Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: On New York, Facebook and the Superstorm

TakePart is happier than ever to present “Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint,” a weekly column of social justice insight, provocation and solution. Look for Anna’s Sprint every week on the homepage of TakePart.

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By the time the number of years you’ve lived in New York could make up (or surpass) the age of a toddler, you’re well acquainted with the fizzy aperitif of panic and preparation before a projected natural disaster. Having seen multiple false alarms, you’re also duly skeptical that anything is actually going to happen just because some weatherman Tweeted about it.

Nevertheless, you make it to the store at the last minute and buy some water and crackers and a flashlight and cat food. Or—as I spent last year’s overhyped Hurricane Irene—you go to a friend’s house in Chelsea and watch all of Twin Peaks and sleep far away from the windows.

Obviously, in the case of Monday night, the event was actually of severe magnitude—85 dead and rising, millions still without power, possibly $ 50 billion in financial losses (figure is still in estimates)—and the Tri-State Area will undoubtedly be dealing with the consequences for months. In short, I thought it was going to be like this, but it was like this.

MORE: Hurricane Sandy Recovery: How to Help

However, along with the damage incurred by the storm comes a camaraderie you don’t usually see around these parts. And, because we live in the future, it’s primarily communicated via social media.

Photos of good Samaritans placing power strips outside their houses for strangers to charge their phones are making the rounds, and people with power are inviting their Facebook friends over for food and Wi-Fi.

“We are ok” was the most-shared term on Facebook as of 10 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning. Others in the Top 10 included “power” (lost power, have power), “made it” and “safe.”

Photos of good Samaritans placing power strips outside their houses for strangers to charge their phones are making the rounds, and people with power are inviting their Facebook friends over for food and Wi-Fi.

At the grocery store Monday afternoon, a woman and I nervously chatted in the endless checkout line about unperishable almond milk for her baby—just in case. I held her place in line as she went to grab it and asked if she could get me two Greek yogurts. This may not seem terribly significant anywhere but New York, where talking to strangers sans inebriation is tantamount to immediate exile from the borough.

(Of course, one can’t help but wonder what the sociological response would have been if—God forbid—it had been even worse. Just think of every major disaster anecdote or film you know: There’s the looting scene, someone smashing a TV set into the window of a store, and people being trampled to death in a rush, which has happened in far less dire conditions than these. Fortunately, there’s no need to think too hard about it this time.)

As for those in Sandy’s path fortunate enough not to incur any major individual loss, we’re basically just left with a whole lot of rebuilding and an abiding sense of plain weirdness: The rumors of alligators swimming in the streets of a decimated Atlantic City, for one thing. This shirtless dude jogging through the storm with a horse mask on. This new temporary subway map, reminding us that even the steadfast MTA system is mortal. And so on.

Nevertheless, we persevere; at least, as much as we can without leaving our borough.

And if anyone wants to come over, I have power and crackers.

Do you have power and crackers, or anything comparable, to share? Leave it in COMMENTS.

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• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Is Wonder Woman Necessary?

• (VIDEO) Strength in Disaster: Courageous Young Vets Rebuild Alabama Town Devastated by the Storms

• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: The Oxymoronic Rise of Anti-Rape Zealotry

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Anna Breslaw is a regular contributor to Jezebel, New York magazine’s Vulture and Glamour, and her writing has been featured elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn. Email Anna | Anna’s Tumblr

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AP PHOTOS: Stars come out for Sandy victims’ show

NEW YORK (AP) — For the victims of Superstorm Sandy, it was a sorely needed message delivered.

From “Livin’ on a Prayer” to “The Living Proof,” every song Friday at NBC’s benefit concert became a message song.

New Jersey‘s Jon Bon Jovi gave extra meaning to “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Billy Joel worked in a reference to Staten Island, the decimated New York City borough.

The hourlong event, hosted by Matt Lauer, was heavy on stars and lyrics identified with New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area, which took the brunt of this week’s deadly storm. The telethon was a mix of music, storm footage and calls for donations from Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg and others.

The show ended, as it only could, with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, tearing into “Land Of Hope and Dreams.”

“God bless New York,” Springsteen, New Jersey‘s ageless native son, said in conclusion. “God bless the Jersey shore.”

Here, in pictures, are some of the performers on this somber but hopeful night:

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How Computational Models Are Improving Medicine [Video]

