SC Alcoa plant to close without lower power rate
Alcoa officials say the company's aluminum smelting plant in this Charleston suburb consumes $4 million a week in power and will close at a loss of more than 600 jobs if they can't negotiate a lower rate with Santee Cooper, South Carolina's state-owned electric utility.
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South Carolina has the fewest female lawmakers of any state in the nation, but a coalition of several women’s advocacy groups are trying to change that statistic.
There are currently no female state senators and only 15 of the 124 house representatives are women.
The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.
The announcement by the World Economic Forum was the latest bad news for the Obama administration, which has been struggling to boost the sinking U.S. economy and lower an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.
Switzerland held onto the top spot for the third consecutive year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based forum, which is best known for its exclusive meeting of luminaries in Davos, Switzerland, each January.
Singapore moved up to second place, bumping Sweden down to third. Finland moved up to fourth place, from seventh last year. The U.S. was in fourth place last year, after falling from No. 1 in 2008.
Counting adults 18-64 who were laid off in the recent recession as well as single twenty-somethings still looking for jobs, the new working-age poor represent nearly 3 out of 5 poor people - a switch from the early 1970s when children made up the main impoverished group.
While much of the shift in poverty is due to demographic changes - Americans are having fewer children than before - the now-weakened economy and limited government safety net for workers are heightening the effect.
Currently, the ranks of the working-age poor are at the highest level since the 1960s when the war on poverty was launched. When new census figures for 2010 are released next week, analysts expect a continued increase in the overall poverty rate due to persistently high unemployment last year.
If that holds true, it will mark the fourth year in a row of increases in the U.S. poverty rate, which now stands at 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people.
Most people associate heart attack symptoms with chest pain, pain in the shoulder, or other well-known signs. However, according to renowned cardiologist Dr. Chauncey Crandall, there are some signs that are so minor, many people ignore them or chalk them up to symptoms of a less threatening ailment.
Each year, about 785,000 Americans suffer a first heart attack. And 470,000 more people who’ve already had at least one attack suffer yet another one. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. In fact, it kills more men and women each year than all cancers combined, and is responsible for nearly a third of all deaths.
PROBLEM: Many studies have documented the heath benefits of red wine and other alcoholic beverages. Relatively few, however, have looked into the optimal amount of alcohol for middle-aged women to avoid major chronic diseases, cognitive and physical impairment, and mental health limitations. In other words, how much alcohol is really necessary for successful aging?
METHODOLOGY: The authors, led by Qi Sun from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, used information from the U.S. Nurses' Health Study, which began in 1976. For that study, 121,700 female nurses answered periodic food frequency questionnaires to assess their alcohol consumption during middle age. The researchers focused on participants who drank less than 45 grams of alcohol a day when middle-aged (average age: 58), examining the health status of those who lived to 70 years and over.
A stroke occurs when a blood vessel supplying your brain becomes blocked (ischemic stroke) or when a blood vessel ruptures (hemorrhagic stroke), causing interrupted or reduced blood supply to your brain. This deprives your brain of oxygen and nutrients, which can cause your brain cells to die. Some people may experience a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which is a brief period of symptoms similar to those experienced in a stroke.
Researchers studied 400 patients who were diagnosed at Mayo Clinic's emergency department with either acute ischemic stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA), a temporary interruption of blood flow to part of the brain.
Less than half of the patients — 42 percent — thought they were having a stroke. In fact, most in the study did not go to the emergency room when symptoms appeared. The median time from onset of symptoms to arrival at the hospital was over three and a half hours. Most said they thought the symptoms would simply go away. The delay in seeking medical help was the same among men and women.
In October 2005, three Citigroup analysts released a report describing the pattern of growth in the U.S. economy. To really understand the future of the economy and the stock market, they wrote, you first needed to recognize that there was “no such animal as the U.S. consumer,” and that concepts such as “average” consumer debt and “average” consumer spending were highly misleading.
In fact, they said, America was composed of two distinct groups: the rich and the rest. And for the purposes of investment decisions, the second group didn’t matter; tracking its spending habits or worrying over its savings rate was a waste of time. All the action in the American economy was at the top: the richest 1 percent of households earned as much each year as the bottom 60 percent put together; they possessed as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; and with each passing year, a greater share of the nation’s treasure was flowing through their hands and into their pockets. It was this segment of the population, almost exclusively, that held the key to future growth and future returns. The analysts, Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod, and Narendra Singh, had coined a term for this state of affairs: plutonomy.
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