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NEW HAVEN, Connecticut / USA Today / February 24, 2009

A study from the Yale School of Public Health gives new meaning to the adage "You're only as old as you think." A researcher there finds that younger people who have strong negative images about the elderly are more likely to have strokes and heart problems when they grow old, according to a university press release.

More than 400 people, age 18 to 49, were surveyed on their age stereotypes. Thirty years later, 25% of those with more negative age stereotypes - such as the belief that the elderly are feeble or helpless - had suffered a heart problem or stroke, while only 13% of those with more positive age stereotypes experienced a heart problem or stroke. The study appears in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Becca R. Levy, associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale is the study’s lead author. In earlier studies, Levy and colleagues found that negative ideas about age can increase stress and decrease the likelihood that the person will live healthfully, increasing the risk of poor cardiovascular health.

Author and physician Andrew Weill agrees that optimism is key to healthy aging, with the most successful people being those who anticipate being able to cope with the changes of growing older and maintaining control over their lives.

These negative views of the elderly affect more than just the health of the attitude holder. The site Older Workers notes that such attitudes perpetuate the myths that older people can't learn new technology and are less adaptable to change.

Actress Jane Fonda, 71, has a well-known quote about aging: “Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.” Age obviously has not slowed her down. She's starring on Broadway in the play 33 Variations.

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have said it best: Age is opportunity no less/than youth itself, though in another dress,/And as the evening twilight fades away/The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

AP photo by Peter Kramer of Jane Fonda at a photo session for her new Broadway play.

By Sue Kelly, USA TODAY

© Copyright 2007 USA TODAY

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WASHINGTON, DC / Slate Magazine / February 24, 2009

Finding your own metaphor for death

By Meghan O'Rourke
Updated Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009, at 7:11 AM ET
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From: Meghan O'Rourke
Subject: The Long Goodbye
Posted Monday, Feb. 16, 2009, at 6:02 PM ET
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The other morning I looked at my BlackBerry and saw an e-mail from my mother. At last! I thought. I've missed her so much. Then I caught myself. The e-mail couldn't be from my mother. My mother died a month ago.

The e-mail was from a publicist with the same first name: Barbara. The name was all that had showed up on the screen.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer sometime before 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. I can't say the exact time, because none of us thought to look at a clock for some time after she stopped breathing. She was in a hospital bed in the living room of my parents' house (now my father's house) in Connecticut with my father, my two younger brothers, and me. She had been unconscious for five days. She opened her eyes only when we moved her, which caused her extreme pain, and so we began to move her less and less, despite cautions from the hospice nurses about bedsores.

For several weeks before her death, my mother had been experiencing some confusion due to ammonia building up in her brain as her liver began to fail. And yet, irrationally, I am confident my mother knew what day it was when she died. I believe she knew we were around her. And I believe she chose to die when she did. Christmas was her favorite day of the year; she loved the morning ritual of walking the dogs, making coffee as we all waited impatiently for her to be ready, then slowly opening presents, drawing the gift-giving out for hours. This year, she couldn't walk the dogs or make coffee, but her bed was in the room where our tree was, and as we opened presents that morning, she made a madrigal of quiet sounds, as if to indicate that she was with us.

Since my mother's death, I have been in grief. I walk down the street; I answer my phone; I brush my hair; I manage, at times, to look like a normal person, but I don't feel normal. I am not surprised to find that it is a lonely life: After all, the person who brought me into the world is gone. But it is more than that. I feel not just that I am but that the world around me is deeply unprepared to deal with grief. Nearly every day I get e-mails from people who write: "I hope you're doing well." It's a kind sentiment, and yet sometimes it angers me. I am not OK. Nor do I find much relief in the well-meant refrain that at least my mother is "no longer suffering." Mainly, I feel one thing: My mother is dead, and I want her back. I really want her back—sometimes so intensely that I don't even want to heal. At least, not yet.

Nothing about the past losses I have experienced prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me in the least. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable. What makes it worse is that my mother was young: 55. The loss I feel stems partly from feeling robbed of 20 more years with her I'd always imagined having.

I say this knowing it sounds melodramatic. This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands. I am aware that I am one of the lucky ones. I am an adult. My mother had a good life. We had insurance that allowed us to treat her cancer and to keep her as comfortable as possible before she died. And in the past year, I got to know my mother as never before. I went with her to the hospital and bought her lunch while she had chemotherapy, searching for juices that wouldn't sting the sores in her mouth. We went to a spiritual doctor who made her sing and passed crystals over her body. We shopped for new clothes together, standing frankly in our underwear in the changing room after years of being shyly polite with our bodies. I crawled into bed with her and stroked her hair when she cried in frustration that she couldn't go to work. I grew to love my mother in ways I never had. Some of the new intimacy came from finding myself in a caretaking role where, before, I had been the one taken care of. But much of it came from being forced into openness by our sense that time was passing. Every time we had a cup of coffee together (when she was well enough to drink coffee), I thought, against my will: This could be the last time I have coffee with my mother.

Grief is common, as Hamlet's mother Gertrude brusquely reminds him. We know it exists in our midst. But I am suddenly aware of how difficult it is for us to confront it. And to the degree that we do want to confront it, we do so in the form of self-help: We want to heal our grief. We want to achieve an emotional recovery. We want our grief to be teleological, and we've assigned it five tidy stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Yet as we've come to frame grief as a psychological process, we've also made it more private. Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore—we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail. We may—I have done it—weep and rail privately, in the middle of the night. But we don't have the rituals of public mourning around which the individual experience of grief were once constellated.

And in the weeks since my mother died, I have felt acutely the lack of these rituals. I was not prepared for how hard I would find it to re-enter the slipstream of contemporary life, our world of constant connectivity and immediacy, so ill-suited to reflection. I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish—a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person. So I began wondering: What does it mean to grieve in a culture that—for many of us, at least—has few ceremonies for observing it? What is it actually like to grieve? In a series of pieces over the next few weeks, I'll delve into these questions and also look at the literature of grieving, from memoirs to medical texts. I'll be doing so from an intellectual perspective, but also from a personal one: I want to write about grief from the inside out. I will be writing about my grief, of course, and I don't pretend that it is universal. But I hope these pieces will reflect something about the paradox of loss, with its monumental sublimity and microscopic intimacy.

If you have a story or thought about grieving you'd like to share, please e-mail me at morourkexx@gmail.com.

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From: Meghan O'Rourke
Subject: Finding a Metaphor for Your Loss
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009, at 7:11 AM ET
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I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious. And until my mother grew ill, I might not have described myself as deeply spiritual. I used to find it infuriating when people offered up the—to me—empty consolation that whatever happened, she "will always be there with you."

But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone. She took one slow, rattling breath; then, 30 seconds later, another; then she opened her eyes and looked at us, and took a last. As she exhaled, her face settled into repose. Her body grew utterly still, and yet she seemed present. I felt she had simply been transferred into another substance; what substance, where it might be located, I wasn't quite sure.

I went outside onto my parents' porch without putting my coat on. The limp winter sun sparkled off the frozen snow on the lawn. "Please take good care of my mother," I said to the air. I addressed the fir tree she loved and the wind moving in it. "Please keep her safe for me."

This is what a friend of mine—let's call her Rose—calls "finding a metaphor." I was visiting her a few weeks ago in California; we stayed up late, drinking lemon-ginger tea and talking about the difficulty of grieving, its odd jags of ecstasy and pain. Her father died several years ago, and it was easy to speak with her: She was in what more than one acquaintance who's lost a parent has now referred to as "the club." It's not a club any of us wished to join, but I, for one, am glad it exists. It makes mourning less lonely. I told Rose how I envied my Jewish friends the reassuring ritual of saying kaddish. She talked about the hodge-podge of traditions she had embraced in the midst of her grief. And then she asked me, "Have you found a metaphor?"

"A metaphor?"

"Have you found your metaphor for where your mother is?"

I knew immediately what Rose meant. I had. It was the sky—the wind. (The cynic in me cringes on rereading this. But, in fact, it's how I feel.) When I got home to Brooklyn, I asked one of my mother's friends whether she had a metaphor for where my mother was. She unhesitatingly answered: "The water. The ocean."

The idea that my mother might be somewhere rather than nowhere is one that's hard for the skeptical empiricist in me to swallow. When my grandfather died last September, he seemed to me merely—gone. On a safari in South Africa a few weeks later, I saw two female lions kill a zebra. The zebra struggled for three or four long minutes; as soon as he stopped, his body seemed to be only flesh. (When I got home the next week, I found out that my mother had learned that same day that her cancer had returned. It spooked me.)

