Article:
In the long history of false promises made by trade negotiators, the claim that China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 would reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China and create good U.S. jobs stands out. The total U.S. goods trade deficit with China reached $324.2 billion in 2013. Between 2001 and 2013, this growing deficit eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs (Kimball and Scott 2014). As the world’s largest retailer, U.S.-based Wal-Mart is a key conduit of Chinese imports into the American market. This paper updates earlier work (Scott 2007) to provide a conservative estimate of how many jobs have likely been displaced by Chinese imports entering the country through Wal-Mart:

 Chinese imports entering through Wal-Mart in 2013 likely totaled at least $49.1 billion and the combined effect of imports from and exports to China conducted through Wal-Mart likely accounted for 15.3 percent of the growth of the total U.S. goods trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013.

 The Wal-Mart-based trade deficit with China alone eliminated or displaced over 400,000 U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2013.

 The manufacturing sector and its workers have been hardest hit by the growth of Wal-Mart’s imports. Wal-Mart’s increased trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013 eliminated 314,500 manufacturing jobs, 75.7 percent of the jobs lost from Wal-Mart’s trade deficit. These job losses are particularly destructive because jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education.

 Wal-Mart has announced plans to create opportunities for American manufacturing by “investing in American jobs.�? To date, very few actual U.S. jobs have been created by this program, and since 2001, the growing Wal-Mart trade deficit with China has displaced more than 100 U.S. jobs for every actual or promised job created through this program.

 China has achieved its rapidly growing trade surpluses by manipulating its currency: it invests hundreds of billions of dollars per year in U.S. Treasury bills, other government securities, and private foreign assets to bid up the value of the dollar and other currencies and thereby lower the cost of its exports to the United States and other countries. China has also repressed the labor rights of its workers and suppressed their wages, making its products artificially cheap and further subsidizing its exports. Wal-Mart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internationally recognized norms of fair trade by providing a vast and ever-expanding conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States.

 China trade and U.S. job loss

 Exports support jobs in the United States, and imports displace them. Thus, the net effect of trade flows on employment must be based on an analysis of the trade balance. This Briefing Paper calculates the employment effects of growing goods trade deficits by using an input-output model that estimates the direct and indirect labor requirements of producing output in a given domestic industry. The model includes 195 U.S. industries, 77 of which are in the manufacturing sector.

 The model estimates the labor that would be required to produce a given volume of exports, and the labor that is displaced when a given volume of imports is substituted for domestic output. The job losses presented here represent an estimate of what total employment levels would have been in the absence of growing trade deficits.

 U.S. exports to China in 2001 supported 161,400 jobs, but U.S. imports displaced production that would have supported 1,127,700 jobs, as shown in the bottom half of Table 1. Therefore, the $84.1 billion goods trade deficit in 2001 displaced nearly 1 million jobs in that year. Net job displacement rose to 4,123,400 in 2013. Growth in trade deficits with China has reduced demand for goods produced in every region of the United States and has led to job displacement in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The overall China trade and job loss estimates in this report are based on the findings reported in Kimball and Scott (2014).

 Table 1 Wal-Mart – China goods trade and U.S. job displacement, 2001–2013 2001 2013 Change, 2001–2013 U.S. total Wal-Mart U.S. total Wal-Mart U.S. total Wal-Mart Goods trade with China ($ billions, nominal) U.S. domestic exports* 18.0 0.1 114.0 1.0 96.0 0.9 U.S. imports for consumption 102.1 11.4 438.2 49.1 336.1 37.6 U.S. trade balance -84.1 -11.4 -324.2 -48.1 -240.1 -36.7 Wal-Mart share of U.S. imports 11.2% U.S. trade-related jobs supported and displaced (thousands of jobs) U.S. domestic exports–jobs supported 161.4 0.5 767.5 6.5 606.1 6.1 U.S. imports for consumption–jobs displaced 1,127.7 126.3 4,890.9 547.8 3,763.2 421.5 U.S. trade balance–net jobs displaced 966.3 125.8 4,123.4 541.3 3,157.1 415.4 Wal-Mart share of U.S. Job loss 13.2% *Domestic exports are goods produced in the United States and exclude foreign exports (re-exports), i.e., goods produced in other countries and shipped through the United States. Total exports as reported by the U.S. International Trade Commission include re-exports. Total exports were estimated to be $121.7 billion in 2013, and U.S. re-exports to China represent 6.33 percent of total exports. The employment estimates shown here are based on domestic exports only. See Scott and Kimball (2014), "Methodology" Appendix and endnotes 5 and 6 there for additional details on data sources and models used. This analysis assumes job gains and losses due to Wal-Mart trade are proportional to the shares of trade in each year for domestic exports and imports for consumption. Source: Author's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau (2013), U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC 2014), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS 2014), BLS-EP 2014a, BLS-EP 2014b, and Scott and Kimball (2014). Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image

 Wal-Mart’s role

 Given its enormous size and the fact that it sells manufactured goods, which have been the primary Chinese export to the U.S. in recent years, it is natural to try to estimate the role of Wal-Mart as a conduit for Chinese trade. We find that a conservative estimate is that Wal-Mart accounted for approximately 11.2 percent of total U.S. goods imports from China between 2001 and 2013. This estimate is based on published reports on Wal-Mart trade with China between 2001 and 2004, including Wal-Mart’s own estimates of its imports from China, on more recent published data on ocean trade (by company), and on the relationship between total Wal-Mart sales in the United States and personal consumption expenditures on goods from the GDP accounts (BEA 2015).

 Wal-Mart provided its own estimate for the value of imports from China in its fiscal year ending January 31, 2004 (Wal-Mart 2007). Most of these goods were imported in 2003, and the Wal-Mart share of total imports from China in that year was 11.9 percent. Bianco and Zellner (2003) and Bianco (2006) have also attempted to construct estimates of Wal-Mart’s imports from China and have reported imports that yield shares that are similar to Wal-Mart’s own estimates, with the lowest share reported as 11.2 percent in 2004. Since 2007, evidence strongly suggests that this share has not shrunk (and may have risen). For example, The Journal of Commerce produces annual reports of total U.S. imports and exports of goods via ocean container transport. While this is a partial and incomplete accounting, it does show that Wal-Mart was the top U.S. importer of ocean container freight in every year between 2001 and 2013, and its share of top 100 imports remained stable in a range from 12.1 percent to 14.8 percent of total imports of the top 100 importers.

 Limited data on total imports by company are also available from shipments data collected by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. Data on Wal-Mart imports are available for only two comparable months in the study period: November 2007 and 2012. The available information reports total imports in both kilograms and container equivalents (twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs). The Wal-Mart share of total imports from China increased in both kilograms and TEUs in this period (Panjiva.com 2015). In short, the 2003 share of imports accounted for by Wal-Mart as estimated by the company itself (11.2 percent) has likely only grown since then. However, for this report we make the conservative assumption that it has remained stable.

 But a stable share of Wal-Mart imports implies rapid growth in volumes. U.S. goods imports from China increased $336.1 billion between 2001 and 2013, as shown in the top half of Table 1, an increase of 329 percent. If Wal-Mart’s share of U.S. imports from China remained stable in this period at 11.2 percent, this implies that its imports increased from $11.4 billion in 2001 to $49.1 billion in 2013, an increase of $37.6 billion. As it is a retailer and not a manufacturer, Wal-Mart likely exports only a negligible amount to China. Our best estimate is that Wal-Mart accounts (at most) for roughly 1.0 percent of total U.S. exports to China. This in turn implies that Wal-Mart was responsible for a $36.7 billion increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013.

 The Wal-Mart trade deficit displaced 125,800 jobs in 2001 and 541,300 jobs in 2013. Thus, Wal-Mart was responsible for displacing at least an additional 415,400 U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2013, as shown in the bottom half of Table 1 and in Figure A. While Wal-Mart was responsible for 11.2 percent of U.S. imports in this period, it was responsible for 13.2 percent of the U.S. job losses due to growing trade deficits with China (Table 1). Since Wal-Mart’s exports to China were negligible, the rapid growth of its imports had a proportionately bigger impact on the U.S. trade deficit and job losses than overall U.S. trade flows with China (since the rest of U.S. trade with China does include significant U.S. exports to that country). On average, each of the 4,835 stores Wal-Mart operated in the United States in fiscal 2014 (Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 2014) was responsible for the loss of about 86 U.S. jobs due to the growth of Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013.

 Figure A Wal-Mart share of jobs lost due to growth of U.S. goods trade deficit with China, 2001–2013 Category Jobs Other U.S. trade 2,741,700 Wal-Mart 415,400 Chart Data Download data The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. The data underlying the figure. Source: Author's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau (2013), U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC 2014), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS 2014), BLS Employment Projections program (BLS-EP 2014a and 2014b), and Scott and Kimball (2014). Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image

 These job loss estimates are conservative because goods sold at Wal-Mart are primarily durable and nondurable consumer goods, such as furniture, apparel and textiles, toys, and sporting goods. These are particularly labor-intensive manufacturing industries and support more jobs per $1 billion of imports than more capital-intensive goods such as machine tools, motor vehicles and parts, and aircraft and parts imported by other U.S. firms.

