Stressed in the City: How Urban Life May Change Your Brain
Coach SunglassesI live in New York City, and for me, there's nothing that compares to its culture, energy and convenience. I'm not alone in feeling this way more than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. But I also know that when it comes to mental health, the urban lifestyle may not be such a good thing. City dwellers tend to be more stressed and have higher levels of mood disorders and psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia than those living in rural or suburban areas. And now researchers say they have uncovered certain changes in brain activity that could potentially help explain why. In an international study, researchers at University of Heidelberg and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University report in the journal Nature that people who live or were raised in cities show distinct differences in activity in certain brain regions than those who aren't city dwellers. Those who currently live in the city, for example, showed higher activation the amygdala, the brain region that regulates emotions such as anxiety and fear. Nike Air MaxThe amygdala is most often called into action under situations of stress or threat, and the data suggest that city dwellers' brains have a more sensitive, hair-trigger response to such situations, at least when compared with those living in the suburbs or more rural areas. The study also found that people who were raised in the city during their first 15 years of life were more likely to show increased activation in another brain region, a more global regulator of stress known as the anterior cingulate. In these individuals, the change appears to be more permanent than in people who move to cities later in life, says Jens Pruessner, director of aging and Alzheimer's research at the Douglas Institute and one of the study's co-authors, because it occurs during an important period of development. Living in the city during your early years "means you will become more alert to [stress] situations via the anterior cingulate for the rest of your life," he says. The researchers came to their conclusions after conducting a stress test on volunteers while their brains were imaged with functional MRI to detect which areas of the brain were more or less active when the participants felt stressed. Coach- Poppy CollectionsThe stress was applied by asking people to solve difficult math problems, either under time pressure or while enduring criticism from researchers for their bad performance. The research team then correlated the participants' brain scan results with information they provided about where they currently lived or where they were raised. Activation of the amygdala increased in step with the population density of participants' home towns: from rural areas to small cities to large urban settings. Nike Air Griffey MaxThe researchers think it is the social aspects of urban living the stress of living and dealing with lots of people, and feeling more anxiety, fear and threat as a result more so than other urban factors like pollution or noise that explains the higher stress-related brain responses among the city dwellers. Although it would seem that the more people were faced with stress, the more they might tolerate these annoyances and even become immune to them thus lowering, rather than increasing their threshold for triggering the stress response the new findings suggest otherwise. Even after years of city living, people remained highly alert and anxious, which indicates that the stresses of city life may be both constant and diverse and not easy to adapt to. "City people may never really face the same stresses," says Pruessner. Nike Air Max 2010"Even though the type of stress may be similar, such as time pressure or being stuck in a commute or meeting a deadline, it's always distinct enough that you don't have the chance to habituate to them."
The Curse of the Crocodile: Russia's Deadly Designer Drug
replica coach handbagsThe new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village that is a two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer (the center is run by Pentecostals), they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, the only resident at the center who is addicted to krokodil, or crocodile, Russia's deadliest new designer drug. There is no good medical explanation for why Pavlova survived her addiction. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured. But Pavlova says she injected the drug nearly every day for six years, having learned to cook it in her brother's kitchen. "God must have protected me," she says. But the addiction still left some of its trademark scars. Air Max OutletShe developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient's vacant gaze. "Her motor skills are shot from the brain damage," says Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager, who was addicted to heroin for seven years. "She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her." (See why Russia raids Afghanistan for drugs.) As typically happens in Russia, Pavlova began her drug use as a teenager shooting a substance called khanka, a tarlike opiate cooked from poppy bulbs, then graduated to heroin and finally, at the age of 27, switched to krokodil, because it has roughly the same effect as heroin but is at least three times cheaper and extremely easy to make. Coach WalletsThe active component is codeine, a widely sold over-the-counter painkiller that is not toxic on its own. But to produce krokodil, whose medical name is desomorphine, addicts mix it with ingredients including gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous, which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes. In 2010, between a few hundred thousand and a million people, according to various official estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, so far the only country in the world to see the