But I never felt my mother leave the world.

At times I simply feel she's just on a long trip—and am jolted to realize it's one she's not coming back from. I'm reminded of an untitled poem I love by Franz Wright, a contemporary American poet, which has new meaning. It reads, in full:

I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)

Sometimes I recite this to myself as I walk around.

At lunch yesterday, as velvety snow coated the narrow Brooklyn street, I attempted to talk about this haunted feeling with a friend whose son died a few years ago. She told me that she, too, feels that her son is with her. They have conversations. She's an intellectually exacting person, and she told me that she had sometimes wondered about how to conceptualize her—well, let's call it a persistent intuition. A psychiatrist reframed it for her: He reminded her that the sensation isn't merely an empty notion. The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

That's a kind of comfort. But I confess I felt a sudden resistance of the therapist's view. The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head. Every now and then, I see a tree shift in the wind and its bend has, to my eye, a distinctly maternal cast. For me, my metaphor is—as all good metaphors ought to be—a persuasive transformation. In these moments, I do not say to myself that my mother is like the wind; I think she is the wind. I feel her: there, and there. One sad day, I actually sat up in shock when I felt my mother come shake me out of a pervasive fearfulness that was making it hard for me to read or get on subways. Whether it was the ghostly flicker of my synapses, or an actual ghostly flicker of her spirit, I don't know. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping it was the latter.

Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's culture critic and the author of Halflife, a collection of poetry.

Illustration by Deanna Staffo

Read source article

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

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WASHINGTON, DC / CNN News / February 24, 2009

Jazz legend Duke Ellington is the first African American to appear on an American coin, the U.S. Mint says in introducing the latest in its line of state-themed quarters.

The District of Columbia coin honoring Duke Ellington will be introduced Tuesday at the Smithsonian

The District of Columbia commemorative quarter showing Ellington playing the piano will be introduced by U.S. Mint Director Ed Moy at a news conference Tuesday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Ellington won the honor by a vote of D.C. residents, beating out abolitionist Frederick Douglas and astronomer Benjamin Banneker.

Also on the coin is the phrase "justice for all." The Mint rejected the first inscription choice of D.C. voters, which was "taxation without representation," in protest of the District's lack of voting representation in Congress.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington received 13 Grammy Awards and was a pioneer in jazz, according to his official Web site.

Ellington was born in the District and composed more than 3,000 songs, including the notable "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," a song that helped usher in the swing era of jazz.

Ellington performed with other famous artists, including John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and he traveled around the world with his orchestras.

He died in 1974 at age 75.

All about Duke Ellington

© 2009 Cable News Network

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CANBERRA / Reuters / February 24, 2009

Staying married is better for the planet because divorce leads the newly single to live more wasteful lifestyles, an Australian lawmaker said Tuesday.

Senator Steve Fielding told a Senate hearing in the Australian capital Canberra that divorce only made climate change worse.

A couple share a siesta at the base of a wall on Manly Beach in Sydney December 25, 2007. Reuters/Will Burgess

When couples separated, they needed more rooms, more electricity and more water. This increased their carbon footprint, Australian Associated Press (AAP) quoted Fielding as telling the hearing on environmental issues.

"We understand that there is a social problem (with divorce), but now we're seeing there is also environmental impact as well on the footprint," AAP quoted him as saying.

Such a "resource-inefficient lifestyle" meant it would be better for the planet if couples stayed married, he said.

During the hearing, the senator read out quotes from a U.S. report that advocated his stance.

Fielding, who leads the independent Family First party, grew up in a family of 16 children and has been married for 22 years, his website says.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by David Fogarty and Paul Tait)

© Thomson Reuters 2009

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KOCHI, Kerala / Express Buzz / February 24, 2009

By Navamy Sudhish

For working people who worry about aged parents left at home, there is good news.

The old age home under the Social Welfare Department at Thevara has started a ‘Pakalveedu,’ an adult day care centre which will start functioning very soon. “We have already invited applications. Admission will take into account the family background and age of the applicants,” says Shantha Kumari, superintendent of the old age home.

The major aim of the Pakalveedu is to provide care and companionship for the elderly who need assistance during the daytime. It will also ensure essential protection and security to parents and grandparents left alone inside homes.

The old-age home already has 34 residents and 7 staff. The two-storeyed building next to the old age home will accommodate the day care members of the Pakalveedu. All the preparations to welcome the new members are complete. The new building will be able to accommodate 100 inmates. The first floor has a number of beds, newspapers, magazines, TV sets and board games to make the 8 to 5 day cheerful and comfortable. Free pick up and drop facility will be provided. Tea and snacks will be served, but the elderly will have to bring their own lunch.

“As of now only people residing in locations that come under the corporation area are eligible to make use of this facility,” says Shantha Kumari. Applicants should be under the Below-the-Poverty-Line category and aged fifty-five and over. “The aim is to help working-class families where husband and wife go out for work and parents are left behind without any protection and care during the day.

Pakalveedu allows the couples the freedom to handle professional and personal lives with the knowledge that their parents are safe and well cared for. And for the elderly who are in the twilight of their lives, it provides a forum to celebrate their second childhood.

More details: Old Age Home, Thevara, Near Fisheries School, Kochi. Phone 2663688.

navamy@gmail.com

Copyright © 2008 Express Buzz

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LONDON, England / United Press International / Health News / February 24, 2009

Many believe more money will make people happier, however as societies grow richer, they don't necessarily become happier, a British researcher says.

Richard Layard of the London School of Economics says in the past 50 years individual levels of wealth have increased in many societies but so has crime, deprivation, depression and addictions to alcohol and drugs.

Richard Layard

Layard is scheduled to speak at the first of three events Thursday organized by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the Festival of Social Science.

He says that when it comes to happiness many fail to take into consideration that if everyone gains purchasing power, some may still turn out unhappy if their position relative to others is worse and may diminish the benefits people draw from their hard work.

In an economy where people are constantly forced to compete with each other, life and work become a rat race, he says. As people get used to higher income levels, their idea of a sufficient income grows with their income and if this is not anticipated, they will invest more time for work than is good for their happiness.

Individual preferences are not fixed, he contends, but increasingly mutable shifting constantly according to the latest trends and cultural norms subjecting one's possessions to depreciation.

© 2009 United Press International

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MUMBAI, India / The Times of India / February 24, 2009

By Swati Deshpande, Times News Network

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided to introduce age-bar in law colleges across India, a move that has not gone down well with the student as well the teaching community who are aghast and calling for a proper debate before the ‘‘controversial new rule’’ is enforced.

Once the new rule comes into effect, no one above the age of 20 can join the integrated five-year LLb course for which a student enrols after passing class XII. Also, one can’t be over 30 if one wants to join the three-year LLB degree course (for which a bachelor’s degree is must).

The BCI is the apex organisation that determines the standards and rules governing legal education in India and their advice is binding on all law-teaching institutions.

But, in Mumbai’s G J Advani Law College, principal Vijay Ghormade said: ‘‘Any change has to be gradual, well thought out and consensual. Colleges, principals, lawyers, teachers and students ought to be involved in the decision-making process.’’

BCI vice-chairperson J R Beniwal justified the move saying, ‘‘We want to improve the standards of legal education. We don’t want to open the gates for a 70-year-old. Law education must be on par with medical and engineering education.’’

There are about 300 universities across India, a dozen national law schools in various states and over 300 law colleges. Tens of thousands of students enrol for law courses every year.

The BCI, however, has made a concession for SC/ST and OBC students who can join a five-year course (after class XII) at 22 and a three-year PG course at even 35.

The BCI says it is introducing age bar to improve the quality of lawyers but law colleges and advocates say the move smacks of ‘‘discrimination’’. It violates the constitutional right to equality and to practise a profession of one’s choice. Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani said: ‘‘It’s unnecessary and discriminatory. How can you stop someone from studying at any age and changing his profession?’’

Beniwal, however, said: ‘‘This is a good idea. Lot of senior people, including a former Supreme Court judge, have applied their mind.’’

Copyright © 2009 Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd

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NEW DELHI, India / The Hindu / National / February 23, 2009

By J. Venkatesan

Considering the plight of senior citizens and aged parents neglected by their sons and daughters, the Government of India has enacted the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. The law seeks to make it a legal obligation for children and heirs to provide maintenance to senior citizens. It also permits State governments to establish old age homes in every district.

