ATHENS -- A Greek fisherman has netted the remains of a bronze horseman and an amphora, treasures from ancient Greece preserved for two millenia in the Aegean Sea, officials said yesterday. The haul, which the man discovered in his nets off the island of Kalymnos last Tuesday, was delivered to police who then handed it over to archeology service officials, the culture ministry said in a statement. Greece, as part of a program to recuperate and preserve ancient artifacts, offers treasure finders a reward worth 10 percent of the object's value to return it to state authorities.
The haul, which the man discovered in his nets off the island of Kalymnos last Tuesday, was delivered to police who then handed it over to archeology service officials, the culture ministry said in a statement.
Greece, as part of a program to recuperate and preserve ancient artifacts, offers treasure finders a reward worth 10 percent of the object's value to return it to state authorities.
NEW YORK - Daily circulation fell 2.5 percent at U.S. newspapers in the six-month period ending in March, according to data released Monday, reflecting the industry's ongoing struggle to retain paying customers amid competition from the Internet and other media outlets. The Newspaper Association of America, analyzing data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, also reported that Sunday circulation fell 3.1 percent at the 610 newspapers reporting those figures. The 2.5 percent decline in average paid weekday circulation was based on data from 770 newspapers reporting to the Audit Bureau. The overall decline in both weekday and Sunday circulation were approximately the same as those given in the previous six-month reporting cycle for the period ending last September. Newspaper circulation has been in general decline for years as many people, particularly young adults, turn to other media outlets including cable TV and the Internet for news and information. Also, tougher rules on telemarketing have forced newspapers to find other ways to attract new readers. Despite the decline in paid copies, newspapers are seeing a greater number of visitors to their Web sites. The NAA also reported Monday that newspaper-run sites had an overall 8 percent increase in viewers in the first quarter.
The Newspaper Association of America, analyzing data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, also reported that Sunday circulation fell 3.1 percent at the 610 newspapers reporting those figures. The 2.5 percent decline in average paid weekday circulation was based on data from 770 newspapers reporting to the Audit Bureau.
The overall decline in both weekday and Sunday circulation were approximately the same as those given in the previous six-month reporting cycle for the period ending last September.
Newspaper circulation has been in general decline for years as many people, particularly young adults, turn to other media outlets including cable TV and the Internet for news and information. Also, tougher rules on telemarketing have forced newspapers to find other ways to attract new readers.
Despite the decline in paid copies, newspapers are seeing a greater number of visitors to their Web sites. The NAA also reported Monday that newspaper-run sites had an overall 8 percent increase in viewers in the first quarter.
AccountingWEB.com - Apr-19-2006 - Is there any more 'American' story than the immigrant who earns success through hard work, determination and sheer grit? This story is ingrained in the American psyche, but recent research is exploding the myths of the land of opportunity. Perhaps the United States was never a classless society, but it is certainly more rigid today than ever. These days, if you're born into a poor family, you're likely to die poor. If you're born into riches, you'll stay rich. If your parents are middle-class, the chances of ending up on a higher rung of the economic ladder are far smaller than you might think. According to research cited in a new paper written by Alan Berube, a Brookings Institution scholar and metropolitan policy expert, the U.S. is becoming increasingly less socially mobile. Across the 1990s, about 40 percent of U.S. families ended the decade in the same income bracket in which they began, versus 36-37 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. More than half the families at the bottom were still there after 10 years. Several serious examinations of class mobility-or more accurately the lack thereof-are drawing attention to the barriers that hinder movement from one social class to the next. As the divide between the haves and have-nots grows, the more difficult it is to climb from one rung to the next, Berube wrote. He pointed out that in 2004 and 2005, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, have all written series of articles on the subject of whether and how Americans are moving up the ladder. And in the United Kingdom, the issue has taken central stage in the public debate, Berube said in "Overcoming Barriers to Mobility: The Role of Place in the United States and UK."
This story is ingrained in the American psyche, but recent research is exploding the myths of the land of opportunity. Perhaps the United States was never a classless society, but it is certainly more rigid today than ever. These days, if you're born into a poor family, you're likely to die poor. If you're born into riches, you'll stay rich. If your parents are middle-class, the chances of ending up on a higher rung of the economic ladder are far smaller than you might think.
