Friday, 9 November 2012

Iranians Attacked U.S. Drone Over International Waters

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=118486

Iranians Attacked U.S. Drone Over International Waters

By Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2012 – A recent Iranian attack on a U.S. drone occurred over international waters, but the aircraft suffered no damage and returned safely to base, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, Little said the Iranian aircraft fired on the drone and followed it as it flew over the Arabian Gulf last week.

“I can confirm that on November 1, at approximately 4:50 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, an unarmed, unmanned MQ-1 U.S. military aircraft conducting routine surveillance over the Arabian Gulf, was intercepted by an Iranian SU-25 Frog-foot aircraft and was fired upon with guns,” he said.

“The incident occurred over international waters, approximately 16 nautical miles off of the Iranian coastline,” Little said. “The MQ-1 was not hit, and returned to its base safely.”

Little provided further details regarding the Iranian attack.

“The aircraft, once it came under fire at approximately the 16 nautical mile range, moved further out,” he said. “The Iranian aircraft continued to pursue the MQ-1 for some period of time before letting it return to base.”

“We believe they fired at least twice and made at least two passes,” Little added.

The press secretary confirmed both Congress and the White House were notified of the incident, and the U.S. responded to Iran through the “Swiss protective powers.”

“The United States has communicated to the Iranians that we will continue to conduct surveillance flights over international waters, over the Arabian Gulf, consistent with longstanding practices and our commitment to the security of the region,” Little said.

Little emphasized the U.S. can respond using a “wide range of options -- from diplomatic to military -- to protect our military assets and our forces in the region, and will do so when necessary.”

“Our aircraft was never in Iranian airspace. It was always flying in international airspace,” he said. “The internationally recognized territorial limit is 12 nautical miles off the coast, and we never entered the 12 nautical-mile limit.”

Little said Defense Department officials believe this is the first time an unmanned aircraft has been shot at over international waters in the Arabian Gulf.

“There is absolutely no question that the aircraft fired on the U.S. military aircraft,” he said.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Interactive Graphics of US Election 2012: The Economists

US election 2012

US election 2012 results

Nov 7th 2012, 10:30 by Economist.com

November 7th: Barack Obama handily won the American presidential election, gaining an expected 332 electoral-college votes to Mitt Romney’s 206, and taking about 50% of the popular vote to the Republican’s 48% (Mr Obama’s margin over Mr Romney in the popular vote may rise a bit once California completes its count). In the end, Mr Romney only managed to turn Indiana and North Carolina from blue to red. Florida was the closest race; Mr Obama's margin of victory there was only about 0.6 of a percentage point. He won Ohio by two points, and Colorado and Virginia by three. But he did even better in the crucial Midwest, a region that Mr Romney had to make a big dent in to stand any chance of victory. Mr Obama won Michigan and Wisconsin (Paul Ryan's home state) by seven, and Iowa by six. The president's re-election was assured once the results started coming in from those counties in the swing states that the campaigns fought over the hardest. For example, he won Hamilton county (which covers Cincinnati) in Ohio by 52% to 47%, Macomb county north of Detroit by the same margin, and Hillsborough county, which covers Tampa in Florida, by 53% to 46%.
Our interactive map provides the latest result in each state (where available) and nationally. Click your cursor on a state to see the detailed result or use the “zoom to” drop-down menu to take you to a region.
The presidential election is won by the candidate who attains at least 270 electoral-college votes out of the 538 in total that are spread among the states and which are distributed to take account of population size. To view a list of the allocation of the votes in the states click on the “Electoral college votes” tab.
Click on the “Results 2008” tab to see how the election went last time.

« Daily chart: Money, votes and imponderables

US election: The trials of the campaign trail

Registration open for international TV festival [Brazil] | IJNet

Registration open for international TV festival [Brazil]

Date: 11/6/12 - 11/11/12

Producers, journalists and filmmakers can participate in this festival November 6 - 11 in Rio de Janeiro.
The International Television Festival will feature a competitive exhibition of TV pilots and free activities, including lectures on turning content viral, business models of participatory content and independent production in Brazil, as well as workshops on interactivity, social games and formatting projects for TV.
Registration is free and ongoing, but spots are limited to 120 participants. Registration guarantees a reservation password, which must be collected 30 minutes prior to the beginning of the event.
The festival is organized by the Institute of Television Studies, and sponsored by Petrobras, Oi, Globosat and Turner Broadcasting System, among others.
For more information, click here.

