Switzerland May Adopt A $25 Minimum Wage - Huffington Post

Switzerland May Adopt A $25 Minimum Wage

The Huffington Post  | by  Kevin Short

The world's most expensive country may adopt the world's highest minimum wage on Sunday.

Switzerland will vote on a measure to raise its minimum wage to 22 Swiss francs, or about $25 an hour. Currently, Australians have the world's highest minimum wage at $16.88 an hour.

The ballot proposal is sponsored by the Swiss Trades Union Confederation, which states that the measure will boost pay for 300,000 Swiss citizens, or about 10 percent of the country's workforce, mainly those in service and agricultural jobs.

Supporters cite the exorbitant cost of living in the country, with a fast food meal costing $15 and two pounds of chicken going for $28, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

Many Swiss corporations and government officials, however, are voicing concern about the proposal, which they argue will increase the nation's low unemployment rate of 3.2 percent.

“A minimum wage won’t stop poverty,” Economic Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann told The Christian Science Monitor. “This system would be counterproductive.”

Swiss food and beverage giant Nestlé has also been public about its opposition to the wage hike. The measure is "unfavorable to job creation in Switzerland," Nestlé SA Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told The Wall Street Journal.

Debate over the minimum wage and economic inequality is raging in countries around the world. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently agreed to hike her nation's minimum wage to $11.50, while the British have raised theirs to roughly $11 an hour. In the U.S., President Barack Obama has proposed a $10.10 minimum wage, but faces heavy opposition from congressional Republicans.

The outcome of the Swiss vote remains uncertain. Opinion polls showed support for the proposal two months ago, but a survey last week revealed that 64 percent plan to vote against the measure, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

This vote marks the third time in about a year that the Swiss have held popular votes on issues related to pay. In 2013, voters approved a law allowing shareholders of publicly traded companies to have a say in determining the compensation of top executives, but they didn't back a later proposal to cap CEO pay at 12 times the salary of the lowest-paid employee.

Class Act - AJ McCarron And Katherine Webb Make Inspiring Choice For Flower Girl At Their Wedding

AJ McCarron And Katherine Webb Make Inspiring Choice For Flower Girl At Their Wedding

The Huffington Post  | by  Ryan Grenoble

 

Just off his selection in the fifth round of the NFL draft, freshly minted Cincinnati Bengals player AJ McCarron has made an important pick of his own.

The former Alabama quarterback and his new fiancée, Katherine Webb, have chosen Starla Chapman to be the flower girl at their wedding. Starla is a 5-year-old leukemia survivor, who met McCarron in 2011 when he visited the University of South Alabama Children's and Women's Hospital to hand out presents on Christmas Eve.

When they first met, reports The Post Game, Starla gave McCarron a yellow wristband inscribed with the words "Just Trust." He vowed to wear it, bringing Starla national attention when he played with it on during the BCS national championship game in 2012. (Alabama won the game 21 - 0).

According to the Alabama Media Group, it was Webb that actually popped the question to Starla, to which she responded, "Roll Tide."

See more at - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Saudi Arabia to build world's tallest tower, reaching 1 kilometer into the sky - CNN.com

By Daisy Carrington, for CNN

updated 5:40 AM EDT, Fri April 18, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Saudi Arabia is set to start on Kingdom Tower, slated to be the world's tallest building
• The Kingdom Tower will reach 3,280 feet, have 200 floors and cost $1.2 billion
• It would require 5.7 million square feet of concrete and 80,000 tons of steel
• The foundations would be 200 feet (60 meters) deep

(CNN) -- Dubai, long champion of all things biggest, longest andmost expensive, will soon have some competition from neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Dubai's iconic Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, could be stripped of its Guinness title if Saudi Arabia succeeds in its plans to construct the even larger Kingdom Tower in Jeddah -- a prospect looking more likely as work begins next week, according to Construction Weekly.

Consultants Advanced Construction Technology Services have recently announced testing materials to build the 3,280-feet (1 kilometer) skyscraper (the Burj Khalifa, by comparison, stands at a meeker 2,716 feet, or 827 meters).

The Kingdom Tower, estimated to cost $1.23 billion, would have 200 floors and overlook the Red Sea. Building it will require about 5.7 million square feet of concrete and 80,000 tons of steel, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Building a structure that tall, particularly on the coast, where saltwater could potentially damage it, is no easy feat. The foundations, which will be 200 feet (60 meters) deep, need to be able to withstand the saltwater of the nearby ocean. As a result, Advanced Construction Technology Services will test the strength of different concretes.

