Chia Obama Heads Pulled
From Stores

Last Edited: Monday, 06 Apr 2009, 10:55 AM CDT
Created On: Monday, 06 Apr 2009, 10:41 AM CDT

• By Anthony Bartkewicz

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Well, that didn't last long. Just days after it was made available in stores after only being sold online, the Barack Obama Chia Head has been pulled from some Walgreen's stores, MyFox Tampa Bay reports .

According to MyFox Tampa Bay, stores in Tampa, Fla., were asked to remove the Chia Obama from their shelves because the item "is not appropriate for the company's corporate image."

• YouTube user Samantha Jordann captured video of a Walgreen's Chia Obama display in this video

The Chia Obama is part of the Chia Pet line of ceramic chia seed planters, with the seeds sprouting from where the pet or person would grow hair. Chia Obama caused controversy even before it hit stores, inspiring debate on blogs and Amazon customer reviews about the appropriateness of a Chia president and whether or not the product is racist.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/dpgo_Chia_Obama_Heads_Pulled_From_Stores_SAB_040620092390856

The Pay at the Top

Interactive Graphic: The Pay at the Top A look at the 2008 pay packages of 198 chief executives, including Citigroup’s Vikram S. Pandit.

http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?th&emc=th

Health Disparities Among Minority Populations Getting Worse

Health Disparities Among Minority Populations Getting Worse

WARSAW, Ind., April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite government efforts to address disparities in the past decade, beginning with President Clinton's 1998 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Initiative, there has been very little progress. African-Americans have more disease, disability, and early death than Caucasians(1).

The statistics are alarming:

• African-Americans are 1.6 times more likely to have diabetes than non-Latino Caucasians.(2)
• African-Americans have higher death rates for coronary heart disease (CHD), coronary artery disease (CAD), and stroke.(3)
• The prevalence of high blood pressure among African-Americans is among the highest in the world.(4)
• There is an estimate that 80% of black women and 60% of black men are overweight or obese (which contributes to heart disease, certain cancers, high blood pressure, diabetes among other chronic health conditions). (5).
• African-American women are 3 times more likely to have lupus than Caucasian women. (6)
• African-Americans are 38% less likely to get joint replacement to alleviate chronic joint pain than Caucasians.(7)

While health disparities worsen for African-Americans, according to Verona Brewton, Zimmer's Director of Minority Initiatives, African-Americans can take control by focusing on those individual behaviors that positively impact one's health.

"Whether you suffer from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure or another chronic health condition, there is a key factor that will make a difference in your quality of life - exercise," explains Ms. Brewton.

Keeping weight under control plays a critical role in managing these health issues. However, many African-Americans face a major hurdle: they are living with chronic joint pain.

"Every warning from governmental and non-profit health organizations implores our community to 'get moving' because of the positive impact it has on combating these conditions,": explains Ms. Brewton. "But we have failed to make the direct link between painful movement and poor health."

That's the situation that Stephanie Mace and Jean Pompey faced. Stephanie was severely overweight and battling other chronic health conditions. After joint replacement, Stephanie regained her mobility and was able to exercise, losing 100 pounds, which improved her overall health.

Jean Pompey suffered from arthritis - causing severe joint pain and her legs to bow two inches. After joint replacement restored her ability to exercise, Jean was able to lose weight and manage her other chronic health conditions.

Early intervention is key as there many options to alleviate joint pain. Knee or hip discomfort should not be dismissed as one of the natural signs of aging without discussing it with a primary care physician. Today's treatment options offer non-surgical solutions, which provide temporary pain relief and more permanent solutions such as joint replacement. Total knee replacement (TKR) is an effective method of reducing pain and improving physical function among those with disabling knee osteoarthritis. However, a February 2009 report from the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) revealed health disparities for African-Americans in getting joint replacement have worsened, from 37% to 39% between 2000 and 2006.(7) Although doctors performed 58% more total knee replacement procedures between 2000 and 2006, African-Americans were 39% less likely than Caucasians to get joint replacement.(7)

Regaining mobility and being active is critical in helping to manage and defeat chronic health conditions. Healthcare disparities for African-Americans in getting joint replacement represent a serious healthcare barrier. Zimmer's Back In The Groove program is an education-based community partnership that addresses healthcare disparities impacting African-Americans in the area of joint replacement. For more information, visit www.backinthegroove.zimmer.com or call 1-866-923-2345.

Fancy N.Y. Restaurants See Black Wait Staff as Bad for Business

Apr. 2, 2009

Fancy N.Y. Restaurants See Black Wait Staff as Bad for Business

By BET.com Staff

Fancy restaurants in New York apparently see Black wait staff as bad for business.

A new study by economist Marc Bendick Jr., came up with the same old results: White job applicants are considerably “more likely to get follow-up interviews, be offered jobs and given information about jobs, and their work histories were less likely to be investigated in detail,” The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Hired by advocacy groups for restaurant workers, Bendick conducted his experiments by sending pairs of applicants with similar résumés to various restaurants. The gender, appearance and experiences of the applicants – virtually everything but race – were the same.

“There really should not be a lot of difference in how the two of them are treated,” said Bendick, whose experiment is part of part of a larger report called “The Great Service Divide: Occupational Segregation and Equality in the New York City Restaurant Industry.” But there were big differences.

For example, Bendick found, non-White job applicants were 54.5 percent less likely as White applicants to get a job offer, and were less likely than White testers to receive a job interview in the first place; work experience of White job applicants was less likely to be subject to scrutiny; accents made a difference — with White candidates; White applicants with slight European accents were 23.1 percent more likely to be hired than White testers with no accent, but accents in non-White applicants made no difference.

Bendick has long researched such social ills as discrimination, ranging from racism in the advertising industry to sexism in firefighting. He said that in industries, such experiments typically found discrimination 20 percent to 25 percent of the time. In New York restaurants, it was found 31 percent of the time.

“That tells us that is a particularly serious situation of discrimination,” he said. “The rate of discrimination is worse for jobs that are really worth having. You don’t get a lot of discrimination for hamburger-flipping jobs at McDonalds.” At expensive restaurants in New York, “these are the jobs that you can make $55,000 to $100,000 a year,” Mr. Bendick said.

http://www.bet.com/NR/exeres/E6C6F6C2-11C3-4ED1-A674-8290228E8E77.htm??Referrer={0471DDF0-D0D8-48A8-9E30-ADD40CBE0269}