Leaders Of Indiana Companies 'Deeply Concerned' Over LGBT Discrimination Law

In a letter to Gov. Mike Pence (R) and state Republican leaders on Monday, the CEOs of nine different large companies headquartered in Indiana expressed concern that the state's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act would lead to discrimination against employees.

The law would allow corporations or private citizens to cite their religious beliefs as a defense if they are sued, which many say would make discrimination against LGBT individuals permissible. While Pence has said that the intent of the law was not to discriminate, the CEOs said on Monday that intent was not relevant.

"Regardless of the original intention of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, we are deeply concerned about the impact it is having on our employees and on the reputation of our state," the executives, which included leaders from Angie's List and Eli Lilly, wrote in the letter. "All of our companies seek to promote fair, diverse and inclusive workplaces. Our employees must not feel unwelcome in the place where they work and live."

The executives urged Pence and the legislative leaders to immediately pass new legislation that would clarify that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act cannot be used to justify discrimination based on gender and sexual identity. Pence has said that legislators would clarify the law, but the governor has also indicated that he is not interested in providing specific protections for gay and lesbian individuals in his state.

On Monday, the mayor of Indianapolis signed an executive order reaffirming that groups doing business with the city must abide by its Human Rights Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination against LGBT individuals. Many of the companies whose executives signed the letter to Pence and Republican leaders on Monday are headquartered in Indianapolis.

Several corporations have condemned the Indiana law, including Apple and Yelp. Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy (D) signed an executive order on Monday banning travel to Indiana on Monday, joining the mayors of Seattle and San Francisco, who have imposed similar bans.

Indiana Republicans leaders have said that they were "shocked" at the backlash over the bill.

Read the full letter below:

CEOs RFRA Letter

Why You're Getting Bombarded With More Alcohol Ads Than Ever Before

Beer behemoths are on an advertising bender as craft brewers slurp up drinkers.

Spending on alcohol ads has shot up 400 percent over the last four decades, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin. Yet the amount of booze Americans are buying has remained relatively the same. Brands are fighting harder to keep drinkers, but they're not convincing them to drink more.

“It’s gotten harder and harder to reach consumers,” Gary B. Wilcox, the lead author of the study and a professor at the college’s advertising school, told The Huffington Post on Friday. “The size of the market isn’t expanding, so the intensity for market share has greatly increased over the last 40 years.”

The following chart shows how the average American's alcohol consumption has changed over the years:

Between 1971 and 2011, alcohol sales remained relatively anemic, the study found. In 2012, the average American drank about 24.5 gallons per person, up slightly from 22.2 gallons in 1971 but down from a 1982 peak of 28.8 gallons.

That starts to look pretty pitiful when you consider the recent intensity of the industry's ad spending. Alcohol purveyors have been buying up ad space on any available medium since 1971, the year the Federal Trade Commission lifted a ban on advertising booze via broadcast outlets. As more and more money has been sunk into ads, the amount of alcohol consumed hasn't changed all that much.

Here's an inflation-adjusted look at how the advertising for alcohol has skyrocketed:

Recently, global beer giants Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller and Heineken have ramped up spending in the face of steeper competition from small-batch brewers, whose business depends more on concocting interesting flavors and less on marketing to a large audience.

“Consumers are switching from quantity to quality,” Nick Petrillo, alcohol industry analyst at the research firm IBISWorld, told HuffPost. “Whereas the very nature of these macrobrewers is to sell palatable, mild beer that generally everyone can agree with and enjoy and just sell as much as possible.”

According to the study, advertising sales for beer increased to 64 percent of the overall alcohol market in 2012, up from 47 percent in 1971.

But beer consumption has remained pretty flat, as demonstrated in the following chart:

In response to weak sales, big-label brewers have gobbled up microbreweries in a series of acquisitions. And in cases where smaller competitors can't be bought out, larger companies have opted to bash them instead.

During the last Super Bowl, Budweiser -- AB InBev’s crown jewel -- aired a commercial mocking craft beer enthusiasts, dismissively stating, “Let them sip their pumpkin-peach ale.” Ironically, just two weeks before the big game, AB InBev had acquired Seattle-based Elysian Brewing Company, which sells a pumpkin-peach ale called “Gourdia on My Mind.”

Asked whether, in its entire history, Elysian Brewing has ever spent money on advertising the ale, the brewery told HuffPost, “No, definitely not.”

