Some 18 percent of US veterans were unemployed within one to three years of discharge.

Strained by war, recently discharged veterans are having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years due partly to employer concerns about their mental health and overall skills, a government study says.
The Veterans Affairs Department report, obtained by AP, points to continuing problems with the Bush administration’s efforts to help 4.4 million troops who have been discharged from active duty since 1990.
The 2007 study by the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. found that 18 percent of the veterans were unemployed within one to three years of discharge, while one out of four who did find jobs earned less than $21,840 a year. Many had taken advantage of government programs such as the GI Bill to boost job prospects, but there was little evidence that education benefits yielded higher pay or better advancement.
The report blamed the poor prospects partly on inadequate job networks and lack of mentors after extended periods in war. The study said employers often had misplaced stereotypes about veterans’ fitness for employment, such as concerns they did not have adequate technological skills, or were too rigid, lacked education or were at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Separately, a Labor Department report obtained by the AP showed that formal job complaints by reservists remained high, citing concerns about denied jobs or benefits after they tried to return to their old jobs after extended tours in Iraq. Reservists filed 1,357 complaints with the department in 2006, the latest figures available, down from nearly 1,600 in 2005, when complaints reached the highest level since 1991.
While complaints declined in 2006, the Labor Department report noted for the first time that figures in the previous years might have been inflated. That’s because in some cases a single complaint was double counted after the case was closed in one state and then reopened in another state.
A Pentagon survey of reservists released last year found increasing discontent among returning troops about the government’s performance in protecting their legal rights after taking leave from work. Some legal experts have said those numbers may grow once the Iraq war winds down and more troops come home after an extended period in combat.
The veterans also tended to have lower wages, although total income was often similar when factoring in disability pay and other government benefits, and to be in low-income families (under $29,000) for up to eight years after separation.

Risk factors for suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts are similar in many countries, new research suggests.
The study, which used data collected by the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative, looked at people in 17 nations and found that an overall average of 9.2 percent reported having seriously thought about suicide and 2.7 percent attempted suicide. It also found that suicide risk factors are associated with having a mental disorder, being female, younger, less educated, and unmarried.
“Our research suggests that suicidal thoughts and behaviors are more common than one might think, and also that key risk factors for these behaviors are quite consistent across many different countries around the world,“ study leader Matthew Nock, associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, said in a prepared statement, according to HealthDay News.
While the overall averages were 9.2 percent for suicidal thoughts and 2.7 percent for attempted suicide, there were variations from country to country. For example, rates of suicidal thoughts ranged from 3.1 percent in China to 15.9 percent in New Zealand. But the researchers noted that people in some countries wouldn’t report having suicidal thoughts because it’s culturally unacceptable, meaning those countries would have much lower rates.
In high-income countries, the strongest risk factor associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors was mood disorders; in low- and middle-income countries, it was impulse control disorders.
“We often think of suicidal thoughts and behaviors as occurring among people who are depressed, but across all of these countries, we found that it is not just depression that increases the risk of suicidal behaviors--impulse control disorders, substance abuse disorders and anxiety disorders are all associated with a significantly higher risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts,“ Nock said.
Among people with suicidal thoughts, the risk of making a suicide attempt was strongest among those with substance abuse and impulse control disorders, which suggests these disorders are most strongly associated with acting on suicidal thoughts.
The study also found that among people with suicidal thoughts, 29 percent later made a suicide attempt, and these attempts were most common within the first year after the onset of suicidal thoughts.
Among people with both suicidal thoughts and a plan, there was a 56 percent probability of a suicide attempt, compared with 15.4 percent among those without a plan.
The study looked at 84,850 adults in Nigeria, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Japan, New Zealand, China, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, Israel and Lebanon.
Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. This is the first study to examine the suicidal thoughts and behaviors of people in numerous and diverse countries.

If you’re sad and shopping, watch your wallet: A new study shows people’s spending judgment goes out the window when they’re down, especially if they’re a bit self-absorbed.
Study participants who watched a sadness-inducing video clip offered to pay nearly four times as much money to buy a water bottle than a group that watched an emotionally neutral clip.
The so-called “misery is not miserly“ phenomenon is well-known to psychologists, advertisers and personal shoppers alike, and has been documented in a similar study in 2004.
The new study released Friday by researchers from four universities goes further, trying to answer whether temporary sadness alone can trigger spendthrift tendencies, AP reported.
The study found a willingness to spend freely by sad people occurs mainly when their sadness triggers greater “self-focus“. That response was measured by counting how frequently study participants used references to “I,“ “me,“ “my“ and “myself“ in writing an essay about how a sad situation such as the one portrayed in the video would affect them personally.
The brief video was about the death of a boy’s mentor. Another group watched an emotionally neutral clip about the Great Barrier Reef, the vast coral reef system off Australia’s coast.
On average, the group watching the sad video offered to pay nearly four times as much for a sporty-looking, insulated water bottle than the group watching the nature video, according to the study by researchers from Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and Pittsburgh universities.
Thirty-three study subjects--young adults who responded to an advertisement offering $10 for participation--were offered the chance to trade some of the $10 to buy the bottle. The sad group offered to trade an average of $2.11, compared with 56 cents for the neutral group.
Despite the big difference, participants in the sad group typically insisted that the video’s emotional content didn’t affect their willingness to spend more--an incorrect assumption, said one of the study’s co-authors.
“This is a phenomenon that occurs without awareness,“ Jennifer Lerner, a Harvard professor who studies emotion and decision making, said in a phone interview. “This is really different from the idea of retail therapy, where people are feeling negative and want to cheer themselves up by shopping. People have no idea this is going on.“
The researchers concluded sadness can trigger a chain of emotions leading to extravagant tendencies. Sadness leads people to become more focused on themselves, causing the person to feel that they and their possessions are worth little. That feeling increases willingness to pay more--presumably to feel better about themselves.