 Job losses in manufacturing account for 75.7 percent of total jobs displaced due to the growing U.S. trade deficit with China in this period (Kimball and Scott 2014, Table 3). Jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education. Manufacturing also employs a greater share of such workers than other sectors (Scott 2013).

 The job displacement estimates in this study are conservative. They include only the jobs directly or indirectly displaced by trade, and exclude jobs in domestic wholesale and retail trade or advertising; they also exclude re-spending employment. They also do not account for the fact that during the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and continuing through 2013, jobs displaced by China trade reduced wages and spending, which led to further job losses.

 Further, the labor-market effects of the U.S. trade deficit with China are not limited to job loss and displacement and the associated direct wage losses. Competition with low-wage workers from less-developed countries such as China has driven down wages for workers in U.S. manufacturing and reduced the wages and bargaining power of similar, non-college-educated workers throughout the economy, as previous EPI research has shown (Bivens 2013). The affected population includes essentially all workers with less than a four-year college degree—such workers make up roughly 70 percent of the workforce, or about 100 million workers (U.S. Census Bureau 2015).

 The workers affected by this job displacement include millions whose jobs were not lost but whose wages were held down because of increased labor market competition with the job losers. As earlier EPI research has shown, trade with China between 2001 and 2011 displaced 2.7 million workers, who suffered a direct loss of $37.0 billion in reduced wages alone when re-employed in non-traded industries in 2011 (Scott 2013). In addition, the nation’s 100 million non-college educated workers suffered a total loss of roughly $180 billion due to increased trade with low-wage countries. These indirect wage losses were nearly five times greater than the direct losses suffered by workers displaced by China trade, and the pool of affected workers was nearly 40 times larger (100 million non-college-educated workers versus 2.7 million displaced workers).

 Wal-Mart’s U.S. manufacturing promises

 In 2013 Wal-Mart announced a plan to purchase “$250 billion in products that support the creation of American jobs�? by 2023 by increasing purchases of U.S. manufactured goods (Loeb 2013, Wal-Mart 2015a). To date, very few actual U.S. manufacturing jobs have been created as a result of this commitment. Wal-Mart remains, by far, the top importer of ocean shipping containers in the United States with total imports of more than 775,000 container-equivalents (TEUs) in 2014, exceeding total imports by Target, the number two importer, by more than 250,000 TEUs (48.7 percent, more than total Target imports) (Journal of Commerce 2015). In addition, about two-thirds of what Wal-Mart calls American-made goods are actually groceries, which support few U.S. manufacturing jobs (Alliance for American Manufacturing 2015).

 In 2015, Wal-Mart’s publicly available list of manufacturing jobs that have been or will be created in the United States includes fewer than 4,100 specific U.S. manufacturing jobs, and many of those are promised jobs that firms “will create�? up to 10 years in the future (Wal-Mart 2015c). Since 2001, Wal-Mart’s growing trade deficit with China has displaced more than 100 U.S. jobs for every job that Wal-Mart has created in the United States through its “Invest in American Jobs�? program.�? Meanwhile, the U.S. goods trade deficit with China increased by $23.9 billion (7.5 percent) in 2014 (Scott 2015). Continuing growth in that trade deficit and in Wal-Mart imports will likely displace many times more manufacturing jobs than Wal-Mart creates in the United States over the next decade.

 Conclusion

 The growing goods trade deficit with China displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2013, and it has been a prime contributor to the crisis in manufacturing employment over the past 15 years. Due to its own growing trade deficit with China, Wal-Mart alone was responsible for the loss of more than 400,000 U.S. jobs, 13.2 percent of total U.S. jobs lost in this period. The current unbalanced U.S.-China trade relationship is bad for both countries, and Wal-Mart has played a major role in creating that imbalance. The United States is piling up foreign debt, losing export capacity, and facing a more fragile macroeconomic environment.

 Meanwhile, China has become dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment generation, has suppressed the purchasing power of its own middle class with a weak currency, and, most importantly, has purchased trillions of dollars of hard-currency reserves in low-yielding, government securities and other financial assets, instead of investing these funds in public goods that could benefit Chinese consumers and workers. In order to artificially and illegally hold down the value of its currency, and thereby lower the cost of its exports to the United States and other countries, China has purchased nearly $5 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills and other government securities and private assets (IMF 2015, SWFI 2015) since it entered the WTO in 2001. It has also repressed the labor rights and wages of its workers, making its exports artificially cheap, further subsidizing its exports. Wal-Mart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internationally recognized norms of fair trade behavior by providing a vast and growing conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States.

 The U.S. relationship with China needs fundamental change: addressing the exchange rate policies and labor standards issues in the Chinese economy should be important national priorities. Wal-Mart’s huge reliance on Chinese imports illustrates that many powerful economic actors in the United States benefit from China’s unfair trading system. Wal-Mart’s gain, however, is not the country’s gain, as Wal-Mart’s imports have contributed to the ever-growing trade deficit that imperils future economic growth.

 —The author thanks Josh Bivens and Ross Eisenbrey for comments; Elizabeth Glass for research assistance; and Molly McGrath, Kevin Rudiger, and Aditya Pande for data analysis.

 About the author

 Robert E. Scott is director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. He joined EPI as an international economist in 1996. Before that, he was an assistant professor with the College of Business and Management of the University of Maryland at College Park. His areas of research include international economics and trade agreements and their impacts on working people in the United States and other countries, the economic impacts of foreign investment, and the macroeconomic effects of trade and capital flows. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Berkeley.

 Endnotes

 See Kimball and Scott (2014, 6 and “Appendix: Methodology,�? 25–27) for further details.

 This report distinguishes exports produced domestically and re-exports—which are goods produced in other countries, imported into the United States, and then re-exported to other countries, in this case to China. Re-exports do not support domestic employment because they are not produced domestically and they are excluded from the model used here. See Table 1 for information about the levels of U.S. re-exports to China in this period.

 This model assumes that everything else is held constant; the trade and job loss estimates shown here are based on counterfactual simulations.

 The complete list of Journal of Commerce citations for 2004–2015, covering calendar year trade between 2003 and 2014, is available on request.

 Wal-Mart (2007) reports that it “estimates about $18 billion worth of products were purchased from China [in the fiscal year ending 2004] … about $9 billion imported from direct sources and about $9 billion from indirect.�? These data are for Wal-Mart’s fiscal year ending on January 31, 2004, and were 11.9 percent of U.S. consumption imports from China in 2003, when most of those goods were imported. The following estimates all assume that Chinese imports are for Wal-Mart fiscal years (FY), and are compared with total U.S. imports in the preceding calendar years. Bianco and Zellner (2003) report that Wal-Mart imports from China totaled $12 billion (11.8 percent of U.S.-China imports) in FY 2002. Bianco (2006) reports that Wal-Mart imports from China were $22 billion in FY2005 (11.2 percent of China imports). Bianco’s estimates for FY 2004 replicate the estimate provided by Wal-Mart (2007) for its FY2004 imports from China. Based on these estimates, Table 1 assumes, conservatively, that Wal-Mart maintained a stable 11.2 percent share of U.S. goods imports from China between 2001 and 2013.

 Between 2003 and 2013, overall Wal-Mart net sales in the United States rose from $208.8 billion to $336.6 billion (Wal-Mart Stores Inc. various years), rising from 7.7 percent of total U.S. personal consumption expenditures on goods in 2003 to 8.8 percent in 2013 (BEA 2015). Thus, Wal-Mart was a major and growing channel for the distribution of both domestic and imported goods in the United States in this period. Wal-Mart was also the single largest U.S. importer of goods imported from all countries via ocean container freight in 2014 (Journal of Commerce 2015), and was responsible for 12.1 percent of the total containers imported by the top 100 companies in that year. These data suggest that Wal-Mart’s share of total China imports likely increased between 2003 and 2013. Thus, the estimate of jobs displaced by Wal-Mart’s China trade in Table 1 likely represent a lower-bound estimate of actual jobs displaced.

 Under U.S. rules, companies are allowed to petition Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to avoid disclosure of company names on bills of lading that accompany each shipment. Periodically, gaps appear in these disclosure petitions, making importing companies known for short periods of time. Comparable Wal-Mart data are available only for November 2007 and 2012 from this database.

