Get the recipe Photo: Sarah Shatz
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/food-52/leftover-bread_b_1239171.html
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Food52: 5 Ways To Use Leftover Bread
There's nothing to making this French toast. But there is one thing that makes it exceptional: cream. This recipe cuts to the chase, forgoing spices and extracts, and focussing instead on eggs, cream and challah. You whip together the eggs and cream, which form a custardy mixture, then dip the eggy bread into this custard -- make sure to gently squeeze the bread with your fingertips to draw the eggs and cream to the center -- and fry them in butter. Outside is a crisp crepe-like shell. Inside, pudding. What are you waiting for? - Amanda & Merrill
Get the recipe Photo: Sarah Shatz
Get the recipe Photo: Sarah Shatz
Microsoft begins Office 15 technical preview, fills up before you knew it existed
Everybody calm... we know, we're excited too. We're just dying to see the latest in spreadsheet and presentation technology. But, for now, you'll just have to wait as the technical preview for Microsoft's next version of Office is all filled up. What exactly Redmond has in store for us it wont say but, it's not shying away from hyperbole, declaring it "the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division." Primarily we assume that's because every arrow in the Office quiver is being updated simultaneously, including desktop, mobile and web apps, Visio, Lync and its countless other peripheral programs. Don't draw a warm bath and grab a straight razor, though -- you'll get a chance to play with all the updated products when they enter public beta this summer.Microsoft begins Office 15 technical preview, fills up before you knew it existed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Emily Blunt's Bright Green Gown: Love It or Hate It? (omg!)
Brighten up, Hollywood!
At the 2012 SAG Awards in Los Angeles Sunday, Emily Blunt stood out in a sea of dramatic black gowns -- not for showing a lot of leg a la Lea Michele, but for the bold, eye-popping color of her dress.
PHOTOS: 2012 SAG Awards - what the stars wore!
The Adjustment Bureau actress, 28, who stepped out at The Shrine Auditorium with her hubby John Krasinski from The Office, rocked a jade chiffon, one-shoulder Oscar de la Renta gown from the designer's Resort 2012 collection that features a high slit up the left side.
PHOTOS: Get your fave looks from awards season for less
While bright green hasn't been a go-to dress color for awards season thus far, it has been the choice shade for dazzling statement jewelry.
PHOTOS: What all the stars wore at the 2012 Golden Globes
At the 2012 Golden Globes in Beverly Hills January 15, stars like Julianne Moore, Debra Messing and Julianna Marguiles stunned in eye-catching emerald earrings.
Get more Us! Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Facebook, Subscribe to Us Weekly
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Libyan PM calls for security meeting over weapons (Reuters)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) ? Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib called on Sunday for a regional security conference to tackle a proliferation of weapons by exiled supporters of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The Libyan civil war may have given militant groups in Africa's Sahel region like Boko Haram and al Qaeda access to large weapons caches, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.
"(There is) still a real threat from some of the armed remnants of the former regime who escaped outside the country and still roam freely. This is a threat for us, for neighboring countries and our shared relations," Keib told African Union leaders in Addis Ababa.
"My country calls for a regional security conference in Libya of interior and defense ministers of neighboring countries," he told the summit, the first since Gaddafi's death last year.
A U.N. report said the Libyan civil war may have created a proliferation of small arms, giving militant groups like Boko Haram and al Qaeda access to large weapons caches in Africa's Sahel region that straddle the Sahara, including Nigeria, Niger and Chad.
The report said some countries believe weapons have been smuggled into the Sahel by former fighters in Libya - Libyan army regulars and mercenaries who fought on behalf of Gaddafi, who was ousted and killed by rebels.
Links between al Qaeda and Boko Haram have become a growing source of concern for the countries of the region, the U.N. report said.
The Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed at least 935 people since it launched an uprising in Nigeria in 2009, including 250 in the first weeks of this year, Human Rights Watch said last week.
(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Macharia)
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Euro, rich-poor gap proved key issues at Davos
The mountain resort of Davos pictured during the last day of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. The overarching theme of the Meeting, that took place from Jan. 25 to Jan. 29 was "The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models". (AP Photo/Keystone/Laurent Gillieron)
The mountain resort of Davos pictured during the last day of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. The overarching theme of the Meeting, that took place from Jan. 25 to Jan. 29 was "The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models". (AP Photo/Keystone/Laurent Gillieron)
Workers remove material during the last day of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Keystone/Jean-Christophe Bott)
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? Europe's crippling debt crisis dominated the world's foremost gathering of business and political leaders, but for the first time the growing inequality between the planet's haves and have-nots became an issue, thanks largely to the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy movement and other protests around the globe.
The mood at the end of the five-day meeting in Davos was somber, and more than 2,500 VIPs headed home Sunday concerned about what lies ahead in 2012. Plenty of champagne flowed in this alpine ski resort ? but the atmosphere was flat and the bubbling enthusiasm of some past World Economic Forums was noticeably absent.
Despite some guarded optimism about Europe's latest attempts to stem the eurozone crisis, fears remain that turmoil could return and spill over to the rest of the world. And there were no answers to the widening inequality gap, but a mounting realization that economic growth must include the poor, that job creation is critical, and that affordable food, housing, health care and education need to part of any solution.
Just before the forum began, the International Monetary Fund reduced its forecast for global growth in 2012 to 3.3 percent from the 4 percent pace it projected in September. Many other economic forecasters also predict a slowing economy, including New York University's Nouriel Roubini, who is widely acknowledged to have predicted the crash of 2008 and who said he might be "even slightly more bearish" on the new IMF forecast.
Asia is expected to remain the engine for global growth though at a slower rate, with China leading the way at more than 8 percent, followed by India and Indonesia.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned that the eurozone crisis is not the region's problem alone.
"It's a crisis that could have collateral effects, spillover effects, around the world," she said. "What I have seen, and what the IMF has seen in numbers and forecasts, is that no country is immune and everybody has an interest in making sure that this crisis is resolved adequately."
The IMF is the world's traditional lender-of-last-resort and Lagarde is trying to increase its resources by $500 billion so it can help if more lending is needed in Europe or elsewhere. European countries have said they're prepared to give the IMF $150 billion, but that means the rest of the world will have to come up with $350 billion.
At a closing panel Sunday, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, said a readjustment in Europe is essential "because, if you want to really simplify it, we've lived above our means, and we've done that for too long, and the moment of truth has arrived."
Vikram Pandit, CEO of the global bank Citigroup Inc., said the euro crisis "is costing us about 1 percent in GDP around the world. You do the math. You do the math and say: 'How many jobs is that? How many people are not working because of that? What can we do to go after the biggest question we've got for this decade which is jobs?'"
The world needs 400 million new jobs between now and the end of the decade, not counting the 200 million needed just to get back to full employment, so "that should be our number one priority," he said.
To keep the spotlight on jobs and poverty at the forum, the Occupy movement that began on Wall Street and spread to dozens of cities around the world set up a protest camp in igloos in Davos. They demonstrated in front of City Hall.
In a separate protest, three Ukrainian women were arrested when they stripped off their tops ? despite temperatures around freezing ? and tried to climb a fence surrounding the invitation-only gathering holding banners saying: "Poor, because of you" and "Gangsters party in Davos."
Citi's Pandit said to create the conditions for growth, economic uncertainty must end and that means quickly resolving the eurozone crisis, ending regulatory uncertainty, and getting the public and private sector together to build infrastructure that can create jobs.
Unilever's Polman said it's unacceptable that more than 1 billion people are hungry every day while another billion are obese.
"How do we pull up the people that are excluded from the work force, at the bottom of the pyramid?" he asked. "That we haven't quite figured out yet."
Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, said the Internet sector has been creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and to keep up innovations in technology "great scientists" need to be educated all over the world, investment in infrastructure is critical, and regulations must not stifle growth or access.
Nobel economics laureate Peter Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an Associated Press interview that in the U.S. there is "an unemployment crisis," especially among young people who aren't accumulating experience. He said the government should fix the Social Security system, fix aging infrastructure, spend on research, and start fixing the education system.
When the forum opened, its normally upbeat founder Klaus Schwab said he remained a deep believer in free markets but that capitalism is out of whack and needs to be fixed "to serve society." He welcomed critics' ideas of how to fix it ? including from the Occupy protesters, though they walked out of a side event where a representative had been invited to talk.
This year for the first time, the forum invited about 60 "Global Shapers" ? young leaders under 30 ? to the forum to try to address issues confronting the generation that will be running the world in decades to come.
Among the younger generation also at Davos were Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the former U.S. president and present secretary of state, who moderated a panel on philanthropy and philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, whose foundation focuses on promoting agriculture and fighting hunger, especially in Africa.
The possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons was among top concerns at Davos this year. There were also several follow-up panels on the Arab Spring and a session moderated by Schwab with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which demonstrated the deep divisions over getting peace negotiations back on track.
But although the conflict in Syria ? where the U.N. estimates a crackdown on anti-government protesters has killed some 5,400 people over the past year ? came up in the Arab Spring panels, it wasn't a hot issue.
Julia Marton-Lefevre, director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said that this year for the first time at Davos "the environment is not treated so much as separate topic, which I think is a good thing."
"We are moving towards a more integrated approach to the world's challenges," she said. "Environment is not a side issue, it's really a part of everything. For me, of course, nature is a life support system ? and finally it is being recognized as being a part of the solution."
(This version CORRECTS Corrects spelling of 'Vikram' and first reference to bank as Citigroup Inc. in 10th paragraph. This story is part of AP's general news and financial services.)
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A Health Insurance Quote | Find Dental Health Insurance
Posted on 27 January 2012.
Insurance is an important part of financial security for all people. When medical problems occur, you need to make sure you have enough money to cover the health care you will need. You never know when you might have an accident or get sick with cancer. That is why you need to find a health insurance quote that is right for you. Easy To Insure ME
You have thousands of insurance companies to choose from, but you can begin by requesting quotes from a few of the more prestigious companies. As you evaluate the quotes you receive, you will start to figure out which company has the best options for you. Don?t rely on cost charts or estimates. Instead, request a personalized quote.
In order to acquire the quotes, there are several things you have to do. Almost every insurance company is going to ask you to fill out an extensive questionnaire. You will need to answer questions about your medical history and any previous procedures you have had done. You will need to give information on any alcohol or tobacco use as well.
On the questionnaire, you will be asked to give your medical history. This will undoubtedly be verified by the insurance company so be honest about all past surgeries and sicknesses. When you receive quotes back from the insurance companies, you can see which ones have clauses excluding pre-existing conditions. This might change your decision on who to purchase coverage from.
You will also need to find out the details of your coverage options. Policies will differ depending on whether you are taking out a company policy or a personal policy. Either way, you need to make sure that you will get coverage from local health care providers. Check with your current doctor and hospital to make sure that they would accept the prospective policy.
You should also ask the insurance company for any additional policy options that could be added. Some companies provide bundled insurance packages where you can purchase dental insurance, life insurance, and even vision insurance all at once.
Source: http://www.projektgenerika.org/a-health-insurance-quote.html
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Columbus to host NHL All-Star game in 2013
OTTAWA (AP) ? In a season in which very little has gone right for the Blue Jackets, general manager Scott Howson was able to deliver something positive: Columbus has landed the 2013 NHL All-Star game.
"We haven't had a lot of good news here since the season started. This is really a nice piece of news for us to start building some momentum," Howson said Saturday after attending the NHL Board of Governors meeting during the All-Star festivities in Ottawa.
"It's phenomenal for our market. It's phenomenal for our team," Howson said, noting the event will bring tens of millions of dollars to the city. "The attention it brings to your city, the attention it brings to your team, it just raises your profile. It's a tremendous event."
The Blue Jackets (13-30-6) entered the All-Star break with the NHL's worst record and have already gone through a coaching change after Scott Arniel was fired three weeks ago. And only the Tampa Bay Lightning (165) have allowed more goals this season than Columbus (163).
Commissioner Gary Bettman formally announced the Blue Jackets would host the game.
"We're looking forward to bringing our All-Star celebration to Columbus," Bettman said. "The Blue Jackets did a great job of hosting the NHL Draft in 2007, and I have no doubt they will raise the bar even higher when they welcome our All-Star celebration next January."
In their 11th NHL season, the Blue Jackets, who play in Nationwide Arena, had applied for hosting rights in 2013, 2014 or 2015. Next year's All-Star weekend will be Jan. 26-27 and will mark the third straight year a city has hosted the game for the first time. Raleigh, N.C., home of the Carolina Hurricanes, hosted the game last year and this year's game is Sunday in Ottawa.
"The Blue Jackets are honored to host the 2013 All-Star celebration in Columbus as we believe our city offers a truly unique setting for this special event," said Blue Jackets majority owner John P. McConnell. "As much as it is a showcase for the NHL's best players, it is also a celebration of hockey fans and having it in Columbus is a testament to the fantastic support of our fans and the strength of Central Ohio as a hockey market."
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Nokia loss tempered by Windows phone launch (AP)
HELSINKI ? Mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. on Thursday posted a fourth-quarter net loss of euro1.07 billion ($1.38 billion) as sales slumped 21 percent even as the company's first Windows smartphones hit markets in Europe and Asia.
The loss, widened by a euro1 billion loss booked on Nokia's navigation systems unit, compares with a profit of euro745 million in the same period a year earlier.
Nokia said net revenue ? including both its mobile phones and its network divisions ? fell from euro12.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 to euro10 billion, with smartphone sales plunging 23 percent.
Nokia has lost its once-dominant position in the global cellphone market, with Android phones and iPhones overtaking it in the growing smartphone segment.
The Finnish company is attempting a comeback with smartphones using Microsoft's Windows software, a struggle that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop characterized as a "war of ecosystems."
He said Nokia has sold "well over" 1 million such devices since the launch of the Lumia line in the fourth quarter, in line with expectations.
Including other models, Nokia sold 19.6 million smartphones in the quarter, down from 28 million a year earlier. By comparison, Apple sold 37 million iPhones.
The Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 hit stores in Europe and Asia in November, while T-Mobile started offering the 710 in the U.S. in January. Nokia hopes to boost its poor presence in the U.S. with the higher-end Lumia 900, which AT&T will offer later this year.
Elop said Nokia would be shipping Lumia phones to Canada next month and China and South America during the first half of this year.
"With Lumia, our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems, and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing," Elop said in a conference call.
Nokia shares were up about 1.5 percent at euro4.12 ($5.33) in late trading in Helsinki.
Michael Schroeder, analyst at FIM bank in Helsinki, said markets had welcomed Elop's comments on Lumia sales.
"It definitely alleviated concerns about a horror scenario, expected by some. Although a million is not a lot in the market, it was better than expected," Schroeder said.
The company said it would not provide annual targets for 2012 since it was in a "year of transition" but added that it expects operating margins in the first quarter of this year to be "about break-even, ranging either above or below by approximately 2 percentage points."
It repeated the target of cutting costs by more than euro1 billion by 2013.
Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics in London said Nokia "was not out of the woods yet," but its quarterly result was in line with expectations.
"Nokia is not necessarily dead in the water. Profit margins were a bit higher than expected and Nokia has not lost its third position in smartphones, although it is suffering in North America and western Europe," Mawston said.
