SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) ? An early morning fire swept through a two-story wood frame house in eastern New York on Thursday, killing four people, including three children, authorities said.
A fourth child was injured and taken to a burn unit at Westchester Medical Center.
The fire in Schenectady, just west of the capital of Albany, broke out shortly after 4 a.m. It was the third fire of the night in the city of about 66,000 people and struck shortly after firefighters fought another blaze about a half-mile away.
The investigation will look for any connections between the two nearby fires, but Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said they are believed to be unrelated.
Two adults and four children lived in the upstairs unit, Della Rocco said. The father was killed along with three of his children. Della Rocco said they haven't been able to locate the mother, who was not in the house at the time of the fire.
The building burned quickly and completely largely because it was made in a late 19th- and early 20th-century building style known as "balloon construction" in which studs run from the ground to the roof without the fire-breaks required by modern codes, Della Rocco said.
The house, gray with maroon trim, was tucked closely between two other two-story homes on a residential street where many of the houses are two-family. The second-floor was gutted and the roof gone. The fire curled siding on the house next door, separated by a narrow alley barely the width of a car and filled with charred debris.
City fire investigators were working with state and federal agencies to try to determine the cause. Della Rocco said the building will be condemned and demolished.
Krystal Ashline knew the family and said the children ranged in age from about 11 months to 7 years.
"The kids were great kids," she said. "My kids played with them. He was a really good father. He was the one who mainly took care of the kids.
"It's a tragedy," she said. "It just broke my heart."
Shane Conway, who lives on the first floor of the house, told The Daily Gazette that he awoke around 4:30 a.m. to the shouts of his stepfather's girlfriend.
"I got up, got everyone out, made sure my son got out," Conway told the newspaper.
Three children and four adults escaped the first-floor dwelling.
James Moloney, who also lives downstairs, said he could hear what he thought were smoke detector alarms.
"I wanted to go back in to see if I could get any of them, but you can't," Moloney told the newspaper. "It was fully engulfed."
Annette Singh said the neighborhood is a mix of people from Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. She said people generally help each other out there.
But Ashline said the street is plagued by drugs and crime, including shootings and assaults.
(Reuters) - IT services company CGI Group Inc reported a second-quarter profit above analysts' estimates, partly helped by its acquisition of Logica Plc in August, sending its shares up more than 15 percent on Tuesday.
Excluding Logica integration costs, Canada's largest IT services provider earned 56 Canadian cents per share on an adjusted basis, above the 50 Canadian cents analysts had expected.
The company completed the $2.64 billion acquisition of larger Anglo-Dutch rival Logica in August.
"Now people have more confidence in CGI and their ability to pull off Logica's integration," Morningstar analyst Swami Shanmugasundaram told Reuters.
Second-quarter revenue more than doubled to C$2.53 billion ($2.53 billion). Analysts were looking for C$2.56 billion on average, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Montreal, CGI is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world.
It competes with companies such as IBM Corp and Accenture Plc to provide services including business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance and infrastructure management.
Clients range from businesses such as Vodafone Plc to to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Revenue from CGI's Nordics, Southern Europe and South America (NSESA) division rose to C$511.2 million from C$10 million a year earlier due to the acquisition.
Logica's market is concentrated in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Brazil, while CGI had operations in Spain and Portugal. Sweden and Finland accounted for 73 percent of CGI's revenue from the NSESA region year-to-date.
The company also increased its annual savings target from the acquisition to C$375 million from C$300 million, and said it expects to generate the savings by the end of fiscal 2014, a year earlier than originally planned.
"The successful cost saving program should get CGI closer to C$3 per share in earnings about one year ahead of schedule," National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson said in a note to clients on Tuesday.
CGI's second-quarter net earnings rose to C$114.2 million, or 36 Canadian cents per share, from C$105.7 million, or 40 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier.
The stock was up 14 percent at C$30.89 at mid day on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Shounak Dasgupta and Krithika Krishnamurthy in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)
New plant protein discoveries could ease global food and fuel demandsPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego
New discoveries of the way plants transport important substances across their biological membranes to resist toxic metals and pests, increase salt and drought tolerance, control water loss and store sugar can have profound implications for increasing the supply of food and energy for our rapidly growing global population.
