Category: News

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Unions confront child labor in Latin America

Child labor remains a vexing problem throughout the world. But labor unions in some nations are stepping up efforts to change things, as reported in today’s edition of The Guardian in a story entitled “Bolivia’s child workers unite to end exploitation.” As the story begins:

“Shining shoes, mining and herding animals among the many jobs done by an estimated 750,000 children between five and 17.Rodrigo Medrano Calle is a Bolivian labour leader who meets and lobbies top government officials for his constituency’s rights. That’s not surprising in a country Continue reading “Unions confront child labor in Latin America”

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Bigotry is not a Christmas value

“I will not donate to the Salvation Army, but will instead give to other charities until the Salvation stops discriminating.”

The statement appears on vouchers circulating this week in opposition to the Salvation Army’s widely-known prejudices toward the LGBT community. As The Huffington Post reports,

“With the holiday shopping season in full swing, the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign is once again coming under intense scrutiny from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights advocates. Continue reading “Bigotry is not a Christmas value”

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U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions

At today’s United Nations Climate Change meeting in Doha, Qatar, American officials asserted the U.S. had made “enormous” advances that much of the world didn’t know about. As reported in The Guardian, American progress in climate change has resulted in part by the carbon reductions from its investments in the controversial practice of “fracking” for shale gas. As reported by Fiona Harvey,

“The claim came as nearly 200 governments gathered in Doha, Qatar, for two weeks of talks aimed at forging an agreement on the climate. Governments have until 2015 to draw up a binding treaty, the first since the 1997 Kyoto protocol, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. Continue reading “U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions”

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You can be sued for what you tweet

Ever wonder about how outrageous you can be in a Tweet or Facebook post? Well wonder no more and say hello to libel and slander litigation.

According to Slate.com, “A British politician is seeking damages from high-profile Twitter users who repeated or retweeted a false report linking him to child sex abuse.”

In “Can You Libel Someone on Twitter,” L.V. Anderson, “The former Conservative Party official, Alistair McAlpine, is also asking lower-profile Twitter users who libeled him to apologize and make a donation to charity. The United Kingdom is notorious for its plaintiff-friendly defamation laws—but what about in the United States?

“Could an American be sued for libel based on tweets, too?

Continue reading “You can be sued for what you tweet”

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U.N. declares contraception a basic human right

This month the United Nations declared access to contraception a basic human right. In its new State of World Population 2012 report titled “By Choice Not By Chance,” the U.N. addressed the issue of family planning and stressed the importance of making contraceptives accessible in developing countries. According to the UN, an estimated 222 million women worldwide at risk of unintended pregnancy.

The report stated that “voluntary family planning should be available to all, not just the wealthy or otherwise privileged.” That concept, of making accessible forms of contraception Continue reading “U.N. declares contraception a basic human right”

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Feds bust 132 fake cyber-Monday sites

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Federal law enforcement authorities have announced the seizure of 132 domain names in several countries to stop them from selling counterfeit merchandise online. The Huffington Post reports :

The Cyber Monday crackdown comes on what’s expected to be the biggest online shopping day of the year. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations coordinated the effort with Europol and police in Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania and the United Kingdom.

Authorities say it’s the third consecutive Cyber Monday that websites selling knockoff sports jerseys, DVDs and other goods have been targeted.

They say sites were seized after copyright holders confirmed that products purchased there by investigators were illegal.

Site visitors now see a banner explaining the seizure and copyright infringement.

Homeland Security field offices in Buffalo, N.Y., New Jersey, California, Maryland, Colorado and Texas investigated.

 

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The Obama murder manual

Since President Obama took office in 2008, the CIA has killed 2,500 people with robotically controlled drones run by technicians housed in remote trailers. Anticipating a possible new regime in Washington, the administration accelerated work on a set of guidelines to give a new president standards and criteria for future killings. It’s worth noting, that 70 percent of the deaths have been civilian casualties, according to TruthOut (See, “Civilian Deaths From US Drone Attacks Much Higher Than Reported”

The secret drone policy under consideration was discussed in today’s Continue reading “The Obama murder manual”

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Cell phones raising HIV risks in India

The recent closings of hundreds of ancient brothels in India, while something of an economic victory for prostitutes, may one day cost them, and many others, their lives. The decentralization of prostitution has done little to curb demands for such services, which now is met on an ad hoc basis by individual prostitutes using cell phones to connect with clients. As reported in the New York Times:

“Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS.