Senior citizens unable to maintain themselves shall have the right to apply to a maintenance tribunal seeking a monthly allowance of Rs. 10,000 from their children or heirs. State governments will set up tribunals in every sub-division to decide the level of maintenance. The punishment for not paying the monthly allowance shall be Rs. 5,000 or up to three months imprisonment or both.

To sensitise judges, judicial officers, senior government officials and non-governmental organisations on implementing this law, the National Legal Services Authority conducted a one-day national seminar here on Saturday.

Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan inaugurated the seminar attended by Chief Justices of various High Courts, judges, Executive Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the State Legal Services Authorities/High Court Legal Services Committees, Ministers and Secretaries of Social Welfare Departments of various States. The CJI, who released in a booklet form the law and its provisions for the benefit of senior citizens and the implementing agency, explained the benefits of the legislation.

Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar expressed concern that senior citizens were not getting the traditional respect and care from their children and called for effective implementation of the law. She said there was a gradual increase in the women population among the elderly and they were set to outnumber the males in the old-age group by 2016.

Supreme Court Judge and NALSA Executive Chairman Justice Arijit Pasayat said senior citizens unable to maintain themselves would have the right to apply to a maintenance tribunal seeking a monthly allowance from their children or heirs.

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu.

Related Report

Chief Justice wants guidelines to govern private old-age homes

NEW DELHI / Press Trust of India / February 21, 2009

There should be proper guidelines to govern private old-age homes to ensure "right benefits" for the elderly and prevent any exploitation, Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said today.

"The Jammu and Kashmir High Court recently talked about having guidelines for health clinics...(similarly) it's high time to have guidelines for private old-age homes so that the elderly get the right benefits," the CJI said while talking about money-making pratices adopted by some homes meant for parents of NRIs.

The CJI, who inaugurated a one-day national seminar on Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 (MWPSCA) here, said under Article 21 of the Constitution the elderly have a right to live with dignity.

"The statute has several provisions which have good intention but these should be implemented," the CJI said adding that the National Legal Services Authority is now trying to educate and empower the beneficiaries of laws.

"There are several statutes lying dormant and we should reinvigorate them so to that they are implemented," he said in the backdrop his recent observation that when it comes to implementing laws on collecting surcharges, the government will rush them but not implement "benevolent legislations."

A Bench headed by the CJI had observed this on a PIL on implementation of a 14-year-old disabilities law.

Press Trust of India

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MIAMI, Florida / Miami Herald / February 23, 2009

Camera shop is old-fashioned bastion in digital age
By Ana Veciana-Suarez

Enter George Zima's tiny photo shop prepared for a stroll down memory lane -- and a comprehensive lesson in the history of photography. The second-floor office space in a nondescript Palmetto Bay building is chockablock with cameras, lenses, slide projectors and accessories for the tried-and-true 35 mm buff.

Aptly named Forever 35, Zima's cozy nook is where film -- that so very 20th century idea of emulsion and negatives and darkroom -- is making its last stand.

''It's a Don Quixote thing,'' admits Zima, speaking of this bastion for single lens reflex photography. ``I know it's a losing battle because digital is the wave of the future. But I want to think 35 mm is not dead. Film is not dead.''

That said, Zima -- photographer, pianist, pilot, avid boater and collector of antique cars -- is not giving up. Film photography, which he mastered as an adolescent in Argentina, remains his first love. As Miami's only Leica dealer, he carries the brand's digital line, and he even admits to ''liking very much'' the V-Lux 1. He used it, his first digital, during a European trip last year.

''This is an incredible camera, so lightweight, so easy,'' he says. ``On my trip I could use it in any kind of lighting, any kind of distance. And then I put my card in my Sony printer, and there, just like that, I have my photographs.''

Nevertheless, Zima, 58, remains a ''diehard'' film guy. He has plenty of like-minded company, too, those who think that capturing an image has lost some of its art in the digital revolution. Listen to Zima's wistful tone when he opines:

``The days of waiting five, six days for the right light and the right image are gone. Now the computer makes the perfect picture. Want blue sky? The computer makes blue sky. Everything is too perfect. Everything is fictitious.''

Zima's love for old-fashioned photography is nowhere more evident than when he coaches young novitiates in the wonder of film. Rob Friedman, who has been teaching photography at Palmetto High School for 16 years, sends his students to Forever 35 for manual film cameras and for help in building their own darkrooms. Zima, he says, always quotes reasonable prices and sometimes gives students chemicals for free.

''He takes a lot of time to explain things to them,'' adds Friedman. ``He's very knowledgeable and sincere. I trust his judgment completely.''

FAITHFUL FOLLOWING

Zima also has a faithful following among veteran photogs, some of whom have been buying equipment from him for two decades, when his store was known as Zima's and the promise -- or threat -- of digital was unimaginable.

Sue Daisley, a Jackson Memorial Hospital nurse, is one of the faithful. Her first purchase was a lens. Then Zima began developing her rolls because he ''is a master of images, a true talent,'' she says. In the past 15 years, she has bought several cameras from him, too. Though she owns two digital ones, she agrees with Zima about the new technology. ``I don't have the control I would like with them.''

Shopping at Forever 35, Daisley says, is an experience, not a transaction. Zima is generous with his time and expertise. Always dressed impeccably in suit and tie, a contrast to the polo-shirted uniform of his competitors, Zima's old-world manners match his products.

''You're not going in there for 15 minutes to buy a camera and be gone,'' Daisley says. ``You're going in there for a couple of hours and he's going to make sure that before you leave you know how to operate the camera and you know everything about it.''

PERSONAL TOUCH

She even phoned Zima from Alaska asking for help. That kind of customer service has enabled Zima to survive the onslaught of the Internet and ubiquitous big box stores at a time when many of his competitors have been forced to close shop.

''The personal attention he gives customers is far beyond what you can pay for,'' she says. ``There isn't anything you can ask him about that he doesn't know -- or doesn't know where to get the answer. You can buy cameras anywhere, but you can't get the knowledge George has.''

Retired architect Jose Tuñon is another longtime customer who agrees that Zima's ''boutique style'' of shopping attracts return customers year after year. ''He eventually becomes your friend because he spends so much time and attention with you,'' he adds. ``There really is no other photo store in the area like his.''

FIRST LOVE

Zima can't remember much before photography captured his heart. He was born in Berazategui, a small town south of Buenos Aires where his grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, had founded a department store.

Zima's father, Isaac, decided to introduce imaging products to the store's offerings just in time for his eldest son to discover them.

While the family business became one of the largest suppliers of classical guitars in the area -- a factory produced instruments just for the Zima operation -- young George was busy experimenting with the photography equipment instead. By the time he was in high school, his father had put him in charge of that department.

''In those days there were photo clubs and art groups everywhere and I was invited to all of them,'' he recalls. ``I was making movies at school and shooting for friends and families at various events.''

As photography grew more sophisticated with the mass introduction of the single lens reflex camera in the 1960s, Zima expanded the store's line from Eastman Kodak to other brands. Whenever his family traveled, which was often, Zima took both his still and movie cameras along. Even as a university student majoring in physics and engineering, and then during stints in the Army and Air Force, Zima continued snapping shots.

With access to top-of the-line equipment, Zima learned a valuable lesson early: ``It's not the quality of the camera, but the quality of the photographer behind the camera. Yes, more expensive cameras are more precise, but it is not a replacement for a good eye.''

COMING TO MIAMI

Zima eventually moved to Miami in 1979 with his family as Argentina's political situation worsened. He set up shop ''selling anything and everything'' to his compatriots in downtown Miami during the heyday of Latin American tourism. When that business dried up, he decided to focus on photography.

In 1982, when he opened his first store, Zima's, on U.S. 1 and Ludlam Road, competition was fierce among the 50 or more camera shops. Eventually mail order and the Internet began taking a bite out of his business, too, so he decided to specialize, maintaining two lines -- Pentax and Leica -- and offering what others could not: his knowledge and his passion for the art.

''I have said I will never give up, but I am also realistic, no?'' he philosophizes. ``I'm not convinced of this digital revolution, but I also know that it is better in many ways. Even an inexperienced photographer can do real art.''

© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company.

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ScienceBlog.com / February 23, 2009

Many Retirees Are Using Time and Money to Pursue Lifelong Interests

By BJS

Contrary to the stereotype of grandparents sitting on the porch in rocking chairs, retirement can be a time of personal growth and activity, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"Our research investigates retirement as a life stage focused on consumption where outdated cultural scripts for retirement are challenged," write authors Hope Jensen Schau (University of Arizona), Mary C. Gilly (University of California, Irvine), and Mary Wolfinbarger (California State University, Long Beach).

