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Layoffs are often an unfortunate reality, even as the economy continues its slow rebound. A layoff?or reduction-in-force or RIF?is a tricky, painful process for management, those who lose their jobs and even employees who remain afterward.
No matter how well or poorly management handles it, a RIF means an organization is traveling down a difficult road. Here are four critical and often overlooked RIF pitfalls that can make the route more treacherous than it needs to be.
1. No clear RIF criteria
Carefully choosing which jobs will be selected for a RIF is critical. For private employers, unless a union contract governs, selection of participants in a RIF is highly discretionary, but also risky.
For example, an employer determines 10 employees need to be laid off. Management selects the six most recent hires, but also four more senior employees labeled as ?troublemakers.? If those troublemakers decide to challenge the RIF in court?perhaps claiming that they were selected for discriminatory reasons?the employer may have a difficult time establishing that the RIF selection criteria were legitimate.
To avoid potential discrimination liability, focus on specific categories of employees, rather than upon specific employees. Consider eliminating an entire department, or closing down an entire shift. Or focus on seniority.
This is not to suggest it?s wholly impermissible to focus a RIF on in??dividual employees. You might target employees who scored below a certain threshold on performance evaluations. But ask: Evaluated objectively, was the evaluation process legitimate and fair, or does the RIF appear a sham, designed to allow management to hand pick participants while blaming a purportedly neutral criteria?
2. Flimsy excuse for the RIF
Similar to the first pothole, a failure to articulate and document the need for a RIF can lead to proof issues if the RIF is challenged as discriminatory.
Merely stating that the economy is bad is probably insufficient. Be ready to answer questions like: How is the economy affecting the company? Are specific departments overstaffed or underperforming? What alternatives to a RIF have you evaluated and rejected?
3. Lack of RIF notice
Following the economic woes of the mid-1980s, Congress enacted the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. It requires employers with 100 or more em??ployees to give affected employees 60 days? advance notice of a plant closing or mass layoff. Failing to anticipate the need for a RIF and give adequate notice in a timely manner can result in significant liability under the WARN Act.
A plant closing is a shutdown of a single site of employment (or one or more facilities or units within a single site of employment) that results in a layoff of 50 or more employees. A mass layoff is any RIF or combination of RIFs within a 30-day period that results in a layoff of either one-third of a company?s employees (if it?s 50 or more) or at least 500 employees.
Even if a RIF does not qualify as a plant closing or mass layoff, carefully scrutinize any series of RIFs. Under the WARN Act, if two or more RIFs occur at the same employment site during a 90-day period, and each RIF includes less than the minimum number of employees to create a notice requirement, the RIFs will be aggregated, unless the employer can prove that the employment losses are the result of separate and distinct causes.
4. Failing to minimize liability
Some employers provide severance benefits to employees affected by a RIF. Those benefits need not be wholly gratuitous. An employer can avoid future liability for a variety of potential post-employment claims by seeking releases of liability in exchange for severance benefits.
There are a few things to consider when obtaining releases. Employees with employment contracts, for in?stance, may be entitled to severance benefits notwithstanding the employer?s desire for a release.
Also, some liabilities may not lawfully be released. For example, the North Carolina Unemployment Secu??rity Law provides: ?Any agreement by an individual to waive, release, or commute his rights to benefits or any other rights under this Chapter shall be void.?
In addition, affected employees age 40 or older are afforded special treatment by the federal Older Workers Benefit Protection Act. In the case of a RIF, such employees must be allowed 45 days to consider any severance package that includes a release of age discrimination liability. The employees must be allowed seven days in which to revoke acceptance of any package that includes a release. And such employees must be provided information about the scope of the layoff.
Final note: This is only an overview of the risks involved in layoffs. Beginning the process early and with legal assistance is the first step to a successful, albeit stressful, reduction-in-force.