BBC seeks editor/translator | IJNet

BBC seeks editor/translator

Deadline: 11/29/12

Journalists who are fluent in Persian and English can apply for this position.
BBC Monitoring is seeking a journalist for its Delhi bureau.
The successful candidate will select news and information from source material, which will involve translating, editing and writing material in clear English. This role is being offered on local terms and conditions on a 12-month fixed-term basis.
In addition to fluency in Persian and English, applicants should have exceptional translation and editing skills. As part of the selection process, applicants will be expected to appear for editing and translation tests.
The application deadline is November 29.
For more information, click here.

Thomson Reuters offers journalism training program | IJNet

Thomson Reuters offers journalism training program

Deadline: 12/31/12

Early-career journalists and financial professionals or seniors/recent graduates of journalism, economics, business or languages are eligible.
The Thomson Reuters Journalism Trainee Programme is seeking candidates to train for nine months in its London, New York and Singapore offices.
After several weeks of intensive classroom training, the trainees will be placed in professional newsrooms reporting news stories up to Reuters standards. Journalists who meet the performance standards will move to staff positions in one of 200 newsrooms worldwide.
Applicants must have editorial experience and proven interest in financial news. Fluency in more than one language is a plus.
The deadline to apply is December 31.
For more information, click here.

How to harness the power of mobile voice for news | IJNet

How to harness the power of mobile voice for news

10/30/12 by Ben Colmery

mobile phone reporting using CGNet Swara

Voice technology has tremendous potential for engaging citizens in news.
That was the thinking behind the meeting – called Turn Up the Volume: Bringing Voice to Mobile Citizen Journalism – which the International Center for Journalists organized this month at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. We brought together a diverse group of journalists, technologists and media entrepreneurs from around the world to look for the best models for using voice technology to engage citizens in news – and to identify needed improvements to the technology.
The idea came from Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary’s project, CGNet Swara, in India. CGNet Swara has shown how mobile phones can enable people living outside population centers to share stories and concerns that are often absent from traditional news reports. Swara uses Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology so that people can simply call a phone number, press “1” to leave reports and press "2" to listen to reports, making two-way news distribution possible. Voice reports are then vetted by moderators and made available to mainstream media and public officials through a website.
For these isolated people, voice technology is game changing: Since it relies on the spoken word, people don’t need to be able to read or write in order to contribute content. This is especially important in places like India, where news media don’t produce content in the rural and tribal languages spoken by many. Unlike text, voice is language-agnostic. And most people in the world have access to a mobile phone. This means mobile phones give more people the chance to contribute content.
To engage disconnected people with mainstream news, voice-based mobile is the way to go. But with all its potential, there are technical hurdles that prevent journalists and news organizations from using this technology as often as they could.
We brought together two dozen mobile voice and citizen engagement pioneers to figure out how to take mobile voice engagement to the next level. Attendees came from a wide variety of backgrounds and regions. They included Soud Hyder, a web and social media project manager for Al Jazeera in Qatar; Siok Sian Pek-Dorji, executive director of the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy; Umar Saif, chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board in Pakistan; and Izabella Moi, coordinator and editor of newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo's citizen media blog Mural.
The group identified three developments that would help tap the full potential of mobile voice for citizen engagement. They are:
Platforms that talk to one another and are easier to use
There are already voice applications out there, like Freedom Fone and Swara, but they are often not easy to implement (for instance, many are Linux based) for non-techie users. What’s more, voice applications, and many of their non-voice peers, function in technology silos that cannot speak to one another. This is fine if you want to use just voice or just SMS, but what if your radio station wants to use voice, SMS, mapping and social media in one interoperable suite? The solution is to customize the existing platforms, not to necessarily build new ones.
Data and analytics for voice
What if you want to easily categorize a voice report by topic? Or geolocate a voice report on a map? Or autotranscribe and publish to Twitter? Or analyze demographic or topical data within aggregated voice reports? Think of the power of being able to add analytics – the ability to detect meaningful patterns in data -- to voice, and the impact it could have on understanding and reaching populations of people most dependent on voice for news.
Collaboration among mobile voice pioneers
Many people in the group had worked for years without coming face to face. This meeting connected them to networks of people just getting their feet wet with mobile voice. We developed action plans to tackle some of the challenges identified at this meeting. We look forward to sharing more about these once they’ve broken ground. They include cracking the code to add analytics to IVR platforms, geolocating voice and connecting it to maps and FrontlineSMS, creating a new tool for engaging citizens in editorial tasks that journalists often do not have time for, like photo verification and interview transcription for pay and experiments with voice in Brazil, Bhutan and Mali. Stay tuned.
It was amazing to gather a select group of pioneers and innovators, and watch them lay a broader foundation for engaging new voices in news through mobile technology. Our next goal is to grow this network, and help others in the news ecosystem adopt voice technologies to engage people who are left on the periphery of news.
Photo courtesy of Knight International Journalism Fellowships.
Ben Colmery is the deputy director of ICFJ’s Knight International Journalism Fellowships program.