That's the conclusion of 12 leading plant biologists from around the world whose laboratories recently discovered important properties of plant transport proteins that, collectively, could have a profound impact on global agriculture. They report in the May 2nd issue of the journal Nature that the application of their findings could help the world meet its increasing demand for food and fuel as the global population grows from seven billion people to an estimated nine billion by 2050.
"These membrane transporters are a class of specialized proteins that plants use to take up nutrients from the soil, transport sugar and resist toxic substances like salt and aluminum," said Julian Schroeder, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who brought together 11 other scientists from Australia, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the U.S. and the U.K. to collaborate on a paper describing how their discoveries collectively could be used to enhance sustainable food and fuel production.
Schroeder, who is also co-director of a new research entity at UC San Diego called Food and Fuel for the 21st Century, which is designed to apply basic research on plants to sustainable food and biofuel production, said many of the recent discoveries in his and other laboratories around the world had previously been "under the radar"known only to a small group of plant biologistsbut that by disseminating these findings widely, the biologists hoped to educate policy makers and speed the eventual application of their discoveries to global agriculture.
"Of the present global population of seven billion people, almost one billion are undernourished and lack sufficient protein and carbohydrates in their diets," the biologists write in their paper. "An additional billion people are malnourished because their diets lack required micronutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin A. These dietary deficiencies have an enormous negative impact on global health resulting in increased susceptibility to infection and diseases, as well as increasing the risk of significant mental impairment. During the next four decades, an expected additional two billion humans will require nutritious food. Along with growing urbanization, increased demand for protein in developing countries coupled with impending climate change and population growth will impose further pressures on agricultural production."
"Simply increasing inorganic fertilizer use and water supply or applying organic farming systems to agriculture will be unable to satisfy the joint requirements of increased yield and environmental sustainability," the scientists added. "Increasing food production on limited land resources will rely on innovative agronomic practices coupled to the genetic improvement of crops."
One of Schroeder's research advances led to the discovery of a sodium transporter that plays a key role in protecting plants from salt stress, which causes major crop losses in irrigated fields, such as those in the California central valley. Agricultural scientists in Australia, headed by co-author Rana Munns and her colleagues, have now utilized this type of sodium transporter in breeding research to engineer wheat plants that are more tolerant to salt in the soil, boosting wheat yields by a whopping 25 percent in field trials. This recent development could be used to improve the salt tolerance of crops, so they can be grown on previously productive farmland with soil that now lies fallow.
Another recent discovery, headed by co-authors Emanuel Delhaize in Australia and Leon Kochian at Cornell University, opens up the potential to grow crops on the 30 percent of the earth's acidic soils that are now unusable for agricultural production, but that otherwise could be ideal for agriculture.
"When soils are acidic, aluminum ions are freed in the soil, resulting in toxicity to the plant," the scientists write. "Once in the soil solution, aluminum damages the root tips of susceptible plants and inhibits root growth, which impairs the uptake of water and nutrients."
From their recent findings, the plant biologists now understand how transport proteins control processes that allow roots to tolerate toxic aluminum. By engineering crops to convert aluminum ions into a non-toxic form, they said, agricultural scientists can now turn these unusable or low-yielding acidic soils into astonishingly productive farmland to grow crops for food and biofuels.
Other recent transport protein developments described by the biologists have been shown to increase the storage of iron and zinc in food crops to improve their nutritive qualities. "Over two billion people suffer from iron and zinc deficiencies because their plant-based diets are not a sufficiently rich source of these essential elements," the biologists write.
The scientists also discovered transporters in plants and symbiotic soil fungi that allow crops to acquire phosphatean element essential for plant growth and crop yieldmore efficiently and to increase the uptake of nitrogen fertilizers, which are costly to produce. "Nitrogen fertilizer production consumes one percent of global energy usage and poses the highest input cost for many crops," the scientists write. "Nevertheless, only 20 to 30 of the phosphate and 30 to 50 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied are utilized by plants. The remainder can lead to production of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, or to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems through water run-off."
The biologists said crops could be made more efficient in using water through discoveries in plant transport proteins that regulate the "stomatal pores" in the epidermis of leaves, where plants lose more than 90 percent of their water through transpiration. Two other major goals in agriculture are increasing the carbohydrate content and pest-resistance of crops. A recent discovery of protein transporters that move sugar throughout the plant has been used to develop rice plants that confer pest resistance to crops, the biologists said, providing a novel way to simplify the engineering of crops with high yields and pest resistance, which could lead to reduced use of pesticides in the field.
