Asia will wield more global power than the US and Europe combined by 2030, a forecast from the US intelligence community has found.
Within two decades China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, the report adds.
It also warns of slower growth and falling living standards in advanced nations with ageing populations.
Budget negotiations between the White House and Republican House Speaker John Boehner have progressed steadily in recent days, people close to the process said, breathing life into talks that appeared to have stalled.
Both sides still face sizable differences before any agreement might be reached by the end of the year, and talks could well falter again over such controversial issues as taxes and Medicare before any deal is ultimately reached.
The people familiar with the matter say talks have taken a marked shift in recent days as staff and leaders have consulted, becoming more “serious.” Both sides have agreed to keep details private, according to the people, who declined to detail where new ground was being broken.
Home House Press is one of at least a dozen book publishers operating in South Carolina. Half of those companies are based in the Charleston area. They produce traditional books ”” printed on paper, bound and shipped to stores and customers. They do this in a digital age when printed materials such as newspapers, magazines and books face increasing competition from other media platforms.
They are succeeding, more or less, even as larger publishers ”” typically divisions of multinational media conglomerates ”” are struggling to cope with growing demand for Web-based products and electronic books. They are flourishing even though powerful retailers and distributors like Amazon and Ingram demand discounts and high fees.
What’s the secret? Specialization, South Carolina publishers said. And a strong emphasis on local topics and people. Oh, and coffee table books.
This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family ”” always stressful and uncertain ”” is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies now deepen our understanding.
When the labor market operates smoothly, it creates an economic escalator. Just out of high school or college, young workers typically switch jobs frequently until they find something that fits their talent and temperament. Job changes often mean higher pay; people move to advance themselves. The more they succeed, the more confident they feel in marrying and having children.
The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births….
More than 200 school districts across California are taking a second look at the high price of the debt they’ve taken on using risky financial arrangements. Collectively, the districts have borrowed billions in loans that defer payments for years ”” leaving many districts owing far more than they borrowed.
In 2010, officials at the West Contra Costa School District, just east of San Francisco, were in a bind. The district needed $2.5 million to help secure a federally subsidized $25 million loan to build a badly needed elementary school.
Charles Ramsey, president of the school board, says he needed that $2.5 million upfront, but the district didn’t have it.
For more than a year, politicians have been fighting over whether to raise taxes on high-income people. They rarely mention that affluent Americans will soon be hit with new taxes adopted as part of the 2010 health care law.
The new levies, which take effect in January, include an increase in the payroll tax on wages and a tax on investment income, including interest, dividends and capital gains. The Obama administration proposed rules to enforce both last week.
Affluent people are much more likely than low-income people to have health insurance, and now they will, in effect, help pay for coverage for many lower-income families. Among the most affluent fifth of households, those affected will see tax increases averaging $6,000 next year, economists estimate.
America’s employers added jobs at a slow pace in November, easing fears that uncertainty about U.S. budget policies would stifle hiring, but fueling concerns about the robustness of the economic recovery.
The Labor Department’s latest snapshot of the job market said employers added 146,000 jobs last month. That is an improvement from the previous two months, but below the average job growth per month of about 150,000 over the past two years. Payroll growth in September and October also was revised down by about 50,000 jobs…..
…November’s figures also show that jobs are growing too slowly to significantly lower unemployment or boost the economy’s overall growth, which faces headwinds. To keep up with population growth, the economy needs to add about 120,000 new jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.
Americans have a long tradition of pampering and memorializing their pets. Now, technology lets precious friends become precious gems.
The idea of turning the carbon in ashes into man-made diamonds emerged a decade ago as a way to memorialize humans. Today, departed pets are fueling the industry’s growth, with a handful of companies selling diamonds, gemstones and other jewelry out of pet remains, including hair and feathers.
Some gems start at about $250, while pet diamonds cost at least $1,400, with prices based on color and size. The diamonds have the same physical properties as mined diamonds, purveyors say.
One of the holiest sites in Christendom has also been one of the most contested. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem lies on the site where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and buried.