Apple's Tim Cook To Donate All His Money, Magazine Says

(Adds details on Cook's growing public presence, background)

March 26 (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook is joining the roster of the very rich who are giving away their wealth.

Fortune magazine cited the head of the world's largest technology corporation as saying he planned to donate his estimated $785 million fortune to charity - after paying for his 10-year-old nephew's college education.

"You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripples for change," Cook told the magazine.

Fortune estimated Cook's net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, at about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested.

The 54-year-old CEO's revelation in Fortune's lengthy profile of him is an example of the increasingly public philanthropy of the world's richest people.

Billionaire financier Warren Buffett is encouraging the very wealthy to give away at least half their worth in their lifetimes through the "Giving Pledge," whose website lists such luminaries as Microsoft Corp's Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc and Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison.

While Cook's largesse could not begin to approach the scale of a Gates or Zuckerberg, both worth billions of dollars, the Apple CEO told Fortune he hopes to make a difference.

Cook, who is not listed on the website, is known as an intensely private person who shuns the spotlight on philanthropy.

In recent years, however, he has begun speaking out more openly about issues ranging from the environment to civil rights. Cook, who recently revealed he was gay, spoke out against discrimination of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual communities during his induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor last year.

He told Fortune he has started donating money to unspecified causes quietly and is trying to develop a more "systematic approach" to philanthropy that goes beyond writing checks. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Andre Grenon)

How To Get 8 Extra Minutes Of Sleep Every Day, Without Hitting Snooze

When you have more control over when and where you work, you get more sleep.

That's according to a new study published in the March issue of Sleep Health, which found that employees at an IT company slept an average of one hour longer each week when their bosses were supportive of work-life balance and gave workers the freedom to decide their own work schedules.

That translates into about eight extra minutes a day -- basically one hit on the snooze button.

“Who wouldn’t want a snooze alarm effect every day?” asked Ryan Olson, an occupational health psychologist at Oregon Health & Science Universities and one of several researchers who worked on the study, part of a larger project funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before the experiment at the IT company, one worker told researchers she woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get an early start and avoid evening rush hour traffic. With the new flex rules, she now gets up at around 6:00 a.m. and starts working at 7:00. “I get more sleep than I've had in years,” she said in the research paper.

Most of the advice on how to get more sleep is centered around things an individual can do: practices like yoga, mindfulness and turning off all digital devices an hour before bed. And of course, there are shelves full of medications offering a drugged-out shut-eye.

What’s notable about the new study is that the researchers -- from Harvard, Penn State, Portland State University and elsewhere -- looked at what companies could do to help workers, not what individual workers could do to help themselves.

The broader aim of their project, which encompasses several studies, is to see what happens when companies take steps to help reduce the amount of work-family conflict workers face. This particular paper showcases one delightful result: Employees slept more when they had more control over their work and were less stressed about balancing the competing demands of home and work.

The research is notable considering that about 30 percent of U.S. workers sleep less than six hours a night, according to the CDC.

For the study, randomly selected groups of workers at the IT company were given the flexibility to decide when and where they could work, as long as they got their jobs done. Their sleep was tracked digitally with smartwatches. The employees were observed over a year-long period and compared to a control group.

Workers who had control over their time were smart about structuring it. “If a person with a bad commute has the freedom to schedule and avoid traffic, they can find more time for family and sleep,” Olson said.

Employees were not just told “work whenever!” and left to figure it out. Managers were given training on how to create an environment that supported the flexibility policy. Olson said leaders were told to be good role models when it comes to work-life balance and to be emotionally supportive of workers, asking them things like, “What can I do to help you get your work done?” Some of those conversations allowed workers to express personal issues and helped managers figure out how to make their employees' lives easier.

“Supervisors were aware and supportive of everyone having a life outside of work,” said Olson. They were accommodating of various scheduling demands -- people didn’t have to ask if they could work from home one morning or leave early to pick up a sick kid, he said.

To be sure, there are millions of shift workers in the U.S. who have much less control over their schedules. A forthcoming part of this big study addresses that by examining work-family conflict at a long-term care facility where the law requires a certain number of staff members to be present, reducing the amount of flexibility available.