Wind load is another issue for buildings of this magnitude. To counter this challenge, the tower will change shape regularly.

"Because it changes shape every few floors, the wind loads go round the building and won't be as extreme as on a really solid block," Gordon Gill explained toConstruction Weekly. Gill is a partner at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the design architects for the project.

Delivering the concrete to higher floors will also be a challenge. Possibly, engineers could use similar methods to those employed when building the Burj Khalifa; 6 million cubic feet of concrete was pushed through a single pump, usually at night when temperatures were low enough to ensure that it would set.

Though ambitious, building the Kingdom Tower should be feasible, according to Sang Dae Kim, the director of theCouncil on Tall Buildings.

"At this point in time we can build a tower that is one kilometer, maybe two kilometers. Any higher than that and we will have to do a lot of homework," he told Construction Weekly.

Neymar and Co lift young South African pitch invader up in heartwarming scenes - www.dailymail.co.uk

By JOHN DRAYTON

PUBLISHED: 16:02 EST, 5 March 2014 | UPDATED: 06:50 EST, 6 March 2014

After watching Brazil dismantle his team in Soweto, one young South Africa supporter felt the need to get up close to the visiting players.

But rather than tackle the interloper to the ground, the South American superstars had other ideas.

The young boy posed for pictures with world-renowned Barcelona forward Neymar before being hoisted up by the Brazilians in a heartwarming display. 

The South African boy is the picture of pride as David Luiz, Neymar, Dani Alves and Fred joyously lift him above their heads.

The lad may look happy, but the Brazil stars appear to be having a whale of a time as they make the dreams of the young supporter come true. 

Neymar and Co weren't so kind when they faced South Africa on the pitch. 

The poster boy of the summer's World Cup netted a hat-trick for the tournament's hosts as Chelsea playmaker Oscar and Fernandinho, of Manchester City, completed the rout.

Pride of Africa: Kenya celebrates Nyong’o’s Oscar - Washingtonpost.com

By Associated Press, Published: March 3

NAIROBI, Kenya — “You are the pride of Africa,” Kenya’s president exclaimed on Twitter as he celebrated Kenya’s first major Oscar win by actress Lupita Nyong’o.

Nyong’o was the topic of the day on Kenya’s radio and TV stations Monday, the day after her Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress in the movie “12 Years A Slave.”

At a conference at the United Nations headquarters in Nairobi, more than 300 people broke out into applause after Wanjira Maathai — the daughter of the late Kenyan Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai — mentioned her mother and Nyong’o in the same sentence.

“We all had hoped of course that she would win. Everybody feels a sudden attachment to her, she’s a Kenyan woman,” Maathai said in an interview later. “A lot of her work, a lot of her experience in film started in Kenya.”

Nyong’o, 31, was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents but was mostly raised in Kenya. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Nyong’o had starred in several productions in Kenya before landing her breakout role alongside Brad Pitt.

Nyong’o had been considered a front-runner in a category that included Jennifer Lawrence and Julia Roberts. When her name was called Sunday, she bent over in her seat as the audience erupted.

Just before her win, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a statement saying Nyong’o’s accomplishments testify to her talent and the determination to go the extra mile that success demands.

At the end of her Oscar speech, Nyong’o asked that her win remind “every little child that no matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.”

Maathai spoke Monday, which is Wangari Maathai Day in Africa, to honor the Nobel prize winner’s dedication to the environment. She said that like her mother, Nyong’o is another Kenyan who has reached great heights.

“She (Nyong’o) attributes to her success to a lot of other black actresses who made her believe she could be something and that she could make it in film,” Maathai said. “And I think it’s so important to have role models, so important to have people who you can say, ‘Ah, if she made it, maybe I can too.’”

While celebrating the win, Kenyan film critic Ogova Ondego criticized Kenya for not supporting the arts. Nyong’o, whose father is a Kenyan senator, did not get any support from the government while developing her talent, Ondego said.

Kenyatta in Sunday’s statement said the government has made the promotion of arts a key pledge that must be delivered. He said many young Kenyans will have access to funding for artistic projects.

“It is our intention that Lupita becomes the first of an endless line of Oscar nominees and winners from Africa and Kenya,” he said.

David Opondoe, the managing director of Phoenix Players, a Kenya-based theater company where Nyong’o performed earlier in her career, said Nyongo’s success will encourage many in in Kenya to embrace the arts.

