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Food Safety Is Focus of Hearing Tuesday
The Associated Press
April 23, 2007
From tainted peanut butter to deadly spinach and pet food, incidents of
contamination have raised questions not only about the U.S. food supply
but the government's efforts to keep it safe.
The Food and Drug Administration's oversight of what Americans eat is
the larger focus of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing
scheduled for Tuesday. Witnesses were to include officials from food
manufacturers and distributors involved in recent recalls of tainted
products.
The safety of food raised domestically was questioned anew last fall
when officials traced a nationwide E. coli outbreak to contaminated
spinach processed by Natural Selections LLC. Three people died and
nearly 200 others were sickened.
The popular Peter Pan brand of peanut butter drew a nationwide recall in
February after a salmonella outbreak. More than 400 people were made
ill, and the recall cost manufacturer ConAgra Foods Inc. between $50
million and $60 million.
Non-human food has had its own problems. In March, Menu Foods recalled
60 million cans of dog and cat food after the deaths of 16 pets, mostly
cats, that had eaten products contaminated with the chemical melamine.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. The abstinence-only
sex-education programs on which the federal government has been spending
around $176 million a year have been shown to have zero effect. That's
right: zero.
"Abstinence-only" classes in public schools, funded by provisions of
the 1996 federal welfare reform law, focus on the message of waiting
until marriage. They do not teach about contraception or safe sex.
But a national study that tracked 2,000 young people over several
years has found no evidence that such classes as currently taught
actually increased rates of sexual abstinence. It found that program
participants had similar numbers of sexual partners compared with peers
who were not in the specialized abstinence programs.
Among teens who had sex by the end of the period of the study, the
average age of their first intercourse was the same for participants as
for nonparticipants: 14.9 years.
This is especially disappointing given that earlier research seemed
to indicate that abstinence programs were at least changing teen
attitudes, if not behavior.
The study, carried out by the nonpartisan firm Mathematica Policy
Research Inc., did turn up some interesting threads for further study.
It suggests that peer relationships are important predictors for
abstinence in other words, that young people will refrain from sex if
their close friends do, too. The study also found no particular increase
in unprotected sex.
Sex education, of course, is primarily the responsibility of parents,
and shouldn't be confined solely to the classroom. Parents, along with
religious communities, can impart messages of restraint, unselfishness,
and commitment that shape relationships. Where these values are lacking
in the home, then public schools can have a role, one with difficult
policy choices, as this report points out.
Critics of abstinence-only have used the study to say, "I told you
so!"
"This is social agenda masquerading as teen pregnancy prevention,"
said Martha Kempner of the Sexuality Information and Education Council
of the US. "This administration has allowed ideology to trump science."
Voices on the other side have called for the programs to continue. And a
top federal official, commenting that the study lacked rigor, said the
government has no intention of changing funding priorities in light of
the study which was conducted for the US Department of Health and
Human Services.
So where do we go from here?
To confront the apparent failures of abstinence programs is not to
give up on teen abstinence as a standard.
The welfare reform that led to these classes was a collaboration
between President Clinton and a Republican Congress. Now the Bush
administration, faced with allegations of ignoring science, has an
opportunity to refute that charge by heeding these findings and
retooling its efforts.
It may be that sex education that includes abstinence is more useful
than abstinence-only classes. The head of the National Campaign to
Prevent Teen Pregnancy said Mathematica's research supports what other
studies show: "The most effective programs are those that say abstinence
is the best choice but birth control and protection are also worth
knowing about."
Sales of existing homes plunged 8.4% in March to a seasonally
adjusted annual rate of 6.12 million, the lowest in nearly four years,
the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.
It was the largest percentage decline in sales since January 1989.
Sales are down 11.3% in the past year. Read full report.
"Unusual seasonal patterns are catching up with the existing home sales
market, revealing the fundamental weakness that persists in housing
activity," wrote Celia Chen, an economist for Moody's Economy.com.
The report was much weaker than expected. Economists surveyed by
MarketWatch were expecting sales to fall to 6.45 million. See Economic
Calendar.
The data helped push down stocks after they showed strength at the
opening bell. See full story.