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Hellfire II missiles are accurate and powerful, but expensive. Hydra 70 rockets are relatively cheap but unguided and far less accurate, which increases the chances of incurring collateral damage. But by combining a Hellfire's guidance and launcher with a Hydra's warhead and propellant, Lockheed has created a deadly new hybrid in the Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR). More »
As a brilliant Israeli-born math student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1960s, Danny Cohen was known as a force of nature. And when he learned that Ivan Sutherland, the inventor of the seminal Sketchpad computer interface system, was teaching a small graduate seminar on computer graphics at Harvard, he was determined to take the course.
?At that time the way you got into courses like that was that Harvard had a quaint little phrase, ?admission by consent of the instructor,?? recalled Robert F. Sproull, a computer scientist who was a Harvard student at the time. ?Danny had shown up and we all figured that Ivan had consented, but later we learned, according to Ivan, it was more like relented.?
The Israeli math prodigy would go on to become a graduate student with Dr. Sutherland, with whom he designed the first computerized flight simulation system, pioneering the software technique for hiding visual surfaces from view.
After earning his doctorate he joined the Harvard computer science faculty and then moved to the University of Southern California, where he spent 20 years at the Information Sciences Institute. While at the institute he made fundamental contributions that included developing techniques for sending voice and other ?real time? information over the Arpanet, the predecessor to the modern Internet; to helping create the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service, the first computer chip ?foundry,? which helped train a generation of students in the art of Very Large Scale Integrated circuit design, as well as inventing a ultra-high speed networking system, which made possible the first commodity computing clusters ? forerunners of today?s cloud computing systems ? practical.
Along the way he achieved a legendary status inside the elite computing fraternity who pioneered today?s computers and networks.
On Saturday, to celebrate his recent retirement as a distinguished engineer from the former Sun Microsystems Laboratories, which in 2009 became part of Oracle, a small group of computing pioneers gathered at Google to hold a ?Festschrift? ? which traditionally refers to a book written to honor a respected academic colleague.
Among the more than 40 attendees who came to the afternoon seminar and told stories about Dr. Cohen?s academic accomplishments and adventures were Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, who designed the original Internet protocols; Larry Roberts, an early ARPA manager who would become the first president of Telnet and later other networking firms; Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA computer scientist who did early design work in computer networking; Charles Seitz, a California Institute of Technology computer scientist who designed some of the first supercomputers based on cheap microprocessors; Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT; Ivan and William Robert Sutherland, known as Bert, brothers who pioneered a range of computing technologies at Xerox, Sun and elsewhere; and Deborah L. Estrin, a member of a well known family of computer scientists who recently became the first professor hired by CornellNYC Tech.
Long known for both a sly sense of humor and also being a bit of a practical joker, Dr. Cohen over the years took to publishing with a mysterious co-author, the imaginary ?Professor James Finnegan? (who is cited twice in Dr. Cohen?s Wikipedia entry). A scientist playing Dr. Finnegan, outfitted in a tiger-stripe sport coat, made a presentation on Saturday ? an academic treatise on the invention of something called a ?daser.? Just as the laser amplified light, the daser, he noted, would amplify darkness.
Ron Ho, a microprocessor architect at Oracle, described arriving at Sun Labs in 2003 and on his second day Dr. Cohen, introducing himself as ?Danny,? charged into his office and handed him a paper written by Professor Finnegan and told him he must read it.
As he read the paper Dr. Ho became more and more enraged. ?It wasn?t until I got to the very end where it said, ?the more processors, the better the paper,? that I realized it was a joke,? he recalled.
Several revisions to a city ordinance governing the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) were postponed by the city council at its March 4, 2013 meeting. Some of the proposed revisions would have an impact of several million dollars over the next two decades, affecting several jurisdictions besides Ann Arbor. The postponement was until the council?s March 18 ?meeting.
Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority tax increment finance district is shown in blue.
Among the revisions to Chapter 7 that are being considered by the council are: a new prohibition against elected officials serving on the DDA board; term limits on DDA board members; a new requirement that the DDA submit its annual report to the city in early January; and a requirement that all taxes captured by the DDA be spent on projects that directly benefit property in the DDA tax increment finance (TIF) district.