Click here to view the video

High-resolution electromechanical model of a heart; courtesy of N. Trayanova

The more we learn about cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, the more vexingly complex they seem–and the more elusive their cures. Even with cutting-edge imaging technology, biomarker tests and genetic data, we are still far from understanding the multifaceted causes and varied developmental stages of these illnesses. With the advent of powerful computing, better modeling programs and a flood of raw biomedical data, researchers have been anticipating a leap forward in their abilities to decipher the intricate dynamics involved human disease. Now, these computational capabilities are starting to arrive, according to a new analysis published online this week in Science Translational Medicine. In fact, “the field has exploded,” Raymond Winslow, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Computational Medicine, and co-author of the review, said in a prepared statement. Medicine and medical research largely have been focused on small specialties and narrow studies. But the body is a whole system–not isolated organ groups–and it is in constant interaction with the wider environment, including pollutants, toxins and other stressors. The resulting interactions do not only work in a single direction; instead, we have learned that there are feed-forward and feedback loops and crosstalk on cellular, molecular and genetic levels. This nexus is where advances in computational medicine are poised to make a large contribution. “Computational medicine can help you see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together to give a more holistic picture,” Winslow said. “We may never have all of the missing pieces, but will wind up with a much clearer view of what causes disease and how to treat it.” Models comparing gene expression in different patients have already successfully helped to determine different grades of prostate cancer, predict how different patients will respond to breast cancer treatment and find different types of stomach cancer. Scientists are also taking advantage of more advanced anatomical data to model whole organs and their function–and dysfunction. Using, for example, diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging, researchers can collect detailed information about heart anatomy, fiber and structure. This macro structure can be combined with more cellular-based models for “unprecedented structural and biophysical detail, including cardiac electromechanics,” the researchers noted in their paper. With this information, scientists are learning more about blood-flow dynamics, arrhythmia and heart attacks. These new models are now starting to be translated back to individual patients, to help find better treatments. Computational-medicine algorithms from detailed brain maps have already been used to develop an iPad app that is being used clinically to help doctors decide on deep brain stimulation locations and strengths. These models, however, also need to be checked frequently against real-world data and adjusted accordingly. But researchers who are armed to deal with this once unusual cross-discipline endeavor are growing more common. “There is a whole new community of people being trained in mathematics, computer science and engineering, and they are being cross-trained in biology,” Winslow said. “This allows them to bring a whole new perspective to medical diagnosis and treatment.” The myriad applications for computational medicine approaches are only beginning to be explored, the researchers noted. “As we gain confidence in the ability of computational models to predict human biological processes, they will help guide us through the complex landscape of disease, ultimately leading to more effective and reliable methods for disease diagnosis, risk stratification and therapy,” the researchers wrote. “We are poised at an exciting moment in medicine.”

Video of electromechanical heart model courtesy of N. Trayanova

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

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Syria army quits base on strategic Aleppo road

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.

But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.

The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.

Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.

“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.

“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.

Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

STRATEGIC BLOW

Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.

Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.

In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.

The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.

Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.

His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.

The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.

The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Worries over basic bank accounts

1 November 2012 Last updated at 20:01 ET

A watchdog has claimed that “dark clouds” are gathering for the future of simple bank accounts designed for vulnerable and low-income customers.

Consumer Focus said that basic bank accounts – assisting those with chequered credit histories – have been a success for the banking industry.

But it warned that a minimum standard was needed to ensure they survived.

The Treasury Committee has sought reassurance that ATM access for these customers will not be restricted.

Wishlist

One in five UK adults have a basic bank account as their only or main account, according to Consumer Focus. They were first offered about a decade ago and have most commonly been used by people needing an account to allow their wages to be paid.

These accounts do not offer overdrafts. Some have a debit card, but with only limited facilities and no chequebook. They do not incur a monthly fee.

There are about 20 basic bank accounts available. They have tended to be used by people who have experienced difficulties with credit in the past and so are turned down when applying for a regular current account.

Continue reading the main story

These are simple accounts which allow customers to have their wages, benefits, and cheques paid in.

Customers can gain access to their money from some cash machines, or the Post Office.

Bills can be made by direct debit from the account, but these accounts offer no overdraft facility or access to credit – unlike most standard current accounts.

However, only Barclays allows undischarged bankrupts to sign up, after the Co-op withdrew from this market in September.

Meanwhile, RBS and NatWest joined Lloyds Banking Group in withdrawing access for basic bank account holders to the Link cash machine network.

Consumer Focus said that action was needed from all banks and building societies to ensure there were no further restrictions of basic bank accounts in the future.

It is calling for minimum standards for basic accounts that include:

• Full cash machine and Post Office counter access


• Free electronic payments and debit card use


• Buffer zones to cover small overdrafts


• No large fees for unpaid charges

“The last thing these consumers need is a race to the bottom between banks which keep chipping away at the features these accounts offer,” said Mike O’Connor, chief executive at Consumer Focus.

“Without intervention, these accounts could become less useful or more expensive for low-income consumers.”

The Co-operative Bank, which blamed an “un-level playing field” for pulling out of offers to undischarged bankrupts, has also expressed its fear that the standards for basic bank accounts will continue to deteriorate.

Cash machine access

In tandem with the campaign from Consumer Focus, the Treasury Committee said providers including Bank of Ireland, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, the Co-op and Nationwide had confirmed they had no plans to restrict cash machine access for basic bank account customers.

Similar undertakings were given by Barclays, HSBC and Santander during the committee’s inquiry into ATM access earlier this year.

“We have now obtained confirmation from other providers of basic bank accounts that they have no plans to restrict access to cash machines for these customers. That is a step forward,” said Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the committee.

“However, the letters that I received make clear that this might change. That RBS and Lloyds should want to cut their costs is understandable. But the cash machine network is a cost shared by all banks; if one bank decides to withdraw from the system, it is more likely that others would be forced to follow suit.”

BBC News – Business

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10 Wooden iPhone Cases for the Geeky Lumberjack

1. Grove Cases

A mix of bamboo and plant fiber composite combine to create this classic Grove case. There are tons of achingly cool etched patterns to choose from on the site, or you can design your own. For: iPhone 4/4S, 5, Cost: From $ 79

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: YouTube’s 20 Most-Shared Ads in October]

If you’re in the market for a new iPhone case, why not give wood a chance? We have found 10 gorgeous cases made from natural materials.

Take a look through our hand-picked selection in the photo gallery above. Let us know in the comments below if you’d consider a wooden cover for your Apple device.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Suicide Silence singer Lucker dies in California motorcycle accident

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Mitch Lucker, the lead singer of extreme heavy metal band Suicide Silence, died on Thursday of injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in Huntington Beach, California, police said.

The band from Southern California was given the Golden Gods award for best new talent by Revolver magazine in 2009.

Lucker, 28, was on a new Harley Davidson motorcycle driving in the Orange County city of Huntington Beach on Halloween night when he lost control and crashed into a light pole, according to a statement from the local police department.

