The small baltic state had 190.8 drug-induced deaths per million of the population in 2012, more than double second placed Norway. The reason for Estonia’s high death rate is an overdose boom caused by fentanyl, a synthetic form of heroin produced clandestinely in neighbouring Russia. For more infographics about Europe, read more in Statista’s latest Independent feature.
This chart shows drug-induced deaths per million of the population in 2012.
Webb says: Is it possible for us to return to a leadership environment where people from both political parties and from all philosophical points of view would feel compelled to work together for the common good, and to sort out their disagreements in a way that moves our country forward rather than tearing the fabric of this nation apart?
As one who spent four years in the Reagan Administration and then served in the Senate as a Democrat, I believe it is possible. It is also necessary. We desperately need to fix our country, and to reinforce the values that have sustained us for more than two centuries, many of which have fallen by the wayside in the nasty debates of the last several years. I hope you will consider joining me in that effort.
Over the past few months thousands of concerned Americans from across the political spectrum have urged me to run for President. A constant theme runs through these requests. Americans want positive, visionary leadership that they can trust. They’re worried about the state of our economy, the fairness of our complicated multicultural society, the manner in which we are addressing foreign policy and national security challenges, and the divisive, paralyzed nature of our government itself. In short, they’re worried about the future. They want solutions, not rhetoric.
In addition, Webb has looked and will look at our broken banking system.
About Webb: Both sides of Mr. Webb’s family have a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Mr. Webb’s father was a career Air Force officer who flew B-17s and B-29s during World War Two, cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift, and was a pioneer in the United States missile program. Colonel Webb was the first family member to finish high school and graduated from the University of Omaha in 1962 after 26 years of night school.
While in the Senate, Mr. Webb was selected to deliver the response to the President’s State of the Union address in 2007, and served on the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Veterans Affairs, and the Joint Economic Committees. He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic Magazine as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.”
Mr. Webb was a leading voice in calling for the United States to re-engage in East Asia, meeting frequently with key national leaders throughout the region. In 2009, he led an historic visit to Burma, becoming the first American leader to visit that country in ten years, and opening up the dialogue that resulted in the re-establishment of relations between our two countries.
Mr. Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, receiving a special commendation for his leadership contributions. First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer’s Basic School, he served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1975.
Mr. Webb served in Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981. In 1982 he led the fight to include an African American soldier in the Vietnam Veterans memorial on the National Mall. In 1984 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, and in 1987 became Secretary of the Navy.
He was a Fall 1992 Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.
In addition to his public service, Mr. Webb has enjoyed a varied career as a writer. He taught literature at the Naval Academy. Traveling widely as a journalist, he received an Emmy Award for his PBS coverage of the U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, and in 2004 was embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. A screenwriter and producer, his original story “Rules of Engagement” held the top slot in U.S. box offices for two weeks in April 2000. Mr. Webb has written ten books, including “Born Fighting,” a sweeping history of the Scots – Irish culture, and “Fields of Fire,” widely recognized as the classic novel of the Vietnam War.
Dubai is a can-do environment for entrepreneurs.
Handbags: Luxe bag designer Zufi Alexander has found a fan base among such fashionable red carpet walkers as Cate Blanchett, Sienna Miller, Alicia Keys and Beyoncé.
After a university education that combined the US with the ivory towers of Oxford, she cut her business teeth at one of London’s most established auction houses. “I love art and vintage jewellery and have always been good at drawing,” she says. “A role at Christie’s fitted the bill perfectly.”
It soon became clear that the surroundings – and perhaps the sale of the odd vintage Chanel clutch – were inspiring her own artistic aspirations as a handbag designer.
Zufi Alexander’s eponymous label now sells more than 10,000 bags a year to women across the world. Married to an Englishman and living between London and Dubai, she personifies the international woman she designs for.
“Dubai is a land of opportunity and that opportunity is not tied to a particular bracket or class of people,” she says. “At the same time, I love it because I get to experience all different types of people and culture.”