According to research cited in a new paper written by Alan Berube, a Brookings Institution scholar and metropolitan policy expert, the U.S. is becoming increasingly less socially mobile. Across the 1990s, about 40 percent of U.S. families ended the decade in the same income bracket in which they began, versus 36-37 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. More than half the families at the bottom were still there after 10 years.
Several serious examinations of class mobility-or more accurately the lack thereof-are drawing attention to the barriers that hinder movement from one social class to the next. As the divide between the haves and have-nots grows, the more difficult it is to climb from one rung to the next, Berube wrote.
He pointed out that in 2004 and 2005, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, have all written series of articles on the subject of whether and how Americans are moving up the ladder. And in the United Kingdom, the issue has taken central stage in the public debate, Berube said in "Overcoming Barriers to Mobility: The Role of Place in the United States and UK."
They dress up in pink catsuits, have names like "Spider Mum" and feel a social obligation to plunder the most expensive restaurants and gourmet delicatessens in town as part of a campaign to help the poor. Last week the well-heeled citizens of Hamburg's Altona district got a taste of their antics when 30 of them marched into the city's luxury "Fresh Paradise Goedeken" supermarket and walked out five minutes later with €15,000 (£10,000) worth of stolen goods. The gang's booty included magnums of Champagne at €99 a bottle, filets of Japanese Kobe beef at €108 a kilogram, legs of venison, a salmon and several boxes of Valrhona chocolate. Before leaving, gang members thrust a bouquet of flowers into the hands of a shop assistant. Attached was a handwritten note which proclaimed: "Survival in the city of millionaires would be impossible without us!" It was signed by "Spider Mum", "Santa Guevara" and "Multiflex". Another note later released by the gang insisted that the haul had been distributed to Hamburg's needy, to the "social workers, cleaning ladies and minimum-wage earners". It added: "The places of wealth in this town are as numerous as the opportunities to take it."
Last week the well-heeled citizens of Hamburg's Altona district got a taste of their antics when 30 of them marched into the city's luxury "Fresh Paradise Goedeken" supermarket and walked out five minutes later with €15,000 (£10,000) worth of stolen goods.
The gang's booty included magnums of Champagne at €99 a bottle, filets of Japanese Kobe beef at €108 a kilogram, legs of venison, a salmon and several boxes of Valrhona chocolate.
Before leaving, gang members thrust a bouquet of flowers into the hands of a shop assistant. Attached was a handwritten note which proclaimed: "Survival in the city of millionaires would be impossible without us!" It was signed by "Spider Mum", "Santa Guevara" and "Multiflex".
Another note later released by the gang insisted that the haul had been distributed to Hamburg's needy, to the "social workers, cleaning ladies and minimum-wage earners". It added: "The places of wealth in this town are as numerous as the opportunities to take it."
Reminds me of a funny Japanese movie from the eighties, in which the widow of a gourmet wants to become Japan's best noodles cook, and learns the trade in a spoof on karate/kung-fu films. One of the 'masters' she learns from is a homeless ex-gourmet with a following of other homeless cooks, who'd sneak into the kitchen of luxury restaurants after they're closed to cook this or that specialty. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
A fun stunt I'm sure, but it sounds like it was more by way of a free feast for themselves. keep to the Fen Causeway
I don't think the poor desire to enjoy luxuries any less than the rich. Emergency rations of dried bread for the poor, champagne and salmon for the rich, that's still a rather ugly class system. Besides, another point of such a protest is the obscenely high price of food for the rich, which could have fed dozens to thousands of poor with 'normal' food. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
However your second point about the relatively high price of luxury food in the proximity of such deprivation needed to be made. But that leads to a wider connection these people seemed reluctant to draw. keep to the Fen Causeway
!?
I thought that conclusion was obvious in the story. Maybe we have a cultural issue here? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Besides, another point of such a protest is the obscenely high price of food for the rich, which could have fed dozens to thousands of poor with 'normal' food.
There's a thought that hadn't occurred to me: modern industrial farming reduces the price of subsistence for workers to a very low level, reducing the theoretical minimum wage that they can be paid. If base-line food was more expensive you'd have to pay the poor more or they'd starve, fail to reproduce and you'd run out of workers. Or at least have to outsource overseas.
