What’s wrong with Kris Aquino tipping a cabbie? Plenty, says Comelec By Philip C. Tubeza, TJ Burgonio Philippine Daily Inquirer

What’s wrong with giving a cab driver a fat tip during an election campaign?

Plenty, in the view of Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes who said popular television host Kris Aquino could be liable for vote-buying.

“It looks like you’re campaigning, you’re making an appeal and then you give a prize,” commented Brillantes.

“Anyone could ride a taxi, go campaigning and then give out cash,” he said.

The Comelec chief was actually reacting to media reports of a story that Aquino gave reporters, about how when she was campaigning in Cebu City last week, she let the taxi driver keep the change from the P1,000 bill she handed him after he agreed to vote for three senatorial candidates she was endorsing—Sen. Francis Escudero, Grace Poe Llamanzares and her cousin, Bam Aquino.

Palace defends Kris

Not surprisingly, Malacañang on Wednesday said it disagreed with the Comelec chief and defended President Aquino’s celebrity sister.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said it was apparent that Aquino “decided to let the taxi driver keep the change after he made it known to her that he was voting for the three candidates.”

The taxi driver “needed no persuasion nor was the money given in exchange for his vote as defined by the law,” she said.

“We respect Chairman Brilliantes’ opinion but disagree with it,” she said.

Brillantes said, however, that it would not be easy to charge Aquino. For one thing, there would have to be a complainant, he said.

“It’s not that easy. Who will be the complainant? She can always deny it. I don’t know if she would admit that under oath. I will not make any conclusion,” he said.

Vote-buying is an election offense and violators could face up to six years of imprisonment, the loss of the right to vote, and disqualification from holding public office.

Brillantes said Aquino’s narration of what happened showed that she gave the driver money “in good faith.”

“As far as she is concerned, she does not find anything wrong with it. It was like she was happy because she campaigned (for her candidates) and the driver said, ‘okay,’” he said.

‘In good faith’

“I think it was done in good faith. I’m making statements here… I might be jailed,” he added in jest.

Aquino, who has disclosed that she intends to run for governor of Tarlac in 2016, took time out from her busy schedule to pitch for Escudero, Llamanzares and her cousin in a two-day swing through General Santos, Davao, Cebu and Tacloban cities last week.

Talking with reporters while campaigning in Cebu City, Aquino said she took a taxi from the airport to her hotel and gave the driver a fat tip after the latter agreed to vote for her three candidates.

“I reminded him that apart from Chiz, and Grace, don’t forget Bam Aquino. When he said yes, I doubled my payment. I gave him P1,000 and told him keep the change,” she said.

New sex 'superbug' may be more infectious than AIDS

WASHINGTON: Doctors are warning of a new sexually-transmitted superbug which they fear could ultimately prove to be even more deadly than AIDS.

The antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhoea - now considered a superbug - was discovered in Japan two years ago.

Experts have warned that the bacteria's effects could match those of AIDS.

"This might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly," said Alan Christianson, a doctor ofnaturopathic medicine.

Even though nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS related causes worldwide, Christianson believes the effect of the gonorrhoea bacteria is more direct, 'CNBC News' reported.

"Getting gonorrhoea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days. This is very dangerous," Christianson said.

"It's an emergency situation. As time moves on, it's getting more hazardous," said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

This gonorrhoea strain, HO41, was discovered in Japan two years ago in a 31-year-old female sex worker who had been screened in 2009.

Since it resists current antibiotic treatment, the strain has been placed in the superbug category with other resistant bacteria, such as MRSA and CRE.

These superbugs kill about half the people they attack, and nearly one in 20 hospital patients become infected with one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Though no deaths from HO41 have been reported, efforts to combat it must continue, Smith said.

"We have to keep beating the drum on this. The potential for disaster is great," he said.

Let My People Awake!

By Orlan R. Ravanera
Kim's Dream

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

IT was written seven decades ago but that one poem of a poet laureate from India, Rabindranath Tagore still reverberates until now . . .”Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, Where knowledge is free, Where the world is not broken down by narrow domestic walls, In that heaven of freedom my Father, LET MY PEOPLE AWAKE!”

Although the call to awaken the Indian people was one of liberation against the British Colonial Rule, it is still very relevant today. This time, the call is for us to be conscious of the contemporary issues believing that an awakened people can craft their own destiny based on the truism that the people united can never be defeated. Today, we strongly advocate:

Let my people awake to the painful reality that, according to scientists and environmentalists, the “current degradation of the environment and the massive loss of species are evidence that we are facing our own extinction and that “in the absence of a major change, the world system will collapse in less than a hundred years.”