"Just as our cell phones will need more advanced technology to carry more information, plants need better or new transporters to make them work harder on existing agricultural land," said Dale Sanders, director of the John Innes Centre in the U.K. and a corresponding co-author of the paper. "Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are the current solution, but we can make plants better at finding and carrying their own chemical elements."
These recent developments in understanding the biology of plant transporters are leading to improved varieties less susceptible to adverse environments and for improving human health. Says Schroeder, "More fundamental knowledge and basic discovery research is needed and would enable us to further and fully exploit these advances and pursue new promising avenues of plant improvement in light of food and energy demands and the need for sustainable yield gains."
###
In addition to Schroeder and Sanders, the co-authors of the paper are Emmanuel Delhaize of CSIRO in Canberra, Australia; Wolf Frommer of the Carnegie Institution of Science; Mary Lou Guerinot of Dartmouth College; Maria Harrison of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Ithaca, NY; Luis Herrera-Estrella of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute in Iraputo, Mexico; Tomoaki Horie of Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan; Leon Kochian of Cornell University; Rana Munns of the University of Western Australia in Perth; Naoko Nishizawa of Ishikawa Prefectural University in Japan; and Yi-Fang Tsay of the National Academy of Science of Taiwan.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
New plant protein discoveries could ease global food and fuel demandsPublic release date: 1-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego
New discoveries of the way plants transport important substances across their biological membranes to resist toxic metals and pests, increase salt and drought tolerance, control water loss and store sugar can have profound implications for increasing the supply of food and energy for our rapidly growing global population.
That's the conclusion of 12 leading plant biologists from around the world whose laboratories recently discovered important properties of plant transport proteins that, collectively, could have a profound impact on global agriculture. They report in the May 2nd issue of the journal Nature that the application of their findings could help the world meet its increasing demand for food and fuel as the global population grows from seven billion people to an estimated nine billion by 2050.
"These membrane transporters are a class of specialized proteins that plants use to take up nutrients from the soil, transport sugar and resist toxic substances like salt and aluminum," said Julian Schroeder, a professor of biology at UC San Diego who brought together 11 other scientists from Australia, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the U.S. and the U.K. to collaborate on a paper describing how their discoveries collectively could be used to enhance sustainable food and fuel production.
Schroeder, who is also co-director of a new research entity at UC San Diego called Food and Fuel for the 21st Century, which is designed to apply basic research on plants to sustainable food and biofuel production, said many of the recent discoveries in his and other laboratories around the world had previously been "under the radar"known only to a small group of plant biologistsbut that by disseminating these findings widely, the biologists hoped to educate policy makers and speed the eventual application of their discoveries to global agriculture.
"Of the present global population of seven billion people, almost one billion are undernourished and lack sufficient protein and carbohydrates in their diets," the biologists write in their paper. "An additional billion people are malnourished because their diets lack required micronutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin A. These dietary deficiencies have an enormous negative impact on global health resulting in increased susceptibility to infection and diseases, as well as increasing the risk of significant mental impairment. During the next four decades, an expected additional two billion humans will require nutritious food. Along with growing urbanization, increased demand for protein in developing countries coupled with impending climate change and population growth will impose further pressures on agricultural production."
"Simply increasing inorganic fertilizer use and water supply or applying organic farming systems to agriculture will be unable to satisfy the joint requirements of increased yield and environmental sustainability," the scientists added. "Increasing food production on limited land resources will rely on innovative agronomic practices coupled to the genetic improvement of crops."
One of Schroeder's research advances led to the discovery of a sodium transporter that plays a key role in protecting plants from salt stress, which causes major crop losses in irrigated fields, such as those in the California central valley. Agricultural scientists in Australia, headed by co-author Rana Munns and her colleagues, have now utilized this type of sodium transporter in breeding research to engineer wheat plants that are more tolerant to salt in the soil, boosting wheat yields by a whopping 25 percent in field trials. This recent development could be used to improve the salt tolerance of crops, so they can be grown on previously productive farmland with soil that now lies fallow.
Another recent discovery, headed by co-authors Emanuel Delhaize in Australia and Leon Kochian at Cornell University, opens up the potential to grow crops on the 30 percent of the earth's acidic soils that are now unusable for agricultural production, but that otherwise could be ideal for agriculture.
