Swimming goggles and 'V for Vendetta' masks cropped up in street vendors' hands within days of the first demonstrations in Taksim Square.
By Tom A. Peter,?Correspondent / June 12, 2013
Turkish police firing tear gas battle antigovernment protesters as they try to reestablish police control of Taksim Square after an absence of 10 days in the heart of Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday. Turkish street vendors were out selling swimming goggles and disposable face masks as protection against tear gas.
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
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A local, slice-of-life story from a monitor correspondent
After almost a decade in the Middle East and Central Asia, I?ve found local street vendors to be among the most responsive businessmen I?ve ever encountered. When I got off the plane in Istanbul today, it started to rain. By the time I took a cab into the city, street vendors were out selling Chinese umbrellas for about $3.20 a piece.
Skip to next paragraph Tom A. Peter
Correspondent
Tom A. Peter is a journalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan where he covers news and features throughout the country. He has also reported for The Monitor from Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, and throughout the United States.
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While most people in Turkey will tell you that they were taken completely off guard by the protests, within days street vendors were out selling swimming goggles and disposable face masks for about $2.67 each as protection against tear gas. They also had masks popularized by the movie "V is for Vendetta" and the "Anonymous" hacker group, which have been adopted by many Turkish demonstrators.
The speed at which they were able to offer these items is astonishing when you think that before the protests, most of these people were probably selling toys and products that generally?had nothing to do with protection from tear gas or revolutionary symbolism. I wouldn?t be surprised to learn that they have boxes of pro-government paraphernalia ready in case the protests are permanently squashed.
Of course, the quality of their wares is always questionable. On my first day covering the protests, I didn?t have a gas mask so I purchased a pair of swimming goggles and a face mask, the sort of thing you?d wear to hang dry wall in your basement. When I hit a cloud of tear gas the goggles provided some protection for my eyes, but immediately fogged, blinding me more than the tear gas. As for the mask? I would have been better off trying to hold my breath.
Coming back to Istanbul after yesterday's fierce clashes, I decided that I needed a real gas mask, and sought out a vendor with a brick and mortar storefront. I found an industrial safety shop where the clerk told me that in the past 10 days he?d sold more gas masks than he normally sells in three months.
Normally, Turkish people couldn't care less about industrial safety and breathing toxic fumes, especially if it means spending money, he told me, but now he has people coming in to buy masks as gifts for their friends. Still, committed to selling quality products, he lacks a street merchant?s adaptability. He told me he worried he would burn through his inventory shortly if the demand continued.
If I?m ever in an end-of-days scenario, I hope there?s a Middle Eastern street vendor around. I?m sure he?ll have something to sell me for $5 or less that will protect me (at least psychologically) from anything ranging from a Biblical plague to a zombie apocalypse. In fact, whatever I?d need to weather either of those scenarios is probably already in a box wherever street vendors store their wares.
Both iOS and Android are rapidly approaching the million app mark. It's an absurd number of apps, and making a living in that vast sea is a tough prospect. Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 are both over 100,000 apps, which on its own is also an absurd number. How is a developer supposed to get noticed when there are thousands upon thousands of other apps in the same store?
A developer can rely on search and word-of-mouth, but that's only going to get them so far. How is a developer supposed to get their app featured on the platform storefront? How are they supposed to tell users and publications about their app? And just how can they convince users to actually download the app? Is it better to be flashy or funny, informative or intriguing? Does it matter what audience you're targeting?
Just bobbing up and down in the waves of a million other apps is counting on an impossible stroke of luck to get noticed. Developers can be their own best advocates - but how does somebody who specializes in code and interface design come to understand what it takes to market their wares?
In South Fork, Colo., a surging Colorado fire has forced hundreds to evacuate, one of several recent blazes that made for an especially destructive fire season in the state. Now federal cuts may diminish fire prevention funding even further across the nation, forcing some communities to take matters into their own hands. ?NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.
By Keith Coffman, Reuters
DENVER - Three wildfires sparked by lightning were raging out of control in rugged Colorado mountain terrain, prompting the evacuation of two towns and menacing a third on Friday.
The West Fork Fire Complex - consisting of two separate fires in Rio Grande County in southern Colorado - forced 600 residents of South Fork to flee as high winds helped the blazes grow from 12,000 acres to 30,000 acres overnight.
"The fire behavior we saw yesterday was so extreme, it was ... unprecedented," said Eric Norton, a fire behavior analyst with the National Incident Management Organization.
A smoke plume from the blazes billowed 30,000 feet into the air, and firefighters reported 100-foot flames.
A string of fires have claimed at least two lives, charred hundreds of square miles and torched hundreds of homes across the western United States and in Alaska, which is baking in a heat wave.
The blazes, coming just as firefighters near Colorado Springs have contained the state's most destructive wildfire on record, underscore concerns that prolonged drought conditions in the West could intensify this year's fire season.
Much of Colorado is on high fire alert for the next several days due to heat, low humidity and strong winds, the National Weather Service said.
