Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

At a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it.

LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.

No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”

Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.

Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.

“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”

John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).

“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.

In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.

“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”

A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.

Read More..

Facebook tests $1 fee for messages to non-friends

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook says it is testing a service that will charge users $ 1 to guarantee that messages they send to people they are not connected to arrive in users’ inboxes, rather than in an often-ignored folder called “other.”

Launched in 2011, the “other” folder is where Facebook routes messages it deems less relevant. Not quite spam, these include messages from people you most likely don’t know, based on Facebook’s reading of your social connections. Many users ignore this folder.

Now, users will be able to pay $ 1 to route their messages to non-friends. Facebook said Thursday that it is testing the service with a small percentage of individuals — not businesses — in the U.S.

“For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox,” Facebook said in an online post. “For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.”

The company says charging for messages could help discourage spammers.

In October, Facebook unveiled another feature that lets users pay if they want more people to read their updates. For $ 7, users can promote a post to their friends, just as advertisers do.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Facebook tests $1 fee for messages to non-friends
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Country singer Tate Stevens wins Fox's 'X Factor'

NEW YORK (AP) — Tate Stevens, who was mentored by music exec L.A. Reid on the second season of "The X Factor," has won the Fox singing competition.

The 37-year-old country singer from Belton, Mo., beat runner-up Carly Rose Sonenclar, a 13-year-old schoolgirl from Westchester, N.Y., and teenage girl group Fifth Harmony on the finale that aired live Thursday night.

Stevens wins a $5 million recording contract.

More than 35 million votes were cast by viewers after Wednesday's performance show.

Besides Reid, judges this season included Demi Lovato, Britney Spears and series creator Simon Cowell.

Thursday's show was also the grand finale for Reid. Earlier this month, he said he wouldn't be returning to "The X Factor" next year. No replacement has been announced.

Read More..

Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow taxes to rise on the most affluent households in the country.

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the bill after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dejected Republicans filed out of the basement meeting room and declared there would be no votes to avert the “fiscal cliff” until after Christmas. With his “Plan B” all but dead, the speaker was left with the choice to find a new Republican way forward or to try to get a broad deficit reduction deal with President Obama that could win passage with Republican and Democratic votes.

What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement that said responsibility for a solution now fell to the White House and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”

The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

At the White House, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said the defeat should press Mr. Boehner back into talks with Mr. Obama.

“The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” he said.

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

With a series of votes on Thursday, the speaker, who faces election for his post in the new Congress next month, had hoped to assemble a Republican path away from the cliff. With a show of Republican unity, he also sought to strengthen his own hand in negotiations with Mr. Obama. The House did narrowly pass legislation to cancel automatic, across-the-board military cuts set to begin next month, and shift them to domestic programs.

But the main component of “Plan B,” a bill to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $1 million, could not win enough Republican support to overcome united Democratic opposition. Democrats questioned Mr. Boehner’s ability to deliver any agreement.

“I think this demonstrates that Speaker Boehner has a real challenge,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat. “He hasn’t been able to cut any deal, make any agreement that’s balanced. Even if it’s his own compromise.”

Representative Rick Larsen of Washington accused Republicans of shirking their responsibility by leaving the capital. “The Republicans just picked up their toys and went home,” he said.

Futures contracts on indexes of United States stock listings and shares in Asia fell sharply after Mr. Boehner conceded that his bill lacked the votes to pass.

The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.“Some people don’t know how to take yea for an answer,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a Republican who supported the measure and was open about his disappointment with his colleagues.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked.

“The speaker should be meeting with us to get our views on things rather than just presenting his,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently lost a committee post for routinely crossing the leadership.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

Read More..

At Queens High Rise, Fear, Death and Myth Collided

Sergey Shinderman

Residents of the Sand Castle in Far Rockaway struggled after the hurricane hit New York.

On Nov. 7, little more than a week after Hurricane Sandy battered New York, a filmmaker, Kate Balandina, navigated the dark hallways and staircases of 7-11 Seagirt Avenue, four hulking towers with more than 900 apartments along the beach in Far Rockaway, Queens.

The action she captured played out by flashlight beam, illuminating elderly men and women swaddled in coats, robes, sweaters, hats and scarves in their apartments. “It’s cold, so cold,” one gray-haired man said in Russian, sounding short of breath. The privately owned high rise had been without heat, water or working elevators since the evening of the storm.