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Big Polluters’ Big Ad Spending in the 2012 Elections

SOURCE: AP/Gary Kazanjian

Oil well pump jacks of Chevron Corp. are shown in the hills in Coalinga, California.

By Noreen Nielsen | November 7, 2012

The 2012 campaign season was one of the most expensive in history, with an estimated $6 billion spent on television ads in races up and down the ticket. Not surprisingly, corporate polluters and other dirty energy interests were some of the largest outside spenders in the 2012 campaign cycle. These groups—which include Restore Our Future, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, Crossroads GPS, and several more—bet big and lost big.
In just the last two months of the campaign, outside groups linked to dirty energy sources or the promotion of a dirty energy agenda spent more than $270 million on TV ads in the presidential, House, and Senate races and industry ads promoting oil, gas, and coal interest, and more than $31 million was spent on energy-related ads, according to a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis of data from Kantar Media’s CMAG. This includes more than $109 million spent in congressional races with $21.7 million on energy-specific ads. During that time, more than 59,600 spots ran on energy and environmental issues in the presidential race and key House and Senate races.
Since April outside polluter allied groups spent $265.9 million on campaign ads in the presidential race alone, with $15.7 million going toward energy-related issues. These groups also spent more than $111.5 million in Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Colorado, putting more than $6.2 million specifically toward energy-related ads. Yet they failed to unseat President Barack Obama, who won the election with at least 303 electoral votes.
These outside polluter-backed groups spent more than $60 million since September to influence Senate races, but candidates that supported clean energy and common-sense public health protections for our air and water were elected to the Senate in key areas. Senate races in Montana, Ohio, and Virginia, for example, saw $17.3 million spent in outside polluter-backed TV ads over the past two months, with $6 million on energy-related ads attacking Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Senate candidate Tim Kaine (D-VA). Both Sen. Brown and Sen.-elect Kaine defeated their polluter-backed opponents. The Montana senate race is still too close to call.
These same polluter interests also spent more than $49.7 million since September to influence House races, including $12.9 million on energy-related ads, but candidates in key races that supported clean energy and common-sense public health protections won.
In addition to dirty energy groups’ direct spending on specific electoral campaigns, they also pumped millions of dollars into generic “branding” campaigns promoting oil, gas, and coal interests, such as the American Petroleum Institute’s “I’m an Energy Voter” campaign. From September 1 through November 5, for example, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the American Petroleum Institute spent $5.5 million on these types of ads.
It’s clear that the voters have spoken and rejected these special interest appeals to keep special tax breaks for Big Oil and their allies and reject pollution reductions. Now it’s time to move forward with a clean energy and clean air agenda that protects our health, creates American jobs, secures our energy future, and addresses climate change.
Noreen Nielsen is the Energy Communications Director for the Think Progress War Room at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Note: Groups with clear polluter ties and/or groups that ran ads promoting pro-fossil fuel interests include: American Action Network; American Chemistry Council; American Commitment; American Energy Alliance; American Future Fund; Americans for Job Security; Americans for Prosperity; Americans for Tax Reform; Center for Individual Freedom; Checks and Balances for Economic Growth; Citizens for a Working America PAC; Club for Growth; Congressional Leadership Fund; American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS; Ending Spending Fund; Let Freedom Ring; National Association of Manufacturers; National Federation of Independent Businesses; National Mining Association; Now or Never PAC; Restore Our Future; Super PAC for America; Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition;, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; American Petroleum Institute; American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity; and Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports.

