New high-profile bipartisan group on immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is part of a new bipartisan group that will push for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws and a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

The other co-chairs of the new effort are former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, a Democrat; and former Republican Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, several people involved told The Associated Press on Friday.

The high-profile group, brought together by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, will aim to keep up momentum behind overhauling immigration and serve as a sounding board for policy makers, Rendell said.

The effort is also meant to underscore that there is a bipartisan consensus behind passing immigration legislation. Bipartisan Senate negotiators are aiming to finalize a bill by March and get it through the Senate by summer, although success is far from certain. Even if legislation gets through the Senate the Republican-led House would still have to approve it. President Barack Obama is also pushing on the issue.

"I hope it makes plain that there is bipartisan support for pro-growth solutions that would result from immigration reform," Barbour said in an interview.

Rendell said that, "there are a lot of issues that are yet to be resolved and it's going to take a lot of goodwill and a lot of patience, and anyone who thinks we're going to have an immigration bill by the end of March is probably a cockeyed optimist."

"Obviously this cannot wait," Cisneros said. "If we're going to be helpful we need to weigh in immediately."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-08-Immigration-Bipartisan%20Group/id-e3656c248802426a8faebdd03e53f5c5

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Impatient employers step in to educate workers

Chris Connell / The Hechinger Report

From cable guy to nuclear technician: John Hoffmeister.

By Christopher Connell, The Hechinger Report

LYNCHBURG, Va. ??Cable TV installer John Hoffmeister was strapped to a utility pole 30 feet in the air when his cellphone rang with the offer of a better job.

The energy company AREVA was calling to say that it would train Hoffmeister to repair nuclear reactors and at the same time send him to a community college in Lynchburg, Va., for an associate?s degree. He?d draw his full salary while spending 10 weeks a year in two compressed semesters of classes that the company helped devise.

For Hoffmeister, 37 ? who had started college after high school but dropped out, and ended up installing home-security systems, delivering pizzas and even working as a cattle hand ? it was a perfect second chance.

?When you find out about a program like this where you can kind of turn back the hands of time and get, essentially, a scholarship, it works out amazing,? said Hoffmeister, who received his associate?s degree four years after starting in the program. It also served AREVA by helping fill a glaring need for trained employees that many companies say the nation?s higher-education system isn?t turning out with the skills, and at the speed, they need.

---

The AREVA collaboration with its hometown community college is an example of an approach that has come to be called ?learn and earn,? which the Obama administration and many higher education experts say the country needs to stay competitive: It offers more opportunities for working adults to earn a living, often supported by their employers, while they upgrade skills to take on specific, high-demand jobs.

Instead of just picking up stray credits and classes, older students like Hoffmeister are steered into carefully planned and structured programs that lead to degrees and certificates in particular fields in the shortest time possible.

Hospitals in Cincinnati, Ohio; Louisville, Ky., and elsewhere are providing higher-level training to prospective nurses and technicians they?ve already hired for lower-level jobs. Shipyard trainees in Newport News, Va., and newly minted jet mechanics and machinists in Seattle, too, are earning college credits while starting their careers, preparing them to advance to more sophisticated work.

Business-community college partnerships like these are getting a push from a little-known, $2 billion U.S. Department of Labor initiative to improve career pathways at community colleges and address dismal graduation rates. While it sounds like common sense that everyone entering a community college would be enrolled in targeted, carefully focused programs of study, most students aren?t. They wander in, take a few credits and wander off again ? a few because they land new jobs or promotions, but many because their educations were taking too much time or didn?t seem to be getting them anywhere. Meanwhile, an estimated 3.7 million jobs remain vacant because employers say they can?t find applicants with the right skills.

Only half of 62,000 students in community colleges in Washington state, for example, tracked over seven years by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College at Columbia University, passed at least three courses in a single field, and fewer than 30 percent earned certificates or degrees or transferred to four-year institutions.

But for those who found their ways into concentrated programs of study, the success rate approached 50 percent ? especially if they did so right off the bat.