Fire spokeswoman Betsy Coffee said firefighters were deployed around South Fork to prevent flames from entering the community. Aerial crews were attacking the blazes with fire retardant and water drops.
Farther east in Huerfano County, a wind-driven blaze forced the evacuation of about 800 residents of the town of La Veta. The fire was bearing down on Walsenburg, a community of 3,000.
Another Huerfano County fire that forced about 200 people to flee a Boy Scout camp this week has grown to 9,100 acres and destroyed nine structures and four outbuildings, fire officials said.
In Arizona, officials said more than 600 firefighters continued to make progress against a blaze that forced the evacuation of 465 homes near the city of Prescott, about 100 miles north of Phoenix. No structures have been lost.
The Arizona fire, which is 10 percent contained, has claimed 6,732 acres of bone-dry chaparral and pine forests since it broke out on Tuesday.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
A banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, is displayed at Central, Hong Kong's business district, Thursday, June 20, 2013. A WikiLeaks spokesman who claims to represent Snowden has reached out to government officials in Iceland about the potential of the NSA leaker applying for asylum in the Nordic country, officials there said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
A banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, is displayed at Central, Hong Kong's business district, Thursday, June 20, 2013. A WikiLeaks spokesman who claims to represent Snowden has reached out to government officials in Iceland about the potential of the NSA leaker applying for asylum in the Nordic country, officials there said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A government watchdog testified Thursday there may have been problems with a security clearance background check conducted on the 29-year-old federal contractor who disclosed previously secret National Security Agency programs for collecting phone records and Internet data ? just as news media disclosed more information about those programs.
Appearing at a Senate hearing, Patrick McFarland, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's inspector general, said USIS, the company that conducted the background investigation of former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, is now under investigation itself.
McFarland declined to say what triggered the inquiry of USIS or whether the probe is related to Snowden. But when asked by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., if there were any concerns about the USIS background check on Snowden, McFarland answered: "Yes, we do believe that there may be some problems."
Meanwhile, new details emerged about the scope of two recently disclosed NSA programs ? one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.
Two new documents published Thursday by The Guardian newspaper ? one labeled "top secret" and the other "secret" ? said NSA can keep copies of intercepted communications from or about U.S. citizens indefinitely if the material contains significant intelligence or evidence of crimes.
McFarland declined after the Senate hearing to describe to reporters the type of investigation his office is conducting. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said she was told the inquiry is a criminal investigation related "to USIS' systemic failure to adequately conduct investigations under its contract."
"We are limited in what we can say about this investigation because it is an ongoing criminal matter," said McCaskill, chairwoman of the Senate subcommittee on financial and contracting oversight. "But it is a reminder that background investigations can have real consequences for our national security."
McCaskill's panel conducted the hearing jointly with Tester's subcommittee on efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs.
USIS, based in Falls Church, Va., said in a statement that it has never been informed that it is under criminal investigation. USIS received a subpoena from the inspector general's office in January 2012 for records, the statement said. "USIS complied with that subpoena and has cooperated fully with the government's civil investigative efforts," according to the company.
USIS declined to comment on whether it conducted a background investigation of Snowden. The company said it performs thousands of background investigations each year for OPM and other government agencies. "These investigations are confidential and USIS does not comment on them," the USIS statement said.
The background check USIS performed on Snowden was done in 2011 and was part of periodic reinvestigations that are required for employees who hold security clearances, according to McFarland and Michelle Schmitz, the assistant inspector general for investigations at OPM.
Schmitz said the investigation of USIS commenced later in 2011.
Booz Allen Hamilton, the company where Snowden was working at the time of the disclosures, fired him for violations of the firm's code of ethics and firm policy. The company said he had been a Booz Allen employee for less than three months.
Snowden worked previously at the CIA and probably obtained his security clearance there. But like others who leave the government to join private contractors, he was able to keep his clearance after he left and began working for outside firms.
Of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21 percent, work for outside contractors, according to a January report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors.
OPM's Federal Investigative Services division performs almost all the background investigations for federal agencies and nearly 75 percent of the investigators who perform background checks are contractors, according to information on the agency's website.
At the hearing, McFarland called for much closer oversight of the investigators who conduct background checks. He said that 18 background investigators and record searchers have been criminally convicted since 2006 for fabricating information in background reports.
McFarland's office is actively working on 11 fabrication cases and another 36 cases involving background investigators are pending, according to data he provided to the subcommittees.
Of the 18 investigators who were criminally convicted, 11 were federal employees and seven were contractors. Of the 47 active and pending cases, six involve federal employees and 41 involve contractors, according to McFarland.
The new documents revealed by The Guardian were signed by Attorney General Eric Holder. They include point-by-point directions on how an NSA employee must work to determine that a person being targeted has not entered the United States. If NSA finds the target has entered the U.S., it will stop gathering phone and Internet data immediately, the documents say.
If supervisors determine that information on a U.S. person or a target who entered the U.S. was intentionally targeted, that information is destroyed, according to the documents.