 This calculation is based on the ratio of total Wal-Mart international sales per square foot times an estimate of total Wal-Mart square footage in China, in various Wal-Mart fiscal years (Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 2002, 2006, 2014). Wal-Mart reports state that “over 95 percent of the merchandise in our stores in China is sourced locally�? (Wal-Mart 2015b). Export estimates in this paper assume that sales per store in China were equal to the average per square foot for all Wal-Mart international stores times estimated total Wal-Mart square footage in China, and that all Wal-Mart imports into China came from the United States (the average Wal-Mart store in China was 2.3 to 2.8 times larger than the average Wal-Mart international store, based on data reported by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (various years)). This is clearly an upper bound on total Wal-Mart exports to China because it assumes that all Wal-Mart imports into China originated in the United States, which is highly unlikely.

 Wal-Mart had 6,107 international stores at the end of FY2014 and total international sales of $136.5 billion in 2014, or about $22.3 million per store. Wal-Mart had 405 stores in China, with estimated total sales of $25.6 billion in FY2014, and total imports of $1.0 billion (reported as U.S. exports in 2013 in Table 1). Assuming that all these imports were shipped from the United States, Wal-Mart was responsible for 0.9 percent of total U.S. exports to China in 2013.

 These estimates assume that jobs supported and displaced by Wal-Mart’s China trade were directly proportional to total jobs supported and displaced by total U.S. exports to and imports from China in 2001 and 2013, as estimated by Kimball and Scott (2014).

 Direct jobs displaced refer to jobs displaced within a given industry, such as motor vehicles and parts. Indirect jobs displaced are those displaced in industries that supply inputs to that industry, such as primary metal (e.g., steel), plastics and rubber products (e.g., tires and hoses), transportation, and information. Re-spending employment results from the spending of wages by employed workers. It is one form of a macroeconomic multiplier.

 Author’s calculations from the estimated $1,800 wages lost by a median-wage non-college educated worker per year (Bivens 2013) times the 68.1 percent of the workforce made up of workers with less than a four-year college degree (U.S. Census Bureau 2015) times total number of U.S. workers employed (on average) in 2014 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS 2015) (yielding roughly 100 million non-college educated workers).

 The initial Wal-Mart commitment was to purchase $50 billion in “U.S. products,�? a figure that was subsequently increased to $250 billion (Loeb 2013, Walmart 2015a).

 References

 Alliance for American Manufacturing. 2015. “ANOTHER Walmart Made in America Infographic Needed Some Work, So We Fixed It.�? Manufacture This (blog of the Alliance for American Manufacturing). July 7.

 Bianco, Anthony. 2006. The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America. New York: Currency/Doubleday.

 Bianco, Anthony, and Wendy Zellner. 2003. “Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?�? Business Week. October 3.

 Bivens, Josh. 2013. Using Standard Models to Benchmark the Costs of Globalization for American Workers Without a College Degree. Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #354.

 Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). 2015. “Table 1.1.5 Gross Domestic Product.�? (Accessed October 27).

 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 2014. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics Survey (National): Manufacturing Employment.�? [Excel file].

 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 2015. “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Statistics: Employment Level.�? [Excel file].

 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program (BLS–EP). 2014a. “Special Purpose Files—Employment Requirements Matrix; Chain-Weighted (2005 dollars) Real Domestic Employment Requirements Table for 2001�? [Excel sheet, converted to Stata data file]. http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_data_emp_requirements.htm

 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program (BLS–EP). 2014b. “Special Purpose Files—Industry Output and Employment – Data for Researchers, Industry Output.�? [CSV File, converted to Excel sheet and Stata data file]. http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_data_industry_out_and_emp.htm

 International Monetary Fund (IMF). 2015. International Financial Statistics. [CD-Rom, August 2015], Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.

 Journal of Commerce. 2015. “JOC Top 100 Importers in 2014: U.S. Foreign Trade Via Ocean Container Transport.�? May 28.

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 Loeb, Walter. 2013. “How Walmart Plans to Bring Manufacturing Back to the United States.�? Forbes. November 12.

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 Scott, Robert E. 2007. The Wal-Mart effect: Its Chinese imports have Displaced Nearly 200,000 U.S. Jobs. Issue Brief #235. Economic Policy Institute.

 Scott, Robert E. 2013. Trading Away the Manufacturing Advantage: China Trade Drives Down U.S. Wages and Benefits and Eliminated Good Jobs for U.S. Workers. Briefing Paper #367. Economic Policy Institute.

 Scott, Robert E. 2015. “Increased U.S. Trade Deficit in 2014 Warns Against Signing Trade Deal without Currency Manipulation Protection.�? Economic Indicator: Trade and Globalization. Economic Policy Institute, February 5.

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 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. 2015c. “Walmart U.S. Manufacturing Announcements.�? ||||| The Economic Policy Institute recently published a study estimating how many jobs Walmart has effectively eliminated or displaced as a result of its contribution to the U.S. trade deficit with China .

 The study states that between 2001 and 2013, the inflated deficit eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs. As the world's largest retailer, it seems to follow that U.S.-based Walmart would be a key contributor to the climbing deficit and subsequent job losses. The EPI estimates that the retailer's Chinese imports account for 15.3% of trade deficit growth in that time period.

 The study states that, in total, the U.S. trade deficit resulted in a net job loss of nearly 1 million in 2001; that number rose to over 4 million by 2013. It estimates Walmart alone contributed to over 400,000 job losses over those 12 years, and speculates that about 75% of those were manufacturing jobs which offer better pay and benefits than other affected industries, particularly for workers who lack a college education.

 Walmart announced in 2013 its plans to increase sourcing of U.S.-made products by $50 billion in the following 10 years, the New York Times reports . The EPI's study denounces that program claiming that 100 jobs are displaced by the company for every one job created.

 The EPI utilized information from a 2007 report to construct these estimates and, since the breakdown of a company's imports aren't publicly released, it relied on guesswork. A spokesperson for the company criticized the study:

 We are very proud of our U.S. manufacturing initiative and the results speak for themselves. By investing in products that support American jobs, we are able to bring new products to our shelves while bringing new jobs to local communities in Ohio, Tennessee, California, and many others. Unfortunately, this is an old report with flawed economic analysis that assumed that imports equal job losses and does not take into consideration that countless jobs are added through the global supply chain, distribution and logistics, among other areas of business.

 The EPI is headed by chairman Richard L. Trumka who also serves as the president of AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S. |||||Summary:

– America's favorite big-box retailer may be responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of US jobs since 2001, Fortune reports. According to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, Walmart's importing of cheap Chinese goods resulted in the elimination of 400,000 American jobs between 2001 and 2013 by increasing the US' trade deficit with China. It's an estimate the EPI calls "conservative." About three-quarters of those lost jobs were likely manufacturing jobs, Fortune reports. "These job losses are particularly destructive because jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education," the study states. The EPI estimates Walmart is responsible for more than 15% of the trade deficit growth from 2001 to 2013, costing 3.2 million US jobs. Fortune reports the EPI's study is based on a 2007 report and—because Walmart doesn't release specifics on its imports—"guesswork." Needless to say, Walmart disagrees with the EPI's findings. "Unfortunately, this is an old report with flawed economic analysis that assumed that imports equal job losses and does not take into consideration that countless jobs are added," Fortune quotes a Walmart statement. Economists agree, pointing to retail and transportation jobs created by importing goods, according to the New York Times. In 2013, Walmart announced it would increase its use of American-made goods by $50 billion over the next decade. But the EPI counters that Walmart's importing of Chinese goods has cost 100 US jobs for every one American job it creates with that program.


– A new study says one in seven US colon cancer patients is younger than 50—raising questions about why more young people seem to be getting the disease and what can be done about it, reports HealthDay via the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Colon cancer has traditionally been thought of as a disease of the elderly," says lead author Samantha Hendren. "This study is really a wake-up call to the medical community that a relatively large number of colon cancers are occurring in people under 50." Using government data on almost 260,000 colon-cancer patients from 1998 to 2011, the study also says younger patients more often have advanced cancer and undergo surgery (72% compared to 63% of patients over 50). The young are also more likely to use radiation therapy (53% to 48%) and have a slight advantage in surviving for five years (68% to 67%). Younger people are more likely to have advanced colon cancer partly because they get tested after noticing symptoms (like colon blockage, bleeding, and anemia), while people over 50 are advised to begin screenings, says Hendren. "Unfortunately, these symptoms are often ignored by the patient or doctor or ascribed to something like hemorrhoids," a scientist adds, per Reuters. Hendren's team conducted the study after noticing a rise in colon cancer among young people, Medical Daily reports, but that spike remains unexplained. Physical inactivity, obesity, smoking, and "an effect in our environment" are all possible causes, a Harvard professor says. More screenings for young people might help, but the yield would be low because under-50s are still less likely to get colon cancer. "This would be a big and costly change," says Hendren, who recommends "a lot of research" be done first. (A new killer is expected to top cancer by 2050.)

Expand this summary.

More from this journal ||||| Colorectal cancer is often considered a disease that affects primarily older men, yet this perception may be changing. An extensive analysis of recent data showed that one in every seven colorectal cancer patients was younger than 50. The University of Michigan study raises questions about the current guidelines to begin screening at age 50.