He was taken to the University of California, Irvine Medical Center where he later died, police said. Investigators said they were looking into the cause of the collision and whether alcohol was a factor.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” the band said in a post on Facebook. “Mitch passed away earlier this morning from injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident.”

Suicide Silence in 2007 came out with the album “The Cleansing” and followed that up with the 2009 “No Time to Bleed” and last year’s “The Black Crown,” which made its way to No. 9 on the Billboard hard rock chart.

The band, whose musical style is referred to as “deathcore,” is originally from Riverside, California, a working-class community 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Will Dunham)

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“Wage scar” threatens U.S. labor recovery: Manpower CEO

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A “wage scar” caused by workers accepting lower pay could slow the pace of U.S. economic recovery for years to come, the chief executive of global staffing services company ManpowerGroup said on Fri day.

Workers are accepting lower pay because a U.S. labor recovery, while encouraging, remains muted.

“You get this kind of wage scar that occurs,” Jeff Joerres said in an interview following a stronger-than-expected October jobs report that also showed a dip in average hourly wages.

“You make a compromise and you’re now making $ 25,000 and you used to make $ 30,000,” Joerres said. “That kind of follows you … throughout your career. So by the time you’re 50 years old, when you normally would’ve been making $ 60,000, you’re now making $ 52,000.

“Those things are going to happen. We’re going to see lower disposable income and a more tepid economy for a long time.”

The U.S. economy added 171,000 jobs outside the farm sector last month. That was more than economists forecast, but the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent.

At that pace of payrolls growth, it would take more than two years for the labor market to reach pre-recession levels.

FRAGILE RECOVERY

Friday’s jobs report showed 13,600 temporary help jobs added in October. Those jobs, which rose at a slightly faster pace sequentially than is typical, are considered a leading indicator of broader labor activity because employers add or cut temporary workers before hiring or firing permanent staff.

The percentage of temps in the labor force rose to 1.9 percent but remains below its year 2000 record above 2 percent.

Temp jobs usually rise as companies ramp up in October ahead of the holiday shopping season. Although the move was encouraging, Joerres said, the jobs recovery remains fragile and a prolonged period of flattish growth is much more likely than a fast, ‘V-shaped’ recovery.

“It’s a hand-over-hand crawl out of where we were. If anybody wants to see a number like 250,000 to 300,000, which would not be unusual if we start really motoring, we have a ways to go before that,” he said. “When we talk to clients, the more conversations recently are about holding back as opposed to moving forward, and part of that is just a wall of uncertainty.”

Some uncertainty will lift once it is clear who wins Tuesday’s election, but attention will immediately turn to the so-called “fiscal cliff” of budget cuts and tax hikes that could begin in the new year.

“What we need to get on very quickly is the fiscal cliff. Regardless of who wins, what are you gonna do with that?” Joerres said. “That’s the one that really starts to affect the economy.”

Employers have cash but are waiting to see a clearer direction for the economy before they commit to spending it. Besides the U.S. fiscal situation and the possibility that President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms could be reversed if he fails to win re-election, corporate chiefs worry about the European debt crisis, China’s economy and recent tensions between Japan and China over disputed islands.

“The interconnected world is creating variables that we just can’t understand,” Joerres said. (Reporting by Nick Zieminski in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Civility efforts seek better behavior on campus

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Jewish students in the University of California system labeled terrorists for their support of Israel. Black high school students pelted by bananas on a Tennessee campus tour. A hostile student in Maryland challenging his professor to a fight after the teacher limited the use of cell phones and laptops during lectures.

In a society where anonymous Internet commenters freely lob insults, and politicians spew partisan barbs, the decline of basic civility isn’t limited to academia. But the push for more polite discourse — often as an extension of more entrenched diversity efforts — is firmly taking root on campus.

From the University of Missouri to Penn State and Vanderbilt, colleges across the country are treating the erosion of common decency as a public health epidemic on par with measles outbreaks and sexually transmitted diseases.

“What we’re trying to do is remind me people of what they already know, to get back in touch with things they probably learned growing up,” said Noel English, who heads a new Missouri civility campaign called “Show Me Respect,” a nod to the state’s nickname.

The Missouri campaign comes after two white students pleaded guilty in April 2010 to misdemeanor littering charges for dumping cotton balls outside the school’s black culture center during Black History Month; the students were sentenced to 80 hours of community service, two years of probation and had their driver licenses suspended for two months. A 2009 survey of more than 3,500 students found that nearly one in seven reported incidents of harassment on campus, from racial slurs to hostile emails.

At a campus civility workshop earlier this week, Eric Waters, a junior from Mansfield, Texas, who is the football team’s starting tight end, described how other students often label Mizzou football players as “mean” and “disrespectful” womanizers, sometimes to his face.

“It’s not about the stereotypes people put on us,” he said. “We try to carry ourselves like true gentlemen.”

The University of Tennessee enacted its civility campaign in 2011. There had been a cotton ball incident at the Knoxville school’s black cultural center after President Barack Obama‘s election and, in 2010, bananas were thrown at a group of more than 100 black high school students from Memphis during a campus visit.

“We want to be a campus that’s welcoming to all, and hostile to none,” said Chancellor Jimmy Cheek, who now outlines the school’s 10 “principles of civility and community” at freshman orientation. The shared values range from inclusivity and collegiality to respect and integrity.

In some cases, the campus civility campaigns are being challenged by First Amendment advocates who fear that such programs muzzle unpopular speech in the name of tolerance and diversity.

That was the complaint at North Carolina State University, which revised a residence hall policy that, among other stipulations, prohibited dorm dwellers from wearing T-shirts or hanging posters “disrespectful and hurtful to others” while also requiring students to “confront behavior or report to staff incidents of incivility and intolerance.”