Multiple Christian denominations share the church uneasily, and clerics sometimes come to blows over the most minor of disputes. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox all have a presence in the church.
But the most recent conflict at the 4th century church was over something entirely different: an unpaid water bill.
I am interested in your observations about the list–check it out.
[Here is a list of]…the most expensive tax breaks in the current tax code, based on what those breaks would cost the U.S. Treasury in lost revenue from 2013 to 2017:
1) Exclusion of employer contributions for medical insurance premiums & medical: $1 trillion
2) Mortgage interest deduction: $606 billion
3) Deduction for 401(k) plans: $429 billion
4) Accelerated depreciation of machinery & equipment: $375 billion
5) Exclusion of net imputed rental income: $337 billion
6) Capital gains: $321 billion
7) Charitable contributions: $293 billion
Robert LeTourneau, a roving American evangelist and inventor, decided in the mid-1930s that a plot of lakefront land a mile and a half northeast of downtown Peoria would be a fine place to make earth-moving equipment. Skilled labor and suppliers were plentiful; transport links were good.
Nearly eight decades later, Japan’s Komatsu Ltd…., which owns the plant, still thinks Mr. LeTourneau chose the right location””even though most giant mining trucks made there are shipped overseas to Latin America, Australia, Asia and Africa.
Islands that are most vulnerable to rising oceans are seeking an insurance program to protect against damage related to climate change, adding to pressure on industrial nations to increase aid committed to fight global warming to more than $100 billion a year.
The islands are proposing a “loss and damage” mechanism that would insure and compensate countries that suffer from extreme weather, erosion and drought. The request is raising tension levels among more than 190 industrial and developing nations at United Nations climate talks in Doha this week.
“All we are asking is that they help us with these issues that aren’t our doing,” Malia Talakai of Nauru, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, or AOSIS, a bloc of 43 island nations, said in an interview in Doha. “We are trying to say that if you pollute you must help us.”
Since exploding onto the global stage in 2002 with his phenomenally successful book The Purpose Driven Life, Warren has been the warm and friendly face of Âevangelicalism””a welcoming, avuncular alternative to hellfire-and-brimstone finger waggers such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. With his goatee and dressed-down aesthetic (for our meeting he’s sporting jeans, a bright blue and Ârobin’s-egg plaid oxford, and black slip-ons), 58-year-old “Pastor Rick” cultivates the casual, cool-dad aura of the boomer generation to which he belongs. (He has the Korean rap phenomenon “Gangnam Style” as his ringtone and, in classic ÂSoCal fashion, shuns socks unless visiting wintery climes such as New York in late November). Warren’s ministry, similarly, presents Christianity in a relatable, user-friendly package, much in keeping with his book’s uplifting promise that every one of our lives has meaning.
These days, however, the aggressively upbeat Warren is increasingly disheartened by what he sees as a “malaise” afoot in the land. “I feel America is in the emotional doldrums,” he says sadly. The economy is sluggish, the political system is a disaster, and citizens are at each other’s throats. He observes, “I think America is more divided today””and it’s sad””than at any time since the Civil War.”
Warren voices special concern for younger generations. “There’s a lot of people in their 20s and even early 30s still waiting for their lives to start,” he observes. They can’t find jobs. They’re moving back in with their parents. “They’re like, where’s the American Dream for me?”
Bottom line, says Warren: “This nation is in desperate need of some direction and purpose and meaning. Somebody’s got to speak up now. And I thought, OK. If nobody else volunteers, I’ll step up.”
The ongoing debate over homework focuses mostly on kids’ mounting workloads , and some schools’ efforts to curtail them.
A growing number of parents are struggling with another homework trend that threatens to sink their juggle ”“ an increase in extremely complicated homework projects, from neighborhood field trips to do research, to expansive dioramas or multimedia presentations to report on what students have learned, according to parents I interviewed for last Wednesday’s “Work & Family” column on homework.
The question of who rules the Internet and how is being debated at a 12-day conference in Dubai.