How Big Oil Spent Part of Its $90 Billion in Profits So Far in 2012

SOURCE: AP/Haraz N. Ghanbari

Oil company executives, from left, ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron Chairman and CEO John Watson, ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva, Shell Oil President Marvin Odum, and BP America chairman and president Lamar McKay testify on Capitol Hill in Washington.

By Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman | November 5, 2012

Download full data on Big Oil’s profits and activities in the third quarter of 2012 (.xls) Lingering high oil and gasoline prices contributed to another quarter of huge profits for the big five oil companies: BP plc, Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Corp, and the Royal Dutch Shell Group. They earned a combined $28 billion in the third quarter of 2012, reaping more than $90 billion in profits through the first three quarters of the year. (see Table 1) As they did last year, the “big five” are on track to easily exceed $100 billion in profits this year.

What makes this figure all the more staggering is that these companies actually produced less oil in 2012 compared to 2011. The big five oil companies’ total oil production in the third quarter was 5 percent—or 400,000 barrels per day—lower than in the third quarter of 2011.
And despite such impressive profits, U.S. taxpayers are still subsidizing these companies. In 2012 the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that these big five oil companies would receive $2.4 billion in special tax breaks. The three U.S. oil companies among this cohort—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil—also pay a relatively low effective federal tax rate. Reuters reports that in 2011 these three companies paid 19 percent, 18 percent, and 13 percent effective federal tax rate, respectively. These oil companies’ tax rates, Reuters concluded, are “a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.”
So what benefits do these profits produce? Do they create new jobs, as those advocating for the tax breaks and lower corporate tax rates would lead us to believe? Not exactly. Between 2005 and 2010—the last year for which data is available—the “big five” reduced their workforce by 11,200 employees, according to a report by the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee. And the profits certainly haven’t been used as a buffer to lower gas prices, which are still hovering around $3.50, according to the American Automobile Association. Instead, the companies used these enormous profits on some other activities.
For starters, these companies continue to use massive profits to enrich their top executives and largest shareholders by repurchasing their own stock. The big five oil companies spent nearly one-quarter of their third-quarter profits buying back their own stock. These companies are also sitting on $70.7 billion in cash reserves—money not invested in searching for new sources of energy.
But the “big five” did spend lots of money on Capitol Hill in 2012, investing heavily to protect their special tax breaks. Since 2011 they have spent more than $100 million lobbying Congress to protect low tax rates and block pollution controls and safeguards for public health.
In addition to lobbying Congress, the big five oil companies have directly contributed $6.7 million to federal candidates and political parties with 78 percent going to Republicans and 22 percent to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
We also know that these companies have been funneling money into super PACs and political advocacy organizations to broadcast ads that oppose President Obama and his clean energy agenda and promote the companies’ tax breaks. Last month, for example, Chevron made the single-largest corporate donation since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for corporate money in elections in its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision. The company invested $2.5 million in the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC for House Republicans.
This relatively modest investment in lobbying, elections, and politics by oil companies has paid off handsomely. In addition to maintaining their special tax breaks, the FY 2013 budget passed by the house would provide an additional new tax cut of more than $2 billion annually for these same companies in the fiscal year beginning this past October. Overall, the House of Representatives voted 109 times this Congress to enrich oil companies, according to a study by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA). This is a return on investment that would make Donald Trump jealous.
If the story of huge profits, stock buybacks, cash reserves, lobbying, and campaign dollars by big oil companies sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The “big five” rake in billions of dollars due to high oil and gasoline prices, all while receiving special tax breaks and producing less oil. It’s a story that will be rebroadcast again and again until Congress begins to reform this industry, starting with ending their $2.4 billion in special tax breaks.
Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for Energy Opportunity at the Center.