 Signs of colorectal cancer, often called the “symptomless cancer,” include anemia, a dramatic change in the size or frequency of bowel movements, and dark blood or blood mixed with stool, (sometimes appearing as black threads), in bowel movements. Because these symptoms may be nonexistent, mild, or infrequent, many people are not aware of their condition until their malignancy becomes advanced and spreads into the lymph nodes. A colonoscopy is the usual screening test, but stool tests are also effective for some people. If you are worried, you can request your primary care physician provide you with one of these simple stool tests, no matter your age.

 Younger Patients Increasing

 Seeing a recent rise in cancer cases among younger people, a team led by Dr. Samantha Hendren conducted a study of the nationally representative Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Insitute to assess age and treatment patterns among colorectal patients. Specifically, they gathered and analyzed data from patients diagnosed in the United States between 1998 and 2011. Their results point to important changes.

 Of more than 258,000 total colorectal cancer patients, 37,847 (about 15 percent) were younger than 50. These younger-than-expected patients were more likely to be diagnosed with either regional or distant malignancies, both of which are more dangerous than localized tumors.

 In terms of treatment, younger patients suffering with a distant metastasis — where the cancer has spread from an original tumor — were more likely to undergo surgery than older patients; 72 percent versus 63 percent. Radiation therapy was more likely to be used with younger rectal cancer patients than in older patients; 53 percent versus 48 percent.

 By various measures, younger patients saw more positive results. Despite the tendency to have more advanced disease when diagnosed, younger-than-50 colorectal cancer patients overall lived slightly longer without a cancer recurrence. With regard to localized disease, the five-year survival rate was 95.1 percent for younger patients versus 91.9 percent for older patients, with regard to regional disease, 76 percent versus 70.3 percent, and with regard to distant disease 21.3 percent versus 14.1 percent.

 “These findings suggest the need for improved risk assessment and screening decisions for younger adults,” wrote the researchers in the study. They believe their work is a wake-up call to the medical community, which should be looking for the signs of colorectal cancer in patients younger than 50.

 If age 50 is maintained as the recommended time to begin screening, this study suggests that nearly 15 percent of all patients may be caught late in the process of disease. By comparison, breast cancer screening is recommended to begin at age 40. Less than 5 percent of invasive breast cancers occur in women under that age.

 Source: Abdelsattar Z, Wong S, Regenbogen S, et al. Colorectal Cancer Outcomes and Treatment Patterns in Patients Too Young for Average-Risk Screening. CANCER. 2016. ||||| (Reuters Health) - One in seven colon and rectal cancers in the U.S. are now diagnosed in patients younger than age 50, which is when people are advised to begin routine screenings for these tumors, a new study finds.

 By 2030, nearly one in four rectal tumors and more than one in 10 colon cancers will be diagnosed in people under 50, researchers estimate in the journal Cancer.

 “Colorectal cancer has traditionally been thought of as a disease of the elderly; this study is really a wake-up call to the medical community that a relatively large number of colorectal cancers are occurring in young people,” said senior study author Dr. Samantha Hendren of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

 Researchers analyzed cancer registry data from 1998 to 2011 for about 258,000 patients with colorectal tumors and found that 37,847 of them, or almost 15 percent, were diagnosed before age 50.

 Compared with older patients, those under 50 were 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with tumors that had spread to the lymph nodes and 50 percent more likely to have cancer that had advanced to other organs, the study found.

 Younger patients with tumors that had metastasized, or reached other organs, were also more likely than older people to get more aggressive treatments.

 About 72 percent of people under 50 got surgery, compared with 63 percent of older individuals. And while 53 percent of younger patients received radiation, just 48 percent of older people did.

 Even though patients diagnosed younger tended to have more aggressive disease, they also lived slightly longer without tumors returning after their initial course of treatment.

 Five-year survival odds were about 95 percent for patients under 50 diagnosed with local tumors that hadn’t spread yet, compared to roughly 92 percent for older people.

 With tumors that spread to the lymph nodes, five-year survival rates were 76 percent for young people and 70 percent for older patients, while with cancers that metastasized to other organs the survival odds were 21 percent versus 14 percent, respectively.

 One shortcoming of the study is that researchers lacked data on family history and other risk factors for colorectal cancers, the authors note. It’s also possible that treatment choices and overall survival were influenced by what’s known as selection bias, when healthier people may get more interventions and have better outcomes.

 Often, patients may get an early warning of colorectal tumors with symptoms such as bleeding, changes in bowel habits or pain when going to the bathroom that can point to the need for diagnostic screening, said Dr. Joel Randolph Hecht, director of the gastrointestinal oncology program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles.

 “Unfortunately, these symptoms are often ignored by the patient or doctor or ascribed to something like hemorrhoids,” Hecht, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

 There are guidelines for screening some people starting at age 40 if they have a family history of colorectal cancer, noted Dr. Sidney Winawer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

 “Without a family history, physicians need to use their judgment when seeing young people who have bowel symptoms and refer those of concern to a gastroenterologist for a diagnostic workup, “ Winawer, who wasn’t involved in the study, added by email. “This is difficult since we do not wish to expose young people to unnecessary tests.”

 It isn’t clear from the study findings, however, whether changing preventive screening guidelines to start at a younger age would ultimately prevent more cancer deaths, said Dr. David Weinberg, chairman of medicine at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

 “If the goal of screening is disease prevention, as it generally is for colorectal cancer, it is not clear when screening should start,” Weinberg, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Too early and the yield of screening will be very low since young people are still less likely to get colorectal cancer than older people.”

 SOURCE: bit.ly/23o5QvC Cancer, online January 25, 2016. ||||| MONDAY, Jan. 25, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Colon cancer rates are rising among men and women under 50, the age at which guidelines recommend screenings start, a new analysis shows. One in seven colon cancer patients is under 50. Younger patients are more likely to have advanced stage cancer, but they live slightly longer without a cancer recurrence because they are treated aggressively, the researchers reported. "Colon cancer has traditionally been thought of as a disease of the elderly," said study lead author Dr. Samantha Hendren, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

 "This study is really a wake-up call to the medical community that a relatively large number of colon cancers are occurring in people under 50," she added.

 However, Hendren said it's too soon to say whether colon cancer screening guidelines should be altered to reflect that trend.

 In the analysis, colon cancer among younger patients was often found at an advanced stage, meaning the disease has spread to lymph nodes or other organs. "Part of the reason for this is that these young patients are often diagnosed only after their cancers start to cause symptoms, such as anemia, bowel bleeding or a blockage in the colon," Hendren explained.

 Doctors should be on the lookout for these warning signs of colon cancer, she added.

 Not all bowel bleeding is caused by cancer, she said. "Bright red bleeding with a bowel movement is usually due to hemorrhoids or fissures, but dark blood or blood mixed with the stool is a warning sign," Hendren said.

 People with a family history of colon cancer and others who are at higher risk should begin screening earlier than the age of 50, she said. "This is already recommended, but we don't think this is happening consistently, and this is something we need to optimize," she added.

 The report was published online Jan. 25 in the journal Cancer.

 Dr. Andrew Chan, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said the reasons for the increase in colon cancer among younger adults isn't known.

 "It is unexplained," he said. "It's not simply a change in diagnoses, it's a very real increase. There may be an effect of our environment that could be contributing to the increase."

 Smoking, obesity and physical inactivity are all risk factors for colon cancer, as is a poor diet, Chan said. "When we are faced with patients who have many of these elements, we should think more about the potential of them developing colon cancer at an earlier age," he said.

 For the study, Hendren and her colleagues culled federal government data on nearly 260,000 patients diagnosed with colon cancer between 1998 and 2011.

 Of these patients, nearly 15 percent were younger than 50. These patients were more likely to be diagnosed with advanced cancer and more likely to have surgery than older patients (72 percent versus 63 percent). Radiation therapy was also used more often in younger patients than in older patients (53 percent versus 48 percent), the researchers found.

 Younger patients lived a little longer without a cancer recurrence, even though they tended to have more advanced cancer, Hendren said.

 For patients under 50, about 68 percent survived five years, while about 67 percent of the patients 50 and older survived five years, she said. "It looks like patients' young age helps them in their cancer treatment and survival," she added.

 These findings raise the question of whether screening for colon cancer should begin at an earlier age, Hendren said. "This would be a big and costly change, and I don't know whether it would help more people than it would hurt, so a lot of research would be required to understand this before any changes should be made," she said.

 Chan noted that although the incidence of colon cancer is increasing among people under 50, the risk is still low. "I don't think the data at this point support expanding screening to younger age groups," he said.

 Hendren said that "the cancer community needs to prepare for the increasing number of very young colorectal cancer survivors who will need long-term support to cope with the physical and psychological consequences of their disease and treatments."

