Acrobats fall during Ringling Bros. circus stunt PROVIDENCE, R.I

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A support frame collapsed during an aerial hair-hanging stunt at a circus performance Sunday, sending eight acrobats plummeting to the ground. Nine performers were seriously injured in the fall, including a dancer below, while an unknown number of others suffered less serious injuries.

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The accident was reported about 45 minutes into the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus' 11 a.m. Legends show at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence.

Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros., said the accident happened during an act in which eight performers hang "like a human chandelier" using their hair.
He said the metal-frame apparatus from which the performers were hanging came free from the metal truss it was connected to. The eight women fell 25 to 40 feet, landing on a dancer below.
All the performers have been doing "some variation of this act for some time," Payne said, though he didn't know how long. The current incarnation of the act began in January with the launch of the show, he said.

Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare said officials and inspectors haven't yet determined what caused the accident. He said none of the injuries appears to be life-threatening.

Roman Garcia, general manager of the Legends show, asked people to pray for the performers.
"Everybody's doing fine, everybody's at the hospital, everybody's conscious, everybody's doing pretty well," he said at the Dunkin' Donuts Center less than two hours after the accident.

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Emergency personnel attend to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performers who were injured …

Rhode Island Hospital in Providence admitted 11 patients with varying injuries, including one in critical condition, spokeswoman Jill Reuter said.
The hair-hanging stunt is described on the circus' website as a "larger-than-life act" featuring eight female performers.
"These 'hairialists' perform a combination of choreography and cut-ups including spinning, hanging from hoops, and rolling down wrapped silks, all while being suspended 35 feet in the air by their hair alone," the website says. "In this hair-raising act, audiences will even see the weight of three girls held aloft by the locks of only one of these tangled beauties."
Video taken by audience members shows a curtain dropping to reveal several performers hanging from an apparatus suspended from above. Seconds later, as they begin to perform, the women fall, and the metal apparatus lands on them.

"It just went crashing down," said audience member Sydney Bragg, 14, of North Kingstown. "Everyone was freaking out. We heard this huge clatter and then we just heard the girls scream."

She said spotlights were on the performers at the time, but all the lights went out after the fall.
Rosa Viveiros of Seekonk, Massachusetts, said she saw that the acrobats had fallen on top of at least one other performer below, a man who stood up with his face bloodied. The acrobats remained still and did not get up, she said.
"We thought it was part of the circus," said her husband, Joe.
The couple attended the circus with their 6-year-old grandson and 9-year-old niece.
"Everyone was in shock," Rosa Viveiros said. "It was pretty overwhelming to see that."

The circus began performances in Providence on Friday. The Dunkin' Donuts Center canceled two shows scheduled for later Sunday.

A Ringling Bros. aerial performer was killed in 2004 in St. Paul, Minnesota, when she was twirling 30 feet in the air on long chiffon scarves and the material gave way.

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NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's full inaugural address

 

http://www.democratichub.com/video/11189.aspx

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chemist Ruth Benerito for developing wrinkle-free cotton

Her name graces no labels, but millions wear Ruth Benerito creations daily.