The details of the report "paint a negative picture on the housing
market, but not much different than should have been expected," wrote
Tony Crescenzi, chief bond market strategist for Miller Tabak & Co. "In
my eyes, nothing new was learned about the housing market today relative
to lousy sentiment that already exists."
The median price of an existing home fell 0.3% year-over-year to
$217,000. Prices have been lower year-over-year for eight straight
months.
It was the largest percentage decline in sales since January 1989.
National Association of Realtors
The inventory of unsold homes on the market fell 1.6% to 3.75 million,
representing a 7.3-month supply, just below the high of 7.4 months
reached in November.
Sales of condos were unchanged at 800,000 while sales of single-family
homes dropped 9.5% to 5.32 million, also the lowest since June 2003 and
the biggest decline since 1989. Sales of single-family homes are down
11.9% in the past year.
The median sales price of a single-family home is down 0.9% in the past
year.
In a separate report, the S&P/Case-Shiller price index showed home
prices in 10 major cities are down 1.5% in the past year, the biggest
drop since late 1993. For 20 major cities, prices are down 1% in the
past year. Prices fell in 17 of 20 cities See full story.
Existing-home sales fell in all four regions in March. Sales fell 10.9%
in the Midwest, 9.1% in the West, 8.2% in the South and 6.2% in the
Northeast.
"This number reflects subprime lending" as well as the cold weather in
February, said David Lereah, chief economist for the real estate group.
Because existing home sales are counted when they close, cold weather in
February kept buyers away and reduced the number of closings in March.
The weather had been unseasonably warm earlier in the winter, boosting
sales.
Lereah said he expects sluggish sales in the second quarter, but he
thought sales would pick up from March's low. "We're still looking for
existing-home sales to gradually improve during the last half of 2007,"
he said.
In a separate report, the Conference Board said that consumer confidence
fell in April to its lowest level since last August. It was the third
straight drop in confidence. Consumers' plans to buy homes fell to a
10-year low.
Music Licensing Comes Late to the Mash-Up Party
Record Industry Clamps Down on DJs Who Sample Other Artists on Mash-Up
Albums
By MICHAEL SMITH
April 23, 2007 - Rock 'n' roll has always been about rebellion. And
rebellion sells.
The music industry is well aware of this and has struggled mightily to
co-opt most of the hot, countercultural phenomena that bubble up. Record
labels now leak their own singles into file-sharing networks and
systematically sign nominally indie bands to lucrative deals.
So how do musicians rebel when rebellion itself is a commodity?
A DJ known as Girl Talk is showing us how. Girl Talk (real name: Greg
Gillis) has put together an album of "mash-ups" that has taken the world
by storm.
To make a mash-up, a DJ splices together the vocal a cappella track from
one song over the instrumental track from another. Girl Talk mixes audio
tracks from dozens of songs, using artists from the Beatles to Beyonce,
in the course of a single song. He has remixed songs for Beck and is
opening for him at various European concert dates.
"Initially there's a lot of novelty appeal," Gillis said, on his way
back home from his day job as an engineer. "I'm not a music theorist,
but it's amazing how many songs are in the same key. A Kansas song will
fit over a Chris Brown beat, and it'll sound perfect."
"It's a very punk style," Gillis said. "All of a sudden you can be
manipulating these celebrities doing whatever you want."
Mash-Ups Go Back Decades
Though mash-ups may be the ultimate media age statement, the concept is
nothing new. As Gillis pointed out, mash-ups, sampling and rock itself
all occupy different points on the spectrum of musical borrowing.
As early as the '70s, hip-hop DJs like Grandmaster Flash mixed together
hip-hop and house tracks in clubs. In the '90s, aided by technology and
a burgeoning DJ scene, especially in the United Kingdom, DJs like
Coldcut and DJ Shadow brought mash-ups into the future with full-length
studio albums involving heavily sampling and remixing. These albums put
Diddy's chart-topping, sample-based singles to shame in terms of sheer
complexity.
The true watershed moment came in 1999, when an Arizona DJ named Z-Trip
put out an album called Uneasy Listening. This album stitched together a
symphony that included such random variables as Kansas' "Dust in the
Wind," Madonna's "Like a Prayer," the Beatles' "Yesterday" and just
about everything in between.