?All the data says the same thing: If you know where you?re going, you?re more likely to get there,? said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

25 percent high school drop-out rate
The Labor Department?s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program is a remnant of the American Graduation Initiative, which President Barack Obama proposed early in his first term as part of efforts to regain by 2020 America?s standing as the country with the highest proportion of college-educated people.

That remains a goal. But it?s a tall order with 25 percent of teenagers dropping out of high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and anemic community-college graduation rates that have helped sink the United States from first to 16^th among developed countries in the proportion of its population with college and university degrees.

It?s also why policymakers, educators, employers and foundations are pushing to make community college courses more relevant to available jobs and speed up the journey to degrees and certificates.

Colleges including Central Virginia and Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville dovetail instruction to the needs of older, working students and the requirements of local businesses.

Related:?Economic reality marries?apprenticeships, college

Norton Healthcare and other hospitals in Louisville are working with Jefferson to fill their ranks of medical lab technicians and therapists? assistants by sending them to specially designed evening classes at the college that help entry-level hospital workers advance into higher-paid, more demanding positions.

Gail Kuper, a receptionist in a Norton physicians? practice, jumped at the opportunity and is on her way to becoming a medical assistant with an associate?s degree.

?What a mistake I made not going to college right out of high school, but I got married and had two kids. It just wasn?t in the cards at the time,? said the 43-year-old grandmother. Now she spends 15 hours in classes each week in addition to her day job.

In Cincinnati, a successful hospital-college partnership has propelled Carrie Martin from taking vital signs and administering shots in a clinic into the better-paid position of registered nurse. The Health Careers Collaborative that local hospitals launched with Cincinnati State Technical and Community College has become a national model. Cincinnati State and Jefferson are among 10 colleges that shared a $20 million U.S. Department of Labor grant last year to continue to expand pathways into high-demand medical professions.

It took Martin, who is 37, four years of evening classes, but she earned an associate?s degree and her nurse?s cap in 2010, then went on to get a bachelor?s degree the next year. Now she?s halfway through a master?s program from which she will emerge as a nurse practitioner, making $60,000 to $70,000 a year to start, all while working full time at Cincinnati Children?s Hospital Medical Center.

Community college 'boot camps'
Some learn and earn programs, like AREVA?s, pay workers? salaries while they take classes. AREVA enrolls about 24 new technicians each year at Central Virginia, who take math, computer and general education classes while training at the company?s Lynchburg facility or going on the road to maintain or repair nuclear power plants.

Chris Connell / The Hechinger Report

The UPS Worldport is a noisy mammoth of a place, a whirligig of conveyor belts and bins. Lasers guide 1.6 million packages each night into the right bins so they can be trundled back onto the UPS fleet of 130 jets.

In Louisville, some 2,000 students at Jefferson and the University of Louisville are getting their full college tuition paid by working part-time on the midnight shift at UPS Worldport, the package delivery giant?s huge facility at the Louisville International Airport. The college students and other workers unload 130 UPS jets that converge there each evening, feed the packages onto conveyor belts that sort them into the right bins, then load them back again.

UPS was having trouble finding reliable workers for the 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift before it began a $1 billion expansion of Worldport in 1999. Rather than risk losing one of the city?s major employers, the state offered the company tax credits to cover half the cost of employees? community-college tuition, and a collaboration called Metropolitan College was born.

It?s still an expensive proposition for UPS, but it has produced a dependable, highly productive and stable workforce, said Tom Volta, vice president for human resources. ?People aren?t moving packages in the wrong places and sending them off to destinations unknown,? he said. The college students, added personnel manager Steve Oppel, ?make the best employees because they have a lot more at stake. They don?t want to jeopardize their job.?

Since Metropolitan College?s inception 12,000 UPS workers have availed themselves of free tuition to earn 3,000 degrees and 4,000 certificates.

Utility companies in Georgia and elsewhere, worried about a looming shortage of line-workers among their aging workforce, have teamed up with community colleges to run ?boot camps? that groom students for those critical jobs.

With help from an industry-sponsored organization called the Center for Energy Workforce Development, the utilities and colleges produced a curriculum for an eight-week electrical line-worker training program that combines classroom instruction about working safely with electricity with outdoor practice climbs on utility poles. Students earn 12 college credits and first crack at jobs that pay $14 to $16 an hour.

