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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

WWII vet honored with long-overdue medals

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Given the choice, World War II veteran Phillip Coon probably wouldn't want the formality and fuss of being honored on a military base with men and women standing at attention, dressed in full regalia — even if it was with a fistful of long-overdue medals he waited decades to receive.

So it's fitting that the awards were presented to the humble Tulsa-area man Monday evening in an informal ceremony at the Tulsa International Airport, with family and fellow veterans in attendance and little pomp and circumstance.

The 94-year-old survivor of a POW labor camp and the Bataan Death March received the Prisoner of War Medal, Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge after he and his son, Michael, returned from a trip to Japan to promote understanding and healing with the U.S.

A couple of dozen people applauded wildly after the medals were presented to Coon, who was seated in a wheelchair. He lifted his ball cap in recognition, exposing a shock of silver hair.

"I've been blessed to come this far in life," he said, a tear streaming down one cheek. "I thank the Lord for watching over me."

Japan's Foreign Ministry said Coon visited the site of the former POW camp in Kosaka next to a now defunct copper mine where he was put to forced labor. The veteran also met the mayor and other officials in Kosaka, in Japan's northern prefecture of Akita.

Coon, who lives in Sapulpa in northeastern Oklahoma, served as an infantry machine gunner in the Army. He is also a survivor of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942, when the Japanese military forced tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers to trek for 65 miles with little food or water in blazing heat. As many as 11,000 died along the way.

It's not clear why Coon didn't get his medals before now, but such occurrences with awards are not uncommon in the military.

"It continues to trouble me that there are instances where service members do not receive the service medals they have earned through the course of their careers," said U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, whose office contacted the military three weeks ago about the missing medals. "But It is extremely rewarding for me and my staff to be able to help veterans and active-duty members receive the honors they have fought for."

Retired Maj. Gen. Rita Aragon, Oklahoma's secretary of military and veterans' affairs, said most veterans were — rightly — more focused on reuniting with their families than chasing after military ribbons when they returned after the war. Aragon presented the medals to Coon during the airport ceremony.

Tulsa veteran David Rule, who served in the Vietnam War, helped Coon and his family to find out why his medals hadn't been issued. For the past 10 years or so, Rule has helped recognize about 150 area veterans by memorializing their names, ranks and branches of service on granite plaques that are presented to them and their families.

"I have a passion for these servicemen," Rule said earlier Monday. "They just sacrificed so much. It doesn't matter to me whether they were a cook or a four-star general, just for them to get this million-dollar smile on their face when they know they aren't forgotten."

___

Associated Press reporter Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wwii-vet-honored-long-overdue-military-medals-070235041.html
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Analysis: Little evidence yet that Obamacare costing full-time jobs (reuters)

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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

'Boxers & Saints' & Compassion: Questions For Gene Luen Yang

Gene Luen Yang broke out in 2006 with American Born Chinese, the first graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award. It weaves three stories — about a Chinese-American boy, a terrible stereotype named Chin-Kee and the mythical Monkey King — into a complex tapestry of identity and assimilation.

Yang returns to the theme of identity and sense of self in his latest book, another National Book Award candidate. Boxers & Saints is a diptych following a Chinese boy and girl as their lives are upended by the Boxer Rebellion. Little Bao joins the Boxers — a violent, mystically-inspired fighting society dedicated to wiping out foreign influences in China at the turn of the 20th century. Vibiana, on the other side of the divide, sheds her Chinese name and her constrained home life to join a Christian missionary group after her family rejects her. Both must wrestle with questions of faith and identity: What does it mean to be Chinese? To be Christian? Can you be both?

In an email interview, Yang says his Catholic upbringing inspired his interest in the Boxer Rebellion. "In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 saints of China, 87 of whom were ethnically Chinese. My home church was incredibly excited, because this was the first time the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged Chinese citizens in this way," he says. "When I looked into the lives of the newly canonized, I learned that many of them were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. And when I looked to the world outside my Chinese American Catholic community, I realized that the canonizations were controversial. Shortly after the Vatican's announcement, the Chinese government issued a statement of protest. From their point of view, the Catholic Church was honoring traitors to Chinese culture."

This is a work deeply concerned with compassion — it draws parallels between Jesus and Guan Yin, and on a more personal level almost everyone in it is complex and hard to dislike. Little Bao, for example, is really a fanatic, but you give him depth and a believable inner struggle.