"When soils are acidic, aluminum ions are freed in the soil, resulting in toxicity to the plant," the scientists write. "Once in the soil solution, aluminum damages the root tips of susceptible plants and inhibits root growth, which impairs the uptake of water and nutrients."
From their recent findings, the plant biologists now understand how transport proteins control processes that allow roots to tolerate toxic aluminum. By engineering crops to convert aluminum ions into a non-toxic form, they said, agricultural scientists can now turn these unusable or low-yielding acidic soils into astonishingly productive farmland to grow crops for food and biofuels.
Other recent transport protein developments described by the biologists have been shown to increase the storage of iron and zinc in food crops to improve their nutritive qualities. "Over two billion people suffer from iron and zinc deficiencies because their plant-based diets are not a sufficiently rich source of these essential elements," the biologists write.
The scientists also discovered transporters in plants and symbiotic soil fungi that allow crops to acquire phosphatean element essential for plant growth and crop yieldmore efficiently and to increase the uptake of nitrogen fertilizers, which are costly to produce. "Nitrogen fertilizer production consumes one percent of global energy usage and poses the highest input cost for many crops," the scientists write. "Nevertheless, only 20 to 30 of the phosphate and 30 to 50 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied are utilized by plants. The remainder can lead to production of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, or to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems through water run-off."
The biologists said crops could be made more efficient in using water through discoveries in plant transport proteins that regulate the "stomatal pores" in the epidermis of leaves, where plants lose more than 90 percent of their water through transpiration. Two other major goals in agriculture are increasing the carbohydrate content and pest-resistance of crops. A recent discovery of protein transporters that move sugar throughout the plant has been used to develop rice plants that confer pest resistance to crops, the biologists said, providing a novel way to simplify the engineering of crops with high yields and pest resistance, which could lead to reduced use of pesticides in the field.
"Just as our cell phones will need more advanced technology to carry more information, plants need better or new transporters to make them work harder on existing agricultural land," said Dale Sanders, director of the John Innes Centre in the U.K. and a corresponding co-author of the paper. "Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are the current solution, but we can make plants better at finding and carrying their own chemical elements."
These recent developments in understanding the biology of plant transporters are leading to improved varieties less susceptible to adverse environments and for improving human health. Says Schroeder, "More fundamental knowledge and basic discovery research is needed and would enable us to further and fully exploit these advances and pursue new promising avenues of plant improvement in light of food and energy demands and the need for sustainable yield gains."
###
In addition to Schroeder and Sanders, the co-authors of the paper are Emmanuel Delhaize of CSIRO in Canberra, Australia; Wolf Frommer of the Carnegie Institution of Science; Mary Lou Guerinot of Dartmouth College; Maria Harrison of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Ithaca, NY; Luis Herrera-Estrella of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute in Iraputo, Mexico; Tomoaki Horie of Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan; Leon Kochian of Cornell University; Rana Munns of the University of Western Australia in Perth; Naoko Nishizawa of Ishikawa Prefectural University in Japan; and Yi-Fang Tsay of the National Academy of Science of Taiwan.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The next time some college football fan gripes about his favorite player going to the NFL before his senior season, we'll have a ready reply.
Three of them, actually.
Manti Te'o. Geno Smith. Matt Barkley.
The trio returned for a fourth year of college football and look what it got them.
Heartache. Embarrassment. And, certainly in the case of Barkley, a much lighter wallet than he would've had a year ago.
The first round of the NFL draft came and went.
All three were left waiting by the phone. It never rang.
That's a harsh lesson every rising junior with pro aspirations should heed. Think only of yourself.
If there's a chance to dramatically improve your draft position, then stay in school. If you're already projected as a first-rounder, it's time to get started on your real job. Rest assured, the school will get along just fine without you. Sure, a college degree is great to have, but you can always finish up those last few classes in the offseason.
After getting passed over Thursday night, Te'o must've been having second thoughts.
We'll never know for sure if the Notre Dame linebacker would've been a first-round pick in 2012, as many projected, going on the assumption that he wouldn't done any better in the 40-yard dash than the painfully slow time he turned in at this year's combine. But at least he wouldn't have been lugging around all that off-the-field baggage ? a ruse of a relationship with a girlfriend that wasn't ? plus a stinker of a performance against Alabama in the national championship game.