Nokia proposed a dividend of euro0.20 per share for 2011 and said that chairman and former CEO Jorma Ollila will step down at the annual meeting in May. A nomination committee proposed board member Risto Siilasmaa as the new chairman.
The average selling price of a Nokia handset rose by euro2 from the previous quarter to euro53 but was down from euro69 a year earlier, reflecting a higher proportion of cheaper mobile phones in Nokia's product mix.
The company also reported a 4 percent drop in sales for Nokia Siemens Networks, its joint network equipment unit with Siemens AG of Germany.
After selling four in 10 smartphones worldwide in 2010, Nokia has steadily lost market share to competitors, including Apple and Samsung. It didn't give any market share estimates in the report Thursday, but said its net revenue fell 9 percent to euro38.6 billion in the full year 2011, with smartphone sales plunging 27 percent and total mobile phone sales down 18 percent.
Nokia, based in Espoo near the Finnish capital, employs 130,000 people ? down from more than 132,000 a year earlier.
___
Ritter reported from Stockholm.
(This version CORRECTS Updates with CEO comment, share price, details. Corrects 18 percent drop was for all mobile phones, not just low-end ones. This story is part of AP's general news and financial services.)
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Nielsen: Obama's smallest State of Union audience (AP)
NEW YORK ? The interest among television viewers in President Barack Obama's annual State of the Union addresses is dwindling.
The Nielsen measurement company said Wednesday an estimated 37.8 million people watched Obama's speech the night before on one of the 14 networks airing it. Obama's audience for the speech has dropped each year, from a high of 52.4 million in 2009.
Obama narrowly missed President George W. Bush's least-watched State of the Union. Bush's last one was seen by 37.5 million people in 2008.
The largest individual audience for Obama's speech was NBC's, more than 8 million. On cable, MSNBC beat CNN for the first time for second place behind Fox News Channel.
___
NBC and MSNBC are controlled by Comcast Corp.; CNN is owned by Time Warner Inc.; Fox is a unit of News Corp.
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How To Fight off a Pack of Hungry Wolves
Good news: After years of hiding out in the Explainatorium like a banished superhero, answering submitted questions from deep inside the fortress, the Explainer has decided to soar out into the world, pen in hand, to spread peace and understanding among the column's faithful.
And so we present a new, occasional feature on?Slate: the?Explainer House Call. Do you have a family disagreement over some fact or pseudo-fact? Are you stuck in an endless argument with an annoying co-worker or a friend? Have your attempts to Google your way out of it only pushed you both into the?filter bubbles?of the Internet? Worry no more: The Explainer will be your arbiter and your savior, an avenging angel of argument, slinging thunderbolts of pure reason and drenching your squabbles in the heavy rain of explanation.
How does one qualify for this personal Explainer service? To get a house call, and have the Explainer resolve your special beef in?Slate, you must first gain the support of your peers. What factual matter has been driving you and your friend/spouse/co-worker bonkers in recent weeks? Post a short summary on?our Facebook page?or?Tweet us the question?with the hashtag #ExplainerHouseCall. Then we'll ask the members of Explainer Nation to vote for the dispute that's most deserving of the Explainer's attention.
(Winners: Please note that the Explainer will not actually visit your house.)
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=7221d5db8a0b19294a144470e85886b0
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Princeton research: Hurricane Katrina survivors struggle with mental health years later
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Public release date: 25-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Elisabeth Donahue
edonahue@princeton.edu
609-258-5988
Princeton University
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina have struggled with poor mental health for years after the storm, according to a new study of low-income mothers in the New Orleans area.
The study's lead author, Christina Paxson of Princeton University, said that the results were a departure from other surveys both in the design and the results. The researchers were able to collect data on the participants before Katrina and nearly five years after the August 2005 storm, finding a persistence of poor mental health and gaining insights into how different types of hurricane-related stressors affect mental health.
"On average, people were not back to baseline mental health and they were showing pretty high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. There aren't many studies that trace people for this long, but the very few that there are suggest faster recovery than what we're finding here," said Paxson, who is Princeton's Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "I think the lesson for treatment of mental health conditions is don't think it's over after a year. It isn't."
In addition to helping mental health professionals aid survivors of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, the research may guide policymakers in addressing areas that had a significant impact on the women in the study, such as home damage and rebuilding.
The paper appears in the January issue of the journal Social Science and Medicine. Paxson's co-authors were Elizabeth Fussell, an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University; Jean Rhodes, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston; and Mary Waters, the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.
The project began in 2003 as a study of low-income adults enrolled in community college around the country, including three sites in New Orleans. The initial questionnaire contained questions about education, income, families and health. After Hurricane Katrina, some of the researchers decided to try to continue to track the New Orleans-based participants.
"I realized right away that the kinds of information we had on mental and physical health were very rare in disaster studies," Waters said. "Researchers never know if people are suffering because of the disaster or if they had underlying conditions that would have led to depression or poor health even before the disaster hit."
The sample size in the study was made up of 532 low-income mothers, most of whom were African American and whose average age was 26. They were interviewed in two follow-up surveys tracked down largely through their unchanged cellphone numbers, though they were spread across 23 states about 11 months and nearly five years after the storm.
Due to the makeup of the sample, Paxson cautioned that the study's results cannot be assumed to apply to the population as a whole, but they shed light on natural disasters' effects on a particularly vulnerable group.
The surveys helped rate the women on two signs of poor mental health: psychological distress and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Researchers measured psychological distress using a series of questions (also in the initial questionnaire) typically used to screen for anxiety and mood disorders, asking about feelings such as sadness, hopelessness and nervousness experienced over the last 30 days. They measured PTSS using a test used to identify individuals at a high risk of meeting the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder; for example, the women in the study were asked how often they thought about the hurricane in the last seven days and whether they had thoughts about the storm that they could not suppress.
The researchers found that even after four years, about 33 percent of the participants still had PTSS, and 30 percent had psychological distress. Though levels for both conditions had declined from the first follow-up 11 months after the hurricane, they were not back to pre-hurricane levels.
The researchers had also interviewed the study participants about the types of stressors they had experienced during the storm: home damage, traumatic experiences the week of the hurricane (such as being in danger or lacking food, water or necessary medical care), or death of a friend or relative.
Paxson and her collaborators found that these stressors played a role in whether the participants suffered from psychological distress or PTSS, or both. For the most part, the hurricane stressors, especially home damage, were associated with the risk of chronic, long-term PTSS alone or in combination with psychological distress.
"I think Katrina might be different from a lot of natural disasters in the sense that it completely upended most people's lives," Paxson said. "About two-thirds of the sample is back in the New Orleans area, but almost nobody lives in their old home. So they're living in new communities. They've been disrupted from their friends and their families. The whole fabric of their lives has really been changed."
Demographer Narayan Sastry, a research professor in the Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, said that the study makes an important contribution toward understanding the medium- to long-term effects of Katrina on mental health.
"The most significant aspect was its study of long-term outcomes that were assessed at multiple points in time, including prior to the hurricane a unique feature of this study," said Sastry, who is familiar with the study but was not involved in it. "The results are important not just for designing policies and programs to help address any ongoing mental health problems being experienced by survivors of Hurricane Katrina, but also in devising the best response to help people who are affected by natural disasters in the future."
Sastry added that the study found very similar levels of psychological distress as his work on a broader, representative sample of the pre-hurricane population of New Orleans.
Paxson and her collaborators plan to further examine the data from their surveys, and to continue tracking the women in the sample. Some avenues for further study include looking at how genetics may have a played a role in the mental health responses, examining the hurricane's effects on physical health, and tracking the educational and mental health outcomes of the children of the women in the sample. They also plan to publish a book that combines the survey results with in-depth interviews with some of the women.