Early on in my research, I was struck by the parallels between the Boxer Rebellion and current events. The Boxers have a lot in common with many of today's extremist movements in the Middle East. Little Bao would probably be labeled a terrorist if he were real and alive today. I tried to make him understandable, but not justified. The Boxers were defending a culture under attack. Yet — within my story, at least — their view of their own culture was incomplete. There is this strand of compassion that runs through every world culture. It's embodied by Guan Yin within Eastern stories, and Christ within Western ones.

This book is also concerned with identity and sense of self – which is a recurring theme in your work, and this time you're addressing the role religion plays in identity.

Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me. My experiences growing up in both a Chinese American household and the Catholic Church define much of who I am. A college writing professor once told me to write my life. Cliched advice, but still really helpful. I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods.

Gene Yang's 2006 debut, American Born Chinese, was a National Book Award Finalist.

First Second

Gene Yang's 2006 debut, American Born Chinese, was a National Book Award Finalist.

First Second

Boxers & Saints is a wrenching read — having finished it, I feel like the only reason it's in the YA category is that it features teen characters. How did you approach the story when you were writing it? Who's it for?

My main goal with all my comics is to tell a story compelling enough to get the reader from the first page to the last. I don't think about age demographics all that much during my process. The age demographics get figured out later. That said, I think my graphic novels fit pretty well in the YA category. Author Marsha Qualey says that an equation lies at the heart of all YA: Power + Belonging = Identity. That describes my stories, including Boxers & Saints. My characters long for power and belonging because they're figuring out their place in the world, their identities.

You've chosen to publish this as two separate volumes, even though the stories are intertwined.

I outlined both books together, but then I wrote and drew Boxers first, then Saints. I did them as two separate books because I wanted each to stand on their own, to have a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Each would represent a complete, cohesive worldview. I had expected First Second Books to put out one book and then the other in two separate seasons. It was my editor Mark Siegel who suggested the simultaneous release. That guy is super-smart.

What do you want readers to take away from Boxers & Saints?

I hope readers are inspired to look into the actual historical event. The Boxer Rebellion doesn't get all that much attention on this side of the Pacific, but it still resonates in modern China. The Boxer Rebellion, and all the events of China's Century of Humiliation, still weighs heavily on their foreign policy. As China grows economically, as China and America's relationship evolves, events like the Boxer Rebellion will gain importance in Western history classes.

I also hope the books encourage readers to look at both sides of every conflict. The Internet age has brought about a blossoming of exaggerated righteous indignation. I've certainly been guilty of it. Maybe some of that will dissipate if we learn to look at both sides with compassion.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/22/234824741/boxers-saints-compassion-quesions-for-gene-luen-yang?ft=1&f=1032
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Obama turns to top aide for 'tech surge' to fix healthcare website

By David Morgan and John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama turned to a trusted adviser on Tuesday to lead a "tech surge" aimed at repairing the troubled launch of the government website at the heart of his signature healthcare law.

Jeffrey Zients, a former official of the Office of Management and Budget who will become head of the National Economic Council in January, will provide short-term management advice on the project, said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

She said a team of experts and specialists drawn from government and industry, "including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies," also would work to diagnose and fix the problems that have plagued the rollout of Healthcare.gov since October 1 and drawn criticism from Republicans opposed to the law.

The websites, which Obama compared to online shopping sites such as Amazon.com, were meant to be the main vehicle for consumers to check out prices and purchase the health insurance offered under the law.

The HHS said at the weekend it was launching a "tech surge" for the website, but neither the White House nor the health department has provided details about the cause of the problems, precisely what is being done to fix them and who exactly is doing the fixing.

Obama's administration scheduled a briefing for Wednesday with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, some of whom have expressed concern with the program's troubles.

One Democrat, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, called for an extension of the "open enrollment" date for those purchasing insurance beyond the March 31 deadline because of what she called the "incredibly frustrating and disappointing" experience people are having as they try to enroll.

The announcement that Zients would be involved underlines Obama's determination to put the website controversy behind him. Zients has 20 years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur.

He helped the Obama administration figure out a solution for the "cash for clunkers" car exchange program's website, which crashed repeatedly when it opened early in Obama's first term.

Republicans, long opposed to the 2010 Affordable Care Act known as "Obamacare," have seized on the information vacuum about the website's problems to start their own investigation in Congress about the role of the White House.

CRITICISM OF DESIGN FEATURE

In a letter to two administration technology officers, Republicans on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said their investigation already points to significant White House involvement in discussions between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the website contractor, CGI Federal.

CGI officials have also told committee staff the widely criticized design feature requiring visitors to create accounts before shopping for insurance was implemented in late August or early September, barely a month before the October 1 start of open enrollment.