The five enthusiastic students at the boot camp last summer at Georgia Piedmont Technical College outside Atlanta included a laid-off machinist, a laid-off metalworker, a house painter, an electrician and a yard worker, ages 21 to 31. Corey Willard, the youngest, quit his last job because ?I wanted more of a career than cutting people?s grass for $9 an hour.? The oldest, machinist Kenny Minish, said, ?I?m a believer. I always wanted to be a lineman and this was the perfect opportunity.?

The Georgia Piedmont program ?has been a godsend for us,? said Victor Hurst, vice president of line services for Snapping Shoals Electric Membership Corporation. ?We were just failing too often hiring straight off the street.? And, he said, the college classes serve an additional purpose: letting the future line-workers know they need to keep learning.

?The equipment, the technology they have to work with, changes and changes fast. It?s getting hard for us to keep them abreast of the things they need to work on. They are constantly going to class,? said Hurst. ?Training is part of what you?ll be doing in this business until the day you say, ?I?m ready to retire.??

This article was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University. It?s one of a series of reports about workforce development and higher education.

?More from The Hechinger Report

?As its universities turn out engineering grads, Poland attracts U.S. tech giants

New pressure on colleges to disclose grads? earnings

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/06/16873666-impatient-employers-step-in-to-educate-prospective-workers?lite

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Big data collection collides with privacy concerns | Computerworld ...

A recent push in the IT industry to collect and monetize big data is headed for a clash with privacy concerns from Internet users and potential regulation from some governments, according to tech analyst firm Ovum.

Internet advertising networks and other companies that depend on the collection of personal data online should prepare for a "rebalancing" of the relationship between themselves and Web users, with Web users having more control of their data, said Mark Little, principal analyst at the U.K. tech and business analysis firm.

Web users are becoming more aware of privacy tools and appear ready to use them, Little said. "More and more consumers are deciding to effectively become invisible in data terms on the Internet," he added. "It will shake the Internet economy as more and more users decide they don't want to be tracked."

Ovum, in a recent survey of about 11,000 people across 11 countries, found that 68 percent said they would use a do-not-track feature if it was easily available on a search engine. Just 14 percent of respondents said they believe Internet companies are honest about their use of personal data.

"Unfortunately, in the gold rush that is big data, taking the supply of little data -- personal data -- for granted seems to be an accident waiting to happen," Little said in a written statement regarding the Ovum findings.

Ovum's survey results point to trouble for online business models that rely on the collection of personal data, including targeted or behavioral advertising, Little said in an interview. In addition to consumer concerns about online privacy, governments in Europe and North America are looking at new ways to protect consumer data through regulation, he noted.

"You are getting this squeeze between a hardening consumer attitude and tighter regulation," Little said.

Privacy advocates say the recent focus in the tech industry on using big data raises concerns.

"Big data is both a boon and a curse for users," Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said in an email. "Tens of thousands of data sources on individuals can be compiled in milliseconds."

The profiles allow marketers, politicians and businesses to predict consumers' futures, he said, "whether we will be a big and low-wage lifetime earner, how we may respond to medical concerns and whom we can be persuaded to vote for."

In the long term, companies that collect personal data online may have to find new methods than the current approach of stealthily placing a cookie on a Web user's browser, a practice Little calls "data fracking."

A growing number of consumers seem to think the current model of data collection, with free Web content or services in exchange for their personal data, is out of balance, he said. Consumers are "feeling exploited," he said. "There's that feeling of, 'what am I getting out of this?'"

Data collection companies may need to establish stronger relationships with their customers or offer more incentives for customers to give up personal information, Little said. In the U.K. grocery store chain Tesco is allowing its customers to see their personal data collected by the company, he noted.

Little also sees potential for a new business model in which consumers create personal data vaults that they control, giving consumers a choice about which companies they share their personal information with. A company called Personal is one company that has begun offering personal data vaults, he said.

A move toward more consumer control of personal data won't be all bad for Internet companies, however, Little said. Personal data vaults will contain more accurate and forward-looking information than the current data collection methods can gather, he said.

The change in relationship between consumer and data collectors will change slowly, and Internet businesses shouldn't change their data collection practices immediately, Little said.

