PHILADELPHIA — Juan Lopez kept an eye on his son as he toddled on little legs at a small Spanish eatery around the corner from Lopez’s house.

“Sometimes, I still feel like a kid and I haven’t grown up,” said Lopez, 23, “but when I look at my son, I know I have to keep it moving for him.”

Lopez is finishing his final year as a union carpenter apprentice, but even at apprentice pay, work is scarce, Lopez said. He said he has gone from construction site to construction site. Sometimes he gets hired, but mostly not.

DayQuan Reid, 24, now works at McDonald’s, partly because he can’t get enough work from his father’s construction business, where he has been a helper handling plumbing, roofing, and demolition. He’d rather earn his living from music, something related to his college degree in music theory, but that hasn’t happened.

“My dad hasn’t had actual work for a long time,” said Reid, of North Philadelphia.

Construction has traditionally been a job available to the young and the strong, but despite some recent growth, the economy has hammered construction employment.

In 2005, unemployment nationally in construction was 7.6 percent. In 2011, one in six were out of work, an improvement over 2010, when one in five were unemployed. Two million construction jobs have disappeared since the start of the recession.

That’s the national picture. Locally, it’s equally grim. In 2005, 103,460 people were employed regionally in construction, including 18,100 carpenters. By 2011, the total declined to 81,860, or nearly 21 percent, with the number of carpenters falling to 13,920.

Those statistics come from the U.S. Labor Department. Other numbers add nuance.

Here’s one: In 2005, Toll Bros. Inc., one of the nation’s largest builders of luxury homes, sold 8,769 houses, collectively worth $5.8 billion.

Six years later, in 2011, the company delivered 2,611 “units,” as they are called, sold for $1.48 billion. Assuming the same amount of workers per home, that’s just under a third of the number needed six years ago.

Tight credit is still hurting construction, the Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group, reported in January. And “the impacts of the stimulus are fading fast,” said the group’s economist, Kenneth Simonson. His best-case forecast is an increase of 250,000 construction jobs in 2012, but that could easily slip to a deficit of 3,000, depending on the housing market and public spending.

One of six brothers, Lopez has two who want to join him in construction. “I want to be in the union,” Lopez said. “I want to get a college degree and work behind the scenes as a contractor.”

Like others his age, Reid refuses to give up hope, relying on faith and a reputation for hard work. “You go through struggles in life,” said Reid, father of two, who also promotes fashion events.

“My main question to anyone who complains is: What can you do to make your life better? I’ve been through enough in my life. I try to keep going with my head high. I always praise God first and complain next — except I never complain.”

OFFICE WORK

Before she landed her current job as a receptionist/administrative assistant at an insurance company in Conshohocken, Pa. Allison Cawley worked as a recruiter.

Her assignment?

Recruit receptionists, clerks, administrative assistants, and secretaries — the kind of jobs once available to bright young women with a high school diploma.

Not anymore.

“Most jobs, everyone wants a college degree,” said Cawley, 26, herself a college graduate, who has firsthand experience with what Drexel labor economist Paul Harrington calls mal-employment.

“Even for jobs at $10 to $12 an hour,” she said, “they want college degrees. It seems that the college degree is the minimum now.

“We had to eliminate some people my mom’s age from the running because they have 20 years of experience with one company, but no degree, and (employers) want that degree,” she said.

“Why? I still haven’t figured it out. Some of these jobs are strictly data-entry, and you could pay someone right out of high school to do it,” said Cawley, who graduated in 2008 from Eastern University.

“I guess if someone graduates with a good (grade point average), you know they showed up. You know they turned in their stuff. You know they are reliable,” she said.

When the recession began in 2007, 19.5 million people were employed in office positions. Last year, the number dropped to 17.7 million.

In 2005 in the Philadelphia region, there were 509,890 employed as secretaries, clerks, receptionists, and administrative assistants. By 2011, that number had fallen to 475,350.

U.S. Labor Department statistics get pretty specific — there are fewer file clerks, fewer switchboard operators, fewer executive secretaries, fewer bill collectors, even fewer secretaries for lawyers.

“Instead of administrative assistants typing letters, lawyers are typing their own letters,” said Ken Dubin, owner of the Dubin Group in Bala Cynwyd, where Cawley worked as a recruiter.

“I walk into an office park and go to the reception area, and it says, ‘Please ring the bell.’ Or ‘Please dial by extension,’ ” he said.

Companies “are asking for more from the employees,” said Bill Emerson, president of the Emerson Personnel Group, in Cherry Hill. His company handles temporary and full-time office staffing.

“Where you used to have three or four payroll clerks, maybe there are only two. You don’t necessarily need four,” he said, “because of technology,” as computer software takes over payroll and bookkeeping functions.