“It shows that there is so much talent, only that the opportunities are not there,” he said. “It’s time for parents and government to see that this is not a pastime. It’s something you can do professionally and bring glory.”

More than 1,000 people have auditioned at the Phoenix Players this year, he said, whereas before they had to actively hunt actors for parts. Opondoe said he first saw Nyongo on stage in the play “There Goes The Bride” in 2002, which he also starred in.

“At that time she was viewed as an amateur and she gave us, some of the professionals, a run for our money. She had her lines and was on point and I knew this person is passionate about acting,” he said.

“We are going to celebrate this for a very long time,” Opondoe said.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You? Here's How To Tell - the Huffington Post

How Emotionally Intelligent Are You? Here's How To Tell

The Huffington Post  |  By Carolyn Gregoire
Posted: 12/05/2013 8:39 am EST  |  Updated: 12/05/2013 2:22 pm EST

What makes some people more successful in work and life than others? IQ and work ethic are important, but they don't tell the whole story. Our emotional intelligence -- the way we manage emotions, both our own and those of others -- can play a critical role in determining our happiness and success.

Plato said that all learning has some emotional basis, and he may be right. The way we interact with and regulate our emotions has repercussions in nearly every aspect of our lives. To put it in colloquial terms, emotional intelligence (EQ) is like "street smarts," as opposed to "book smarts," and it's what accounts for a great deal of one's ability to navigate life effectively.

"What having emotional intelligence looks like is that you're confident, good at working towards your goals, adaptable and flexible. You recover quickly from stress and you're resilient," Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, tells The Huffington Post. "Life goes much more smoothly if you have good emotional intelligence."

The five components of emotional intelligence, as defined by Goleman, are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social skills and empathy. We can be strong in some of these areas and deficient in others, but we all have the power to improve any of them.

Not sure how emotionally intelligent you are? Here are 14 signs you have a high EQ.

1. You're curious about people you don't know.

Do you love meeting new people, and naturally tend to ask lots of questions after you've been introduced to someone? If so, you have a certain degree of empathy, one of the main components of emotional intelligence. Highly Empathetic People (HEPs) -- those who are extremely attuned to the needs and feelings of others, and act in a way that is sensitive to those needs -- have one important thing in common: They're very curious about strangers and genuinely interested in learning more about others.

Being curious about others is also a way to cultivate empathy. "Curiosity expands our empathy when we talk to people outside our usual social circle, encountering lives and worldviews very different from our own," Roman Krznaric, author of the forthcoming Empathy: A Handbook For Revolution, wrote in a Greater Good blog post.

2. You're a great leader.

Exceptional leaders often have one thing in common, according to Goleman. In addition to the traditional requirements for success -- talent, a strong work ethic and ambition, for instance -- they possess a high degree of emotional intelligence. In his research comparing those who excelled in senior leadership roles with those who were merely average, he found that close to 90 percent of the difference in their profiles was due to emotional intelligence, rather than cognitive ability.

"The higher the rank of a person considered to be a star performer, the more emotional intelligence capabilities showed up as the reason for his or her effectiveness," Goleman wrote in Harvard Business Review.

3. You know your strengths and weaknesses.

A big part of having self-awareness is being honest with yourself about who you are -- knowing where you excel, and where you struggle, and accepting these things about yourself. An emotionally intelligent person learns to identify their areas of strength and weakness, and analyze how to work most effectively within this framework. This awareness breeds the strong self-confidence that's a main factor of emotional intelligence, according to Goleman.

"If you know what you're truly effective at, then you can operate from that with confidence," he says.

4. You know how to pay attention.

Do you get distracted by every tweet, text and passing thought? If so, it could be keeping you from functioning on your most emotionally intelligent level. But the ability to withstand distractions and focus on the task at hand is a great secret to emotional intelligence, Goleman says. Without being present with ourselves and others, it's difficult to develop self-awareness and strong relationships.

"Your ability to concentrate on the work you're doing or your schoolwork, and to put off looking at that text or playing that video game until after you're done ... how good you are at that in childhood turns out to be a stronger predictor of your financial success in adulthood than either your IQ or the wealth of the family you grew up in," Goleman says. "And we can teach kids how to do that."

5. When you're upset, you know exactly why.

We all experience a number of emotional fluctuations throughout the day, and often we don't even understand what's causing a wave of anger or sadness. But an important aspect of self-awareness is the ability to recognize where your emotions are coming from and to know why you feel upset.