 More information

 Visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute for more on colon cancer. |||||


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 Disconnect ||||| It was a tense situation at Busch Stadium on Wednesday night. The Royals and Cardinals were playing a key Interleague series for both teams, but especially the Cardinals, who entered the game just two and a half games back of the Cubs in the competitive NL Central.

 Royals reliever Peter Moylan was clinging precariously to a 5-4 lead in the bottom of the sixth. Two men were down, but the Cardinals had the bases loaded for Yadier Molina. Moylan delivered a pitch for a ball, and then, out of nowhere, a tiny cat stormed onto the field.

 Its first stop was saying hello to center fielder Lorenzo Cain:

 What a kind kitty!

 Cardinals manager Mike Matheny was caught off guard by the team's new guest. "I didn't see anything until all of the noise," he said to MLB.com's Alaina Getzenberg. "I thought there was a streaker on the field to be honest, but I was happy it was a cat."

 A stadium employee did eventually have to track the feline down, but it wasn't ready to go:

 It did not take well to its ballgame experience being cut short, scratching and biting at the poor guy as he ran off the field with it. Chances are, it's a descendent of the cat that wreaked similar havoc on a Kingdome employee in Seattle back in the day:

 The levity was broken on the very next pitch, when Molina crushed a game-changing grand slam to put the Cardinals ahead:

 The 8-5 lead held, and the Cardinals won. They leapfrogged the Brewers to jump into second place in the NL Central, a mere game and a half behind the Cubs. "I'm not a cat person, but I sure like that one," Matheny joked after the game.

 It wasn't be the first time that the Cardinals have received inspiration from the animal kingdom, either, having benefited from the "Rally Squirrel" in the 2011 NLDS. Molina remembered. "It was the catcher that told me like, 'You haven't seen something like that before,'" he said. "I said 'Not with a cat, but a squirrel, yes.'"

 Molina often goes by the nickname "Yadi," which he'll wear on his jersey during Players Weekend on Aug. 25-27. So, in that vein, just call the Cardinals' new feline friend "Yadi the Rally Cat." |||||

Write a summary.

– The Cardinals needed help. They got "Rally Cat"—and now baseball has a new hero and meme. MLB.com explains: The St. Louis Cardinals trailed the Kansas City Royals 5-4 in the bottom of the sixth in a crucial playoff-race game Wednesday, but they had the bases loaded. Let Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch set the stage further: "There for a brief moment, before rally cat came into their lives, Yadier Molina paused at the plate, stood tall, and pointed his bat toward left field, appearing as if he were calling his shot." As it turns out, he was pointing to a cat in the outfield that went on to interrupt the game for a few entertaining minutes. When the game resumed, Molina hit a grand slam on the very next pitch, and the lead held for a St. Louis victory. "I'm not a cat person, but I sure like that one," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said after the game. The MLB site has video of the cat (immediately dubbed "Rally Cat" in the game's broadcast) scampering around and either biting or scratching the St. Louis field crew member who finally corralled it. Others are posting YouTube clips. It's not clear whether the cat is a stray, but if so it would surely find a home quickly given the fans' reaction. The incident calls to mind a similar one involving a squirrel in the 2011 playoffs. In fact, as the Post-Dispatch notes, the Cards etched a silhouette of "Rally Squirrel" on their championship rings that year.


Summarize this article:

Dick Clark has become synonymous with New Year's Eve, so it's no surprise the renowned television host is back to ring in 2012 and celebrate the 40th anniversary of his iconic program, "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve."

 Clark will once again make an appearance alongside Ryan Seacrest on the annual ABC special, set to air beginning at 10 p.m. EST on Dec. 31.

 Seacrest has been co-hosting the extravaganza since 2005, the year after Clark suffered a stroke that impaired his speech, according to People magazine.

 Friend and fellow television host Regis Philbin filled in for Clark in 2004, CNN reports.

 But since then, health troubles haven't stopped the indefatigable 82-year-old Clark from taking an active role in his show's production.

 "This is very important to him. This is one of his children," producer Larry Klein told the Associated Press.

 Saturday's program will recap highlights from the last 40 years of the show.

 "The army of talent we had join us over the years has truly been outstanding, and this year we top it off with an appearance by Lady Gaga," Clark told ABC. "'New Year's Rockin' Eve 2012' promises to be one of the most exciting ever, and I'm proud to be part of the team."

 In an email interview with USA Today, Clark said he's hosted a number of memorable New Year's Eve celebrations, but he called festivities following the Sept. 11 attacks "the most nerve-racking."

 As for Seacrest, the longtime "American Idol" host has no problem sharing the spotlight with the man he watched on television as a child.

 "He still runs the show. He'll make as many appearances as he wants, and I kind of just stand there and take the ball when he passes it," Seacrest told ABC News.

 With temperatures forecast to be in the 40s, a record crowd of nearly one million people are expected to gather in Times Square to watch the ball make its iconic descent. ||||| Forty years ago, Dick Clark's New Year's Eve special was created to give young people an alternative to a seasonal institution, bandleader Guy Lombardo.

 In this image released by ABC, Dick Clark, right, and Ryan Seacrest are shown in New York. Clark and Seacrest will celebrate 40 years of history as they host "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with... (Associated Press)

 Now Clark's annual show is the institution.

 "New Year's Rockin' Eve," with Clark and Ryan Seacrest, pays tribute to its own history during a sprawling, nearly six-hour program Saturday night. The celebration takes up all of prime time on ABC, breaks for a half-hour of local news, then comes back on the air for two and a quarter hours that includes the ball dropping in New York City's Times Square to mark the beginning of 2012.

 "I'm looking forward to it being 2:15 (a.m. on Sunday)," said Larry Klein, who has been producing the show since 1977.

 Clark's special shows no sign of slippage, after collecting its biggest audience in five years last year. The 18.8 million people who were watching ABC during the last half-hour of 2010 and first half-hour of 2011 were more than NBC and Fox's audience combined, the Nielsen ratings company said.

 The show isn't designed to be a recap of the year in music, but that's almost what it turns out to be, Klein said.

 In all, 29 separate musical performances are planned.

 This year's headliner is Lady Gaga, who gets the prime slot in Times Square in the moments before midnight. Justin Bieber, Pitbull, Hot Chelle Rae, Florence + The Machine, Gym Class Heroes, Nicki Minaj and Taio Cruz are among the other featured performers from New York and Los Angeles. Beyonce is scheduled to perform from London, where she's on tour.

 It may not seem so from that lineup, but Klein said booking the show is a challenge because performers frequently are offered some of their most lucrative gigs of the year on New Year's Eve. What Clark has to offer is exposure to a large audience not often seen this side of "American Idol."

 And it's unique. Klein remembers Jennifer Lopez's exhilaration a few years back after performing in Times Square despite wearing a skimpy outfit and being pelted by freezing rain.

 "No matter how much I can try to explain to people what it's like to be in Times Square live, I can't do it justice," he said. "You have to experience it once in your life."

 During the first two hours, ABC will show clips of performances from past New Year's Eve specials, which Klein describes as a fascinating trip through hair, clothing and musical styles. Stars of Clark's first "Rockin' Eve" included Al Green, Helen Reddy and Three Dog Night.

 New Year's Eve also marks the annual appearance of Clark, once a ubiquitous presence on television. A stroke makes it difficult for Clark to communicate, but he doesn't want to miss this show, Klein said.

 "Dick is still Dick Clark," he said. "His communication is a little bit more difficult, but he's still involved in contemporary music. He listens to a lot, he knows a lot, he's still involved in the production. This is very important to him. This is one of his children."

 Among the other big broadcasters, NBC and Fox will both be in Times Square on New Year's Eve, too. CBS hands its late-night schedule to its local affiliates.

 Highlights of other New Year's Eve offerings:

 _Carson Daly is host of a two-hour NBC special, sandwiching local news. The show is heavy on NBC personalities, with a comedy performance from Jimmy Fallon, a review of the year in music from NBC News anchor Brian Williams and performances by Fallon's "Late Night" band, the Roots, and Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton of "The Voice."

 _Comic Rodney Carrington and "Pawn Stars" Rick Harrison and Austin "Chumlee" Russell host "American Country New Year's Eve Live" on Fox. Country stars Toby Keith and Joe Nichols are among the performers in a 90-minute special that switches between New York and Las Vegas.

 _MTV's Times Square studio is the site of that network's New Year's Eve party, with Demi Lovato and "Teen Wolf" actor Tyler Posey as hosts. Lovato, Selena Gomez, J Cole and Mac Miller are among the performers.

 _After 12 hours of counting down the year's top music videos, BET presents its "106 & Party" special at 11 p.m.

 _Two news networks are also marking the occasion with specials. Fox News Channel's Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly are live in Times Square, and the network will have performances from country artists Big & Rich and Trace Adkins. On CNN, Anderson Cooper and comic Kathy Griffin have developed their own strange kind of chemistry, and will be back. Promises the outspoken Griffin: "By the time I'm done with him, Anderson's hair is going to be even more gray."