But most significant of the revisions would be those that clarify how the DDA?s TIF tax capture is calculated. The ?increment? in a tax increment finance (TIF) district refers to the difference between the initial value of a property and the value of a property after development. The Ann Arbor DDA captures the taxes ? just on that initial increment ? of some other taxing authorities in the district. Those are the city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Community College and the Ann Arbor District Library. For FY 2013, the DDA will capture roughly $3.9 million in taxes.
The proposed ordinance revision would clarify existing ordinance language, which includes a paragraph that appears to limit the amount of TIF that can be captured. The limit is defined relative to the projections for the valuation of the increment in the TIF plan, which is a foundational document for the DDA.
If the actual rate of growth outpaces that anticipated in the TIF plan, then at least half the excess amount is supposed to be redistributed to the other taxing authorities in the DDA district.
What the proposed ordinance revisions clarify is which estimates in the TIF plan are the standard of comparison ? the ?realistic? projections, not the ?optimistic? or ?pessimistic? estimates. However, the ordinance revisions as currently formulated do not clarify whether a ?cumulative? method of performing the calculations should be used or if a year-to-year method should be used.
Use of the cumulative method has an impact on whether the redistribution of excess TIF is made on a one-time or recurring basis. Under the cumulative method, other taxing authorities in the Ann Arbor DDA TIF district would see a total on the order of $1 million in additional tax revenue, compared to the way the DDA currently calculates the TIF capture. The city of Ann Arbor?s annual share would be more than half of that amount, around $600,000. [.jpg of chart showing DDA TIF capture using different methods]
Method: Year-to-Year
Refunds
City County WCC AADL Total Ref DDA TIF
FY14 $429,409 $149,392 $94,257 $40,163 $713,221 $3,964,457
FY15 $11,958 $4,160 $2,625 $1,118 $19,862 $4,774,758
===============================
Method: Cumulative
Refunds
City County WCC AADL Total Ref DDA TIF
FY14 $613,919 $213,583 $134,757 $57,421 $1,019,680 $3,657,998
FY15 $635,108 $211,673 $139,195 $58,539 $1,044,515 $3,773,043
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The clarification of the ordinance crucially strikes two paragraphs related to bond and debt payments. One of the two paragraphs was key to the DDA?s current legal position ? which is that no redistribution of TIF is required under the ordinance, given the DDA?s financial position. The DDA interprets the stricken paragraphs to mean that no redistribution to other taxing authorities needs to be made, until the total amount of the DDA?s debt payments falls below the amount of its TIF capture. In the FY 2014 budget, adopted by the DDA board at its Feb. 6, 2013 meeting, about $6.5 million is slated for bond payments and interest.
That clearly exceeds the amount of anticipated TIF capture in the FY 2014 budget ? about $3.9 million. The DDA is able to make those debt payments because about half of that $6.5 million is covered by revenues from the public parking system. The DDA administers the public parking system under contract with the city of Ann Arbor.
This issue first arose back in the spring of 2011. The context was the year-long hard negotiations between the DDA and the city over terms of a new contract under which the DDA would manage the city?s parking system. The Chapter 7 issue emerged just as the DDA board was set to vote on the parking system contract at its May 2, 2011 meeting.
When the issue was identified by the city?s financial staff, the DDA board postponed voting on the new contract. The period of the postponement was used to analyze whether the DDA?s Chapter 7 obligations could be met ? at the same time the DDA was ratifying a new parking system contract, which required the DDA to pay the city of Ann Arbor 17.5% of gross parking revenues.
Initially, the DDA agreed that money was owed to other taxing authorities, not just for that year, but for previous years as well. And the DDA paid a combined roughly $473,000 to the Ann Arbor District Library, Washtenaw Community College and Washtenaw County in 2011. The city of Ann Arbor chose to waive its $712,000 share of the calculated excess.
