In just 60 minutes, you could earn enough to pay for a tank of gas, the cable bill, gym membership, or dinner out. Thirty dollars still covers some of life’s essential costs. Earn that much in just one hour on the job, and you have enough to build a comfortable life.
The latest U.S. Census Bureau figures put the median household income in the U.S. at $50,233. A $30-per-hour job brings in $62,400 before taxes, or 20% more than the national median. For many people, this extra margin is just one promotion or one credential away. To boost your economic security, consider these 10 careers with salary data as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Database Administrator Mean Hourly Wage: $33.78
Salary: $70,260
Database administrators perform a vital role in our information economy, managing the database systems that help companies store, process, and access data effectively. Job growth is stunning in this high-demand field as well — the profession is expected to grow 37 percent through 2016. Continuing education is a must to keep up with evolving technology, but entry requirements are modest. You can launch this $30-plus-an-hour career with an associate’s degree in database administration or information technology.
Registered Nurse Mean Hourly Wage: $30.04
Salary: $62,480
Historic demand for registered nurses is inspiring many people to reinvent themselves as health care practitioners. Nursing is projected to generate more new jobs than any other profession — an estimated 587,000 positions through 2016, which represents a 23% increase in a decade. To take advantage of this boom, head to nursing school for your bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN). Accelerated programs are available for career changers who already have a bachelor degree in another field.
Technical Writer Median Hourly Wage: $30.18
Salary: $62,780
Technical writers interpret engineering and scientific information for a lay audience, producing product documentation, user manuals, project proposals, and scientific reports. Most writers come to the field with a college bachelor’s degree in a communications or liberal arts field. Some colleges offer specialized certificate programs in technical communication, which incorporate IT literacy training.
Fashion Designer Median Hourly Wage: $34.22
Salary: $71,170
Fashion design has the reputation as an all-or-nothing labor of love — you begin as a starving artist and ultimately attain celebrity stature designing haute couture. In fact, the majority of fashion designers — 3 in 4 designers — work secure, salaried jobs for apparel manufacturers. What these artists give up in suffering and glamour they make up for in a solid and stable paycheck. A job as a salaried fashion designer starts with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in fashion design.
Accountant Median Hourly Wage: $30.11
Salary: $62,640
Accountants should have no trouble finding work as businesses throughout the economy sort through the financial rubble of the credit crisis. Mounting federal regulation will also contribute to demand for trained accountants. Accountants working for accounting and bookkeeping services earn upwards of $30 per hour. These employers hire trained professionals with a bachelor’s degree in accounting or finance.
Environmental Scientist Median Hourly Wage: $30.71
Salary: $63,870
Environmental scientists will be the heroes of the coming era, developing much-needed strategies to redress environmental damage to soil, water, and air. The field is expected to grow 25% in response to new federal regulations and funding, as well as private investment. A bachelor’s degree in earth sciences will get you started in this fascinating and important field. Many scientists go on to a master’s degree to secure the best opportunities.
K-12 Curriculum Designer Median Hourly Wage: $30.87
Salary: $64,220
Curriculum designers are at the forefront of educational research, developing new instructional materials and strategies to improve the quality of education in our nation’s schools. The job typically calls for a graduate-level degree in the field, such as a master’s degree in education (M.Ed.).
Dental Hygienist Mean Hourly Wage: $31.21
Salary: $64,910
To make about the same amount of money with a two-year associate’s degree, enroll in a dental hygiene program. Dental hygienists work alongside dentists to promote oral health and hygiene. Hygienists enjoy distinction as one of the nation’s fastest growing occupations, with 30% growth expected through 2016.
Detectives and Criminal Investigators Median Hourly Wage: $30.05
Salary: $62,500
Solving crimes is all in a day’s work for these criminal justice professionals. Criminal investigators can build their skill set by completing an associate’s degree in criminal justice, where they take courses in crime scene investigation, criminal investigation procedures, and more. The Bureau of Labor Statistics rates job opportunities as “excellent.”
Television Producer Median Hourly Wage: $31.66
Salary: $65,850
Producers coordinate the television features we enjoy, from sitcoms to dramas to the nightly news. To build the necessary skill set, producers enter the field with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in mass communications or broadcast media.
A tight economy hasn’t stopped employers in these ten fields from hiring qualified grads. With the right degree, you can upgrade your career and find job security in the form of a $30-an-hour paycheck.
YORK, ONTARIO (Canada) – A man has been arrested in connection to two bank robberies in York on Wednesday.
