I, in contrast, not having taken a vacation this year and with none scheduled, am positively euphoric compared with these dour souls: I have something to look forward to and a world of possible destinations to fantasize about.

Anecdotes do not equal data, as scientists say, but in this case the anecdotes about vacations failing to give us a post-trip mood boost match the results of years of research. Studies point to an inescapable conclusion: “Generally, there is no difference between vacationers’ and non-vacationers’ post-trip happiness,” as the authors of a recent paper in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life put it. One interesting exception is the period just before taking a vacation, when about-to-be travelers report feeling happier than nonvacationers, possibly because the anticipation puts them in a good mood.

But the holiday aftermath is a different story, and a glum one. One small study in 2008 used text messages from vacationers during their holidays to assess how happy they were, and then compared these real-time missives with how people recalled their holiday moods once they’d returned to real life. Vacationers were, overall, happier on holiday than in their normal lives. So far, so good. But once home, they stank at remembering how happy they had been while away, consistently recalling higher levels of happiness than they had reported at the time. That suggests two things: we will ourselves to recall being happy on vacation (if we weren’t happy, why did we just spend all that money?), but by comparison real life feels grimmer. Another small study, from 2004 in the Annals of Tourism Research, measured the effect of a vacation on post-vacation mood more directly, having people fill out a questionnaire that assessed their levels of happiness right before going on holiday and then when they returned. (Nontravelers also filled out the questionnaire, with results confirming that about-to-be vacationers indeed experience an anticipatory high.) The carry-over effect of a vacation on happiness was so small, the best the researchers could report was that vacations are “not causing individuals to feel any worse off than before traveling.” I don’t think we’ll be seeing that sentiment on tourist Web sites any time soon. (“Come to the Caribbean: you won’t feel any lousier than you did before vacationing here!”)

Why? For one thing, holiday trips are not 24/7 bliss. There are missed flight connections, disappointing hotels, bad food, and illness. Looking back on all that, once we’re back home, can understandably put a dent in our happiness.
Although scientists generally find no correlation between length of a vacation and post-trip contentment, there is one argument in favor of shorter vacations. Say you get 10 days of vacation a year.

Result: vacationers were happier before their trips than were nonvacationers, confirming the anticipation effect or suggesting that people able to take trips might have more happiness-boosting characteristics (good health, money, friends and family to travel with) than nonvacationers do.

Between June 27 and July 3, the provincial Office of the Independent Police Review Director received 164 complaints, compared with an average 80 per week, said spokeswoman Rosemary Parker.

The arm’s-length agency created last year to deal with complaints against police doesn’t have “enough resources” to determine what portion of those are related to the G20, Parker said.

However, some people who may be intimidated by the process of lodging a complaint with the provincial office are turning to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. It has received more than 75 complaints from people caught up in mass arrests.

“We are finding that people may be intimidated by the process, by the amount of information they need to provide to make a complaint, and some are worried that if they file a complaint the police will get mad at them,” said Des Rosiers. The group helps individuals file a complaint or get legal advice, she said.

Most complaints lodged with CCLA came after a meeting last Tuesday at Christie Pits Park, where people were urged to take action through legal avenues.

Natalie Logan, 21, was among those attending. She said she was arrested while taking photos at The Esplanade on Saturday evening and detained for 14 hours.

Logan plans to send her complaint to both the complaints office and the civil liberties group. She delayed doing so, she said, because she wanted to ensure her account was as neutral and accurate as possible. “I want to keep this issue upfront and not let it fizzle away with time.”

In the mean time, she urges people to speak out: “It’s important for people to stand up and denounce police misconduct, and filing a complaint is the best way to do so. It’s a service to your community to do so.”

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine watching a stressful soccer match more than doubles the risk of an acute cardiovascular event. And the study warns that in view of “this excess risk” men with known heart

The study examines the period from June 9 to July 9 2006 during the FIFA World Cup held in Germany and looks at cardiovascular events in patients in the greater Munich area. Heart attacks in 4,279 patients were assessed. And on the days of matches involving the German team, the study found the incidence of cardiac emergencies was 2.66 times than during the control period.

“Our results show a strong and significant increase in the incidence of cardiovascular events (including the acute coronary syndrome and symptomatic cardiac arrhythmia), in a defined sample of the German population, in association with matches involving the German team during the FIFA World Cup,” the study says.

“In contrast, the average daily number of cardiac emergencies during soccer matches involving foreign teams was well within the range of values obtained during the control period.”

In other words if it’s your team that’s in a tight spot during the World Cup you’re more likely to have a heart attack. “It is clear that watching an important soccer match, which can be associated with intense emotional stress, triggers the acute coronary syndrome and symptomatic cardiac arrhythmia.”