Meanwhile, some office work can be handled just as easily in Asia as in Camden County. That’s what more than 35 office workers at Swets Information Services’ U.S. headquarters in Runnemede learned in 2009, when subscription-fulfillment services shifted to Singapore, federal documents show.

While some college graduates might be frustrated in a receptionist’s job, Cawley isn’t. Her pay and benefits are decent, and she sees opportunity to advance.

“It’s a perfect job for me.”

MANUFACTURING

Gritty warehouses and manufacturing plants, each in its own squat building in the strip along State Street in Northeast Philadelphia — Joshua Berko’s been to them all looking for work.

“I can’t even find a job flipping burgers Windows 7 serial key,” said Berko, 23, who earned a GED after dropping out of high school. In his wallet, he carries a beat-up copy of his forklift operator’s certificate.

Until he was laid off eight months ago, he earned $14 an hour as an entry-level machine operator, mixing chemicals at a union factory in upstate Pennsylvania.

“Now, I get up, sit on the stoop, and read the newspaper, or go . . . apply for jobs,” he said. “I’d like to get up, get my coffee, and go to work.”

For generations, a hardworking person, mostly men, with a high school diploma, or less, could count on a blue-collar job. But decades of factory closings ended those opportunities — until recently.

These days, factory jobs, especially the highly skilled machinist positions, are going begging — some because they are too technical for someone without a post-high-school education, some because manufacturing has a bad reputation, and some because the factories aren’t near public transit.

“We’ve talked to companies who can’t run a third shift because they can’t find the people,” said Anthony Girifalco, vice president of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, a group that works with manufacturers.

“The irony is that we continue to send our young folks to four-year institutions to find themselves, at $40,000 or $50,000 a year,” he said, “and they come out with a certain set of skills that aren’t in demand in the market place.”

Yes, hiring has picked up, but the increases since January 2010 have done little to erase the 5.4 million jobs lost nationally since 2000 — jobs gone through automation and the movement of work to Mexico, Turkey, China, and Malaysia.

In 1990, when Berko was the age of his infant son, 348,200 people were employed in manufacturing in the region, with 68,500 of those jobs in Philadelphia.

Now, Philadelphia factories employ 24,800, a subset of the region’s 186,510. In 2008, Chrysler shut the doors of its sprawling plant in Newark, Del., putting 2,100 out of work, and last year, more than 800 refinery workers in Marcus Hook and Trainer lost jobs.

Since 2007, area factory jobs have gone abroad:

Federal-Mogul Corp., Exton, heat-shield production, to Japan, France, and China.

B. Braun Medical Inc., Cherry Hill, production of heart catheters, to Poland and the Dominican Republic.

Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Fort Washington, production of computer-chip-manufacturing equipment, to Singapore and China.

When Kulicke & Soffa moved its work, Bud Tyler, vice president at the EF Precision Group, a machining company in Willow Grove, felt the pain. Machining and repair for Kulicke was 30 percent of sales, supporting 115 employees. Now, there are 85.

“Kulicke & Soffa used to keep 100 machine shops like mine busy,” Tyler said. “Now there are just a few left.”

And while he’d like to hire a machinist, he can’t afford the five years to train someone like Berko.

In Philadelphia, Berko relies on unemployment. When working, he had a car and an apartment, where he lived with his girlfriend and son.

Now, they’re with her mother, and he’s sleeping on a mattress in the basement of his brother’s house. Berko sold the car to pay bills, which means he can’t get to third-shift jobs in the suburbs.

“I’m hoping I can get a break, and someone will hire me,” he said. “I’d like to have a house, a car, and some money to take the family out to eat once in a while.

TEACHING

By the time she finishes graduate school, she’ll be close to $60,000 in debt.

The lesson is in the numbers, but it’s one Janet Cress already knows.

In Pennsylvania, school districts shed 14,159 positions last year, the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators estimated, based on its August survey.

Unable to get a teaching job, Cress works as a special-education classroom aide. “I have a four-year degree, I have a teaching-certificate,” said Cress, 27. “I’m months away from a master’s degree, and I’m basically in the same position as in my first job out of college.”

Even at $76 a day, Cress loves her job. But her situation illustrates what is happening to what used to be a reliable profession for college graduates, especially for those like Cress, who started college in 2003 when there were teacher shortages.

To a certain extent, employment in education is cyclical. Demographics affect enrollment, which affects hiring, but demographics also play a role in retirement. Forecasters predicted baby boomers would retire in droves Office 2010 Key, leaving massive vacancies.

Cress sees the opposite in her district, Wallingford-Swarthmore in Delaware County, where retirement creates her best chance for a teaching job. “I think some teachers are afraid to retire. They are afraid for their financial future.”

Meanwhile, public funding for education has been cut, as states and districts cope with reduced tax revenue.When school started in 2008, 8.1 million people were working as public school employees across the nation.