In the lobby, Rodney Duff, a burly resident in a black sweatshirt, made a grim prediction. “Two hundred seniors that can’t move up and down these stairs,” Mr. Duff said. “One of them is going to die in this building tonight.”

Those scenes inside the complex, known as the Sand Castle, soon appeared in a disturbing five-minute video on YouTube, telling what has become a familiar story in the storm’s aftermath. Like thousands of other vulnerable city residents, the tenants endured hunger, cold and fear for days, deprived of assistance and, in some cases, vital medicines. Almost everyone — the residents, their families, the building owners, city officials and aid workers — was poorly prepared for the magnitude of need caused by power failures that persisted long after the hurricane had passed.

But the video produced by Ms. Balandina, who was volunteering aid and pulled out her camera because she was horrified at what she was seeing, made this story all its own. After YouTube viewers witnessed the desperation at the Far Rockaway complex, some sprang into action. Aid convoys rumbled in from out of state. People as far away as Britain called City Hall, pleading that officials help the Sand Castle. Ambulances were summoned there by residents of Pennsylvania.

Facebook reports and blog posts, some by people who had not visited the buildings, even circulated accounts of multiple bodies being removed from the complex when the power was out. Those reports were not borne out by the police, medical examiner and health department records, but they contributed to the making of a myth, a social-media tale that seemed believable amid so much misery.

After the lights came on nearly two weeks after the storm, Danny Sanchez, an assistant superintendent, used a master key to enter Apartment C on the 13th floor of Building B, where no one had answered the door on repeated visits. There, he found Thomas S. Anderson, 89, who had lived alone, face up on the floor beside his bed.

His was the sole death at the Sand Castle, where no one in the days after the storm could claim to understand the full story of what was happening and what it meant.

The New York City medical examiner’s office classified Mr. Anderson’s death as natural after consulting with his doctor. A World War II veteran, he was buried the next week with military honors at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island. Without an autopsy, the specific factors that preceded his death and the possible ways the post-hurricane conditions might have contributed to it — A fall in his unlighted studio? Heart disease worsened by stress? — will never be known.

But what can be said for certain is that Mr. Anderson spent his last days largely alone in the dark, trapped high above the ground without heat, dependent on the haphazard good will of others for his survival.

Perpetually Cool

Mr. Anderson projected cool well into his 80s, a tattooed, earring-wearing great-grandfather with a white Van Dyke mustache that curved into a goatee. He wore glasses and rarely left his apartment without a baseball cap or beanie and his clip-on, yellow-tinted shades.

Before retiring, Mr. Anderson, a native of North Carolina, had worked in a post office and as a supervisor at Marboro Books in Lower Manhattan, a chain acquired by Barnes & Noble. He once took tailoring classes to learn to make his own suits, and loved baseball — he had played with an old-timers club in Harlem called The Unknowns and watched or attended nearly every Mets game.

In his early 20s, he was an Army infantryman who served in the Pacific during World War II and earned several decorations, his daughter, Jannette Elliott, said.

Alain Delaquérière, Lisa Schwartz and Jack Styczynski contributed research.

Follow Sheri Fink on Twitter: @SheriFink

Read More..

$66M Kinkade estate dispute secretly settled

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Thomas Kinkade's widow and girlfriend have reached a settlement after a dispute over the late artist's $66 million estate, their attorneys said Wednesday.

The San Jose Mercury News reports (http://bit.ly/Wq5kti ) that counsel for Nanette Kinkade and his girlfriend Amy Pinto announced the settlement but wouldn't provide further details, leaving it unclear who will inherit Kinkade's San Francisco Bay area mansion and his warehouse of paintings.

In a statement, they said the women kept Kinkade's message of "love, spirituality and optimism" in their amicable resolution.

The dispute went public after the 54-year-old artist died April 6 from an accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription tranquilizers.

Pinto, who began dating Kinkade six months after his marriage of 28 years imploded, claimed Kinkade wrote two notes bequeathing her his mansion and $10 million to establish a museum of his paintings. Her lawyers filed court papers stating that she and Kinkade had planned to marry as soon as his divorce went through.

Nanette Kinkade disputed those claims and sought full control of the estate. She portrayed Pinto in court papers as a gold-digger who is trying to cheat the artist's rightful heirs.