The first occurred at a Scotiabank, where a male handed a note to a teller demanding cash, said Toronto police. He fled after the teller handed money over.
On the same day, police also responded to a robbery at a Bank of Montreal, where a male also produced a note and demanded cash.
Then shortly after that, a man appeared at a CIBC and tried to execute a transaction. The manager became suspicious, seized the cash and then called police.
Robel Negash, 21, a native of Ethiopia, is charged with possessing property obtained by crime and two counts of robbery.
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s opposition party said on Friday it doubted its unity government with President Robert Mugabe would extradite Ethiopia’s former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has asylum there.
Mengistu, called the “Butcher of Addis Ababa” by his enemies, was driven from power in 1991. He was sentenced to death in absentia last year. [The current ruler, Meles Zenawi, is as well known as the butcher of Addis Ababa and Mogadishu.]
Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which has agreed to join a government with Mugabe, said it would seriously consider extraditing Mengistu if it were forming a government by itself.
“But what we are going to have is a government of national unity, and decisions there will have to be reached through some consensus and I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible,” said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
The extent of the MDC’s influence in the new administration remains unclear.
The Ethiopian government has long called for Mengistu’s extradition, but Mugabe’s government has refused that.
He was sentenced to death in absentia in May 2008 by Ethiopia’s Supreme Court. It found him guilty of genocide arising from the thousands of killings during his 17-year rule that included famine, war and the “Red Terror” purges of his suspected opponents.
Yoseph Kiros, the special prosecutor during the trial of Mengistu and other senior officers, welcomed any chance that prospects for extraditing Mengistu could have improved. He said any such decision by Zimbabwe “would bestow great honour on that country.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The just completed African Union summit in Addis Ababa was partly a celebration of the continent’s achievements, and partly a reminder of how deeply it remains troubled by wars, poverty and flawed leadership.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attended the African Union summit, as did the heads of international financial institutions and as many as 25 other heads of state and government. But they were all upstaged by the golden-robed Libyan leader Moamar Gadhafi, hailed by supporters as ‘the king of kings’ as he was sworn in as AU chairman for the coming year.
The opening sessions were all business, presided over by the outgoing chairman, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete in his finely tailored suit. He was the third consecutive AU leader from a country where the government is chosen through elections.
Lukewarm reception for Colonel Gadhafi
The tone changed half way through the second day, when President Kikwete gave way to Libya’s ruler. In contrast to the packed hall during the earlier business sessions, the room was half empty, with only a handful of heads of state on hand as Mr. Gadhafi turned the floor over to the tribal kings in native dress he had brought with him.
Delegates at this summit reacted cautiously to Mr. Gadhafi’s election. When asked for her reaction, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said , ‘I have accepted it”. Other leaders made a silent statement by staying home, making this one of the most poorly attended summits since the organization began.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gadhafi sharply criticized racism in the United States, America’s role in creating the world financial crisis, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the failure of democracy in Africa, which he blamed for the recent rise in military coups.
Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, Mr. Gadhafi said in his Green Book, a collection of thoughts published in 1988, he had predicted the election of a black president in the United States.
“But the Green Book says after analysis, after all various conditions that black people will prevail over the world, and today Obama, the Kenyan son has imposed himself in the United States of America, defying openly. It was a kind of challenge against this despicable attitude toward the black population, the looting of African wealth and the looting and pillaging of the continent,” he said.
Later, in answer to a reporter’s question, the Libyan leader railed against multi-party democracy, calling it an imported system that has brought nothing but chaos to Africa.
“Finally there was multi-partyism, but this new method, which is imported, is now faced with many challenges. Unfortunately we have seen coup d’etats and rebellions are showing back their ugly heads. After elections, there are massacres as it happened in Kenya. Also results of elections are made public then followed by rebellion, a president is elected and a revolt follows and a coup d’etat takes place, a rebellion and so on,” said the Libyan leader.
AU cautious on continental government
There were few heads of state in the room to hear Mr. Gadhafi’s speech. The summit had been extended an extra day because of a standoff between the Libyan leader and most other delegations over his plan to create a union government, and most presidents and prime ministers had gone home by the time the closing ceremonies were held.
In the end, this was Mr. Gadhafi’s summit, and he insisted he is pushing ahead with his plans. It was left to Africa’s chief diplomat, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping to explain to reporters that, despite what Mr. Gadhafi may say, his dream of a continent-wide government will not be coming true any time soon.