The new policy now includes a written caveat calling the civility effort a set of “voluntary expectations” while emphasizing that the school is “strongly committed to freedom of expression.”

“Civility is an important value,” said Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which protested the Raleigh university’s civility policy. “But at the same time, it can’t be made the paramount issue in a free society, because there has to be space for people who have intense feelings about things to express those feelings in a way that really communicates the urgency and the depths of feeling that lies behind their opinions.”

When campuses attempt to compel civil behavior, Shibley said, they become “so committed to civility that if you say something uncivil, you are going to be penalized In some way, that’s going too far. It starts to infringe on the very expressions that are protected by the First Amendment.”

Many credit Pier Forni, a professor of Italian literature at Johns Hopkins University, as the dean of the campus civility movement. He started the Hopkins Civility Project 15 years ago, wrote the 2002 book “Choosing Civility” and is a frequent guest speaker on other campuses, including at Missouri earlier this year.

For Forni, the culprits behind contemporary incivility are numerous, from what he called “the crisis of civil engagement” in this country to eroding workplace manners to “radical informality” heightened by Facebook and related social media. Yet he has no interest in making civil behavior a campus requirement.

“Civility should be promoted, not believed in,” he said. “Civility is not something to enforce. “

Among the schools embracing those beliefs is the University of Arizona, which last year opened the National Institute for Civil Discourse after the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In 2010, Rutgers University launched its “Project Civility” just before freshman Tyler Clementi killed himself when a roommate secretly recorded the teen’s sexual encounter with another man. English, the Missouri campaign leader, said the New Jersey student’s suicide helped influence her decision to start a program on campus.

She, too, favors the voluntary approach, though her initial instincts said otherwise.

“My first thought was, ‘I’m a lawyer, we need a rule or a policy,’ but then my thinking was, ‘That’s not really necessary,’” she said. “We can have all the policies in the world, but what we want to do is raise awareness and get people thinking … We want to change the culture so it just becomes embedded.”

Or, as Noor Azizan-Gardner, Missouri’s chief diversity officer, put it: “I’m hoping when they graduate they will know what it means to be civil, kind and compassionate.”

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Online:

Show Me Respect: http://civility.missouri.edu/

University of Tennessee Principles of Civility and Community: http://civility.utk.edu/

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: http://thefire.org/

___ Alan Scher Zagier can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier

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NBC to hold a benefit concert for Sandy victims

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC will hold a benefit concert Friday for victims of Hurricane Sandy featuring some artists native to the areas hardest hit.

Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi of New Jersey and Billy Joel of Long Island are scheduled to appear at the concert, hosted by “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer.

Other performers include Christina Aguilera, Sting and Jimmy Fallon.

The telecast will benefit the American Red Cross and will be shown on NBC and its cable stations including Bravo, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and E! Other networks are invited to join in.

“Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together” will air at 8 p.m. EDT and will be taped-delayed in the West.

The telethon will be broadcast from NBC facilities in Rockefeller Center in New York City.

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NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.

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Living at high altitude tied to developmental delay

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – South American babies and toddlers living at high altitude were more likely to score poorly on early tests of brain development, in a new study.

Of all kids age three months to two years, one in five was at high risk of developmental delays, according to tests done at their pediatricians’ offices. That rose to between one in three and one in four for those who lived above 2,600 meters, or 8,530 feet.

Because there is less oxygen at higher elevations, researchers said blood flow in the uterus may also be decreased at altitude – which could impact the brain of a developing fetus.

“The findings emphasize the need for health care providers and policy-makers to recognize that altitude may increase developmental risks not just for physical growth, as has been reported, but for neurologic and cognitive development,” wrote George Wehby from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who conducted the research.

His study involved over 2,000 young kids evaluated at offices in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador in 2005 and 2006.

The babies and toddlers were all given a series of problem-solving and motor tasks to complete, which their doctors used to measure which ones might be at risk for delayed development.

Wehby found that on average, for every 100-meter (328-feet) increase in elevation, kids were 2 percent more likely to be judged at high risk of future developmental problems.

Compared to kids living below 800 meters (2,625 feet), those above 8,530 feet were twice as likely to be at high risk, according to their pediatricians’ evaluations.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

All of the babies in Bolivia lived above the 8,530-foot cut-off, and all the kids in Argentina, Brazil and Chile lived below it. Ecuador was the only country in the study that included kids from both high- and low-altitude regions.

Of the largest cities in the United States, Albuquerque has a high point of 6,120 feet and Denver of 5,470 feet. Many Western states – including California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah – have regions above 10,000 feet.

However, it’s hard to know whether the results apply to other communities at high elevation, according to Alexis Handal, an epidemiologist from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who does her research in Ecuador.

“We’re starting to realize there’s such a complicated social context within which these populations live that it’s very hard to look at one area and try to generalize to other areas,” Handal, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

For example, she said, parents’ work hours, whether families have access to nutritious food and what environmental toxins communities might be exposed to can all interact with factors like altitude to influence maternal and child health.

“Perhaps what we also have to focus on is… how can we also develop programs that promote infant development, that help families?” she added.

Wehby said in the study that babies born at higher elevations may be helped by earlier health screening to make sure they’re developing normally.

But he also pointed to the need for more research on why altitude may affect development – and whether similar patterns apply to kids in other high-altitude regions.

SOURCE: bitly.com/SsOh9z The Journal of Pediatrics, online October 22, 2012.

Parenting/Kids News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Comet to go into administration

1 November 2012 Last updated at 12:26 ET

Dan Wagner, Powa Technologies: “They failed to leverage their physical presence… ten years ago”

About 6,500 retail jobs are at risk after electrical chain Comet confirmed that it would be put into administration next week.