Subsequently, the DDA reversed its legal position, and contended that no money should have been returned at all. That decision came at a July 27, 2011 DDA board meeting.
The following spring, during the May 21, 2012 budget deliberations, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) proposed an amendment to the city?s FY 2013 budget that stipulated specific interpretations of Chapter 7, with a recurring positive impact to the city of Ann Arbor?s general fund of about $200,000 a year. Kunselman wanted to use that general fund money to pay for additional firefighters. That year the budget amendment got support from just two other councilmembers: Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5).
The postponement of the Chapter 7 ordinance revisions on March 4 was unanimous, based on the need to look at a considerable amount of additional information and analysis.
For a Chronicle op-ed on this topic, see: ?Column: Let?s Get DDA TIF Capture Right.?
This brief was filed from the city council?s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow.
JUPITER, Fla. -- Venezuela's baseball team was taking pregame batting practice when players heard that president Hugo Chavez had died.
"He was a baseball man," manager Luis Sojo said after a 6-5 loss to the Miami Marlins in a warmup game for the World Baseball Classic. "At the World Baseball Classic in 2006 and 2009, the first call in the morning was his. And after the game, he used to call me, too. It's a very sad moment for our country. We wish the best to his family, we know they are going through a tough time right now."
Chavez died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year fight against cancer.
"It's sad what's happening to our country," first baseman Miguel Cabrera said. "We send our condolences to his family. This is something you don't wish on anybody.
"I don't know how his family is right now. He's no longer with us - it's very sad. I cannot comment a lot on it because I feel a lot of pain, and I'm not there in Venezuela."
Pitcher Carlos Zambrano said he hoped his fellow Venezuelans would come together.
"I'm very sad. I ask that the Venezuela people stay calm," Zambrano said. "We have to understand that the president had a family. He's a human being and it's sad. We send him the condolences to the Chavez family. We know it's a difficult moment. This caught us by surprise."
Some players did not want to discuss Chavez's death. Pitcher Anibal Sanchez and third baseman Pablo Sandoval both declined when asked to comment.
A Venezuela spokesman said the team had requested a pre-game moment of silence for Chavez and asked that flags be flown at half-staff, but was told all parties involved - the Marlins, Major League Baseball and Roger Dean Stadium - were not prepared to do so.
"There are things we can't control," Zambrano said. "For the respect of Venezuela, they have to do something before the first game against the Dominican Republic (at the WBC in Puerto Rico)."
TRICKY WORK: SES and Tallow Tree Services cleared the tree and debris while neighbours gave ?amazing? support after the tree crashed onto Kyla Reid?s home in Byron Bay on Saturday. Cathy Adams
THREE young children and their parents are lucky to be alive after a huge tree crashed through the roof of a Byron Bay home on Saturday.
The bureau issued a severe weather warning for heavy rain on Saturday for the Northern Rivers, with Lismore, Coraki and Bungawalbyn all experiencing minor flooding.
Kyla Reid said about 1pm she was in the kitchen making lunch for her children Kiana, 6 and Jarrah, 7, her partner Philip Remington and his son Noor, 5, when she saw the massive ironbark fall.
Ms Reid said when the tree fell on the Cemetery Rd rental property there was "not a breath of wind blowing".
"I had just taken some sandwiches around the side of the kitchen island bench and I heard the first branches hit the roof," she said.
"It's all glass along that side of the house and I looked out to see the trunk of the ironbark falling toward the house."
"At that point I screamed and turned around and looked at the kids who were sitting at a glass table behind the kitchen bench."
She said the quick reactions of the children and her partner may have saved their lives.
"The tree came through the roof and speared through the kitchen bench, stove and floor and moved the bench about one and a half metres toward where the children were sitting eating their lunch."
"My partner, who was also in the kitchen making lunch, luckily put his arm up and was knocked to the ground by the tree and got a big gash on his arm."
"If he had tried to go around the kitchen bench to the right he would have been pinned against the wall by the kitchen bench which ended up wedged against the wall."