But if a foreign target has conversations with an American or a U.S.-based person whom NSA supervisors determine is related to terrorism, or contains significant intelligence or evidence of crimes, that call or email or text message can be kept indefinitely. Encrypted communications also can be kept indefinitely, according the documents.
Administration officials had said the U.S. phone records NSA gathered could only be kept for five years. A fact sheet those officials provided to reporters mentioned no exceptions.
The documents outline fairly broad authority when the NSA monitors a foreigner's communications. For instance, if the monitored foreigner has been criminally indicted in the U.S. and is speaking to legal counsel, NSA has to cease monitoring the call. The agency, however, can log the call and mine it later so long as conversation protected by attorney-client privilege is not used in legal proceedings against the foreigner.
The NSA had no comment when asked about the newly revealed documents.
___
Follow Lardner on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rplardner and Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier
No Talk Mobile Hangout today, as everyone's attention is already split between Facebook on one coast and Samsung on several others. Whether Instagram gets video or Samsung remembers Windows Phone exists, the Mobile Nations team will have it covered. So sit back, relax, and hit the links below for whatever event today interests you the most -- including our own, of course!
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? Jack White, Kitty and Joe Jonas are among the winners of the O Music Awards.
The off-kilter 24-hour awards show hosted by the MTV family of networks wrapped up Thursday night. White won the analog genius award. Kitty was named best web-born artist, Jonas won best artist Instagram and Yoko Ono took the digital genius award.
MTV, CMT and VH1 hosted 24 hours of performances from artists like Asher Monroe, Gavin DeGraw and Atlas Genius in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville. Andrew WK also set a record by drumming continuously for 24 hours with assistance from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and others.
And fans voted to give the band Darling Parade the opportunity to perform during MTV's Video Music Awards weekend in August. Other winners included Avicii and Linkin Park.
American DVRs are inferior to European ones for one very important reason.
Photo by Thinkstock
It took a few minutes shy of forever to get to the end of Game 1 of hockey?s Stanley Cup Final, but at least for non-Bostonians, it was worth the wait. Four hours and 38 minutes after the game began, Andrew Shaw finally scored the winning goal to push the Chicago Blackhawks past the Boston Bruins in the third overtime. The game?s not-so-sudden death didn?t come quite quickly enough for one unlucky hockey watcher. As that anonymous fan explained on Reddit, adding an extra two hours to the end of his DVR recording seemed like a smart move. But in the end, those buffer hours left him just six seconds shy of seeing the winning goal. Ain?t that a puck in the teeth.
I can relate. In the interest of sleep and sanity, I time-shifted the early rounds of the NBA playoffs, catching up on the previous night?s games each morning. Alas, my recording of Game 1 of the NBA?s Western Conference semis, in which the Spurs beat the Warriors 129?127 in double overtime, ended just before the final shot went in the air. (I think the Warriors could still pull this one out!) As a savvy DVR user, I of course padded my recording by an extra hour, just in case the game extended beyond its scheduled end time. But an hour, or even two, sometimes isn?t enough. That?s the peril of taping live sporting events. A long fifth set, a bee delay, or yet another period without the puck going in the net?all can lead to a game overspilling its programming window by hours. Worst of all, the sporting events most likely to be ruined in this manner are precisely the ones we most want to watch to the end: those extra-long, extra-tense games that go into overtime or extra innings.
It?s easy to imagine a universe in which DVRs worked better. Rather than forcing TV watchers to pad their recordings manually, broadcasters could send a signal to cable and satellite providers when a program begins and another when it ends. Your DVR would grab these signals, ensuring that it starts each recording when it should start and ends it when should end?not at some (often-wrong) scheduled time, but at the real time. This wouldn?t just solve ball, stick, and puck problems. It would also benefit everyone who?s suffered the pain of missing the last joke on 30 Rock because the show runs just a little bit beyond its allotted time.
Here?s the good news: This hypothetical DVR utopia actually exists, and a lot of people are living in it. The bad news for me and my fellow Americans: The United States is trapped in the bowels of DVR hell, and we?re not going to escape any time soon.
Now, let us take a journey to this magical land where DVRs work as they should. Our tour guide is Raj Patel, the chief solutions architect for the United Kingdom?s Freesat, a partnership between ITV and the BBC that provides free satellite TV service to 1.7 million homes. Patel explains that broadcasters supply Freesat and certain other international television providers with what?s called ?present and following? information?that is, the identity of the program that?s airing right now and the one that?s scheduled to air next. Even if a program (like, say, a sporting event) is supposed to end at 10:30 p.m., the broadcaster will not change that present and following data until the game is actually over. A customer?s DVR, in turn, will not stop recording until it?s been signaled that the present and following information has changed. This feature is called ?accurate recording,? and that?s exactly what it is. It means you?ll never miss the end of a game?not even a Champions League final that goes into extra time.
This isn?t a special feature reserved exclusively for couch potatoes with British accents. NorDig, the body that specifies digital TV standards in Scandinavia and Ireland, also mandates that DVRs come equipped with accurate recording technology. This feature is also available in Australia, where the TV provider Freeview calls it ?intuitive recording? and brags that ?you will never miss the end of a recorded show again? thanks to a system in which each show gets a unique reference code.
