If you accepted an invitation to buy Amazon’s Echo speaker, you’ve noticed that the device didn’t have a vast musical vocabulary at first — you could tell it to play iHeartRadio or Prime Music tunes, and that’s about it. You’ll have a better time of…
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Carl Djerassi, the chemist widely considered the father of the birth control pill, has died.
Djerrasi died of complications of cancer Friday in his San Francisco home, Stanford University spokesman Dan Stober said. He was 91.
Djerassi, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Stanford, was most famous for leading a research team in Mexico City that in 1951 developed norethindrone, a synthetic molecule that became a key component of the first birth control pill.
“The pill” as it came to be known radically transformed sexual practices and women’s lives. The pill gave women more control over their fertility than they had ever had before and permanently put doctors — who previously didn’t see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture.
In his book, “This Man’s Pill,” Djerassi said the invention also changed his life, making him more interested in how science affects society.
In 1969, he submitted a public policy article about the global implications of U.S. contraceptive research, according to the Stanford News Service. In 1970, he published another article about the feasibility of a birth control pill for men.
“The thoughts behind these two public policy articles had convinced me that politics, rather than science, would play the dominant role in shaping the future of human birth control,” he wrote.
Later in life, Djerassi wrote poems, short stories and plays. He used stock earnings from the company that made the pill to help collect Paul Klee art work, which he donated to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (http://bit.ly/16cGiZB).
“Carl Djerassi is probably the greatest chemist our department ever had,” Richard N. Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford, said in an obituary released by the university. “I know of no person in the world who combined the mastery of science with literary talent as Carl Djerassi.”
“He also is the only person, to my knowledge, to receive from President Nixon the National Medal of Science and to be named on Nixon’s blacklist in the same year,” Zare added.
Djerassi told the Chronicle last year he was tired of talking about the pill (http://bit.ly/18DVAHK).
“Carl did many things in his life — he was a true Renaissance man and scholar,” Philip Darney, a contraceptive scientist and director of the University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, told the Chronicle.
He is survived by a son, Dale Djerassi; a stepdaughter, Leah Middlebrook; and a grandson, Alexander M. Djerassi.
This story was originally published on 24/7 Wall St.
The U.S. elderly population has grown exponentially in recent decades. The number of Americans 65 and older grew from 35 million in 2000 to 41.4 million in 2011 and to an estimated 44.7 million in 2013. This trend is expected to continue as members of the baby boomer generation reach retirement age.
While it can be difficult to grow old in some U.S. states, life for seniors is often far worse in many other countries. Still, the United States will face increasingly large challenges. In the coming years, state officials, families, and individuals will need to pay more attention to the needs of the elderly — to improve medical care, access to services, infrastructure, or other amenities that become more necessary late in life.
Click here to see the worst states to grow old in
HelpAge International evaluates each year the social and economic well-being of elderly country residents in its Global AgeWatch Index. Last year, the United States was among the better places to grow old in the world, at eighth place. However, domestically, each state offers a very different quality of life for its older residents. Based on an independent analysis by 24/7 Wall St., which incorporated a range of income, health, labor, and environmental indicators, Utah is the best state in which to grow old, while Mississippi is the worst.
To be considered among the worst states to grow old, senior citizens in the states had to have relatively weak income security, as measured by several indicators. The 2013 median income among families with a head of household 65 and older, for example, did not exceed the comparable national figure of $37,847 in nine of the worst states to grow old. A typical elderly household in Mississippi earned less than $30,000, the least nationwide.
Retirees often have fixed income as they begin to tap into their savings and collect social security. Kate Bunting, CEO of AgeWatch USA, explained that, “It’s really important for older people to have reliable access to a guaranteed income.” More than 90% of Americans 65 and older in the vast majority of states received social security income in 2013. Yet, the average monthly social security benefit of $1,294 was likely not enough for many seniors.
Many older Americans also had non-social security income, such as withdrawals from 401Ks and savings as a supplement. In 2013, 47.9% of Americans 65 and older had such supplemental retirement incomes. Comparable figures in a majority of the worst states to grow old actually exceeded the national figure. Even with the supplemental retirement income many elderly residents had, it was frequently not enough to offset their financial burdens. At stake, according to Bunting, is the elderly’s “ability to eat nutritious foods, which impacts their health, and their ability to access other critical services.”