Continue reading “Cell phones raising HIV risks in India”

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Therapists turn to branding as demand drops by 30 percent

It seems that people are spending less time on the therapist’s couch these days, due to economic pressures and the availability of alternative resources. An estimated 30 percent drop in the psychotherapy business in the past decade has sent many shrinks scrambling to find clients by “niche” marketing their services.

As essay in today’s New York Times Magazine tells the story of one such therapist. Opening paragraphs from “The Branding Cure: My So-called Career as a Therapist” appears below

“Since the 1990s, managed care has increasingly limited visits and reimbursements for talk therapy but not for drug treatment; and in 2005 alone, pharmaceutical companies spent $4.2 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising and $7.2 billion on promotion to physicians, nearly twice what they spent on research and development. Continue reading “Therapists turn to branding as demand drops by 30 percent”

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Six non-European cardinals named

For a faith that has seen it’s share of bad publicity in recent years, the Catholic church seem moving in the right direction on at least one front. Today Pope Benedict XVI has officially named six new non-European cardinals to the body that will elect his successor, saying the move underlined the Catholic Church’s diversity.”

This the total number cardinals (of a total of 117) from outside Europe to 47 percent. Al Jazeera reports that “The 85-year-old pontiff presided over the ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica that elevated the six prelates to the Church’s College of Cardinals on Saturday.

The body “presents a variety of faces, because it expresses the face of the universal Church”, he said in a development that has been welcomed by critics concerned that the college has become increasingly Euro-centric under Benedict. Continue reading “Six non-European cardinals named”

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Immigrant numbers shifting in tech

There are signs that immigrants’ influence in the U.S. tech industry may be plateauing, as reported in a recent study by AnnaLee Saxenian of Berkeley and Vivek Wadhwa of Duke. Slate reports that the researchers found “that 43.9 percent of Silicon Valley startups launched in the past seven years had at least one key founder who was an immigrant. That’s a big number, but it’s a drop from 2005, when 52.4 percent of startups were immigrant-founded.

“The composition of immigrants in the Valley has shifted a bit, too. In Saxenian and Wadhwa’s ranking of countries that produced the most U.S.-based techies, Taiwan fell from fourth to 23rd. (The reasons for that drop—and the decline of immigrant-founders across the board—can be attributed in part to U.S. visa issues and burgeoning opportunities abroad.) At the same time, though, some tech insiders have seen Latin American-born entrepreneurs, a previously invisible cohort, begin to make their presence known in Silicon Valley. Continue reading “Immigrant numbers shifting in tech”

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Majoring in cyberwar

It had to happen: now you can major in cyberwarfare.  As reported in today’s Los Angeles Times, “stalking is part of the curriculum in the Cyber Corps, an unusual two-year program at the University of Tulsa that teaches students how to spy in cyberspace, the latest frontier in espionage.

“Students learn not only how to rifle through trash, sneak a tracking device on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives.

“It may sound like a Jason Bourne movie, but the little-known program has funneled most of its graduates to the CIA and the Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which conducts America’s digital spying. Other graduates have taken positions with the FBI, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.

“The need for stronger cyber-defense — and offense — was highlighted when Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned in an Oct. 11 speech that a “a cyber-terrorist attack could paralyze the nation,” and that America needs experts to tackle the growing threat.

“’An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,’’ Panetta said. ‘They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.’

“Panetta said the Pentagon spends more than $3 billion annually for cyber-security. ‘Our most important investment is in skilled cyber-warriors needed to conduct operations in cyberspace,’ he said.

 

See full story in the Los Angeles Times, “Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age.”