 ___

 ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co.

 ___

 Online:

 http://abc.go.com/ ||||| Later, when asked if this year would indeed be his last, Mr. Clark answered in an e-mail, “I hope not.”

 Such speculation has surrounded Mr. Clark ever since he had the stroke a few weeks before New Year’s in 2004. Regis Philbin filled in that year, and Mr. Seacrest stepped in in 2005, the last time the show fell on a Saturday, sharing the hosting duties with Mr. Clark. It was, Mr. Clark says, probably the most memorable of all his New Year’s broadcasts.

 “Though I hadn’t conquered language difficulties and walking, it was good to be back at my old stand,” he said.

 Mr. Clark has managed to recover somewhat since then, but his speech remains significantly impaired, a consequence of the stroke. Two years ago he missed a couple of numbers in the countdown.

 Photo

 Though some television critics have asserted that Mr. Clark’s appearance on the show since his stroke can be uncomfortable for some viewers, Mr. Shapiro said that “a lot more than not, people truly appreciate the beacon of light that he is.”

 Interviews with Mr. Clark are conducted via e-mail because of his speech. He said he presumed that for many viewers, it’s “comforting to see a familiar face who has been there for the past 40 years.”

 He added that for viewers who have a physical disability, his appearances “may serve as a source of inspiration.”

 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 Despite Mr. Clark’s health problems, Mr. Shapiro said there was no taped back-up.

 “We take our shot, and we go live,” he said. “And Dick wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Mr. Clark’s first nationwide New Year’s Eve broadcast took place in 1972, when he conceived “Rockin’ Eve” as a youthful alternative to Guy Lombardo’s big-band broadcasts on CBS. It was originally shown on NBC and after two years moved to ABC, where it has stayed since.

 “Dick has been the mainstay,” said Larry Klein, the show’s producer, who flies to New York from Los Angeles on Christmas Day each year. “What changes around him is the music.”

 On Saturday, the 8 p.m. anniversary special will sample four decades of performances. (It cost a “considerable amount of money” for the rights to replay some songs, Mr. Shapiro said.) Then the regular “Rockin’ Eve” — which starts at 10, pauses for the 11 o’clock news and resumes at 11:30 — will feature Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Carlos Santana, Pitbull and Hot Chelle Rae, among others.

 “Rockin’ Eve” is typically more popular than the competing countdown shows on NBC, Fox, MTV and other channels. Last year almost 19 million were watching ABC around midnight, according to Nielsen, though that figure surely understates the total audience because it does not count the groups of people who were watching at bars, restaurants and other parties.

 The show’s producers go out of their way to praise and protect Mr. Clark. (“As long as he’s able, we want him for the countdown,” Mr. Shapiro said.) But they acknowledge that Mr. Seacrest, 37, is the primary host; they added “With Ryan Seacrest” to the show’s title three years ago. He is the broadcast’s traffic cop in Times Square, tossing to bands and correspondents and to Mr. Clark for the countdown.

 “He has the same instinct that Dick had,” said Mr. Klein, who sits comfortably in a control room while Mr. Seacrest freezes outside at Broadway and 44th Street. “He knows when he’s going to be cued; he knows how to transition; he knows when to wrap.”

 Mr. Seacrest, who has been in talks with NBC’s “Today” show about a co-anchor role, came on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday to promote the countdown show. Mr. Clark, he said, “very much looks forward to being a part of it,” and added:

 “The guy is still the boss. He walks into the room, and you defer. He is Dick Clark.” |||||

– Dick Clark will be in his usual New Year's Eve spot tonight, in front of the cameras for his New Year's Rockin' Eve show on ABC, notes the Huffington Post. As has been the case since 2005, Ryan Seacrest will co-host and handle most of the duties for the 82-year-old Clark, who has been slowed by a stroke since 2004. This year is the 40th anniversary of the show, which will feature a Lady Gaga performance just before midnight. (AP has more details on the show and what else is on.) Clark does all his interviews via email these days because of his speech difficulties, and the New York Times broaches some touchy topics, like whether this might be his last show. "I hope not," came the reply. Clark also said he hopes his hosting "may serve as an inspiration" to viewers who have physical disabilities. Click for more.


With this petition, and the efforts of several other people on the internet, we were able to convince Disney to issue an epilepsy warning for Incredibles 2! Now we're moving on to our next goal: to have them include an epilepsy warning in the Blu-Ray release of the film. This can set a precedent to make movies (both in the theater and at home) safer for all viewers. ||||| More from USA Today:

 Even Sophia Bush has a 'lady crush' on Voyd, her breakout 'Incredibles 2' hero

 'Incredibles 2' soars with $180M: Biggest opening ever for an animated film

 The definitive ranking of all 20 Pixar movies (including 'Incredibles 2')

 AMC supervisor Mauricio Mencia, who's worked at the Universal CityWalk location in Los Angeles for the past year, says, "I've never seen something like that happen."

 The memo, which has been shared on social media, says: " 'Incredibles 2' contains a sequence of flashing lights, which may affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities."

 Mencia's theater has informed the staff about the memo and posted the warning next to the guest greeter who rips tickets.

 According to the Epilepsy Foundation, "for about 3 percent of people with epilepsy, exposure to flashing lights at certain intensities, or with certain visual patterns, can trigger seizures. This condition is known as photosensitive epilepsy and it's more common in children and adolescents, especially those with generalized epilepsy and a type known as juvenile myoclonic epilepsy."

 Jackie Aker, director of media relations for the Epilepsy Foundation, says her organization had never before called for a movie to issue a photosensitivity warning, but earlier this year asked Apple to change a promotional spot for the new iPad that had flashing lights that would be unsafe for certain viewers. Apple worked with the foundation to change the video.

 In 1997, an episode of "Pokémon" that aired in Japan with flashing lights sent nearly 700 children to the hospital. ||||| This is not a joke. I was at a first-night showing tonight, and my immediate thought was how disasterously unsafe this movie is for my photosensitive epilepic friends. @markingatlightspeed I’m tagging you with this specifically because I feel that this would be extremely dangerous for you to watch.

 There are multiple scenes in this movie with full-screen, black-and-white flashing strobe effects. They all happen without warning, and last anywhere between a few seconds to more than two minutes. In a darkened movie theater, this means the likelihood of a seizure could be VERY HIGH if you are sensitive to these effects.

 If you have photosensitive epilepsy or another disorder that is triggered by strobe lights, I would highly recommend you DO NOT SEE THE INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATERS. Wait until the movie’s released on digital/Bluray, and you can watch it in a fully-lit room, with someone with you who will be able to help if the strobe effects do trigger a seizure.

 Please stay safe.

 UPDATE: After talking to some people who have loved ones with severe epilepsy, I would sadly have to recommend that you DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE - PERIOD - IF YOU HAVE SEVERE SEIZURES WHEN EXPOSED TO STROBE EFFECTS. DO NOT PUT YOUR HEALTH AT RISK FOR A MOVIE. NO KIND OF MEDIA IS WORTH GAMBLING WITH YOUR LIFE.

 The scenes in which the flashing happens are MAJOR plot points and CANNOT be skipped. The one workaround I can suggest would be to find a version of the movie (when it’s released) with Audio Descriptions for the visually impaired. Watch it on your PC - turn the monitor OFF, but keep the audio going.

 If you have been disappointed by the creative decisions made by Disney-Pixar, please sign the petition created by @moviehealthcommunity for Disney to include a seizure warning for moviegoers and people who buy/rent the movie. It is unlikely they would edit these things out of the movie entirely - but there are nearly 20,000 notes on this post, and if 20,000 people asked them to consider people with epilepsy, it could mean they consider these things more carefully in the future.

 Thank you. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– After anecdotal warnings circulated on social media, Disney has issued an official seizure warning for Incredibles 2. Both the film and the trailer contain flashing or strobe light effects, which can cause seizures for some epileptic viewers; the Epilepsy Foundation spoke out about the issue, and a petition called for Disney to include a visual warning about the lights. On Friday, Disney asked theaters showing the movie to include such a warning, reports CNBC, which calls it an "unprecedented" move by the company. The lights can also affect people who suffer from migraines or have other conditions causing them to be photosensitive. Disney's official memo reads, "Incredibles 2 contains a sequence of flashing lights, which may affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities."


Article:
An Indian surgeon used infected instruments to sterilize 83 women in about six hours, according to a local medical official, leaving 10 of them dead and another 69 hospitalized in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

 The doctor breached guidelines that limit surgeons from performing more than 30 sterilizations a day, said the official, who asked not to be named because details of the investigation are private. He also failed to disinfect the instruments before using them again, the official said.

 “It’s a case of negligence,” Raman Singh, the state’s chief minister, told reporters at a news conference today, adding that the doctor, R.K. Gupta, had been suspended and a criminal investigation is under way. “It is unfortunate that such an incident occurred in a scheme of national importance.”