A British Medical Journal analysis also found there was a connection between watching the World Cup and heart attacks. The analysis found the risk of being admitted to a British hospital for acute myocardial infarction on June 30, 1998 – the day England lost to Argentina in a World Cup match that was decided by a penalty kick shoot out – was higher than other days. In fact 25 per cent higher than average for that day of the year. And it wasn’t just the day of the loss, but heart attacks continued for a couple more days. In total there were 55 more heart attacks than normal.

At a wake on Wednesday, grieving relatives wept over the body of Sergio Hernandez, shot on the Mexican side of the border in the frontier city of Ciudad Juarez as he and other youths were running from US border patrol agents.

The death of the teenager has sparked outrage in Mexico, where many already bristle at the way Mexican immigrants doing menial jobs are treated in the United States.

“I would just caution on this particular incident … Any law enforcement officer has the right of self-defence if people are taking up arms or (throwing) rocks against them,” Crowley told reporters in Washington.

Espinosa said it was not clear if the youths, who were under a bridge border crossing a few meters into Mexican territory, had attacked the agents.

Tensions between the major trading partners have been fanned by the state of Arizona’s decision to crack down on illegal immigrants.

First we have to get control of the human rights problem. We need better training of the agents so they won’t abuse the migrants. Several of them have been indicted recently for rape, beatings and so on. Fortunately, we haven’t had any shootings here since the early nineties.

Secondly, once we get the human rights issue under control we need to revisit our immigration laws. We have three to five million undocumented migrants in the U.S. and we have to look at the whole amnesty issue all over again. We have to find ways that people can cross to the U.S. and work legally. That’s something that has to be agreed on by immigrants rights groups as well as by Congressional leaders and immigration authorities. Sooner or later they are going to have to revisit the whole amnesty issue.

Right now it’s estimated between six and seven thousand. Five thousand on the border at least. Here in San Diego alone we have 2,200. In San Diego we are boxed in. That’s part of the problem. But the real big problem is these troops were not trained for immigration or interacting with civilians. They were trained for battle. For combat. For search and destroy. The boy is an example. They left that boy out there, after they shot him. He laid out there for 20 to 30 minutes bleeding to death. They didn’t have any first-aid on them. They didn’t have any medics with them like they do in combat. They had to wait for the Border Patrol to call the paramedics. By then the boy had bled to death. That’s the kind of people they are going to have out there on the border.

But how well do the leading complaint websites themselves work? On Monday, an old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar organization, the Consumer Federation of America, delivered a mixed verdict: The best sites are great for helping consumers voice irritation, but not so great for helping them address it.

Stephen Brobeck, the federation’s executive director, said the group decided to examine more than a dozen complaint websites, in part because they show up so frequently in Web searches.

Not very long ago, aggrieved consumers had few options beyond griping to friends or relatives, filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or state attorney general, or suing, Brobeck said. Now, sites such as My3cents, Complaints Board, and Ripoff Report, offer an alternative.

Though some sites, such as My3cents, offer consumers the chance to post positive comments, the sites have special appeal to the disgruntled.

“They’re unhappy, and they want to vent,” Brobeck said. “And this is a very low-cost way to vent, with potentially high impact.”

Susan Grant, the federation’s director of consumer protection, said the best sites could help potential customers of the large, national companies most likely to appear in the sites’ databases.

She said a lack of complaints should not be seen as any sort of guarantee. “But if there are lots of complaints, and lots of complaints about particular kinds of problems, that’s a good indicator to consumers that they may want to look elsewhere for their purchases,” Grant said.

Grant said the sites could also prove useful because consumers sometimes shared stories about how they ultimately solved a problem.

While the corporate media attempts to minimize, under-report, distort, or outright ignore the enormous and growing and irreparable damage to people, wildlife, fishing, vegetation, and the eco-system of Mother Earth caused by this corporate horror that began on April 20th, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama / Biden / Rahm Emanuel administration was busily urging that off-shore drilling be expanded. In an April 15th, 2010, article in The Black Commentator titled, ‘Decloaking the Deadly Foxes in Our Midst,’ I specifically warned about the insidious and “environmentally insane off-shore drilling” policies on the part of “Obama and his Democratic and Republican Party colleagues.” Who was paying attention? Who is paying attention even now?

It is important to understand that British Petroleum (BP) is not by any means the only corporate player involved in this horrendous national and planetary disaster, just as Goldman Sachs is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only corporate vampire on Wall Street. In point of fact, Haliburton Corporation, Transocean Corporation, and Hyundai Heavy Industries all worked together with British Petroleum. The bottom line for these corporations is profit for the elite, motivated by greed. The safety and welfare of everyday people and the planet is a distant second or third – if indeed at all.

