environment.
"Business used to restrict itself to economic issues but they're now seeing the importance of other kinds of issues," said Darrell M. West, vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
The measure Brewer vetoed Wednesday night would have allowed people to cite their religious beliefs as a defense against claims of discrimination. She faced intense pressure from gay rights supporters, prominent politicians and local businesses. But ultimately, it might have been the national business community that tipped the scales.
"They seem to have had a dramatic impact on the decision," West said. "When you get major companies weighing in about the possible negative impact, that makes a big difference."
Arizona is a large tourism and convention destination. The state is the spring training home to several Major League Baseball teams and is hosting the Super Bowl next year. When Brewer signed an immigration bill in 2010 that sought to identify and deport illegal immigrants, there was nationwide backlash. Numerous companies and trade groups moved their annual conferences and retreats to other states.
The business community warned against a similar type of boycott this time.
"They played a major role in stopping this bill from becoming law. It's pretty simple: when the businesses that fuel our economic growth voiced this level of urgency, lawmakers pay attention," said Jace Woodrum, director of communications for the Equality Federation, a national advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker suggested his airline would cut flights if the state's business, tourism and convention industry didn't remain healthy. Although he just moved his company's headquarters from Arizona to Texas, American — and its US Airways subsidiary — is still the largest airline in Phoenix.
"There is genuine concern throughout the business community that this bill, if signed into law, would jeopardize all that has been accomplished so far," Parker wrote in a letter to the governor.
Parker noted that "few states suffered as greatly during the recession as Arizona" and that the region is showing great signs of an economic comeback.
Verizon CEO Lowell C. McAdam also flexed some muscle, noting that Verizon has 2,500 Arizona employees, spent $1.4 billion on its in-state network and has more than 2.6 million customers there.
"It is our hope to continue to grow our business in Arizona, but legislation like (this bill) is extremely harmful to pursuing this objective," McAdam wrote.
Other companies, such as Intel, PetSmart, American Express, eBay and GoDaddy joined with local and state chambers of commerce and other business collations, signing letters in opposition to the bill, known as SB 1062. One after another delivered the same clear message: This is discriminatory and bad for the bottom line.
— Yelp: "This bill goes against the rule that every great business subscribes to, which is that the customer is always right."
— Marriott: "This legislation has the potential to subject our state to travel boycotts."
— Southwest Airlines: "Already, even just the discussion surrounding (the bill) has had a profound and immediate impact on the Arizona tourism industry and on our company."
— Starwood Hotels: "We expect a significant number of tourists, event planners and even corporations will react hostilely to passage of (this bill) and will choose to book trips and events other than in Arizona."
"Business leaders feel emboldened to speak out on a wide range of issues now," West, of the Brookings Institute, said. "They understand that they have a platform and are using it more and more."
Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.


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With many workers taking second and third shift jobs to make ends meet, there's a growing demand for evening and overnight child care. While parents used to rush to pick up their kids from daycare by the 6 P.M., the traditional closing time, these days many centers are staying open much later, or even around-the-clock.
Erin Toner of member station WUWM visited a 24-hour facility in Milwaukee to learn about nighttime at day care.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Now, when I call it out, I want you all to spell out whatever word that I call out.
ERIN TONER, BYLINE: It's 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and a game of bingo is starting at Fantastic Beginnings, a daycare center in Milwaukee's inner city. It's small and a bit rundown, but it's cheerful, with bright yellow walls and cutouts of ladybugs hanging from the ceiling.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Was.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Good job. You.
TONER: This is a group of 8, 9 and 10 year olds. On the other side of the room, younger kids are sitting at a table working on puzzles. Four-year-old Tania spends part of her day at daycare, and also goes to sleep here some nights when her mother works second shift.
TANIA: I always like to go somewhere with my momma, but sometimes we don't. We can't go to work with her 'cause it's old people there.
TONER: Fantastic Beginnings is one of nearly 50 daycares in the city of Milwaukee that are licensed to operate 24 hours, and more than 100 stay open until 11 or midnight.
Owner Marilyn Barton says demand for nighttime care has been growing, and recently she's had to turn families away because she's at capacity at night.
MARILYN BARTON: This means that they have to try and put their job on hold, or either they just can't go to work at that time because they don't have anybody to take care of their children.
TONER: While national groups don't formally keep track of how many daycare centers offer non-traditional hours, it's clear that more are heading in that direction because families are taking shift work or second jobs to make ends meet.
Linda Kostantenaco is president of the National Child Care Association.
LINDA KOSTANTENACO: Some are offering what they call 24-hour child care, evening care, the extended hour care, weekends, you know, even Saturday and Sunday. Transportation to and from home, which was normally not done, but I know several people that are doing that now.
TONER: After the bingo game and a round of brownies for the kids, Contessa Powell arrives to gather her three-year old daughter. Today's pickup is early, but that's not the case most days.
CONTESSA POWELL: Sometimes I work from six to two, sometimes I work two to 10, sometimes I work from 10 to seven, so it's all over the place.
TONER: Powell's job is to pass out medication at a nursing home about a half-hour away. She says she wishes her little girl could go to sleep at home, but right now, day and night care is her only option.
POWELL: Hey. I'm all right, how are you? That's good.
TONER: It's now 9:30 at night at the 24-hour daycare Fantastic Beginnings. Sheikhnur Adan just arrived to pick up his four kids. The littlest ones had already fallen asleep. Adan drives a taxi at night and his wife has begun working for a cleaning service.
SHEIKHNUR ADAN: So it's a good place for the kids to be. It's a better place for them to be.
TONER: Adan loads his kids into his taxi and drives away. There are still two sleeping children left at the daycare. They'll be picked by a parent at around 2 o'clock in the morning.
For NPR News, I'm Erin Toner, in Milwaukee. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Tiger skins were among the wildlife goods seized as part of Interpol's Operation Prey |
Lyon: INTERPOL is marking Global Tiger Day with the announcement of an operation aimed at protecting this iconic species and other big cats threatened with extinction and targeting the individual and organized crime groups behind the illicit activity.
Operation Prey, conducted across Bhutan, China, India and Nepal led has so far led to nearly 40 arrests and the seizure of big cat skins and other body parts as well as wildlife goods such as rhino horns, ivory and sea horses in addition to flora such as protected orchid and cactus plants.
Involving police, customs, environmental agencies, narcotics bureaus, forest protection authorities, health departments, immigration authorities and prosecutors, Operation Prey was conducted under the umbrella of Project Predator, an initiative to protect and save the world's last surviving wild tigers.
"The range of goods recovered during an operation primarily aimed at tiger protection again shows that criminals will target any animal and any plant to make a profit at the expense of our environment and in the case of endangered species, their future," said David Higgins, manager of INTERPOL's Environmental Crime Programme which coordinated Operation Prey.
"INTERPOL is proud to contribute to the global effort to save the world's wild tigers and we will continue to work with our partners to identify and dismantle the criminal networks behind the illicit trade in wildlife," concluded Mr Higgins.
Created by INTERPOL, Project Predator unites the efforts of police, customs and wildlife officials in the 13 countries in Asia where wild tigers can still be found. This new partnership under the Global Tiger Initiative brings together officials from the 13 tiger range countries, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the World Bank, the Smithsonian Institution and INTERPOL.
The Project Predator initiative will help develop capacity building with law enforcement agencies to combat tiger crimes, strengthening their ability to work with wildlife officials using advanced, intelligence-led methods of investigation. In addition, the initiative will encourage countries to establish and resource National Environmental Security Task Forces.
The 13 Tiger Range countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.