Let my people awake that fundamental changes are now sweeping Africa, Latin America and now going to Asia and centuries-old beliefs and convictions are crashing down like the twin tower of the world trade center in New York. Among these are, the belief that nature is inexhaustible and this belief has lead to massive exploitation of our resources. The belief that the “Darwin’s Theory of natural selection to society is that by fittest means the strongest and the most aggressive. That is a gross mistake in principle. By fittest, it really means most cooperative, most adaptive and most caring.” That is why, we must advance cooperativism, the collective quest to make life better for the people rather than the individual quest for self aggrandizement and wealth.

Let my people awake on the unsustainability of the global economic system that is anchored on a dominant paradigm that pursues growth-at-all-cost development strategy. That unbridled consumerism and materialism where there is over-eating and obesity in the North while billions are hungry in the South; the gross inequities are very glaring as the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires equals the income of three billion people.

Let my people awake that social transformation has been so elusive all these years as the structures that breed poverty have remained as formidable as ever; that our country is not a capitalist country but one that follows block capitalism where only 300 families control the economy through cartels; that democratizing wealth and power cannot be had because those in control cannot moderate their greed.

Let my people awake that political exercises have proven to be exercises in futility in effecting social change because those running are voted not because they are for social re-structuring but because they are movie stars or good speakers or popular or because of their names, or because they have so much money as they are funded by vested interest groups or cartels to perpetuate their control over the economy.

Let my people awake that the Filipinos are poor not because they are lazy or lack resources (the truth is, our country is oozing with ecological resources) but because they are powerless to have access and control over their resources which are fast slipping through their fingers.

Let my people awake that poverty is the consequence of putting power where it does not belong, that is, to the politicians who are cornering gargantuan funds through massive corruptions (that is res ipsa loquitor), to the cartels that exploit our resources at the expense of the people and the environment, to institutions that are mouthing moral issues and social change but are only successful in enriching themselves and to TNCs that have made our country dumping grounds of finished products while extracting so much raw materials and natural resources at the expense of our ecosystems (this again, is res ipsa loquitor).

Let my people awake that we now must work for social change, for paradigm shifts. Debunk conventional agriculture because it is just successful in impoverishing the peasantry and in polluting our environment. Stop those who are exploiting our natural resources with utter disregard for nature and the welfare of the coming generations. Stop those cartels that all these years are depriving the people of their ownership of utilities.

Let my people awake to stop political dynasties (which is prohibited in the 1987 Constitution); to stop vote-buying and to elect only those who are subservient to the interest of the people and not to those who are advancing the interest of a few elite.

Only when the people have awakened that we can bring this country to “that heaven of Freedom” where the people are free from hunger and poverty!

Dynasty, RH stand crucial for Senate bets

ByAmando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer

12:29 am | Monday, April 29th, 2013

 

CEBU CITY—Sharp exchanges punctuated the debate among the senatorial candidates on what to do to implement the constitutional ban on political dynasties, the topic of the third and final episode of the Inquirer Senate Forum here on Friday.

The exchanges crystallized the public’s strong sentiment against the domination of Philippine politics by a few but influential and powerful families. The question that surfaced is whether the next Senate will push legislation to give teeth to the constitutional ban.

The intensity of the debate showed that political dynasties are one of the most contentious issues in the May 13 midterm elections, along with the controversial reproductive health (RH) law that has put the Catholic Church in a collision course with the Aquino administration, which backed the measure in Congress.

Their stand on the two issues would either make or break the 33 senatorial candidates’ political fortunes, as indicated by the public’s reaction to them in the three episodes of the Inquirer Senate Forum (the first was held in the University of the Philippines in Diliman and the second in Baguio City).

The three forums tapped into the vein of the views of the senatorial candidates, as the winners will be the policymakers who will shape the national agenda, including political dynasties, the RH law, the economy, poverty, education and taxes.

Social cross-section

The eight candidates, who took part in the Cebu forum, represented a cross-section of society—incumbent office holders, those seeking reelection, and the NGO (nongovernment organizations) sector, with no financial base to fund a campaign, unlike the candidates from political families who had ample resources.

In a way, the candidates from the NGO sector who are seeking electoral support are pitting themselves against the resources of the embedded political families. What are their chances against the goliaths of the dynastic families?

Although they are fighting an uphill battle, the aspiring “outsiders,” the Inquirer forums have found, are rich in ideas and have much to offer to the voters. They can, if elected, democratize the social base of the Senate.

A sort of consensus emerged in the Cebu forum, i.e., there was a need to level the playing field by bringing down the prohibitive costs of electoral campaigning, especially of political advertising.

Independent senatorial candidate Teddy Casiño opened fire on the dynasty issue. After a stint in the House, representing the Left in Philippine politics, Casiño appeared to have already acquired the airs of a veteran senator when he pointed out that he had authored several antidynasty bills, but none of them went to the plenary “because of opposition from lawmakers belonging to big political families.”

Second-degree

Using his own definition of political dynasty, Casiño said the wife, children, parents and siblings—or second-degree relatives—should not be allowed to run for the post being vacated by an outgoing elected official. Singling out Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, Casiño said, “There are other families who have young and budding politicians.”