###
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and Princeton's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 25-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Elisabeth Donahue
edonahue@princeton.edu
609-258-5988
Princeton University
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina have struggled with poor mental health for years after the storm, according to a new study of low-income mothers in the New Orleans area.
The study's lead author, Christina Paxson of Princeton University, said that the results were a departure from other surveys both in the design and the results. The researchers were able to collect data on the participants before Katrina and nearly five years after the August 2005 storm, finding a persistence of poor mental health and gaining insights into how different types of hurricane-related stressors affect mental health.
"On average, people were not back to baseline mental health and they were showing pretty high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. There aren't many studies that trace people for this long, but the very few that there are suggest faster recovery than what we're finding here," said Paxson, who is Princeton's Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "I think the lesson for treatment of mental health conditions is don't think it's over after a year. It isn't."
In addition to helping mental health professionals aid survivors of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, the research may guide policymakers in addressing areas that had a significant impact on the women in the study, such as home damage and rebuilding.
The paper appears in the January issue of the journal Social Science and Medicine. Paxson's co-authors were Elizabeth Fussell, an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University; Jean Rhodes, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston; and Mary Waters, the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.
The project began in 2003 as a study of low-income adults enrolled in community college around the country, including three sites in New Orleans. The initial questionnaire contained questions about education, income, families and health. After Hurricane Katrina, some of the researchers decided to try to continue to track the New Orleans-based participants.
"I realized right away that the kinds of information we had on mental and physical health were very rare in disaster studies," Waters said. "Researchers never know if people are suffering because of the disaster or if they had underlying conditions that would have led to depression or poor health even before the disaster hit."
The sample size in the study was made up of 532 low-income mothers, most of whom were African American and whose average age was 26. They were interviewed in two follow-up surveys tracked down largely through their unchanged cellphone numbers, though they were spread across 23 states about 11 months and nearly five years after the storm.
Due to the makeup of the sample, Paxson cautioned that the study's results cannot be assumed to apply to the population as a whole, but they shed light on natural disasters' effects on a particularly vulnerable group.
The surveys helped rate the women on two signs of poor mental health: psychological distress and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Researchers measured psychological distress using a series of questions (also in the initial questionnaire) typically used to screen for anxiety and mood disorders, asking about feelings such as sadness, hopelessness and nervousness experienced over the last 30 days. They measured PTSS using a test used to identify individuals at a high risk of meeting the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder; for example, the women in the study were asked how often they thought about the hurricane in the last seven days and whether they had thoughts about the storm that they could not suppress.
The researchers found that even after four years, about 33 percent of the participants still had PTSS, and 30 percent had psychological distress. Though levels for both conditions had declined from the first follow-up 11 months after the hurricane, they were not back to pre-hurricane levels.
The researchers had also interviewed the study participants about the types of stressors they had experienced during the storm: home damage, traumatic experiences the week of the hurricane (such as being in danger or lacking food, water or necessary medical care), or death of a friend or relative.
Paxson and her collaborators found that these stressors played a role in whether the participants suffered from psychological distress or PTSS, or both. For the most part, the hurricane stressors, especially home damage, were associated with the risk of chronic, long-term PTSS alone or in combination with psychological distress.
"I think Katrina might be different from a lot of natural disasters in the sense that it completely upended most people's lives," Paxson said. "About two-thirds of the sample is back in the New Orleans area, but almost nobody lives in their old home. So they're living in new communities. They've been disrupted from their friends and their families. The whole fabric of their lives has really been changed."
Demographer Narayan Sastry, a research professor in the Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, said that the study makes an important contribution toward understanding the medium- to long-term effects of Katrina on mental health.
"The most significant aspect was its study of long-term outcomes that were assessed at multiple points in time, including prior to the hurricane a unique feature of this study," said Sastry, who is familiar with the study but was not involved in it. "The results are important not just for designing policies and programs to help address any ongoing mental health problems being experienced by survivors of Hurricane Katrina, but also in devising the best response to help people who are affected by natural disasters in the future."
Sastry added that the study found very similar levels of psychological distress as his work on a broader, representative sample of the pre-hurricane population of New Orleans.
Paxson and her collaborators plan to further examine the data from their surveys, and to continue tracking the women in the sample. Some avenues for further study include looking at how genetics may have a played a role in the mental health responses, examining the hurricane's effects on physical health, and tracking the educational and mental health outcomes of the children of the women in the sample. They also plan to publish a book that combines the survey results with in-depth interviews with some of the women.
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This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and Princeton's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies.
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/pu-prh012512.php
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Semifinals rebranded: 'Big 4' advance in Australia (AP)
MELBOURNE, Australia ? With Novak Djokovic clutching his leg and struggling to breathe, it looked like the "Big 4" semifinal lineup at the Australian Open might not come together.
Then Djokovic's championship instincts kicked in.
The top-ranked Serb held off No. 5 David Ferrer in a second-set tiebreaker Wednesday night and then raced through the third set for a 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-1 win, setting up a rematch of last year's final against fourth-ranked Andy Murray.
Order was restored.
For 10 days, nearly everyone at Melbourne Park has talked about the top four players and how they are on a higher level than the rest of men's tennis. But with the other three already in the semis, Djokovic looked to be in trouble in the second set.
"No, I don't have any physical issues," Djokovic said, playing down any health concerns. "I feel very fit and I feel mentally, as well, very fresh.
"It's just today I found it very difficult after a long time to breathe because I felt the whole day my nose was closed a little bit. I just wasn't able to get enough oxygen."
The win ensured that the top four men reached the semifinals for the third time in four Grand Slams. Murray beat Kei Nishikori 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 earlier Wednesday, while second-ranked Rafael Nadal and No. 3 Roger Federer were already preparing for their semifinal showdown, their 10th clash at a major but their first meeting at that stage of a Grand Slam since 2005.
Doubts about Djokovic's temperament surfaced after he won his first major at the 2008 Australian Open. He went another 11 majors before reaching another Grand Slam final, which he lost.
In his first title defense in 2009, he struggled with breathing problems and the heat and had to retire from his quarterfinal match against Andy Roddick.
Trying again to defend the Australian Open title, and again in the quarterfinals, the 24-year-old Djokovic was leading by a set and a break when he dropped a service game against Ferrer.
At break point, he scrambled to hit a defensive lob on his backhand and didn't even wait for it to land out before turning to face the back of the court, grabbing at the back of his left leg. He leaned over and rested his head on the top of his racket. Ferrer was back in contention.
For the rest of the set, Djokovic sneaked looks at his coaches and team in the stands. He cajoled himself at the baseline and took time between points.
At times he looked exhausted. At times he looked sore.
"Look, you know, in these conditions, at this stage of the tournament, when you're playing somebody like David, somebody that has great shots from both sides from the baseline, makes you always play over five to 10 shots in the rally, your physical strength and endurance comes into question," Djokovic calmly explained of his on-court demeanor. "Actually I'm not concerned about that at all.
"I'm really fit and I have no concerns of recovering for the next match. It's just a matter of breathing better through the nose."
That may not be how Murray's new coach, Ivan Lendl, sees it. Lendl has been working with Murray this month, trying to help him break his Grand Slam title drought ? the Briton has lost three major finals without winning a set, including the last two in Australia.
Lendl lost the first four Grand Slam finals he contested, before winning eight of his next 15.
He was doing some scouting Wednesday night at Rod Laver Arena, sitting about 15 rows behind the Djokovic group, surrounded by people waving Serbian flags. He couldn't have missed the sideways glances from Djokovic to his support crew, or the fact that he sat down in a line judge's chair when Ferrer challenged a line call. Murray and Djokovic have been playing each other since they were 12, and know each other so well they sometimes hit together and kick a soccer ball around.
