SAN
FRANCISCO — Olivia Zacks, 17, recently took a drag of peach-flavored
vapor from a device that most people would call an e-cigarette.
But
Ms. Zacks, a high school senior, does not call it that. In fact, she
insists she has never even tried an e-cigarette. Like many teenagers,
Ms. Zacks calls such products “hookah pens” or “e-hookahs” or “vape
pipes.”
These
devices are part of a subgenre of the fast-growing e-cigarette market
and are being shrewdly marketed to avoid the stigma associated with
cigarettes of any kind. The products, which are exploding in popularity,
come in a rainbow of colors and candy-sweet flavors but, beneath the
surface, they are often virtually identical to e-cigarettes, right down
to their addictive nicotine and unregulated swirl of other chemicals.
The
emergence of e-hookahs and their ilk is frustrating public health
officials who are already struggling to measure the spread of
e-cigarettes, particularly among young people. The new products and new
names have health authorities wondering if they are significantly
underestimating use because they are asking the wrong questions when
they survey people about e-cigarettes.
Marketers
of e-hookahs and hookah pens say they are not trying to reach young
people. But they do say that they want to reach an audience that wants
no part of e-cigarettes and that their customers prefer the association
with traditional hookahs, or water pipes.
“The
technology and hardware is the same,” said Adam Querbach, head of sales
and marketing for Romman Inc. of Austin, Tex., which operates several
websites that sell hookahs as well as e-cigarettes and e-hookahs. “A lot
of the difference is branding.”
Sales of e-hookahs have grown “exponentially” in the last 18 months, Mr. Querbach said.
Public
health authorities worry that people are being drawn to products that
intentionally avoid the term “e-cigarette.” Of particular concern is use
among teenagers, many of whom appear to view e-cigarettes and e-hookahs
as entirely different products when, for all practical purposes, they
are often indistinguishable.
Indeed,
public health officials warn that they may be misjudging the use of
such products — whatever they are called — partly because of semantics. A
survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 10
percent of high school students nationwide said that they had tried
e-cigarettes in 2012, double the year before. But the C.D.C. conceded it
might have asked the wrong question: Many young people say they have
not and will not use an e-cigarette but do say they have tried hookah
pens, e-hookahs or vaping pens.
The
C.D.C. is sending a tobacco-use survey to 20,000 students nationwide
that asks about e-cigarette experimentation but does not identify the
devices by other names. The state of California, through a nonprofit
partner called WestEd, is asking virtually the same question of 400,000
students.
Brian
King, senior adviser to the Office on Smoking and Health at the C.D.C.,
said the agency was aware of the language problem. “The use of hookah
pens could lead us to underestimate overall use of nicotine-delivery
devices,” he said. A similar problem occurred when certain smokeless tobacco products were marketed as snus.
Other health officials are more blunt.
“Asking
about e-cigarettes is a waste of time. Twelve months ago, that was the
question to be asking,” said Janine Saunders, head of tobacco use
prevention education in Alameda County in Northern California.
Like a cigarette, e-cigarettes, e-hookahs and
vape pens can be nicotine delivery devices. Unlike a cigarette, these
are unregulated by the F.D.A. They come in a medley of flavors, like
Belgian waffle, vanilla cupcake, and peppermint blast.
In
October, Ms. Saunders convened a student advisory board to discuss how
to approach “e-cigs.” “They said: ‘What’s an e-cig?’ “ Ms. Saunders
recalled, and she showed what she meant. “They said: ‘That’s a vape
pen.’ “
Health
officials worry that such views will lead to increased nicotine use
and, possibly, prompt some people to graduate to cigarettes. The Food
and Drug Administration is preparing to issue regulations that would
give the agency control over e-cigarettes, which have grown explosively
virtually free of any federal oversight. Sales of e-cigarettes more than
doubled last year from 2012, to $1.7 billion, according to Wells Fargo
Securities, and in the next decade, consumption of e-cigarettes could
outstrip that of conventional cigarettes. The number of stores that sell
them has quadrupled in just the last year, according to the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, an e-cigarette industry trade group.