Click here to see the best states to grow old in
With lower, and often fixed, incomes, elderly Americans are vulnerable financially. In addition, age often brings a host of health problems, causing greater reliance on medical and accessibility services. To determine how the states fared when it comes to health care, we examined health services and outcomes. Among the worst states, for example, life expectancy was relatively low. In all of the 10 worst states, it was less than 80 years. Life expectancy at birth in 2011 did not exceed 76 years in four of the states.
A good education, which can lead to employment opportunities and higher incomes, is also an indication of well-being. More than 24% of Americans 65 and older had at least a bachelor’s degree as of 2013. In seven of the 10 worst states to grow old, however, less than 20% of elderly residents had attained at least a bachelor’s degree. In Mississippi, just 14.2% did, the lowest rate nationwide.
Safety often becomes a greater concern for aging Americans, as older people are often targeted by criminals. Residents of any age in the worst states to grow old also did not feel particularly safe. On a recent survey, less than 70% of residents in nine of the 10 states told Gallup they felt safe walking home alone at night. The violent crime rate in four of the worst states was also greater than 500 violent crimes reported per 100,000 residents, all among the higher violent crime rates in the nation.
In addition, policies often shape the quality of life of a state’s elderly population, particularly in terms of accessibility to services. Based on an OECD survey, all of the worst states for old people had worse accessibility to services than the majority of states. Bunting said that the aging population is growing, and it will become increasingly “important that [states] have the right kinds of policies in place that help support a quality old age.” Adapting to these demographic patterns through age-friendly policy, Bunting continued, is “important and worthwhile to do, no matter what age you are.”
These are the worst states to grow old in.
On 17 December 2014, President Barack Obama announced a change in U.S. Cuba policy and the Free Cuba Foundation feels the need to make its position clear in the following statement:
The Free Cuba Foundation (FCF) was founded at Florida International University in 1993. Throughout its history, FCF has been a steadfast and independent voice in favor nonviolent resistance to injustice and tyranny.
We agree with President Obama on one general observation from his December 17 statement: that one cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Unfortunately, the efforts of the Clinton Administration to engage the Castro dictatorship as well as loosen sanctions before and after 1996 went unmentioned in President Obama’s comments. President Clinton began joint military exercises with the Castro regime in 1994 in pursuit of normalized relations. The shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996, by Castro regime MiGs — which killed Armando Alejandre Jr. (age 45), Carlos Alberto Costa (age 29), Mario Manuel de la Peña (age 24) and Pablo Morales (age 29) — led to the passage and signing of The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act by Congress as an alternative to military action in an election year.
The attack took place on a day that a national gathering called Concilio Cubano was to have started. A massive crackdown had been underway for days attracting international press attention. Despite this act of state terrorism against Americans, President Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and loosened sanctions that opened cash and carry exports from American corporations to the Castro regime. This turned the United States into one of the top five trading partners of the Castro regime.
Economic sanctions were not designed to overthrow the dictatorship but were part of a policy of containment to prevent the spread of its totalitarian model. The rise of Hugo Chavez and the spread of Cuban influence in Venezuela began during Bill Clinton’s presidency and are now harming the entire region undermining the democratic gains of the 1980s and early 1990s. Despite this disaster, the Obama Administration began in 2009 to loosen sanctions on the Cuban dictatorship. The Castro regime’s response was to take Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen, hostage. The Obama administration remained very low key about Gross’s arrest, and it was 25 days before U.S. diplomats even saw this jailed American. FCF believes that this lack of concern sent a message to the dictatorship that they could continue to arbitrarily detain Gross and use him as a bargaining chip in their goals to secure the release of five Cuban spies captured in 1998. These five had not only engaged in spying on U.S.-military facilities but planned terrorist acts on U.S. soil and were criminally involved in the February 24, 1996 shoot down.
As was the case in 1996, this policy of appeasement had dire consequences for the democratic opposition in Cuba, which suffered several setbacks over the next four years. Prisoner-of-conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on hunger strike under suspicious circumstances in 2010; Ladies in White founder Laura Inés Pollán Toledo died from a suspicious illness in 2011; and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero died in the summer of 2012, under circumstances that point to a state security killing. Rising violence against opposition activists, including machete attacks, is a new and disturbing phenomenon.
FCF is concerned that releasing the three remaining spies, including Gerardo Hernandez — who was serving two life sentences, one of them for conspiracy to murder four members of Brothers to the Rescue in exchange for Gross and an unknown Cuban intelligence operative — may lead to the Castro regime murdering more innocents inside and outside of Cuba. We also know, as does the regime, that due to short-term economic interests that economic engagement with the dictatorship will not be seriously impacted by whatever new atrocities are committed.