"It was a very close shave; he just missed being really seriously hurt."
Ms Reid attributed the tree falling to its shallow root base and the sodden clay earth it was growing in.
"Even though it was a huge strong living tree the root system, which was about one-and-a-half metres across, was inadequate."
Ms Reid said the efforts of the SES and Tallow Tree Services along with the support offered by neighbours was amazing.
With the home deemed unsafe to occupy and her children enrolled at school at Byron Bay, Ms Reid said she hoped to find another house to rent in the town.
A crane was used to remove the fallen tree yesterday afternoon.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Roman Catholic cardinals filed into the Vatican on Monday for preliminary meetings to sketch a profile for the next pope and ponder who among them might be best to lead a church beset by crises.
They arrived by private car, taxi and minibus at the gates of the Vatican for gatherings known as general congregations, closed-door meetings in which they will get to know each other and decide when to start a conclave to choose a man to lead the 1.2 billion member Church.
The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new pope elected next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on March 24 and culminating in Easter the following Sunday.
Pope Benedict left the Church in a state of shock when he announced last month that he would be the first pontiff in 600 years to resign instead of ruling for life. He formally stepped down on Thursday, leaving the papacy vacant.
High on the agenda at the general congregations will be the daunting challenges that will face the next pontiff, including the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Church and last year's "Vatileaks" scandal which exposed corruption and rivalries in the Vatican's bureaucracy.
"We need a man of governance, by that I mean a man who is able with the people he chooses to help him in an intimate way to govern the Church," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the former Archbishop of Westminster in London, told BBC radio.
"Among the things we will be talking about out here are precisely the need in looking for a new pope for these failings that have happened again to be treated, to be faced strongly."
The cardinals, numbering about 150, are expected to hold one or two meetings a day. The Vatican seems keen to have only a week of preliminary talks so the 115 "cardinal electors" aged under 80 can enter the Sistine Chapel for the conclave next week. The exact date for its start has not been decided.
"We have meetings all this week to get to know each other better and consider the situations that we face," said Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris as he entered. He said he could not say at this stage "who will be the best one to respond to them".
Cardinals expect to be briefed on a secret report to the pope on the problems highlighted by the Vatileaks scandal, when documents which alleged corruption in the Vatican and infighting over the running of its bank were leaked to the media.
SHADOW OF ABUSE CRISIS
The crisis involving sexual abuse of children by priests and inappropriate behavior among adult clerics continues to haunt the Church and has rarely been out of the headlines.
One elector - Cardinal Keith O'Brien - quit as Edinburgh archbishop last week and pulled out of attending the conclave because of accusations that he behaved inappropriately with priests and seminarians in the past.
O'Brien initially denied the allegations but issued a statement late on Sunday apologizing because "my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal".
"The church has a particular responsibility to set a moral standard and that's what it tries to do and if sometimes it doesn't, if it fails with certain individuals occasionally it's going to repent and carry on," said Murphy-O'Connor, who will not take part in the conclave as he is aged over 80.
He said about O'Brien: "I think that's clearly very sad and the person involved has in fact apologized and is now going to leave, as it were, public life as a priest, as a bishop."
The preliminary meetings also give cardinals the chance to size up potential candidates by watching them closely in the debates and checking discreetly with other cardinals about their qualifications or any skeletons in their closets.
Cardinals never reveal publicly who they prefer but drop hints in interviews by discussing the identikit for their ideal candidate. The most frequently mentioned quality here is an ability to communicate the Catholic faith convincingly.
Most cardinals say the new pope could come from outside Europe, but it is not clear if the conclave, which has a slight majority of European cardinals, will break the long-standing tradition of choosing men only from the continent.
No front-runner stands out but leading candidates include Peter Turkson of Ghana, Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, Austrian Christoph Schoenborn, Brazil's Odilo Scherer, Canadian Marc Ouellet and Angelo Scola, from Italy.