Angara is running for the Senate as a candidate of the administration’s Team PNoy, led by President Aquino himself, scion of the country’s most powerful dynasty, which has produced two presidents (the incumbent and his mother, former President Cory Aquino).

Casiño lamented the fate of the antidynasty bills being killed in Congress. How can the bills be reported out to the floor after the President has stubbornly refused to certify them as urgent legislation?

Angara replied that Casiño’s definition does not apply to him because his father, outgoing Sen. Edgardo Angara, is retiring in June after serving in the Senate for 24 years. “Everyone must be given equal opportunity to serve,” the younger Angara said. But voters, he said, should not elect him because of his family name but because of his track record.

The six other candidates in the forum were former Bukidnon Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance, Bro. Eddie Villanueva of Bangon Pilipinas, Rizalito David of Ang Kapatiran Party, Mary Grace Poe of Team PNoy, Samson Alcantara of the Social Justice Society, and independent Ricardo Penson.

Charter definition

According to Alcantara, there is no need to define what a political dynasty is because the Constitution is clear that “political dynasties are prohibited, whether they are good or bad.”

David and Penson agreed that the Constitution had already sufficiently defined what a political dynasty was. But they pointed out that the constitutional prohibition had not been implemented because the electorate had kept on voting the wrong officials into office.

Villanueva reiterated his earlier position that no one should be discriminated against in serving the country through the government because of his or her family name, so long as he or she is competent and of good moral standing.

A religious leader, Villanueva has a son, Joel, who is chief of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, a government agency.

Casiño, David, Penson and Alcantara, a lawyer, are against political dynasties.

Zubiri made a pitch for a broad public health care system subsidized by the state. He belongs to a political family in Bukidnon. He is the son of Bukidnon Gov. Juan Zubiri Jr. and the younger brother of Bukidnon Rep Jose Ma. Zubiri III. He contended that there are scions of political clans who have excelled and surpassed the performance of their parents and grandparents.

Underrepresented

Zubiri took pains to point out that his region, Mindanao, is grossly underrepresented on the two main contending tickets. It is represented only by him and Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III of the dynasty founded by former Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr.

Dynastic lineage runs across interlocking party lines. None of the two alignments can claim superiority in being able to push antidynasty legislation in the next Congress. Both are blighted on this issue.

There is no more ironic setting for the third Inquirer Senate forum than Cebu. As the campaign heated up, I observed that the walls in the city were plastered with election posters that carried the pictures of candidates from Cebu’s political dynasties.

Among the cities or ethnic regions of the country, Cebu has the most political dynasties. The posters carry the names of families that have ruled the region since the turn of the 20th century—the Osmeñas, Duranos, Garcias, Sottos and Cuencos.

According to a study by Bobby Tuazon of the Center of People Empowerment in Governance, 94 percent of the provinces (73 out of a total of 80) have political dynasties. The average number of political families per province is 2.31. Cebu accounts for at least six. Whether the density of dynasties has made Cebu more democratic and more economically progressive is an issue that calls for further academic research.

Poverty: The good, bad and ugly news

By Cielito F. Habito
Philippine Daily Inquirer

10:07 pm | Monday, April 29th, 2013

 

By some accounts, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) and its mother agency the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) ruffled feathers in the Palace and the Cabinet with the way they announced the first semester 2012 poverty figures last week. Some even speculated that it may have cost Neda Secretary Arsi Balisacan his slot in the President’s delegation to the Asean meeting in Brunei, having dropped out of the list at the last minute.

I can see why NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert and Secretary Balisacan, disciplined academic professionals as they have been in their former nongovernment personas, would choose to report the news the way they did, and when they did. They can be expected to report the facts as they are, good news or bad. They must also adhere to a previously announced schedule for release of “designated statistics” that include the quarterly reports on gross domestic product (GDP) growth and other key statistics. Postponing the release of not-so-flattering news until after the elections would have been an obvious temptation for the government’s political strategists. But NSCB and Neda would betray their constitutionally provided independence—not to mention raise suspicions at the expense of their credibility—if they were to deviate from their committed release schedule for data as important as these.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s the journalist in me, but NSCB didn’t really have to headline its report by outright saying that Philippine poverty incidence had “remained unchanged.” It could just as easily (and no less truthfully) have headlined that the poverty rate appears to have gone down, from the 2009 level of 28.6 to 27.9 percent of the population, or from 22.9 to 22.3 percent of families. It could then qualify that the difference was not statistically significant (I have seen NSCB do this before). Notice how when GDP growth rises or falls by a few decimal points, no one pays attention to whether the difference is statistically significant or not; GDP growth goes up or down, period. Indeed, choice of words can make a great deal of difference. And at the height of political season such as now, the administration’s political strategists would understandably wish that NSCB and Neda had taken some lessons on “wordsmithing” and been more politically savvy in their reports, without necessarily forsaking the truth. Media professionals call it “spin.”