The
emergence of hookah pens and other products and nicknames seems to
suggest the market is growing well beyond smokers. Ms. Zacks was among
more than 300 Bay Area high school students who attended a conference
focused on health issues last month on the campus of the University of
California, Berkeley. Many students talked about wide use of e-hookahs
or vaping pens — saying as many as half of their classmates had tried
one — but said that there was little use of e-cigarettes.
Ms. Zacks said the devices were popular at her high school here. “E-cigarettes are for people trying to quit smoking,”
she said, explaining her understanding of the distinction. “Hookah pens
are for people doing tricks, like blowing smoke rings.”
James
Hennessey, a sophomore at Drake High School in San Anselmo, Calif., who
has tried a hookah pen several times, said e-hookahs were less
dangerous than e-cigarettes. He and several Drake students estimated
that 60 percent of their classmates had tried the devices, that they
could be purchased easily in local stores, and that they often were
present at parties or when people were hanging out.
“E-cigarettes have nicotine and hookah pens just have water vapor and flavor,” said Andrew Hamilton, a senior from Drake.
Actually,
it is possible for e-cigarettes or e-hookah devices to vary in nicotine
content, and even to have no nicotine. Mr. Querbach at Romman said that
75 percent of the demand initially was for liquids with no nicotine,
but that makers of the liquids were expanding their nicotine offerings.
Often, nicotine is precisely the point, along with flavor.
Take,
for example, the offerings of a store in San Francisco called King Kush
Clothing Plus, where high school students say they sometimes buy their
electronic inhalers. On a counter near the back, where tobacco products
are sold, are several racks of flavored liquids that can be used to
refill e-cigarettes or hookah pens. The flavors include cinnamon apple,
banana nut bread, vanilla cupcake, chocolate candy bar and coconut bomb.
They range in nicotine concentration from zero to 24 milligrams — about
as much as a pack of 20 ordinary cigarettes — but most of the products
have some nicotine. To use the refills, it is necessary to buy a hookah
pen, which vary widely in price — around $20 and upward.
It
is also possible to buy disposable versions, whether e-cigarettes or
hookah pens, that vary in nicotine content and flavor. At King Kush, the
Atmos ice lemonade-flavored disposable electronic portable hookah
promises 0.6 percent nicotine and 600 puffs before it expires.
Emily
Anne McDonald, an anthropologist at the University of California, San
Francisco who is studying e-cigarette use among young people, said the
lack of public education about the breadth of nicotine-vapor products
was creating a vacuum “so that young adults are getting information from
marketing and from each other.”
“We
need to understand what people are calling these before we send out
large surveys,” Dr. McDonald said. Otherwise the responses do not
reflect reality, “and then you’re back to the beginning.”
By Sophia Yan and Dayu Zhang@CNNMoneyMarch 4, 2014: 11:32 PM ET
Premier Li Keqiang said China will aim for 7.5% GDP growth this year.
China has set its goal for economic growth at 7.5% this year, as the country faces mounting challenges.
Economic development remains the central task for China, according to
the work report that Premier Li Keqiang delivered at China's annual
parliamentary meeting that kicks off Wednesday in Beijing.
"We are at a critical juncture where our path upward is particularly steep...The
pace of economic growth is changing," Li said in the report. "At the
same time, it should be noted that China has the foundation and
conditions for maintaining a medium-high rate of economic growth for
some time to come."
The world's second-largest economy is faced
with moderating economic growth, especially after decades of runaway
expansion. Economists agree that China needs painful reforms,
though implementing them is no easy task as the economy decelerates.
Reaching its goal of gross domestic product growth of 7.5% this year
would represent slower expansion than the 7.7% growth China posted in 2013.
Experts say Beijing's decision to keep its GDP target unchanged from
last year's goal point to the government's commitment to balanced
growth.