 Related: Doctor Says Toxic Indian Pills Killed Women He Sterilized

 Women often suffer most from efforts to control population growth, such as one-day sterilization drives, in the nation of 1.2 billion people. India has the world’s third-highest female sterilization rate after the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico among more than 180 countries tracked by the United Nations.

 “Chhattisgarh was a culmination of no accountability in the system and when basic hygiene conditions aren’t met,” Kerry McBroom, director of the Reproductive Rights Initiative at the New Delhi-based Human Rights Law Network, said by phone. “The most appalling and terrifying thing is that it’s so commonplace in India for women to suffer these surgeries” under poor conditions, she said.

 Four women were still in critical condition after the Nov. 8 surgeries, according to Amar Singh Thakur, chief health officer for Bilaspur district. Eight died yesterday while two passed away today, he said.

 15,000 Mishaps

 “The deaths were due to infection causing septic shock,” Thakur said. “We are investigating but it is too early to say that it was due to sterilization.”

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Chhattisgarh’s leader to ensure a “thorough investigation and action” on the “unfortunate tragedy,” his office posted on Twitter.

 India's Aspirations

 Sterilizations are voluntary and couples choose between a tubectomy or vasectomy, Harsh Vardhan, who was India’s health minister at the time, told parliament on July 18. From April 2010 to March 2013, the government paid about 510 million rupees ($8 million) for 15,264 deaths or failed surgeries, he said.

 Women are offered as little as 600 rupees ($10) in compensation for participating in the procedure, which usually takes about 15 minutes and is done under local anesthesia, according to Alok Banerjee of Advocating Reproductive Choices, a coalition of health groups.

 “If they follow the guidelines, then sterilization is a very safe method of contraception and population control,” Banerjee said.

 37 Percent

 India’s National Family Health Survey in 2005-2006 showed that about 37 percent of married women have been sterilized while only 1 percent of men have had a vasectomy. About 29 percent of Chinese women surveyed around the same time had been sterilized compared with 4.5 percent men, according to UN data. The vasectomy rate compares with about 24 percent in Canada and 11 percent in the U.S.

 India in 1952 was the first country to start a family planning program. Emergency rule in the 1970s allowed then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to forcibly sterilize people, according to the Population Research Institute.

 Between June 25, 1975, and March 1977, about 11 million men and women were sterilized and 1 million women were inserted with intra-uterine devices, the U.S.-based group said in a report, citing Marika Vicziany’s book “Coercion in a Soft State: The Family-Planning Program of India.”

 ‘Coercive Environment’

 About 47 percent of women in the survey aged between 20 to 24 said they were already married by the legal age of 18, while 16 percent of 15-19 year-olds were mothers or pregnant when the survey was being conducted.

 While cash incentives are offered to couples who stay childless until prescribed ages or opt for contraceptives, the use of numerical targets has contributed to a “coercive environment for several decades,” Human Rights Watch said in a 2012 report. Although the federal government has announced a “target-free” approach to family planning, district health workers are threatened with salary cuts or dismissals if local targets aren’t met, according to the report.

 “This is an exceptional case which unfortunately happens once every four or five years,” said Abhijeet Phatak, medical program specialist with International Planned Parenthood in New Delhi. “The fault lies with the person who did not disinfect the equipment on a day when 80 or 90 women are being sterilized. But also the strategy of having one-day camps for sterilization is to blame and should be reconsidered.”

 To contact the reporter on this story: Unni Krishnan in New Delhi at ukrishnan2@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net Jeanette Rodrigues ||||| NEW DELHI (AP) — Eight Indian women have died and 20 others were in critical condition Tuesday after undergoing sterilization surgeries in a free government-run program to help slow the country's population growth.

 A total of 83 women, all poor villagers under the age of 32, had the operations Saturday in a hospital outside Bilaspur city in the central state of Chhattisgarh, officials said. All 83 surgeries were conducted within six hours, said the state's chief medical officer, Dr. S.K. Mandal.

 "That is not usual," he said. He declined to comment further on what might have gone wrong until autopsies are conducted on the victims.

 Each of the women had received a payment of 600 rupees, or about $10, to participate in the sterilization program, Mandal said.

 The women were sent home Saturday evening after their surgeries, but more than two dozen were later rushed in ambulances to private hospitals after becoming ill. By Tuesday, eight of the women had died — apparently from either blood poisoning or hemorrhagic shock, which occurs when a person has lost too much blood, state deputy health director Amar Singh told the Press Trust of India news agency.

 Twenty other women were in critical care, according to the district magistrate, Siddharth Komal Pardeshi.

 "Their condition is very serious. Blood pressure is low," said Dr. Ramesh Murty at CIMS hospital, one of the facilities where the sick women were taken. "We are now concentrating on treating them, not on what caused this."

 The state suspended four government doctors, including the surgeon who performed the operations and the district's chief medical officer. It also will give compensation payments of about $6,600 to each of the victims' families.

 Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh said "it appears the incident occurred due to negligence" by doctors.

 The state's surgeons met Tuesday night to discuss whether to continue the state's sterilization schedule, with a target of 180,000 for the year ending in March set by the central government, Mandal said. He said the quota for Bilaspur district for the year was around 12,000.

 A spokeswoman for the federal Health Ministry declined to confirm whether the central government was setting sterilization quotas for states. India's central government had said it stopped setting targets for sterilizing women in the 1990s.

 Activists blame sterilization quotas for leading health authorities to pressure patients into surgery rather than advising them on other forms of contraception.

 "These women have become victims because of the target-based approach to population control," said Brinda Karat of the All India Democratic Women's Association, while demanding that the state's health minister resign.

 India's government — long concerned with fast growth in a country whose population has reached 1.3 billion — offers free sterilizations to both women and men who want to avoid the risk and cost of having a baby, though the vast majority of patients are women.

 In many cases, they are offered a one-time payment for undergoing surgery of $10-$20, or about a week's pay for a poor person in India. Hundreds of millions of Indians live in poverty.

 India has the world's highest rate of sterilization among women, with about 37 percent undergoing such operations compared to 29 percent in China, according to 2006 statistics reported by the United Nations. During 2011-12, the government said 4.6 million Indian women were sterilized.

 ___

 Associated Press writers Indrajit Singh in Patna and Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report.

 ___

 Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at twitter.com/katydaigle |||||Summary:

– In a mass sterilization of 83 women in India on Saturday, a surgeon used infected instruments; now, 10 patients are dead and 69 others have been hospitalized, a local health official tells Bloomberg. "It's a case of negligence," says the chief minister of Chhattisgarh state, where surgeons are banned from conducting more than 30 such procedures daily. A reproductive rights activist in New Delhi uses starker terms: "Chhattisgarh was a culmination of no accountability in the system and when basic hygiene conditions aren't met," she says, adding that such circumstances are "commonplace." The doctor involved, RK Gupta, has been suspended amid a criminal investigation, says the state's chief minister. The district's top health officer says the deaths were a result of "infection causing septic shock" and that it's "too early to say that it was due to sterilization." All the women were poor villagers younger than 32, the AP reports. They were paid about $10 each to join the sterilization program, the state's chief medical officer says. The surgeries took place within a six-hour period. As the country works toward population control, sterilizations are voluntary. But amid events like single-day sterilization drives, India has the third-highest female sterilization rate in the world—and while 37% of married women have undergone the process, just 1% of men have had vasectomies, a national survey shows. Chhattisgarh state is aiming for 180,000 sterilizations for the 12 months preceding March, the chief medical officer says.


News article:

BRUSSELS Two weeks ago, the mayor of Molenbeek ordered the closure of a neighborhood bar where Brussels police had found young men dealing drugs and smoking dope over the summer.

 Last Friday, the owner blew himself up at another laid-back corner cafe, this time in Paris, on a mission of retribution from Islamic State.

 Brahim Abdeslam's journey from barkeeper to suicide bomber remains a mystery, along with the whereabouts of his younger brother Salah, now on the run as Europe's most wanted man but until recently the manager of Brahim's bar, Les Beguines.

 The brothers sold the business just six weeks ago.

 There is a seeming disconnect between the ownership by Muslims - whose religion forbids the use of alcohol and tobacco - of a bar, where drugs were being dealt, on a quiet street in the low-rent Brussels borough of Molenbeek who have become the focus of a manhunt for violent Islamists with ties to Syria.

 Yet time and again, investigations after attacks like those that killed 129 people in Paris have uncovered tales of workaday Arab immigrant lives, assimilated to the profane daily cares and pleasures of European cities, that have turned, unseen to family and friends, into explosions of pious, suicidal fanaticism.

 "It's shocking, especially when it's people you've hung out with," said 25-year-old Nabil, as he walked home from work to his apartment nearby, past the cafe on rue des Beguines, now shuttered by court order, which Brahim Abdeslam, 31, had owned.