There is, after all, good news in the poverty figures along with the bad (and ugly). It is welcome news, for example, that poverty incidence actually went down in the majority of our regions (9 out of 16) and provinces (50 out of 81). The best performing regions were Cagayan Valley (Region II) and Zamboanga Peninsula (Region IX), both of whose poverty rates (as a percent of families) fell by more than 11 percent. Poverty dropped from 22.3 to 19.8 percent of families in Cagayan Valley, and from 41.5 to 36.9 percent in the Zamboanga Peninsula. Other top performing regions were the Ilocos Region (18.5 to 16.7 percent, or a 9.7 percent drop), Central Visayas (31.6 to 28.8 percent, or a 9 percent drop), Western Visayas (26.7 to 24.7 percent, a 7.5 percent drop), Mimaropa (30.6 to 28.4 percent, a 7.2 percent drop), and Bicol Region (36.5 to 34.1 percent, a 6.6 percent drop).

Tawi-Tawi was the best performer among the provinces, with poverty rate dropping from nearly half (48.3 percent) of families in 2009 to only one-fifth (20.8 percent) by 2012, a steep 57 percent fall. Following closely are Aklan (from 38.4 to 21 percent, dropping by 45.3 percent), Biliran (34.6 to 20.7 percent, a 40.2 percent drop), and Benguet (whose already low poverty incidence of 7 percent was further cut to 4.3 percent, a 39 percent improvement). Other top performing provinces were Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur, Ilocos Norte, Camarines Norte and Zamboanga del Norte. Interestingly, the last used to be the nation’s poorest province, with 63.6 percent of its families poor in 2009. Now it is only the fifth poorest, dislodged by Lanao del Sur, Apayao, Eastern Samar and Maguindanao, in that order—all of whose poverty rates shot up in the three-year period by 27 to 54 percent.

The ugly news was the drastic rise in poverty in 19 provinces where poverty incidence jumped by more than 25 percent within just a three-year period. The island province of Camiguin—proximity to dynamic Cagayan de Oro notwithstanding—fared worst, with poverty rate more than doubling from 17.2 to 34.9 percent. Second worst was Zambales, with poverty rate nearly doubling from 9.4 to 18 percent. North Cotabato’s poverty rate jumped 80 percent, from 24.4 to 43.9 percent. Also seeing a dramatic rise in poverty rates are Ifugao, Maguindanao, Aurora, Quirino, Batanes, Nueva Vizcaya and Guimaras, all jumping by more than 40 percent. From the list, one might venture reasonable guesses on why these provinces saw such a dramatic poverty rise, including political turmoil and geographic isolation, especially in the case of island provinces.

The recent reported poverty trends are sobering, but not surprising. Even with huge amounts (P39.4 billion) given out as targeted conditional cash transfers (CCT) to poor families in 2012, NSCB calculates that more than twice that amount would have been needed to close the poverty gap. Also, and as widely lamented, recent improvements in the economy have not permeated down to the Filipino poor. We all have our favorite theories and solutions, but what is clear is that trickle-down economics and business as usual simply won’t bring our poverty numbers down to where we all need them to go.

Philippines President Benigno Aquino coughs during campaign trail President will continue to canvass for votes ahead of May 13 elections

By Barbara Mae Dacanay, Bureau Chief

Published: 13:30 April 30, 2013

Manila: President Benigno Aquino has been coughing during a campaign trail in southern Luzon, prompting a spokesman to clarify that Aquino remained in the “pink of health”.

“There is nothing wrong with the president. There are no indications of any illness,” said Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda.

Aquino will not stop campaigning for the Liberal Party’s senatorial candidates for the next two weeks before the May 13 elections, said Lacierda, adding that it is natural for the president to campaign for candidates of the ruling party.

“This is a campaign for reform. We still have three more years left in this administration and he wants these three years to be even more productive than the first three,” said Lacierda.

His voice was hoarse and he coughed severely six times during a political campaign in Lucena, Quezon, a TV report showed.

“I am asking for forgiveness ahead of this speech. I have a cold but I will try to clearly enunciate what I want to say [in this campaign speech],” said Aquino.

He reminded his audience about the advice of Health Secretary Enrique Ona who had earlier asked him to get some rest.

Aquino has been asked to stop smoking. But he said smoking relaxes him and he is not willing to give it up.

Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: April 29, 2013

Kyodo News, via Associated Press

Gray and silver storage tanks filled with radioactive waste water

are sprawling over the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

TOKYO — Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.  

Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.

But even they are not enough to handle the tons of strontium-laced water at the plant — a reflection of the scale of the 2011 disaster and, in critics’ view, ad hoc decision making by the company that runs the plant and the regulators who oversee it. In a sign of the sheer size of the problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks.