In an interview with Reuters, Cardinal Sandri, 69, said the next pope should not be chosen according to a geographic area but must be a "saintly man" who was "best qualified".
Sandri said one of the greatest problems facing the Church was "the loss of faith" among many who had "turned their back on God" and need to be brought back into the life of the church.
He also said the Church must open itself up to women in the next pontificate, giving them more decision-making positions in the Vatican and beyond.
(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan and Cristiano Corvino in Rome, and Michael Holden in London; Editing by Pravin Char)
Evernote, a Web-based note-sharing service, said it was resetting the passwords of its 50 million users because hackers managed to breach its computer network and access some user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords.
Evernote spokeswoman Ronda Scott said via email on Saturday that the attack "follows a similar pattern" to other cyber attacks on Internet-based companies in recent weeks, but she did not elaborate.
"In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost," the company said on its website. "We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed."
Scott declined to say how many accounts had been exposed or whether it might be possible for the hackers to unscramble encrypted passwords.
A series of technology companies including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Twitter have recently disclosed cyber attacks. In the majority of those cases, the companies said that the unknown hackers exploited a bug in Java software and that no user information was compromised.
Twitter is the only major Internet company that has recently reported its user information was exposed to hackers. On Feb. 1, Twitter reset passwords for 250,000 accounts whose encrypted passwords may have been accessed.
Scott said Evernote believed that the hackers did not exploit a bug in Java when they broke into the company's system.
Evernote is a privately held company whose major investors include Meritech Capital, CBC Capital, Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures and DOCOMO Capital.
In deciding whether to strike down a portion of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court is focusing on whether the South has redeemed its racist history. Massachusetts, though, has a quibble with Chief Justice Roberts.
By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff writer / March 2, 2013
Assistant Poll Manager Kim Abenatha helps voters line up at the Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Stone Mountain, Ga. on Election Day 2012.
Kent D. Johnson/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP
Enlarge
Massachusetts officials came out swinging this week after Chief Justice John Roberts argued in a hearing on the constitutionality of a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Mississippi may be more sensitive to black voting rights than Massachusetts.
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That's important because Mississippi, often derided as a backwards backwater due to its ugly racial history, has to run any changes to its voting laws by the US Department of Justice, while Massachusetts, broadly seen as a paragon of the enlightened North, does not.
The argument cuts to the bone of what's in front of the Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder: Should the South continue to be punished for its past racism despite evidence that those days are gone, or is there another, broader imperative that Section 5 protections are necessary to guarantee the franchise for all Americans?
Section 5 requires that 9 states and many other jurisdictions, mostly in the South but also including parts of the Bronx, "pre-clear" voting law changes with the US Justice Department due to evidence of past disenfranchisement.
While Congress handily reauthorized the VRA in 2006 for another 25 years, conservative justices on the Supreme Court, including Chief Roberts, zeroed in this week on whether Section 5 has itself become discriminatory, since many indices suggest that blacks vote at equal or even higher rates than whites in the covered jurisdictions.
Justice Roberts pointed out as proof that Massachusetts, for example, has "the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout."
Claiming Roberts is obfuscating US Census data, Massachusetts voting officials shot back.
"The concept of black communities in Massachusetts not voting is an old slur, and it?s not true,? Secretary of State William Galvin said. ?I guess the point [Roberts] is trying to make is Mississippi is doing so much better they don?t need the Voting Rights Act. He can still relay that conclusion, but he shouldn?t be using phony statistics. It?s deceptive, and it?s truly disturbing.?
As it is, Roberts is reading Census figures that partially support his contention, but he failed to include margins of error that could, also technically, put Massachusetts ahead of Mississippi when it comes to minority participation versus white. Also, officials noted, several other states have similar disparities as Massachusetts. At the same time, three Sec. 5 jurisdictions ? Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina ? today have higher proportions of blacks voting than whites.
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British study finds a significant drop in hospital admissions for childhood asthma attacks after a law is enacted banning smoking in enclosed spaces.