Even if the whole sordid affair with the fake girlfriend had still occurred, chances are it wouldn't have been discovered until Te'o had already signed a pro contract. The money would've already been in the bank.
Instead, he's left to wonder how much money he left on the table by returning to the Fighting Irish for what seemed a dream season until it took an oh-so-wrong turn at the end.
Ditto for Smith, who blossomed as a junior in West Virginia's wide-open offense, throwing for more than 4,300 yards with 31 touchdowns and just seven interceptions. If he had decided to go pro at that point, the last bit of tape NFL scouts would've had on him was a 70-33 rout of Clemson in the Orange Bowl, when he threw for a record six touchdowns and 401 yards to earn the MVP award.
Smith kept it going through his first give games as a senior, when he was the hands-down favorite to win the Heisman Trophy and looked every bit like a guy who would be the top pick in the draft. He and the Mountaineers were unstoppable, averaging more than 50 points a game.
Unfortunately, the season still had eight games to go.
There was another side to the mountain, and it was all downhill.
Smith still put up some dazzling numbers ? 4,205 yards passing, 42 touchdowns, just six interceptions ? but West Virginia dropped six of its last eight, including a blowout loss to Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl. Suddenly, everyone was finding flaws in Smith's game. His confidence was shaky. He setup and delivery were faulty. He was too emotional, too loose with the ball.
Heck, some pointed out that he didn't play well in poor weather ? which comes off as the ultimate bit of nitpicking.
Even so, Smith still expected to go somewhere in the first round, maybe even among the top 10 picks. That's why he turned up at Radio City Music Hall in New York with all the other projected first-rounders. For most of them, their dreams came true. All Smith could do was look on glumly as one player after another went ahead of him ? even a teammate he helped look so good, receiver Tavon Austin, selected at No. 8 by the St. Louis Rams.
Te'o stayed away from New York, allowing him to sort out whatever anger or humiliation he was feeling in private. That was the right call, showing he does have the ability to make good decisions beyond the online dating world.
On Friday ? finally! ? both Te'o and Smith heard their names. Back to back, no less. The Notre Dame star went to San Diego in the second round with the 38th overall pick; Smith was selected next by the New York Jets.
Barkley was still waiting. Amazingly, he wasn't picked in the first three rounds ? passed over through a total of 97 selections. The last four rounds will be held Saturday.
The guess here is that Te'o will turn out to be a good, solid pro, while Smith has a shot at greatness. Certainly, no other rookies will have a bigger chip on their shoulders.
When asked to analyze Te'o, former NFL coach-turned-TV analyst Jon Gruden said, "He's got a real good football aptitude. He plays faster, I think, than people give him credit. I think he's a very good, instinctive, high-effort, well-coached inside linebacker that's got to prove he can play on every down. There is no question about that. But I'm really confident that he can do it."
As for Smith: "It's very underestimated what this kid can do from a football standpoint. He does a lot above the neck as well as making plays with his arm and his mobility."
Then there's Barkley, who was being mentioned in the same breath with Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III before last year's draft.
Not anymore.
Barkley, for some reason, returned to Southern Cal for one more year. Maybe he was counting on less competition at the quarterback position in the 2013 draft (and, indeed, only one QB was taken Thursday). Maybe he truly wanted to take another shot at a national championship with a team that was pegged as the preseason No. 1.
Whatever the case, Barkley couldn't have been more wrong in his decision, at least from a financial point of view. The Trojans didn't come close to living up to the hype, barely finishing with more wins than losses (7-6). He threw twice as many interceptions and wound up spraining his shoulder in a late-season game, which raised more doubts in the eyes of the scouts.
Barkley's stock dropped so severely that, frankly, it would've been a surprise if he had been picked in the first round.
"I think Barkley's going to be a starter in the league at some point," Gruden said, not sounding nearly as upbeat as he did about the other two. "He's going to be a guy that relies on his system, complete execution around him. I think his supporting cast is going to be important to him."
Now, Barkley will tell you that he has no regrets about his decision to return to USC. He'll tell you that getting the chance to be a leader during tough times will help him down the road.
Hogwash.
Barkley blew it.
So did Te'o and Smith.
All those juniors-to-be out there better not to make the same mistake.