Why do Brits and Aussies get to watch impeccable recordings of ?football? while red-blooded, American football gets cut off by our inferior American DVRs? It?s not because the technology somehow doesn?t work on our side of the pond. Based on interviews with multiple people at various industry stakeholders, I believe that accurate/intuitive/non-terrible recording would be feasible in the United States. The reason it doesn?t exist, I believe, is that American broadcasters and service providers don?t want it to exist. But we need to make our voices heard. The time is now to save our country from substandard DVR technology.
Broadcast standards aren?t uniform across the world. Europe, Australia, India, parts of Africa, and a bunch of other places comply with the DVB standard, while North America goes by something called ATSC. But Dave Arland, a spokesman for ATSC, says there?s nothing about the North American broadcast standard that would prevent any company here from implementing accurate recording.
Similarly, a source at a major U.S. television service provider?who refused to go on the record, perhaps fearing an onslaught of marauding customers?told me the company?s DVRs are capable of accurate recording. The issue, the source said, is that the broadcasters would need to provide them with real-time data on the start and end times of live events. That?s already happening in the United Kingdom and other places with accurate recording, but not in North America.
A Freedom of Information Act request from The Atlantic Wire for the military records of Edward Snowden was "withheld in its entirety" by the Department of the Army. Despite the public value of better understanding the NSA leaker's first stint as a government employee, the Army exercised a legal exemption allowing it to reserve information that could "reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings." Experts question that decision.
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Our initial request, sent on June 10, asked for "The military records of Edward Snowden, formerly employed by the United States Army, originally from Elizabeth City, North Carolina." At the time ??and still today ??not much was known about Snowden's time in the Army Reserve, during which he apparently sought a position with the special forces.
RELATED: Snowden Speaks: 'I'm Neither Traitor Nor Hero. I'm an American.'
What little we do know comes thanks to a Guardian article on the same day, in which the paper's Spencer Ackerman reported that the Army had refused to release the service record without citing a reason. The Army did, however, share the tenure of his service and the reason for his discharge: "he broke both his legs in a training accident." And it revealed Snowden's birthday. Today, he turns 30. Yesterday, the Wire received a response to our request for the complete file. In it, Army Information Release Specialist Monique Wey Gilbert cited the seventh of the FOIA's nine exemptions. (The eighth, if you're wondering, is "information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions.")
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It's not clear if charges have yet been filed against Snowden. The Justice Department has repeatedly indicated that it plans to do so, and, during his interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama indicated that an investigation was "taking place," and that "the case has been referred to the DOJ" for that purpose.
RELATED: Hong Kong May Have Been Ed Snowden's Biggest Mistake
Given that Snowden's military service lasted from May to September of 2004, according to the Army spokesman Ackerman spoke with, it's highly unlikely that it is conducting any enforcement action. Alex Abdo, staff attorney at the ACLU's National Security Project, told The Atlantic Wire by phone that the exemptionwas "not inconsistent with our experience" ??but generally for those facing enforcement action by the military. The ACLU has seen information withheld under a 7(a) exemption, specifically in a case being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Division. Whether or not the Army withheld the information at the behest of the Department of Justice is unclear; a Justice spokesperson declined to comment.
That we know Snowden's period of service raises a question of its own. Under FOIA, the government is supposed to release any information that it possibly can. Clearly, the length of Snowden's enlistment is information that would be included in his personnel file and, therefore, should have been released under our request. "It's not supposed to withhold whole batches of documents just because some of it is withholdable," Abdo told us. "It's suprising that they're withholding everything."
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, agreed. "If they denied access to the entire record, en masse, I think that's problematic," Fidell told us by phone. He, too, had seen the exemption used in the past, but "not simply for personnel records." Fidell suggested that detailed records, which, for example, might explore a psychiatric condition or stigmatizing discharge, could be withheld under FOIA's sixth exemption. Even Snowden had a right to privacy, Fidell pointed out, ironic though it might be.
The FOIA process allows for an appeal of a withholding; the Army does so through its Initial Denial Authority. We plan to exercise that option in an effort to present as full a picture as possible of a man who left high school, then the Army, and then the NSA before he was supposed to.
Isolated, related snail populations in Ireland and the Pyrenees suggests that humans carried the creatures north by sea. Dina Fine Maron reports
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A population of snails in Ireland shares genetic traits and physical characteristics with another population in the Pyrenees. And you hardly ever find such snails elsewhere in Europe. So how did they make the hop without leaving any obvious trail? Researchers now think that Stone-Age humans carried the creatures by sea some 8,000 years ago. The analysis is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Adele J. Grindon and Angus Davison, Irish Cepaea nemoralis Land Snails Have a Cryptic Franco-Iberian Origin That Is Most Easily Explained by the Movements of Mesolithic Humans]
The critters in question are a variety of banded wood snails. Birds sometimes move meals long distances, but no known migration route covers these two areas. People are thus the most likely travelers to pick up a snail in the south of France and drop it in Ireland.