Private equity firm OpCapita, which owns the 240-store business, has lined up restructuring specialist Deloitte to act as administrator.

OpCapita bought Comet last year for £2, but the business has struggled from the downturn in consumer spending.

Comet’s demise is one of the biggest High Street casualties of recent years.

Two weeks ago, OpCapita said it was examining a number of potential bids for the retailer.

The administrator will run the business as a going concern while it assesses options for sales, closures and liquidation.

Comet said it was “urgently working” on plans to secure the company’s future. Customers with outstanding orders are being told it is “business as usual until further notice” and that the group intends to fulfil deliveries of products that have been paid for.

Comet’s customer care team is handling customer inquiries on 0844 8009595.

Continue reading the main story

• Any customers with Comet vouchers or gift cards can use them in stores at present


• Administrators would decide whether they would be honoured were the business to enter administration


• Generally, gift card holders are fairly low on a list of creditors when a business folds


• Extended warranties are overseen by a separate business. If it ceased trading, then a trust fund would be set up to meet obligations to customers who hold extended warranties


• The Comet website is currently out of action


• Customer enquiries are being answered by its customer card team on 0844 8009595

Shares of Comet’s rivals rose on news of the planned administration, with Dixons Retail, which owns PC World and Currys, jumping 15% as investors speculated that a major competitor could be removed from the market.

OpCapita bought Comet last February from Kesa Electricals, which had itself struggled to turn around the business. Comet is thought to have had operational losses of about £35m last year.

‘Market failure’

The economic downturn and pressure on consumer spending has led many people to put off purchases of big-ticket items such as TVs and large appliances. But sales of such items have also moved increasingly online.

Dan Wagner, a technology entrepreneur who has backed several internet businesses, told the BBC that Comet “was an accident waiting to happen” because successive managements had failed to understand the online world.

Retailers must now offer multi-channel options – shops, a website, purchases via mobile phones – to be successful, he said. “Comet failed to understand the importance of this for driving business.”

Jon Copestake, retail analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, also felt that Comet’s problems “come as little surprise”.

He said: “Not only has Comet faced deflationary pressures thanks to stiff competition and cheaper production costs, but core audio visual products are being undermined by combined platforms on smartphones and tablet computers.”

Comet is one of the biggest retail casualties since the demise of Woolworths in 2008. Other recent High Street collapses have included JJB Sports, Clinton Cards, Blacks Leisure, Game, and Peacocks.

America’s Best Buy recently pulled the plug on 11 giant electrical stores after failing to make inroads into the UK market.

Comet was founded in 1933 as a business charging batteries for wireless sets. It opened its first store in 1968, in Hull, and was bought by Kingfisher in 1984, which expanded the Comet brand into one of the most familiar names on the High Street.

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U.S. seeks patriotic computer geeks for help in cyber crisis

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Department of Homeland Security is considering setting up a “Cyber Reserve” of computer security experts who could be called upon in the event of a crippling cyber attack.

The idea came from a task force the agency set up to address what has long been a weak spot – recruiting and retaining skilled cyber professionals who feel they can get better jobs and earn higher salaries, in the private sector.

“The status quo is not acceptable,” DHS Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute told Reuters in a recent interview. “We are not standing around. There is a lot to do in cyber security.”

Lute said she hopes to have a working model for a Cyber Reserve within a year, with the first members drawn from retired government employees now working for private companies. The reserve corps might later look to experts outside of government.

The United States has become increasingly vocal about the need to beef up cyber defenses as Iranian hackers have repeatedly attacked the nation’s three biggest banks over the past year, raising the stakes in a long-running battle to protect private companies from digital attacks.

The detonation of a cyber “time bomb” at Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company in August caused unprecedented damage at a private company, pulling 30,000 PCs out of service and raising concerns that similar attacks could occur in the United States.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on October 11 that the country faces a potential “cyber Pearl Harbor” and that foreign groups have gained access to computer systems that control critical U.S. infrastructure, such as chemical, electricity and water plants.

The Department of Homeland Security has had trouble attracting and retaining top cyber talent since it was created after 9/11 in a massive merger of 22 agencies in 2002. In its early days, the DHS farmed out cyber work to contractors so it could quickly get systems running to improve national security.

As a result, the agency tends to award the most coveted cyber jobs to outside contractors. Those positions include forensics investigators, posts on “flyaway teams” that probe suspected cyber attacks and intelligence liaisons.

“It’s not the money that makes people go to the contractors. It’s the cool jobs,” said Alan Paller, co-chair of the DHS task force. “People want the excitement.”

The task force advised the DHS to give more exciting cyber work to government workers to help with retention.

NSA VS DHS

Over the past decade, only 3 percent of students who won scholarships through a prestigious government-funded program known as CyberCorps have taken jobs with DHS. In contrast, nearly a third chose the National Security Agency, according to the task force.

Tony Sager, a task force member and former NSA senior official, said the military intelligence agency has a strong “brand” that opens doors for recruiters.

“DHS doesn’t have that sense of ‘Wow,’” he said. “There are plenty of cool jobs at DHS. The job is identifying them.”

The NSA has spent decades building cachet with university students through on-campus programs and, more recently, with children through cartoon puzzles on the Web. Once people join the NSA, they typically stay for a long time, said Sager, who retired this year after 34 years at the agency.

The DHS task force recommended it set up two-year cyber programs at community colleges to train large numbers of people and encourage military veterans to participate. Lute said the first of those programs could start next year.

Jeff Moss, who co-chairs the task force, said the community college programs would produce more graduates than needed, but the question is how many of them would want to work for DHS.

“Hopefully we’ll get our fair share,” said Moss, who founded the Def Con hacking convention 20 years ago during a summer break before he started law school.