drug grow into an epidemic. It seems to have first appeared in Siberia and the Russian Far East around 2002, but only in the past three years has it spread throughout the country. Since 2009, the amount of krokodil seized in Russia has increased 23-fold, according to the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov. In the first three months of this year alone, the service says, it confiscated 65 million doses. "As recently as five years ago, there were only one-off instances of catching this drug," Ivanov told a meeting on April 18 attended by President Dmitri Medvedev and other top officials. Medvedev then turned to his tablet computer and searched the Internet for krokodil. Nike Air Max 93 The search engine gave him a list of recipes and instructions on how to cook it. "What does this mean?" he demanded. "Most people are not just looking for what desomorphine is, but how they can use it." Two of the governors at the meeting then informed him that krokodil accounts for about half of all addictions and drug-related deaths in their regions. In some provinces, Ivanov chimed in, it "has practically pushed out traditional opiates." (See "To Prevent AIDS in Russia, Drug Addicts Need Care.") Predictably, it has spread the fastest in the poorest and most remote parts of the country, like Vorkuta, Pavlova's hometown, a former Gulag prison camp about 100 miles (161 km) north of the Arctic Circle. The winters there last eight months of the year, and as Pavlova recalls, the young people are in a constant state of boredom.Air Max Most of them drink and few of them work, the same as in hundreds of towns and villages across Russia's frozen north. Besides her, Pavlova says there were about a dozen krokodil addicts she hung around with, including her brother. "Practically all of them are dead now," she says. "For some it led to pneumonia, some got blood poisoning, some had an artery burst in their heart, some got meningitis, others simply rot."
19-year-old arrested over Sony hack, London police say
Coach JewelryA teenager has been arrested near London in connection with the hacking of Sony, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday. The 19-year-old is suspected of hacking into systems and mounting denial of service attacks against "a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies," police said. Naming suspects who have been arrested is illegal in Britain. A police spokesman, who declined to be named in line with custom, said the arrested man's computers will be examined for activities related to hacks against the UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency, the CIA and Sony. Sony's PlayStation Network went down on April 20 after what Sony said was a massive data breach. It had more than 70 million subscribers at the time. It began coming back online in mid-May. Air Max ShoesThe PlayStation Store did not reopen until June 2. The company estimated the cost of that attack will total $171 million. Hackers later broke into Sony Pictures' website, compromising the accounts of over 1 million users, and the gaming company Sega, stealing nearly 1.3 million users' details via a British subsidiary of the Japanese company. Sega makes games for PlayStation and other gaming systems. Coach SneakersThe suspect's computer will also be examined for links to LulzSec, another police spokesman told CNN, who also declined to be named in line with custom. "This link has not been established yet as it is still early days," the spokesman said. The hacker group LulzSec posted an irreverent denial that its leader was the one arrested. "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now ... wait ... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" they said on Twitter several hours after the announcement of the arrest. LulzSec claimed recently to have attacked the CIA website, and took credit for hacking into the website of the American public broadcaster PBS and posting a fake story saying the rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive. He was killed nearly 15 years ago. It's unclear whether LulzSec members played a role in the Sony PlayStation Network breach. But they have posted on their website what they claim is proprietary information from Sony Pictures and other Sony properties' websites. Nike Air Max BWOn Friday, on the occasion of their 1,000th tweet, the group posted a manifesto of sorts in which they said people, including their targets and advocates of Internet freedom, should be thankful. "The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that ... our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you," the group wrote. "But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony ... watching ... abusing ... ." They seemed to suggest that by making their attacks public, they'll push websites to increase security. They said they're sitting on account information for 200,000 players of the online game Brink, but moments later said that releasing people's information is worth doing sometimes because it's fun. "Yes, yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011," they wrote. "This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining." Analysts said the group appears to be some sort of spin-off of "Anonymous," the loose coalition of hackers that grew to prominence through their support of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. nike dunk shoesBut while Anonymous has its own set of moral codes and is largely politically motivated, LulzSec seems to be random. For every hack like the one on PBS, which the group said came out of anger over a documentary about WikiLeaks, there's the cracking of porn site pron.com -- and a subsequent public list of members' e-mail addresses and passwords. The teen suspect was arrested in Essex, outside London, in a raid that police said was "intelligence-led." The suspect was arrested Monday night and police are now examining a "significant amount of material," they said.