I'm not entirely sure what that protest is meant to achieve. It wasn't clear from the article I read.
If it is a per capita fifty times bigger problem, then that not many can afford it is not really an argument. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
If (say) 1% of people can afford to have a fish shipped to them then that is a much smaller problem than the 99% of people having Thai chicken fillets shipped to them. Which problem do you solve first? Which is actually a problem?
If producing luxury foods for one person wastes 50 times more resources than producing cheap factory food for one person, and 1% buy luxury foods while the rest eats factory food, then it's 50 to 99 - two big problems. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
On the other hand, I see I led the debate off-track with ill-chosen words. The issue wasn't really food, it was social differences, and who benefits and who enjoys what is produced. I translate some more from the letter of the guys:
...Superflex is familiar with all kinds of work contracts: part-time, full-time, practicum. All the stress led to a welcome mutation of his molecules. Operaistorix survived the last few years with an unemployment module. Thanks to his unheard-of agility, he managed so far to avoid visits by the Labor Office and One-Euro-Jobs. The mutant body of SpiderMum was born somewhere between daycare, unpaid and paid cleaning. Cleaning agents and washing mop turn into weapons in her hand. Santa Guevara detracts himself from controls and disappears without a trace. That way, he manages to escape the boredom of callcenters and university seminars again and again. ...without the abilities of superheroes, it is impossible to survive in the city of millionaires [some Hamburg districts are Germany's top gated communities for the richest]. Altough we produce the richness of Hamburg City, we don't have much of it. This doesn't have to stay so. ...the places of richness are as numerous as the possibilities to take away this richness. One question remains: where do you apply your superhero powers? Simply just come to the Euromaydayparade on 1 May...
...without the abilities of superheroes, it is impossible to survive in the city of millionaires [some Hamburg districts are Germany's top gated communities for the richest]. Altough we produce the richness of Hamburg City, we don't have much of it. This doesn't have to stay so. ...the places of richness are as numerous as the possibilities to take away this richness. One question remains: where do you apply your superhero powers? Simply just come to the Euromaydayparade on 1 May...
ONE of America's most famous fraudsters arrived in London yesterday to warn Britain about identity theft. Frank Abagnale, 58, whose life story inspired the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can, is to advise banks, utility companies and large retailers on how to combat fraud. His advice to the Government is that identity cards will provide new and greater opportunities for identity theft. And he has told the public: never trust e-mail, buy a "criss-cross" shredder and employ a security company to monitor your bank account 24 hours a day. Mr Abagnale's CV includes a five-year spell in which he cashed $2.5 million (£1.3 million) from bad cheques, successfully assumed eight identities and passed himself off as a paediatrician, a lawyer and a pilot for Pan Am. When he was finally arrested in 1969, Mr Abagnale was wanted by authorities in 26 countries and, after serving sentences in France and Sweden, was returned to the US and jailed for 12 years. In 1974 he was released on the condition that he worked for the FBI. He has since worked for the US Government for 30 years and built a business advising American banks and companies on fraud prevention. He told The Times yesterday that identity theft, which began in America, was rapidly taking hold in Britain.
His advice to the Government is that identity cards will provide new and greater opportunities for identity theft. And he has told the public: never trust e-mail, buy a "criss-cross" shredder and employ a security company to monitor your bank account 24 hours a day.
Mr Abagnale's CV includes a five-year spell in which he cashed $2.5 million (£1.3 million) from bad cheques, successfully assumed eight identities and passed himself off as a paediatrician, a lawyer and a pilot for Pan Am.
When he was finally arrested in 1969, Mr Abagnale was wanted by authorities in 26 countries and, after serving sentences in France and Sweden, was returned to the US and jailed for 12 years.
In 1974 he was released on the condition that he worked for the FBI. He has since worked for the US Government for 30 years and built a business advising American banks and companies on fraud prevention. He told The Times yesterday that identity theft, which began in America, was rapidly taking hold in Britain.