Internet companies should "keep on riding the margins of regulation and consumer acceptance in order to maximize your data set, because that is just good business," he said. "But prepare for changes where consumers start to want more of a relationship with their own data and the people who are collecting it."

IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)

Source: http://cw.com.hk/news/big-data-collection-collides-privacy-concerns

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Ministry of Justice slammed for "shambolic" commissioning

LONDON (Reuters) - British government plans to contract out billions of pounds worth of public services to private companies have been called into question in a parliamentary committee report published on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Justice plans, which have been criticised by the Labour party, include allowing firms to run criminal probation services, and are part of a wider drive across government to cut spending by outsourcing.

The chair of the justice select committee said that the MOJ's handling of a 90 million-pound contract to run court translation services was "shambolic" after translators failed to turn up at court and others mistranslated hearings to defendants.

The report also said that weaknesses in the MOJ's due diligence and risk mitigation procedures were a "cause for concern" ahead of its ambitious plans to contract out more public services, and repeated a call made in a previous report for an independent review into the department's ability to commission services.

It added that the MOJ did not have a sufficient understanding of the complexities of the work it was contracting out when it started the procurement process.

The committee said that services firm Capita, which inherited a five-year translation services contract when it bought Applied Language Solutions for 7.5 million pounds in late 2011, had improved the service markedly but it had taken a long time, even with Capita's "considerable" resources. The service is also still largely boycotted by qualified interpreters who previously worked in the public sector.

Capita acknowledged there had been issues regarding the delivery of the contract but said it had invested in improving its performance.

"Processes have been put in place to get the service running efficiently and effectively which means that the vast majority of booking requests are fulfilled and the volume of complaints has fallen," Capita said in a statement.

The MOJ held a joint seminar with G4S in January, reassuring its investors that the security firm was not blacklisted from government work after its failure to provide enough security guards for the London Olympics.

Analysts at Jefferies said in a note afterwards that they estimated business opportunities for firms with the MOJ amounted to 300-400 million pounds worth of prison facilities management, 100-150 million in electronic tagging and 60-100 million of criminal fines compliance work.

Other government departments have also been blamed when deals involving the private sector have gone awry, including the mishandling of the award of the West Coast Main Line train operating franchise late last year.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ministry-justice-slammed-shambolic-commissioning-040326164--sector.html

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Cash Loans ? Derive Finance For Solving Financial Troubles

by Author on February 3, 2013

Hunting for loans to meet with financial requirements? Want an immediate relief? cash loans can help you greatly in solving your unexpected financial matters. These loans possess the capacity of being your financial supporter in difficult times, as these loans gets immediately approved by the lender. These loans come with negligible formalities, which help the borrowers to derive a required amount in a short time span.

The loans are easy to derive and can be availed without the need of pledging any collateral. Moreover, your bad credit does not matter at all while availing these loans. This is due to the fact that the amount is sanctioned by the lender without any credit check. With no credit check and collateral free approval, it results in fast processing of the loans and in turn you get to avail the loans instantly.

These days many people are turning to payday loans to help get them through a rough financial situation. Emergencies come up in life and it is nice to know that there is a way out.

The loan comes with a higher interest rate, but in an emergency you may have no other choice, and the price may seem small in comparison to being able to handle the emergency right away. You are paying for a high interest rate because of the convenience factor and because you can apply with poor or bad credit.

Emergency cash loans may be just the answer to your problem. Of course, you need to make sure you are able to pay it back, but in times of crisis these kind of loans can really help you through the emergency and get it handled.

Related Articles:

Instant Cash loans: Providing Instant Help For You
Personal Cash loan ? Swiftly Approved Money For Paying Off Bills

Source: http://unsecured-loans-for-people-with-bad-credit.com/11114/cash-loans-derive-finance-for-solving-financial-troubles/

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Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella - seattlepi.com

NEW YORK (AP) ? Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.

The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.

Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.

Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death ? an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.

In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.

Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.

Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.