Coach OutletSyrian President Bashar Assad used his third televised appearance in the three months since
antiregime protests first erupted to deliver a monotonous, rambling and technocratic speech to a handpicked audience at Damascus University on Monday, June
20 and while the autocratic leader promised a national dialogue, the offer is unlikely to dampen the violent dissent rocking his country.
There was little new in his more than hourlong address. In many ways, it was basically a repeat of his first speech before parliament, on March 30, although
the applause was more restrained this time and the 45-year-old leader wasn't interrupted by pledges of fealty. In the first speech, Assad blamed the then
two-week-long unrest on a foreign conspiracy to undermine Syria for its anti-Israeli stance. Air MaxHe
recycled that claim on Monday, adding that saboteurs or "germs," as he described them were, while the most dangerous element to the unrest, also the
smallest. The protesters fell into three groups, the President said: those who were peaceful and had legitimate demands the government should meet; "outlaws"
and "criminals" whose sole aim was to harm the state (he said there were 64,000 of these "a small army"); and finally, the extremists and blasphemers who
"kill in the name of religion, sow destruction in the name of reform and spread chaos in the name of freedom." (See pictures from the protests in Syria.)
Nike outletApart from the renewed promises of an imminent national dialogue and all the talk about setting up
committees to investigate reforming various laws, there was a clear, key message: Assad is trying to listen to his people.
The key problem, however, is that he's unlikely to hear a truly representative spectrum of opinion, even though he said he'd discussed "more than 1,200
topics" with scores of delegations from across the country's ethnic, sectarian and geographical divides. Assad must know this, given his mention that only
36,000 stateless Kurds have made use of one of his earlier recent concessions and applied for full citizenship, because "fear has prevented citizens from
approaching the state." (See pictures of Syrians fleeing into Turkey.)
He spoke of amending the constitution or even tossing it out and drafting another, of wanting the army to return to its barracks and a resumption of "normal
life." But Syria is unlikely to ever be the same again. Assad specifically appealed to the 10,000 or so refugees from the northern town of Jisr al-Shoughour
to return from the official Turkish camps and makeshift shelters along a sliver of Syrian territory hugging the Turkish border they have fled to. "The army
is there to protect the people," Assad said. But many of those refugees told TIME recently that they will not return to their homes unless Assad's nepotistic
regime falls. It wasn't enough that the President's first cousin, the billionaire businessman Rami Makhlouf, announced several days ago that he would be
stepping back from business to focus on charity work. Coach Wallets"We want Bashar and
everyone associated with him to go. What did they teach or offer us except corruption, oppression and death?" says Sharif, a 25-year-old refugee from Jisr
al-Shoughour camping out near the Turkish border.
Assad has talked the reform talk since he first inherited power, upon the death of his father Hafez in 2000, but 11 years later, he has little to show for
it. He shot back on Monday at critics who question his sincerity and capability in bringing real change to Syria, and he indicated that he knows that
the stakes, especially regarding the economy, are high. "The most dangerous thing we face in the next stage is the weakness or collapse of the Syrian
economy, and a large part of the problem is psychological," he said. "We cannot allow depression and fear to defeat us. We have to defeat the problem by
returning to normal life."
Syrian-rights activists were quick to dismiss Assad's speech.Nike Air Max Burst
Demonstrations reportedly broke out in more than a dozen cities after his talk. "Today it is more clear than ever Assad cannot stay in power and will not
reform," tweeted Malath Aumran, a prolific cyberdissident.