"It is a statement that China will ensure steady growth
momentum from 2013 to persist in 2014 in the face of various challenges
facing the economy," said Reorient economist Steve Wang. "The 7.5%
target is a balance between needs and possibility, helps to boost
confidence and facilitate economic restructuring."
The most watched TV show on Earth
Li's report to the National People's Congress included other economic
goals, such as holding consumer price inflation within 3.5%. China's
initiatives included a commitment to create 10 million new jobs, keep
urban unemployment rates under 4.6%, and ensure that personal incomes
keep pace with overall economic growth.
He also reiterated China's commitment to certain economic reforms, including opening up the country's financial markets, and making fiscal reform "high priority."
When Gov. Chris Christie
pushed to expand financial incentives to keep businesses in New Jersey,
one of the first companies to benefit was a client of David Samson, a
lawyer with a long and close relationship to the governor.
When
Mr. Christie announced government-backed financing for college and
school construction projects, Mr. Samson’s firm got a piece of that
business.
And after Mr. Christie named Mr. Samson chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
they both benefited when Mr. Samson and the board he led approved
billions of dollars in bridge construction contracts. Labor unions
grateful for the hard-hat jobs threw their endorsements to Mr. Christie,
and clients of Mr. Samson’s firm wound up with the work.
The
lane-closing scandal that has enveloped Mr. Christie’s administration
and the Port Authority for months has focused intense scrutiny on Mr.
Samson and the 120-lawyer firm that he helped found in 1972. A number of
potential conflicts have been reported by other news media, and the
agency’s executive director, Patrick J. Foye, last week said that Mr. Samson lacked the moral authority to remain chairman.
Photo
Under David Samson, the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey awarded a $1.3 billion contract to a
client of his law firm for work on the Bayonne Bridge.Credit
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
A
comprehensive examination of Mr. Samson’s dealings with Governor
Christie and his administration, both inside the Port Authority and out,
shows the extent to which their ambitions and successes became
intertwined. Mr. Samson and his law firm benefited financially. Mr.
Christie benefited politically. And each enhanced the other’s stature as
their relationship deepened in ways that were not apparent at the time.
Mr.
Samson has had a long career at the nexus of law and politics in New
Jersey. But since Mr. Christie took office in 2010, his firm, Wolff
& Samson, has risen to become one of the biggest bond counsel firms
in the state, advising scores of private clients and state agencies, and
jumped up in rankings of the state’s biggest lobbying firms.
The
efforts of the two men became increasingly bold as Mr. Christie’s
national profile increased and Mr. Samson became a central figure in the
region’s construction field.
Perhaps
the clearest example of this symbiosis, previously unreported, came
last April, when Mr. Samson presided as the Port Authority awarded two
bridge construction contracts worth a total of $2.8 billion.
Mr.
Samson paused after the vote of the 12-member board to call the
occasion “joyous and happy.” It certainly was for two clients of his law
firm.
One
longtime client was I.M.T.T., which owns a liquid storage facility on
the Bayonne waterfront. The company is half-owned by the Macquarie Infrastructure Company,
one of the contractors Mr. Samson and his fellow commissioners awarded
$1.5 billion to replace and maintain the Goethals Bridge.
A
second contract, for $1.3 billion, was to raise the Bayonne Bridge to
allow clearance for the largest container ships — though Port Authority
experts had seen the project as a lower priority. Mr. Samson “came in
like gangbusters” and insisted on proceeding immediately, one former
project official said.
The
Port Authority awarded that contract to a team including Skanska Koch, a
division of a multinational construction company based in Sweden and
another client of Mr. Samson’s firm. Wolff & Samson lawyers were
then in the throes of settling a costly dispute for the company in
federal court on Long Island.
Mr. Samson did not recuse himself from either vote, according to minutes
of the meeting. Mr. Samson’s spokeswoman, responding to multiple
requests delivered by phone and email, declined to comment on the votes
or other apparent conflicts that have been raised in recent weeks.
