India’s government had banned international adoption of children from Andhra Pradesh ever since 2001 or 2002, but now Americans would call India’s ‘federal’ government (called ‘central’ or ‘union’ government in India) has changed that.

The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development’s sub-agency, called Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), recognized Andhra Pradesh state’s Department of Women Development and Child Welfare (DWDCW) to place children for international adoption.

If you’re interested (I’ve placed a video in this website’s video gallery, showing orphans from Andhra Pradesh), please contact one of the adoption agencies approved by CARA (I’ve been in touch with Frank Block, executive director of Love Basket, which is one of these approved agencies) and ask them how to go about this.

USA: Age bias is as wrong as race bias. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives complaints, alerts employers, leads to either reconciliation or a lawsuit. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act covering workers 40 years and up says complaining workers must file an EEOC ‘charge’ at least 60 days before appearing in court. Meantime, the EEOC is to tell the employer of the prolem and try to resolve the dispute informally.

In 2002, FedEx workers complained, led by Patricia Kennedy, who completed the EEOC questionnaire but not also the more formal ‘charge’ form on time. The EEOC is siding with the workers, saying the questionnaire filled the requirements. A judge threw out a lawsuit because the formal charge wasn’t filled out on time. The US Court of Appeals reinstated the case in 2006, saying Kennedy had fulfilled the basic requirements in her first filing, even though the EEOC didn’t notify the employer. FedEx appealed to the Supreme Court.

Assistant Solicitor General Toby Heytens said the justices should defer to the EEOC’s interpretation of its regulations. Supreme Court Chief Justic John Roberts said, ‘Why should we defer to an agency regulation with the people in the agency hardly ever follow it?’ The Court is angry with the EEOC for not telling her the correct procedures. Roberts said to the FedEx lawyer, ‘I just don’t understand your leap from government incompetence to saying the worker loses.’ Justice Clarence Thomas, who chaired the EEOC during 1982-1990, sat in his customary silence, rocked in his chair, looked at the ceiling. Justice Antonin Scalia said EEOC regulations are confusing and contradictory and ‘My main concern in this case, however the decision comes out, is to do something that will require the EEOC to get its act in order, because this is nonsense. This whole situation can be traceable back to the agency and, whoever ends up bearing the burden of it, it’s the agency’s fault, and this scheme has to be revised.’ Justice Ruth Ginsburg said if the responsibility had been Kennedy’s to inform the employer, ‘you would have a much stronger argument, but federal law places that burden on the EEOC.’

The EEOC has clarified its bureaucratic policy since 2002.
Results of the case: 17,000 age discrimination claims each year with the EOCC might now be able to file age-bias lawsuits.

RETIREMENT:
Consider: Only 16.9% of all American retirees get corporate pensions, so they must live on savings. Bond interest rates are low, so they probably can’t live on bond savings. Inflation of 3%/year will erode pensions by 24% in ten years. Life spans grow—an average 65-yaar-old woman can expect to live to nearly 87, and the equivalent man to 84. About 58% of all couples aged 65 will have one partner live to 90, and 28% will have one partner live to 95. These are merely averages.
If you invested $1 million in bonds in 1977, then withdrew 6% of the account eh first yea rand raised that amount each year by the % gain in the consumer price index, your account would empty by 1998. If you invested in shor-term Treasury Bills, you’d go broke in the same amount of time. An account invested in stocks would have grown to $12 million in 30 years, even with withdrawals.
This is not a guarantee—if you had retired in 1972, with same scenario, you’d have gone broke in 1985 because the market fell.
Therefore:
1. If you retire young and so your retirement might be long, you might want to leave more of your retirement funds in stocks—say 50% in stocks, 50% in bonds if you retire at 65. Not too much in volatile stocks—cut back on risk. But don’t put ALL in bonds.
2. Don’t take out all the money in January that you expect to spend that year—doing so loses the interest on those funds.
3. Keep a simple life. Costs down. Withdraw only maximum of 4% or 5% per year.
4. Don’t overtrust financial advisers supplied by employer at retirement parties. These advisers claim to be able to fund early retirement if the workers will invest in high-return, high-commission funds. Now regulators are fining brokerage houses who exaggerate returns. So don’t retire too early. Some people have simply assumed that their retirement funds would mature rapidly every year, have quit their jobs, have spent heavily in a retirement home, have seen a downturn in the market hit their retirement funds, have had to return to work at far lower salaries than they had before.
5. Remember health care costs can be higher as you get older, so save extra.
6. Thinking you can make as much from returns alone as you can from working means either a very large investment or an unrealistically high expectation of return. Average long-term return is 10.4% when all returns are reinvested, 6% for more conservative instruments, say bonds. Thinking you can withdraw 9%/year and never run out is unrealistic and will probably deplete your fund, says the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

He was kicked out of University of Colorado in the 1950s for drinking, and lost his baseball scholarship. Then ‘I went out into the real world and started seeing how active people in other countries were about their government.’ ‘We were all on the same page the day after 9/11. We were united,’ he says, and it’s obvious to people who remember that time. He says the Bush administration should apologize for ‘being transparently deceptive about weapons of mass destruction.’

USA: In the early 1900s, businessmen created social and professional networks like the Lions Club, the Rotarians, and the Kiwanis, then expanded them to focus on humanitarian causes, now work to fight hunger, disease and homelessness worldwide. The Lions work to eradicate blindness, Rotarians to (among other things) stamp out polio, Kiwanis to serve ‘the children of the world’. All three clubs’ membership has declined:

Lions Clubs had 570,000 in 1978, now have about 400,000 members.
Rotarians had peak membership of 421,953 in 1993, has been below 400,000 since 1999.
Kiwanis hit peak US membership in 1992 at 325,000, declined 5%/year until 2006, rebounded to 260,000.