In China: Prostitution:Old profession, new debate: The Economist

Prostitution:Old profession, new debate

One woman’s controversial campaign to legalise prostitution

Oct 27th 2012 | BEIJING | from the print edition

Come in for a sing-song

WHEN an activist, Ye Haiyan, was attacked by eight men in May near her home in the south-western province of Guangxi, she was not completely surprised. Nor was she shocked when local police raided the China Grassroots Women’s Rights Centre where she works. The incidents followed her participation in a controversial stunt in January when she volunteered as a prostitute for two days to highlight sex workers’ plight. She then described her experiences in minute detail on Weibo, a popular microblog. The stunt was meant to boost awareness about Ms Ye’s campaign to legalise prostitution, and it succeeded. Online debate about China’s booming sex trade has raged ever since.
Chairman Mao abolished overt prostitution after 1949, and it remains illegal in China today. (To avoid repercussions Ms Ye did not charge for sex during her stint in the brothel.) But now China has between four and six million sex workers, according to a paper published in 2010 by the World Health Organisation. In small towns and large cities across the country, skimpily dressed women sit in the windows of hair salons and loiter in karaoke bars, openly offering sexual services.
Ms Ye, who is 37, describes squalid conditions in the hotel-brothel where she volunteered in the city of Yulin in Guangxi province. Workers rent cramped cubicles with no windows for 15 yuan ($2.50) a day. There are no showers. Most prostitutes are middle-aged, with scant education and no job prospects or connections. In a society with little welfare or national-health benefits, poverty-stricken women often sell their bodies out of desperation. “Providing sex services is the only way to survive,” says Ms Ye, who believes legalising prostitution will keep women safer and protect public health. Don’t go there
But plenty of people in what is still a sexually conservative society disagree, and the subject is highly politicised. Many government officials would approve of legalisation to help spur the economy, but few will say so out loud, says Pan Suiming of Renmin University’s Institute for Sexuality and Gender in Beijing.
Ms Ye has some prominent allies. Chi Susheng, a lawyer, says China should build red-light districts, license sex workers, and standardise regulations to prevent the spread of HIV. She cites the example of Taiwan, which decriminalised prostitution in designated red-light districts last year, and Sweden, where prostitutes can register to pay taxes. Since 2003, Ms Chi has submitted three proposals to legalise prostitution to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament. All have failed.
Meanwhile, prostitutes in China, as elsewhere in the world, remain socially stigmatised and are often victimised by corrupt police (who pocket fines), violent clients and pimps. While solicitation is illegal, men who visit prostitutes are not usually punished, whereas prostitutes rounded up in periodic sweeps by police can be sent to education-through-labour camps for up to two years.
Last week, a video of a policeman interviewing naked girls in a raid on a Beijing health club suspected of operating as a brothel provoked over 73,000 comments on a Chinese website. One scene in the clip shows a girl with a bowed head shielding her body on a bed, as another girl stands naked against a wall before a plain-clothed officer. Web users expressed dismay that suspects were not allowed to get dressed before questioning.
But translating such outrage into action, or indeed policy, is hard. None of Ms Ye’s assailants has been caught. Still, she plans to continue her work, stoking debate and operating grassroots centres, including a hotline for sex workers.
Chinese sex workers will continue their work too. Lan Lan charges 50 yuan ($8) a time in a massage parlour in the northern city of Tianjin. She used to wash dishes in a restaurant. For her, prostitution is a step up, providing flexible working hours, no heavy labour and a bigger income, she says. She earns 5,000 yuan ($800) a month, and volunteers at an HIV-awareness charity that provides condoms and advice to fellow sex workers. “I respect what I do,” she says. “It is better than washing dishes.”