“The water keeps increasing every minute, no matter whether we eat, sleep or work,” said Masayuki Ono, a general manager with Tepco who acts as a company spokesman. “It feels like we are constantly being chased, but we are doing our best to stay a step in front.”

While the company has managed to stay ahead, the constant threat of running out of storage space has turned into what Tepco itself called an emergency, with the sheer volume of water raising fears of future leaks at the seaside plant that could reach the Pacific Ocean.

That quandary along with an embarrassing string of mishaps — including a 29-hour power failure affecting another, less vital cooling system — have underscored an alarming reality: two years after the meltdowns, the plant remains vulnerable to the same sort of large earthquake and tsunami that set the original calamity in motion.

There is no question that the Fukushima plant is less dangerous than it was during the desperate first months after the accident, mostly through the determined efforts of workers who have stabilized the melted reactor cores, which are cooler and less dangerous than they once were.

But many experts warn that safety systems and fixes at the plant remain makeshift and prone to accidents.

The jury-rigged cooling loop that pours water over the damaged reactor cores is a mazelike collection of pumps, filters and pipes that snake two and a half miles along the ground through the plant. And a pool for storing used nuclear fuel remains perched on the fifth floor of a damaged reactor building as Tepco struggles to move the rods to a safer location.

The situation is worrisome enough that Shunichi Tanaka, a longtime nuclear power proponent who is the chairman of the newly created watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority, told reporters after the announcement of the leaking pits that “there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident.”

A growing number of government officials and advisers now say that by entrusting the cleanup to the company that ran the plant before the meltdowns, Japanese leaders paved the way for a return to the insider-dominated status quo that prevailed before the disaster.

Even many scientists who acknowledge the complexity of cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl fear that the water crisis is just the latest sign that Tepco is lurching from one problem to the next without a coherent strategy.

“Tepco is clearly just hanging on day by day, with no time to think about tomorrow, much less next year,” said Tadashi Inoue, an expert in nuclear power who served on a committee that drew up the road map for cleaning up the plant.

But the concerns extend well beyond Tepco. While doing a more rigorous job of policing Japan’s nuclear industry than regulators before the accident, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has a team of just nine inspectors to oversee the more than 3,000 workers at Fukushima.

And a separate committee created by the government to oversee the cleanup is loaded with industry insiders, including from the Ministry of Trade, in charge of promoting nuclear energy, and nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba and Hitachi. The story of how the Fukushima plant ended up swamped with water, critics say, is a cautionary tale about the continued dangers of leaving decisions about nuclear safety to industry insiders. 

 When Tepco and the government devised the current plans for decommissioning the plant in late 2011, groundwater had already been identified as a problem — the plant lies in the path of water flowing from nearby mountains to the sea. But decision makers placed too low a priority on the problem, critics say, assuming the water could be stored until it could be cleaned and disposed of. 

According to some who helped the government plan the cleanup, outside experts might have predicted the water problem, but Tepco and the government swatted away entreaties to bring in such experts or companies with more cleanup expertise, preferring to keep control of the plant within the collusive nuclear industry.

Tepco also rejected a proposal to build a concrete wall running more than 60 feet into the ground to block water from reaching the reactors and turbine buildings, and the Trade Ministry did not force the issue, according to experts and regulators who helped draw up the decommissioning plan.

Instead, Tepco made interim adjustments, including hastily building the plastic- and clay-lined underground water storage pits that eventually developed leaks.

It was only after the discovery of those leaks that the regulation agency was added as a full-fledged member to the government’s cleanup oversight committee.

But the biggest problem, critics say, was that Tepco and other members of the oversight committee appeared to assume all along that they would eventually be able to dump the contaminated water into the ocean once a powerful new filtering system was put in place that could remove 62 types of radioactive particles, including strontium.

The dumping plans have now been thwarted by what some experts say was a predictable problem: a public outcry over tritium, a relatively weak radioactive isotope that cannot be removed from the water.

Tritium, which can be harmful only if ingested, is regularly released into the environment by normally functioning nuclear plants, but even Tepco acknowledges that the water at Fukushima contains about 100 times the amount of tritium released in an average year by a healthy plant.

“We were so focused on the fuel rods and melted reactor cores that we underestimated the water problem,” said Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, a government body that helped draw up Tepco’s original cleanup plan. “Someone from outside the industry might have foreseen the water problem.”

Tepco rejects the criticism that it has mishandled the growing groundwater problem, saying that the only way to safely stop the inflow is by plugging the cracks in the damaged reactor buildings. It contends that no company in the world has the ability to do that because it would require entering the highly radioactive buildings and working in dangerously toxic water several feet deep.

“We operate the plant, so we know it better than anyone else,” said Mr. Ono, the Tepco spokesman. He then teared up, adding, “Fixing this mess that we made is the only way we can regain the faith of society.”