Asked
about the potential conflicts in Mr. Samson’s votes, his spokeswoman
provided a one-sentence statement from Mr. Samson’s lawyer, Michael
Chertoff, who is a former secretary of homeland security.
“Since
assuming the chairmanship of the P.A.N.Y.N.J., David Samson’s
commitment has been to benefit the region and not about personal gain,”
Mr. Chertoff said in the statement.
None
of this occurred in a vacuum, of course. Both Skanska and Macquarie are
worldwide leaders in their field, and no one has suggested that the bid
process was tainted. Mr. Samson’s law firm has a deep bench of skilled
lawyers who handle a broad range of complicated matters. And both he and
Mr. Christie operate in a state with a long history of cozy,
back-scratching relationships among politicians, lawyers and businesses
tied to real estate and construction.
But
the April 2013 vote was just one of many instances in which Mr.
Samson’s work at the Port Authority lined up with the interests of his
law firm — and, in many cases, with Mr. Christie’s political priorities.
Jameson
W. Doig, a scholar who has long studied the Port Authority, said that
while the Port Authority had not been immune to allegations of political
influence, he had not seen anything in his research going back to the
1920s that compared to how Mr. Samson and Mr. Christie have used the
bistate agency’s vast resources to advance the governor’s interests, at
times benefiting Mr. Samson’s clients in the process.
“Chris
Christie has been very active in using the Port Authority for his own
purposes, more so than any other governor,” said Mr. Doig, a research
professor at Dartmouth College. “And that increased when David Samson
arrived.”
‘The General’ and Christie
Mr.
Christie, 51, and Mr. Samson, 74, were lobbyists and lawyers in the
1990s, Mr. Christie at Dughi Hewit and Mr. Samson at his own firm. They
served as the state’s top law enforcement officers for a brief period of
time: Mr. Christie as the United States attorney from 2002 to 2008, and
Mr. Samson as the attorney general for 13 months starting in 2002.
Mr.
Christie still refers to Mr. Samson as “the general.” The governor has
said that at one point during that brief overlap he and Mr. Samson were
informed that members of the Latin Kings gang had threatened to kill
them both.
“That brings you together,” Mr. Christie joked.
In
2007, Mr. Christie gave Mr. Samson a $10 million contract to be the
compliance monitor for a medical implant company, a position that was
part of a settlement under which Mr. Christie agreed not to criminally
prosecute the company on federal kickback charges.
Two
years later, when Mr. Christie ran for governor, Mr. Samson was the
lawyer for his campaign. After he won the election, Mr. Christie chose
Mr. Samson to lead his transition team, along with Jeffrey S. Chiesa,
then a new Wolff & Samson lawyer who had befriended Mr. Christie at
Dughi Hewit and followed him to the federal prosecutor’s office.
Soon
after he took office in 2010, Mr. Christie, a Republican, pushed for a
vast increase in the tax breaks and other subsidies that could be
awarded to businesses if they remained in New Jersey. He held a news
conference that summer at the headquarters of Honeywell International,
in Morristown, warning that the manufacturer planned to move to
Pennsylvania, and arguing that New Jersey needed a major increase in its
business-retention program.
Photo
The new developer of an unfinished mall and amusement park formerly known as Xanadu is also a client of Wolff & Samson.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
What was not widely known at the time was that Honeywell had hired Mr. Samson’s law firm to lobby for retention subsidies.
Lawmakers
passed the legislation, a more than sixfold increase to the maximum
per-job award. Honeywell later dropped that program after Mr. Christie
pushed for an increase to a second program. Wolff & Samson lobbied
for that legislation, and helped persuade the state Economic Development
Authority to award Honeywell $40 million in tax breaks, the most
allowed, under the second program.
Mr. Samson’s firm received $540,000 in lobbying fees from Honeywell from 2010 through 2012.
Mr.
Christie, in turn, trumpeted a major victory in an otherwise painfully
slow economic recovery, saying his legislation had been “instrumental in
Honeywell’s decision to stay and expand their operations in New
Jersey.”