replica coach outletWhiner. Before this year's NBA playoffs, that would have been one of the first words that came to mind, for many people, if someone mentioned Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. After all, this is the guy who has racked up around $1.7 million in fines over the past decade for criticizing the league and its referees. Go ahead and Google it. "Mark Cuban and whiner." You'll see only 533,000 results. Another insult frequently directed at Cuban was baby. During the 2009 Western Conference semifinals, after Cuban told the mother of Denver Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin that her son was a "punk" and "thug," a Nuggets fan held up a poster of Cuban's head attached to a baby holding a bottle. (See pictures of Mark Cuban.) After all the years of derision, Cuban has become used to the name-calling. Over the past few days, however, he's been referred to in very different ways: winner, for instance, and even classy. Nike Air MaxOh, and all the while, he's been busy cradling the NBA championship trophy. Like it's his baby. In fact, it's hard to think of another sports executive who's so transformed his image, in so short a time, as Mark Cuban. Most sports fans could always find some reason to at least grudgingly respect Cuban. In 1999 he sold his Internet-radio business to Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in stock. He injected life into a horrid basketball team. Since Cuban bought the Mavs in January 2000, the team has reached the playoffs in each of the 11 full seasons of his tenure. Prior to his arrival, Dallas had missed the playoffs nine straight years. But he has always been hard to like and hard to root for. He's cocky and brash and incessantly gripes, whether to the media or directly to the refs on the floor. He's also been way overexposed. At games, you couldn't miss him, sitting courtside in jeans and T-shirt, exhorting his players as if he were their coach or one of them. And Cuban briefly had his own reality show, called The Benefactor, in which 16 aspiring entrepreneurs competed for a $1 million prize from the Dallas owner. It flopped worse than any NBA player Cuban has accused of faking fouls. Then came this year's playoffs. After Dallas knocked off the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, Cuban decided to stay mum during Dallas' second-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers.hermes birkin handbags It was quite a departure. He had dissed Lakers forward Ron Artest back in March. "Anything that puts the ball in Ron Artest's hands is always a good thing," Cuban said. For years, Cuban has been publicly jawing with then Lakers coach Phil Jackson. In January, he called Jackson "Jeanie Buss's boy toy," referring to Jackson's romantic relationship with Buss, the team's vice president of business operations and daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss. "I knew the questions everyone was going to ask," Cuban explained to the postgame press after Dallas knocked off the Miami Heat on June 12. "They were going to ask me about my repartee with Phil Jackson and the things I said about Ron Artest. I didn't want to get in the middle of a back-and-forth about that." Then a funny thing happened: while Cuban kept quiet, the Mavericks kept winning, sweeping the Lakers in commanding, shocking fashion. Next up, in the Western Conference finals, were the young, surging Oklahoma City Thunder, and Cuban knew the media wanted to inject him into the story line. Cuban had been one of only two owners who opposed the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008, since Dallas and the Oklahoma capital are only some 200 miles apart. Coach Madison CollectionsCuban knew he'd receive questions about his opposition, so he shut up again. The Mavs won the series in five games. (See 10 big stories to follow in the NBA this season.) At this point, Cuban would have been an idiot to act the way he did during the Mavs' 2006 finals loss to the Heat, when his rants against the refs though understandable, since the officiating in that series was atrocious became a sideshow. "It didn't make sense to say anything," Cuban says to the press. "The quieter I got, the more we won. I didn't want to break the karma." Give the man credit. It wasn't easy for a carnival barker like Cuban to remain low-key during the finals, when the world's attention was focused on his team. (This year's Game 6, for example, notched the highest rating for a Game 6 in 11 years.) And though Dallas may well have still beaten Miami if Cuban had been a distraction, it certainly made it easier for the Mavs that he wasn't. And after Dallas clinched, Cuban made the classiest (there's that word) public move of his career. Nike Air Max Triax 94 LEOn a stage in Miami, he stepped aside to let Donald Carter, the team's founding owner and the man most responsible for bringing an NBA franchise to the Metroplex in 1980, accept the championship trophy from NBA commissioner David Stern. "He's become the owner I always wanted him to become because of his love for the game," Carter said afterward. "He played it just right."
Papers: Strauss-Kahn claimed to have diplomatic immunity
Coach Sunglasses Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former chief of the International Monetary
Fund, at first claimed to have diplomatic immunity when he was taken into custody, but later said he was not invoking it, according to a new prosecution
document.