from the print edition | China

Forced labour in India: Toil and trouble | The Economist

Forced labour in India: Toil and trouble

Where slavery persists in all but name

Nov 3rd 2012 | DELHI | from the print edition

BONDAGE, says Harsh Mander, a prominent Indian social activist, “is endemic. It is an essential factor of labour relations across India.” On October 31st Mr Mander and a host of others launched a new campaign against the practice. The desperately poor, especially indebted villagers, are often forced to toil for no wages and denied a chance to work elsewhere. They are slaves in all but name.
Depending how you define it—workers are usually snared after an employer gives or promises a small loan—victims number possibly in the millions. One activist describes how, last year, his group helped to free 512 bonded workers trapped in a single brick kiln in Tamil Nadu. All were migrants ferried in by a middleman from distant Odisha. They spoke no Tamil and had no notion of their legal rights or of a means of escape. In another case some of the 30 bonded workers found in a rice mill said that they had inherited debts from their parents.
Despite a 1975 law banning debt bondage, almost nobody is ever prosecuted. In any case the stipulated fine—2,000 rupees ($37)—is laughable, and hardly anyone is jailed. The campaigners in Delhi introduced Gurwail Singh in order to make their point. A Punjabi, Mr Singh says that five years ago he borrowed 5,000 rupees from a farmer and agreed to work on the fields to pay his debt. But after the employer slapped him with arbitrary “fines”, plus high rates of interest, he was told he owed over 100,000 rupees. He complained and was beaten so badly he ended up in hospital. In some states, notably Punjab, officials routinely insist the feudal practice no longer exists. But when Mr Singh tried to prosecute his old boss, the case was rejected. Indeed, his then employer is countersuing. Activists gather other examples. A recent survey of 120 villages in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh unearthed 286 people considered bonded labourers. Other exploitation verges on bonded labour: unpaid workers and girls sent to work in a relative’s textile mill who earn no wages but a lump sum to be used as a dowry.
Tougher punishments would help, plus inspections of farms and industries, like brickyards, that make intense use of cheap labour. More attention should be paid to tribal people and the lowest castes, who supply most bonded workers. But the most effective change would be economic. Encouragingly, rural incomes are rising fast: a national survey of consumption in July suggested villagers are gaining wealth faster than urbanites. A state guarantee of 100 days of paid work for every family is also helping. If poor villagers like Mr Singh could also get property deeds and access to banks and loans, then the power of informal moneylenders would fall, too.

from the print edition | Asia

Language skills English where she is spoke: The Economist

Language skills

English where she is spoke

Oct 24th 2012, 14:27 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

LAST YEAR we looked at the first-ever global survey of English-language skills by EF Education First, a teaching company. This year, EF has produced its second study of the same subject. It's worth revisiting for the changes between last year and this one.
First, I'll repeat my caveat from last year: "This was not a statistically controlled study: the subjects took a free test online and of their own accord. They were by definition connected to the internet and interested in testing their English; they will also be younger and more urban than the population at large. But Philip Hult, the boss of EF, says that his sample shows results similar to a more scientifically controlled but smaller study by the British Council."
The test will obviously not reach poor and rural folk who lack internet access. So if a country has an urban elite who are good with English, and a lot of rural poor people who cannot take the test, its score might be relatively inflated. In another country where nearly everyone is online but English skills are mediocre, the scores might be relatively depressed.
Despite that, the index has value. It is based on the test results of a huge sample: 1.7m people over three years in more than 50 countries. For the first time this year, gender, age, industry and job-level are broken out for those who want to get further into the data. (Spoiler alert: women do better than men, and the 30-35 set does best in terms of age. Those working in tourism do better than those working in mining and energy.) Fascinating individual country reports, including regional maps, are here. We learn, for example, that Moscow compares with Austria in its English skill, while Russia's Urals region compares with Qatar or Mexico.
Last year, the biggest surprise to me was that China and India were ranked alongside each other, despite India's much better reputation for English skill. That has changed this year, owing to a methodological tweak. India is now well ahead. Michael Lu of EF explains in an e-mail:

The 1st EF EPI report was based on four tests and in the 2nd report, we removed one of the four tests that didn’t fully test listening skills (it was optional). This change was made to ensure the EPI gets more accurate over time. Countries that are better at vocabulary/grammar/reading and weaker at listening had their rankings slightly inflated in the 1st report, as was the case with China. Conversely, countries such as India which are better at listening moved up in rankings.