The researchers embarked on a research project to explore the phenomena called "identity renaissance." They found that in contrast to images of seniors in decline, many retirees are using their time and money to pursue lifelong interests they had put aside in favor of more immediate obligations prior to retirement.

Using in-depth interviews with retirees, observation of senior centers and a rehabilitation center, and monitoring online forums, the researchers revealed a culture of seniors actively engaging in new projects and picking up old ones.

The study data reveals two categories of identity work among retirees: self-expression and affiliation. Self-expression tends to be more about enhancing or developing the self, and can involve "self-retrieval," when people take up past life projects that were deferred or continue with life interests in the face of change such as illness or disability. Other self-expression projects involve the concept of "self-permanence," or creating a lasting legacy; self-synchronization, which is an effort to align oneself with the current state of culture and society, such as buying a computer and learning to use the internet; or self-discovery, which entails creating new projects, life goals, or memories.

Affiliation projects are more outward focused and can involve moving closer to friends and family; increasing a connection to a place, such as their homeland; or volunteering or working to improve the world situation.

"Our research on retirement as a life transition demonstrates that this later life stage need not focus on cognitive or corporeal decline, but rather celebrate the vibrant identity projects of retirees," write the authors. "It is a time of significant renewal, when individuals have time to engage in identity work in a way not possible since their adolescence."

Hope Jensen Schau, Mary C. Gilly, and Mary Wolfinbarger. "Consumer Identity Renaissance: The Resurgence of Identity Inspired Consumption in Retirement." Journal of Consumer Research: August 2009.

Read original

Copyright, Science Blog

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NEW DELHI, India / MailToday.com / February 23, 2009

By Tanvi Varma

With banks slashing interest rates on fixed deposits, investors are looking at corporate debt as an alternative. But these instruments are more risky than the bank FDs

These are bad days for investment. Wealth creation is not on most investors' mind, with an erosion of over 50 per cent in portfolio values, they are too busy trying to protect the wealth they are left with. Most investors are making a beeline for the hitherto scorned bank fixed deposits. However, with RBI cutting the benchmark interest rates, banks too have trimmed their deposit rates. So the State Bank of India, which until two months ago was offering 10 per cent on a 1,000-day FD, has now pegged it at nine per cent.

So where can the beleaguered investor go? To what is possibly one of the last few lucrative investment options - company fixed deposits. Of late, owing to the tightening liquidity and the increasing risks attached to businesses, banks have become wary of lending to corporates. It has resulted in these companies tapping the retail market to fund their expansion plans

So, what do you get with a corporate FD? More risk than a bank deposit, for one. This is because there's no government backing, nor is the investment amount protected under the Deposit Insurance Act (up to Rs 1 lakh in case of bank FDs). "An investor should look at the pedigree of the management and the fundamentals of the company," says Dipen Shah, vice-president, PCG Research, Kotak Securities. Having learnt from the Satyam imbroglio, numbers can be fudged, but if the reputation of the management and its credibility is strong, then an investor's interest is likely to be protected. "It is equally important to look at financial indicators like the interest coverage ratio, the debt-to-equity ratio and the free cash flow generated by the company," adds Shah.

The interest coverage ratio will tell you whether the company can fulfil its interest obligations. Typically, look for a ratio of 2:1 and be sceptical of anything above this. Likewise, the debt-to equity ratio of a company will tell you how leveraged the company is. Several industries require capex, which may increase their ratios, but a gearing of 1-1.5 is acceptable, says Shah. Lastly, the free cash flow generated by the company will reveal the amount available for repayments.

"Though one cannot rely only on these, one should look at the credit ratings assigned to these companies," says Gaurav Mashruwala, a certified financial planner. Typically, look for a rating of BBB or above this.

Here's how you can actually use the above pointers. Take Tata Motors. The company is raising money from the market to fund its recent acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover and to meet its capex requirement. It is offering 11 per cent on a three-year FD; shareholders, employees and senior citizens get an additional 0.5 per cent. Like bank FDs, the company will deduct tax at source if the interest exceeds Rs 5,000 in a financial year, at 10.3 per cent, including surcharge.

The company's debt-to-equity ratio is expected to be more than two times going forward; in the last quarter, Tata Motors posted a net loss of Rs 200 crore for the first time in seven years. The company's debt rating too has been reduced by Crisil, reflecting the impact of the weakening business environment on the company's global and Indian operations. Sounds like a bad bet, doesn't it? But take a look at this.

Raman Uberoi, senior director, ratings, Crisil, says, "The downgrade does not mean that the company is not in a position to repay; its rating has been brought down from higher safety to adequate safety." Also, the company's strong management and an impeccable track record provide confidence to investors, adds Shah. Crisil also believes that the measures undertaken by Tata Motors to contain costs and manage its working capital requirements will ease the pressure on its financial risk profile. The group has on tap its non-convertible debentures by Tata Capital, which offers an interest rate of 12 per cent with an AA+ rating assigned by Icra. Typically, debentures are considered safer as they are secured against a firm's assets unlike FDs, which are unsecured.

So, the positives may outweigh the negatives in this case. The deposit is attractive for investors in the highest tax bracket as the post-tax yield still works out to eight per cent. The closest comparison to this option is the Public Provident Fund, which offers a tax-free return of eight per cent and qualifies for deduction under Section 80C; a corporate FD is not eligible for such a deduction.

There are various other companies offering deposit rates of 10 per cent and more (see table), but each company's balance sheet should be scrutinised before you invest, says Mashruwala. Shriram Transport Finance is offering a rate of 11.5 per cent on a three-year deposit. Given it's market leadership position and well-entrenched business, analysts believe that the company will deliver 38 per cent CAGR over the next two years, with an average return on equity of 27 per cent. These are good numbers to reckon with.

The point to remember is that corporate FDs are as risky as the company itself. In general, government undertakings are the safest option since they come with a sovereign rating. Financial institutions are also good bets as they have proven risk aversion measures and high capital adequacy ratios, followed by manufacturing companies.

Source: epaper.MailToday.com

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PARIS, France / Le Figaro Daily / February 23, 2009

François Bouniol, who has a dozen nursing homes in the Ile-de-France area, says it is more advantageous to put a person in paid care home than under independent care. He is backing the French Hospitals Federation's project to publish a report next month of indicators of elder abuse in nursing homes. Photo: Le Figaro

The French Hospital Federation plans to establish “indicators” of mistreatment in nursing homes. According to François Bouniol who is promoting the project, there is huge opposition against the issue of guidelines as it is regarded as a financial rather than a human problem. The funds raised by those establishments from the French Department Councils are strongly linked to the degree of dependence of the retired persons. This explains the tendency to avoid encouraging their autonomy and the “artificial creation of bedridden persons.”

There are five pertinent and objective indicators that are likely to be introduced and to be reported by the nursing homes regularly, allowing control in the long run that is much more efficient than random controls, reports Delphine de Mallevoüe who prepared the survey for LE FIGARO according to an article published today.

Click for Source: LE FIGARO

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka / Daily Mirror / February 23, 2009

By Kelum Bandara

The government has decided to release persons over 60 years of age from the internally displaced camps in Vavuniya so that they could live independently or with their relatives, Vavuniya Government Agent Ms. P. S.M. Charles said.

There are 15 welfare camps in Vavuniya currently occupied by over 31,504 displaced persons from the Wanni.

Ms. Charles said these aged persons fond it difficult to live in a temporary hut without the aid of anyone, and therefore they would be allowed to live with their relatives outside the camps.

She said the elderly people could choose to do so only if they were willing.

However, the aged persons without any relatives would be accommodated in separate elderly homes to be looked after by the government.

“We have already released 60 aged persons. We have identified another 73 persons at one camp to be released,” she said.

Asked about the persons who had found their family members missing, she said that four such children were re-united with their families after their parents were traced.

The parents of a few other children were yet to be identified, and the government was planning to launch an online programme to gather such information about the IDPs.

Meanwhile, the Government Agent said that they had started the community cooking programme for the IDPs in Vavuniya. Accordingly, 100 families would team up in one group, and cook for all starting from today.

The government provides essential items, kitchen utensils and firewood.

Copyright © Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.

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NEW DELHI, India / The Hindustan Times / Business / February 23, 2009

By Sandeep Singh, The Hindustan Times

A 0.0009 per cent fee for managing your wealth makes pension funds, that will be launched on April 1, the world’s lowest cost money managers. Technically called the new pension system (NPS), pension funds will come to life under Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and offer Indian citizens, particularly contract workers, an inexpensive option for planning their retirement.