Mon, Jan 21 2013 at 2:09 PM
A new study in the United Kingdom has some good news for children who suffer from asthma. According to researchers at the Imperial College London, childhood asthma attacks have dropped significantly since a law was enacted in 2007 banning smoking in enclosed spaces.
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The new study, which was published in a recent issue of Pediatrics, found that the hospital admissions for children suffering from asthma attacks dropped more than 12 percent in the first year after the law was introduced in July 2007. ?The admission rates continued to decline in subsequent years suggesting that the health benefits from the law have had a sustained effect on England's kids.
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Before the ban was implemented, hospital admissions for childhood asthma attacks were rising at a rate of 2.2 percent per year, with admissions hitting a peak of 26,969 admissions in 2006-07. ?Researchers estimate that the rapid decline in admissions, which began immediately after the law came into effect, is equivalent to 6,800 fewer hospital admission within the first three years after the law came into effect. ?
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The decline in hospital admissions was seen across the board in both boys and girls and for children living in poor neighborhoods or wealthier communities.?
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Obama Jedi Mind Meld:?Yoda-quoting nerds, Beltway insiders, and even Hollywood heroes were instantly abuzz.
By Darlene Superville,?Associated Press / March 1, 2013
President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks to reporters in the White House briefing room in Washington, March 1, following a meeting with congressional leaders regarding the automatic spending cuts.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
Enlarge
He's not a dictator and won't entertain the idea of a "Jedi mind-meld" with opponents. There's no "secret formula or special sauce" he can slip foes to make them see things his way. And not to worry, he says, the situation may look dire but won't be an "apocalypse."
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So who was the guy in a suit and tie who showed up Friday in the White House briefing room, mixing metaphors and references to "Star?Wars" and "Star?Trek"?
"I am not a dictator. I'm the president," Barack?Obama?declared as he rejected the idea of using Secret Service agents to keep lawmakers from leaving until everyone agreed on a budget. He answered reporters' questions shortly after an inconclusive, 52-minute meeting with the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate.
"So ultimately, if (Senate Minority leader) Mitch McConnell or (House Speaker) John Boehner say, 'We need to go to catch a plane,' I can't have Secret Service block the doorway. Right?"
Even if he did bar his office ? the oval one ??Obama?said he wouldn't do a "Jedi mind-meld" with Congress' top two Republicans to persuade them "to do what's right."
Yoda-quoting nerds, Beltway insiders and even Hollywood heroes were instantly abuzz. The presidential mishmash of sci-fi references went viral, turning off geeks who had considered?Obama?one of their own after a slip of the tongue that was almost as bad as confusing Klingons and Ewoks, or even Democrats and Republicans.
Jedi are from "Star?Wars," while mind melds happened on "Star?Trek."
Mister Spock of "Star?Trek" weighed in.
"Only a Vulcan mind-meld would be effective on this Congress. LLAP," Leonard Nimoy emailed after The Associated Press sought his reaction. Nimoy signed off with the abbreviation for his "Live long and prosper."
Maybe it was the power of the Force or some kind of Starfleet prime directive, but the White House couldn't ignore comments like that, flashing in and out of time and space and mixed metaphors like a Tardis traveling at warp speed in social media. It later tweeted: "We must bring balance to the force," with a link to an?Obamaphoto inside a border designed to look like outer space.
As for the situation that led?Obama?to the briefing room in the first place, he could have quoted Bobby McFerrin and just said: "Don't worry. Be happy."
Instead, the president went with: "This is not going to be a apocalypse."
KITTERY, Maine (AP) ? They don't care which side caused Washington's latest crisis.
Five hundred miles from Capitol Hill, the men and women of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are worrying about paying rent, searching for new jobs and caring for sick loved ones.
Almost the entire workforce, a community of more than 5,000 along the Maine and New Hampshire seacoast, is preparing to lose the equivalent of a month's pay because of Congress' inability to resolve another budget stalemate.
Orsom "Butch" Huntley, 63, a shipyard employee for three decades, is already living paycheck to paycheck while caring for his terminally ill wife.