A government chemist, Benerito led a team that helped create wrinkle-resistant cotton — an innovation that spared homemakers hours of ironing and breathed new life into an industry smothered in rayon, polyester and other synthetics.
Benerito, who was credited with 55 patents and more than 200 professional publications, died Oct. 5 at her home in Metairie, La., family members said. She was 97.
Until Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, she had lived in the same house for 56 years, sharing it in her later years with an older sister.
Benerito was sometimes called the Queen of Cotton, according to the American Chemical Society, which installed a plaque honoring her team's work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory she called home for nearly 33 years. Last February, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) lauded her achievements, along with those of other little-known inventors, at a committee meeting he chaired on American competitiveness.
"We can thank chemist Ruth Benerito for developing wrinkle-free cotton, which is in the shirts many Americans wear today, including mine," he said.
Though she always wanted to be a scientist, Benerito never set out to make lawmakers look hearing-room crisp.
"A lot of times what you discover is more from serendipity than what you set out to do," she told Investor's Business Daily in 2002. "That's why I think you can't manage science. You can't say that on a certain month, day or year you're going to do such and such a thing."
Her breakthrough came amid years of work by scientists eager to unrumple cotton garments and free women from the iron's grip. Over just a few decades, new, easy-care synthetics had battered the cotton market, cutting its share by 50% from 1960 to 1975. Some analysts predicted that by 2000, U.S. cotton would be a cool, dry memory.
In 1958, Benerito took charge of the cotton chemicals laboratory at the USDA's Southern Regional Research Center in New Orleans. After years of experimenting, she figured out how to strengthen the bonds among cotton's molecular strands with a technique called "cross-linking." With chemical processes she developed, the stronger bonds withstood pounding in washers, decreasing wrinkles in the garments.
"It's sort of like when a woman gets her hair in a permanent wave," Benerito once told an interviewer. "You have to take these long chains and cross-link them, connecting the two chains in a specific arrangement."
The development "opened more doors down the line that people hadn't thought about," including flame-retardant clothing and bedding, said Rini Paiva, executive director of the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Va. Benerito was inducted in 2008.
Though most of Benerito's patents are related to cotton, she also pioneered a life-saving treatment during the Korean War, allowing intravenous delivery of fat to wounded soldiers who were too sick to eat.
Born in New Orleans Jan. 12, 1916, Ruth Mary Rogan Benerito often said her civil engineer father and artist mother were early feminists, encouraging their daughters in pursuits that at the time were seen as unladylike.
Graduating from high school at 14, Benerito went on to Newcomb College and was one of two women allowed to take physical chemistry at Newcomb's affiliated school, Tulane University.
"We took it with the engineers," she said in a 1986 oral history, "and they didn't like it one bit."
Even after receiving her master's degree in physics from Tulane, Benerito had a tough time finding a job. She taught math, science and driving safety in nearby Jefferson Parish, although at the time she didn't know how to drive.
When her family moved to Chicago, she went along. In 1948, she received her doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago, shuttling back to New Orleans during summers to teach at Tulane.
In 1950, she married Frank "Benny" Benerito, who died 20 years later. She has no immediate survivors.
After retiring from her research career, she continued to teach. She was an adjunct professor at the University of New Orleans when poor vision forced her to stop at 81.
Five years later, Benerito was honored with the 2002 Lemelson-MIT lifetime achievement award.
"It's safe to say," said Merton Flemings, who was then director of the Lemelson-MIT program, "that Ruth Benerito has made us all more comfortable in our clothes over the years."

Shutdown backfires on Republicans as they score worst poll rating of any political party for the last 20 years

Not popular: The polls also show a dramatic spike in the proportion of people who have a negative view of the GOP since the shutdown

Gallup put its questions in the


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2452054/Republicans-score-record-low-favorablity-rating-shutdown-continues-Obama-calls-GOP-leaders-White-House-meeting.html#ixzz2hQ2gjC00

household income the U.S. Census Bureau

Getty Images - An aerial view of Ketchikan, Alaska from a seaplane.