The World Conference on International Telecommunications, which started Monday, aims to draft a new treaty to underpin international telecommunications regulations. The current rules were put in place in 1988. The conference is sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies.
The bid to change the rule book has unleashed fears of a grab for centralized control of the Internet by the U.N. The process has also come under criticism for its lack of transparency, with documents unpublished and proposals up for debate kept secret.
Jay Litton: “One of the most interesting things about a job networking ministry is, you don’t need more than one person to volunteer. And by the way, you just need one person out of work. That’s it. I have a concern that when people stop by and see what we’re doing, it looks like this big huge production, big huge event. And it’s like, ”˜Well, if we can’t do that then we shouldn’t do anything.’ And that’s just so wrong. So we go out of our way to let every church know that there should be somebody there at that church that should be willing to have conversations with people that are in transition.”
Tyrone Griffin tried the program at Roswell, found a job, and kept the faith.
….seasoned Washington hands say that once this rather gloomy back and forth has played out – and it might take another week or more – the work towards reaching a solution that both sides can sell to their parties and their lawmakers will begin in earnest.
A deal by Christmas, a week before the fiscal cliff deadline, remains uncertain but not out of the question. The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases due to be implemented under existing law in early 2013 that may cut the federal budget deficit but also tip the economy back into recession.
The pattern of little happening until very close to a holiday is well-established on Capitol Hill. The past three pre-Christmas seasons brought important eleventh-hour developments on health care in 2009, tax cut extensions in 2010 and the payroll tax holiday in 2011.
I’m applying to law school. I’m sure there are many schools that could provide me with a decent education; I’m less confident that a degree from some institutions will get me a job. In fact, some schools, while charging outrageously high tuition, place fewer than half of their recent graduates in long-term, full-time legal positions. Is it moral for schools like these to keep enrolling students and collecting tuition dollars knowing that their product is a risky (or outright bad) investment?
….President Obama’s call for a return to Clinton-era tax rates is misleading: If the Bush upper-income tax cuts go away, tax rates will exceed those in place at the end of the 1990s.
The top effective federal marginal tax rate on work income would rise to roughly 44.6% from 37.9% in 2012.
That’s higher than under President Clinton because of a 0.9-percentage-point Medicare payroll tax hike for upper-income households, which passed with Obama-Care and takes effect in January.
Tax rates on long-term capital gains also will be higher than when Clinton left office if Bush tax cuts expire as ObamaCare’s new 3.8% Medicare tax on investment gains takes effect. Up to now, only wage and salary income has been subject to Medicare taxes.
At first blush, it seems to make policy sense, too. The rich fabric of America’s civic life, from Boy Scouts to community orchestras to soup kitchens, is the envy of the world. Its diversity reflects in part how much it depends on private givers with diverse interests and motives, and not just on the government. Their giving is encouraged by the charitable deduction, enacted in 1917, just four years after the income tax itself. The deduction lets people feel they are beating the system even as they practice virtue.
But there’s a question of fairness that complicates the issue. Overwhelmingly, the deduction benefits the wealthy ”” and the rest of the country has to make up the gap.
[Emmanuel] Davidenkoff says the Socialist government doesn’t seem to understand the concerns of the working and middle class and in the name of equality, got it all wrong.
“Mostly, wealthy people don’t want homework because when the kids are at home, they make sports or dance or music. They go to the museums, to the theater. So they have this access to culture, which is very important,” he says. “In poor families, they don’t have that, so the only link they have with culture and school is homework.”
Elisabeth Zeboulon sits in her office over the playground. Today, she’s the principal at a private, bilingual school in Paris, but she spent most of her career in French public schools. Zeboulon says the centralized French education system doesn’t leave much room for trying different teaching methods….
Read or listen to it all (audio highly recommended).
The Primate of All Nigeria Anglican Communion, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, on Saturday dismissed calls in some quarters for Churches in the country to be mandated to pay tax to government.
Okoh said this in Abuja at the 2012 Carnival for Christ, organised by the Abuja Diocese of the Anglican Communion.