"Congress doesn't look at the individual. They just look at the bottom line. And it just really makes it tough to think we're just a number to them," Huntley, a computer engineer, said this week in a restaurant outside the shipyard gate. "It's going to be totally devastating."
The fear is consuming military communities as the nation braces for budget cuts designed to be so painful they would compel Congress to find better ways to cut the federal deficit. President Barack Obama and governors from across the nation have intensified calls for compromise in recent days to meet Friday's deadline.
Defense officials warn of diminished military readiness as the cuts begin to bite. Economists warn of damage to a delicate economic recovery. And federal officials warn of travel delays, slashed preschool access and closed national parks.
But in small towns whose economies are deeply tied to the military, there is a human impact that breeds anger and fear.
Across the table from Huntley, facilities engineer Kevin Do explains that he and his wife ? also a shipyard employee ? have already delayed plans to buy their first home because of uncertainty created by Washington. With a 4-year-old son in daycare, he's now looking for part-time construction work to help pay the bills, even if it means working seven days a week.
"We basically put the American dream on hold," Do said.
Preparing for a worst-case scenario, Navy officials have plans to force mandatory furloughs on roughly 186,000 civilian employees across the country. People like Huntley and Do would lose 22 paid days between April and October, or roughly 20 percent of their pay. Shipyards from coast to coast have outlined cost-cutting plans to delay huge maintenance contracts on nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
Polling suggests that some Americans are still unaware of the looming cuts, known in Washington speak as a "sequester," but the debate is well known to federal employees and the huge network of businesses, contractors and communities that serve Navy shipyards and military bases. Virtually every nearby restaurant, grocery store or car dealer is aware of the looming cuts.
Some states are facing more pain than others. Oklahoma has five military installations. Chris Spiwak, owner of Chequers Restaurant and Pub outside Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, said he's afraid he might have to lay off an employee or two.
"We have customers telling us that if they're furloughed, they won't be coming in as much," Spiwak said. "That's their expendable income. They'll be eating at home or bringing their lunches."
And there is widespread uncertainty in Virginia, where many of the 21,000 workers at Newport News Shipbuilding are bracing for the worst. Obama addressed shipyard workers this week about the dangers of the spending cuts.
"Everybody's nervous, worried about what's going to happen," Ronnie Hall, a 27-year-old fleet support apprentice, said before the president spoke.
The president, who has pushed for a compromise deficit package of spending cuts and new tax revenue, seems to have the upper hand among the public over the standoff. A Pew/USA Today poll this week found 49 percent of Americans would blame Republicans in Congress if Obama and Congress couldn't strike a deal. Thirty-one percent would blame Obama, 11 percent would blame both of them and 8 percent were unsure.
On federal spending in general, an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday found significantly more Americans in favor of Obama's handling of federal spending than Republicans in Congress, although neither side earned high marks. Half of the country disapproved of Obama's handling of the issue, while two-thirds disapproved of congressional Republicans.
The political stakes meant little to the workers gathered outside the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard this week during their lunch break.
"Both sides put us here," said Huntley, who had already lost his house because of his wife's medical bills. "At my age I should be in my golden years. But those things are gone. As the guys around me say, the golden years have taken the gold and just left me the years."
Next up for Congress and the White House is how to avoid Washington's coming crisis, which threatens a government shutdown after March 27, when a six-month spending bill enacted last year expires.
In Kittery, Do offered elected leaders a reminder: "They forget it's faces and families," he said. "There's a cloud over a lot of people."
___
Associated Press writers Brock Vergakis in Virginia and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington contributed to this report.
Question: ?The whole he/she issue when writing something that doesn?t apply to a named person still confuses me. Some people get irritated when you choose one gender over the other even when you?re just writing about a hypothetical situation, but the phrase ?he or she? sounds silly and awkward when it has to be used too often. What?s the best way to get around this problem?? ?Eric, Admissions Advisor
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