Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/302376345?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, April 29, 2013
UK: Guardian newspaper's Twitter feeds hacked
LONDON (AP) ? The Guardian newspaper said Monday that its Twitter accounts have been hacked, and it cited a claim of responsibility from the group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army.
The British paper reported on its website that several of its feeds on the social media site were broken into over the weekend. It said that it has since discovered that the attack apparently originated from Internet protocol addresses within Syria.
"We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this," said a statement from Guardian News and Media, the company that publishes the paper.
The Syrian Electronic Army is a shadowy group that supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which is battling an armed uprising.
The group has claimed responsibility for a string of Web attacks on other media targets, including The Associated Press. The Guardian said the group accused it of spreading "lies and slander about Syria."
Hackers attacked the AP's Twitter accounts last week, sending out a false tweet about an attack on the White House and triggering a brief plunge on the U.S. stock market.
The Guardian said it first recognized it was being targeted when suspect emails were sent to staff members to trick them into giving away security details. Some of the paper's Twitter accounts, including those focusing on books and film, were suspended Monday.
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Per-student pre-K spending lowest in decade
WASHINGTON (AP) ? State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.
The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.
Those findings ? combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars ? complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.
"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.
During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.
If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.
Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.
As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.
"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.
Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.
Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.
To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.
Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.
States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.
Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.
Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.
Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.
"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.
Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.
Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.
In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.
"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.
Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.
"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.
Nationally, 42 percent of students ? or more than a half million students ? were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.
That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/per-student-pre-k-spending-lowest-decade-042832006.html
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Faith in God positively influences treatment for individuals with psychiatric illness
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness, according to a recent study conducted by McLean Hospital investigators.
In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, David H. Rosmarin, PhD, McLean Hospital clinician and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, examined individuals at the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital program at McLean in an effort to investigate the relationship between patients' level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.
"Our work suggests that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without, regardless of their religious affiliation. Belief was associated with not only improved psychological wellbeing, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," explained Rosmarin.
The study looked at 159 patients, recruited over a one-year period. Each participant was asked to gauge their belief in God as well as their expectations for treatment outcome and emotion regulation, each on a five-point scale. Levels of depression, wellbeing, and self-harm were assessed at the beginning and end of their treatment program.
Of the patients sampled, more than 30 percent claimed no specific religious affiliation yet still saw the same benefits in treatment if their belief in a higher power was rated as moderately or very high. Patients with "no" or only "slight" belief in God were twice as likely not to respond to treatment than patients with higher levels of belief.
The study concludes: ." .. belief in God is associated with improved treatment outcomes in psychiatric care. More centrally, our results suggest that belief in the credibility of psychiatric treatment and increased expectations to gain from treatment might be mechanisms by which belief in God can impact treatment outcomes."
Rosmarin commented, "Given the prevalence of religious belief in the United States -- over 90% of the population -- these findings are important in that they highlight the clinical implications of spiritual life. I hope that this work will lead to larger studies and increased funding in order to help as many people as possible."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McLean Hospital.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- David H. Rosmarin, Joseph S. Bigda-Peyton, Sarah J. Kertz, Nasya Smith, Scott L. Rauch, Thr?stur Bj?rgvinsson. A test of faith in God and treatment: The relationship of belief in God to psychiatric treatment outcomes. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2013; 146 (3): 441 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2012.08.030
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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MTV piping up for 'Scream' series to air in 2014
In this publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Courteney Cox is shown in a scene from the horror film "Scream 4." The MTV network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011. The films? original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot, MTV said. The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014. (AP Photo/Dimension Films-The Weinstein Company, Gemma La Mana)
In this publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Courteney Cox is shown in a scene from the horror film "Scream 4." The MTV network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011. The films? original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot, MTV said. The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014. (AP Photo/Dimension Films-The Weinstein Company, Gemma La Mana)
NEW YORK (AP) ? MTV is getting ready to blast viewers with a brand-new "Scream."
The network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011.
MTV said the films' original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot.
The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014.
The announcement was made Thursday at MTV's presentation of its upcoming schedule to advertisers in New York.
MTV also said "Snooki & JWOWW" has been renewed for a third season. The reality show stars "Jersey Shore" pals Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWOWW" Farley.
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The Poorly Attended Hearing on One of the Economy's Toughest Problems
It stands to reason that lawmakers who often decry the high jobless rate would want to be seen publicly trying to tackle the problem, right? Well, apparently not.
When a hearing to explore how to get the long-term unemployed back to work kicked off on Wednesday morning, only one lawmaker was in attendance. That was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was holding the hearing in her role as the vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee. The Joint Economic Commitee is one of a handful of committees whose members come from both parties and both houses of Congress. Klobuchar was eventually joined by three colleagues (in order of their appearance): Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. All four are Democrats.
Lawmaker schedules are often packed with votes, hearings, meetings, press conferences, the works. By 10:30 a.m., when the long-term unemployment hearing began, more than 25 hearings had already kicked off in the House and Senate. But elected officials also often try to show up at important hearings, even if only for a few minutes, for no other reason than to be seen. For a group that often bickers over how to solve the nation?s biggest economic problems, Wednesday?s hearing represented a perfect chance to do just that: be seen discussing how to tackle the intractable problem of long-term unemployment.
The long-term unemployed have it incredibly rough: their ranks have swelled in recent years, accounting for a larger share of the unemployed; the problem is compounded by eroding skills; and the psychological effects of unemployment can take a toll on them and their families. In a 2010 Pew survey, close to half of the people out of work six or months said being unemployed for so long had strained family relations, and more than 40 percent said they?d lost contact with close friends.?Just being unemployed for a long period makes individuals less employable. It?s what Kevin Hassett, a former economic advisor to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, called a ?national emergency? at Wednesday?s hearing.
The purpose of the meeting was to explore bipartisan solutions to tackling the problem, including: equipping the unemployed with new skills; encouraging the private sector to hire more of the long-term unemployed by providing incentives, such as tax breaks or subsidies; improving the economy; and improving education. It's a daunting task, experts say, but not an impossible one.?
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