 "They were regular guys, who enjoyed a laugh," he said, still wearing his workclothes and a Nike baseball cap. "There was nothing radical about them. ... They were here just last week hanging out. ... I think they were indoctrinated. ... There is some mastermind behind it all."

 "LIKE SYLVESTER STALLONE"

 Hicham, also 25 and in blue tracksuit and sneakers, echoed that view of Brahim and Salah: "They smoked. They didn't go to the mosque or anything. We saw them every day at the cafe," he said. Brahim, with a voice "like Sylvester Stallone," could, he conceded, at times be "a bit crazy".

 "We played cards. We talked about football," he added. "We talked about the everyday. Nothing jihadist, not about Islam."

 Those sentiments were echoed by family including a third brother, a local council employee, who was released on Monday after two days in custody, and by former workmates of Salah at the tram repair shop - though the latter told public radio that the "joker" Salah lost that job in 2011 for absenteeism.

 Belgian media also reported that Salah spent time in jail for robbery five years ago alongside another Molenbeek man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 28. French investigators believe Abaaoud may have ordered the Paris attacks from Syria, where he has become an Internet propagandist for Islamic State under the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Belgiki - the Belgian.

 Belgian police could not confirm any previous record for the brothers or whether they had been under surveillance.

 "STRONG SMELL OF DRUGS"

 What is clear is that the bar the brothers ran had annoyed some of its neighbors and, in August, been raided by police.

 Details posted on the door, on the ground floor of a typical brick-built 19th-century townhouse and confirmed by police to Reuters, stated: "The premises have been used for the consumption of banned hallucinogenic substances."

 The notice ordered a five-month closure from Nov. 5, and said police found "a strong smell of drugs" and ashtrays containing "partially smoked joints", while a number of customers were found to be carrying drugs on their persons.

 The notice said the manager had been given a chance, on Sept. 4, to object. "But he did not reply to our invitation".

 Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans has described Molenbeek as a "breeding ground for radical violence", suffering from high youth unemployment and overcrowding. Belgian ministers have promised to "clean it up."

 The Abdeslams do not appear to have figured among the jobless. Legal documents reviewed by Reuters and first reported by Belgian newspaper L'Echo show that Brahim, a French citizen born in Brussels, formed a company in March 2013 to run the bar.

 In December that year, Brahim stepped aside as manager of the company in favor of Salah, but remained the main owner. Two other family members held small stakes at various times.

 On Sept. 30 this year, after the closure warning, the family sold out to an individual who gave an address in southern Belgium. That person could not be contacted by Reuters.

 The documents listed both brothers' address as the family home in a four-storey house facing Molenbeek town hall across a cobbled square. There, Mohammed Abdeslam, the brother held by police, told reporters the family were stunned by events.

 "We've never had problems with the law," he said on the doorstep. "My parents are in shock and can't quite take in what's happened," he added, saying they had had no idea Brahim was going to Paris on Friday or where Salah now was.

 According to French police, Brahim detonated a suicide vest at the Comptoir Voltaire, a cafe close to the Bataclan music hall where gunmen killed 89. The explosion seriously wounded several other people.

 Salah, police say, rented a Volkswagen car that was found near the Bataclan with Belgian plates and he was later checked, but not arrested, near the Belgian border, in a car with two others.

 GIVING A FRIEND A RIDE

 A lawyer for Mohammed, who works for the town hall, said Mohammed was released because he had an alibi putting him in the French northern border city of Lille, where he was helping renovate a bar.

 Lawyers say the two men in the car with Salah when he was stopped by French police early on Saturday near Cambrai are among three people in Belgian custody. The lawyer for one, Mohamed Amri, said he had taken a call from a friend saying he had broken down in Paris and drove south to fetch him. Amri said he had known nothing of any involvement in the attacks.

 Outside Les Beguines, just over a mile from Molenbeek town hall, another acquaintance of the Abdeslam brothers, 23-year-old Amir, who works installing shop tills, said a friend had called him on Friday night asking him to drive the 280 km (180 miles) to Paris to pick up Salah. Amir told him he could not go.

 He was told Salah offered to pay the fuel costs, but Amir did not want to run up such big mileage on his leased car. "It's incredible," he said of the arrests of those who did drive Salah. "It could have been me. ... I had no idea."

 With television running hours of live coverage on Monday from the armed police siege of a house in Molenbeek in the hunt for Salah, his brother Mohammed stressed that Salah had been found guilty of nothing: "But with things as tense as they are," he said, "we don't know if he'll dare give himself up."

 So what took Brahim from running a marijuana-scented beer joint named for a mediaeval order of Christian lay nuns to blowing himself up at a bar named for Voltaire, the 18th-century critic of religion?

 His brother Mohammed had seen "absolutely nothing". Brahim and Salah were, he said, "two brothers who were totally normal".

 (Additional reporting and writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Leslie Adler) ||||| A Paris suicide bomber drank, smoked and ran a drug den, friends who visited the bar he ran have said.

 Ibrahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up outside the Comptoir Voltaire café on Friday night during a terrorist rampage, enjoyed activities banned under Islamic law.

 Abdeslam ran Les Beguines café in Rue des Beguines, Molenbeek, a poor district of Brussels notorious for Islamist extremism, from 2013 to August this year, when it was shut by the local commune due to drugs. It is now boarded up.

 His brother Salah is now subject to an international manhunt, while another sibling, Mohammed, has been interviewed by police before being released.

 A neighbour, who declined to be named, told the Telegraph: "Ibrahim was the proprietor, but the cafe is closed now. I used to go there every day after work, on my way home. We would go there to smoke hashish, drink alcohol, no problem.

 “Ibrahim and I played cards together, we laughed and joked. He talked to everyone, he was very generous. I would have a drink and he would say don't worry about playing. I used to play cards with Salah too, he was often at the cafe.

 “Ibrahim used to go to parties, he would drink alcohol, smoke. But he stopped drinking alcohol in the last year.

 “Now I am scared because I talked to them, I know them. Everyone is disgusted and shocked. No one thought it was possible that it was them. "

 Another man, aged 30, who lives just down the road from Les Beguines café said: “I used to play football with Salah, he played very well. He used to go out to a lot of parties.

 "I also saw Ibrahim a lot at the cafe. They are good guys, like any other guys in this area."

 A police raid in August found the bar was “used for the consumption of illegal hallucinogenic substances and had a strong smell of drugs and half smoked joints at the tables,” according to the closure order posted on the front door.

 “The bar appears to be a point where you can buy and consume drugs, causing problems for the neighbourhood and public order in general,” the order said.

 During the raid customers were found with drugs and five were booked by police for possession, the order said.

 The requirement to close came into force last week but locals said Ibrahim had sold the bar after the police raid, and made “a lot of money”.

 The Belgian newspaper L'Echo reported that Les Beguines cafe was set up by Ibrahim in March 2013, who remained the majority shareholder, according to company records.

 His brother Saleh, who has been dubbed 'the most wanted manin Europe', was a manager at the cafe.

 He chaired the most recent general meeting on September 30, documents reveal, at which he and another family member resigned from the business.

 Ibrahim, who seriously injured a bystander when he detonated his suicide bomb, rented a Seat Leon used in the attacks.

 The car was used by the terrorists who murdered diners outside the Casa Nostra pizza restaurant and the La Belle Équipe cafe.

 It was later found abandoned with a cache of weapons inside.

 The area has been described as an “airbase” for jihadists, and has been linked to plots including the 2004 Madrid bombing, the 2014 Jewish Museum shooting and this year’s botched attack on a Thalys commuter train.

 Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, this week vowed to “clean up” the area, saying that the government had lost control of it. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Before they were suspects in the deadliest attack on French soil since WWII, brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam owned a bar called Les Beguines in Brussels, the Wall Street Journal reports. "I used to go there every day after work," a neighbor tells the Telegraph. "We would go there to smoke hashish, drink alcohol, no problem." A friend tells Reuters he would see the brothers at Les Beguines everyday. They would play cards and talk sports, he says. But Brahim and Salah sold the bar Sept. 30 for what locals say was "a lot of money," the Telegraph reports. Six weeks later, Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris cafe and Salah is on the run from a continent-wide manhunt. Authorities shut down Les Beguines, located in a heavily Muslim area of Brussels, on Nov. 5 after a police raid in August found patrons selling drugs and smoking marijuana, Reuters reports. And a neighbor tells the Journal the bar was "a rough hangout with regular fights and frequent visits by police." Brahim and Salah were reportedly known to police for drug violations despite the use of drugs—in addition to alcohol and tobacco—being banned in Islam. "The history of the two fits a pattern in which many Islamist terrorists in Europe have been radicalized from the ranks of petty criminals and drug users," the Journal states. And Reuters notes attacks are often carried out by people who were seemingly fully assimilated into the culture of Europe.