Fossil records suggest snails in the Pyrenees were part of the diet of Mesolithic humans. And the river that flanks the Pyrenees is known to have been a trade route to the ocean. The researchers conjecture that migrating humans brought them on the voyage to Ireland either accidentally or for an escargot snack. A fate that some snails escaped to found the population there today.
NASA researchers have composed an interactive, panoramic view of Mars created with more than 900 exposures taken from the Curiosity rover.
By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 20, 2013
A slice of the panorama from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity with 1.3 billion pixels in the full-resolution version. It shows Curiosity at the "Rocknest" site where the rover scooped up samples of windblown dust and sand.
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NASA has released an interactive, billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, an amalgamation of some 900 exposures shot from Curiosity?s cameras.
The grand, unearthly view stretches like a timeline of Curiosity?s journey, from the site where Curiosity collected its first rock sample to Mount Sharp, to which the rover is now chugging. The result is a landscape portrait as majestic as any Ray Bradbury novel: a red-brown, rocky desert, sloping to a distant mountain bathed in dust.
"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras' capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. "You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."
Deen assembled the panorama using some 850 frames from Curiosity?s telephoto camera, along with about 21 frames from its wider-angle camera and some 25 black-and-white frames from the rover?s Navigation Camera. The images were shot on different days in the fall of 2012, showing variation in atmospheric quality and light.
The 1.3-billion-pixel image can be seen at NASA?s website with zoom and pan tools that let earthling explorers tour the red planet. A scaled-down version of the photograph is also available for download.
The raw, single-frames that Curiosity sends home are regularly posted on NASA?s homepage for its rover.
Curiosity has been on Mars since August and has continuously sent back to Earth information that has changed our understanding of the far-off planet. Earlier this June, Curiosity found a rock containing clay-mineral elements that could only have formed in water ? evidence that the dusty planet once had fresh water.
While the?Windows Azure?documentation is pretty comprehensive and developer friendly, there are some other great resources as well:
1.?Channel 9 Microsoft DevRadio 21-part video tutorial series - Looking to get started with Windows Azure without poring over text? Check out the 21-part video tutorial series "Practical Azure with Jim O?Neil":
Azure Basics: 11 minutes, 13 seconds
What to do with Blobs?: 15 minutes, 14 seconds
Why do we need Drives?: 9 minutes, 23 seconds
Using the Content Delivery Network (CDN): 10 minutes, 33 seconds
Table Storage Overview: 15 minutes, 44 seconds
Windows Azure SQL Database: 19 minutes, 25 seconds
SQL Database Federations: 18 minutes, 42 seconds
SQL Data Sync: 18 minutes, 3 seconds
Windows Azure Web Sites: 11 minutes, 35 seconds
Web Roles: 15 minutes, 36 seconds
Worker Roles: 8 minutes, 26 seconds
Caching: 17 minutes
Windows Azure Queue Storage: 13 minutes, 12 seconds
Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Part 1: 21 minutes, 23 seconds
Windows Azure Virtual Machines ? Part 2: 15 minutes, 33 seconds
Traffic Manager: 13 minutes, 53 seconds
Identity: 18 minutes, 59 seconds
Service Bus: 11 minutes, 26 seconds
Virtual Networks: 13 minutes, 10 seconds
SQL Reporting: 13 minutes, 31 seconds
HDInsight Service: 15 minutes, 59 seconds
2.?Technet E-Book Gallery for Microsoft Technologies?- Detailed, though not beginner-level, freely download-able ebooks.
work in progress...
Also see: Free Pluralsight videos Free 42 episode video series on HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript for Absolute Beginners
Labels: Azure, Learning Resources
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High costs of raising a child challenges state's most vulnerable caregivers: GrandparentsPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Gwen Driscoll gdriscoll@ucla.edu 310-794-0930 University of California - Los Angeles
Raising a child is not cheap. Now try raising one on a fixed income and long past the age one associates with parenthood: 65 years and older.
More than 300,000 grandparents in California have primary responsibility for their grandchildren, and of this group, almost 65,000 are over the age of 65. More than 20,000 care for their grandkids without any extended family assistance at home.
A new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development shows that these families older adults raising grandchildren alone may be among the most vulnerable residents in California, due to the state's high cost of living and low levels of public assistance.
"California's high cost of living turns the loving act of caring for a grandchild into a desperate financial risk," said the UCLA center's D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, lead author of the study. "And older grandparents, many on fixed incomes and with limited mobility, are often the least able to advocate for, and access, public assistance."
The brief's new calculations based on the true cost of living in every California county show that nearly half of custodial grandparents who are 65 and over in California do not have enough income to cover the most basic needs of the grandchildren placed in their care. Yet public programs that might provide benefits that could help grandparents cope, such as the state foster-care program, are often difficult to access or off-limits altogether for family caregivers.
"There is a hypocrisy built into how assistance is allocated to children and their caregivers in California," said Susan E. Smith, director of the California Elder Economic Security Initiative at the Insight Center. "We preach the importance of keeping families together yet deny grandparents essential assistance because they are 'family.' This is an injustice that policymakers could easily address by making more benefits available, and accessible, to grandparents."