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Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my deep concern about the deterioration of democracy in Ukraine over the past 16 months, and the current Ukrainian leadership's use of politically motivated selective prosecution to harass high-ranking officials from the previous government. The country's once-promising democratic future is in jeopardy. While we face many serious challenges in every region of the world today, nonetheless it is imperative that Washington focus attention on what is happening in Ukraine–especially given that country's vital role in the region.
As a long-time member and current Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, I have followed and spoken out on developments in Ukraine since the early 1980's, when the rights of the Ukrainian people were completely denied and any brave soul who advocated for freedom was brutally persecuted.
Mr. Speaker, for nearly two decades, independent Ukraine has been moving away from its communist past while establishing itself as an important partner to the United States. Both the executive branch and Congress, on a bipartisan basis, have provided strong political support and concrete assistance for Ukraine's independence and facilitated Ukraine's post-Communist transition. In the wake of the 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukraine even became a beacon of hope for other post-Soviet countries, earning the designation of "Free" from Freedom House–the only country among the 12 non-Baltic former Soviet republics to earn such a ranking. And while many of the promises of that revolution have sadly gone unfulfilled, one of its successes had been Ukraine's rise from "Partly Free" to "Free", reflecting genuine improvements in human rights and democratic practices.
Under President Viktor Yanukovych, elected in February 2010, this promising legacy may vanish. Today we see backsliding on many fronts, which threatens to return Ukraine to authoritarianism and jeopardizes its independence from Russia. Among the most worrisome of these trends are: consolidation of power in the presidency which has weakened checks and balances; backpedaling with respect to freedom of expression and assembly; various forms of pressure on the media and civil society groups; attempts to curtail academic freedom and that of institutions and activists who peacefully promote the Ukrainian national identity; and seriously flawed local elections. Meanwhile, endemic corruption–arguably the greatest and most persistent threat to Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty–as well as the weak rule of law and the lack of an independent judiciary, which were not seriously addressed by the Orange governments, have only become more pronounced under the current regime.
Moreover, in recent months, we have seen intensified pressure on opposition leaders, even selective prosecutions of high-ranking members of the previous government. The vast majority of observers both within and outside Ukraine see these cases, which have targeted former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko among others, as politically motivated acts of revenge which aim to remove possible contenders from the political scene, especially in the run-up to next year's parliamentary elections.
Mr. Speaker, the Helsinki Commission has closely monitored these troubling trends as have the U.S., other Western governments, and the European Parliament and Council of Europe. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities have largely downplayed concerns voiced by the European Union, which they aspire to join someday, and by the United States, with which Kyiv professes to seek better relations.
The U.S. also desires enhanced bilateral ties. Yet, moving in the wrong direction on human rights, democracy and the rule of law decidedly works against strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian relations. More importantly, the erosion of hard-won democratic freedoms weakens Ukraine's independence and harms the people of Ukraine, who have endured a painful history as a captive nation over the course of the last century. Indeed, as Ukraine this week marks the 70th anniversary of the brutal Nazi invasion, we mourn the loss of life and untold human suffering of that horrific war.
Against this backdrop of devastation wreaked by totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, Ukrainians deserve to have the promise of democracy made possible by their independence fully realized.
A few days ago, President Yanukovych said that he would take into account the criticisms in Freedom House's recent "Sounding the Alarm: Protecting Democracy in Ukraine" report. His promise is encouraging, but words alone are not enough. All friends of Ukraine should measure his words by actual and meaningful changes that improve the state of democracy and human rights for the Ukrainian people.


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