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Addiction and identity

“A leading expert on addictions says there still remains a ‘tremendous misunderstanding’ about the problem in our society,” reports the Chatham Daily News in a story about psychiatrist Gabor Mate.

“People see addictions as some lifestyle choice that somebody makes,” but  “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘My ambition is to become an addict,'” say Mate. A keynote speaker this week at the Chatham-Kent Addictions Awareness Conference, Mate said “addiction is a response to suffering and most people who are severely addicted were traumatized as children. As a result, he said, people in this situation have pain they try to soothe with drugs.”

Continue reading “Addiction and identity”

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Medications help prevent those with ADHD from law breaking

A large study suggests that people with serious attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are less likely to commit crimes when taking medication. It is widely known within psychiatry that ADHD symptoms can include difficulties with impulse control, which in some cases can lead to law breaking

As reported in today’s New York Times, “The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, examined records of 25,000 people in Sweden to see if those with A.D.H.D. had fewer criminal convictions when taking medication than when they were not. Of 8,000 people whose medication use fluctuated over a three-year period, men were 32 percent less likely and women were 41 percent Continue reading “Medications help prevent those with ADHD from law breaking”

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Educators nationwide respond to Emory arts closure

Arts educators were stunned by the news in September that Emory University would eliminate its Visual Arts Department as part of a cost-cutting effort favoring science and engineering programs. Many observers cited the move as further evidence of a creeping corporatization of the American university. As reported by the College Art Association (CAA),  “Since the economic downturn in 2008, liberal arts colleges and universities across the country have reshaped their curriculums. They have narrowed the fields of study to prepare students for vocational work quantified by employment and statistical analysis, shearing the visual arts––in part or whole––from the intellectual mold that has underpinned students’ critical thinking in the United States over the past century.”

In response to the Emory decision, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) noted the authoritarian and anti-democratic character of Emory’s actions in suspending a range of programs in art, education, journalism, and Spanish––all with out faculty consultation. An excerpt of “An Open Letter from AAUP” appears below.

“On Sept. 14, 2012, Dean Robin Forman announced a number of changes to the curriculum, including the closing of the Department of Visual Arts, the Division of Educational Studies, the Program in Journalism and the Department of Physical Education (the last already in progress at the time of his letter). He also announced the suspension of admissions to the graduate programs in economics, Spanish, and the Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA). The ILA, he wrote, will be restructured as an “institute without permanent faculty.”

“Owing to these cuts, a number of lecture track faculty will not have their contracts renewed, two tenure-track assistant professors hired in educational studies last spring will be let go in advance of any formal review of their work and a number of tenured faculty will be relocated to other departments. Dean Forman has made it clear, in his letter and elsewhere, that he made the decisions in consultation with what he called the “Faculty Financial Advisory Committee,” a small (seven-to-eight person) group of appointed faculty; Lisa Tedesco, the dean of the Laney Graduate School; and Earl Lewis, the provost.

“On behalf of the Emory Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), we want to remind the deans, the provost, the president, the Board of Trustees and, most importantly, Emory’s faculty and students of AAUP guidelines. These state that primary responsibility for decision-making concerning curriculum resides in the hands of the faculty. AAUP guidelines make it clear that this responsibility covers not only the determination of those areas of study to be offered by a college or university, but extends to “appointments, reappointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal” (from Section five of AAUP’s “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities”).

“We understand that restructurings and reallocation of funds are sometimes necessary to ensure that an institution remains strong. In this instance, however, the University failed to undertake that process of reallocation through properly constituted faculty deliberative bodies and to understand that important decisions having to do with these matters must come from those bodies to the deans, provost, president and Board of Trustees.

“Moreover, we are dismayed that a small committee, initially appointed to advise Dean Robert Paul informally on financial matters in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, became a subcommittee of the College Governance Committee that advised the dean on curricular matters. Given the impact of the dean’s decisions on graduate education, we are also concerned that the Executive Council of the Laney Graduate School (LGS) — an elected body of faculty representatives — was not consulted in advance about these changes in accordance with stated practices. The LGS website states that “[t]he Executive Council reviews proposals … for changes in existing courses and programs on a rolling basis.” No proposals in this matter were brought before this council for deliberation. The fact that a College subcommittee seems to have issued recommendations to close programs in another unit, the Graduate School, also raises questions of purview.”