Many older adults in California are ineligible for public programs like Medi-Cal, housing subsidies and food benefits because they have incomes that are above, often just slightly, the federal poverty level (FPL), which is the official federal definition of poverty. Yet this definition $18,530 for a family of three and $14,710 for a family of two in 2011 is considered by many experts to be inadequate, largely because it does not take into account variations in the cost of living from state to state and county to county.
Grandparents whose incomes leave them above the FPL but below the income needed to cover their basic needs may struggle in a high-cost county such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. The costs involved in caring for a grandchild (or two) far exceed the FPL in every California county. For example, in 2011, an older couple with one grandchild who lived in a two-bedroom rental needed an income as high as $49,942 if they lived in Santa Cruz County and as low as $32,965 if they lived in Kern, the "lowest-cost" county. (See county breakdown below.)
Among the study's recommendations, the authors suggest raising the eligibility criteria for certain public programs to 200 percent of the FPL; extending state foster-care benefits to kinship caregivers; and limiting the frequency of cumbersome and bureaucratic benefit renewals (since most older adults live on fixed incomes and thus do not experience income fluctuations that require regular documenting).
The data on the costs of raising a grandchild are part of a larger release of 2011 Elder Index data on the true cost of living for older Californians. See all Elder Index 2011 data here.
Updated every two years by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, in partnership with the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, the Elder Index quantifies the cost of basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter for each county of California and is part of a national movement to improve the way poverty is measured in the U.S. The methodology for the basic amounts was developed by the Gerontology Center at the University of MassachusettsBoston and Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington, D.C.
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Learn more about how the Elder Index is calculated.
See county-by-county information on the Elder Index and on the Elder Index for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.
Read the policy brief: "The High Cost of Caring: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren."
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development is a 44-year-old national research, legal and consulting organization dedicated to building economic health in vulnerable communities.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is one of the nation's leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health-related information on Californians.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
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High costs of raising a child challenges state's most vulnerable caregivers: GrandparentsPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Gwen Driscoll gdriscoll@ucla.edu 310-794-0930 University of California - Los Angeles
Raising a child is not cheap. Now try raising one on a fixed income and long past the age one associates with parenthood: 65 years and older.
More than 300,000 grandparents in California have primary responsibility for their grandchildren, and of this group, almost 65,000 are over the age of 65. More than 20,000 care for their grandkids without any extended family assistance at home.
A new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development shows that these families older adults raising grandchildren alone may be among the most vulnerable residents in California, due to the state's high cost of living and low levels of public assistance.
"California's high cost of living turns the loving act of caring for a grandchild into a desperate financial risk," said the UCLA center's D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, lead author of the study. "And older grandparents, many on fixed incomes and with limited mobility, are often the least able to advocate for, and access, public assistance."
The brief's new calculations based on the true cost of living in every California county show that nearly half of custodial grandparents who are 65 and over in California do not have enough income to cover the most basic needs of the grandchildren placed in their care. Yet public programs that might provide benefits that could help grandparents cope, such as the state foster-care program, are often difficult to access or off-limits altogether for family caregivers.
"There is a hypocrisy built into how assistance is allocated to children and their caregivers in California," said Susan E. Smith, director of the California Elder Economic Security Initiative at the Insight Center. "We preach the importance of keeping families together yet deny grandparents essential assistance because they are 'family.' This is an injustice that policymakers could easily address by making more benefits available, and accessible, to grandparents."
Many older adults in California are ineligible for public programs like Medi-Cal, housing subsidies and food benefits because they have incomes that are above, often just slightly, the federal poverty level (FPL), which is the official federal definition of poverty. Yet this definition $18,530 for a family of three and $14,710 for a family of two in 2011 is considered by many experts to be inadequate, largely because it does not take into account variations in the cost of living from state to state and county to county.
Grandparents whose incomes leave them above the FPL but below the income needed to cover their basic needs may struggle in a high-cost county such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. The costs involved in caring for a grandchild (or two) far exceed the FPL in every California county. For example, in 2011, an older couple with one grandchild who lived in a two-bedroom rental needed an income as high as $49,942 if they lived in Santa Cruz County and as low as $32,965 if they lived in Kern, the "lowest-cost" county. (See county breakdown below.)
Among the study's recommendations, the authors suggest raising the eligibility criteria for certain public programs to 200 percent of the FPL; extending state foster-care benefits to kinship caregivers; and limiting the frequency of cumbersome and bureaucratic benefit renewals (since most older adults live on fixed incomes and thus do not experience income fluctuations that require regular documenting).
The data on the costs of raising a grandchild are part of a larger release of 2011 Elder Index data on the true cost of living for older Californians. See all Elder Index 2011 data here.
Updated every two years by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, in partnership with the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, the Elder Index quantifies the cost of basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter for each county of California and is part of a national movement to improve the way poverty is measured in the U.S. The methodology for the basic amounts was developed by the Gerontology Center at the University of MassachusettsBoston and Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington, D.C.