Strauss-Kahn told a Port Authority detective, "I have diplomatic immunity," according to a transcript in the document. But four hours later, he told a New
York Police officer with the Manhattan Special Victims squad, "No, no, no, I'm not trying to use that. I just want to know if I need a lawyer."
Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty June 6 to seven charges involving a May 14 incident in which a housekeeping employee at New York's Sofitel hotel accused him
of sexual assault.
Air Max ShoesThe IMF has said Strauss-Kahn would have been entitled to diplomatic immunity only if his
alleged crime involved official fund business, which is not the case in this situation.
Strauss-Kahn repeatedly questioned why he was being detained, at one point asking, "What is this about?"
When he was approached by Port Authority officers on an Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the first thing he said was, "Do you have
my cell phone?" The report shows he called the hotel several times, looking for a phone he thought he left behind.
Later that night, just before 11 p.m., he was asked whether he'd like to speak to detectives about the incident. nike dunk shoes He responded, "My attorney has told me not to talk. I was ready to talk."
Strauss-Kahn, who was considered a front-runner in France's presidential race before his arrest, faces charges including criminal sexual acts and sexual
abuse.
His attorney, Ben Brafman, declined to comment on details of the case in a brief statement outside the courtroom after entering the plea.
"We intend to defend this case and defend it vigorously, but we are going to do so in the courtroom," Brafman said, renewing statements that evidence in the
case will reveal his client is innocent.
The new court filing indicates that several reports will be forthcoming, including a medical examination of the housekeeping employee, DNA reports, a sexual
assault forensic examination, photographs and electronic recordings.
According to New York police, the attack happened soon after the housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn's suite to clean it.
Coach Totes BagsStrauss-Kahn emerged naked from a room, ran down a hallway, shut a door
to prevent the woman from leaving and attacked her, according to police and prosecutors.
According to court documents and prosecutors, Strauss-Kahn grabbed the woman's chest, tried to take off her pantyhose and forcibly grabbed her between her
legs.
The criminal complaint against Strauss-Kahn alleges that he forced the woman to engage "in oral sexual conduct and anal sexual conduct" and tried to force
her to engage in sexual intercourse.
The next court date for Strauss-Kahn is July 18, according to Erin Duggan of the district attorney's office. No date for a trial has been set, Duggan said.
The alleged victim, who has not returned to work, intends to testify against Strauss-Kahn, said her attorney, Ken Thompson.
"She is going to come into this courthouse, get on that witness stand and tell the world what Dominique Strauss did to her," Thompson said.
He declined to discuss specifics of any possible settlement negotiations with Strauss-Kahn, saying his focus is preserving the good name of his client.
Nike Air Max 2003She was described by a former attorney as a 32-year-old single
mother living in the New York borough of the Bronx who moved to the United States from the West African country of Guinea.
At the hearing, defense lawyers formally requested that Manhattan prosecutors provide discovery materials: copies of scientific reports as well as police
reports and formal statements made by the hotel employee.