For the complete text of the letter, see “An Open Letter from AAUP”

 

http://www.emorywheel.com/an-open-letter-from-the-aaup/

 

http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/emory-university-eradicates-its-visual-arts-department-portending-an-ominous-trend-in-university-education/

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Biden pardons single yam in Thanksgiving ritual

WASHINGTON—“In keeping with a longstanding Thanksgiving tradition, Vice President Joe Biden ceremonially pardoned a 4-pound yam today at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.”

As The Onion continues it’s holiday parody: ‘Under my authority as vice president of the United States of America, I hereby grant this yam full and unconditional clemency,’ a smiling Biden declared as he gently patted ‘Spud,’ a Beauregard sweet potato grown in Louisiana and selected from millions of candidates yielded by this year’s harvest. ‘May he never find himself in a casserole. Right, little guy?’ Like yams reprieved before him, Spud will ride as an honored guest aboard the second float of the Disneyland Thanksgiving Day Parade before spending the rest of his life in the comfort and safety of a tuber petting zoo.”

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Covering up in San Francisco

It looks like public nudity is a thing of the past in San Francisco. SF Gate today reported that “Nudists will need to cover up or limit where they show their bare buns after the Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 to pass a ban on public nudity.

“Supervisors Jane Kim, John Avalos, Eric Mar, Christina Olague and David Campos voted to oppose the ban. Campos argued that police resources could better be spent fighting violent crime, instead  of tracking down naked men roaming the streets. Other supervisors argued the ban seemed to infringe on people’s right to express themselves and was merely a problem in a Castro that didn’t need a citywide ban.

“The ban still requires a second vote by the board and approval by the mayor, but if all happens as expected, the ban could go into effect Feb. 1.”

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Israeli pets are worried about rocket attacks

When sporadic rocket-attack alarms blared in his Isreali neighborhood in recent months, Lucky would often freeze in confusion as the human residents of his Moshav Gea home ran to their safe room. But during the past week, in which rocket fire and alarms have become routine for the southern community, the large golden dog jets to the shelter automatically. “He follows us to the shelter, he knows,” Kineret Rozen-Edelman, a teacher at Sha’ar Hanegev Regional High School and Gea resident, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “He gets up with us and runs to the shelter.”

Rozen-Edelman was speaking with the Post on Monday morning at around 11 a.m., and she was happy to have had a night of relative quiet from 1:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. Since rescuing the one-and-a-half-year-old Lucky from an Ashkelon shelter about a year ago, Rozen-Edelman and her husband have been training the dog to grow accustomed to using the shelter when necessary. Continue reading “Israeli pets are worried about rocket attacks”

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Why women are driven from academic research

“The number of women studying science and engineering at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has increased markedly in recent decades.” says the webiste Oikos. ” However females have lower retention rates than males in these fields, and perform worse on average than men in terms of promotion and common research metrics. Two key differences between men and women are the larger role that women play in childcare and house work in most families, and the narrower window for female fertility. Here we explore how these two factors affect research output by applying a common ecological model to research performance, incorporating part-time work and the duration of career prior to the onset of part-time work. The model parameterizes the positive feedback between historical research Continue reading “Why women are driven from academic research”

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Don’t look back in space-time

New research was unveiled in the study of time. As reported in ArsTechnica, “Unlike our daily experience, the world of elementary particle physics is mostly symmetrical in time. Run the clock backward on your day and it won’t work; run the clock backward on a process in particle physics and things are just fine. However, to preserve certain fundamental aspects of space-time the Standard Model predicts that certain reversible events nevertheless have different probabilities, depending on which way they go. This time-reversal asymmetry is remarkably hard to observe in practice since it involves measurements of highly unstable particles. Continue reading “Don’t look back in space-time”