Additionally, the hostage demand having been met by the United States government also sets a dangerous precedent for Americans traveling abroad. Add to this the normalization of diplomatic relations and the further loosening of sanctions and the signal sent to the hardline elements within the regime is clear: operating with criminal impunity delivers results. This was the same message sent by President Clinton in 2000.
FCF and its members are disturbed by the President’s statement on December 19,2014 that the 1996 shoot down was not a premeditated move by Castro but a “tragic circumstance.” This statement was deficient on two basic points. First of all, two planes were shot down over international airspace not one as he stated in the press conference. More importantly, the president’s statement ignored documented evidence as well as court decisions and investigations by international human rights bodies that have concluded that the attack was indeed a premeditated extrajudicial execution.
Every year since the week following the 1996 shoot-down, FCF members have joined together to hold a silent vigil at Florida International University on February 24th between 3:21pm and 3:27pm at the times both planes were blown up by Castro’s MiGs in remembrance of Armando, Carlos, Mario, and Pablo who gave their lives in service to others in a continuing demand for justice. This tradition has been maintained for the past 18 years and next year on Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 3:21pm we will gather with the families of the four martyrs.
We the present and former members of the Free CubaFoundation say to the United States government and the Castro regime that the fruits that have emerged thus far from these negotiations point to the impure means upon which they were founded and will only lead to more grief. Therefore, with great respect we say, not in our name!
Signed by:
Brian Alonso
Grace Cuelez Droblas
Oscar Grau
Yosvani Oliva Iglesias
Robert Linares
Neri Ann Martinez
Augusto Monge
Susana Navajas
Cindy Rodriguez
Raisa Romaelle
Pedro M. Ross
Juan Carlos Sanchez
Harold Alexander Silva
John Suarez
César Vásquez
This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series called “90 Miles: Rethinking the Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations.” The series puts the spotlight on the emerging relations between two long-standing Western Hemisphere foes and will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.
If you’d like to contribute your own blog on this topic, send a 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com (subject line: “90 Miles”).
“Did you hear the speech?”
This was a frequent question among Cubans the morning after Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address. President Obama talked clear and loud: “This year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo.”
He seemed confident while delivering the address — and Cuba was a part of it. During his first term in office, Obama tried to work together with Capitol Hill, but had to face a group of legislators who put their personal interests above the interests of the American people.
Now the scene could become more polarized, if possible, considering that Republicans have the majority in both the House and Senate. The Obama Administration is pushing to re-establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba. He eased some regulations, but normal relations between our two countries are not possible while the embargo — which we call “blockade” — still remains.
Unfortunately, lifting the embargo depends on a vote in Congress, and we are aware that any congressional action will take time. Since the December 17th announcement that the countries were exploring relations, we have heard too many extreme positions on that matter. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary John Kerry regarding Assistant Secretary Roberta Jacobson’s visit to Havana last week. “As the Administration pursues further engagement with Cuba, I urge you to link the pace of changes in U.S. policy to reciprocal action from the Castro regime. The Cuban people, in their continued struggle for democracy and fundamental freedoms, deserve nothing less than our unwavering support,” he wrote.
Another longtime critic of Cuba, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), has shown strong opposition to any change. “This notion that somehow being able to travel more to Cuba — to sell more consumer products — the idea that’s going to lead to some democratic opening is absurd,” he said.
The Cuban-American lobby is the only significant ethnic lobby against normal relations between its native country and the United States. This is senseless. Someone asked me one time: “What could the United States gain by ending the embargo?” I responded: “What is the benefit of not ending it?”
That policy has been condemned in the United Nations for more than two decades, and over all, it has not accomplished its goal.
“When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new,” said Obama. “We are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date.”
The President’s new approach has the support of many congressmen, economic sectors, and most of the American public opinion, as a recent poll proved.
A delegation of Democratic legislators visited Cuba since the announcement, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy. “We want to explore opportunities for greater cooperation and to encourage Cuban officials to address issues of real concern to the American people and to their representatives in Congress,” he declared.
After meeting with Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez, Leahy talked positively about the trip. “I think he is open to every single issue — from trade to communications to establishing relations in agriculture,” Leahy told reporters, according to Reuters. “It’s not like we’re negotiating with countries we’ve been at war with.”
I was born in 1989, at the beginning of a very difficult period of time for Cuba. I grew up as part of a generation that has known nothing but the embargo and confrontation between our countries.
But at the same time, we have so much in common. Cuba and the United States have had historical and cultural ties for centuries.