LONDON, May 8 -- Liberian girls as young as 8 are being sexually exploited by United Nations peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers in return for food, small favors and even rides in trucks, according to a new report from Save the Children U.K. The report said the problem was widespread throughout Liberia, a small country struggling to get back on its feet after a long and bloody civil war. Save the Children based its findings on interviews with more than 300 people in camps for displaced people and in neighborhoods whose residents have returned after being driven away by war. They said men in positions of authority -- aid workers and soldiers, government employees and officials in the camps -- were abusing girls. "All of the respondents clearly stated that the scale of the problem affected over half of the girls in their locations," the report said. "The girls reportedly ranged in age from 8 to 18 years, with girls of 12 years and upward described as being regularly involved in 'selling sex,' commonly referred to as 'man business.' " In a statement from Liberia, the United Nations said that eight cases of sexual abuse and exploitation involving its workers had been reported since the beginning of the year and that one staff member had been suspended, Reuters reported.
The report said the problem was widespread throughout Liberia, a small country struggling to get back on its feet after a long and bloody civil war.
Save the Children based its findings on interviews with more than 300 people in camps for displaced people and in neighborhoods whose residents have returned after being driven away by war. They said men in positions of authority -- aid workers and soldiers, government employees and officials in the camps -- were abusing girls.
"All of the respondents clearly stated that the scale of the problem affected over half of the girls in their locations," the report said. "The girls reportedly ranged in age from 8 to 18 years, with girls of 12 years and upward described as being regularly involved in 'selling sex,' commonly referred to as 'man business.' "
In a statement from Liberia, the United Nations said that eight cases of sexual abuse and exploitation involving its workers had been reported since the beginning of the year and that one staff member had been suspended, Reuters reported.
Following a study in Liberia, Save the Children UK has reported finding the exploitation of children by humanitarian workers, peacekeepers and local businessmen to be prolific. The study was conducted in temporary camps for those displaced by the civil war and amongst those recently repatriated to their towns and villages of origin after the end of the war. Despite commitments made in 2002 by non governmental organizations, the United Nations and peacekeepers to improve the worldwide monitoring of recruitment and staff conduct, vulnerable children are still exchanging sex for basic necessities such as money to attend school or food to feed their families.
Despite commitments made in 2002 by non governmental organizations, the United Nations and peacekeepers to improve the worldwide monitoring of recruitment and staff conduct, vulnerable children are still exchanging sex for basic necessities such as money to attend school or food to feed their families.
Pursuing the United Nations policy of zero tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by its staff, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has reported eight cases for investigation since the beginning of the year, one of which has been substantiated with the person involved immediately suspended. The other investigations are continuing. "The United Nations in Liberia is committed to prevent, identify and sanction the abhorrent practice of sexual abuse and exploitation in full compliance with the Secretary-General's Bulletin `Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse' and its policy of zero tolerance," the mission said in a statement. Secretary-General Kofi Annan instituted the policy following allegations in 2004 against peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
"The United Nations in Liberia is committed to prevent, identify and sanction the abhorrent practice of sexual abuse and exploitation in full compliance with the Secretary-General's Bulletin `Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse' and its policy of zero tolerance," the mission said in a statement.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan instituted the policy following allegations in 2004 against peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The United Nations in Liberia takes the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse seriously and is currently implementing a range of measures to address the matter. The United Nations recognizes the urgent need to raise awareness about SEA and in this regard takes note of the release of the Save the Children UK Discussion Paper entitled "From Camp to Community: Liberia study on exploitation of children." On several occasions the United Nations met with Save the Children UK to discuss the issue of SEA and to offer a collaborative approach to intensify actions against SEA. On these occasions the United Nations has sought information on specific cases to prevent and sanction SEA. Although Save did not discuss the ultimate findings or recommendations of its report with the United Nations, the Organization will continue to vigorously pursue its activities to prevent and deal with SEA. The United Nations is committed to continue to work with national authorities and other partners in an effort to ensure a common, effective approach to deal with SEA.
On several occasions the United Nations met with Save the Children UK to discuss the issue of SEA and to offer a collaborative approach to intensify actions against SEA. On these occasions the United Nations has sought information on specific cases to prevent and sanction SEA. Although Save did not discuss the ultimate findings or recommendations of its report with the United Nations, the Organization will continue to vigorously pursue its activities to prevent and deal with SEA. The United Nations is committed to continue to work with national authorities and other partners in an effort to ensure a common, effective approach to deal with SEA.