That vow has been superseded by her love of what she has achieved: “It’s all worthwhile when I see a confident woman walking down the street clutching one of my bags.”
Luxury Leather goods: Nicole Silvertand, founder of luxury leather marque Complete, grew up every inch the sophisticated lady. Nurturing an appreciation of elegant, quality product, her craftsman father spoilt her generously with one-off handbags and shoes he made especially for her.
Inspired by the vibrant business culture of Dubai, Silvertand took the plunge in 2002 and set about launching her own leather business. Complete’s range of leather goods are made bespoke for key movers and shakers of the region including Armani Dubai, Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa and Burj Al Arab.
Silvertand offers clients a range of 12 leather colours from black and brown to vibrant turquoise, orange and silver. All of the items are made to order so everything can be uniquely branded and personalised.
“Because of spending so much time in my father’s atelier while I was growing up, with education, age and experience I became aware of the vast opportunities for a company providing commercial organisations, government departments and five-star hotels with beautifully designed leather goods,” says Silvertand. “The word ‘Complete’ perfectly summarises that sense of entirety; of being able to satisfy all clients’ needs.
Sarah Barrett writes: After a good few months’ worth of watching Doctor Who, reading Doctor Who scripts, talking to other people about their thoughts on Doctor Who, getting briefly sick of Doctor Who, watching more Doctor Who, and doing a tremendous amount of copypasting things into other things, here’s what happened.
(The Bechel test: The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. Originally conceived for evaluating films, the Bechdel test is now used as an indicator of gender bias in all forms of fiction. Almost half of all contemporary films fail the test, and critics have noted that the test is most informative when applied in the aggregate, because individual works may pass or fail the test for reasons unrelated to sexism.)
Turns out that out of 117 episodes, 96 pass the Bechdel Test, giving Doctor Who an overall pass rate of… 80%! That strikes me as not bad, but not outstanding either, for a show that has so many female main characters. I give you a B+, Doctor Who. I know you can do better. Especially since:
The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between women of colour is low. 7%, and that’s really only because we had Martha as a main character, having conversations with her family and friends, for so long. The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between LGBT women is even lower – a mere 3%, and that’s almost entirely down to the existence of Madame Vastra and Jenny. The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between disabled women is lowest of all – 0% in fact – but I kinda expected that.
But I promised you some mild surprises, so here’s mild surprise number one: the Steven Moffat factor. The current Doctor Who showrunner receives a hell of a lot of criticism and often it’s deserved, but his series isn’t that far behind Davies’s series in terms of Bechdel Test passes. Davies’ series (1-4 plus specials) stand tall at 85%, but Moffat’s series (5-8) score 75%. Mild surprise number two: Steven Moffat actually wrote the most Bechdel Test-passing episodes. Not by much – only two more than Davies – but whaddayaknow.
Mild surprise number three (and the nicest of them) is that when these results were published on Doctor Who TV, the response was pretty positive, way more than I expected.
On the human-capital side, in 1995 America had the highest graduation rate in the OECD. Now it lags behind seven other countries. President Barack Obama has set a target for his country to return to the top of the graduation league by 2020, but it is unlikely to be met. Young American graduates are below the OECD average in numeracy and literacy, and are doing relatively worse than older ones. Some of the explanation lies with the poor performance of America’s schools, but the most expensive tertiary-education system in the OECD might be expected to help students catch up.
Recent work by American academics suggests that it does not. Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, authors of “Academically Adrift”, looked at the results of 2,300 students who took the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a test of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing, and found that 45% of the sample showed no significant gains between their first and third years. Innumeracy in America
France will ban excessively thin fashion models and expose modeling agents and the fashion houses that hire them to possible fines and even jail, under a new law passed on Friday.
The move by France, with its fashion and luxury industries worth tens of billions of euros, comes after a similar ban by Israel in 2013, while other countries, like Italy and Spain, rely on voluntary codes of conduct to protect models.
The measure is part of a campaign against anorexia by President Francois Hollande’s government. Lawmakers also made it illegal to condone anorexia and said any re-touched photo that alters the bodily appearance of a model for commercial purposes must carry a message stating it had been manipulated.