The Carnival for Christ is an annual gathering of the various archdeaconries in the diocese to praise and worship God.
The Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA) yesterday said it had taken over most of the properties from defrocked Bishop, Nolbert Kunonga, following a recent Supreme Court ruling.
The court, a fortnight ago ruled that Bishop Chad Gandiya’s faction was the rightful owner of the properties which Kunonga had grabbed.
Gandiya’s press officer, Precious Shumba, said although the CPCA had faced resistance in some of the parishes, most of the buildings had been taken by midday yesterday.
[Crystal] Thompson made $18 an hour as a senior account executive at Daniel Island giftware manufacturer Davis & Small until March, and the 36-year-old single mother hasn’t been able to find suitable replacement work since.
She said she would simply work two jobs if she didn’t have children, but since she has to support her girls, she figures she needs to be paid at least $14 an hour.
“There’s so many people who are unemployed that they’re all going for the same jobs,” she said.
Thompson already moved in with her mother to save money, even though “it’s not emotionally healthy for me and my children.” And if no one hires her this month, it’s about to get rougher.
Thompson is one of 29,000 South Carolinians who will lose their federal unemployment benefits at the end of the year.
After several extensions of the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to help out-of-work Americans ride out the recession the past few years, it’s over. Congress passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 in February, which cut off the benefits by Jan. 3, 2013.
This morning, if all goes as planned, the new old church of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate will begin its journey from Germanton to Chapel Hill. Built in the early 1890s, the historic St. Philip’s Episcopal Church will take nine days to get here, traveling mostly rural roads.
Blake Moving Company is moving the building, which is scheduled to arrive on Dec. 8. Episcopal Church of the Advocate member Sam Laurent will be there to greet it. He’s a founding member of ECOTA, which, with the arrival of the chapel, will have its first real home.
“We call ourselves a nomadic church a lot of the time,” Laurent said.
Read more: The Herald-Sun – Episcopal Church of the Advocate gets a new old church
For decades, doctors in picturesque Boise, Idaho, were part of a tight-knit community, freely referring patients to the specialists or hospitals of their choice and exchanging information about the latest medical treatments.
But that began to change a few years ago, when the city’s largest hospital, St. Luke’s Health System, began rapidly buying physician practices all over town, from general practitioners to cardiologists to orthopedic surgeons.
Today, Boise is a medical battleground….
The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969.
According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole.
This week we learned of yet another fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh, this one killing more than 100 people. Before the nine-storey building blazed, workers at Tazreen Fashions Ltd. in Dhaka were making clothes for Wal-Mart and Walt Disney, among other retailers. The International Labor Rights Forum estimates that since 2005, more than 700 garment workers have died in Bangladesh as a result of safety violations in buildings. Survivors of the Tazreen fire told The Guardian that managers stopped workers from leaving the building after a fire alarm and locked the doors. Then came a panicked crush; bodies were charred beyond recognition. All this for a job that earned most workers less than $40 a month.
So this is the dark side of “more.” And we are consuming more, for less money, than we used to. In 1969, Canadians spent 10.5 per cent of household income on clothing and accessories; in 2010, that figure dropped to 6.5 per cent. An insatiable appetite for makeover shows and a mainstreaming of the fashionista ideal have coincided with a total transformation of clothing production. According to a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, it now takes “fast fashion” leader Zara two to three weeks to move an item from an idea in a studio to a hanger in a store….
The recession and weak recovery appears to be keeping many adult children from getting a home of their own, and that could have implications for the housing industry’s recovery.
A Census Bureau report released Wednesday found that between 2007 and 2011 there was a steady increase in the percentage of adults living in someone else’s house ”“ and that increase has mostly been driven by adult children moving in with mom and dad.
In 2011, Census Bureau researchers found that 17.9 percent of people 18 and older, or 41.2 million people, lived in a house in which they weren’t the head of the household or that person’s spouse or significant other. That’s up from 16 percent in 2007, before the nation went into recession.