The requirement contributed to a traffic bottleneck that worsened underlying flaws in a system intended to serve millions of Americans without healthcare insurance. The technology problems have frustrated attempts by many to sign on and allowed only a trickle of enrollments.

"We are concerned that the administration required contractors to change course late in the implementation process to conceal Obamacare's effect on increasing health insurance premiums," said the letter authored by panel chairman Darrell Issa and four Republican subcommittee chairmen.

The committee probe, the second House Republican investigation into Obamacare, follows the latest attempt by the party to derail the law during a 16-day government shutdown in October.

Republicans, who view the law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government, eventually dropped demands for delays or changes to the healthcare law before they would support a federal funding bill and allowed the government to reopen.

Obama said on Monday he was frustrated by the website's problems. A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year it takes effect.

CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS

The White House declined to directly address the October 21 letter to U.S. Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.

"It's not about, you know, who's to blame for glitches in a website. What we need to focus on is fixing those problems, making the information that the American people want available to them in an efficient way. And that's what we're doing," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Under Issa's leadership, the House oversight committee has investigated the Obama administration on several issues since Republicans took control of the chamber in the 2010 elections.

Last year, Issa accused Obama or his aides of obstructing an investigation into the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-running probe on the Arizona border with Mexico. He also spearheaded the House investigation of a 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and another into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of conservative non-profit groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Issa's committee is asking VanRoekel and Park to provide all documents and communications that describe the federal system's architecture and design, CMS' role as system integrator, problems relayed to the White House and the decision to require account creation as a prerequisite to seeing insurance plans.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has started its own investigation and is scheduled to question Sebelius and several contractors at separate hearings within the next eight days.

Polls show that a narrow majority of Americans oppose the healthcare law, and the flap over the launch of the insurance exchanges has done little to change public opinion.

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Tuesday showed 54 percent of Americans opposed the law and 46 percent favored it. A poll from a month ago found similar percentages divided over the law.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Editing by Fred Barbash, Grant McCool and Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-turns-top-aide-tech-surge-fix-health-200247248--sector.html
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Syria's Grinding War Takes Toll On Children

Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.

Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.

Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Alexandra Chen, a specialist in childhood trauma, is on her way from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to the southern town of Nabatiyeh, where she's running a workshop for teachers, child psychologists and sports coaches who are dealing with the Syrian children scarred by war in their homeland.

"All of the children have experienced trauma to varying degree," explains Chen, who works for Mercy Corps and is training a dozen new hires for her aid group.

Her intense five-day workshop is based on skills and techniques developed in other conflict zones, used for the first time here.

"They need to know enough to understand exactly what's going on in the brain of the children they are working with," Chen says of her trainees. Her course stresses the science of severe trauma, which can be toxic for the brain.

"The human memory remembers negative memories almost four times more strongly than positive ones," she says.

Some 2 million Syrian children have been displaced by the war and more than 1 million of them are now refugees in neighboring countries. One of the biggest challenges for international aid agencies is healing the invisible scars of war in the youngest victims.

Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.

Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.

Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

"These children have seen terrible things, like bombings and people screaming and people dying, and they've smelled blood and smoke," Chen says as she opens the course. "For them, to be connected to the world feels like a very dangerous thing."

PTSD In Children

Chen tells the trainees that long-term exposure to violence can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which is difficult to treat in adults and even harder to manage in kids. Children can remain hyper-alert, with an "inability to step out of survival mode," which is often expressed as anger or aggression.

This group has already seen signs of severe trauma in Syrian children who recently arrived. Chen teaches them key skills to build a sense of safety for children.

But these newly trained Mercy Corps outreach workers face an overwhelming task. More than 85,000 Syrian refugees have migrated to this part of southern Lebanon, living in the poorest neighborhoods. Aid programs are underfunded and basic needs often go unmet.

Still, international aid organizations are raising the alarm over the newest arrivals. They have lived under traumatic conditions for much longer, surviving continuous bombardments, witnessing deaths firsthand, and many need immediate help.

Chen moves between workshops in Lebanon and refugee camps in Jordan to tackle the same problem.

A Camp Where Most Refugees Are Children

We met again in Zaatari, the sprawling camp in Jordan's desert with more than 120,000 residents, 65 percent of them under 18. Here, children seem dangerously aggressive, punching, fighting or throwing rocks in the open spaces between the refugee tents and trailers.

"Acting aggressively, in many ways, is the mind's way of making sense of what happened before," says Chen, who adds that she has seen behavior change. Many have made progress in a program run by Mercy Corps in a place called Dream Land.