But they haven't been on the same side of a Grand Slam draw for a while. Murray said he always seems to be drawn with Nadal, while Djokovic and Federer have frequently been on the same half.
Murray said he's not necessarily more relaxed in Australia, "just more used to being in this position because of the experience."
"Definitely have more experienced than I had at this point last year because I played deep in the Slams the last five or six of them."
To him, the prospect of not playing Nadal in the semis "doesn't make a huge difference."
"Not like the match on Friday's going to be easy, because Novak's obviously playing great tennis," he said. "It doesn't change too much."
Nadal and Federer will play on Rod Laver Arena on Thursday night, with the Australian great in attendance ? partly to celebrate 50 years since he completed his first Grand Slam of winning all four majors in 1962.
In the day session, 2008 Australian Open winner Maria Sharapova will play reigning Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, and defending Australian champion Kim Clijsters will take on No. 3 Victoria Azarenka. Three of the four ? excluding Clijsters ? can finish the tournament with the No. 1 ranking.
Azarenka is the only one of the semifinalists who hasn't won a major ? the last eight women's titles have been shared among six women.
Not so the majors on the men's side, which have been much more tightly held.
The "Big 4" have reached the semifinals of the last two Grand Slams, and three of the last four. But it needs to be put into perspective: that has only happened twice before at the Australian Open, in 1988 and 2005.
And if it's any omen for Federer and Murray, No. 3 Mats Wilander beat No. 4 Pat Cash in the '88 final and No. 4 Marat Safin beat No. 3 Lleyton Hewitt in the '05 final.
It's only the 14th time since the Open era began in 1968 that the top four seeded players reached the semifinals in a major.
The top three have 30 Grand Slams between them. The rest of top 10, based on the pre-Australian Open rankings, had none.
And with Djokovic and Murray winning their quarterfinals in straight sets, the "Big 4" had dropped only three sets between them in five rounds.
Players ranging from former No. 1 Andy Roddick to retired greats have talked about the gap between the top four and the rest of men's tennis widening. No. 7 Tomas Berdych, after losing in the quarterfinals in a rematch of the 2010 Wimbledon final against Nadal, said it was "probably the toughest time to play because of those four really strong guys ... making almost history every week."
On Wednesday night, Ferrer confirmed the gap.
"I think the top four players, they are better than the other ones," the Spaniard said.
And he wasn't sure the disparity will be closed any time soon.
"No, I don't think so. Because the last year, the top four players plays all the finals in the Grand Slams," he said. "They were there in the final rounds. And this year they are doing it again, so ...
"I think the top four, it's another level."
Social Brand Marketing Booms In 2011, Buddy Media Ups Revenue 2.5X
With 300 new big brand customers and 2.5X revenue, 2011 was a landmark year for social media marketing software developer Buddy Media. It attracted premier clients such as Citibank, IBM, and the NFL with its reputation for helping brands promote through Facebook. Meanwhile it became a developer partner for LinkedIn and Google+. The company grew from 100 to 225 employees, and opened new offices in London, SF, and Singapore. In short, brands are getting serious about social marketing, and Buddy Media is their tool of choice.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4Uy0jaHSfSQ/
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Video: Law enforcement deaths on the rise
2012 is picking up where 2011 ended with deadly shootings of law enforcement officers.? ?NBC?s Pete Williams reports that the number of police officers who died in the line of duty in 2011 increased 14 percent, with an alarming number of those deaths from ?firearms.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Poorest smokers face toughest odds for kicking the habit
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Quitting smoking is never easy. However, when you're poor and uneducated, kicking the habit for good is doubly hard, according to a new study by a tobacco dependence researcher at The City College of New York (CCNY).
Christine Sheffer, associate medical professor at CCNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, tracked smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.
Whether rich or poor, participants managed to quit at about the same rate upon completing a program of cognitive behavioral therapy, either with or without nicotine patches. But as time went on, a disparity between the groups appeared and widened.
Those with the fewest social and financial resources had the hardest time staving off cravings over the long run. "The poorer they are, the worse it gets," said Professor Sheffer, who directed the program and was an assistant professor with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at the time.
She found that smokers on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder were 55 percent more likely than those at the upper end to start smoking again three months after treatment. By six months post-quitting, the probability of their going back to cigarettes jumped to two-and-a-half times that of the more affluent smokers. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health and will appear ahead-of-print online under the journal's "First Look" section.
In their study, Professor Sheffer and her colleagues noted that overall, Americans with household incomes of $15,000 or less smoke at nearly three times the rate of those with incomes of $50,000 or greater. The consequences are bleak. "Smoking is still the greatest cause of preventable death and disease in the United States today," noted Professor Sheffer. "And it's a growing problem in developing countries."
Harder to Stay Away
Professor Sheffer suggested reasons it may be harder for some to give up tobacco forever.
Smoking relieves stress for those fighting nicotine addiction, so it is life's difficulties that often make them reach for the cigarette pack again. Unfortunately, those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale suffer more hardships than those at the top ? in the form of financial difficulties, discrimination, and job insecurity, to name a few. And for those smokers who started as teenagers, they may have never learned other ways to manage stress, said Professor Sheffer.
For people with lower socioeconomic status (SES), it can be tougher to avoid temptation as well. "Lower SES groups, with lower paying jobs, aren't as protected by smoke-free laws," said Sheffer, so individuals who have quit can find themselves back at work and surrounded by smokers. Also fewer of them have no-smoking policies in their homes.
These factors are rarely addressed in standard treatment programs. "The evidence-based treatments that are around have been developed for middle-class patients," Professor Sheffer pointed out. "So (in therapy) we talk about middle-class problems."
Further research would help determine how the standard six sessions of therapy might be altered or augmented to help. "Our next plan is to take the results of this and other studies and apply what we learned to revise the approach, in order to better meet the needs of poor folks," she said. "Maybe there is a better arrangement, like giving 'booster sessions'. Not everybody can predict in six weeks all the stresses they will have later on down the road."
"Some people say [quitting] is the most difficult thing in their life to do," said Sheffer. "If we better prepare people with more limited resources to manage the types of stress they have in their lives, we'd get better results. "
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City College of New York: http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu
Thanks to City College of New York for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116914/Poorest_smokers_face_toughest_odds_for_kicking_the_habit
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CyanogenMod Android app store coming soon (Digital Trends)
The popular Android custom ROM known as CyanogenMod could soon benefit from its own application store, following the embracing of an idea suggested by one of the team members recently. Posting to his Google+ account, Koushik Dutta said an independent store would be a much-needed source of income for CyanogenMod, which is now active on more than a million Android phones.
But rather than offer the same old apps available through the official Android Market, the CyanogenMod store would be home to apps specifically suited to rooted Android phones, plus offer an outlet for those that have been refused access or have been removed from Google?s store.
For example, this would include applications that simplify the rooting process, games console emulators and apps that networks don?t approve of, such as those used for tethering. According to Dutta, the store would only contain legal apps, so shouldn?t provide safe-haven for apps removed from the Market due to security concerns.
The decision to open their own store comes after conversations with Amazon failed to progress to something meaningful. Originally, CyanogenMod toyed with the idea of bundling Amazon?s store with their custom ROM, in return for a cut of application revenue, but Amazon wouldn?t commit to a time frame.