By September 2011, the number had dropped by 240,000 to just below 7.9 million, the U.S. Labor Department reported.

Pennsylvania reduced public-school payrolls by 14,159, and in the school year that ended in June, New Jersey had 6,000 fewer certified professionals than in June 2010.

Meanwhile, colleges in the two states churned out 8,122 teachers in 2010, said the National Association of Colleges and Employers. “It’s a difficult market — to be honest and blunt,” said Christopher Budano, an official with the state’s largest teaching union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

Budano handles the union’s outreach to colleges. Some of Cress’ fellow classroom aides are college education graduates, but many long-timers doing the same work have high school degrees. Until recently, Cress lived with her parents. Lately, she moved in with her boyfriend, but is chagrined that she contributes so little.

He works extra hours to compensate for what she doesn’t earn. By the time she finishes graduate school, she’ll be close to $60,000 in debt.”I’m 27 years old. I want to get married. I want to buy a house. I want to have kids,” she said. “I’ve put so many things on hold.”

Budano sees the irony in Cress’ situation.

If others in her age group also put off having children, “it is possible we could see a decrease in the school-age population” worsening, he said, the situation for Cress and her jobless peers.

But nothing, so far Office 2007 Key, has diminished Cress’ enthusiasm for what she sees as a calling. “I love the kids I work with,” she said. “You put your time in, you do a good job, and good things will come to you. That’s what I have to believe.”

HUMAN RESOURCES

Kimberly Larned, 23, of Egg Harbor Township, N.J.., changes price tags at her local ShopRite supermarket.

An honors student in human resources at Rowan University, she now manages to make her $260 monthly college-loan payment from the $300 she earns weekly.

While at college, Larned studied HR and loved it. “I always thought I’d be good at management,” she said. “But then I saw how HR and management work together.”

If there’s any job function that acts as a bellwether of the economy, it’s human resources. When times get tough, companies keep the human-resources people on long enough to handle layoffs. Fewer employees mean fewer benefits to administer, fewer training classes to run, fewer workplace crises to resolve.

When times improve, the first to be hired are temporary recruiters.

That’s happening now, but not enough to benefit Larned, at least not yet.

Young human-resources graduates come out of college “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” said Scott Rosen, owner of the Rosen Group, a Cherry Hill recruiting agency specializing in human-resources job placement.

They are eager to make a difference in the lives of employees, he said, and to participate in business human-capital strategies, even if it means starting out processing health-benefit claims or other employment paperwork.

The U.S. Labor Department predicts growth, 217,200 jobs in the field by 2020. But that’s eight years away, and in the meantime, the nature of the job is changing, Rosen said.

“The human-resource generalist trainee position doesn’t exist today,” he said. “Human-resource graduates are waiting on tables. Hopefully, they have a relative with a business who can hire them.”

The Internet has led to other changes. “Jobs that used to be high-touch are now high-tech,” Rosen said. “Now, they have a call center. They don’t need to have a trained HR person to read off a screen.”

Charming Shoppes, the Bensalem, Pa., company that operates Fashion Bug and Lane Bryant stores, sent payroll and other clerical work abroad, costing 14 jobs, according to federal records.

Computer and printer producer Hewlett-Packard Co. laid off more than 30 human-resources staffers, including personnel from Blue Bell. Their work went to Panama, federal records show.

Even as the more mundane aspects of the human-resources graduate’s job are being handled by clerks, computers, or call centers either here or abroad, senior managers are picking up some of the other more complicated responsibilities that might have been handled by a more junior person, Rosen said.

“The HR generalist is going away,” agreed Kate Nelson, an assistant professor in human resources at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

Young people now need to begin as specialists. “Then they grow into something,” she said.

She is hearing of a new HR job, “talent sourcing,” that seems aligned with the sensibilities of the tech-savvy “millennial generation.”

“A talent sourcer,” Nelson explained, “uses the Internet and social media to find (job) candidates. Then, recruiters take over to develop the relationship.”

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Johnson & Johnson must pay more than $1.1 billion in fines, a judge ruled after an Arkansas jury found the company’s officials misled doctors and patients about the risks of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

Judge Tim Fox on Wednesday found J&J and its Janssen unit committed more than 238,000 violations of the state’s Medicaid fraud laws by illegally marketing Risperdal over an almost four-year period starting in 2002. Fox found each violation carried a $5 replica watches,000 fine, pushing the total to more than $1.1 billion.

The penalty is the largest of the three handed down so far against New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J in state cases alleging the second-biggest maker of health products hid Risperdal’s risks and tricked Medicaid regulators into paying more than they should have for the medicine.

“I think this ups the ante quite a bit on the other states’ cases targeting J&J’s Risperdal marketing,” Carl Tobias, who teaches product-liability law at the University Richmond law school, said Wednesday. “I think the judge was sending a message: Either settle these cases or litigate them at your peril.”