It's in the middle of Zaatari, where kids can feel secure. They play soccer or build sandcastles in soft sand under a large tent that protects them from the sun.

Here, kids hammer on Legos in nearby trailers, while others sit, quietly, watching Tom and Jerry cartoons.

"The fact that they can sit there for an hour of Tom and Jerry is quite remarkable" says Chen, calling it a sign of healing.

But for some, the terrible memories can still become a trigger in daily life.

"The misunderstanding about trauma is that it is an event we have been unable to deal with in the past," she explains. In severe cases of PTSD, she says, "it is the person's inability to engage with the present that is the problem."

There have been some children who sneak into Dream Land in the middle of the night, she says.

"There was a little boy who would come at 3 a.m.," she says. "He would hide in the corner of the tent and shake. The stress that he was expressing was too much in his own little mind. He was unable to sleep. So, this is where he came to find refuge."

And that was a small success, that he had found a safe place.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/10/22/238989633/syrias-grinding-war-and-the-toll-it-takes-on-children?ft=1&f=1009
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US employers add 148K jobs; rate falls to 7.2 pct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy added just 148,000 jobs in September, suggesting that employers held back on hiring before a 16-day partial government shutdown began Oct. 1.

Still, hiring last month was enough to lower the unemployment rate. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the rate fell to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent in August. Unemployment remains historically high but is near a five-year low and is down from 7.9 percent at the start of 2013.

The tepid job growth makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will maintain its level of bond purchases for the rest of this year. The bond purchases are intended to lower long-term interest rates and boost borrowing and spending.

The release of the September jobs report had been delayed 2½ weeks by the shutdown, which likely further slowed economic growth and hiring. Temporary layoffs of federal workers and government contractors will probably depress October's job gain. That means a clear view of the job market may not emerge until the November jobs report is issued in December.

The report "reinforces the impression that the labor market was losing a little momentum heading in to the shutdown," said Josh Feinman, global chief economist at Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management. "The labor market is continuing to create jobs. ...It's just frustratingly slow."

The economy has added an average of 143,000 jobs a month from July through September, weaker than the 182,000 average gain from April through June.

Stock futures rose after the report was released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, and in early trading the Dow Jones industrial average was up about 40 points.

A tight job market has discouraged many Americans from looking for work. The percentage of Americans working or looking for work remained at a 35-year low last month

The September jobs report showed that some higher-paying industries added jobs at a healthy pace. Construction companies, for example, added 20,000.

Transportation and warehousing gained 23,400 jobs, governments 22,000.

And average hourly pay ticked up 3 cents to $24.09. In the past year, hourly pay has risen 2.1 percent, ahead of the 1.5 percent inflation rate.

The department revised its estimates of job growth in July and August to show a slight net gain of 9,000. It said employers added 193,000 jobs in August, more than the 169,000 previously estimated. But it said just 89,000 were added in July, the fewest in more than a year and below the earlier estimated 104,000.

The deceleration in job growth was a key reason the Fed decided in September to hold off on slowing its $85-billion-a-month in bond purchases. Many economists think the lack of clean data will lead the Fed to put off any decision on the bond purchases until 2014.

"It reinforces their hesitancy," Feinman said of the September jobs report. "It's more validation for their hesitancy to taper in September."

Many economists say the shutdown cut $25 billion out of the economy and slowed growth to about a 2 percent annual rate in the October-December quarter. That's down from estimates before the shutdown that the economy would expand at a 2.5 percent annual rate.

But growth will likely be a bit higher in the first three months of next year, as consumers and businesses make purchases and investments that were delayed during the shutdown.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-employers-add-148k-jobs-rate-falls-7-123141392--finance.html
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Co-operative Group agrees to restructuring

LONDON (AP) — Co-operative Group, the U.K.'s biggest mutual business, says it will retain "effective control" of its banking unit after agreeing to a restructuring that will give bondholders a 70 percent stake in the lender.

Chief executive Officer Euan Sutherland said Monday that the group will retain 30 percent of Co-operative Bank, making it the single largest shareholder. Fuller details of the agreement in principle will emerge in the coming days.

The restructuring took place as the bank had to plug a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.4 billion) hole in its finances. Co-op had wanted to retain a majority stake in the rescue deal that converts some bonds into stock, but investors demanded majority ownership.

The bank's difficulties arose from poor commercial loans taken on in a merger with the Britannia building society in 2009.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/co-operative-group-agrees-restructuring-092302492--finance.html
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