To put this figure in perspective, pension fund managers (PFMs) will charge Rs 9 as fund management fee under NPS for managing Rs 10 lakh. In contrast, the same investment in an equity scheme of a mutual fund will charge Rs 22,500 upfront, while a debt scheme will charge Rs 5,000-6,000.

In addition, a mutual fund will charge up to 1.75 per cent on your total corpus every year, compared to Rs 350 for any amount that is invested in the NPS. So, a Rs 10 lakh investment corpus on which you add Rs 1 lakh will cost you the sum of Rs 2,250 and Rs 17,500. The same investment in NPS comes for Rs 359.

The low charge structure makes the product more attractive when compared to its nearest low-cost option, mutual funds — investment plans from insurance companies (unit linked insurance plans or ULIPs) don’t even come close.

The net impact: Rs 1 lakh per annum invested in NPS will grow to Rs 1.8 crore after 30 years, assuming a 10 per cent per annum return. If put in a mutual fund, the money will grow to Rs 0.8 crore.

And even though NPS returns will be taxed when withdrawn under the exempt exempt tax (EET) regime (investment taxable when withdrawn) — an anomaly that the regulator has been fighting with ministry of finance to equalise with the provident fund scheme that enjoys exempt exempt exempt (EEE) regime (investment not taxable even at the time of withdrawal) — it will still generate a higher return than a mutual fund.

As fund management fee is very low, experts argue that it is unsustainable for the fund houses. “Operating at such cost is not feasible and no one will be able to recover their cost,” said the head of a financial institution that could not make it into the list of successful bidders.

This is a long-term game, PFRDA Chairman D Swarup told Hindustan Times. “I had warned all the bidders that you enter this business only if you are a serious player. Because even if there is lot of potential, you are not going to make money for the first several years.”

While it appears to be an ideal investment option for long-term retirement savings for households, financial planners have their reservations. “It is a good initiative but I have my concerns on the quality of fund managers who will be managing the scheme,” said a financial planner on conditions of anonymity. “At such a low charge it is practically impossible for the fund house get good fund managers to manage the fund.”

Copyright: HT Media Ltd

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NEW DELHI, India / The Times of India / February 23, 2009

By Saurabh Sinha, Times News Network

‘‘Senior citizen’’ pilots may eventually be allowed to fly only private planes and not scheduled commercial Indian airliners.

The government had extended pilots’ flying age in India from 60 to 65 about three years ago due to a severe shortage of pilots, during an unprecedented aviation boom then.

But, now, with the boom gone bust and scores of young commercial pilot licence (CPL) holders idling after spending millions on their training, a rethink is on in the higher echelons of government. ‘‘The reducing of upper age limit can progressively be considered, depending on the ground situation, for schedule airlines but not for private planes,’’ aviation minister Praful Patel said.

Industry insiders put the number of 60 plus pilots flying Indian carriers between 400 and 500. The aviation boom led hundreds of young students to pursue commercial flying and procure CPL training at prohibitive cost. But, now, with air traffic declining sharply, airlines have reduced their current fleet sizes and cancelled or delayed future delivery of aircraft as well. As a result, there are excess co-pilots and fresh CPL holders are not getting jobs. Moreover, with airlines cutting flights, even active duty pilots are also being paid progressively less.

For instance, one of India’s biggest private airline recently reduced the number of days its pilots must be available from 22 days a month to just 15. ‘‘Airlines have over 1,000 foreign pilots and a large number of pilots above 60 years of age. While the expats must be sent back, we have nothing against our senior pilots. Only thing is that in current situation, fresh openings need to be made,’’ said a senior pilot.

Copyright © 2009 Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.

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LOS ANGELES, California / Los Angeles Times / Business News / February 22, 2009

A job seeker views postings at an employment center in Glendale. Amid the downsizing epidemic, unemployed people are having a hard time returning to the workforce and earning a paycheck. Jay L. Clendenin /
Los Angeles Times

The epidemic of layoffs across the country is breeding anxiety and damaging hopes. The pain is passed on to family members.

By David Lazarus

For more than 17 years, Yvonne Nance knew just who she was -- the helpful voice at the other end of the line when people called AT&T for directory assistance.

That ended in December, when AT&T Inc. informed the 47-year-old mother of four that she was among 12,000 workers being cut from the telecom giant's payroll.

Two months later, Nance is confused.

"I'm going to my 30th class reunion in July," the Los Angeles resident said. "What do I put on my bio? Unemployed? Homemaker? That I used to work at AT&T for 17 1/2 years?"

She paused to get her feelings under control.

"Right now, I don't feel so good about myself," Nance said. "I've always had a job. I've never been laid off from a job. Some days, I don't even want to get out of bed."

The statistics are alarming: Nearly 2 million people have lost their jobs in the last three months, almost 600,000 in January alone. The national unemployment rate has reached 7.6%. In California it's 9.3%.

But the numbers are only half the story.

The other half is what happens to people and families when a job disappears. The psychological and emotional toll can be devastating.

"Our culture is based on what people do and how much they make," said Sharon Tucker, an L.A. psychologist who says an increasing number of her clients are dealing with layoff-related issues. "For a lot of people, being laid off means your identity has been taken away."

Dorothea Braginsky, a psychology professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut who has spent decades studying how layoffs affect people, said the link between people's jobs and their sense of self-worth is established at an early age -- and reinforced throughout our lives.

"One of the first things we ask little children is what they want to be when they grow up," she said. "When we meet people at a party, one of the first things we ask is what they do. It really becomes an essential part of self-definition."

Beginning in the 1970s, Braginsky started following a group of 50 men who'd lost their jobs.

She found that the trauma of the experience could be long-lasting, for both the men and their loved ones.

"The men who found new jobs eventually recovered their self-esteem, but it never got back to the point of men who had not lost their jobs," Braginsky said.

At the same time, she saw cynicism and distrust rise among those who'd been laid off. These feelings affected relationships with spouses and were passed on to children.

That dynamic, Braginsky predicted, will play out again in the current downturn, resulting in a generation of young people who will approach jobs and relationships with a sense of wariness instilled early on.

We'll see the ramifications of this for many years, she said. "Things are going to be different for people after this, and it's not going to be good."

Northridge resident Dan Adams, 47, lost his job as an office-equipment salesman in September, after 26 years of work. He said the hardest part has been putting on a brave face for his 12-year-old daughter.

"You don't want to tell your kid that Dad's not going to work," Adams said. "You try to downplay it."

Rachelle J. Canter is a San Francisco psychologist and consultant who has advised a wide variety of companies on how to handle employment issues. Her clients have included American Express Co., AT&T, Bank of America Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and the University of California.

Losing a job, she said, "is the psychological equivalent of being hit by a car."

Canter advises people to give in to the vocational version of the grieving process. Give yourself time to come to terms with your new reality before reaching out to others for assistance.

"Networking is important," Canter said. "But you don't want to present yourself in the wrong way. People don't hire people who are desperate."

Try to shield your children from fear and anxiety as much as possible, especially younger ones who may still have Mommy or Daddy on a pedestal.

"They don't need to know all the gory details," Canter said. "They especially don't need to know that Daddy or Mommy is scared. Be careful about what you say -- less is more."

Ditto with your spouse. Canter said she's seen many couples pull together when times are tough.

But she's also seen anger and resentment take hold, tearing away at the fabric of a relationship.

After AT&T showed her the door, Nance said she wasn't sure how to break the news to her kids. "It's hard to explain to them that you're going to be cutting back," she said.

Fortunately, Nance's husband still has a job as a plumber for the L.A. Unified School District.

Nance said she was trying to find temp work, anything to help tide the family over until the economy improves. So far, it hasn't been easy.

"I want to be optimistic," she said. "But I'm a realist."

David Lazarus
david.lazarus@latimes.com.

Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

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MIAMI, Florida / The Miami Herald / Living / February 22, 2009

By Paradise Afshar

Family and friends gathered at the South Dade Adult Day Care Center to celebrate Julia Gonzalez's 100th birthday. Gonzalez, originally a 4th grade teacher in Cuba, has lived in the U.S. since 1959. Gonzalez, in middle, enjoys the company of her grandsons and their wives, from left, Jill, Armando, Steven and Diana.
Allison Diaz / For The Miami Herald

Most people who know Cuba-born Julia Gonzalez find it hard to believe that she is 100.''She looks 80,'' Diana Gonzalez, 47, a Davie resident, said. ``She's as smart as can be, loves needle work and can cook unbelievably good. She's a wealth of information.''