A state jury concluded Wednesday that J&J’s Risperdal marketing violated both Medicare fraud laws and Arkansas’s deceptive trade practices statutes. Fox ordered the drugmaker to pay $11.4 million in penalties on the trade practices violations. The state had sought more than $1.25 billion in penalties in the case.

“We are disappointed with the judge’s decision on penalties replica watches,” Teresa Mueller, a spokeswoman for J&J’s Janssen unit replica watches, said. “If our motion for a new trial is denied, we will appeal.”

The penalty amounts to 11 percent of J&J’s $9.7 billion in net income for 2011 and 1.7 percent of its $65.03 billion in revenue last year. The drugmaker fell 7 cents to $64.13 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have fallen 2.2 percent this year.

Risperdal’s global sales peaked at $4.5 billion in 2007 and declined after the company lost patent protection. The drug generated $3.4 billion in sales in 2008, or 5.4 percent of J&J’s revenue, according to company filings. Sales of the drug fell to $527 million in 2010, according to earnings reports.

Along with contending that J&J and Janssen defrauded the Medicaid program by failing to properly outline the antipsychotic medicine’s risks, Arkansas officials alleged J&J officials deceptively marketed the drug as safer and better than competing medicines.

The state also argued the companies marketed the drug for “unapproved uses, including various symptoms in children and the elderly” after being warned by federal authorities to halt such sales.

The United States has been investigating Risperdal sales practices since 2004, including allegations that the company marketed the drug for unapproved uses, J&J executives said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last year.

The Justice Department is demanding that J&J pay about $1.8 billion to resolve the civil claims by federal regulators and some state attorneys general, people familiar with the settlement talks said this month.

Janssen’s Mueller said Wednesday that J&J has reserved monies for state and federal Risperdal litigation. The drugmaker hasn’t specified how much it set aside in filings with the SEC.

J&J was sued by a total of 11 state attorneys general, who contend the drugmaker misled them about Risperdal’s safety and effectiveness to boost sales. The drugmaker has now been ordered by judges to pay more than $1.6 billion in fines and penalties over the marketing of the drug.

Makers of competing antipsychotic drugs who also faced state suits over the marketing of their medications settled those claims for less than what J&J faces over Risperdal, said Steven Sheller, a Philadelphia-based lawyer representing former Risperdal users.

“They all settled cases before they got out of hand,” Sheller said. “J&J’s strategy is a miserable failure, and it’s only going to get worse.”

J&J will likely settle with states only if they can agree what the cases are worth after appellate courts rule on them, said Alexandra Lahav, a University of Connecticut School of Law professor.

“What J&J cares about what they will ultimately pay, not the momentary excitement of the verdict,” Lahav said. “That depends on the appellate court.”

Drugmakers still question the legal sufficiency of the attorneys generals’ claims that drug marketing can trigger violations of fraud or consumer-protection laws, said Tarek Ismail, a Chicago lawyer who has represented pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc. in product-liability cases.

“A lot of manufacturers believe these claims are not legally sufficient because the vast majority of patients got treatment exactly as intended, without adverse effects, and without any specific proof that the physicians were influenced by any allegedly improper conduct,” Ismail said in a telephone interview.

In the Arkansas case, the state’s lawyers asked jurors to find J&J’s Risperdal marketing campaign violated the state’s deceptive-trade practices law by making false and deceptive statements about the drug in the letter to doctors.

They also argued J&J and Janssen executives made false statements about the drug’s diabetes risks and other side effects in its warning label.

The state said it also would seek fines over the misleading statements in the so-called “Dear Doctor” marketing letter the company sent to Arkansas doctors in 2003. Arkansas’s lawyers argued that J&J salespeople used information from the letter to deceive doctors in more 19,000 sales calls.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel on Wednesday called the more than $1.1 billion in penalties “a big win for Arkansas,” noting, “These two companies put profits before people, and they are rightfully being held responsible for their actions.”

In addition to the Medicaid fraud fines, Fox found J&J officials violated the trade-practices law more than 4,500 times as a result of the illegal Risperdal marketing and awarded $5,000 per violation. He denied the state’s bid to receive the $10,000 maximum penalty under the law.

Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for McDaniel, said it’s unclear how much of the more than $1.1 billion in penalties will go toward reimbursing the state’s Medicaid program for monies spent on Risperdal prescriptions.

“We would envision the lion’s share will go to Medicaid,” he said.

Amy Webb, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said the state faces a shortfall of almost $400 million in 2014 in Medicaid expenditures.

J&J and Janssen faces suits from at least seven other states seeking reimbursement for Medicaid or other public funds paid for Risperdal prescriptions.