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Learn more about how the Elder Index is calculated.
See county-by-county information on the Elder Index and on the Elder Index for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.
Read the policy brief: "The High Cost of Caring: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren."
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development is a 44-year-old national research, legal and consulting organization dedicated to building economic health in vulnerable communities.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is one of the nation's leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health-related information on Californians.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
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Virgin Mobile USA, one of Sprint?s prepaid subsidiaries, may not have a reputation for selling the cream of the Android crop, but when it comes to budget-conscious devices, the network is almost unbeatable. The latest such phone to be up for grabs via Virgin is the Samsung Galaxy Ring.
This is by no means a high-end gadget, but if all the data listed on Virgin?s website is correct, it will blow your minds with its bang for the buck factor. First off, let?s mention it only costs $179.99. Sans contracts, that is, and with the carrier?s fairly lucrative prepaid plans (for $55 a month, you can get unlimited minutes, messaging and data).
So what do you think you can get for the 180 bucks? Some Ice Cream Sandwich, a tiny low-res screen and a pitiful single-core processor? Think again. The Galaxy Ring comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean in tow, a not so small 4-inch display and? wait for it? a quad-core 1.4 GHz processor.
Wait, what?!? Quad-core speed on a $180 phone? It?s true, or at least we have no reason to think it?s not true. Sure, the ?quad? part could be a typo or a big misunderstanding, but let?s be positive.
And no, there?s no way the SoC is a Snapdragon 600 or any other high-end model, but even a 200 would provide far more speed than you ever dreamed of getting for below $200.
As for the rest of the specs, that 4-inch panel is undetailed, which is never a good sign, but the 1 GB of RAM sounds awesome, the 5 MP/1.3 MP cameras are fairly nice too, as is the Bluetooth 4.0 support. Sadly, the battery is not so very hot (1,750 mAh), there are only 4 GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), and 4G LTE is missing altogether.
But still, $180 for an off-contract Jelly Beaner with quad-core speed? Crazy!
The E3 and WWDC news surges have finally calmed, so now we're back into the normal weekly groove. This week, Ben details his time using an Oculus Rift to watch recorded video and Richard attempts to ride out E3 as long as possible with our roundup. All that and more is ready to stream straight to your ears below.
Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh (@bjdraw), Richard Lawler (@rjcc)
Motorola invented the flip phone but its mobile offerings lagged in recent years
When Google acquired Motorola Mobility in 2011,? big changes were in store for the ailing cell phone maker. Thousands lost their jobs as part of the restructuring. Meanwhile, Google brought in top officials from DARPA to reenergize Motorola?s moribund mobile technology.
Regina Dugan who headed the agency and her lieutenant Kaigham Gabriel set about injecting DARPA?s fleet-footed technology development approach into Motorola?s more deliberate culture.
Motorola?s Advanced Technology and Projects Group, which Dugan now leads, does not even call itself a research organization. Instead, like DARPA, it has started to structure projects to demonstrate avant-garde technologies that are just beginning to make the transition from laboratories pursuing basic science.? Projects will rope in investigators from other companies and universities, even more than Motorola researchers, to pursue prototypes for communications and information technologies that incorporate advances beyond simply making a cell phone a few millimeters thinner.
Toward that goal, the company is announcing on June 19th a collaboration with eight of the top public and private research universities.? Motorola negotiated a common agreement for conducting joint research that would allow the company to initiate a project rapidly with one or more universities.
A so-called master agreement between a single university and a company that provides boilerplate provisions for multiple research projects at a single school is routine.? What distinguishes the Motorola effort is that it is a? standard agreement that lays the groundwork for collaborative projects with multiple schools.
It can take up to a year to negotiate a corporate-academic agreement with a single university, which would hamper the urgency that the advanced technology group wants to bring to these efforts. ?A technical project leader can reach out to researchers,? Gabriel says. ?They can identify what the scope of work is, what?s the duration, what?s the expense.? We?re assuming that it takes less than 30 days and then we?re off and running, no additional work is required?
Motorola signed with California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, and Virginia Tech University. The universities do not receive any funding up front, only when a project is initiated.
Gabriel gave an example from an ongoing effort of the type of project that might be contemplated under the new agreement. Motorola is investigating whether the emerging technology of 3D printing might be used by consumers to customize their cell phones. ?To what extent can I, at the last minute, make the back of the phone or the front or have certain functional as well as aesthetic elements that are part of the phone?? he asks. Current 3D finished parts do not meet commercial standards for product finish or durability. Gabriel speculated that a? small company on the East Coast might have created an innovative ink and a university in the Midwest might have devised a novel printable structural material. ?As part of a project we would go out to a company and a university and pull them in to to improve 3D printing,? Gabriel says.
It remains to be seen whether there is blowback as to whether Motorola/Google is trying to capture the best and brightest among IT researchers for its internal needs. But Fred Farina director of Caltech?s offfice of technology transfer did not seem worried. ?We?re open to Intel doing the same thing and IBM doing the same thing.? Just because they [Motorola] came and agreed on something and they were the first company to do this on the? IT side, I would say to other companies ?bring it on? and we will work with you as well.?