Unlike some her age, Gonzalez can walk short distances without using her cane, is sharp enough to play dominoes with friends and rarely takes any medication.

''Her blood pressure is better than mine,'' said Lillian Juarbe, center manager of the South Dade Adult Day Care Center in Cutler Bay ``It's normally 110/60 or 110/68. That's the blood pressure of a young person.''

On Thursday Gonzalez celebrated this milestone birthday with a party in the center, a place she called her ``second home.'' ''She goes and does activities at this adult day care. It's a great program that the county has for the elderly,'' said Gonzalez's grandson David Gonzalez, 39, of Miami.

At the center, Gonzalez is liked by everyone and is known for bringing people gifts either for birthdays or whenever she is thinking of them. ''She doesn't buy them what is cheap; she buys what she would buy for herself,'' Juarbe said.

For her 100th birthday, Gonzalez received plenty of presents from her friends at the center, including Gloria Sharp, who has a shirt made for Gonzalez that had birthday wishes written on it. ''I just love her; she's so sweet. I will do anything for her,'' said Sharp, 77.

Gonzalez began going to the day care center after her husband, Armando Sr., died so she wouldn't have to spend her days alone. ''My husband died eight years ago; we were married for 61 years,'' Gonzalez said in Spanish. ``I graduated as a teacher in 1934 and I met my husband at my graduation ceremony.''

The couple had two children, Armando Jr. and Rafael, who died in his early 30s. ''He had a heart attack, and I still don't know how. He never had problems before,'' Gonzalez said. A year after Gonzalez began going to the center, she started volunteering there.

''She is a great help here,'' Juarbe said. ``She keeps an eye out on everyone. We have clients with Alzheimer's and she'll tell me when they put [food] in their pockets or try to leave.'' Juarbe said Gonzalez also hands out utensils when it is time to eat and often helps take care of younger clients.

Gonzalez currently lives with Armando Jr. in Kendall and said he inspires her.

''My mom is amazing to everybody,'' said Armando Jr., 77. ``She's special.''

Gonzalez was a school teacher in Cuba and moved to the United States as Fidel Castro came to power.

''I feel people are restricted there,'' she said. ``My husband always wanted to go back to Cuba, but I don't want to go. Cuba was a beautiful island.'' Her family moved to New Jersey after leaving Cuba and later came to Florida after the winters became too harsh. Gonzalez says said what drives her to live is her remaining family members, especially Armando.

''I feel that I am here for my son,'' she said. ``I am very close to him, and if I am not here, how will my son feel without me? I've had a good life.''

© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company.

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DHAKA, Bangladesh / The Daily Star / February 22, 2009


Inside Probin Bhaban: Their silence speaks of
their loneliness. Photo: Shayera Moula

A. N. M. Nurul Haque

THE poignant story, carried by The Daily Star on February 15, of an elderly woman living a lonely life in an old people's home in the capital, despite having four children in high places, touched the hearts of scores of readers, as many of them rushed to meet her in person and offered financial help for her treatment.

60 year-old Selina Majumder is a mother of four. One son is a doctor and the other is an architect. One daughter lives in US and the other is married to a wealthy man. Selina, who should have been a happy and contended mother, is now desolate. The children, whom she reared and educated with love, have no time to pay her a visit.

Old people have social protection in most countries. New Zealand enacted laws protecting the rights and well-being of older people, and its Positive Aging Strategy has raised the profile of older people. Abuse and neglect of older people have been recognised as issues that are specially addressed by legislative provisions or social service policy.

More than 21,000 people over age 65 live in 303 retirement villages in New Zealand. These villages are large complexes with elaborate facilities, and provide security, companionship and access to the services they consider important.

The legal rights and social security of senior citizens in India are protected by the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizen's Act-2007. The objective of the act is to oblige persons who inherited the property of their aged relatives to look after them and provide facilities, including medical care.

The act also safeguards the legal rights of childless senior citizens, who could move against their prospective legal heirs. Under the Act, even the transfer of a property by a senior citizen or parent to his or her prospective heir could be declared void if the transferee failed to provide the parent's needs.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is responsible for the welfare of the senior citizens in India. It has announced the National Policy on Older Persons, which seeks to assure older persons that their concerns are national concerns and they will not live unprotected, ignored and marginalised.

The National Policy on Older Persons visualises support for financial security, health care and nutrition, and shelter for senior citizens, and pays special attention to protecting and strengthening their legal rights so as to safeguard their life and property.

It aims to strengthen their legitimate place in the society, and to help them live the last phase of their life with purpose, dignity and peace. The National Policy on Older Persons confers the status of senior citizen to a person who has attained the age of 60 years.

The Indian government has also taken steps to ensure welfare and safety of senior citizens residing in Delhi, keeping in view the fact that in 2007 there were 17 fatal attacks on them in Delhi, compared to 12 in 2006. Establishment of helpline, identification of elderly people living alone, and setting up of Senior Citizens' Security Cell were some steps taken to protect senior citizens.

Older people, with diminished mental and physical capacities, require others to take care of them. But, in many instances, they are abused and neglected instead of being loved and respected.

Aging has become a major social problem because of break up of the joint family system, where aged parents and relatives are often exposed to emotional neglect and denied financial support. This is happening not only in urban society but also in suburban and rural areas.

Under the social safety net, Bangladesh government provides old age allowance of Tk. 250 per month to some 20 lakh vulnerable older people having no financial support. Other than this program, there are no ways and means of addressing the plight of the elderly people with no law in place to protect their rights.

Sadly, the abuse and neglect of the elderly people have not yet been recognised as a major social problem, which needs to be addressed by legislative provision. The government should enact laws protecting old people's rights and form a national council of elder people.

The elderly people need not only financial help but also love and respect from their near and dear ones. Therefore, the core family values, which have been lost in the whirlpool of so-called nuclear lifestyle, must be redressed through vigorous campaigns.

Old age has a dual dimension of challenges and opportunities that can give society their vision of life. While elder people were sometimes seen as burdens on society, they are now increasingly recognised as assets, which should be tapped. So, it is the task of our government to safeguard the safety and rights of the elderly people.

A.N.M. Nurul Haque is a columnist for The Daily Star.

© thedailystar.net, 1991-2008.

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LONDON, England / Guardian / Life & Style / The Q & A / February 21, 2009

Q&A: Hollywood Actor Dennis Hopper

'I got Warhol's first soup can painting for $75. I lost it to my first wife'

By Rosanna Greenstreet


'I used to talk like a hippy' ... Dennis Hopper.
Photograph: Michael Caulfield/Getty Images

Dennis Hopper was born in 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas. In 1969, he directed, co-wrote and starred in the low-budget road movie Easy Rider, which became a global success. His career was hampered by drink and drugs but, after rehab, he went on to star in many acclaimed movies, including Rumble Fish and Blue Velvet. He is married for the fifth time and has four children.

When were you happiest?

I can't answer a question like that - it's not possible in our world.

What is your greatest fear?

Another one I cannot answer. Keep going.

What is your earliest memory?

I was born in the Dust Bowl, so maybe seeing the sun for the first time.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

I am not a hero-worshipper.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I don't know.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Lying.

Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?

I don't spend a lot. Most of my art collection I got by trading it or through knowing the artist. I got Andy Warhol's first soup can painting for $75. I lost it to my first wife.

What is your most treasured possession?

My family.

Where would you like to live?

I used to think anywhere but LA, but I live in LA now. I try hard every day to find good things about LA. I'm still working on it.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

I haven't had any in a long time, but I'm available.

How do you relax?

The best way to relax is to be alone.

What is the worst job you've done?

A lot of the movies I've been in. A lot show only in Fiji, if they're lucky.

What do you owe your parents?

They allowed me to start acting at 13, even though they didn't approve.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My work.

Which living person do you most despise, and why?

I don't go there.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

I used to talk like a hippy and say, "man" and "I'm hip" and "cool". I've pretty much dropped that now.

What has been your biggest disappointment?

Not getting the part Warren (Beatty) did in Splendor In The Grass when I was about 18.

How often do you have sex?

Not nearly enough: my wife's at home with the children and I am not there.

What is the closest you've come to death?

A lot of times.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Easy Rider.

What song would you like played at your funeral?

Taps and some bagpipe music would be good - I have Scottish ancestors.

How would you like to be remembered?

They had a retrospective of mine at the Cinémathèque in Paris, and the fifth floor had 20 monitors going with all my films from 1955. They had part of my art collection and part of my own art. It was incredible.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Keep your head down and dash the last 100 yards.