Last
year, Honeywell announced it was moving one town over to Morris Plains
and putting its 147-acre Morristown campus up for redevelopment —
prompting critics to ask whether that had been the company’s intent all
along.
“You
just have to wonder if the threat was real or if it was idle,” said Jon
Whiten, deputy director of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a
liberal-leaning nonprofit group.
Booming Bond Business
Along
Route 3 in the Meadowlands sits a developer’s garish folly, a
long-unfinished mall and amusement park once known as Xanadu. In 2011,
Mr. Christie pressed for another change in state law, this time to make
incentives available to Triple Five, the new developer of the project,
now renamed the American Dream.
Its
lawyer: Wolff & Samson. In November, the state Economic Development
Authority awarded Triple Five tax credits worth $390 million.
Mr.
Christie pointed to Triple Five when he accepted the backing of the
Laborers’ International Union in December 2012, one of the first major
endorsements of his re-election campaign. “Here I’m looking at the men
and women who are going to take that thing and turn it from ugly and
into a job machine for the men and women of New Jersey,” he said.
“The
Christie train has left the station and we are driving it,” said Ray
Pocino, regional manager of the laborers union. He singled out the
Bayonne Bridge, the Revel casino in Atlantic City and American Dream as
projects Mr. Christie championed that were putting his members to work.
During
Mr. Christie’s first three years in office, New Jersey awarded $2.11
billion in business incentives, almost double the $1.25 billion awarded
during the prior decade, according to a report by New Jersey Policy
Perspective.
“The state has been a one-note band for the last couple of years,” Mr. Whiten said.
Yet
as of December, New Jersey had recovered only 44 percent of jobs lost
in the recession, compared with a national average of 87 percent, Mr.
Whiten said. New York was at 156 percent.
In addition to its lobbying work, Wolff & Samson serves as counsel on municipal bond
issues, including being on the list of firms that can be hired to
perform legal work when the Economic Development Authority issues bonds
to support projects.
So
when the development authority approved $102 million in tax credits to
help Panasonic, which had threatened to leave the state, move instead
from Secaucus to Newark, Mr. Samson’s firm was listed as bond counsel
for a related $10 million bond proposal.
It
was bond counsel when the authority issued $237 million in bonds to
support a major expansion at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and on
at least three bonds totaling about $43 million to support the
construction of privately run charter schools, something the governor had pushed to expand.
Since
Mr. Christie took office, Mr. Samson’s firm has served as counsel for
$10.3 billion in municipal bonds, WNYC radio reported. Its share of the
municipal bond counsel business has jumped to 22 percent under Mr.
Christie, from 2 percent during the administration of Gov. Jon S.
Corzine, according to an analysis by Thomson Reuters.
Marc
Pfeiffer, who worked in municipal financing for New Jersey for decades,
said it would not be surprising that a firm known to be close to any
governor would pick up business.
“The
bond counsel selection process is not immune to the political process,”
said Mr. Pfeiffer, now a research fellow at Rutgers University’s
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
Mr. Christie, shovel in hand, got to take credit for putting New Jersey back to work.
“This
is another success story about one of our largest businesses choosing
to stay in New Jersey, continue to grow and invest in our state and
people,” Mr. Christie said at Panasonic’s groundbreaking in 2011.
Photo
After Chris Christie became
governor, the Port Authority took over the failing Atlantic City airport
from a Wolff & Samson client.Credit
Mel Evans/Associated Press
‘An Activist Chairman’
When
Mr. Samson arrived in 2011 as chairman of the Port Authority, an unpaid
position, he made clear that, unlike most prior chairmen, he intended
to insert himself into the day-to-day operations of the $8.2
billion-a-year agency.
He
commuted to its offices near Union Square two or three times a week,
meeting with Mr. Christie’s other two top appointees at the authority,
Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, according to people who worked closely
with them.
“He
really decided to be an activist chairman from the beginning,” said one
former authority official who spoke anonymously so as not to damage
business relationships.