The DHS may need to boost salaries as well. One former agency official who left government for a job with a private company said that some staff quit DHS jobs, then were immediately returned as employees for outside contractors.

“On Friday they are a government employee working making $ 80,000 a year. On Monday they are a contractor at the same desk and the government is paying them roughly $ 150,000,” he said.

(Reporting By Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Andre Grenon)

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Brad Pitt donates $100K for gay marriage effort

WASHINGTON (AP) — Brad Pitt has agreed to donate $ 100,000 to help the Human Rights Campaign raise money for its efforts to support same-sex marriage initiatives in several states.

The nation’s largest gay rights group announced Wednesday that Pitt agreed to match contributions from the group’s members up to $ 100,000.

In an e-mail to members of the Human Rights Campaign, Pitt wrote that it’s “unbelievable” that people’s relationships will be put to a vote on Election Day.

Same-sex marriage will be on the ballot in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota and Washington state.

The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign says it has spent $ 8 million to push for marriage equality for gays and lesbians over the past two years, including $ 5 million in the four ballot measures this year.

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Firm linked to U.S. meningitis outbreak recalls all drugs

BOSTON (Reuters) – Ameridose, the sister company to the U.S. pharmacy linked to a national outbreak of meningitis that has killed 28 people, on Wednesday announced it was recalling all its products, in a move to cooperate with U.S. and state regulators.

The Westborough, Massachusetts-based company said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked it to improve its sterility testing processes.

The company said it had not received any reports of adverse reactions to the products it is recalling.

“Ameridose and FDA agree that the use of injectable products that are not sterile can represent a serious hazard to health,” the company said in a statement.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke, writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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Barclays in new regulatory probes

31 October 2012 Last updated at 13:29 ET

UK bank Barclays has announced that it is the subject of two new regulatory probes, soon after a series of scandals that have dented its reputation.

US authorities are looking at whether the way that Barclays won business complied with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The bank disclosed the probes as it reported a pre-tax statutory loss of £47m for the third quarter, down from a £2.4bn profit last year.

Shares in the bank fell 4.7%.

The loss includes charges to cover the payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling scandal.

“The spectre of more damage to the bank’s reputation in the form of further regulatory probes is weighing heavily on the shares,” said Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Barclays’ outlook statement is also cautious, whilst the previously announced extra PPI provision has dented the overall performance. On the upside, the bank has seen a reduction in impairments and costs, has further bolstered its capital position and has reduced its exposure to the weak peripheral European markets.”

Scandals

The US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into how Barclays won its business, while the second probe is by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc), which has been investigating Barclays power trading in the western US with respect to the period from late 2006 through 2008.

Ferc alleges that Barclays bought and sold electricity in enough volume to move exchange prices up or down to benefit the lender’s positions.

“Barclays intends to vigorously defend this matter,” the bank said.

The SEC conducts its investigations privately and a spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.

Barclays’ adjusted profits, not including additional charges, were £1.7bn, up from £1.3bn for the quarter last year.

Continue reading the main story

The bank said it needed to set aside a further £700m for PPI claims, on top of £1bn in 2011 and £300m in the first quarter of this year that it anticipated.

Chief executive Antony Jenkins said the results show “good momentum in our businesses despite the difficulties we faced through this period”.

Mr Jenkins took over at a difficult time for the banking group, which has seen its reputation severely dented. In June, Barclays was fined £290m by UK and US regulators for attempting to manipulate Libor, an interbank lending rate which affects mortgages and loans.

The scandal saw previous boss Bob Diamond and chairman Marcus Agius depart the bank.

And in August, the Serious Fraud Office started an investigation into payments between Barclays’ bank and Qatar Holding in 2008 when the bank was raising money in the Middle East during the banking crisis.

The entire financial services industry has come under scrutiny since the financial crisis in 2008.

The industry’s reputation has been battered further by the mis-selling of PPI, and the mis-selling of specialist insurance – called interest rate swaps – to small businesses.

Barclays has set aside provisions of £450m for interest-rate hedging products, it said.

It had already said it would take a £1.01bn charge related to revaluing the cost of its debt on its balance sheet.

In the third quarter, Barclays said its staff costs fell 9% to almost £2bn, including an increase in deferred charges for bonuses in previous years to £942m.

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Russia’s Mail.Ru to launch global expansion with online games

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian email-to-social networking group Mail.Ru is targeting online gamers as it prepares to launch services in foreign markets under the ‘my.com’ name.

“Games is what we can begin to enter new markets with,” Dmitry Grishin, the chief executive officer of Mail.Ru Group, told reporters on Tuesday.

The company, part-owned by metals tycoon Alisher Usmanov, did not elaborate on its international plans, saying only that it has been testing various products in foreign markets for more than six months.

It has previously focused on the domestic, Russian-language market.

Rival internet group Yandex has already expanded to Turkey and Czech Republic and said recently it would take the fight against Google in other emerging markets to offset the inroads made by the U.S. giant in its home market.

Mail.Ru operates two of the three largest Russian language social networks, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, instant messaging networks Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ and email service Mail.ru.

It also has a 1.17 percent stake in U.S. game maker Zynga, a 0.75 percent stake in social networking site Facebook and 4.12 percent of shares in daily deal website Groupon.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

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Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood engaged to marry

LONDON (Reuters) – Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood is engaged to be married to a 34-year-old theatre producer named Sally Humphreys, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The twice-married, 65-year-old musician and artist separated from his second wife Jo Wood in 2008 and had a public disagreement with her over the auction of some memorabilia in Los Angeles which went ahead earlier this month.