Where would you most like to be right now?

In London. I am in London, right?

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
_______________________________________

Guardian / Art & Design / Gallery / February 13, 2009

World Press Photo Awards



French photographer Jerome Bonnet won second prize in the portraits singles category for this photograph of the US actor Dennis Hopper

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

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OSAKA, Japan / The Mainichi Daily News / February 21, 2009

The number of people in Japan who are concerned that they will not be able to pay their medical bills in case of serious illness has jumped dramatically in the past two years, according to a recent survey.

The survey, conducted by the private Health Policy Institute, Japan think tank, revealed that 86.2 percent of respondents were either "very worried" or "somewhat worried" about their ability to pay major medical expenses, a 13.5 point hike from 2007.

Concerning Japan's medical insurance system for those 75 years of age or more, 20.5 percent of survey respondents aged 70 or over said they believed the system should continue as it is, while 35.9 percent said they believed there should be some revisions, but that the basic structure of the system should be maintained, the highest levels of confidence in any age group. In the same age category, those who believed the system should be dismantled and those who said a new system should be built totaled 38.4 percent.

While the health system for the elderly has had a bad reputation since its introduction in April last year, those registered with the system are now accepting it.

In an effort to gauge the public's reaction to national health policy, this past January the institute polled 1,650 people 20 years of age and over, and received 1,016 responses -- a 62 percent response rate.

Those who were "very concerned" that they would not be able to pay large medical expenses stood at 42.7 percent, about 1.5 times higher than the 2007 figure of 28.5 percent. Those most worried about medical costs were those in their 20s (50.3 percent) and 30s (50 percent), an enormous jump from 2007 survey data that showed 28.8 percent of those in their 20s and 20.7 percent of those in their 30s with such concerns.

According to the institute's analysis, the results were heavily colored by the current difficult employment environment and economic conditions.

Copyright 2009 The Mainichi Newspapers

Six grannies pick vegetables from a farm near Mansang Senior Citizen Center in Euiryeong County, South Gyeongsang on February 15.
By Song Bong-geun

SEOUL, Korea / JoongAng Daily / February 21, 2009

Seo Gu-sun, an 80-year-old grandmother, says she is less concerned about getting sick and being alone since she moved into communal living quarters set up by her local county office.

She used to live alone, like so many senior citizens these days.

"The rooms in the center are so well heated that the aching in my joints has disappeared since I moved here," said Seo, who lives with five other elderly women in the Mansang Senior Citizen Center in Euiryeong County, South Gyeongsang. "My younger sisters [roommates] are treating me well and that allows me to live comfortably in this house."

Officials in Euiryeong County set up the residential center in 2007 for elderly people who were living alone. Seo had been alone ever since her husband died 12 years back.

The county is reacting to national statistics on population demographics that suggest the number of single-member households will increase at a faster pace in agricultural and fishing communities. Young people will continue to move to cities for work, leaving rural areas populated mostly with senior citizens living alone, according to a report released last year by the National Statistical Office.

The state-run statistical institution forecast that the number of senior citizens living alone will reach 1.02 million in 2010 and 1.51 million in 2020.

Kim Chae-yong, who heads the county office, said the problem has been escalating in the Euiryeong area, and there have been cases of elderly people lying dead in their homes for several days because no one was looking out for them.

The county's specialized housing, which has been set up in two villages in the county, provides social and health services for the elderly, and covers utility expenses for the center. In addition, medical staff from a nearby health center regularly run health checks.

So far, so good, officials report, as residents at the center said they feel healthier and don't feel lonely anymore.

Seo has been eating and sleeping in this center for a year. Her five children, who live in Busan and Seoul, have tried to get Seo to move in with them, but she insisted on staying in her small village. She said she cannot leave the village as she feels specially attached to living there. She first moved there when she got married aged 16.

"I was always worried about getting sick at night because I was alone, but now it's O.K. because I'm with others. And they will take care me of me when I pass away," said Seo, who grows vegetables in a nearby farm with her "sisters" for local school kids.

Kim Byeong-ja, a Masan resident, South Gyeongsang, resident whose mother-in-law is living in the center, is also less stressed now. "I was really worried before, but now things are much better," she said. "The county hopes the project will help seniors deal with illness and economic hardship better."

Euiryeong officials are planning to invest an additional 100 million won ($66,011) in the project for the benefit of elderly people living alone in 13 other villages dotted around the county.

By Kim Sang-jin JoongAng Ilbo
mijukim@joongang.co.kr

Copyright by Joins.com, Inc.

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SEOUL, Korea / Reuters / February 21, 2009

A South Korean woman who has failed the driver's exam 775 times is not about give up on her hope of buying a truck one day to go into her own business, whether other drivers want her on the road or not.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, has been trying since 2005 to pass the written portion of the test to get a licence, but she has so far failed to get the 60 percent required to clear it.

"I've looked up some guidebooks to get a driver's licence, and they were saying it takes at most five years to get this," Cha said in North Jeolla province, where farmers on tractors or cows can be just as common on country roads as motor vehicles.

"It's already been four years, so I might pass the test next time. That's what I hope for."

Driving schools in South Korea offer courses to enable applicants to walk away with a licence in a week. Cha has not been fortunate enough to set foot in such a class, which tends to congregate more in busy metropolitan areas, but she remains unfazed, even after having spent more than 10 million won ($6,800) on test applications.

"I believe you can achieve your goal if you persistently pursue it," she says. "So don't give up your dream, like me. Be strong and do your best."

($1=1470.8 Won)

Reporting by Reuters TV, writing by Jack Kiml Editing by Sanjeev Miglani

Copyright © 2009 Reuters Limited.

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NEW DELHI, India / Business Standard / February 21, 2009

Old age can haunt both the materially indigen as well as the well-off and well-educated

By Sunil Sethi

The late economic historian Dharma Kumar used to remark that to be old and poor was a terrible predicament anywhere but it was a fate not to be countenanced in India. As someone who had researched agricultural servitude in south India with scholarly brio, she thought that too much was made of the vaunted Indian notion of respect for the elderly. In most parts of India, the aged were simply among the first outcastes.

1935. Lotika Sarkar. The picture of Sarkar with sister Basanti, was taken by their mother. The activist-lawyer became founder-member of the Committee of Status of Women in India Photo by courtesy of The Telegraph, Kolkata

Old age, though, can haunt not only the materially indigent — it can prey upon the well-off and well-educated, as has come to light in the strange case of Lotika Sarkar, once an eminent professor at the law faculty at Delhi University, who has, by her own account to the police, been done out of her home by Nirmal Dhoundial, an IPS officer from Bihar, and his family.

At first it seems like a case of shocking land grab: a lonely widow, suffering from the loss of her husband (journalist Chanchal Sarkar who died in 2005) becomes physically and emotionally dependent on a friendly and caring family. But Dhoundial has produced documents to show that part of the valuable property was legally gifted by Prof Sarkar to his wife in 2007.
_____________________________________________________________

OLD AGE WOES: Eighty-six year-old
Lotika Sarkar is a victim of a legal wrangle over
her Rs 5 crore (US$1.1 million) property. A woman
who was instrumental in blazing a new trail in women's
rights now seems to have no rights even to her own home.

(Click to read report on IBNlive.com)_____________________________________________________________

The professor says she could never have knowingly given her property away; the police officer’s response is that he will return the professor’s house, provided she spends 10 days with his family. And so the story acquires subtler, more sinister overtones.

Legally the question may turn on whether a gift, once made, can be taken back. But was 86-year-old Prof Sarkar in sound mind when she made the gift? Dhoundial himself admits her short-term memory was bad. And oddly for a legal luminary the gift deed has no witnesses from her side.

There is a worse angle: a maid who worked for Prof Sarkar is laying claim to part of the servants’ quarters.

The case has alarmed many people, including the chief minister, who sent round a delegation to ascertain that Prof Sarkar was safe, as well as the Bihar police, who want to know how Dhoundial’s wife accepted a gift worth crores without placing it on official record.

But surely the bigger story is about the isolation and vulnerability of the old? Crumbling family structures, distanced or unavailable relatives and growing infirmity in a large city, can place a heavy burden of alienation among the elderly. Prof Sarkar’s case is of a type that is likely to become commonplace as India’s population of the aged grows by leaps and bounds. It is expected to reach 137 million by 2021—the second largest in the world.

One analyst wryly comments that longevity is perhaps India’s single most stunning achievement in the last century. Whereas it took France 120 years for the population of the elderly to double, it has taken India just 25 years—up from 19 million in 1951 to 77 million in 2001 and well over a 100 million by now.