Of course, we have serious differences, too. But I strongly believe we can learn how to coexist. We have to. It is the right thing to do. After all, we are neighbors, just separated 90 miles from each other. There are almost two millions Cuban-Americans in the United States. The Miami metropolitan area has more Cubans than anywhere on the planet, after Havana.
Complete normalization will take time — maybe a long time. Meanwhile, if the United States government truly wants to help the Cuban people and “extend the hand of friendship,” as President Obama said Tuesday, Congress should do what the Cuban people, and increasingly the American people, have asked for a long time now: lift the embargo.
This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series called “90 Miles: Rethinking the Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations.” The series puts the spotlight on the emerging relations between two long-standing Western Hemisphere foes and will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.
If you’d like to contribute your own blog on this topic, send a 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com (subject line: “90 Miles”).
Bye, bye, bye to any doubt.
Justin Timberlake celebrated his 34th birthday by finally confirming wife Jessica Biel’s pregnancy in an Instagram that is almost too adorable for words:
Biel’s pregnancy was certainly no secret. Timberlake’s former ‘N Sync band mate Joey Fatone even talked about the news back in December. Even so, the couple has generally been quiet about it until now.
Timberlake received a number of birthday wishes through the day from fans and celebs, including Taylor Swift and Jimmy Fallon. Without out a doubt, it’s hard to argue how the baby news is anything but, to quote Timberlake, the “GREATEST GIFT EVER.”
The Public Interest has been tarnished, stained and harmed and it is time for a course correction of oversight, accurate data, investigations and enforcement of the laws. It is time to not only re-evaluate the public policies that govern communications services in America, but fix what’s broken — finally.
New Networks Institute filed a Petition for Investigation & Complaint with the FCC as well as the New York State Public Service Commission (NYPSC) in January, 2015 against Time Warner Cable and Comcast.
Here is a Summary:
To start, we are calling for a halt to the proposed Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger and we have laid out a series of next steps and investigations that need to be done immediately.
Simply put, one has only to examine this mark up of this Brooklyn New York, Time Warner Cable Triple Play bill (October, 2014) to realize something is terribly wrong, which we will lay out in detail. But these issues impact ALL services and from ALL carriers, who have established the same harmful business practices.
The idea that Comcast and Time Warner Cable, who were two of “the most hated companies in America” in 2014, have proposed a merger that would give one company monopoly control over cable services in the United States (or a duopoly where the other companies have the same problematic business practices) shows just how far we have fallen as a nation to protect the public interest. Besides controlling the cable wires and the broadband, Internet and cable service over those wires, Comcast also owns a large swath of the content on these networks, from NBC to Telemundo, and even movie studios, including Universal Pictures, and cable networks, including Bravo and the Syfy channel.
We will focus on five mostly unexplored areas and supply facts, data and analysis as to why this proposed merger needs to be halted, but more importantly five areas we believe need immediate investigation.
In short, we are not simply asking that the FCC reject the proposed Time Warner-Comcast merger but to start immediate investigations of the cable companies’ business practices. It is time to actually fix the problems everyone in America knows about and is experiencing. These investigations must be done in conjunction with the state commissions, the Attorney General’s offices, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as the communications bill is no longer one service or covered under one jurisdiction. With the sales of the triple play and other marketing packages, these issues impact all communications services — wireline, wireless or cable company supplied cable TV, broadband, Internet, phone, and wireless services.
The FCC and State Commissions Must Focus on the Public Interest.
The FCC has obligations to make sure that the Public Interest is being served. Moreover, the FCC’s actions are supposed to be informed by competition principles.
According to the FCC, Congress has mandated that these mergers be done with an analysis of the public interest:
“Congress has directed the Commission to review transactions involving licenses and authorizations under the Communications Act and to determine whether the proposed transaction would serve ‘the public interest, convenience, and necessity’.”
And according to New York State law, again, the merger must be in the public interest.
“The commission shall approve the application unless it finds that the applicant, the proposed transferee or the cable television system does not conform to the standards established in the regulations promulgated by the commission pursuant to section two hundred fifteen of this article or that approval would be in violation of law, any regulation or standard promulgated by the commission or the public interest.”
The FCC Must Examine Competition.