A Mystery Partly Solved: How the 'Club Drug' Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly
Coach SunglassesA new study sheds light on why the anesthetic and "club drug" ketamine can relieve depression rapidly in hours, instead of weeks or months. The findings may help provide new targets for developing antidepressants and increase researchers' understanding of the devastating disorder. The study, published in the journal Nature, offer support for wider use of ketamine in depression and suggests new leads for scientists aiming to create fast-acting drugs with fewer side effects. A drug that could relieve depression quickly has long been sought by pharmaceutical companies and patients: for the 20 million Americans suffering from depression, the early weeks of treatment are a high-risk time for suicide, which kills nearly 35,000 people each year. The new research involved numerous experiments in mice aimed at teasing out what happens to both brain and behavior when ketamine takes effect. In one such test, mice were forced to swim in a water-filled tube that they cannot escape.Air Max Online Previous research has shown that mice given antidepressants swim longer before giving up: a sign that the drugs are working. The new study found that just one dose of ketamine produced the same effect in a half an hour compared with the weeks or months this can take with standard antidepressants, in mice as well as in humans. Further, the new study found that the antidepressant effect of a single dose of ketamine lasted for a week. (More on TIME.com: How a Study of a Failed Antidepressant Shows That Antidepressants Really Work) cheap hermes birkin"It's a nice, elegant experiment," says Carlos Zarate, chief of experimental therapeutics of the mood and anxiety disorders program at the National Institute of Mental Health and author of an early randomized trial of ketamine for depression. He was not associated with the study. "It's very good work," he adds. The researchers, led by Lisa Monteggia, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, also measured brain changes after animals underwent behavioral tests. Monteggia and her colleagues found that ketamine acted by increasing synthesis of BDNF, a nerve growth factor that supports the health of brain cells, helps them grow and can promote the development of new neurons. Some researchers have previously theorized that all effective antidepressants ultimately act by promoting nerve cell growth, which would help explain the fact that although the drugs change neurotransmitter levels within hours, it takes much longer to lift mood. Nerve cells take time to grow, they argued, and that accounts for the delay. But the rapid action of ketamine shows that this certainly can't be the whole story, whether or not the growth of new cells matters for long-term recovery. Digging further, Monteggia's group found that ketamine increases BDNF by deactivating a chemical called eEF2 kinase (also known as CAMKIII), which normally suppresses BDNF production.Coach Earrings Consequently, when eEF2 kinase is inactivated, brain cells produce more BDNF. "We know that ketamine can produce a fast-acting antidepressant response in treatment-resistant patients, but no one really knows how that works. What we found is a necessary pathway for ketamine to trigger [that response]," says Monteggia. "We've identified a novel pathway never before linked to any behavior, let alone an antidepressant response that could be a novel drug target." That means drugs that inhibit or block eEF2 kinase could potentially work as antidepressants ones that would take effect faster than any current medication and possibly without the "trippy" side effects that make ketamine desirable to some recreational users. Compounds like this currently exist. "It sounds very, very exciting," says Emery Brown, professor of computational neuroscience at MIT, who was not associated with the research. "If they're correct, it most certainly could lead to new drug development. This is the first time I've heard of this possible mechanism." Nike Air Max LeBron 8However, none of these compounds are currently on the market for any use and it's not known what other kinds of side effects they might have, Monteggia says. The implications of the research go beyond possible drugs based on eEF2 kinase. The research shows that ketamine acts on brain circuits that are constantly active "in the background" cells that are activated not when you do something or have an experience, but that are always sort of humming along, no matter what else you are doing or thinking. "That background stuff might not just be the background," Monteggia says. "It might be important. The problem in mental illness may be a function of background neurotransmission." "This is bringing a whole new insight into how we might want to construct these types of drugs," says Brown. "It could make us rethink how we approach this entire problem." Ketamine is already widely used in anesthesia and for pain treatment. But it is not yet widely available to the 5% of Americans over 12 who suffer severe depression, even though such "off-label" use is legally allowed. rown and Zarate say that one reason may be that while anesthesiologists are comfortable using the drug, psychiatrists do not have much experience with it and may be scared about side effects.
Glaring Omission in Republican Debate: Why So Little Mention of Our Costly War?