Under
Mr. Samson, the Port Authority approved transportation projects that
critics said New Jersey would have otherwise had to pay for itself, most
notably upgrades to the Pulaski Skyway. That allowed Mr. Christie to
avoid raising the state’s low gas tax, keeping a campaign promise.
Meanwhile, commuters at Port Authority bridges and tunnels saw their
tolls rise sharply. Mr. Christie spoke against the increases but did not
stop them.
In
another project, Mr. Samson and Mr. Baroni, the agency’s deputy
executive director, arranged for the Port Authority to take over the
failing Atlantic City International Airport.
Some
Port Authority executives saw the move as an expensive effort to boost
Mr. Christie’s re-election efforts in South Jersey. But New York’s
turnover of an airport in Orange County to the Port Authority had given
New Jersey’s governor a coupon to do the same someday.
“It
was always thought that Atlantic City would be the one they’d try to
dump on the Port Authority, because Atlantic City loses money, it’s
always lost money, it’s a dying town,” said a person who worked on the
takeover who spoke anonymously to avoid hurting professional
relationships.
The
airport was being served by just one carrier, Spirit Airlines, with 27
domestic flights a day from Atlantic City. A Port Authority study found
that to break even the airport would need about 22 more flights a day.
In
March 2013, Mr. Baroni assured the Port Authority’s board that the
takeover would “create a more integrated airport system” and perhaps
even “create additional capacity in the region.”
Mr.
Samson thanked him. “That’s really exciting and is consistent with all
our thoughts on where we’re going with this exciting operation
agreement,” he said.
What
he did not say was that his firm served as bond counsel for the South
Jersey Transportation Authority, which was suffering under the burden of
running the Atlantic City airport.
A
transcript quotes Mr. Samson calling for the vote but does not list who
voted in favor. Another document, the minutes, says Mr. Samson recused
himself. But two people who were involved in internal discussions on the
effort said Mr. Samson played an integral role in promoting the
initiative.
The Record, a New Jersey newspaper, reported last year that Mr. Samson took the lead in explaining to reporters the reasoning for the takeover.
Port
Authority policies allow for discretion by commissioners over when to
recuse themselves from votes or discussions over issues, and if they do
recuse themselves, they are not required to publicly divulge why.
It
is clear Mr. Samson made his support for the plan known to his fellow
commissioners and was involved in planning. Mr. Doig, the Dartmouth
professor, said the recusal afforded Mr. Samson an ethical fig leaf.
“And the fig leaf is not adequate,” he said.
During
talks about the airport takeover, Mr. Samson and Mr. Baroni also were
seeking to finance the extension of the PATH train from Lower Manhattan
to Newark Liberty Airport. United Airlines, the primary carrier at
Newark, had long pushed for the extension.
In
August, Mr. Christie and Mr. Samson met with United’s chief executive,
Jeff Smisek. In November, they announced that United would begin making
two daily flights to Atlantic City.
And the Port Authority recently announced a $1.5 billion plan to extend the PATH to Newark Liberty, which would save Manhattan travelers from having to switch trains.
The
Atlantic City airport takeover did not just help a Wolff & Samson
client. It also helped Mr. Christie bolster his relationship with
Stephen M. Sweeney, the president of the State Senate, who has been
crucial to his support in southern New Jersey and his ability to move
initiatives through the Legislature.
While
the investigations into the George Washington Bridge lane closings
brought the relationship between Mr. Samson and Mr. Christie into focus,
Mr. Samson’s role in that event is less clear. But there are
indications that he was not in the dark.
In
September, after Mr. Foye, the Port Authority’s executive director,
reopened the lanes to the bridge that Mr. Christie’s appointees had
ordered closed, Mr. Wildstein angrily sent an email saying “Samson
helping us to retaliate,” records show.
Mr. Samson has denied involvement, and Mr. Christie has stood by “the general.”
Amid
growing alarm at the rate of suicide among members of the military and
confusion about possible causes, researchers reported on Monday that
most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had
them before they enlisted, and that those at highest risk of making an
attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger.