For the moment, that goal seems distant. The public outcry over the plans to dump tritium-tainted water into the sea — driven in part by the company’s failure to inform the public in 2011 when it dumped radioactive water into the Pacific — was so loud that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally intervened last month to say that there would be “no unsafe release.”

Meanwhile, the amount of water stored at the plant just keeps growing.

“How could Tepco not realize that it had to get public approval before dumping this into the sea?” said Muneo Morokuzu, an expert on public policy at the University of Tokyo who has called for creating a specialized new company just to run the cleanup. “This all just goes to show that Tepco is in way over its head.” 

Colleges Adapt Online Courses to Ease Burden

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: April 29, 2013

Katie Kormanik preparing to record a statistics
course at Udacity, an online classroom instruction
 provider in Mountain View, Calif.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Dazzled by the potential of free online college classes, educators are now turning to the gritty task of harnessing online materials to meet the toughest challenges in American higher education: giving more students access to college, and helping them graduate on time.

Nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States arrive on campus needing remedial work before they can begin regular credit-bearing classes. That early detour can be costly, leading many to drop out, often in heavy debt and with diminished prospects of finding a job.

Meanwhile, shrinking state budgets have taken a heavy toll at public institutions, reducing the number of seats available in classes students must take to graduate. In California alone, higher education cuts have left hundreds of thousands of college students without access to classes they need.

To address both problems and keep students on track to graduation, universities are beginning to experiment with adding the new “massive open online courses,” created to deliver elite college instruction to anyone with an Internet connection, to their offerings. 

While the courses, known as MOOCs, have enrolled millions of students around the world, most who enroll never start a single assignment, and very few complete the courses. So to reach students who are not ready for college-level work, or struggling with introductory courses, universities are beginning to add extra supports to the online materials, in hopes of improving success rates.

Here at San Jose State, for example, two pilot programs weave material from the online classes into the instructional mix and allow students to earn credit for them.

“We’re in Silicon Valley, we breathe that entrepreneurial air, so it makes sense that we are the first university to try this,” said Mohammad Qayoumi, the university’s president. “In academia, people are scared to fail, but we know that innovation always comes with the possibility of failure. And if it doesn’t work the first time, we’ll figure out what went wrong and do better.”

In one pilot program, the university is working with Udacity, a company co-founded by a Stanford professor, to see whether round-the-clock online mentors, hired and trained by the company, can help more students make their way through three fully online basic math courses.

The tiny for-credit pilot courses, open to both San Jose State students and local high school and community college students, began in January, so it is too early to draw any conclusions. But early signs are promising, so this summer, Udacity and San Jose State are expanding those classes to 1,000 students, and adding new courses in psychology and computer programming, with tuition of only $150 a course.

San Jose State has already achieved remarkable results with online materials from edX, a nonprofit online provider, in its circuits course, a longstanding hurdle for would-be engineers. Usually, two of every five students earn a grade below C and must retake the course or change career plans. So last spring, Ellen Junn, the provost, visited Anant Agarwal, an M.I.T. professor who taught a free online version of the circuits class, to ask whether San Jose State could become a living lab for his course, the first offering from edX, an online collaboration of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ms. Junn hoped that blending M.I.T.’s online materials with live classroom sessions might help more students succeed. Dr. Agarwal, the president of edX, agreed enthusiastically, and without any formal agreement or exchange of money, he arranged for San Jose State to offer the blended class last fall.

The results were striking: 91 percent of those in the blended section passed, compared with 59 percent in the traditional class.

“We’re engineers, and we check our results, but if this semester is similar, we will not have the traditional version next year,” said Khosrow Ghadiri, who teaches the blended class. “It would be educational malpractice.”

It is hard to say, though, how much the improved results come from the edX online materials, and how much from the shift to classroom sessions focusing on small group projects, rather than lectures.

Finding better ways to move students through the start of college is crucial, said Josh Jarrett, a higher education officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which in the past year has given grants to develop massive open online courses for basic and remedial courses. 

Fast, Cheap, Dead: Shopping and the Bangladesh Factory Collapse

By Bryan Walsh    
April 29, 2013

                           MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFT/GETTY IMAGES

       Rescuers comb the shattered remnants of a textile factory near 

Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nearly 400 people havedied in the building's collapse

The collapse of a factory building near Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed at least 362 people, is almost certainly the worst accident in the history of the garment industry. It’s worse than the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 that you learned 
about in American history class and which helped lead to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards. It’s worse than the 1993 Kader Toy Factory fire in Bangkok, which killed 188 people, nearly all of them women and teenage girls. It’s worse than the Ali Enterprises Factory fire in Karachi, which killed at least 262 people — and which I’m guessing nearly all of us had forgotten about, or never knew it occurred, even though the disaster happened only eight months ago.