Last year, household income remained effectively unchanged, according to data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is despite the fact that the U.S. added nearly 2.2 million jobs in 2012.
“The big story is that everything was stagnant over the year” said Economic Policy Institute's Elise Gould. “We’re stagnant, and continue to be in bad place.”
While the economy continues to struggle, residents in the wealthiest states continued to make far more than in the poorest. In 2012, Maryland remained the richest state in the country, with a median household income of $71,221. Mississippi was again the poorest, with an income of $37,095 -- nearly half that of Maryland’s.
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Despite the addition of jobs nationwide, median incomes remained stagnant in most states and were still generally below their 2008 levels, adjusted for inflation. Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, explained that this has been the nature of the recovery. “We have an economy that continues to grow, with most of the gains going to the economic elite. I don’t see any bright prospects for the median worker, much less the poor.”
States with lower median incomes generally had much higher rates of poverty than the national rate. All of the 10 states with the lowest median income in 2012 also had among the highest poverty rates in the country. While 15.9% of Americans fell below the poverty line in 2012, nearly one in four Mississippians did.
Employment is one of the biggest factors affecting income. In some states with lower unemployment, a higher share of the households had steady income, which bolsters the state’s median. In many of the highest-income states, like New Hampshire, Minnesota and Hawaii, unemployment in 2012 was less than 6%, compared to a national rate of 8.1%.
Elise Gould, Director of Health Policy for Economic Policy Institute, explained that unemployment rates can have a significant effect on a state's household income. “When we’re talking about average families and poor families, the vast majority of income comes from wages. So it’s about jobs.” Gould cautioned, however, that unemployment rates do not tell the full story.
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Unemployment rates, for example, ignore those people who have given up looking for work or accept part-time work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while 8.1% of American workers were unemployed in 2012, 14.7% were underemployed, meaning they wanted to work full time but could not. This was an increase from roughly 10% in 2008.
The types of jobs available in each state also affect income. A review of Census Bureau industry composition data shows that people in most of the states with a higher median income were often more likely to be employed in information, finance, professional and other positions that tend to pay higher salaries. Maryland, the wealthiest state in the country, had the highest percentage of workers in professional, scientific and management positions.
At the same time, many of the low-income states had smaller percentages of these professional occupations and higher rates of employment in retail, manufacturing and transportation. The high proportion of manufacturing jobs in low-income states might be surprising, but, explained Danziger, the makeup of the manufacturing industry in the country has changed.
“There’s a difference between unionized auto company workers and non-unionized parts suppliers,” Danziger said. “Even when manufacturers haven’t cut wages, they are adopting labor-saving technological change.”
To identify the states with the highest and lowest median household income, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed state data on income from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). Based on Census treatment, median household income for all years is adjusted for inflation. We also reviewed unemployment data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2012, as well as 2012 ACS data on health insurance coverage, employment and poverty.
America's Richest States
5. Hawaii
> Median household income: $66,259
> Population: 1,392,313 (11th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 5.8% (12th lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 11.6% (8th lowest)
Over 16% of people in Hawaii worked in arts and entertainment, recreation, accommodation and food services last year, the second highest percentage in the country. This reflects the state’s strong retirement and tourism economy. The unemployment rate in Hawaii declined only slightly in 2012 from the year before, but remained well below the U.S. rate, at just 5.8%. Over that time, Hawaii was also one of a handful of states to see a meaningful increase in income. Median household income rose by more than $3,000, to $66,259.
4. Connecticut
> Median household income: $67,276
> Population: 3,590,347 (22nd lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 8.4% (tied-14th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 10.7% (4th lowest)
Connecticut’s median household income fell considerably from 2008, when a typical family in the state took in $73,075 annually. This mirrored broader trends in the rest of the U.S., as nationwide median household income fell from over $55,000 in 2008 to $51,371 in 2012. Still, 11.5% of the state’s households earned at least $200,000 in 2012, the most in the U.S. Connecticut also remains one of the states with the worst income inequality in the nation, ahead of only New York.
3. Alaska
> Median household income: $67,712
> Population: 731,449 (4th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.0% (22nd lowest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 10.1% (2nd lowest)
In spite of Alaska’s high median household income -- and the nation’s second-lowest poverty rate -- over 20% of the population did not have health insurance last year, more than all but two other states. This could be due in part to the state's high volume of seasonal employees, who are much less likely to have health insurance. Alaska’s oil production also bolsters residents’ income, with most collecting dividend payments from the state’s reinvested oil savings.
2. New Jersey
> Median household income: $69,667
> Population: 8,864,590 (11th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.5% (tied-5th highest)
> Pct. below poverty line: 10.8% (5th lowest)
The median household income in New Jersey was just shy of $70,000 in 2012. This was due in part to the large number of especially wealthy households. More than 11% of households had an income of at least $200,000 in 2012, a higher percentage than any other state except Connecticut, and nearly double the national rate. But not all residents were well off in 2012. The state’s unemployment rate for the year was 9.5%, among the highest in the nation. Also, the percentage of households that depended on food stamps rose from 8.0% in 2011 to 9.3% last year. This mirrored a nationwide trend: The number of American households on food stamps rose to from 13.0% to 13.6% between 2011 and 2012.