For the poor there is no safety net so, as Dharma Kumar pointed out, their fate is blanked out and their stories go unrecorded because they have nothing to leave behind. But those with assets, especially if they are single, are prone to a host of indignities and crime.

Despite the valiant efforts of organizations like Helpage, the concept of retirement homes with specialized medical care is not widespread enough. Nor are there enough legally secure arrangements for the old to live in the comfort and security of their own homes.

A common practice in the West is to enter into binding contracts over property: a home-owner can sell her property in advance provided the buyer guarantees an income—with regular increments to cover cost-of-living and healthcare expenses—during the owner’s lifetime. Such arrangements are sanctioned by city authorities and supervised by authorized social workers.

If such norms existed, the elderly could confidently resist the birds of prey that start circling overhead.

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BERLIN, Germany / Reuters / February 20, 2009

A German court Friday found a dentist guilty of assault for forcibly extracting the dentures from a patient who did not pay a 700-euro (623-pound) bill.

Chirin Kolb, a reporter for the Suedwest Presse newspaper, said the dentist, 57, apologised to the municipal court in Neu-Ulm after he was fined 6,000 euros for going to the woman's home and taking the false teeth from her mouth.

"His lawyer read a statement expressing remorse and he apologised, saying he just blew a fuse because he was under a lot of professional and personal stress," Kolb told Reuters. He was trying to collect 700 euros not covered by her insurance.

The woman appeared in court with no teeth and said she did not want to wear dentures again because of the distress the incident had caused.

Written by Erik Kirschbaum and Dave Graham
Copyright © 2009 Reuters Limited.

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BRUSSELS, Belgium / Cordis / ICT Results / February 20, 2009

Artificial light affects us in subtle ways. At its best, ambient lighting can relax, soothe or excite, but used poorly it can drain us of energy and disrupt sleep. What if lighting could adapt automatically to meet our individual needs?

The result, say a team of European researchers, would be an improvement in the general wellbeing of anybody who spends long periods in artificially lit buildings, particularly the elderly and the infirm, but also factory and office workers.

“Studies have shown that the quality and type of lighting can have a significant impact on our health and comfort,” explains Edith Maier, a researcher at Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences (FHV) in Austria.

Maier coordinated the EU-funded Aladin project which brought together academic and industrial partners from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Romania to develop an innovative ambient lighting system that adapts intelligently to individual needs and wishes.

The system uses information from biosensors worn by the occupants of a room or building to determine what users are doing and then changes the lighting accordingly. The researchers’ goal is to use the technology to improve the wellbeing of the elderly, people suffering from age-related illnesses and people with reduced mobility, many of whom spend a lot of time confined indoors.

“Poor lighting can accentuate existing vision problems and reading difficulties among the elderly, it can cause depression and disrupt sleep cycles,” Maier says. “By automatically adapting the lighting in a room to what people are doing, many of these psychological and physiological problems can be reduced.”

Most adaptive ambient lighting systems in use today do not take individual needs and activities into account. They rely instead on a preset-time cycle to brighten and dim during certain periods of the day. In contrast, the Aladin system uses data from sensors in a glove worn by users to measure their heart rate and skin conductance response – the electrical resistance of the skin which goes up during periods of activity and down while at rest. Fed wirelessly into a control system, the bio-data lets the system know automatically when to switch between a brightly lit “active setting” and a more subdued relaxation mode.

Soothing to sleep, awakening refreshed
“If someone is trying to concentrate on a task, such as reading a book or sewing, the light in the room will intensify, but if they are simply relaxing or trying to sleep it will dim,” Maier explains.

And just as a sunny day brightens our mood, the system could be used to gradually awaken users to a cool, bright light in the morning so they get up feeling refreshed, and lull them to sleep with a subtle glow in the evenings. The system settings can be changed by users via an easy-to-use interface accessed through a TV screen and remote control.

The Aladin researchers are also studying ways in which different intensities and colours of light can be used to assist mobility in a building, such as by automatically highlighting obstacles and dangers. “This could be particularly useful for people suffering from dementia who can easily become disorientated,” Maier notes.

More than a hundred people participated in a series of lab and field tests conducted in Austria, Italy and Germany. The trials showed that elderly people quickly learnt how to use the system and, over the course of three months, experienced improvements in their general wellbeing, including less trouble reading and less disturbed sleep patterns.

Though the prototype system was designed to be installed in a single room in a private home, Maier believes that the real market for the technology is in care homes and residential buildings built specifically for the elderly.

One reason is cost. Building and installing each prototype system cost between €10,000 and €12,000, and even taking into account economies of scale Maier expects a commercial version to run to €5,000 for an individual installation. On the other hand, in a large building, such as a block of apartments or a care home, the price of the installation per resident would be reduced considerably.

Ageing population promises a large market
With Europe’s population ageing, many more care homes and elderly residences are being built, creating a large market for technologies that can improve the quality of life for elderly people and keep them active and less dependent on others for longer.

Maier sees the Aladin system initially being used as part of building management systems that control not only lighting but also temperature, communications and safety. She also sees potential for the concept to be used in factories and offices to help improve the productivity of workers and even in vehicles to help keep drivers alert and awake.

“Because the Aladin system is built using an open and modular architecture it can easily be integrated with other systems,” the project coordinator notes.

Project partners are currently in talks with several lighting companies with a view to developing the Aladin prototype into a commercial product. They plan to showcase the results of their work to an international audience at the Human-Computer Interface International (HCII) conference in San Diego in the United States in July.

The Aladin project received funding from the ICT strand of the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme. Edith Maier and Guido Kempter of the University of Applied Sciences, Vorarlberg, Austria contributed to this release.

Click to view ICT Results feature

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HONG KONG / Chinese University of Hong Kong / UroToday / February 20, 2009

Department of Community and Family Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Written by:
Wong SY, Leung JC, Woo J
yeungshanwong@cuhk.edu.hk

Sexual Activity, Erectile Dysfunction and Their Correlates among 1,566 Older Chinese Men in Southern China - Research Abstract

Few studies on sexuality and its correlates in adults have been conducted in Asia; most studies in Asia have focused instead on erectile dysfunction in men rather than sexuality or sexual activities.

AIM: This study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence and factors associated with sexual activity and erectile dysfunction in elderly Chinese men aged 65 years and above.

Sexual activity and sexual functions were assessed using the International Index of Erectile Function-5. Depressive symptoms were measured by the Chinese version of the Geriatric Depression Scale. Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) were measured by the International Prostatic Symptom Score.

Cross-sectional data from a large prospective cohort study of Chinese elderly men were used in this study. A questionnaire that included demographic, lifestyle, and medical risk factors and physical examination were administered to 1566 Chinese men aged between 65 to 92 years in Hong Kong.

Only 30.7% of men were sexually active in the previous 6 months in this sample and among those who were sexually active, 88% had some form of erectile dysfunction. Being sexually inactive in the previous 6 months was associated with being older (odds ratio [OR] = 1.80; confidence interval [CI]: 1.56-2.09), single (OR = 1.87; CI = 1.19-2.94) and the presence of peripheral arterial disease (OR = 2.43; CI: 1.25-4.71). In multiple multinomial logistic regression, having clinically relevant depressive symptoms (OR = 3.37; CI: 1.31-8.70) and having moderate to severe LUTS (OR = 1.63; CI: 1.01-2.64) were independently associated with increased risk of having erectile dysfunction.

We showed that a large proportion of elderly men were not sexually active in Hong Kong. For those who were sexually active, most suffered from some degree of erectile dysfunction. Having clinically relevant depressive symptoms and LUTS were independently associated with increased risk of erectile dysfunction.

Reference:
J Sex Med. 2009 Jan;6(1):74-80
10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.01034.x

© 2009 UroToday

Four Argentinian retirees arrested for smuggling drugs for Israeli ring

TEL AVIV, Israel / Ha'aretz / February 20, 2009

By Yuval Goren

Four Argentine retirees who made their way to the Netherlands and India from South America allegedly served as couriers in an international drug-smuggling ring thought headed by five Israelis.

Although the retirees initially failed to arouse the suspicion of border police at airports around the world, the Argentines and all five of the Israelis have been arrested in recent weeks.

An undercover operation lasting more than a year conducted by the Israel police and police departments in other countries found the couriers to have been a lot more than innocents abroad. The four were reportedly caught with large quantities of cocaine and hashish.

© Copyright 2009 Haaretz