Bangladeshi officials are still investigating the causes behind the factory’s collapse on April 24, although Sohel Rana, the building’s owner, was arrested over the weekend as he attempted to flee the country. There’s no shortage of possible reasons — building codes in Bangladesh are too rarely enforced and corruption in the country is rampant. Nor, sadly, are such disasters rare. A major fire in a textile factory in Dhaka killed over 100 people just last November. While thousands of Bangladeshi protesters have taken to the streets in the wake of the building collapse, and the political opposition has called for a national strike on May 2, there’s little hope that the catastrophe will be the last that the country’s garment workers suffer.

(MORE: Mr. Green Jeans: Levi’s Detoxifies Its Supply Chain)

The clothes that the doomed workers in Dhaka were laboring over when their factory collapsed include some Western brands, like Primark and Joe Fresh. Is there anything we as clothing consumers can or should do about these deaths? In a post written last week as the dead were still being tallied in the building collapse, Slate’s economics blogger Matthew Yglesias suggests, not really:

Yglesias was raked over the coals by, as he put it in a later piece, just about the entire Internet. (This one was particularly good.) Yglesias was guilty of, at the very least, bad taste — the economic wonkery can wait until the dead have been counted. He makes the neoliberal point, just as the sweatshop defenders did during the Nike Wars of the 1990s, that Bangladesh’s low, low cost of doing business has helped the country take needed textile jobs — including from China — and build an $18 billion manufacturing industry. But there’s a difference between accepting that workers are being paid sweatshop wages to make our incredibly inexpensive clothes — the minimum wage is $36.50 a month — and accepting that they must labor in deathtraps. And they do: according to the International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy group in Washington, more than 1,000 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in fires and other disasters.

Even Yglesias backtracked later, emphasizing that there are on-the-ground improvements that can be made to labor standards in Bangladesh that could mean the difference between life and death. (See this interview with Kimberly Ann Elliott of the Center for Global Development for a few ideas.) And those improvements shouldn’t drastically increase the cost of clothes made in Bangladesh — which is a good thing, given our addiction to cheap and fast-changing fashion:      

International retailers can do more to advocate safer standards at textile factories that manufacture their wares, in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Customers can do their part by putting a little pressure on their favorite brands, though that would require placing as much value on the cost of a life as you might on the cost of a T-shirt.

MORE: Fashion: Why Green Is Not the New Black

Hontiveros remains cautious despite improved survey standing

By Maila Ager        
 INQUIRER.net          
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013



MANILA, Philippines – While elated by the latest Pulse Asia survey that put her for the first time in the list of possible winners, Team PNoy senatorial bet Risa Hontiveros said she would take the survey results “with a grain of salt.”

From the previous 17th to 18th in the March 16 survey of Pulse Asia, Hontiveros now ranked 12th to 17th based on the survey conducted by the same polling firm from April 20 to 23.
“I am definitely happy with the survey results, but I’m taking it with guarded optimism. Rather than being complacent, I need to campaign harder and make my message sharper and more focused,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.

Hontiveros attributed her gains in the latest survey to “alampay magic,” which she used in her latest TV ad as a device to underscore her track record in fighting abuse and corruption. “My alampay, which I have color-coded to symbolize my advocacies, is helping me tighten my message,” she said.

The Team PNoy bet also thanked her supporters and ordinary Filipinos, who she said believed that the Senate should not be an exclusive club for the very few.

“We need to wage another People Power in the ballots. An ordinary Filipina with the right principles and the right track record should have the fighting chance to get into the Senate,” she said.

Hontiveros admitted that her biggest challenge was her unfamiliar name.

“Compared to all the other winning candidates, my awareness level remains low,” she said.

“Unlike them, I don’t have a traditional, familiar surname, and I cannot match the resources that they have for their TV ads. I am relying on my track record and the support of marginalized sectors whose aspirations I carry in my heart.”

Hontiveros remained confident that Team PNoy could still make a 12-0 sweep.
“The most important ‘survey’ is on Election Day. It isn’t over until every country-loving Filipino has [cast] his or her vote. I think that Team PNoy still has a strong chance to make former Senators Jun Magsaysay and Jamby Madrigal and myself win this crucial senate race,” she added.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/399973/hontiveros-remains-cautious-despite-improved-survey-standing#ixzz2S05Mdbq4 

Abdelaziz Bouteflika: Is Algeria’s Strongman on His Way Out?

By Vivienne Walt       
April 29, 2013

                                 FAROUK BATICHE/GETTY IMAGES

               Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika welcomes 

                          the Emir of Kuwait in Algiers on Jan.14,2013

Two days after Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was airlifted to a military hospital in Paris to be treated for a supposed “mini-stroke,” his doctors raced to reassure the country that the autocratic ruler was not seriously ill and, indeed, would soon be home — a message that seemed designed to ward off any maneuvers by his rivals to oust him during his absence. “The President is in very good health,” his doctor Rachid Bougherbal was quoted as saying in the government-aligned Ennahar newspaper on Monday, adding that the President would return to Algiers “in not more than seven days.”