The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

Source: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/medical/article/Hedgehog-Alert-Prickly-pets-can-carry-salmonella-4239573.php

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Henderson Writers' Group Weekly News: Jan 28th Meeting Report

We enjoyed a nice meeting this last Monday. Thirty five met to hear and critique seven readers.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Would you like to volunteer for our conference? We are looking for a few more volunteers, if you are interested please contact Jay.

Next week author Maxwell Alexander Drake will be speaking at our meeting at Albertsons. He writes science-fiction and fantasy and has also taught classes in creative writing.

BRAGS:

Congratulations to Pat Kranish on having a review of a movie published on the gypsy chronicles.

UPCOMING MEETINGS:

Our next weekly meeting is at 6:30 p.m. on February 4th at the Albertsons at the corner of Horizon and College in Henderson. For more information see the calendar at the group's website.

QUOTE OF THE NIGHT:

"A child of an alcoholic has a full time job just staying alive long enough to get a life"

-from "Alabama Blue" by Toni Pacini

WRITING TIP by Jo Wilkins:

Each character in your story should speak differently. We all speak with unique inflections, using specific words or phrases to express ourselves, your characters should too. If you write about an isolated society, remember it would develop a language all of its own.?

As an example, watch the Star Trek: Next Generation episode entitled Nemesis. The writers did a wonderful job using ordinary, recognizable words and phrases to create an entirely different slant on the English language.

ARTICLE:? Our article this week contains a poem, and is a testament to the healing power of writing. It comes from group member Andres Fragoso Jr.

Listen to me when I cry?

I'm not asking for your opinion or advice?

I'm asking for your shoulder where I can cry?

I'm only asking for a little of your time.?

Listen to me when I am depressed?

To yell at me: "Get over it!" does not help me?

I do not get sick at will. I did not choose to be ill?

I'm asking for your understanding.?

Listen to me when I have fears and tears?

To tell me: "It's all in your head," does not encourage me?

Yes it is in my head, that's why it's a mental illness?

I have no control of these fears or shedding tears.?

Listen to me when I'm in agony?

Telling me: "You want attention," does not comfort me?

I'm not five years old and don't need you to scold me?

I need you to comprehend my agonizing pain.?

Listen to me when I am depressed?

I'm not asking for attention and it's not always in my head?

My illness is real. Real to me, I feel it every day after day?

Why do you undermine my pain??

Listen to me when I cry?

It hurts me when you don't listen and ignore my pain?

I am your son, your brother, your nephew?

I am your cousin, your blood and your friend.

Writing is my Pandora Box. When I open it up and write I do not know now what hopes come out. Writing is cathartic to me. It helps me let out my frustrations and alleviates my pain. My illness, bi-polar, is a chemical in-balance in the brain.

When I first was diagnosed with bi-polar, the first four or five years flew by without a peaceful moment. I do not remember much about those years, only that I was asleep most of the time, lethargic, forgetful, asleep most of the time (did I say that already? I forgot), suicidal, manic, depressed and I forgot what else. It was a dark time.

In the interim, I went to therapy and fortunately, I got something good out of it, Journaling, and poetry. I wrote my feelings, my fears, my desires, and above all, how I wanted to kill myself contrasting it with how I wanted to live.

After a while, I started to feel and currently feel that I had just woken up. I tasted everything for the first time. I saw things in a new way. Life is good. It was a re-birthing for me. I could not keep Hope bottled up, I let it out.

I found a web site that members would critique your poems. They wanted to publish a few of my poems. I submitted my first poem, ?My Vanessa, My Butterfly.? A poem dedicated to my sister who never gave up on me.

Someone had mentioned to combine my stories and publish them. I did. I combined the best ones, created new ones, dedicated a few, and published them. My first book of poetry is full of errors, bad grammar, and frightening poems. I kept it that way and hope that people would see the underlying illness in those poems. They are raw, passionate, and truthful.

??They are my feelings, my thoughts, and my sufferings and I need to declare them so that I can be free. Free from being hidden from the world just because half of you can?t deal with the reality of having someone in your life who is gay, bi-polar, artistic, eccentric and, for that matter, NORMAL. . .?

I look forward to being read by you.

Thank you.?

Source: http://hendersonwritersgroup.blogspot.com/2013/01/jan-28th-meeting-report.html

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