However, Olson pointed out that there are still ways to make work environments like the care facility more friendly to workers' needs. Managers could give workers more advanced notice of their schedules and the freedom to trade shifts with colleagues. And bosses can still be understanding. “In the hourly environment, you can still provide emotional support for people,” he said.

H/T: Quartz

How Corporate America Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Meditation

What happens when a millennia-old spiritual practice is embraced by the profit-driven world of corporate America? In David Gelles' new book, Mindful Work, the New York Times reporter offers an inside look.

Roughly, "mindfulness" refers to the practice of consciously paying attention to the present, using tactics like meditation, yoga and breathing. For many people, the need for mindfulness feels particularly urgent these days when we're all choking on an endless stream of tweets, emails, texts and other "feeds" -- all of them tearing little bits of our attention away from whatever we're actually doing.

Huge companies like Google, General Mills, Aetna and even Goldman Sachs offer programs that cultivate mindfulness through meditation and yoga, as Gelles writes. Businesses have become so enamored of the concept that attendance at Wisdom 2.0, an industry conference, quadrupled between 2010 and 2013, drawing some of the most high-profile CEOs around.

The trend has taken off thanks to a growing body of clinical research showing that mindfulness can essentially rewire the brain, leading to health benefits like stress reduction, weight loss and pain relief.

“All this data suggest mindfulness has real impactful changes on our minds and bodies,” Gelles told The Huffington Post. “And it’s helped make mindfulness more kosher with the corporate world, where it might’ve previously been considered new-agey.”

Mindful workers report higher levels of happiness and productivity, Gelles notes in his book. Companies that provide mindfulness training for workers, like Aetna, have seen health care costs drop. At Green Mountain Coffee, factory workers who practice mindfulness saw their injury rates decline.

Gelles, who has been meditating since college, talked with HuffPost about how mindfulness makes him a more focused worker and what surprised him most while writing his book.

What does it mean to be a mindful business?

There’s a range of benefits to mindfulness at work: People are less stressed. They purport to be a bit more focused, and there’s research to back that up. There tends to be a sense of more empathy and compassion for oneself and others in the office. And, maybe, a greater sense or concern for the well-being of other people -- be they customers or collaborators or those people working in factories in China.

What are some of the benefits you’ve seen at companies that are “mindful”? What surprised you most?

We always think of meditating as an individualistic pursuit, but many people actually become more concerned with helping others through mindfulness.

[Aetna CEO] Mark Bertolini started as an individual practicing yoga and meditation to relieve pain. He found that it helped him personally and brought it to his employee base, and it seemed to work. Then hundreds and thousands at Aetna were practicing meditation.

This year he did the extraordinary. He said "I’ve been meditating on inequality," and he gave all his lowest-paid workers a 33 percent raise.

That wasn’t in your book.

It only happened in January, after the book was finished. It was wonderful and great and timely with the book coming out in March.

You meditated right before your job interview with New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson -- and you got the job!

I don’t think meditation directly got me the job at The New York Times. I do like to think it helps me be a less stressed and more focused reporter. Mindfulness is no replacement for a hard work ethic and lucky breaks and dedication to one’s craft.

David Gelles

There’s only one example in your book of a mindfulness program for blue-collar workers -- at Green Mountain Coffee. Do you think we’re seeing an inequality in the practice? Like it’s mostly for white-collar workers?

The Aetna program is open to employees at all levels of the company. I didn’t come across many programs for lower-paid employees. I think there’s clearly an opportunity there. The need for stress reduction and better well-being, especially among lower-paid workers, is just as acute, if not more so, as it is for the higher-paid workers.

If every company on the Fortune 500 incorporated mindfulness, what would happen?

There’d be a lot of work for mindfulness trainers.

Meditation is very personal and very intimate. It’s hubristic to suggest that every company should be teaching meditation in the office. If every company did, you’d see a great range of results. You’d see companies where it’s embraced wholeheartedly and some companies where it didn’t stick.

Mindfulness is not a panacea. It’s not gonna make our problems go away. It’s not gonna make a bad boss go away. It’s not gonna make a company that harms the environment and screws consumers stop doing those things just because they teach mindfulness.

Mindful leaders, like Aetna’s CEO, seem key to changing corporate culture. Can mindfulness thrive at work if the mindful leader steps down?

In some cases, no. I recount the example of Monsanto in the book, where there was an early program -- amazing, considering what that company stands for with a lot of people. They had a progressive CEO. As soon as that CEO was gone, the program shut down.