Kinkade, the self-described "Painter of Light," was known for sentimental scenes of country gardens and pastoral landscapes. His work led to a commercial empire of franchised galleries, reproduced artwork and spin-off products that was said to fetch some $100 million each year in sales.

Read More..

DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, UBS Pays $1.5 Billion Over Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, announced a record settlement with global authorities on Wednesday, agreeing to a combined $1.5 billion in fines for its role in a multiyear scheme to manipulate interest rates.

In a sign that officials are increasingly taking a hard line against financial wrongdoing, the Justice Department also secured a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese subsidiary, sending a warning shot to other big banks suspected of rate rigging. The UBS subsidiary, which agreed to plead to a single count of wire fraud, is the first unit of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

The cash penalties represented the largest fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry. The fine is also one of the biggest sanctions that American and British authorities have ever levied against a financial institution, falling just short of the $1.9 billion payout that HSBC made last week over money laundering accusations.

The severity of the UBS penalties, authorities said, reflected the extent of the problems. The government complaints laid bare a scheme that spanned from 2005 to 2010, describing how the bank reported false rates to squeeze out extra profits and deflect concerns about its health during the financial crisis.

“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” Tracey McDermott, the enforcement director for the Financial Services Authority of Britain, said in a statement. “The integrity of benchmarks,” she said, “are of fundamental importance to both U.K. and international financial markets. UBS traders and managers ignored this.”

The UBS case reflects a pattern of abuse that authorities have uncovered as part of a multi-year investigation into rate-rigging. The inquiry, which has ensnared more than a dozen big banks, is focused on key benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such rates are used to help determine the borrowing rates for trillions of dollars of financial products like corporate loans, mortgages and credit cards.

Libor Explained

In the UBS matter, the wrongdoing occurred largely within the Japanese unit, where traders colluded with other banks and brokerage firms to tinker with Yen denominated Libor and bolster their returns. During the 2008 financial crisis, UBS managers also “inappropriately gave guidance to those employees charged with submitting interest rates, the purpose being to positively influence the perception of UBS’s creditworthiness,” according to authorities.

In a series of colorful e-mails and phone calls, traders tried to influence the rate-setting process. “I need you to keep it as low as possible,” one UBS trader said to an employee at another brokerage firm in September 2008, according to the complaint filed by the Financial Services Authority. “If you do that,” the trader promised to pay “whatever you want. I’m a man of my word.”

As the employees carried out the alleged manipulation, they also celebrated the efforts, with one trader referring to a partner in the scheme as “superman.” “Be a hero today,” he urged, according the complaint by regulators.

The British and Swiss authorities released their complaints on Wednesday before the bank’s shares began trading in Switzerland. American authorities are expected to release their own complaints later Wednesday in Washington.

In a statement, UBS highlighted its cooperation with the investigation. The firm previously stated that it made provisions of 897 million Swiss francs ($975 million) to cover potential legal and regulatory fines.

“We discovered behavior of certain employees that is unacceptable,” the chief executive of UBS, Sergio P. Ermotti, said in the statement. “We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity.”

The UBS case provides a lens to view broader problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. In June, authorities scored their first Libor settlement, securing a $450 million payout from Barclays, the big British bank.

The UBS case — the product of cross-border collaboration among regulators and federal prosecutors – is more than triple the earlier fine.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Justice Department leveled about $1.2 billion in combined fines. The Financial Services Authority of Britain fined the bank $260 million. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which does not have the power to fine, recovered $65 million in the bank’s supposed ill-gotten gains.

The Justice Department’s criminal division, which arranged the guilty plea with the Japanese subsidiary, also struck a non-prosecution agreement with the parent company. The exact total of the penalties was unclear, because the department has not yet released its settlement documents.

The Justice Department’s case is also expected to take aim at some of the bank’s traders, including 33-year-old Thomas Hayes. The Justice Department plans to announce charges against Mr. Hayes, the former UBS and Citigroup trader, who featured prominently in the investigation, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He was arrested in London last week and later released on bail. Other UBS employees have been suspended or fired following an internal investigation.

The fallout from the UBS case is expected to ratchet up the pressure on some of the world’s largest financial institutions and spur settlement talks across the banking industry.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has said it expects to pay fines before its next earnings statement in February, while Deutsche Bank has set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties. Some American institutions, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, also remain in regulators’ crosshairs.