coach handbags outletAt 10 past 8 Monday evening, Michele Bachmann decided to separate herself from the six guys next to her on the stage by telling John King of CNN why she had come to St. Anselm College. It was the fifth anniversary of the day a young man from New Hampshire was killed in Afghanistan, but she made no mention of that. "John ... I just want to make an announcement," she said as the first big TV debate among Republican candidates for President began. "I filed today my paperwork to seek the office of the presidency of the United States ... So I wanted you to be the first to know." Bachmann was trying to provide some contrast to her fellow candidates, the six men who looked as if they were about to be inducted into the local Rotary Club: smiling, amiable, eager to please and ready to drop the hammer at any given moment on Barack Obama for everything from unemployment to health care to same-sex marriage but unwilling to tackle the U.S.'s military engagement for the past 10 years. The crowd for the debate was middle-aged, white, patriotic and ready to roll for anyone who could convince them that competence could beat charisma in 2012. Moments before the TV light went on, an old guy with a white beard shouted, "Let's do the Pledge." Air Max Shoes Outlet OnlineThe CNN floor producer asked, "You want to lead it?" "Yeah," the old guy said. And he did. The crowd stood, hands over hearts, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to great applause. See Mark Halperin grade the New Hampshire debate at The Page. It wasn't until about an hour and a half in, after Romney gave everyone an update on the Bruins game, that the candidates had to turn to that sticky subject of war, when a retired Navy man with three sons serving asked if it was time to start withdrawing from Afghanistan. "It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the word that comes to our generals that we can hand the country over to the Taliban military in a way that they're able to defend themselves," Romney said. cheap nike shoes storeAs he said "Taliban military," the camera cut to someone in the audience in military dress, who winced. Romney corrected his mistake, but the deed was done. To rub it in, Paul followed Romney by saying, "I wouldn't wait for my generals. I'm the Commander in Chief." Coach BeltsNew Hampshire is not that different from the 49 other states. Anxiety and apprehension fill the air. Confidence in the country is shaky as people pay more than $4 a gal. for gas, listen to news about staggering debt, watch home prices and wages wallow in the shadow of what sure seems like a double dip or, at least, a never ending recession. In the morning, traffic on I-93 South toward Boston resembles the highway from Baghdad to Kuwait as thousands of New Hampshire residents head to jobs in Massachusetts. (See the top 10 debate flubs.) Our exhausted nation has been at war for 10 years. Twenty-three residents of New Hampshire have been killed in Iraq, 13 others in Afghanistan. Hundreds have been wounded, physically as well as psychically, and require costly care. As the candidates tried to please the crowd in St. Anselm with hockey scores, 20 miles (32 km) away, on Route 114 near Henniker, there was a sign dedicating a bridge to the memory of Sergeant Russell M. Durgin, 10th Mountain Division, United States Army. Nike Air Max Tailwind Although he grew up in Henniker, he won't be voting in the Republican primary. He was killed in the Korengal Valley, Kunar province, Afghanistan, on June 13, 2006, at the age of 23.
GOP presidential contenders face off in CNN debate
coach outletSeven declared or likely Republican presidential contenders will face off Monday in one of
the first debates of the primary season, giving them the chance to separate themselves from the competition almost 17 months before the 2012 election.
With President Barack Obama intent on re-election, Republican viewers will pay particularly close attention to try to determine which candidates can defeat
an incumbent who won in 2008 with strong support from independent, minority and young voters.
Former Massachusetts Gov.Nike Air Max Mitt Romney, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination
in 2008, has emerged as an early front-runner in his second bid for the White House.
Profiles of the seven hopefuls
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Monday showed Romney grabbing the support of 24% of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP. Former
Alaska Gov. cheap hermes birkin Sarah Palin came in second at 20%, followed by former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani and the rest of the field.
Palin and Giuliani, who have not announced that they will join the race, are not participating in Monday's CNN/WMUR/New Hampshire Union Leader debate.
Scheduled to participate are declared presidential candidates Romney, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Rep. Ron Paul,
former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Also taking part is Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has yet to formally
declare her candidacy.
Nike outletFollow CNN's live blog for up-to-the-minute reports
As the current favorite, Romney will face almost certain criticism from his fellow candidates.
Pawlenty has shied away for months from direct attacks on Romney, but he signaled over the weekend that he intends to step up his criticism in hopes of
making inroads with fiscal conservatives. That could start in earnest at Monday night's debate after Pawlenty said Romney's health care record will be "fair
game."
"I don't think contrasting policy differences between the candidates is out of bounds in a debate," Pawlenty said Monday. "The American people want to know
what you stand for and what do you believe. If you get asked a question about how that differs from other proposals, I think that's fair game."
His comments follow a Sunday appearance on Fox News in which he tied Obama's health care law to Romney's health care legislation in Massachusetts, coining a
word: "Obamneycare."