In other cases there’s a likelihood that it will remain. I don’t think if Google’s leadership changes, [its mindfulness program] Search Inside Yourself will go away.

Can you tell me how to start practicing mindfulness right now? Like the two-minute how-to?

Find a good teacher. I am not a meditation teacher.

All sorts of weird stuff can come along when we start paying attention to our thoughts and emotions. We can easily get surprised or shocked by what we find. Having someone who’s done this before and is equipped to handle legit intense questions that come up is really, really important.

There’s tons of great opportunities. It’s easier than ever to meditate. You can meditate wherever you are. There’s apps like Headspace, classes all over the country. And a lot of companies now are making these things available.

Are there employees who learn mindfulness and then realize they need to leave their jobs?

There are individual examples where people start practicing meditation and become more self-aware. They realize they’re doing the wrong things with their lives, and they quit. I’ve yet to see anyone turn into a hobo. If it helps someone stop doing work that’s not right for them, all the better.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Obama Reveals What Helps Him Manage The Stress Of His Job

President Barack Obama revealed what he thinks is the most important way to manage the stress of his job in an interview with The Huffington Post last week.

Obama credited morning exercise and his Hawaiian roots for his ability to keep a calm demeanor in such a high-stress environment, but he noted family is what really keeps him grounded.

"I don't get too high, don't get too low," Obama said.

"But I think the most important -- I'm very consistent about spending time with family," he added. "And when you have dinner with your daughters -- particularly teenage daughters -- they'll keep you in your place and they'll teach you something about perspective."

Obama said it's also important to "take the long view" on issues instead of panicking about what's happening day by day.

"Everything's a crisis, everything is terrible, everything is doomsday, everything is -- if it doesn't get solved tomorrow, you know, your presidency is going off the rails. There must have been what, 15, 20 things that over the last seven years folks have said, 'This is it. It's over,'" Obama said. "You know, we had the Gulf oil spill, worst environmental disaster in history. Everybody said, 'Ah, he's handling this terribly.' A year later, nobody was talking about it, and in retrospect, it turns out that we handled that as well as any environmental crisis has been handled."

Watch a clip of Obama's interview with HuffPost above.

Antibiotic Use In Meat Is Soaring

BLT sandwiches may need to add an A to the acronym -- for antibiotics.

Soaring demand for meat across the world has caused a major uptick in the amount of antimicrobial drugs in pork, beef and poultry, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But as bacon sales sizzle and China -- where pork is the favored meat -- becomes wealthier, pig farmers around the world are meeting demand by using about four times as much antibiotics per pound of meat as cattle ranchers. Poultry is a close second.

This charts shows that pigs, for the most part, consume the highest density and amount of antibiotics.

The antibiotics serve two purposes. First, they help fatten up livestock at a faster rate. Second, they keep animals healthy despite being raised in overcrowded, filthy conditions where disease spreads easily.

In 2010, farmers around the world used more than 63,000 tons of antibiotics to raise livestock. By 2030, the researchers expect that number to rise to more than 105,000 tons.

“People are getting richer and want to eat more meat,” Thomas Van Boeckel, an epidemiologist at Princeton University and an author of the study, told The Huffington Post by phone. “Antibiotics help to provide a lot of meat for people who can afford it.”

Consumption of antibiotic-fed meat poses a major threat to humanity. Exposure to human antibiotics through meat has given rise to antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” which some researchers suggest could kill up to 10 million people worldwide by 2050 if left unchecked.

As awareness of this threat grows, some companies have removed antibiotics from their meat supply. Earlier this month, McDonald’s vowed to remove human antibiotics from its chicken supply, though animal antibiotics would continue to be used and the human drugs would remain in beef and pork products. Chicken chain Chick-fil-A removed all antibiotics from its chicken last year.

But Chipotle remains the food industry’s poster child for antibiotic-free meat. The burrito chain showed its commitment earlier this year when it suffered a pork shortage after discovering issues with its supplier.

Still, the industry seems unlikely to change unless more consumers demand antibiotic-free meat. Legislation has done little to stymie the growth of the use of antibiotics in the United States. In China, no such legislation exists.

“If things change at all, it’ll be because customers demand better products, like organic bacon,” Van Boeckel said. “But, of course, not everyone can afford that.”