News of the impending wedding comes just after the Stones played a warm-up gig in Paris for 350 people and announced four dates in London and New York to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

It also comes ahead of the release next February of Jo Wood‘s memoirs, which promise to reveal her tales of life as the wife of a Rolling Stone.

Wood has recently been focusing on his visual art career and in April opened a New York City art show entitled, “Faces, Time and Places”, featuring portraits of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and other celebrities.

But he is still best known for his music and in April was inducted for a second time into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with other members of his former group The Faces, including Rod Stewart and Kenney Jones.

The Rolling Stones, which Wood joined in 1975 after Mick Taylor left the band, were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Steve Addison)

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Should schools close during bad flu outbreaks?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A new U.S. government study suggests that during a serious flu epidemic, closing schools can keep people – especially kids – out of the ER.

Now, researchers say, the big questions include, When is it best to close schools? And what are the downsides?

The study, reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, looked at what happened in two Texas communities during the H1N1 “swine” flu epidemic of 2009. In one community, schools were closed as a precaution; in the other, they weren’t.

It turned out that in the district where schools shut down, there were fewer ER visits for the flu.

What’s more, among kids age 6 and up, there was no increase in flu-related ER trips, while that rate doubled in the community where schools stayed open.

“The effect was most dramatic among school-age children,” said Dr. Martin S. Cetron, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There have been skeptics who’ve doubted that school closures could have much impact during a major flu outbreak, according to Cetron.

“They’ve said, well, people will just congregate in malls or other public places,” explained Cetron, who directs the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, and worked on the study.

But schools are different from malls, Cetron pointed out, with kids being in close contact with each other all day long.

He said he thinks this study, along with others, “settles” the question of whether school closures are effective. “Should this be an arrow in our quiver? I think the answer is ‘yes,’” Cetron said.

But lots of other questions remain.

“Under what conditions could (school closures) be warranted?” Cetron said. “What level of severity is needed?”

And if schools are closed, he noted, what are the downsides? Parents will have to stay home from work, or find child care. And kids and teachers will have to make up the lost school time somehow. So the expected benefits of school closings would need to be worth the troubles.

PREDICTION IS DIFFICULT

Every year, between five percent and 20 percent of Americans get the flu, contributing to some 36,000 deaths. The elderly and people with chronic medical conditions, like heart or lung disease, are among those most at risk.

But the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic was noteworthy in that it hit children and healthy young adults hard.

The current study looked at two adjacent counties in Texas: Tarrant County, which closed its schools for eight days after a few kids were diagnosed with H1N1; and Dallas County, where schools did not shut down after a few cases were detected.

Before Tarrant County’s school closures, the flu accounted for about 3 percent of all ER visits to area hospitals; during the closures, that rate inched up to just over 4 percent. But the increase was bigger in Dallas County during the same time period: from 3 percent, to just over 6 percent.

The impact was most clear among kids ages 6 to 18. In Tarrant County, there was no increase in the proportion of ER visits blamed on the flu. In Dallas County, the figure more than doubled, from about 5 percent to 11 percent.

“It’s important to point out that this was a pre-emptive school closure,” Cetron said. “Usually, most closures we see are reactive.”

Predicting how a flu outbreak might affect a local area is far from easy. It’s not like tracking a hurricane, for instance, Cetron pointed out.

Decisions on school closures are made locally. For school districts to make wise decisions, Cetron said communication with local and state health agencies is key.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Tly968 Clinical Infectious Diseases, online October 19, 2012.

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Global shares see modest rise as U.S. storm impact assessed

LONDON (Reuters) – World shares rose modestly in subdued trading on Tuesday as investors waited to see the full impact of a massive storm that wrought destruction across the eastern United States.

The monster storm, code-named Sandy, was responsible for at least 15 deaths, left millions without power, and has closed much of New York’s financial district.

Wall Street shut for a second day, and bond trading was also halted as the focus switched to whether markets would be able to resume activity on the final day of the month on Wednesday, which is key to pricing investment portfolios.

The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares <.FTEU3> was up 0.75 percent at 1,101.75 points and, after gains earlier in Asia, the MSCI world equity index <.MIWD00000PUS> had risen 0.3 percent to 328.86 points.

U.S. stock index futures, which kept trading in Europe, edged lower, but volumes were very light. <.N>

“We’re a bit lost without Wall Street, frankly,” said Alexandre Tixier, technical analyst at TradingSat, in Paris.

Across European stock markets, attention was on corporate earnings, with results from well known names like Germany’s Deutsche Bank , Swiss banking giant UBS and oil major BP lifting prices. UBS shares leapt over four percent as it confirmed a plan to cut 10,000 jobs.

Britain’s FTSE 100 index <.FTSE> was up 0.75 percent, Germany’s DAX index <.GDAXI> up 0.9 percent and Switzerland’s SMI index <.SSMI> up 0.5 percent.

MODEST BOJ MOVE

In the currency markets, which remained open, the dollar lost ground against a resurgent yen after the Bank of Japan eased policy less aggressively than had been hoped for at its regular policy setting meeting.

The BOJ increased its monetary stimulus for a second month running, this time by 11 trillion yen ($ 138.5 billion), disappointing many who had positioned for a more aggressive increase.

“It was a very skeptical response to the BOJ policy meeting, made worse by the fact they have revised lower the growth and inflation outlook,” said Jane Foley, senior currency strategist at Rabobank. “That has seen the yen unwind a lot of the softer tone we saw going into this meeting.”

The dollar hit a one-week low of 79.25 yen and was down 0.3 percent against a basket of major currencies at 79.67 points <.DXY>.

The weaker dollar helped the European common currency climb 0.4 percent to $ 1.2958, while news the Spanish economy had shrunk slightly less than expected in the third quarter and Italy’s borrowing costs had fallen also supported the euro.