Even as the pro-apartheid Zionist Obama / Biden / Rahm Emanuel clique continues to wage bloody imperialistic wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan (to name but a few places), joblessness, foreclosures, college / university education-tuition hikes, homelessness, racism, corporate government attacks on labor unions & working people, and prison incarceration rates continue to sky rocket in this nation. Even as public education is in fact dismantled and privatized by the Democratic Party foxes and Republican Party wolves, our young people serve as cannon fodder for the corporate / military elite – going from the cradle to the military or to prison.

Our addiction to oil comes at a very high price. We have to wean ourselves off of it and as quickly as possible. Our ability to destroy and pollute this planet seems mind bogling and insane. We knew long ago this was coming but took no steps towards change. It amazes me that as a species we can be so kind on one hand but continue to destroy the planet at a reckless pace on ther other. I fear a true desire and push for real change will only come when millions of people are sickened and die. By then I wonder if it may be too late. Facts are facts people. We best wake up soon.

But isn’t the Obama Administration doing everything possible to help US homeowners now living in a toxic home because of toxic Chinese drywall? The Chinese Drywall Complaint Center says, “the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill-now officially the worst oil spill in US history is not the Obama Administrations first astonishing failure to respond to a national disaster. The Obama Administration’s response to toxic Chinese drywall has been negligent, and they act like they either do not want to talk about it-or their are afraid of offending the Chinese-either way 100,000’s of US Homeowners in the US Southeast have been abandoned by Washington, DC.” The group says,”even worse than Obama’s lack of interest in toxic Chinese drywall-the US Consumer Products Safety Commission has miserably failed 100,000’s of US homeowners with their lack of information.

Symptoms of toxic Chinese drywall in homes in Louisiana, North Florida, Central Florida, South Florida, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, or Southeast Texas include: repeated air conditioning coil failures, within two years of the home being built. In addition to air conditioning coil failures, toxic Chinese drywall in the US Southeast may cause appliance failures, light bulbs burning out prematurely, copper turning black, combined with all, or some of the family are experiencing seemingly never ending upper respiratory issues, nose bleeds, severe headaches, unexplained very unusual rashes, especially in the late spring, or summer. The time frame for toxic Chinese drywall in the US Southeast is 2001-to early 2009. The Chinese Drywall Complaint Center is saying, “We think the worst effects of toxic Chinese drywall in the US Southeast occur in from mid April—mid October because of high heat combined with high thresholds of humidity.”

But it wasn’t until after she wired money to rent the property that she discovered she actually was involved in a scam.

Now, the woman won’t be moving into the house, and she is out $900.

Gibsonville police Chief Mike Woznick was alerted to the scam via an e-mail from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

The woman lives in Guilford County and has a Gibsonville address, but she doesn’t live within his police department’s jurisdiction so Woznick wasn’t involved with her case. However, he thought her experience was one that should be shared so people would be careful when using the Internet to buy or rent real estate

“People just need to slow down,” Woznick said. “I feel sorry for the people who are getting scammed. There is no question they are looking for the best possible scenario for their resources. But if they don’t slow down, they might as well drop that money along the interstate somewhere. It’s the same loss.”

The Internet Crime Complaint Center has received 23 similar complaints, Woznick said.

In the Gibsonville woman’s case, she was using oodle.com, a website where people can post and scan classified advertisements. She received an e-mail alert from oodle.com about a three-bedroom house that was available on Elderbush Court in Greensboro.

While oodle.com is a legitimate website, the e-mail the woman received was not from the owner of the property. After receiving the e-mail, she contacted Remax in Greensboro. She was told that it was being rented directly from the owner so she responded to the e-mail and filled out an online application, Woznick said.

After a few days, the woman made arrangements to wire the money to the owner. She wired $900 on May 14 to Eric Cooper in Battersea, London. Shortly after, she received an e-mail from DHL about where she could pick up the keys to the house. A week later, she received an e-mail from oodle.com informing her she was a victim of a scam, Woznick said.

Typically, the imposters claim they are doing missionary work in a foreign country and need to rent their home while they are away. Usually, the imposter asks to have the rental money sent to another country, according to the website.

Woznick said the perpetrators of this type of Internet scam are difficult to catch and costly to prosecute. Federal agents typically won’t pursue scams if they don’t involve thousands of dollars.

As a result, Woznick recommends that people use caution when making deals online.

While the house was real and for rent, the person posing as the owner was an imposter.

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center’s website, scammers duplicate postings from legitimate real estate websites and repost the ads after altering them. Sometimes the scammers use the broker’s real name to create a fake e-mail address. When the victim sends an e-mail through the classified ad’s website inquiring about the rental, the victim will receive an e-mail from the imposter.

First filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee on April 30, the amended complaint in Ward, et. al. v. BP, et.al. (N.D. Fla., Case No. 4:10-cv-00157-SPM-WCS), alleges gross negligence, willful misconduct and other claims in the design, construction and operation of the rig, as well as in the response to the disaster. The case has been assigned to Chief Judge Stephan P. Mickle.

The defendants include various divisions of oil giant BP (formerly British Petroleum), Transocean, Ltd. (the owners/operators of the Deepwater Horizon), Halliburton Energy (which was involved in “cementing” operations to cap the oil rig when the explosion occurred) and Cameron International Corporation (manufacturers of the rig’s blow-out-preventers, which failed to operate properly and prevent the oil spill).

Similar lawsuits are planned for Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, as the devastation from the oil rig disaster continues to grow.

“Oil continues to flow into the gulf, and with it an environmental nightmare,” said Dr. Howard, who most recently played a leading role in coordinating a national team of more than 40 law firms in the Toyota sudden acceleration lawsuits.

“This unmitigated horror threatens to destroy one of the most beautiful marine, coastal and estuarine environments in the world.”

clean up the oil spill along the Gulf of Mexico. The company said they are recovering over 2000 barrels of oil everyday and are in the process of cleaning up the oil spill.

“It is expected that it will take some time to increase the flow through the system and maximise the proportion of oil and gas flowing through the broken riser that will be captured and transported to the drillship” BP said.

The company said this past week that they have been recovering the oil which spread into coastal regions which is an estimated 5000 barrels and over 1000 have been recovered already. BP has been working on covering the leaks in the leaks and has been taking measure to ensure the incident does to worsen and repeat itself.

BP is offering compensation for those affected by the spill in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and has spend $650 million on total expenses out of which $450 million was spent on the clean up. BP said 15,600 complaints were received in total out of which 2,700 have been compensated.

Not a storm from the rainy season bearing down, but a storm over why so many are still in dire straits a full four months after the earthquake.

Why so many are facing the ravages of the rainy season without safe shelter to protect them?A storm over how that could be the case when so much international aid has been committed to help the people of Haiti.

A CBS News investigation examines the total aid committed to Haiti and explores how much has been spent so far.

Critics such as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Policy and Research say more money should have been spent up front making sure the population’s emergency needs were met. He argues that many donors who dug deep during their own tough times to give, thought they were putting immediate food in people’s mouths, giving immediate medical help, and putting a roof over victims’ heads now.

Just how much money has been collected so far? Within days of the earthquake, the United States and the

World Bank each made commitments of $100 million in aid. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Americans sent private donations worth another $150 million — more than they gave after the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. A recent international telethon raised another $57 million.

To put these amounts in perspective, consider that the annual value of all the goods and services produced by Haiti’s economy is about $7 billion. Pledges of aid from around the world already total about 10 percent of that figure, if not more. And so far, aid has been collected based on people’s willingness to give, not on the size of the need. There has been a tacit assumption that the amount donated cannot possibly be excessive.

That may indeed be true, but it does not mean that so much money can be put to immediate use. As aid groups on the ground in Haiti have found, the country’s infrastructure — roads, the power grid, etc. — are not very well developed, and it has few businesses capable of taking on big logistics and construction projects. In this environment, it is not easy to spend a lot of money productively in a short period of time.

This problem is similar to the “resource curse” facing poor countries that discover major reserves of fuels and minerals. When they begin extracting those natural riches (or selling the rights to do so), their economies receive sudden inflows of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. But they can’t always use all of that money right away; even if you have good intentions, you can’t double the size of an education or public health system overnight. Nor can you simply distribute the money to your people; if the economy doesn’t produce more goods and services, all that extra cash sloshing around will just raise prices. Left to sit, the money has a way of disappearing; for decades in Nigeria, billions in oil money were siphoned away annually by elites and corrupt bureaucrats.

Even saving the money for the future, as East Timor has done with its newfound oil wealth, can be dangerous. Several years ago, the Timorese knew that their government was starting to build up billions of dollars in saved funds — the process was actually quite transparent — but they wanted to see the money spent sooner, to create jobs and improve their quality of life. Riots and a change of government ensued.

If Haiti wants to spend its aid money now, it will clearly need help from overseas. But doing so will create an additional danger: that given Haiti’s lack of infrastructure and capacity, it will be dominated by foreign contractors in the same way as Iraq or Afghanistan. Foreign donors will undoubtedly employ their compatriots for big rebuilding projects — doing so makes giving aid that much easier — and they’ll risk falling into the same old traps of cronyism and unaccountability, as evidenced by no-bid contracts, shoddy work, and lack of buy-in from local people.

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