Work has now begun of the CyanogenMod App Store, a name we?d assume won?t be attached to the final product, but it still looks to be early days judging by the screenshot.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
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Decide on an Automotive Oscilloscope Fit to you | Edimaster
Posted by publish on January 22, 2012
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Source: http://www.edimaster.org/decide-on-an-automotive-oscilloscope-fit-to-you/
Sunday, January 22, 2012
2 bombs strike north Nigeria's main city
KANO, Nigeria (AP) ? Two bombs exploded outside of police stations Friday in the largest city in Nigeria's Muslim north, causing panic in the streets as people fled for their lives.
Police could not be immediately reached for comment, but the bomb blasts bore similarities to other attacks carried out by a radical Islamist sect responsible for hundreds of deaths in recent months.
The first bomb detonated at a regional police headquarters in the city of Kano, causing unknown injuries, said Abubakar Jibril, an official with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency. A second blast struck a police station in another neighborhood, Jibril said.
Jibril said officials with his agency couldn't reach the scenes of the blasts because they were stopped by security forces.
Police kept Associated Press reporters away from the regional headquarters. An AP reporter could see a plume of smoke also rising from another neighborhood in the city as people began fleeing the area.
Another AP reporter said the explosion was powerful enough to shake his car several miles (kilometers) away.
The explosion occurred as Nigeria faces increasing attacks from a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. The sect has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an Associated Press count.
So far this year, the group, which has warned it will kill Christians living in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, has been blamed for at least 76 killings, according to an AP count. That has further inflamed religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria, which has seen ethnic violence kill thousands in recent years.
Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for an August suicide car bombing that targeted the U.N. headquarters in the capital, killing 25 people and wounding more than 100.
In a video released last week, Imam Abubakar Shekau, a Boko Haram leader, said the government could not handle attacks by the group.
Although President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from southern Nigeria, has declared emergency rule in some regions, the sect is blamed for almost daily attacks.
Jonathan has said he believes the sect has infiltrated security agencies and government offices in the country, though he has offered no evidence to back up the claim.
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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell and Yinka Ibukun contributed to this report from Lagos, Nigeria.
Associated PressInside Obama's World: The President talks to TIME About the Changing Nature of American Power (Time.com)
Christopher Morris / VII for TIME
Fareed Zakaria interviews President Obama for TIME in the Oval Office on Jan. 18, 2012
Fareed Zakaria: When we talked when you were campaigning for the presidency, I asked you which Administration?s foreign policy you admired. And you said that you looked at George H.W. Bush?s diplomacy, and I took that to mean the pragmatism, the sense of limits, good diplomacy, as you looked upon it favorably. Now that you are President, how has your thinking evolved?
President Obama: It is true that I?ve been complimentary of George H.W. Bush?s foreign policy, and I continue to believe that he managed a very difficult period very effectively. Now that I?ve been in office for three years, I think that I?m always cautious about comparing what we?ve done to what others have done, just because each period is unique. Each set of challenges is unique. But what I can say is that I made a commitment to change the trajectory of American foreign policy in a way that would end the war in Iraq, refocus on defeating our primary enemy, al-Qaeda, strengthen our alliances and our leadership in multilateral fora and restore American leadership in the world. And I think we have accomplished those principal goals.
Christopher Morris?VII for TIME
We still have a lot of work to do, but if you look at the pivot from where we were in 2008 to where we are today, the Iraq war is over, we refocused attention on al-Qaeda, and they are badly wounded. They?re not eliminated, but the defeat not just of [Osama] bin Laden, but most of the top leadership, the tightening noose around their safe havens, the incapacity for them to finance themselves, they are much less capable than they were back in 2008.
Our alliances with NATO, Japan, South Korea, our close military cooperation with countries like Israel have never been stronger. Our participation in multilateral organizations has been extremely effective. In the United Nations, not only do we have a voice, but we have been able to shape an agenda. And in the fastest-growing regions of the world in emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region, just to take one prominent example, countries are once again looking to the United States for leadership.
That?s not the exact same moment as existed post?World War II. It?s an American leadership that recognizes the rise of countries like China and India and Brazil. It?s a U.S. leadership that recognizes our limits in terms of resources, capacity. And yet what I think we?ve been able to establish is a clear belief among other nations that the United States continues to be the one indispensable nation in tackling major international problems.
(MORE: Read TIME?s Cover Story on Obama, Now Available to Subscribers)
And I think that there is a strong belief that we continue to be a superpower, unique perhaps in the annals of history, that is not only self-interested but is also thinking about how to create a set of international rules and norms that everyone can follow and that everyone can benefit from. So you combine all those changes, the United States is in a much stronger position now to assert leadership over the next century than it was only three years ago.
We still have huge challenges ahead. And one thing I?ve learned over the last three years is that as much as you?d like to guide events, stuff happens and you have to respond. And those responses, no matter how effective your diplomacy or your foreign policy, are sometimes going to produce less-than-optimal results. But our overall trajectory, our overall strategy, I think has been very successful.
Mitt Romney says you are timid, indecisive and nuanced.
Ah, yes.
I particularly like the third one. What do you say?
I think Mr. Romney and the rest of the Republican field are going to be playing to their base until the primary season is over. Once it is, we?ll have a serious debate about foreign policy. I will feel very confident about being able to put my record before the American people and saying that America is safer, stronger and better positioned to win the future than it was when I came into office.
And there are going to be some issues where people may have some legitimate differences, and there are going to be some serious debates, just because they?re hard issues. But overall, I think it?s going to be pretty hard to argue that we have not executed a strategy over the last three years that has put America in a stronger position than it was when I came into office.
Romney says if you are re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon, and if he is elected, it won?t. Will you make a categorical statement like that: If you are re-elected, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon?
I have made myself clear since I began running for the presidency that we will take every step available to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. What I?ve also said is that our efforts are going to be ? Excuse me. When I came into office, what we had was a situation in which the world was divided, Iran was unified, it was on the move in the region. And because of effective diplomacy, unprecedented pressure with respect to sanctions, our ability to get countries like Russia and China ? that had previously balked at any serious pressure on Iran?? to work with us, Iran now faces a unified world community, Iran is isolated, its standing in the region is diminished. It is feeling enormous economic pressure.
(MORE: See TIME?s Interview with Hillary Clinton on Libya, China, the Middle East and Barack Obama)
And we are in a position where, even as we apply that pressure, we?re also saying to them, There is an avenue to resolve this, which is a diplomatic path where they forego nuclear weapons, abide by international rules and can have peaceful nuclear power as other countries do, subject to the restrictions of the [Nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But the way, the Iranians might see it as that they have made proposals ? the Brazilian-Turkish proposal ? and that they never go anywhere. They aren?t the basis of negotiations.
Yes, I think if you take a look at the track record, the Iranians have simply not engaged in serious negotiations on these issues.
We actually put forward a very serious proposal that would have allowed them to display good faith. They need medical isotopes; there was a way to take out some of their low-enriched uranium so that they could not ? so that there was clarity that they were not stockpiling that to try to upgrade to weapons-grade uranium. In exchange, the international community would provide the medical isotopes that they needed for their research facility. And they delayed and they delayed, and they hemmed and they hawed, and then when finally the Brazilian-Indian proposal was put forward, it was at a point where they were now declaring that they were about to move forward on 20% enriched uranium, which would defeat the whole purpose of showing good faith that they weren?t stockpiling uranium that could be transformed into weapons-grade.
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So, not to get too bogged down in the details, the point is that the Iranians have a very clear path where they say, We?re not going to produce weapons, we won?t stockpile material that can be used for weapons. The international community then says, We will work with you to develop your peaceful nuclear energy capacity, subject to the kinds of inspections that other countries have agreed to in the past. This is not difficult to do. What makes it difficult is Iran?s insistence that it is not subject to the same rules that everybody else is subject to.
Suppose that with all this pressure you have been able to put on Iran, and the economic pressure, suppose the consequence is that the price of oil keeps rising, but Iran does not make any significant concession. Won?t it be fair to say the policy will have failed?