Global efforts to avoid tens of millions of preventable deaths by reducing tobacco use have been slow to take hold, and no country has fully adopted the World Health Organization’s recommendations, WHO said.
Unless urgent action is taken, the health agency of the United Nations estimates tobacco could kill one billion people this century.
“As a global community we cannot allow this to happen,“ Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of WHO, said at a news conference to launch the organization’s first comprehensive analysis of global tobacco use and control efforts.
Chan said the tobacco industry describes WHO as its No. 1 enemy, Reuters reported.
“Today we intend to enhance that reputation,“ she said in unveiling the “WHO Report of the Global Tobacco Epidemic“ that for the first time analyzed tobacco policies of 179 countries.
The analysis found that only 5 percent of the world’s population live in countries that protect their people through any of the smoking reduction measures WHO has outlined.
It also found that 40 percent of countries still allow smoking in hospitals and schools.
“While efforts to combat tobacco are gaining momentum, virtually every country needs to do more,“ Chan said.
WHO outlined six anti-tobacco strategies through its “MPOWER“ program that Chan said “when combined as a package, offer us the best chance of reversing this growing epidemic.“

A woman on her way to a martyrÕs tomb at Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, Tehran, on the 29th anniversary of the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

China is debating whether to relax control of the Internet during the Olympics, allowing access to banned websites such as the BBC, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee said.
Plans to tear down the so-called Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon, said Wang Hui, head of media relations for the organizing committee, AFP wrote.
“We are studying this now based on suggestions of some journalists and a study of the experiences of other countries, so during the Olympics there may be some changes,“ she said. “This is one of the ways the Olympics may promote progress in China.“
China tightly polices cyberspace and Chinese web surfers see a stripped-down version of the Internet minus some news sites such as the BBC and those belonging to human rights groups or any other sites judged subversive by the country’s communist rulers.
Wang said that changes were expected to be in place in time for the Olympics for the 20,000 foreign journalists planning to cover the Games.
“I believe you will be able to (access banned sites such as the BBC) but I can’t give you a promise yet. The relevant government departments are still working on it,“ she said.
It was unclear whether Chinese citizens would benefit from the plan to reduce Internet oversight but wider reporting freedoms introduced for foreign journalists here last year have not been extended to domestic reporters.

The Vatican has reported a further dramatic fall in the number of Roman Catholic monks and nuns worldwide.
Newly published statistics showed that the number of men and women belonging to religious orders fell by 10 percent to just under a million between 2005 and 2006, BBC reported.
During the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, the number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by a quarter.
The downward trend accelerated despite a steady increase in the membership of the Catholic Church to more than 1.1billion.
However, correspondents say even this failed to keep pace with the overall increase in world population.

South Korea will be the world's oldest country by 2050, if the current trend of fewer births continues.

South Korea proposes to spend more than $11 billion this year on state programs to raise the birthrate and cope with a rapidly ageing society, a presidential panel said.
Some 10.7 trillion won ($11.27 billion) is earmarked for this year’s programs, up from 7.6 trillion won in 2007, said the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy.
The panel said various government agencies or ministries would together spend six trillion won to cope with the ageing population, with 4.7 trillion won set aside to raise the birthrate and support child-rearing, AFP reported.
It was not clear whether the incoming government, which takes office on Feb. 25, would endorse all the spending plans.
After decades of promoting family planning in the crowded nation, South Korea has become increasingly alarmed at the prospect of an ageing society.
Officials say South Korea will be the world’s oldest country by 2050 if the current trend of fewer births continues.
Official data shows the country’s population, which was 48 million in 2006, is forecast to shrink annually from 2045 to 2050 by nearly one percent, one of the fastest declines in the world.
Analysts have warned the low birthrate would cause a drop in the workforce and an ageing society, imposing a burden on the pension system.
The government has announced plans to increase the number of nursery schools and provide more financial support for parents.
Helped by an increase in the number of marriages, the number of births grew by 13,452 to 451,514 in 2007, the first increase since 2000.