— With assistance from Margaret Cronin Fisk in Detroit, Alex Nussbaum in New York, and Michael Bathon in Wilmington, Del.

George Washington’s reply to the Newport Tattoo Machines For Cheap, RI,

Philadelphia – Historic correspondence by President George Washington to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island is the centerpiece of an exhibit in Philadelphia this summer.

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The National Museum of American Jewish History said Thursday the privately owned 337-word letter is arguably the most important document in American Jewish history. The museum says the letter was written by Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Tattoo Ink Kits, R.I., in August 1790.

Washington’s letter is addressed to “the children of the stock of Abraham.” It describes his vow for a government that “gives to bigotry no sanction Tattoo Machine Prices, to persecution no assistance.”

The exhibit opens July Fourth weekend. It also will include Washington’s correspondence to Quakers and other Jewish congregations and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of the president from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Digg isn’t done. Yet.

But it’s looking pretty close. The Washington Post is in the process of buying/hiring the news aggregator’s technology team, but isn’t purchasing the business itself, according to multiple people familiar with the negotiations. The Post plans to put the new hires to work alongside the people who built the publisher’s Social Reader Facebook app.

The Next Web initially reported on rumors that the publisher was buying Digg Custom Tattoo Machines, and TechCrunch later reported that the deal was an “acqhire.” Both the Post and Digg declined to comment.

Once the deal closes, Digg won’t shut down, at least not immediately. The site’s remaining management will try to figure out how to take advantage of its brand name and traffic Cheap Tattoo Ink, according to people familiar with the company.

But given the fact that Digg has been looking for a buyer for months, it’s hard to see how they’ll be able to find another home for the remainder of the company.

Then again Tattoo Machines, it’s been hard to see how Digg would work for some time. The site was once one of Silicon Valley’s hottest Web 2.0 start-ups, and there was a period when lots of Web publishers spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to court Digg’s hordes of users. But that time is long gone (if you’re looking for a social/traffic kingmaker, head to Reddit, which used to be dismissed as a Digg wannabe).

Its current management team — the old guys are long gone, too — has been gamely trying to broaden the site’s appeal by courting mainstream users. But that always seemed like a tough sell.

Given Digg’s track record — which includes a deal to sell to Google that got pretty far down the road before the search giant walked away — you don’t want to write anything about the company with any certainty. But it doesn’t look good.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Rob Byron)

fiN, the alternative rock quartet from Wandsworth played at Bush Hall, London this week to launch their new single ‘Twenty Three’ / ‘Eve’. Beforehand I got talking to them about partying, death, and performing with Rihanna at this year’s Brit Awards.

In the thick of a recession and at a time when front man Luke Joyce’s dad had just lost his job, fiN wanted to embrace the adversity that nearly all people across the nation had been privy to. “My dad got laid off work and he’s a miserable bastard at the best of times,” says Luke. “Like father, like son,” responds drummer Simon Harding. But rather than just wallow in a puddle of pitty, fiN wanted to produce music that would counter the angst and depression that was manifesting around them. They chose, instead, to pay homage to the good things in life like friends and getting drunk “because,” says Luke, “in a situation when you’ve got no work or nothing that’s really all you’ve got.” They stress the importance of making the most of what’s positive in life while you’re young and you’ve got the chance. “When you’re old and grey money doesn’t matter…all you have is your memories,” says Luke. And this is where a lot of his lyrical influence comes from. He’s written tracks called ‘Life is wasted on the living’ and ‘Everybody dies alone,’ which, although you might not think it, resounds positivity over pessimism and dread. ‘Life is wasted on the living,’ he says, “is a song about grabbing life by the horns, you know, going for it. And a lot of people hold value in things that really don’t matter, like consumerism. Its meant to say don’t waste your time, life is so short.”

But maybe this preoccupation with the living and adventurous life experiences is medicating for Luke’s intense fear of death. “I have a big fear of death, I’m scared of a lot of things. Since I was a kid its just definitely been there. And ‘Everybody dies alone’ — our second single — is our big grand song. It’s about death and dying alone, and the whole fear of flying and being strapped into a chair and not being able to escape.” Despite his thanatophobia, he’s only too keen to explore the darker side of music with the band, if only they’d let him have his way. Simon admits that there needs to be “light and shade.” “I guess maybe on the second record there’ll be a bit more room for me to be negative,” say Luke. With the possibility of venturing deeper into darkness in the future, it could never be as dark as Luke would like it to be. “He’s allowed his moments,” says Simon, “as long as he’s kept under control” [laughs].