Some have family clubs involving parents and children. Pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners change to early-coffee-mornings and evening gatherings to adjust to young professionals’ hectic work schedules—more flexible, more available.

People still want to volunteer, but with their families and kids. ‘They want to get their hands dirty. They want to build houses and playgrounds’, sayd Dane LaJoye of Lions Clubs. Lions have started dozens of family clubs. Women now are 22% of membership.

‘Everyone’s so time-crunched that we just passed a change in attendance requirements…taking people’s lifestyles and personal and professional commitments into play,’ says Donna McDonald of Rotary, which now allows 50% attendance at weekly club meetings and started an e-club allowing members to meet online. Another club simply meets less frequently.

A new Kiwanis club of young professionals meets monthly for 45 minutes, organizes 405 service projects a month through interactive calendars on their website, doesn’t take attendance or require members to participate on a minimum number of projects. It uses meetup.com and a Google group to organize itself. They can’t take 2-3 hours once a week away from work, family, graduate school.

Kiwanis is shifting emphasis to leadership development. The next generation is community-oriented and savvy. Many did community service as part of middle school or high school. They care about environment, equality, global thinking.

ASTRONAUTS’ ILLNESS
USA: Astronauts returning to earth after spending time in space are frequently dizzy and nauseous. Also, those returning to gravity have trouble with atrophying muscles, depending on how long they’ve been gone. Astronaut Sunita Williams said re-entry was ‘painful’ and Peggy Whitson said the gravity force felt heavy, but she’s back at the space station again. Once back in gravity, blood puddles in the head and feet. Some astronauts faint. Also, inner-ear disorientation causes imbalance. This can cause commanders flying the shuttle to experience slowed reactions and ability to track moving objects. On the ground, astronauts say calf muscles are so unused to weight that they can have trouble walking. Result: people who regularly lifted weights before leaving were told not to go anywhere without having two people stand one on either side.

ASTRONOMY, A STAR LIKE OUR SUN
USA: Astronomers discovered a fifth planet orbiting 55 Cancri, a star 40 light years from our solar system. The star is ‘very much like our own sun’, says San Francisco State University astronomer Debra Fischer, and the planet is about the same distance from its sun as Earth is from ours and ‘would be a little warmer than the Earth,’ said Jonathan Lunine of University of Arizona. Not after global warming.

STEM CELLS, UMBILICAL CORD BLOOD
USA: The American Medical Association adopted new guidelines urging pregnant mothers to donate their babies’ umbilical cord blood to public cord-blood banks. The stem cells in cord blood can save lives—they’re the same stem cells that make up bone-marrow transplants that help many people survive certain cancers, but cord blood transplants easily into unrelated people. ‘Physicians should be prepared to discuss cord blood banking options with their patients during pregnancy,’ AMA board member William Dolan said.

JET ETIQUETTE: HOW TO BEHAVE ON AN AIRPANE.
1. Don’t take too many, or too large, carry-ons on the airplane. While you struggle to fit it all in place, you hold up other people trying to board.
2. When you board, greet a flight attendant with courtesy and respect. That impresses. If not, word travels fast around the airplane, ‘The passenger in seat 12A is rude.’
3. Don’t chatter on cellphones all the time—space is limited and other people don’t want to hear.
4. Don’t put trash in seat-backet pockets—sometimes airlines can’t clean them between flights.
5. Keep tray table clean, especially if you bring your own food. And don’t bring smelly food.
6. Keep your elbows in your own space. Make eye contact with your seatmate and say, ‘I’m going to bring my elbows in. If I fall asleep and come into your area, please wake me.’ That lets them know not to invade your space, and is non-confrontational.
7. Address unruly passengers in a non-confrontational way: ‘Your child is kicking my seat, and I’d really appreciate it if they’d stop.’ If they don’t, let flight attendant deal with it.

1. Big international retailer websites stationed in the nation where the person is from. For instance, if buying for a UK friend, buy at Amazon.uk, not Amazon.com. They’ll take international credit cards. And no customs or international shipping rates.
2. Gift certificates can be sent via email from the same websites.
3. Big international retailers. For instance, in Britain and Ireland, Marks & Spencer.
4. Send a check. They can spend it on what they like.

1. When you travel, put your suitcase in a place less likely to house bedbugs—like a metal rack.
2. Shine a penlight behind the hotel headboard and look for dark fecal stains. Pull back bedding and look for fecal stains on mattreww seams and ticking.
3. If you wake up with red welts, all laundry goes into a plastic bag outdoors, then into a hot cycle, then into a hot dryer. Five or ten minutes on high heat kills everything. Cold will not kill eggs or all the adults.
4. Don’t buy used bedding or bedding from street sales.
5. Don’t buy bug spray and battle it yourself. Get a good company to do it professionally.
6. Either get rid of your box spring and mattress, or at least get a bug-proof zippered mattress cover that keeps them trapped inside for at least one year
(from Freydkin, Donna. ‘They’re Ba-a-ack for a snack’, USA Today, 2007 Nov 7, p13D)

If you have a business, hire one. Many were leaders, trained in loyalty, tech-savvy, at ease with ethnic diversity, trained to handle a quickly changing environment, in better physical condition. To find them, check military.com