The FCC claims that it cares about competition:
“I believe, as the Commission has consistently recognized, that the FCC’s actions should be informed by competition principles. These principles look to the impact of practices on consumers and the public interest, not just on competitors. They are designed to be fact-based and data-driven. They reflect a common-law belief that the experiences of the present are, to paraphrase Justice Holmes, as important as the logic of the past. They should be applied in a rigorous manner
“But, the ‘public interest’ standard is not limited to purely economic outcomes. It necessarily encompasses the ‘broad aims of the Communications Act,’3 which include, among other things, a deeply rooted preference for preserving and enhancing competition in relevant markets, accelerating private-sector deployment of advanced services, ensuring a diversity of information sources and services to the public,4 and generally managing spectrum in the public interest. Our public interest analysis may also entail assessing whether the transaction will affect the quality of communications services or will result in the provision of new or additional services to consumers.”
Does the merger increase competition? No. Is there competition today? No.
Customers Are Not Happy about Their Communications Providers.
Do people know something is wrong? Emphatically yes.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index survey outlined that the cable companies are ‘the most hated companies in America. The Wire (The Atlantic.com) put it this way:
“The American Customer Satisfaction Index, put out quarterly by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, is ‘considered the most comprehensive customer satisfaction survey in the United States’ … Time Warner was at the bottom of the barrel with a score of 56/100. This is actually the lowest score of all time.”
According to the survey:
“High prices, poor reliability, and declining customer service are to blame for low customer satisfaction with pay TV services.”
All of this also matches the recent FCC Commissioner Clyburn’s Reddit fiasco where the Commissioner did an “Ask me anything” (AMA) session. Adweek’s headline says it all:
“An FCC Commissioner’s Reddit AMA Went About as Terribly as You’d Expect. Mignon Clyburn gets buried under a downvote avalanche”
As we will discuss, the regulators have encouraged and exacerbated these problems over the last decade through a lack of oversight, enforcement, basic data collection and to be blunt — ignoring fundamental issues.
The question really is — what steps are the FCC and state commissions going to take to fix these problems — now that it has been brought to their attention?
On the mergers–Why would any regulator give companies major new benefits, including more market power, when there is collusion with the only major competitor, Verizon, where the previous agreements to wire the schools were ignored while the companies continue to collect money after the contract expired, or that the communications bills are now Christmas trees for the companies with different buckets of revenues hidden on unreadable bills?
It is time for investigations. Period. It is time to fix what’s broken as everyone reading this knows something is wrong; they may not be able to articulate all of the problems but, one thing is certain– this merger proposal should be killed and the FCC needs to finally do the right thing and take the companies to task, not kowtow to their wishes.
Ironically, the New York State Public Service Commission’s motto on their web site has been:
“Ensuring safe, reliable service at just and reasonable rates since 1907.”
But this sentiment is now in jeopardy. Time Warner’s rates are no longer just and reasonable and services are no longer being ‘reliably’ delivered.
I note– Imagine my surprise to see that from the time we filed on January 23rd, 2015, this motto, which had been there for decades, was replaced. The new tagline is “State of Opportunity”. Does this reflect a new vision – opportunity for the companies, I wonder?
In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still less than half the rate of 15 years ago. Smart entrepreneurs now avoid this option like the plague, due to its unpredictability and the challenges of running a public company.
According to a recent Ernst & Young global report, 2014 was a strong year with IPOs actually outperforming other indices by 10 percent. Yet they see warning lights flashing, based on a still fragile global economy, and volatile markets ahead. Today 70 percent of successful startups are still acquired by bigger companies, as the safer and preferred method of growth and funding.
The reasons are a lot more complex than the meltdown of key investment banks in the US a few years ago, so don’t expect a big change in the numbers soon, even with recent stock market rallies. In my view, the key reasons that IPOs have lost their luster from an entrepreneur and investor perspective include the following:
These negatives have largely overshadowed the potential IPO positives of increased capital for the startup, possible huge increase in personal net worth, broader access to investors, market for their stock, the ability to attract top-notch professionals, and the peer prestige of running a public company.
Thus most startups I know don’t even mention the IPO exit option, when applying for Angel funding, and most Angel investors will react negatively if you do mention it. As best, you should reserve this option for later stage VC discussions, once you have a well-proven business model, large market following, and substantial revenue.
More importantly, make sure first that you really want to give up the entrepreneur lifestyle for the challenges of a public company executive. I’m betting that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame still has second thoughts from time to time, despite being worth $33 billion as a result.
Toot toot! I have discovered the apotheosis of transit and it is a hot tub tug boat. HotTug is both real and as incredible as it sounds, a hot tub that doubles as a BOAT.
The U.S. Army is open-sourcing a code it uses to analyze cyberattacks. For the past five years, whenever a Department of Defense network has been compromised, the Army has used the Dshell framework to do forensic analysis on the attacks.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