In addition, he notes that 12 countries were added to the survey, and that the scores are very close to each other. For that reason, countries may seem to have moved quickly up or down the rankings despite no great real-world change in their English skills in the year. Many of the newly added countries ranked ahead of Brazil, for example, and that plus a slight score change caused Brazil to fall 15 places in the rankings. The index, Mr Lu says, should get more accurate over time as data continue to come in and the methodology is refined.
Clarification: This post originally referred to the company that undertook the study as "EF Englishtown". EF Englishtown is one divison of EF Education First, the parent company responsible for the survey.

Panetta: Election Over, Mission Remains

Defense.gov News Article: Panetta: Election Over, Mission Remains

Panetta: Election Over, Mission Remains

American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2012 – With the 2012 presidential election concluded, the Defense Department continues to be “squarely focused” on the mission of national defense, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta wrote today in a message addressed to the department’s military and civilian workforce.
The message reads:
“This week, millions of Americans exercised their most important responsibility as citizens and participated in the electoral process.
“Throughout the campaign season, we at the Department of Defense have been squarely focused on our mission of defending the nation. Now that the campaign is over, we will stay just as focused on that critical mission.
“America's elected leaders, in turn, now have the responsibility to do everything possible to ensure that we succeed in our mission.
“As the country moves beyond the 2012 election, DOD personnel should take heart in one thing that will always unite the American people, and that is their strong support for the millions of men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line to defend and keep our country safe.
“Let us renew our pledge as a Department to keep fighting for a safer and stronger future for the United States, and to ensure this always remains a government of, by, and for all people.”

Turkey Puts Israeli Officers on Trial in Absentia - Businessweek

Bloomberg News

Turkey Puts Israeli Officers on Trial in Absentia

By Selcan Hacaoglu on November 06, 2012

Turkey put former Israeli military chiefs on trial in absentia for ordering a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, prolonging a dispute between the former allies even as their interests in the region converge.

Islamist demonstrators cheered outside the Istanbul court today at the start of the trial. Hundreds of supporters of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH, the Islamic charity that organized the Gaza aid ship, waved Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Israeli slogans, television footage showed. Israel outlawed the IHH in 2008 on grounds of alleged ties to Hamas.
The suspects, including ex-chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, are charged with “inciting to kill monstrously and by torturing” in the May 2010 raid. Judge Umit Kaptan said today that they couldn’t be summoned to court. Israel says extremists aboard the ship attacked commandos seeking to stop it from breaking the Gaza blockade. Several plaintiffs told the court about their ordeal during the Israeli raid, which left nine Turks dead, Anatolia said today.
While Turkey won’t be able to enforce any verdict against the Israelis, the case highlights the lack of progress in mending ties between the U.S. allies at a time when their regional interests coincide. Both countries cite concern about risks from the escalating revolt against Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Turkey has backed away from its friendship with Israel’s chief enemy, Iran.
“Whether they like it or not, Turkey and Israel have increasingly overlapping threat perceptions,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. “The two countries share a problem: what happens after Assad,” while Turkey has recently “taken a less benign view of Iran.”

Trade Flourishing

Israel has threatened military attacks on Iran to halt its nuclear program, and warned of the risk that Syria’s ally Hezbollah may get hold of its chemical weapons. Turkey is backing the rebels fighting to oust Assad, Iran’s ally, and has retaliated with artillery fire after the shelling of Turkish soil by Syrian forces.
Turkey and Israel have kept business channels open during their dispute, allowing trade to flourish. It reached a record $4.4 billion last year, up from $2.6 billion in 2009, and was about $3 billion in the first nine months of 2012, according to official Turkish data.
Economic ties might have been closer still without the political tensions, which have “scared away some foreign investors” who would have been interested in projects such as the proposed third Bosporus bridge, said Ahmet Reyiz Yilmaz. The chief executive of Yilmazlar Holding, which has $1 billion of construction projects in Israel, spoke in his office in Ankara, decorated with pictures of him shaking hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.