“The activity of model is banned for any person whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is lower than levels proposed by health authorities and decreed by the ministers of health and labor,” the legislation says.
The lawmaker behind the bill previously said models would have to present a medical certificate showing a BMI of at least 18, about 55 kg (121 lb) for a height of 1.75 meters (5.7 feet), before being hired for a job and for a few weeks afterwards.
The law, voted through the lower house of parliament by Hollande’s Socialist majority despite opposition by conservative parliamentarians, envisages imprisonment of up to six months and a fine of 75,000 euros ($82,000) for any agency contravening it.
A second measure means that any website inciting a reader to “seek excessive thinness by encouraging eating restrictions for a prolonged period of time, resulting in risk of mortality or damage to health” will face up to a year in prison and fines of up to 100,000 euros.
Elite and IMG, two big modeling agencies present in France, both declined to comment on the moves.
Some 30,000-40,000 people in France suffer from anorexia, most of them teenagers, health experts estimate.
In 2010, Isabelle Caro, an anorexic 28-year-old former French fashion model, died after posing for a photographic campaign to raise awareness about the illness.
It might be hard for us to imagine not having a woman police officer or a woman detective, but Nadeen Alsayat says she’ll be the first woman in Saudi Arabia to do police work when she goes back home next month.
“I would like to work with criminals,” Alsayat said with a big smile on her face.
In 2010, she and her husband decided to expand their education in America. She recently graduated with a master’s degree in criminal justice from CU Denver.
Alsayat says she wasn’t sure, at first, if she would be able to use her degree at home.
“In Saudi Arabia, our government does not allow the woman to work in dangerous jobs, so we don’t have criminal justice for female[s,]” she said. “Now, the government changed their minds. They’re looking to have a female in criminal justice, because in our culture in Saudi Arabia, the public places are separated, female together and male together. When they have a female crime, the detective[s] are male who interview these criminals. The government realize[d] that they should have female detective[s] to interview these female criminals.”
Alsayat said there are women detectives studying in Saudi Arabia to become detectives, but those women will not be graduating until this summer, making Alsayat the first. She’s already had a couple of job offers and can’t wait to go home.
“I feel this is my turn to serve my country, to try to improve my country with experiences I got from the United States and from the degree,” she said.
Alsayat recently finished an internship with the Commerce City Police Department.
“Sometimes when I look at the pictures I took with the detectives, with the officers, I couldn’t imagine I did it,” she said. “To be honest, the sixmonths I spent inside the police department, I think are the best days I spent in the United States.”
She said the hardest part of that internship was when officers asked her to be serious and have a straight face during interviews. Alsayat said she was so excited to be doing the work. She couldn’t wipe a smile off her face.
“I was so happy, and when I’m happy I just keep smiling and laughing,” she said. “They asked me to have a serious face like police officers, but I couldn’t imagine that I’m working with police.”
Peter Beinert writes: The United States should push for the best nuclear deal with Iran that it possibly can. But it’s now obvious, almost three decades after Reagan signed the INF deal with Gorbachev, that it’s not the technical details that mattered. What mattered was the end of a cold war that had cemented Soviet tyranny and ravaged large chunks of the world. Barack Obama has now begun the process of ending America’s smaller, but still terrible, cold war with Iran. In so doing, he has improved America’s strategic position, brightened the prospects for Iranian freedom and Middle Eastern peace, and brought himself closer to being the kind of transformational, Reaganesque president he always hoped to be. Ending the Cold War with Iran
Tony Burman writes: If this deal ultimately leads to a constructive new partnership with the West, which existed before the Islamic revolution of 1979, it will dramatically change the strategic balance in the Middle East. And this will be for the good.
Inevitably, as the final deadline in June approaches, the voices against this deal with Iran will be loud and alarmist. They will exploit the media’s often uncritical echo chamber to terrify. Working for peace is hard work and complicated, but sounding bold and bellicose is easy.
