It’s at least the possibility of good news in Japan’s nuclear crisis: The operator of the Fukushima plant says it’s nearly done with a new power line that would get the cooling pumps working again, reports AP . The line will be tried “as soon as possible,” says a spokesman for…
Continue reading …Here’s a sign of how much Hollywood is salivating over the potential money to be made in China: MGM is digitally editing the Chinese bad guys in an upcoming movie to make them look like they’re from North Korea instead, reports the Los Angeles Times . The move came not because…
Continue reading …The DEA has seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental, one of the key drugs used to execute prisoners, because it believes the state may have improperly imported it. Like many states, Georgia was forced to import the drug from England last year thanks to a shortage in the US, the…
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Saeeda Khan withheld payment from Mwanahamisi Mruke, fed her two slices of bread a day and made her sleep on floor A former hospital director has been convicted of trafficking a woman from Tanzania to Britain and using her as a “slave”, in the first case of its kind to come before a court. Southwark crown court heard that Mwanahamisi Mruke, 47, was brought to the UK by Saeeda Khan with the promise of a domestic service visa and 120,000 Tanzanian shillings a month (£50). There was also £10 a month pocket money. Desperate to fund her daughter Zakia’s college education, Mruke agreed. But when she arrived in Britain in October 2006, Mruke was forced by Khan to work around the clock and sleep on the kitchen floor of her home in Harrow, London, for the next three years. Mruke was fed just two slices of bread a day, and ordered around by a bell, which her captor kept in her bedroom. Although the payment arrangements were initially honoured, Khan stopped paying Mruke after one year. She was also prohibited from leaving the house, her passport was taken away, and Khan made threats about Mruke’s relatives in Tanzania. Yesterday the jury at Southwark crown court found Khan guilty of trafficking a person into the UK for exploitation. She was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £15,000 towards police and prosecution costs, plus £25,000 compensation to Mruke. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said Khan had told “a pack of lies” during the trial. “Your behaviour was callous and greedy,” he said. During the trial, the jury was told that Mruke was forced to work between 6am and midnight each day. She was also woken during the night to take Khan’s son for a walk and never received a day off. When Mruke asked to go home after the deaths of her parents, and for her daughter’s wedding, Khan refused. It was only in February 2010, when Mruke visited her local doctor with an interpreter, Rhoda Mwanga, that concerns were raised about her living conditions. Mwanga contacted the charity Kalayaan, which seeks justice for migrant domestic workers, who alerted the police. Ten days later police officers, accompanied by Mwanga and Kalayaan workers, visited Khan’s home and rescued Mruke. Khan, a widow, was arrested and later charged. Speaking after she was convicted, Mruke said she would “never forgive” the person who had imprisoned her. “I felt like a fool, I was treated like a slave,” she said. “Even the money I was promised, I was never paid. I feel terrible about this. ” Mruke said she had been hoped to “improve my life” in Britain. But her hopes had been “dashed, my strength was reduced and I became unwell.” She is now pursuing a civil claim against Khan. Crime Slavery Police Tanzania Amy Fallon guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Britons advised to consider leaving Tokyo as Japan’s nuclear crisis escalates
March 16, 2011 No Comment
EU expert says Fukushima is out of control as UK and France advise their citizens to leave Tokyo because of radiation fears International concern that Japan has lost control over the nuclear crisis is escalating as Britain, France and other countries advised their citizens to “consider” leaving Tokyo because of heightened radiation levels. Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would visit the Japanese capital to gather information about the “very serious” situation at the Fukushima plant. Conflicting reports from the damaged nuclear plant have deepened alarm over Japan’s management of the crisis, leading to charges that the authorities are actually making the situation worse. Gregory Jaczko, who heads the US nuclear regulator, said Japan had failed to order a big enough evacuation. He told Congress the public should get at least 50 miles away from the stricken plant. The Japanese cleared a radius of 12 miles. He raised further fears by saying that all the water had evaporated from one of the spent fuel pools at the nuclear plant, so there was nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter. Jaczko said officials believe radiation levels are extremely high, which could affect workers’ ability to stop temperatures rising. The EU’s energy chief, Günther Oettinger, told the European parliament the situation was out of control. “We are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster,” he said. “There could be further catastrophic events, which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island.” He said it was impossible to “exclude the worst”, adding: “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen.” The partial meltdown at Fukushima appeared more serious than the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, told Congress. China, which had been driving a global revival of the nuclear industry, announced it was putting construction on hold, and ordered safety reviews at existing facilities. The heightened concerns – six days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami plunged Japan into a humanitarian as well as a nuclear emergency – brought criticism of the authorities’ management of the situation at Fukushima. Yuli Andreyev, former head of the agency tasked with cleaning up after Chernobyl, told the Guardian the Japanese had failed to grasp the scale of the disaster. He also said the authorities had to be willing to sacrifice nuclear response workers for the good of the greater public, and should not only be deploying a skeleton staff. “They don’t know what to do,” he said. “The personnel have been removed and those that remain are stretched.” Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist who has done research on nuclear accident simulation, said Three Mile Island had shown the importance of bringing in outside experts. “I am concerned that the management of this accident was left to very local hands for a very long time,” he said. “Sometimes the managers and operators in place when the accident has taken place are not well qualified. They may have the inability to see the big picture.” He criticised the rescue effort for not immediately working to restore the power to the reactors’ cooling systems. “What was really needed at Fukushima was restoration of the AC power to the emergency cooling system, and instead we saw them running fire hoses from the ocean. A jerry-rigged arrangement like that sounds to me like a move of real desperation.” The Japanese did not assemble a dedicated crisis management team until Monday morning, Bergeron said. “You need a different kind of person and a different kind of training, and I didn’t see any evidence of that until it was very late.” The decision to evacuate personnel when radiation levels spiked also attracted criticism. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said: “How long can 50 workers last in trying to manage a disaster in four reactors?” However, as Chu told Congress: “If workers have to be permanently evacuated from the site it is unclear if the damage can be effectively contained.” The slow and limited information from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, also came under attack. Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, erupted in front of reporters at the company’s lack of transparency. Jim Riccio of Greenpeace said: “I can understand why they would not want to cause panic in the population. But in a disaster of this magnitude timely and accurate information is of the utmost importance.” Andreyev accused Japan’s regulators of sacrificing safety for profits. “Producers always try to hide the danger. After Chernobyl happened, they also tried to hide it.” Viewpoint, page 33 Factory shutdowns, page 35 Japan earthquake and tsunami Natural disasters and extreme weather Japan International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Suzanne Goldenberg Miriam Elder guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Michigan’s House yesterday passed a controversial bill that will install state-appointed emergency financial managers in troubled cities, giving each the power to do whatever is necessary to balance budgets—including breaking union contracts. One Senate Republican recently promised that the managers would only be sent to communities in need of…
Continue reading …Yemen security forces opened fire on protesters in the Red Sea city of Hudaida today, using both live and rubber ammunition, along with tear gas, clubs and daggers. The city’s hospital has been filled to capacity, one doctor tells Reuters . “We received around 200 wounded, 10 were hit by gunfire…
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Official figures show £940m cuts will target teaching colleges All but five universities in England are to have their funding cut next year, according to official figures, which show that newer universities focused on teaching will be worst affected. A total of £940m is being cut from the budget for teaching, research and buildings for the next academic year, a 12.6% reduction. Universities that can offset teaching losses with their research income emerge most unscathed, as the teaching grant is reduced by 8.2%, compared with 2.8% shaved from the research budget. There will also be a 58.1% cut in cash terms in funding for buildings. Figures published on Thursday by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) show that just five universities will see a rise in cash terms in their grant.With inflation of 2.4%, only one institution sees a real-terms rise in income: the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where the teaching grant of £3.2m is dwarfed by £17.7m funding for research. Among the 20 least affected universities, seven are members of the research-intensive Russell group: Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, University College London, Imperial, Warwick and Manchester. None of the Russell group universities feature among the 20 worst affected. The 10 institutions where cuts are deepest include Bishop Grosseteste University College in Lincoln, which focuses on degrees relating to education. It will have a 13.4% cut in cash terms. City University, the next hardest hit, will have an 8.4% cut, while the University for the Creative Arts will have a 7.8% cut, and London Metropolitan University will see its budget reduced by 7.6%. The Hefce chief executive, Sir Alan Langlands, said: “Universities that don’t lose out so much are those that benefit from the very modest nature of the cut in research funding, as opposed to the more significant cut in teaching funding.” The universities with least change to their funding are those with high levels of world-leading research, Langlands said, and those with good incomes from business and charities, which often fund scientific research. Further education colleges that teach degree courses are also facing cuts, in some cases by as much as a fifth of their income for higher education. In coming years, universities will expect to get an increasing proportion of their funding from tuition fees. Durham is the latest to announce it will charge £9,000, the maximum allowed, from next year. Les Ebdon, chair of the university thinktank million+ and vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, criticised the combination of teaching cuts and a freezing of student numbers next year. “The net result is that the wealthiest universities with the most socially exclusive profiles will retain more public funding, while universities which create the most opportunities will receive less funding,” he said. “If there was ever a year when the government needed to be bold and invest in higher education to keep fees down in 2012, this was it. Instead, students and universities are being left to pick up the tab.” Universities have begun preparing for a more spartan public funding environment, cutting back on less successful courses, seeking redundancies and forging closer links with business. David Latchman, master of Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, said he expected to see further growth in the school of business and in courses related to improving job skills, such as arts management. Birkbeck’s strategy will include encouraging firms to subsidise their employees to study part-time and recruiting more foreign students. It will debate a three-tier system of variable fees. “Law can bear a higher fee than English,” Latchman said. Leicester University has shielded itself from the loss in government income through successful philanthropy; commercial activities, including hosting conferences; and raising fees for postgraduate students, as well as cutting costs. Its vice-chancellor, Bob Burgess, said: “A dynamic university will hold its nerve during this period, which is a period of transition. It’s very important to maintain and develop as well as thinking about how you manage cost-cutting exercises.” David Willetts, universities minister, said changes to funding meant more cash would follow student choices through the payment of tuition fees. “These changes will support a more diverse sector, where the choices of informed students provide a drive towards high quality teaching and efficient use of resources,” he said. Gareth Thomas, Labour’s higher education spokesman, said: “At a time when all our major rivals are investing heavily in universities to drive economic growth, cutting by so much the engine room of innovation in our economy seems even more illogical.” A total of £6.5bn is being distributed to universities for the next academic year. The budget cut includes £255m of short-term funding, which was given by the last government to help institutions prepare for spending cuts. If this short-term funding is excluded, the reduction compared with the budget for the current academic year is £685m, or 9.5%. Meanwhile, European students could be charged to come to Scottish universities under proposals to keep higher education free for all Scottish residents. The new measures, coupled with much higher charges for English students, are designed to fend off increasing demands for the Scottish government to drop its long-standing opposition to making Scottish students pay a graduate tax to help increase income for universities. University funding Higher education Tuition fees Students Spending review 2010 Tax and spending Jeevan Vasagar Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
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Internal report finds some staff are under-performing and thousands are paid salary top-up for which they do not qualify The BBC is wasting nearly £80m a year through poor management of under-performing staff and erroneously paying a salary top-up to thousands of employees who do not qualify for it, an internal report has concluded. The leaked study by the BBC’s People department identified a range of savings that could be made as part of BBC director general Mark Thompson’s bid to slash £400m from budgets in the wake of last year’s licence fee freeze . More than 1,000 job cuts have already been announced by the BBC from the World Service and its online operation, and several thousand more are expected as part of the cost cutting in the coming years. Poorly performing staff were costing the corporation more than £50m a year, according to the report, which recommended the introduction of a new management appraisal system based on conversations rather than paperwork. The report categorised 910 staff – about 5% of the BBC’s total workforce – as “poor performers” and said fewer than half of nearly 3,000 employees in the BBC Vision division, which spans all of the BBC’s TV channels, were given a regular appraisal. Other issues identified in the report include £28m in “unpredictability allowances” paid annually to BBC staff who did not work unpredictable hours. The total cost of the unpredictability allowance scheme of £33m a year made up more than 3% of the corporation’s annual wage bill of about £1bn. The study was put together by the People department as part of the BBC’s “Delivering Quality First” initiative in which staff are invited to put forward their ideas on cost savings and how the corporation can provide the best quality programmes for its audience. BBC executives are looking at every area of the organisation to see where it can cut costs, including the possibility of abandoning its coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships and Formula One motor racing . The BBC is also investigating axing the majority of its local radio output , merging much of the stations’ output with national news and sport station, BBC Radio 5 Live. A BBC spokesperson said: “No decisions have been made so it would be wrong to speculate. It is of course only right that BBC staff have an opportunity to input ideas about shaping the BBC’s future. “These sessions are designed to provoke discussion amongst staff about the way the BBC works and any decisions coming out of the DQF process would be subject to public consultation by the BBC Trust.” The People department report also suggested a big discrepancy in pay between different parts of the corporation. Staff between pay grades seven and nine in BBC Vision earned an average of £40,436, 10% more than the typical pay for people on the same pay grades in the BBC News department, who earned an average of £36,464. Staff at equivalent pay grades in the corporation’s operations department, responsible for strategy, property and legal affairs, earned an average of £46,916. The document is understood to have recommended a more flexible BBC workforce with more people on short-term contracts, fewer long-term “lifers” and less generous redundancy terms. “People don’t leave the BBC, they leave line managers,” said the report. “50% of the organisation has a turnover of just 3%. Some areas have even less. When considering the employee deal, it’s more productive to start from identifying what it’s not. It’s not a job for life, a gold-plated pension [or] a paternalistic institution (any more).” •
Continue reading …President Obama isn’t exactly going out on a limb with his Final Four picks: He’s got the top seeds of Kansas, Duke, Ohio State, and Pitt advancing, reports ESPN . He thinks Kansas (“more firepower”) will be the ultimate champ by beating Ohio State in the final game. Obama also picked…
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