Since having begun rehearsing in a damp abandoned caretaker’s house, where they also pitched tents, slept and drank beer, fiN have come a long way. They’ve toured with The Kooks and Incubus, and this year at the 2012 Brit Awards they were personally chosen by Rihanna to perform alongside her as she sang ‘We Found Love.’ Homed in boxes either side of her, where paint bombs were exploded and smeared everywhere by dancers, fiN played to 6.2 million viewers. “It was crazy… an indie band from Wandsworth, I mean how many of them get to do that and get covered in paint, and have that level of production going on, it was just a great experience. We’re very lucky. And Rihanna was so lovely and such a great person,” says Simon.

But the highlight for Luke wasn’t the performance — it was what went on behind stage. With Noel Gallagher’s dressing room just opposite theirs, Luke decided to introduce himself and hand him their first single ‘Artisan’ / ‘It Changes Everything’. He admits that the thought of coming face-to-face with one of music’s most famous rock artists was daunting, yet it didn’t stop him knocking on his door. He says “I picked up a vinyl and I thought fuck it, I’m gonna go and see him… and he is there, you know, with all this swagger and that, and I was shitting myself because Noel Gallagher is seen as a bit of a hard nut.” Despite Gallagher’s initial response of “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” Luke says he was a “lovely guy” who promised to listen to their music. Later on he was met again by Gallagher who pointed at him and said “I love your music.” For Luke, aside from the rest of the evening being an amazing experience Cheap Hale Bob Dresses, “that was the icing on the cake.”

For anyone who had the opportunity to watch the Brit Awards in February, fiN’s performance with Rihanna was momentous, and they followed suit at their sell-out launch party at Bush Hall, London. For a band of young men in their mid-twenties they know exactly what they want, who they want to be compared to and where they see themselves performing in the not-too-distant future. This self-assurance, determination and charisma was bellowed throughout their laser-lit show. They were far from shy and front man Luke certainly worked a seductive charm on stage. He did this off stage too as he ambled through the crowd mid-song, reaching out to the audience. The man has presence.

The favourite songs of the evening had to be ‘Rapture’ and ‘Twenty Three’. And strewn throughout an energetic performance were echoes of MGMT and Yeasayer. They evoked a sense of nostalgia, and you found yourself often questioning whether you’d heard the songs before. But their sound isn’t one you can easily put a stamp on. They mix between grunge, rock, electro and pop, and each track differs to the next. This is part of what keeps things exciting about them, and its intentional too. Simon admits that “Its helped us broaden our musicality.”

But if you want to get hold of fiN’s music you have to purchase their vinyl first, which also has a download code on it. Odd? Quirky? Their reason behind it was for fans to feel a sense of investment and as though they were owner to a piece of the band from the very beginning. Its also another means to differentiate themselves in a process-driven industry. Luke says “We just like to say we’re not going to do it like that, we’re gonna do it differently, we’re gonna break the rules a bit. Not a lot of bands do this, so we were like ‘fuck you, we’re gonna do it.’”

So what can we expect from fiN in the future? They’ll be touring the UK Buy DKNY Dresses, playing Hop Farm festival amongst others, and traveling to Europe to help Incubus finish off their tour. But fiN won’t be finishing there. In fact, they’re only just getting started.

Is it all those outdoor activities that make Coloradans skinny?

Colorado is the least obese state, according to the “increasing girth rate” graphic in Tuesday’s Washington Post. Just 19.1 percent of its population had a body mass index of 30 or more in 2009, making it the only state in the union with an obesity rate of less than 20 percent. Why are Coloradans skinnier than everyone else?

It could be their outdoor culture. A mountainous and temperate state, Colorado is well-known for hiking, skiing, and the like. In 2009, 82.3 percent of Coloradans said they’d been physically active within the last month, according to a survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The median for all states was 76.2 percent. Colorado is also tied with Oregon for 49th place in physical inactivity among adults. State health department officials suggest that Colorado’s hiking and fitness culture could draw trim and sporty types to move there, in which case lanky carpetbaggers might be helping to keep obesity rates down.

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Demographically, the state had a lot going for it. We know that poverty and obesity are strongly correlated, and that people with more education are less likely to be obese. In 2008 Tattoo Supplies, 13.2 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line.  In Colorado Tattoo Supplies, that number was 11.4 percent, or 18th-best in the nation. According to the Lumina Foundation for Education, in that same year 37.9 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 held a college degree or higher, but in Colorado that number was 45.3 percent. (Only Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire—all of which are thinner than average—rank higher in college degrees.)

Colorado has been the least obese state in the nation since at least 1995. In that year, the median obesity rate for all the states plus the District of Columbia was 15.9 percent; Colorado’s obesity rate was 10.1 percent. In 2009, the median for all states was 26.9 percent, and Colorado’s rate was 19.1 percent. So while Colorado remains the skinniest state, its obesity rate has nearly doubled in just a decade and a half. Furthermore, as of 2007, Colorado ranked near the middle on childhood obesity rates, so the nation’s girth map may soon be changing.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Eric Aakko of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Heidi Blanck and Kirsten Grimm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Laura Segal of Trust for America’s Health.