It is fair to say that this isn?t an easy problem, and anybody who claims otherwise doesn?t know what they?re talking about. Obviously, Iran sits in a volatile region during a volatile period of time, and their own internal conflicts makes it that much more difficult, I think, for them to make big strategic decisions. Having said that, our goal consistently has been to combine pressure with an opportunity for them to make good decisions and to mobilize the international community to maximize that pressure.
Can we guarantee that Iran takes the smarter path? No. Which is why I have repeatedly said we don?t take any options off the table in preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon. But what I can confidently say, based on discussions that I?ve had across this government and with governments around the world, is that of all the various difficult options available to us, we?ve taken the one that is most likely to accomplish our goal and one that is most consistent with America?s security interest.
When you look at Afghanistan over the past three years ? the policies you?ve adopted ? would it be fair to say that the counterterrorism part of the policy, the killing bad guys, has been a lot more successful than the counterinsurgency, the stabilizing of vast aspects of the country, and that going forward, you should really focus in on that first set of policies?
Well, what is fair to say is that the counterterrorism strategy as applied to al-Qaeda has been extremely successful. The job is not finished, but there?s no doubt that we have severely degraded al-Qaeda?s capacity.
When it comes to stabilizing Afghanistan, that was always going to be a more difficult and messy task, because it?s not just military ? it?s economic, it?s political, it?s dealing with the capacity of an Afghan government that doesn?t have a history of projecting itself into all parts of the country, tribal and ethnic conflicts that date back centuries. So we always recognized that was going to be more difficult.
Now, we?ve made significant progress in places like Helmand province and in the southern portions of the country. And because of the cohesion and effectiveness of coalition forces, there are big chunks of Afghanistan where the Taliban do not rule, there is increasingly effective local governance, the Afghan security forces are beginning to take the lead. And that?s all real progress.
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But what is absolutely true is that there are portions of the country where that?s not the case, where local governance is weak, where local populations still have deep mistrust of the central government. And part of our challenge over the next two years as we transition to Afghan forces is to continue to work with the Afghan government so that it recognizes its responsibilities not only to provide security for those local populations but also to give them some credible sense that the local government ? or the national government is looking out for them, and that they?re going to be able to make a living and they?re not going to be shaken down by corrupt police officials and that they can get products to market. And that?s a long-term process.
I never believed that America could essentially deliver peace and prosperity to all of Afghanistan in a three-, four-, five-year time frame. And I think anybody who believed that didn?t know the history and the challenges facing Afghanistan. I mean, this is the third poorest country in the world, with one of the lowest literacy rates and no significant history of a strong civil service or an economy that was deeply integrated with the world economy. It?s going to take decades for Afghanistan to fully achieve its potential.
What we can do, and what we are doing, is providing the Afghan government the time and space it needs to become more effective, to serve its people better, to provide better security, to avoid a repetition of all-out civil war that we saw back in the ?90s. And what we?ve also been able to do, I think, is to maintain a international coalition to invest in Afghanistan long beyond the point when it was politically popular to do so.
But ultimately, the Afghans are going to have to take on these responsibilities and these challenges, and there will be, no doubt, bumps in the road along the way.
From the perspective of our security interests, I think we can accomplish our goal, which is to make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven from which to launch attacks against the United States or its allies. But the international community ? not just us; the Russians and the Chinese and the Indians and the Pakistanis and the Iranians and others ? I think all have an interest in making sure that Afghanistan is not engulfed in constant strife, and I think that?s an achievable goal.
As the Chinese watched your most recent diplomacy in Asia, is it fair for them to have looked at the flurry of diplomatic activity ? political, military, economic ? and concluded, as many Chinese scholars have, that the United States is building a containment policy against China?
No, that would not be accurate, and I?ve specifically rejected that formulation.
I think what would be fair to conclude is that, as I said we would do, the United States has pivoted to focus on the fastest-growing region of the world, where we have an enormous stake in peace, security, the free flow of commerce and, frankly, an area of the world that we had neglected over the last decade because of our intense focus on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
So if you look at what we?ve done, we?ve strengthened our alliances with Japan and South Korea ? I think they?re in as good of shape as they?ve ever been. We have involved ourselves in the regional architecture of ? including organizations like ASEAN and APEC. We?ve sent a clear signal that we are a Pacific power and we will continue to be a Pacific power, but we have done this all in the context of a belief that a peacefully rising China is good for everybody.
One of the things we?ve accomplished over the last three years is to establish a strong dialogue and working relationship with China across a whole range of issues. And where we have serious differences, we?ve been able to express those differences without it spiraling into a bad place.
I think the Chinese government respects us, respects what we?re trying to do, recognizes that we?re going to be players in the Asia Pacific region for the long term, but I think also recognize that we have in no way inhibited them from continuing their extraordinary growth. The only thing we?ve insisted on, as a principle in that region is, everybody?s got to play by the same set of rules, everybody?s got to abide by a set of international norms. And that?s not unique to China. That?s true for all of us.
But do you think they?re not?
Well, I think that when we?ve had some friction in the relationship, it?s because China, I think, still sees itself as a developing or even poor country that should be able to pursue mercantilist policies that are for their benefit and where the rules applying to them shouldn?t be the same rules that apply to the United States or Europe or other major powers.
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And what we?ve tried to say to them very clearly is, Look, you guys have grown up. You?re already the most populous country on earth, depending on how you measure it, the largest or next-largest economy in the world and will soon be the largest economy, almost inevitably. You are rapidly consuming more resources than anybody else. And in that context, whether it?s maritime issues or trade issues, you can?t do whatever you think is best for you. You?ve got to play by the same rules as everybody else.
I think that message is one that resonates with other Asia Pacific countries, all of whom want a good relationship with China, all of whom are desperately seeking access to China?s markets and have forged enormous commercial ties, but who also recognize that unless there are some international norms there, they?re going to get pushed around and taken advantage of.
You think it?s inevitable that China will be the largest economy in the world? It?s now the second largest, even on PPP.
Well, they are ? assuming that they maintain stability and current growth patterns, then, yes, it?s inevitable. Even if they slow down somewhat, they?re so large that they?d probably end up being, just in terms of the overall size of the economy, the largest.
But it?s doubtful that any time in the near future they achieve the kind of per capita income that the United States or some of the other highly developed countries have achieved. They?ve just got a lot of people, and they?re moving hundreds of millions of people out of poverty at the same time.
You have developed a reputation for managing your foreign policy team very effectively, without dissention. So how come you can manage this fairly complex process so well, and relations with Congress are not so good?
Well, in foreign policy, the traditional saying is, Partisan differences end at the water?s edge, that there is a history of bipartisanship in foreign policy.
Now, obviously, there were huge partisan differences during the Bush years and during the Iraq war. But I do think there?s still a tradition among those who work in foreign policy, whether it?s our diplomatic corps or our military or intelligence services, that says our focus is on the mission, our focus is on advancing American interests, and we?re going to make decisions based on facts and analysis and a clear-eyed view of the world, as opposed to based on ideology or what?s politically expedient.
And so when I?m working with my foreign policy team, there?s just not a lot of extraneous noise. There?s not a lot of posturing and positioning and ?How?s this going to play on cable news?? and ?Can we score some points here?? That whole political circus that has come to dominate so much of Washington applies less to the foreign policy arena, which is why I could forge such an effective working relationship and friendship with Bob Gates, who comes out of that tradition, even though I?m sure he would?ve considered himself a pretty conservative, hawkish Republican. At least that was where he was coming out of. I never asked him what his current party affiliation was, because it didn?t matter. I just knew he was going to give me good advice.