Others praised the flexibility that Motorola brought to the process after having dealt with companies that wished to dictate stringent contractual terms that could, say, hinder a researcher?s ability to publish in academic journals. ?Everybody?s goals were aligned, says Sam Liss, Harvard?s director of business development.
?I really enjoyed this negotiation because of its openness, says Lesley Millar, director of the office of technology management at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ?It was very candid, on the table, let?s get out there and address the issues one by one,?
The agreement specifies that Google has the option to negotiate exclusive licensing of a technology for particular uses that it has funded the university to develop.? It does not impede researchers from publishing, but? lets Motorola review the final manuscript to ensure that it contains no confidential information.
Following the positive response to the?inaugural Cruising for a Cause sailing, Princess Cruises is?pleased to announce their?2nd charity cruise ? Cruising for a Cause: Princess Has Heart. This 5-day Western Caribbean cruise departing February?10,?2014 from Ft. Lauderdale will raise funds exclusively for the American Heart Association in support of its mission to build healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
Princess is a company with heart. They?care about the health and well-being of our employees, partners, passengers and their families. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in men and women in the United States, with one in every three deaths attributable to heart disease and stroke.
It?s simple! Call us?about this very special sailing. There is?a tax-deductible portion of your?cruise fare, ranging from $100 to $300* per person depending on stateroom category, & will be donated on your?behalf to the American Heart Association. Princess Cruises will match every dollar of these donations, up to $500,000, and will provide you, our?client/s, with a written acknowledgment of their charitable contribution.?
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This is the perfect opportunity to visit Europe?s most beautiful and historic destinations. Explore the legendary monuments of Rome. Experience the rich history and cosmopolitan character of Mykonos and the birthplace of the Olympic Games in Olympia. Aboard and ashore Europe is more than just another destination for MSC Cruises, it is our home. You will set sail on a magnificent ship in true Mediterranean elegance and style at a very attractive price aboard MSC Cruises.
7-Night Cruises From $399*pp?|?Only $100pp Deposit! Plus Military Personnel Get Up To 10% OFF*
This fall,?Disney Cruise Line? will say farewell to its homeport in Galveston, Texas. You?can still get onboard and take advantage of a great lead rate?plus, receive an onboard credit and half-off deposit.
Lead rates for a 7-night Bahamian or Western Caribbean cruise start at $699 for an Inside stateroom, $749 for Oceanview stateroom and $899 for Verandah stateroom (per person, based on double occupancy).
Offer Details: Book a?Disney Wonder? sailing and receive a $100 onboard credit with an Inside stateroom, a $150 onboard credit for Oceanview stateroom, or a $200 onboard credit for a Verandah stateroom?and receive half-off deposit if booked through?June 30, 2013.
Travel Window:
Valid on most 7-night sailings from Sept. 28 ? Nov. 16 and Nov. 30 ? Dec. 7, 2013
Additional Details:
Government Taxes and Fees and Port Adventures not included
Per person government taxes and fees are approximately $80 per person for 7-night Bahamas and Western Caribbean cruises (all amounts subject to change)
Excludes categories with restrictions
Half-off deposit valid for certain categories
Deferred deposit due at final payment
This offer cannot be combined with any other offers, discounts or onboard credits
Shipboard credit is non-refundable and non-transferable
Discover enchanting Morocco, a country rich with culture and blooming with nature. From the serenity of the Mediterranean Sea to the bustling markets of Casablanca, there is mystery around every corner. This 9-day adventure comes with deluxe accommodations, extensive sightseeing, breakfast and dinner daily and transfers from $1,585. Book by June 21 and save $200 per couple!?
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What's Included:
7-nights deluxe accommodations
All sightseeing tours and entrance fees
Breakfast and dinner daily
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International and domestic airfare available upon request?
Your?have more options for longer cruise vacations sailing out of Port Canaveral next year.?Disney Cruise Line? is realigning the fleet beginning Oct. 11, 2014. For the?2014 itineraries?for each ship, please EMAIL us.
Disney Magic? will sail out of Port Canaveral beginning Oct. 21, 2014. Following one 5-night Bahamian cruise, the ship will set sail on 7-night Caribbean voyages departing on Sundays.
Disney Wonder? will return to Miami on Oct. 11, 2014, and begin offering 4- and 5-night Bahamian and Caribbean cruises.?
Beginning Oct. 27, 2014,?Disney Dream? will depart on Mondays and Fridays for 3- and 4-night Bahamian cruises.?
Disney Fantasy? will continue to sail 7-night Eastern and Western Caribbean cruises departing from Port Canaveral on Saturdays.
Of course, your?don?t have to wait until next year to enjoy a magical Disney cruise vacation! Great?rates?are available now on select sailings this fall from Port Canaveral. Email us for more info.
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Public release date: 20-Jun-2013
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Cruise Europe In The Fall from only $399* per person