High-stress lifestyles threaten heart disease epidemic

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 20 April 2007

High-stress lifestyles fuelled by alcohol and fast food that leave no time for exercise are leading to more cases of high blood pressure and threaten an epidemic of heart disease across the globe.

Known as the "silent killer" because it is symptomless but deadly, high blood pressure can damage major organs and lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease and dementia.

It already affects one in four adults globally - about one billion people - and causes an estimated seven million deaths from cardiovascular disease a year. The figure is set to increase by 60 per cent over the next two decades if nothing is done, says a report by three international health experts.

Launched at the European Parliament in Brussels, the report,High Blood Pressure and Health Policy, calls for better education, improved health care and greater efforts to persuade people to change their lifestyles. The authors hope the statistics will prompt a campaign to tackle repeatedly high blood pressure, known as hypertension. continue...

France's borderless election

Candidates in the tight French presidential race, eager to find any edge they can, are wooing all-important expatriate voters in other European cities.

LONDON - There were posters of the candidate, aides on the stage brandishing microphones and macroeconomic statistics, minions in orange T-shirts with clipboards and polling figures, rambling questions from a man at the back of the lecture hall in a blue shirt. It was, in many senses, an unremarkable election campaign rally – apart from one small detail.

The audience was French. But the venue was London.
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www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

How Do Asian Students Get to the Top of the Class?

Why do many Asian students excel? The secret is parenting, say the authors of the provocative book "Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers - and How You Can Too."
By Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim

While Asian Americans make up only 4% of the U.S. population, Asian-American students make up a much higher percentage of student bodies in top universities

Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim

around the country. The percentages are astounding: 24% at Stanford, 18% at Harvard, and 25% at both Columbia and Cornell. More Asian Americans over the age of 25 have bachelor's degrees and advanced degrees than any other race or ethnic group. And after outperforming their colleagues in school, Asian Americans also bring home higher incomes than their non-Asian counterparts — almost $10,000 more annually than the rest of the population (2002 statistics).

So what does this mean? Are Asian students simply smarter? Contrary to what much of the public may believe, Asian students are no more intellectually gifted than non-Asian students are. The reason that Asian students outperform their peers in the classroom has nothing to do with how they were born and everything to do with how they are raised. continue...

The India China Institute

BECOME PART OF THE CONVERSATION

The India China Institute
presents free panel discussions

April 18, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek Reconsidered
66 West 12th Street, Room 510

Join Laura Tyson Li and L.H.M. Ling for a discussion of what China’s eternal first lady can teach the next generation of female leaders in Asia.

Laura Tyson Li, a prominent journalist and biographer of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, has written for South China Morning Post, The Financial Times, and The Economist.

L.H.M. Ling teaches in International Affairs program at The New School and studies international development practice and emerging regional economies in South Asia.

April 21, 1:00-4:00 p.m.
Intermediate Organizations and The 'New' Nepal
55 West 13th Street, Second Floor

Come hear Pratyoush Onta, one of the most respected historians and public intellectuals from Nepal, discuss the social and political role intermediate organizations like NGOs and professional associations can play in the country's future.

April 26, 7:15-9:00 p.m.
The State of Democracy in South Asia
66 West 12th Street, Room 712

What does democracy mean today in South Asia? What are its biggest prospects and challenges?

Engage Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Ruparelia as they discuss Nepal’s constitutional future, Bangladesh’s eroding political institutions, Sri Lanka’s enduring ethnic violence, Pakistan’s democratic hopes, India's rising social inequality, and other pressing issues.

Widely recognized as India's premier electoral analyst, Yogendra Yadav is a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. 
Sanjay Ruparelia is a scholar of South Asian politics and an assistant professor of political science at The New School for Social Research.

This event is co-sponsored by the department of political science at The New School for Social Research

April 30, 12:30-3:00 p.m.
Future Histories: Exploring New Pathways for India and China
65 Fifth Avenue, Wolff Conference Room

Connect with India China Institute Fellow Aromar Revi and leading development scholars and practitioners as they discuss the challenges of sustaining long-range development in India and China. Aromar Revi is a founding director of TARU, a South Asian research and consulting firm specializing in urban and infrastructure planning.

Visit www.indiachina.newschool.edu for more details.

Click here for more public programs.