But gains for the single currency are expected to be limited by continuing questions over whether Greece can agree a deal with its creditors, and when Spain might request financial aid.

Spain’s economy contracted for a fifth straight quarter between July and September, and prices rose, according to new data, keeping pressure on the government to take some action as the prospect of further civil unrest grows.

“Spain’s economy is suffering terribly, which will continue to hit government revenues, and a modest decline in bond yields will not solve the problem,” said Kit Juckes, strategist at Societe Generale.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has maintained an ambivalent stance towards applying for a politically embarrassing rescue that would kickstart an ECB bond-buying programme and ease financing costs.

Investors, too, seem willing to wait; 10-year Spanish bond yields were little changed at 5.67 percent.

German government bonds, the benchmark of European fixed-income markets, were also mostly flat.

Italy was even able to sell 7 billion euros of new five- and 10-year government bonds at its lowest cost since May 2011.

Italian 10-year yields dipped 1 basis point lower on the day to 5 percent, having risen about 25 basis points in the last two weeks.

OIL FLOATS

In oil markets, prices were edging higher as traders awaited news of the damage inflicted by Sandy on refineries and pipelines on the U.S. east coast, though weaker demand from the storm-hit region capped gains.

Brent crude for December rose 8 cents to $ 109.36 a barrel, recovering from a fall to $ 108.75 earlier, while U.S. crude for December was up 60 cents at $ 86.14.

U.S. gasoline futures were little changed at $ 2.7530 a gallon, after climbing more than 5 cents on Monday on expectations of tighter supply.

“People are just holding back a little bit to see if there’s any real damage and impact, and at the moment it’s too hard to see,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, an analyst at SEB in Oslo.

(Additional reporting by Nia Williams, Blaise Robinson and Alice Baghdjian; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Labrinth, Taylor Swift top UK music charts

LONDON (Reuters) – Singer-producer Labrinth topped the British singles charts this week with the ballad “Beneath Your Beautiful” featuring Emeli Sande.

It was the first No. 1 as a solo artist for the British singer.

Boy band JLS was new in at No. 6 with “Hottest Girl in the World”, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.

The other new entry in the singles chart was “Wonder” by British rapper Naughty Boy, also featuring Sande, which took the 10th position.

Taylor Swift swept the album charts with her fourth full-length release “Red”. It is the first time the American country singer has topped the British charts.

British band Lawson, another new entry, scored fourth position with their debut studio album “Chapman Square”.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Mass. shuts down another compounding pharmacy

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts shut down another compounding pharmacy over sterility concerns after a surprise inspection prompted by the nationwide meningitis outbreak linked to a different company, state officials have said.

Dr. Madeleine Biondolillo of the state Department of Public Health said inspectors went to the Waltham location of Rhode Island-based Infusion Resource last week and found significant issues with the environment in which drugs were being mixed.

The company was inspected when it first opened in December 2009 and there had been no complaints since. She said the manager of record at the company was a former employee at Ameridose, which is owned by the same people who ran New England Compounding Center, the company linked to the meningitis outbreak.

She would not identify the drugs or say what specific issues investigators found at Infusion Resource, but she said they were concerned about sterility. The company mixes sterile injectable drugs for people who have been released from hospitals.

The company has agreed to contact its 40 patients and their doctors and ask them to return any unused medication. Biondolillo says there is no indication any medication the company compounded is unsafe. She said the company also had an area to administer intravenous drugs, which it was not licensed to do. She says the company voluntarily surrendered its pharmacy license this weekend.

Company Chief Executive Officer Bernard F. Lambrese said in a statement that the company will take immediate action to fix issues identified by Massachusetts investigators, including a crack in a window, the condition of flooring in a clean room and a leak in a refrigerator drain hose.

“No issues were cited relating to the integrity of our products nor to the quality of our compounding practices,” Lambrese said. “I want to reassure our patients and the general public of the safety, purity and efficacy of our solutions produced at our Waltham pharmacy since we were first licensed in 2009. Patient safety is something we take very seriously.”

Lambrese said in the meantime patient needs are being served out of the company’s pharmacy in its main headquarters in East Providence, R.I.

The surprise inspections started in the wake of the nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord, that has sickened more than 300 people, including 23 who have died, in 17 states. The outbreak has been linked to a steroid made by the NECC and taken mainly for back pain. Compounding pharmacies like NECC custom mix solutions in doses or forms generally not commercially available.

Dr. Lauren Smith, interim commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, said Sunday that the department is adding five inspectors to help review all compounding pharmacies in the state by the end of the year. Previously pharmacies were inspected only when they opened or if they moved or were the subject of complaints.

Smith also said the state pharmacy board, which oversees compounding pharmacies, has asked member Sophia Pasedis to step down. Pasedis, a pharmacy manager for Ameridose, has been on the board since 2004. The state previously said she had recused herself from all matters related to Ameridose and the NECC, but Smith said minutes from pharmacy board meetings raise questions about whether that is true. She said Pasedis has so far declined to leave the board. Her term ends next month.

Tom Kiley, an attorney for Pasedis, said a resignation would be mostly symbolic because she doesn’t have much time left in her term and the board will mostly be dealing with issues related to NECC, which she would not participate in.

“As a practical matter it doesn’t make sense,” Kiley said. “What she’s going to do is whatever she can to contribute to the board and assist the board.”

He said she always recused herself on issues related to NECC and Ameridose. He said meeting minutes may be vague because she may have been present at some point in a given meeting but not necessarily when NECC was discussed.

Smith said the Department of Public Health is taking other steps including proposing regulations to require frequent reports from compounding pharmacies and forming a commission to look at best practices in other states.

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More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

___

AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

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