ISRAEL – Ethiopian rights groups spoke out this week against a government-Jewish Agency decision to close the main immigrant absorption center in Tiberias in the coming weeks due to budget difficulties faced by both bodies.
The 380 residents of the Recital Absorption Center – all immigrants from Ethiopia who have been here less than two years – received notices in late December telling them that the center would be closing and that alternative accommodation would be found for them.
“As a person involved in social welfare issues who has personally been exposed to many cases of discrimination and racism, I’m still shocked that two organizations charged with the welfare of new immigrants would become the instigators of such problems for them,” said Danny Admasu, director of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews.
The association, together with Tebeka (“advocates for justice” in Amharic), urged the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, which works in partnership with the Jewish Agency at the center, to hold off on the closure at least until the current school year is complete and to allow those immigrants who are working nearby to part from their employers on good terms.
“I’ve been living in the absorption center for the past year and three months and work nearby as a dish washer,” said Adis Avka, 35. “To come to us without warning and tell us we have to move, especially when my children are in the middle of the school year, is not fair.”
“To close down an absorption center in the middle of the year and completely ignore the needs of the people living there is unacceptable,” said Yitzhak Desse, the director of Tebeka.
Community representatives, who last week petitioned Jewish Agency and ministry officials on the issue, said the closure would cause significant and irreversible damage to the absorption and integration of the immigrants, who already struggle to adjust to their new lives in Israel.
In response, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the agency issued a joint statement pointing out that the move was purely a financial decision made due to recent cutbacks to the sector.
“After a series of discussions with the residents of Recital, we have agreed to move them to another absorption center not far from Tiberias and to provide the children with transport to their schools, so as to minimize the disturbance to their current routine,” the ministry said in a statement.
A Jewish Agency spokesman told The Jerusalem Post the move was part of ongoing cutbacks faced by the quasi-governmental organization and was not specifically aimed at the Ethiopian immigrant community but rather part of wider phenomenon.
He pointed out that Ulpan Etzion, a popular absorption center in Jerusalem for single immigrants under 35 from Western countries, was also scaled back earlier this year, and absorption programs in Lod and Arad were also cut.
In October, the Jewish Agency – which also receives donations from international Jewry – had its 2009 budget slashed by some $45 million, forcing it to lay off employees around the world.
Politics and music have not always mixed well in Ethiopia. But governments change — and the music survives, and evolves. A fine example is a new project that highlights the work of Ethiopian musicians today.
Before we get to the big thing out of Ethiopia today, first a quick rewind to the origins of Ethio-funk. Sure, some of Ethiopia’s super-cool pop music in the 60s was a bit derivative. But there were also some great jazz players in Addis Abeba who were wholly original.
When Mengistu Haile Mariam took over in 1974, his Derg military government imposed an all-night curfew that lasted for years. It effectively killed the nightclubs in the Ethiopian capital. But singers and bands managed to keep their chops alive — not with audiences. But for each other in small, secretive recording studios.
By the time Mengistu was pushed from power in 1991, Ethiopia’s music scene found itself basically starting from scratch. The traditional azmari singers — wandering troubadours — the artist you’re hearing now for example, had never gone away.
Azmari gathering places began to come alive again in the mid-90s. Younger up-and-coming musicians made themselves known, and began gigging and recording again. Today, between the artists who kept active in the Mengistu years and the newer ones, Addis has begun to recapture some of its former musical prowess.
This track “Azmari Dub” shows a new face of Ethiopian popular music. It’s part of a new music project titled A Town Called Addis. Nick Page is the producer. He’s from the UK and is a frequent traveller to Ethiopia. For this project, Page goes by the name Dub Colossus. And the CD logically is titled “Dub Colossus in a Town Called Addis.”
That’s Ethiopian vocalist Sintayehu Zenebe.
Dub Colossus brought her and four other rising Ethiopian singers and instrumentalists into Peter Gabriel’s Realworld studio in Britain. Dub Colossus comes from a reggae background, but he’s also had interest in all manner of global musical idioms over the years. In a recent promotional video, Nick Page (aka Dub Colossus) explained why he was a champion of Ethiopian music.
“Addis is a very vibrant and exciting musical scene that has an awful lot to offer and needs some kind of exposure.”
With “Dub Colossus in a Town Called Addis,” Nick Page is doing his part to re-elevate Ethiopian music. And it taps into that time-tested tradition in Ethiopia of fusing local sounds with those of the outside world.
PRI’s “The World” is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. “The World” is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.