The new research — contained in three papers posted online Monday by the journal JAMA Psychiatry
— found that about one in 10 soldiers qualified for a diagnosis of
“intermittent explosive disorder,” as it is known to psychiatrists —
more than five times the rate found in the general population. This
impulsive pattern, in combination with mood disorders and the stresses
of deployment, increased the likelihood of acting on suicidal urges.
The
new papers bring together five years of work by a coalition of
academic, government and military researchers, investigating hundreds of
suicides and surveying thousands of active soldiers in anonymous
questionnaires.
The
effort began in 2008, after the suicide rate among active soldiers rose
above the civilian rate among young healthy adults for the first time.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have relied on an all-volunteer Army,
not a draft like previous wars, and many of today’s enlisted men and
women have deployed two, three, sometimes four times.
The
new reports provide the first glimpse at how changes in the makeup of
the fighting force and the increased demands of service have affected
the suicide rate. The annual soldier suicide rate more than doubled
between 2004 and 2009, to over 23 per 100,000. In that period, 569
soldier deaths were ruled suicides. Since then, the rate has begun to
fall back toward 20 per 100,000, the civilian rate in the same age
group.
“This
effort will do for suicide what the Framingham Heart Study did for
cardiology, provide for the first time a way to look at multiple factors
over a huge number of people,” said Dr. David Brent, a psychiatrist at
the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the research. The
results, he added, strongly suggest that “the baggage people bring with
them and often don’t disclose in order to get into armed services
presumably interacts with the stresses of deployment” to increase
vulnerability to suicide.
The
three reports do not settle whether so-called accession waivers, which
relax standards for new soldiers and which the Army has used to shore up
its ranks, increased the force’s vulnerability to suicide. One study,
an investigation of suicides and accidental deaths led by Michael
Schoenbaum of the National Institute of Mental Health, found a host of
risk factors many have suspected: demotions, a lower rank and previous
deployment among them. But looser standards for enlistment were not
correlated with increased suicides.
Overall,
the three reports sketch a portrait of suicide risk that in many
respects is like the civilian one. About 14 percent of the surveyed
soldiers said they had had suicidal thoughts, and 5 percent had made
plans at least once to take their lives — mirroring the rates among
civilian peers. About 2 percent had actually made an attempt. (The
attempt rate for civilians is actually twice as high, but soldiers’
attempts are more often lethal.)
About
a quarter of soldiers surveyed qualified for at least one current
psychiatric disorder, such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse.
That is roughly twice the rate among peers in the general population,
but only about half of those disorders developed after enlistment. The
biggest difference between soldiers and young adults in the civilian
population was in impulsive anger. The rate was more than 11 percent
among surveyed soldiers, and less than 2 percent among young civilians.
The anger issues predated enlistment about three-quarters of the time,
said Matthew Nock, a lead author on one of the papers and a psychologist
at Harvard.
“The
people at highest risk of making an attempt struggled with depression
and anxiety, or post-traumatic stress, in combination with impulsiveness
and aggression,” Dr. Nock said. “The former gets people thinking about
suicide, and the latter gets them to act on those thoughts.”
The
new findings present the military with a challenging question: How do
you identify people vulnerable to suicide without driving them
underground? More intensive scrutiny typically leads would-be recruits
to hide mental struggles. Some experts suggested that the services could
screen people after enlistment, to identify those who might be offered
additional support.
“A
small minority of soldiers are responsible for a disproportionate
amount of suicidal behavior,” wrote Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, of the
National Center for PTSD, in an editorial accompanying the three
reports. “Better identification of and intervention with the cohort are
likely to have the best payoff.”
These
experts also said that the military could invest in courses that shore
up mental toughness service-wide as a preventive measure. In 2009, the
Army invested in such a program for its 1.1 million members, but a
recent report concluded that the program had not been effective.