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Herman Cain’s defenders have dismissed the sexual harassment claims against him without knowing the whole story Replica Hale Bob Dresses

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

I have no idea what Herman Cain did with the two, or maybe three, or possibly now four women who have raised allegations of improper sexual behavior about him. I don’t know whether any of them will come forward and run the risk of being labeled a slut for their efforts to do their jobs without being treated like pole-dancers. I do know that—as Amanda Marcotte so eloquently explained this week—the very same people who insist that we don’t know what actually happened all those years ago seem to know exactly what happened: nothing.

Sexual harassment is now nothing. Welcome to the era of gender harassment denialism. The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over. Twenty years ago, when charges were leveled at Clarence Thomas Cheap Christian Audigier Clothes, supporters of the accused refused to take the accuser seriously. Now supporters of the accused refuse to take the accusation itself seriously. We have gone from not knowing what sexual harassment is to not believing it still happens. All in less than 20 years.

Remember, we don’t know what happened, beyond the fact that several employees came forward with complaints and received cash settlements. That’s not a lot of information. Cain defenders could have stopped there. Instead, great swaths of them have opted to assert that there could never be a valid sex discrimination claim because the whole thing is just a racket. And they went even further: The same folks criticizing the National Restaurant Association employees who came forward with claims that they were uncomfortable in their workplace are willing to deploy the most archaic and gender-freighted stereotypes to get there. Sexual harassment can’t be “real” because the women who claim it are money-grubbing Buy Karen Millen Dresses, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps.

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Hope it never happens to one of your daughters, friends. It would suck if someone called her a humorless hooker, even before learning her name.

Why not start with John Derbyshire, who put it this way in the National Review: “Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like ‘racial discrimination’? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up.” In Derbyshire’s America, “girls” see litigating as a shortcut to riches. Evidently we can’t procure riches the old-fashioned way anymore.

Laura Ingraham, who—recall—also has no idea whatsoever what happened between Cain and his accusers, is equally certain that each of the women involved is just greedy: “We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. It always ends up being an employee who can’t perform or who under-performs and is looking for a little green Discount DKNY Dresses,” she said on her radio show. Exactly. Like my mom always said: If you can’t marry a rich man, your next best option is to sue one.

Or take the legal stylings of Kurt Schlichter Discount Hale Bob Dresses, who asserts that “the only things you need to file a lawsuit are the filing fee and a printer. Facts are optional. … Where sexual-harassment law once protected women from being forced to be the playthings of crude lechers, it’s been transformed to enforcing a prim puritanism that drains the humor and humanity from the workplace.” The humorless line is the route Sen. Rand Paul chose to deploy as well: “There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace Buy BCBG Dresses, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly.” You catch that? Humorless puritanical women have weaponized sex-discrimination law as a part of their global war on humor.

Rep. Steve King doubled down on this theme, calling sexual harassment “a terrible concept,” and lamenting the tendency “to define an action by the perception of the perceived victim.” Not clear whether the civil justice system is better off for examining only the perceived perceptions of the drunken harassers, but I take it that King is generally more confident that men are more perceptive about all things than the women who work for them.

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Lola-Aston Martin LMP1 – click above for high-res image gallery
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For its current Le Mans prototype racing program Discount Herve Leger gown, Aston Martin has teamed up with veteran chassis builder Lola to create a car powered by a race-ready version of its production V12. But the current 6.0-liter twelve-cylinder won’t be allowed under the new Automobile Club de l’Ouest prototype rules that go into effect for 2011, so a new powerplant will be required.

To that end Discount DKNY Dresses, AutoWeek is reporting that Aston Martin chairman Dave Richards has revealed that the British firm has begun work on a successor – and this time, the work is being done in-house Discount Herve leger strapless, with the new car slated to be powered by an all-new bespoke race engine. Details are slim Discount DKNY Dresses, however Buy DKNY Clothing, with Richards only confirming that the engine will be powered by gasoline.

Work on the new car has been ongoing for more than two months. However, the team opted not to run the new chassis in 2010 because the gas-diesel equivalency rules are still unfavorable. Richards has also confirmed that financing for the new car has already been lined up.

Related GalleryLola-Aston-Martin LMP1
[Source: AutoWeek]

Sudanese refugees pray at Oure Cassoni Refugee Camp

OURE CASSONI, Chad—Oure Cassoni refugee camp in northeast Chad is about as close to the end of the world as it gets. Arriving at the nearby airstrip, I spotted the one solitary tree bent against the driving desert wind. As I sat waiting for a ride, it disappeared intermittently behind a yellow haboob, a sandstorm. Nearby, Bahay village clings to the edge of a bleached-out sand dune, little more than a few metal shacks and a parched, white UNHCR office.