We only have the past century to remind us. We can still hear the voices that bellowed “treason” in response to any nuclear deal with the Soviet Union’s “evil empire” or to any accommodation with “Red China.” But those courageous acts changed the direction of the world for the good
The battle for American public opinion has only begun. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Tuesday showed that Americans by nearly a 2-to-1 margin support a deal with Iran but are skeptical that Iran will keep to the bargain. This week’s drama has only emboldened critics of the deal. Already, there are calls from American conservatives for Israel, the U.S. or both to bomb Iran. In the U.S. Congress, the Republicans have vowed to do what they can to block the interim accord and to try to impose added sanctions on Iran.
Three major objections to this interim agreement are wrong on all three counts:
Not true. Decades of sanctions against Iran didn’t force Iran to give up its nuclear program or convince Iranians to revolt. Additional sanctions will simply persuade Iran that negotiations are a waste of time and to conclude that the real western motive is “regime change.”
Why should this be so? Yes, Iran has cheated in the past but that was because the monitoring was weak. This isn’t a deal being made in the dead of night with casual drifters. This is an agreement that is being signed by six of the world’s great powers.
Again, why should this be so? Iran is a cultured, civilized country with a vibrant young population that wants to come in from the cold — in fact, they are insisting on it. If this process unfolds as outlined, why wouldn’t Iran become a positive force in the evolution of a region that we all know is clearly broken.
History is replete with self-serving politicians eager to show off their manhood by sending other people’s children to die in their name. We have miraculously survived the 20th century because enough people, eventually, said ‘no’ to them.
That challenge is no less urgent now, and this week’s historic breakthrough with Iran — because of its promise and in spite of its risks — can be a big step along that journey.
President Barack Obama announced he will travel to Kenya in July to lead his annual entrepreneurship summit.
One important theme from the recent Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Milan – the importance of women entrepreneurs to economic growth whether in an African village or in the Valley.
One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms recently hit the news for reasons other than successful investment — a suit alleging gender discrimination in the workforce.
Alicia Robb, a Kauffman Foundation senior fellow and visiting scholar at UC-Berkeley, led an insightful discussion on high growth in women’s entrepreneurship earlier this month at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress examining problems of gender diversity within the ranks of startups. She was joined by Ruta Aidis, who leads Women’s Entrepreneurship Research Forum and suppors Dell Inc.’s efforts to better understand the unique challenges women entrepreneurs face in starting and scaling their businesses.
While the U.S. leads in global rankings of women’s entrepreneurship, the data points to a glaring absence of women founding new enterprises in the high-tech sector. This, is due to a variety of reasons but the root causes are structural and cultural.
Rebeca Hwang, the cofounder of Rivet Ventures, an early stage venture fund that backs startups targeting female-centric markets, is doing something about this and highlighting the huge yet largely untapped potential that female consumers represent. Even half a century since women entered the workforce, she said, we see many opportunities that male-dominated venture funds simply miss.
She explained that when entrepreneurs, male or female, target women consumers who represent more than half the U.S. market, they must first overcome the understandably male-oriented worldview of male-dominated venture funds.
Girls, she said, are just as talented as boys and that when given the same opportunities, women achieve at the same or higher rates than men. If there is a confidence gap, she said, it’s a reflection of upbringing, not an inherent distinction.
One African Minister who inspired many last week in Milan will be pleased about today’s news of the President’s decision to visit the continent to promote entrepreneurship.
“More than anything else we must create a good environment because the people of South Africa are very creative and industrious and they are able to make their living for themselves,” said Lindiwe Zulu, South Africa’s eloquent Minister of Small Business Development.
President Obama’s Administration is unlikely to need much prodding on including a focus on women’s entrepreneurship. Much of the work that the State Department and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes have led on advancing entrepreneurship overseas has stressed women and youth.
Obama’s personal leadership of this summit offers a unique opportunity once and for all to ensure that those in charge of economic policy around the globe never again view entrepreneurs as merely a side ring at the circus but rather the most powerful driver of new jobs, economic prosperity and innovation and political stability for all.