We parse it all for you — "Amen and Alright Alright Alright"
Lucy Nicholson / ReutersWhat exactly did he mean by all that? After winning for his role as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyer’s Club,
Matthew McConaughey launched into a semi-bizarre tale about his inner
life. Here is what we learned: 1. He needs someone to look up to, something to look forward to and someone to chase. 2. He wants to thank God, who he looks up to. God is all about gratitude. 3. He wants to thank his family, who he looks forward to. His
deceased father, he believes, is celebrating with a big pot of gumbo and
a can of Miller Lite. His mother, still with us, taught him how to
respect himself. 4. The person he chases is himself, 10 years into the future. He
knows he will never catch up, but he wants to find out who that guy will
turn out to be. 5. To all of that, he says “Amen,” ”Alright, Alright, Alright” and “Keep on Livin’.”
A Ukrainian woman reacts as troops in unmarked uniforms hold positions
in Perevalnoye, a small Ukrainian base roughly 15 miles south of
Simferopol on Sunday, March 2, 2014. About two dozen Ukrainian soldiers
could be seen behind her.
Ukraine mobilized for war Saturday, escalating
the most dangerous standoff between the Kremlin and the West since the
Cold War, after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared he had a right
to invade the country to protect Russian interests.
Kiev directed
its armed forces to be put on “full combat readiness” as it mobilized
and trained reserve forces, closed its airspace and boosted security at
key sites, the BBC reports. The Russian army was said to be digging
trenches between Crimea and mainland Ukraine as troops occupied key
sites, including airports and communication hubs.
Russian forces had reportedly already swarmed into Crimea when Putin
obtained permission from his parliament to officially move troops into
Ukraine, taking government buildings and occupying Crimea’s capital,
Simferopol. They surrounded several Ukrainian military bases, Reuters
reports, demanding troops lay down their arms. Some refused, but no
shots have yet been fired.
“This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my
country,” said Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, head of the
pro-Western opposition government that took power in Kiev last week.
“If President Putin wants to be the president who started the war
between two neighboring and friendly countries, between Ukraine and
Russia, so: he has reached this target within a few inches. We are on
the brink of disaster.”
The newly appointed chief of Ukraine’s navy defected to Russia on
Sunday after being appointed to his position just the day before.
A treason case has been launched against him.
In Kiev’s Independence Square, the scene of anti-Moscow
demonstrations since November, thousands of protestors demonstrated
against Russian military action. In eastern Ukraine, where most ethnic
Ukrainians speak Russian and much of the region is oriented East,
pro-Russian demonstrators hoisted flags outside government buildings and
called for Russia to defend them. Kiev called the move a ploy to
encourage Russian troop mobilization across the wider region.
Western government held emergency meetings to discuss a possible
response Saturday, with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
Samantha Power, calling Russia’s troop deployment a violation of
Ukraine’s sovereignty. “It is time for the Russian intervention in
Ukraine to end,” she said.
On Sunday, NATO condemnded Russia’s attack in Ukraine. “Military
action against Ukraine by forces of the Russian Federation is a breach
of international law,” NATO said. The treaty alliance called on Russia
to “withdraw its forces to its bases, and to refrain from any interference elsewhere in Ukraine.”
Hollywood’s biggest night is upon us, and while we’ve made plenty of predictions as to what to expect from tonight’s festivities, it’s anyone’s guess who will take home the trophies. We’ll be updating this post live throughout the night as the winners are announced, so if you aren’t streaming the show, check back here to see an up-to-date count of this year’s Oscar winners. Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club Best Costume Design: Catherine Martin, The Great Gatsby Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Adruitha Lee & Robin Mathews, Dallas Buyers Club Best Animated Short Film:Mr. Hublot Best Animated Feature Film: Frozen Best Visual Effects: Gravity Best Live Action Short: Helium Best Documentary Short: The Lady In Number 6 Best Documentary Feature: 20 Feet From Stardom Best Foreign Language Film: The Great Beauty Best Sound Mixing:Gravity Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave Best Cinematography: Gravity Best Film Editing: Gravity Best Production Design: The Great Gatsby
When Gov. 