Self-awareness is also about recognizing emotions when they arise, rather than misidentifying or ignoring them. Emotionally intelligent people take a step back from their emotions, look at what they're feeling, and examine the effect that the emotion has on them.

6. You can get along with most people.

"Having fulfilling, effective relationships -- that's a sign [of emotional intelligence]," says Goleman.

7. You care deeply about being a good, moral person.

One aspect of emotional intelligence is our "moral identity," which has to do with the extent to which we want to see ourselves as ethical, caring people. If you're someone who cares about building up this side of yourself (regardless of how you've acted in past moral situations), you might have a high EQ.

8. You take time to slow down and help others.

If you make a habit of slowing down to pay attention to others, whether by going slightly out your way to say hello to someone or helping an older woman onto the subway, you're exhibiting emotional intelligence. Many of us, a good portion of the time, are completely focused on ourselves. And it's often because we're so busy running around in a stressed-out state trying to get things done that we simply don't take the time to notice (much less help) others.

"[There's a] spectrum that goes from complete self-absorption to noticing to empathy and to compassion," Goleman said in a TED talk on compassion. "The simple fact is that if we are focused on ourselves, if we're preoccupied -- which we so often are throughout the day -- we don't really fully notice the other."

Being more mindful, in contrast to being absorbed in your own little world, plants the seeds of compassion -- a crucial component of EQ.

9. You're good at reading people's facial expressions.

Being able to sense how others are feeling is an important part of having a good EQ. Take this quiz from UC Berkeley to find out just how skilled you are at reading others' emotions.

10. After you fall, you get right back up.

How you deal with mistakes and setbacks says a lot about who you are. High EQ individuals know that if there's one thing we all must do in life, it's to keep on going. When an emotionally intelligent person experiences a failure or setback, he or she is able to bounce back quickly. This is in part because of the ability to mindfully experience negative emotions without letting them get out of control, which provides a higher degree of resilience.

“The resilient person isn’t papering over the negative emotions, but instead letting them sit side by side with other feelings," Positivity author Barbara Fredrickson told Experience Life. "So at the same time they’re feeling ‘I’m sad about that,’ they’re also prone to thinking, ‘but I’m grateful about this.’”

11. You're a good judge of character.

You've always been able to get a sense for who someone is pretty much right off the bat -- and your intuitions are rarely wrong.

12. You trust your gut.

An emotionally intelligent person is someone who feels comfortable following their intuition, says Goleman. If you're able to trust in yourself and your emotions, there's no reason not to listen to that quiet voice inside (or that feeling in your stomach) telling you which way to go.

13. You've always been self-motivated.

Were you always ambitious and hard-working as a kid, even when you weren't rewarded for it? If you're a motivated self-starter -- and you can focus your attention and energy towards the pursuit of your goals -- you likely have a high EQ.

14. You know when to say "no."

Self-regulation, one of the five components of emotional intelligence, means being able to discipline yourself and avoid unhealthy habits. Emotionally intelligent people are generally well equipped to tolerate stress (a bad-habit trigger for many of us) and to control their impulses, according to Goleman.

Killing cancer like the common cold - CNN.com

Killing cancer like the common cold

By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent

updated 10:08 AM EST, Sat December 7, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Nick Wilkins was out of options for battling leukemia
• He is now cancer free after an experimental treatment
• Doctors taught Nick's immune cells to become adept at killing cancer
• Experts hope the treatment will quickly become more widely available

(CNN) -- Nick Wilkins was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 4 years old, and when the cancer kept bouncing back, impervious to all the different treatments the doctors tried, his father sat him down for a talk.

John Wilkins explained to Nick, who was by then 14, that doctors had tried chemotherapy, radiation, even a bone marrow transplant from his sister.

"I explained to him that we're running out of options," Wilkins remembers telling his son.

There was one possible treatment they could try: an experimental therapy at the University of Pennsylvania.

He asked his son if he understood what it would mean if this treatment didn't work.

"He understood he could die," Wilkins says. "He was very stoic."

A few months later, Nick traveled from his home in Virginia to Philadelphia to become a part of the experiment.

This new therapy was decidedly different from the treatments he'd received before: Instead of attacking his cancer with poisons like chemotherapy and radiation, the Philadelphia doctors taught Nick's own immune cells to become more adept at killing the cancer.