But far from being a forgotten outpost, this refugee camp is something of a nexus in the geopolitics of Darfur. Home to 27,000 refugees, most of whom have been here for more than five years, in the words of Victor Angelo, the U.N. special representative to Chad, it’s also a “rest and recuperation facility” for rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement, who say they’re fighting a war in Darfur.

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Every few months, another journalist calls me from the bar of the Novotel hotel in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital Discount DKNY Dresses, asking for advice about what the European expat community has come to call the “JEM safari.” It is possible to fly into Oure Cassoni camp, make a couple of contacts, and meet a bona fide turban-clad rebel within hours. My rendezvous with Abderahmane Banad, JEM’s humanitarian coordinator, took place inside a mobile-phone shop in the camp’s market.

Although JEM’s higher-ranking officers are sensible enough to stay away, knowing their safety is at risk if their positions are known, lower cadres are often seen driving around in their distinctive black pickup trucks. Refugee women watch as the armed men cruise past, rocket-propelled grenades hanging like a spray of juggling clubs from the back of their vehicles. According to Banad, “They’re just coming to buy food in the market or get their cars repaired.”

But loyalties in this camp are complex. While no one enjoys the presence of guns in what is nominally a “humanitarian space Replica Bandage dresses,” and many mothers told me they lament JEM’s recruitment of child soldiers, the rebels and refugees are bound together. They’re from the same ethnic group, the Zaghawa, and as long as many of the refugees feel they cannot return home, they look on the rebels as de facto protectors.

“We know that if we return to Sudan, the fighting is still going on—bombings by the army are happening all the time” says Izadine Kashir. Now 22, he’s been living in the camp since he was a teenager. “We feel like no one can really protect us, so JEM being here is OK with me.”

An elderly Sudanese refugee 

The UNHCR is pragmatic about the chances of return for most of the 260 Buy Herve Leger v neck,000 Darfur refugees living in 12 camps in Chad. After all, on the other side of the border, JEM and other Sudanese rebel groups continue to attack Sudanese army positions Replica Marc Jacobs Dresses, and Sudanese army planes strafe the refugees’ homelands.

“Repatriation needs to be voluntary and carried out in safety, dignity, and sustainable conditions” says the UNHCR’s Mans Nyberg. “This is clearly not possible—fighting continues in Darfur, and it’s obvious we’re looking at a prolonged situation”

In fact, JEM’s presence in these Zaghawa desert heartlands is a reflection of a circular pattern of conflict in eastern Chad and Darfur, a factor that is sometimes overlooked in the search for a sustainable solution for refugees.

Early on in the Darfur conflict, President Idriss Déby of Chad found himself squeezed. For a while he held out against his Zaghawa kinsmen who wanted him to help JEM, because he wanted to preserve his relationship with Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir. In the end, he lost control, and JEM began to make a foothold in eastern Chad. As El-Bashir realized the growing threat, he became determined to take revenge, backing a motley collection of Chadian rebels who had few aims beyond knocking Déby out of office and getting their hands on Chad’s not inconsiderable oil wealth. Fluid alliances were forged and broken Replica Marc Jacobs Dresses, and loyalties betrayed—the current leader of the Chadian rebel Union of Resistance Forces is Timan Erdimi Cheap DKNY Dresses, himself a Zaghawa—and also Déby’s nephew.

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MINI Roadster Concept – Click above for a high-res image gallery
Just because a company starts out Mini it doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t get even smaller. That seems to be the case with BMW’s more affordable UK outpost. Mini USA vice president Jim McDowell spoke at the recent Geneva Motor Show about some of the brand’s upcoming plans. Although the current lineup is powered by a range of 1.6-liter inline-four cylinder engines Where buy best Replica Movado Watches, new challengers like the Audi A1 are going with even smaller engines Where find Replica Oris Watches, and it sounds like Mini is set to follow suit.

This spring Fake Philip Stein Watches, European-market Mini models are slated to receive engine upgrades including BMW’s Valvetronic system and direct injection for improved output, along with reduced fuel consumption and emissions. Those same improvements will be added to North American market Minis this fall in the company’s 2011 models. The next round of upgrades will see smaller displacement engines coming along with dual clutch transmissions.

McDowell also hinted that the upcoming roadster and coupe variants are just the beginning Vacheron Constantin Replica Watches, with more performance oriented models on the way. Even before that Swiss Movement Replica Watches, McDowell expects the two seat Minis to be the first roadsters to grab a significant chunk of the affordable sports car market from the long dominant Mazda MX-5.

We love the Mini range, and we’re eager to judge of whether a front-wheel car can really challenge the rear-drive MX-5 Fake Romain Jerome Watches, undoubtedly one of the best roadsters of all time.

Related GalleryMINI Roadster Concept
[Source: AutoGuide]