Opinion: New Hampshire good testing ground
Coach NecklacesRomney's focus, however, was on Obama on Monday as he revealed a Web video
titled "Bump in the Road," which criticizes the president over the state of the economy.
The video "highlights President Obama's failure to create jobs for millions of unemployed Americans and shows that the unemployed are not just economic
statistics, but are real Americans looking to support themselves and their families," Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, wrote in an e-mail to
supporters.
Romney, a successful businessman, is basing his campaign largely on his ability to fix the economy.
While Romney will be the center of attention at the debate, Gingrich might have the most to prove after last week's exodus of 16 top aides from his campaign
less than a month after he formally announced his 2012 bid.
The outgoing staff cited the candidate's questionable work ethic and fundraising ability as their reason for abandoning the campaign. Gingrich has vowed to
continue and will seek to use his strong skills as a debater to demonstrate that his candidacy is still viable.
In his first appearance since the departures, Gingrich touched Sunday on his nearly 40 years of experience in the public eye.
"I know full well the rigors of campaigning for public office," Gingrich said in a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition. "In fact, I've had some
recent reminders.Nike Air Max 1 I will endure the challenges. I will carry the
message of American renewal to every part of this great land, whatever it takes."
Coach JewelryOn Monday, May 16, Chris Epps, commissioner of Mississippi's department of corrections, sat at a long conference table, grasping a mound of financial documents. He was preparing to head to the state's penitentiary, an 18,000-acre old cotton farm in the Mississippi River Delta, for the execution of a man convicted of murder nearly two decades ago. Since the mid-1990s, Mississippi has become one of America's most aggressive incarcerators a difficult feat, in a nation of jailers. Now, Epps is leading Mississippi on an improbable shift: dismantling the prison system. "We've got all these needs" education, health care "and spending all this money on corrections," Epps says. "We've got to decide who we're mad with, and who we're afraid of." Incarceration has been America's primary weapon in the war on crime. That's why in the 80s, Congress passed laws mandating that if you were caught with just 50 grams of crack-cocaine about 20 packs of sugar you automatically got a decade in prison. In 1980, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington -based advocacy group, an estimated 41,000 people were in prison or jail for drug offenses, and by 2003, that population had grown to nearly a half-million. Now, some 2.3 million people about 1 in every 100 U.S. adults are incarcerated. Discount Coach Handbags Prison overcrowding reached such crisis levels in California that, in May, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a judicial-panel decision that requires the state to release 46,000 inmates over the next two years. (See TIME's photoessay "Welcome to Prison Valley.") Nevertheless, the incarceration boom appears to be reversing. Between 2008 and 2009, state prison populations fell slightly, by 0.3%, to 1.4 million, the first such decline since the 70s.hermes birkin handbags There are several reasons for the shift. The first is money. The Great Recession decimated state coffers, and is forcing governments to acknowledge they can no longer afford spending $52 billion a year locking people up. The second reason is demographics: people between 15 and 34 prime ages for criminal activity account for about 27% of the American population, compared to about 32% in 1990, near the violent-crime wave's peak. Those shifts, coupled with the over-saturation of prisons, partly explain why the violent crime rate has dropped to the lowest point in almost 40 years. Between 1997 and 2007, New York State's prison population shrank by 9.4%, or 6,500 inmates, according to the Pew Center on the States, and the state's violent crime rate almost halved. cheap nike shoes store The takeaway, says James Austin, a leading criminal justice expert: "You can cut back on the size of the prison population without having a negative impact on crime." Epps wants to bring that lesson to Mississippi's prison system. Or, as he puts it, "To not lock up more people." He is 50 years old, very tall, with a drawl that calls to mind an old-school Southern sheriff. The son of educators raised in Tchula, Miss., a nearly all-black town in the heart of cotton country, Epps joined the department as an officer at the state penitentiary at Parchman, managing the movement of inmates between, say, the dentist and dining hall. Coach BeltsHe rose quickly, and was appointed as the department's chief in 2002, by Ronnie Musgrove, a socially conservative Democratic governor. Two years later, Mississippi's then-new governor, Haley Barbour, a Republican, reappointed him to the job.