With the licensing rights unclear, this album was not exactly easy
listening for industry executives who saw the potential for DJs to make
big profits. Broadband Internet access made mash-up distribution a force
that the industry needed to reckon with.
A Legal Gray Area
In 2004, Dangermouse, who is one-half of pop supergroup Gnarls Barkley,
released the infamous "Grey Album," a mash-up of Jay-Z's gruffly
plaintive "Black Album" and the Beatles soul-searching "White Album."
"A lot of college kids could relate because everyone knew that Jay-Z
album," Gillis said of the "Grey Album's" popularity. "It's a sign of
the times, that you're messing with these untouchable figures, the
Beatles, and mixing them with the most pop thing out there, hip-hop."
But record labels urged that Dangermouse was also messing with the law.
Capitol Records, the Beatles' label, sent a nasty cease-and-desist
letter to Dangermouse, blaming him for the mass distribution that had
resulted from his initial, allegedly limited press of several thousand
copies for his friends and interested parties.
But, as Dangermouse seemed to recognize, the alleged illegality of his
music only helped to garner attention. Fan sites even hosted a "Grey
Tuesday," during which they put the whole album online for free
download. With his talents on full display, Dangermouse went on to
greater and more mainstream success, even appearing on the Grammys
earlier this year.
Making the Copyright Laws Work
Mash-ups may soon be domesticated as well. The first fully licensed,
industry legit mash-up album came out in the United Kingdom last month.
DJs are realizing that the copyright laws may actually help their cause.
Sophisticated mash-ups that rise to the level of genuinely new art may
actually fall into an exception to the usual licensing rules.
Under the fair use exception to copyright law, artists can use someone
else's work for free if they fully transform it into something new. It's
a high bar to meet this standard of "transformative," rather than merely
"derivative" use, but it looks like DJs may be willing to try.
Additionally, courts dealing with copyright suits look at the economic
effects of copying: If the unlicensed use wouldn't possibly hurt the
market for the original, it's more likely to be deemed as fair use.
And this brings us back to Gillis and his DJ alter ego, Girl Talk, who
has thus far evaded legal worries. Though he could not discuss the legal
nature of his music, Gillis said the entire concept of a mash-up, or
sampling, created a lot of gray areas in terms of art and originality.
"A lot of people are starting to integrate samples with original
instrumentation. If you take a track and rearrange the notes, is that a
mash-up or are you sampling?" he asked. "'Sampling' is such a vague
term, and mash-up is an almost an unfortunate term because it confuses
the issue."
Even if the perception of illegality and sticking it to industry giants
(labels and artists) is an important part of the mash-up appeal, it also
appears that Girl Talk has some friends in high places -- like Capitol
Hill. His rabid success drove Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., to testify that
music licensing in an age of mash-ups has to evolve.
As a DJ, I can tell you that audiences are far from tired of mash-ups
and a simpler system of permissions would only help the genre. But I
wonder whether mash-ups will lose some of their edge once the law -- and
the industry -- let them be.
SECURITY CLEARANCE JOBS SALARY SURVEY SHOWS FURTHER WAGE
INCREASES FOR SECURITY-CLEARED CANDIDATES
New Jersey Boasts Highest Salary Increases; Candidates Dissatisfied
Despite Increases
DES MOINES, Iowa (March 20, 2007) ClearanceJobs.com, the leading
Internetbased job board for professionals with U.S. government security
clearances, today announced the results of its third Security Clearance
Jobs Salary Survey. According to the nationwide study, average salaries
of security-cleared professionals rose 1 percent to $68,139. The survey
indicates a widening of the already large wage gap between similarly
skilled cleared and uncleared candidates to a difference of
approximately 25 percent.
Other key findings of the survey include:
Among the 10 highest paid locations, salaries for security clearance
jobs in New Jersey increased 7.7 percent to $74,756 since the last
survey was published in October 2006; statewide salaries in Maryland
dropped nearly 5.6 percent to $74,292
In metro Washington, D.C., top paying locations are split between
Arlington and Fairfax counties, with Fairfax clearance jobs paying
higher Professionals with clearances issued by the Department of Energy
command higher salaries than professionals cleared by the Department of
Defense or other federal agencies
Candidates who have passed polygraph tests earn approximately $10,300
more a year than candidates without one
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