___
Paul Newberry in a national writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963
The National Rifle Association said Wednesday the group is unequivocally opposed to the newly-struck compromise plan to expand background checks ? and threatened that it may seek to penalize lawmakers who vote for what it deems ?anti-gun? measures by giving them poor grades in their rating system.
The warning to members of Congress came just hours after a compromise on expanding background checks for? gun purchasers was announced, a deal that the NRA itself participated closely in.
"Expanding background checks, at gun shows or elsewhere, will not reduce violent crime or keep our kids safe in their schools," top NRA lobbyist Chris Cox wrote in a letter sent to senators Wednesday night. "Given the importance of these issues, votes on all anti-gun amendments or proposals will be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations."
The NRA rates lawmakers based on how they vote on the group's priorities. The letter grades are highly influential and carry particular weight in rural states with a strong gun culture.
Cox was a ubiquitous presence during negotiations between Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who announced the deal Wednesday morning to expand background checks to sales at gun shows and over the Internet.
Manchin has been careful to court the group's support; both he and Toomey both have "A" ratings from the NRA.
But despite their involvement, the NRA ultimately decided to come out against it.
Earlier Wednesday, a Senate Democratic aide had said that Democratic leaders were operating under the impression that the NRA will not throw its full weight behind opposing the background check bill, something which would have relieved pressure on moderate Democrats and Republicans to vote for the legislation.
Now, they have less cover.
Separately Wednesday, Sens. Patrick Leahy and Susan Collins announced they'd reached an agreement with the NRA on gun trafficking language that will be included in the overall gun bill. Cox did not mention the gun trafficking measure in his letter.
NBC News? Luke Russert contributed to this report.
As strong and influential as our generation has been throughout time, we continue to set the pace, but not in a way many of us expected.? In the past 20 years as the divorce rate for those under 50 has plateaued or gone down (according to a Bowling Green University study); those in the 50+ plus age group has DOUBLED!? But even those who embraced this challenge learned more than they expected to.
The reasons for such dissolution are partly for the fact that as we live longer; staying in an unsatisfying relationship is no longer an option.? Many couples find it hard to rekindle what brought the two together after the children are out of the home.? And the stigma of divorce that we grew up with is no longer a valid reason to stay together.
What we didn?t figure on is the complexity of divorce after decades of marriage; nor the aspect of finding love that lasts the second time around.? According to The Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education divorcees in all age groups seem to have only a 40% success rate in finding that special someone ? ?till death do them part? in a second marriage. ?Plus the accumulation of family, friends, assets, and even health issues presents an uphill battle that most younger marriages don?t have to sift through.
Think of it; at this age we have less time to recover financially from such a split, less time to recoup losses (like a home, personal belongings, assets of all types), a greater chance to experience future health issues alone, and what about the decades of friendships and acquaintances that may lost or need to be restructured.
If you are considering divorce in your Platinum years, don?t rush into it. Get help first.
The cost may be prohibitive! Consider that decades of intertwined finances can be a legal cost that may not be an option for you.? The more you can decide on your own, the less the legal fees can be.? And if you choose to cash out and divvy up investments, IRAs, or selling assets like your home? you both can lose a lot on capital gains taxes.? You may be ?together? financially for the long haul if you need to recoup what you have lost over the past few years.
Consider counseling.? If not for the kids and your own wellbeing, remember breakups after decades is much harder and we are facing a time where no matter how much we hate our ex there are some ties we may never be able to break.? Retirement and Social Security issues may be insurmountable under some circumstances.? Don?t forget about health insurance.? This may be the most difficult part of divorce in our time.? Many insurance companies have strict rules about divorce; this is something you need to check before considering any sudden moves.
There is help out there besides marriage counseling and a divorce attorney.? There are certified divorce financial analysts who can also give you a new perspective.? And there are some who are starting ?gray divorcee? support groups and clubs.? Despite the considerations and limitations, the decision to end the marriage at our age will be more prevalent as more baby boomers come of age.
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Public release date: 1-May-2013
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As strong and influential as our generation has been throughout time, we continue to set the pace, but not in a way many of us expected.? In the past 20 years as the divorce rate for those under 50 has plateaued or gone down (according to a Bowling Green University study); those in the 50+ plus age group has DOUBLED!? But even those who embraced this challenge learned more than they expected to.