Two months later, he emerged cancer-free. It's been six months since Nick, now 15, received the personalized cell therapy, and doctors still can find no trace of leukemia in his system.

Trusting her intuition led to two cancer diagnoses

Twenty-one other young people received the same treatment, and 18 of them, like Nick, went into complete remission -- one of them has been disease-free for 20 months. The Penn doctors released their findings this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

"It gives us hope that this is a cure," Nick's father says. "They're really close. I think they're really onto something."

'A whole new realm of medicine '

At the conference, two other cancer centers -- Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York and the National Cancer Institute -- will be announcing results with immunotherapies like the one Nick received. The results are promising, especially considering that the patients had no success with practically every other therapy.

"This is absolutely one of the more exciting advances I've seen in cancer therapy in the last 20 years," said Dr. David Porter, a hematologist and oncologist at Penn. "We've entered into a whole new realm of medicine."

In the therapy, doctors first remove the patient's T-cells, which play a crucial role in the immune system. They then reprogram the cells by transferring in new genes. Once infused back into the body, each modified cell multiplies to 10,000 cells. These "hunter" cells then track down and kill the cancer in a patient's body.

Essentially, researchers are trying to train Nick's body to fight off cancer in much the same way our bodies fight off the common cold.

Tumor Paint: Changing the way surgeons fight cancer

In addition to the pediatric patients, Penn scientists tried the therapy out in 37 adults with leukemia, and 12 went into complete remission. Eight more patients went into partial remission and saw some improvements in their disease.

The treatment does make patients have flulike symptoms for a short period of time -- Nick got so sick he ended up in the intensive care unit for a day -- but patients are spared some of the more severe and long-lasting side effects of extensive chemotherapy.

Penn will now work with other medical centers to test the therapy in more patients, and they plan to try the therapy out in other types of blood cancers and later in solid tumors.

A university press release says it has a licensing relationship with the pharmaceutical company Novartis and "received significant financial benefit" from the trial, and Porter and other inventors of the technology "have benefited financially and/or may benefit financially in the future."

Searching for one-in-a-million cancer cells

The big question is whether Nick's leukemia will come back.

Doctors are cautiously optimistic. The studies have only been going on since 2010, but so far relapse rates have been relatively low: of the 18 other pediatric patients who went into complete remission, only five have relapsed and of the 12 adults who went into complete remission, only one relapsed. Some of the adult patients have been cancer-free and without a relapse for more than three years and counting.

Relapses after this personalized cell therapy may be more promising than relapses after chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant, Porter explained.

First, doctors have been delighted to find the reengineered T-cells -- the ones that know how to hunt down and attack cancer -- are still alive in the patients' bodies after more than three years.

Stigma lingers for deadliest cancer

"The genetically modified T-cells have survived," Porter said. "They're still present and functional and have the ability to protect against recurrence."

Second, before declaring patients in remission, Penn doctors scoured especially hard for errant leukemia cells.

Traditionally, for the kind of leukemia Nick has, doctors can find one in 1,000 to one in 10,000 cancer cells. But Penn's technology could find one in 100,000 to one in a million cancer cells, and didn't find any in Nick or any of the patients who went into complete remission.

'It's not a fluke'

One of the best aspects of this new treatment is that it won't be terribly difficult to reproduce at other medical centers, Porter said, and one day, instead of being used only experimentally, it could be available to anyone who needed it.

"Our hope is that this can progress really quite quickly," he said. "It won't be available to everyone next year, but I don't think it would take a decade, either."

Right now patients can only get this therapy if they're in a study, but Dr. Renier Brentjens, director for cellular therapeutics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, says he thinks it could become available to all patients in just three to five years.

"When you have three centers all with a substantial number of patients seeing the same thing - that these cells work in this disease - you know it's not a fluke," he said.

Two days ago, Brentjens became the co-founder of Juno Therapeutics, a for-profit biotech start-up company that's working on immunotherapies.

"Fifteen years ago I was in the lab looking at these cells kill tumor cells in a petri dish and then I saw them kill tumor cells in mice, and then finally in humans," Brentjens said.

He says he'll never forget the first patient he treated, who initially had an enormous amount of cancer cells in his bone marrow. Then after the therapy, Brentjens looked under the microscope and, in awe, realized he couldn't find a single cancer cell.

"I can't describe what that's like," he said. "It's fantastic."

CNN's John Bonifield contributed to this report.