But have you been able to forge similar relationships with foreign leaders? Because one of the criticisms people make about your style of diplomacy is that it?s very cool, it?s aloof, that you don?t pal around with these guys.
I wasn?t in other Administrations, so I didn?t see the interactions between U.S. Presidents and various world leaders. But the friendships and the bonds of trust that I?ve been able to forge with a whole range of leaders is precisely, or is a big part of, what has allowed us to execute effective diplomacy.
I think that if you ask them, Angela Merkel or Prime Minister Singh or President Lee or Prime Minister Erdogan or David Cameron would say, We have a lot of trust and confidence in the President. We believe what he says. We believe that he?ll follow through on his commitments. We think he?s paying attention to our concerns and our interests. And that?s part of the reason we?ve been able to forge these close working relationships and gotten a whole bunch of stuff done.
You just can?t do it with John Boehner.
You know, the truth is, actually, when it comes to Congress, the issue is not personal relationships. My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don?t go to a lot of Washington parties. And as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn?t feel like I?m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I?m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof.
The fact is, I?ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter, and so, no, Michelle and I don?t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that?s vitally important for our kids.
In terms of Congress, the reason we?re not getting enough done right now is you?ve got a Congress that is deeply ideological and sees a political advantage in not getting stuff done. John Boehner and I get along fine. We had a great time playing golf together. That?s not the issue. The problem was that no matter how much golf we played or no matter how much we yukked it up, he had trouble getting his caucus to go along with doing the responsible thing on a whole bunch of issues over the past year.
You talked a lot about how foreign policy ultimately has to derive from American strength, and so when I talk to businessmen, a lot of them are dismayed that you have not signaled to the world and to markets that the U.S. will get its fiscal house in order by embracing your deficit commission, the Simpson-Bowles. And that walking away from that,which is a phrase I?ve heard a lot, has been a very bad signal to the world. Why won?t you embrace Simpson-Bowles?
I?ve got to say, most of the people who say that, if you asked them what?s in Simpson-Bowles, they couldn?t tell you. So first of all, I did embrace Simpson-Bowles. I?m the one who created the commission. If I hadn?t pushed it, it wouldn?t have happened, because congressional sponsors, including a whole bunch of Republicans, walked away from it.
The basic premise of Simpson-Bowles was, we have to take a balanced approach in which we have spending cuts and we have revenues, increased revenues, in order to close our deficits and deal with our debt. And although I did not agree with every particular that was proposed in Simpson-Bowles ? which, by the way, if you asked most of the folks who were on Simpson-Bowles, did they agree with every provision in there?, they?d say no as well.
What I did do is to take that framework and present a balanced plan of entitlement changes, discretionary cuts, defense cuts, health care cuts as well as revenues and said, We?re ready to make a deal. And I presented that three times to Congress. So the core of Simpson-Bowles, the idea of a balanced deficit-reduction plan, I have consistently argued for, presented to the American people, presented to Congress.
There wasn?t any magic in Simpson-Bowles. They didn?t have some special sauce or formula that avoided us making these tough choices. They?re the same choices that I?ve said I?m prepared to make. And the only reason it hasn?t happened is the Republicans were unwilling to do anything on revenue. Zero. Zip. Nada.
The revenues that we were seeking were far less than what was in Simpson-Bowles. We?ve done more discretionary cuts than was called for in Simpson-Bowles. The things that supposedly would be harder for my side to embrace we?ve said we?d be willing to do. The whole half of Simpson-Bowles that was hard ideologically for the Republicans to embrace they?ve said they?re not going to do any of them.
So this notion that the reason that it hasn?t happened is we didn?t embrace Simpson-Bowles is just nonsense. And by the way, if you talk to some of these same business leaders who say, Well, he shouldn?t have walked away from Simpson-Bowles, and you said, Well, are you prepared to kick capital gains and dividends taxation up to ordinary income ?
? which is what Simpson-Bowles ?
? which is what Simpson-Bowles called for, they would gag. There?s not one of those business leaders who would accept a bet. They?d say, Well, we embrace Simpson-Bowles except for that part that would cause us to pay a lot more.
And in terms of the defense cuts that were called for in Simpson-Bowles, they were far deeper than even what would have been required if the sequester goes through, and so would have not been a responsible pathway for us to reduce our deficit spending. Now, that?s not the fault of Simpson-Bowles. What they were trying to do was provide us a basic framework, and we took that framework, and we have pushed it forward.
And so there should be clarity here. There?s no equivalence between Democratic and Republican positions when it comes to deficit reduction. We?ve shown ourselves to be serious. We?ve made a trillion dollars worth of cuts already. We?ve got another $1.5 trillion worth of cuts on the chopping blocks. But what we?ve also said is, in order for us to seriously reduce the deficit, there?s got to be increased revenue. There?s no way of getting around it. It?s basic math. And if we can get any Republicans to show any serious commitment ? not vague commitments, not ?We?ll get revenues because of tax reform somewhere in the future, but we don?t know exactly what that looks like and we can?t identify a single tax that we would allow to go up? ? but if we can get any of them who are still in office, as opposed to retired, to commit to that, we?ll be able to reduce our deficit.
Now, to your larger point, you?re absolutely right. Our whole foreign policy has to be anchored in economic strength here at home. And if we are not strong, stable, growing, making stuff, training our workforce so that it?s the most skilled in the world, maintaining our lead in innovation, in basic research, in basic science, in the quality of our universities, in the transparency of our financial sector, if we don?t maintain the upward mobility and equality of opportunity that underwrites our political stability and makes us a beacon for the world, then our foreign policy leadership will diminish as well.
Can we do that in a world with so much competition from so many countries? One of the things you do hear people say is, You know, we have all this regulation. You?re trying to make America more competitive, but you?ve got Dodd-Frank, you?ve got health care. There?s all this new regulation. And in that context, are we going to be able to be competitive, to attract investment, to create jobs?
Absolutely. Look, first of all, with respect to regulation, this whole notion that somehow there?s been this huge tidal wave of regulation is not true, and we can provide you the facts. Our regulations have a lower cost than the comparable regulations under the Bush Administration; they have far higher benefits.
We have engaged in a unprecedented regulatory look-back, where we?re weeding out and clearing up a whole bunch of regulations that were outdated and outmoded, and we?re saving businesses billions of dollars and tons of paperwork and man-hours that they?re required to fill out a bunch of forms that aren?t needed. So our regulatory track record actually is very solid.
I just had a conference last week where we had a group of manufacturing companies ? some service companies as well ? that are engaging in insourcing. They?re bringing work back to the United States and plants back to the United States, because as the wages in China and other countries begin to increase, and U.S. worker productivity has gone way up, the cost differential for labor has significantly closed.
And what these companies say is, as long as the United States is still investing in the best infrastructure in the world, the best education system in the world, is training enough skilled workers and engineers and is creating a stable platform for businesses to succeed and providing us with certainty, there?s no reason why America can?t be the most competitive advanced economy in the world.
But that requires us to continue to up our game and do things better and do things smart. We?ve started that process over the last three years. We?ve still got a lot more work to do, because we?re reversing decade-long trends where our education system didn?t keep pace with the improvements that were taking place in other countries; where other countries started to invest more in research and development, and we didn?t up our game; where our infrastructure began to deteriorate at a time when other countries were investing in their infrastructure; and, frankly, where we have gotten bogged down politically in ways that don?t allow us to take strong, decisive action on issues in ways that we?ve been able to do in the past.
And so my whole goal in the last three years and my goal over the next five years is going to be to continue to chip away at these things that are holding us back. And I?m absolutely confident there?s no problem that America is facing right now that we can?t solve, as long we?re working together. That?s our job.
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