Still, the doctor’s message did little to tamp down furious speculation among Algerians. Bouteflika had barely left the country when politicians and analysts began debating whether his 14-year rule was finally over, or at least how much longer he was capable of governing the oil-rich North African country, which has by far the region’s biggest military, and which has faced a long-standing Islamist insurgency. Algerian newspapers were filled on Monday with heated discussion over the country’s future. With the government notoriously secret, Algerians have grown accustomed to picking apart official statements and looking for clues about the true state of affairs. “There is something new this time, in that the announcement of the President’s illness was made by the presidency,” political analyst Rashid Grim told the Algerian newspaper al-Watan; previous bouts of illness went unexplained to the public. “This means he is sick but that his life is not in danger.” Grim also said he believed the regime had already chosen someone to step into power in case Bouteflika were incapacitated.

(MORE: With Limited Freedoms, Many Algerians Vote With Their Feet)

Bouteflika came to power after Algeria’s devastating civil war against Islamist fighters, which is believed to have killed up to 200,000 people, on the promise of cracking down hard on militants, and keeping Algeria safe from insurgency — to a large extent, at the expense of open democracy. For Western leaders, Bouteflika’s departure, if it happened, could entail a tough adjustment, especially since the Arab Spring ousted longtime allies in Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

After the 9/11 attacks, Bouteflika signed an intelligence-sharing relationship with the U.S. Bouteflika refused to join the NATO-led campaign against Muammar Gaddafi in next-door Libya in 2011, and refused to send Algerian troops to join the French-led offensive in northern Mali in January. Yet when Islamist militants seized the In Amenas gas plant in southeastern Algeria in January, killing dozens of foreign oil workers, Bouteflika allowed U.S. surveillance drones to hover overhead throughout the siege. “Algiers has been feted by Paris and Washington in the hopes of enlisting Algeria’s help in stabilizing northern Mali and performing a broader regional counterterrorism role,” says Geoff Porter, director of North Africa Risk Consulting Inc. in Washington. “If the presidency is prematurely up for grabs, Algeria would turn acutely inward. France and the U.S. would find themselves without reliable interlocutors.”

Algerians have good reason to question the statement from Bouteflika’s doctor about the President’s health. In 2005 and again in 2006, Bouteflika was flown to the same French military hospital in Paris, for what his doctors said was treatment for a hemorrhagic stomach ulcer. A year later, Bouteflika admitted that he had been “very, very ill.” But it took a few years more before Algerians learned that their President had in fact undergone treatment for cancer — and even then, they were not told by their own government. The truth emerged only in 2011, when WikiLeaks published a U.S. diplomatic cable in which then ambassador Robert Ford wrote in 2007 that a doctor close to Bouteflika had “told us in strictest confidence that the President suffered from cancer.” That was news to Algerians.

(MORE: ‘We Did Not Predict This’: Top Algerian Official Discusses January Hostage Crisis)

This time, Bouteflika, 76, has taken ill at an intensely awkward time. For months, top officials in the regime have squabbled bitterly over who might ultimately succeed Bouteflika — a subject that until recently seemed almost unmentionable. Under constitutional reforms that are currently under way, Algeria is set to appoint a Deputy President for the first time, a move aimed at paving the way for succession, after years in which Bouteflika has ruled the country with unchallenged authority.

Despite his frail health, Bouteflika has made it clear he intends to stand for a fourth term in office. That would all but ensure his victory, since the controlled process weeds out serious threats to his leadership. “The intelligence services are trying to make sure that the succession process goes their way,” says Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa analyst for the Eurasia Group in London. Given the fact that Bouteflika’s successor could rule for more than a decade, who comes next is crucial for Algeria. Despite its mammoth oil and gas reserves, the country faces declining production and high youth unemployment — both factors that could potentially spark an Arab Spring–style revolt. “There is no long-term perspective about when Algeria’s oil runs out,” Fabiani told TIME on Monday. That could happen, he says, “realistically between 10 and 20 years’ time.”

For most Algerians, the political crisis has arrived far sooner. With Bouteflika out of sight, the tone in the country’s media was impatient, and even irreverent, given the President’s fragile state. The Oran Daily, a newspaper in Algeria’s industrial city, said on Monday that it was unclear whether Bouteflika could last as President even until next year’s election, and warned that Algeria risked all-out revolt by keeping its ruler too long, as Libyans did with Gaddafi and Syrians with Bashar Assad. “We are dangerously infected with the syndrome of Gaddafi or Bashar,” the paper’s editorial said. In a more irreverent tone, a cartoonist in al-Watan showed Bouteflika’s medical team addressing a press conference, and announcing in unison: “The President will need to maintain total rest during his fourth term in office.”

(MORE: The Rising Power of North Africa’s Jihadists Rattles Algeria)

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/04/29/abdelaziz-bouteflika-is-algerias-strongman-on-his-way-out/#ixzz2RzzRrh8B