The UBS case has exposed the systemic problems with the rate-setting process. Over a 6-year period, UBS traders targeted the major currencies that form the Libor system, including the U.S. dollar denominated rate. The bank was also cited for attempting to manipulate other benchmarks like the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, and the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate, or Tibor.

Much of the activity took place in the bank’s Japanese unit. Authorities said four UBS traders colluded to manipulate submissions to Yen Libor. The individuals made more than 1,900 requests to brokers and other banks to alter the rate, according to regulatory filings. As part of their efforts, UBS employees made quarterly payments of £15,000 ($24,000) to outside brokers involved in the rate-rigging for at least 18 months for their help, the complaint said.

To avoid arousing suspicion, UBS employees routinely made small changes to submissions, the complaint detailed. The individuals, who communicated with colleagues about the rate-setting through emails and instant messages, also altered rate submissions to benefit traders at other banks.

The Japanese unit’s guilty plea for wire fraud follows frantic last-minute negotiations last week between senior UBS officials and American authorities. The actions detailed in the complaint emboldened the Justice Department to seek the guilty plea from the Japanese unit. By forcing the plea from the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, federal authorities sent a clear message about the level of wrongdoing, but stopped far short of shutting UBS out of the American markets.

Still, the steep sanctions come as a surprise, given the bank’s cooperation with investigators.

Since first announcing that it was the subject of Libor investigations, the Swiss bank has eagerly worked with authorities in a bid for leniency. UBS, for example, had received conditional immunity from the Justice Department’s antitrust unit, a deal that did not apply to the Justice Department’s criminal division.

The case presents the latest setback for UBS.

The Swiss bank already agreed to a $780 million fine in 2009 with American authorities to settle charges that it helped American clients avoid tax. The firm also announced a $2.3 billion loss last year related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. Mr. Adoboli subsequently was sentenced to seven years, and British authorities fined UBS $47.5 million over the scandal.

UBS said it expected to report a net loss of up to $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of the year because of the costs related to Libor and other legal matters. The figure includes around $2.3 billion of provisions of legal and regulatory costs, as well as $548 million in restructuring charges.

In the wake of the Libor scandal, UBS has been forced to beef up its compliance and rate-setting procedures, according to the Swiss regulator. The bank has also fired individuals connected to the rate-rigging.

“We are pleased that the authorities gave us credit for the important and positive changes we have already made,” the chairman of UBS, Axel Weber, said in a statement. “I have zero tolerance for inappropriate and unethical behavior of any of our staff.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 19, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated a loss announced by UBS related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. It was $2.3 billion, not $2.3 million.

Read More..

Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of 'The Voice'

NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton's protege on the third season of NBC's "The Voice," has won the show's competition.

The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

"The Voice" has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network's surprising success this fall.

The show's status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

Read More..

President of Iraq Is Hospitalized With ‘Medical Emergency’

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, was taken to a hospital in Baghdad after suffering a medical emergency on Monday that was related to hardening of the arteries, statements from his office said on Tuesday. He is in stable condition, a statement said.

Scott Nelson/WpN for The New York Times

President Jilal Talabani of Iraq in May 2006 in Baghdad.

Reuters quoted an unnamed senior Kurdish official as saying that the president, 79, had suffered a stroke and had received treatment for blocked arties. Mr. Talabani has been receiving medical treatment abroad in recent years.

The statements from his office gave few details about Mr. Talabani’s condition but said that he was being treated by specialists at a facility, known as the Baghdad Medical City. One of the statements said the condition was linked to “his recent efforts to achieve stability in the country and due to fatigue and stress.” It said the medical emergency occurred on Monday evening.

Mr. Talabani and the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had held talks earlier in the day on Monday in Baghdad. After that meeting, Mr. Talabani’s office said the two men stressed the need for calm and transparent dialogue, as well as “working according to the spirit of the constitution and the national agreements” as the way to solve the country’s problems.

Mr. Maliki later visited Mr. Talabani in the hospital.

The reports about the health of Mr. Talabani, who is Kurdish, took place against the backdrop of a crisis that involves a standoff in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq between troops sent by Mr. Maliki and soldiers, known as the Peshmerga, sent by Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

Almost a year after the departure of the American military, the tension in the Kurdish region has the potential to escalate, with serious consequences that could exacerbate the country’s ethnic division because the Kurds have a measure of autonomy in the north, oversee their own security forces and have longstanding ambitions for independence.

Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York.

Read More..