 

As US tax rates drop, government's reach grows

from the April 16, 2007 edition

Study: 1 in 2 Americans now receives income from government programs.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Maybe the era of big government isn't over, after all.
As Americans finish their annual tax-filing flurry to meet a Tuesday deadline, it is true that tax rates are lower than they were a few years ago. But according to a different yardstick, the federal government's reach is expanding.

Click to enlarge

SOURCE: A Gary Shilling & Co., 2006/RICH CLABAUGH – STAFF

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.

That two-decade shrink-the-government trend now appears over, if for no other reason than demographics. The aging baby-boomer generation is poised to receive big payments from Social Security and government healthcare programs.

"New Deal programs persist," despite the Reagan revolution and its aftermath, says James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas in Austin. "They persist because they are largely successful and highly popular."

Mr. Shilling's analysis found that about 1 in 5 Americans hold a government job or a job reliant on federal spending. A similar number receive Social Security or a government pension. About 19 million others get food stamps, 2 million get subsidized housing, and 5 million get education grants. For all these categories, Mr. Shilling counted dependents as well as the direct recipients of government income.
Many Americans, in surveys, say they don't like the way their tax money is spent. And a majority now says, in a reversal from a year ago, that their federal income taxes are too high, according to an April Gallup poll. continue...

Blooming Islam changing Russia » Kuwait Times Website

Published Date: April 10, 2007

MAKHACHKALA, Russia:  Ask Khadji Gasan Gasanaliyev, imam of an independent mosque in this North Caucasus city, what's wrong with Russia, and he tells how a three-year-old held a gun to his head. The bearded, excitable imam sprawled face-down on the floor, imitating a friend's young son who threw a tantrum when Gasanaliyev was trying to lead the namaz, or daily prayer devout Muslims perform five times a day. Gasanaliyev dragged the boy up from the floor, and in return the boy got a toy gun and pressed it to the kneeling imam's temple.

"A three-year-old boy! Where did he learn this?" Gasanaliyev asked, his eyes wide behind a pair of thick glasses. "There is no pity, there is no kindness here.... Look at this civilisation: Women going around naked on television, even on the street, violence everywhere. This is civilisation?" Muslims all across the country are asking similar questions about the nature of contemporary Russian society - even as their rapid rise is transforming not only the face of this traditionally Orthodox Christian country, but its culture. continue...

How to make a documentary in Turkmenistan

How do you make a documentary in Turkmenistan, ruled by a despot who has forbidden film crews? Waldemar Januszczak bravely (or foolishly) has a go
Published: 16 April 2007

Go to Turkmenistan, they said. Make a film about it. I can't, I said. The country's closed off. No one knows anything about it, and you're not allowed to film there. Find a way, they insisted. Film it secretly. But isn't that dangerous? Won't I get caught, and thrown into prison, and kept there for the rest of my natural life? What are you, they snapped back, a man or a mouse? Squeak, squeak, I went. But they sent me anyway. And I did end up becoming the first Western journalist to make a film about Turkmenistan or, more precisely, about the thoroughly potty dictator who ran the country. continue...

Blog bullies propel state of the internet into the spotlight

Teachers are mocked on YouTube. Internet commentators receive death threats. But the UK press watchdog's Tim Toulmin says that you can trust UK web journalists
Published: 16 April 2007

The decision by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, to speak out against cyber-bullying last week - urging websites such as YouTube not to carry demeaning videos of pupils and teachers - goes to a hot issue of concern for all new media: that of internet-content regulation.

No sooner had he spoken than the issue arose again in another form. The online death threats and abuse directed against Kathy Sierra, a prominent Californian blogger and web developer, led Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, to call for more civilised blogging - perhaps encouraged by a form of voluntary code of conduct. The branding system proposed - designed to enable users quickly to assess the credibility of the site they are looking at - has echoes of the Press Complaints Commission chairman Sir Christopher Meyer's suggestion that there is a commercial advantage for newspapers and magazines in making clear that information on their sites is subject to professional standards, and so more reliable than that elsewhere. continue...

Wolfowitz's fate to be decided by ministers

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 16 April 2007

The fate of Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, hung in the balance yesterday as development ministers discussed whether he should resign over the job transfer and lavish pay rises he helped arrange for his partner, Shaha Riza.

The ministers held their talks at a lunch on the last day of the annual IMF and World Bank spring meetings here, which have been utterly dominated by the Wolfowitz affair. The Bank's staff association has demanded he step down, saying it was the only way it could regain its credibility...continue...