If you have plans to fly American Airlines this fall you may want to reconsider. As American works through its bankruptcy proceedings, labor strife between the pilots and management is starting to heat up --and passengers are beginning to pay the price.The airline expects to cancel up to 2 percent of its total flights through the end of October because of the disputes. Pilots and crew are calling in sick or delaying fights by getting into a fight with one another, and last-minute maintenance calls are mucking up schedules.
On Wednesday, an American flight was delayed up to four hours out of John F. Kennedy International Airport after two flight attendants got into a verbal argument. The plane eventually returned to the gate and a new flight crew took over. Bruce Hicks, a spokesman for the airline's parent company AMR Corp. says sick leave for pilots is 20 percent higher than a year ago and says pilots call in maintenance requests, often right before takeoff.The Allied Pilots Association, the union that represents the 11,000 pilots of American Airlines, says the pilots are not to blame for these mishaps. It blames the cancelations on company mismanagement and problems with old planes."APA members are experienced professionals who conduct themselves as professionals under whatever circumstances they encounter. Any negative impact on our airline's operational integrity is of management's own making."
These types of issues are creating serious delays in passengers’ air travel. "When these things occur they have a trickle down effects. A flight delay in New York can cause a flight later on in the day in San Francisco to be delayed," said Rick Seaney, co-founder of FareCompare.com
.Airline experts say it's so bad that they're recommending not flying on American unless you have to be there. "I would tell them if they are going to a funeral, a wedding something that they absolutely have to go they might think twice," said George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog.com.Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/09/21/why-might-not-want-to-fly-american-right-now/#ixzz277bntgSb
'Alarming': Life span drops sharply for least-educated whites
'We're used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven't improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling'
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
updated 9/21/2012 4:19:51 AM ETFor generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.
Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.
The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
Maryland is richest state; Mississippi is poorest
White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed. But blacks over all do not live as long as whites, while Hispanics live longer than both whites and blacks.
“We’re used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven’t improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling,” said John G. Haaga, head of the Population and Social Processes Branch of the National Institute on Aging, who was not involved in the new study.
Troubling gap The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in London.
The decline among the least educated non-Hispanic whites, who make up a shrinking share of the population, widened an already troubling gap. The latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better.
The dropping life expectancies have helped weigh down the United States in international life expectancy rankings, particularly for women. In 2010, American women fell to 41st place, down from 14th place in 1985, in the United Nations rankings. Among developed countries, American women sank from the middle of the pack in 1970 to last place in 2010, according to the Human Mortality Database.
The slump is so vexing that it became the subject of an inquiry by the National Academy of Sciences, which published a report on it last year.
“There’s this enormous issue of why,” said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard who was an author of a 2008 paper that found modest declines in life expectancy for less educated white women from 1981 to 2000. “It’s very puzzling and we don’t have a great explanation.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49114733/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/#.UFyTa41lSSo
Gold Seen Luring Wealthy as Central Bankers Expand Stimulus
By Glenys Sim - Sep 21, 2012 11:00 AM ET
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More high-net-worth individuals are seeking to buy gold to protect their wealth from the risk of rising inflation after central banks boosted stimulus, according to Deutsche Bank AG’s asset and wealth-management unit.
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Gold is in the 12th year of a bull run, 13 percent higher this year, as investors seek to hedge against weaker currencies and the threat of rising consumer prices. Photographer: Sergio Dionisio/Bloomberg
“Gold has historically been considered to be a store of value and an inflation hedge and increasingly it is being utilized as a monetary instrument,” said Mark Smallwood, head of Asia-Pacific wealth-management solutions. “There is a growing interest among our clients to gain exposure,” he said, with an increased preference for physical holdings.
Gold is in the 12th year of a bull run, 13.5 percent higher this year, as investors seek to hedge against weaker currencies and the threat of rising consumer prices. Holdings in gold- backed exchange-traded products expanded to an all-time high yesterday, and Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank are among banks forecasting that the price will rally to a record.
“With the movements by the central banks globally in the last few weeks, there is considerable investor concern as to the long-term effects of the liquidity infusions,” Smallwood said by phone from Guilin, China yesterday. “As a result of that, private clients are concerned about the possible future effects of inflation and the means of hedging that risk.”
Immediate-delivery gold reached $1,779.50 an ounce on Sept. 19, the highest price since February, after central banks took further steps to bolster their economies hurt by Europe’s debt crisis. The metal, which reached a record $1,921.15 on Sept. 6, 2011, gained 0.4 percent to $1,774.85 at 5:30 p.m. in Singapore.
Central Banks
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-21/gold-seen-luring-wealthy-as-central-bankers-expand-stimulus-2-.html
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