No Normalization

The standoff also hurt agricultural ties, though in the defense industry the impact “was marginal because most of the big projects were already completed,” said Nurhan Yonezer, co- author of a study of Turkey’s economy after the 2001 crisis. Turkey has bought drones and other army equipment from Israel.
Tourism, meanwhile, has slumped as Israelis shunned Turkey, once a favorite destination. The number of visitors dropped to 80,000 last year from about 500,000 a year before 2009, according to the Israeli Embassy in Ankara.
Ties can’t be “normalized” until all Turkey’s demands are met, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Berlin last week. Turkey says Israel must apologize for the killings, pay compensation and end the blockade of Gaza.
Today’s case involves charges against Ashkenazi, now chairman of Shemen Oil and Gas Resources Ltd., as well as former head of the navy Eliezer Marom and military intelligence chiefs Avishai Levi and Amos Yadlin.

‘Political Show’

Nizar Amer, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, called the trial “a political show with no judicial credibility.”
“We’ve discussed apology and are willing to discuss it again,” Amer said in a Nov. 2 interview. “For that, we need a constructive approach from both sides.”
Israel, which has expressed regret for the loss of lives, says activists attacked the commandos with metal rods and knives. Turkish authorities, citing autopsy reports, say some of the victims were shot dead from close range and in the back, and that several Israeli commandos could also face separate charges.
Ties deteriorated after Israel’s invasion of Gaza in December 2008. Erdogan, whose party has Islamist roots, accused the Jewish state of using excessive force. Turkey canceled military ties and backed the Palestinian bid for statehood.

‘Bigger Fish’

Turkey and Israel had previously held joint military exercises. The U.S., which also took part, is keen for a reconciliation but unwilling to “mount direct pressure on Turkey due to fears that it might hurt Turkey-U.S. ties,” said Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

While the trial of the Israeli officers may “look like an escalatory step,” behind the scenes Turkish leaders as well as Israelis are increasingly open to a rapprochement, Cagaptay said.

“In the language of the Turks, it’s Ankara saying to the Israelis, ‘apologize and we will drop all this inconvenience and start a new page’,” he said. “The region has changed so much that both countries appear to think they may have bigger fish to fry than each other.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

DOD Partners with Cities, Countries on Biosurveillance

Defense.gov News Article: DOD Partners with Cities, Countries on Biosurveillance

DOD Partners with Cities, Countries on Biosurveillance

By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2012 – In line with the first National Biosurveillance Strategy released last month, the Defense Department is working with U.S. cities and countries around the world to enhance capabilities needed to detect and track a range of natural or intentional global disease outbreaks.

Sandia National Laboratory researcher Mark Tucker examines two petri dishes in 1999. On the left is one with a simulant of anthrax growing in it and on the right is one treated with the decontaminating formulation developed at Sandia. Photo by Randy Montoya, courtesy of Sandia National Laboratory
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

Biosurveillance involves using experts and a range of technologies to systematically gather, analyze and interpret data related to disease activity and threats to human and animal health for early warning and detection.

Though the strategy is new, a range of national policy documents has addressed biosurveillance, beginning in 2007 with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21. The directive defined biosurveillance and discussed the need for a national capability. In 2009, objectives stated in the National Strategy for Countering Biological Attacks sought to protect against the misuse of the life sciences to support biological weapons proliferation and terrorism. And the National Security Strategy of 2010 noted the ability of emerging infectious diseases to cross borders and threaten national security.
“DOD’s involvement in biosurveillance goes back probably before DOD to the Revolutionary War,” Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, told American Forces Press Service.
“We didn’t call it biosurveillance then, but monitoring and understanding infectious disease has always been our priority, because for much of our history, we’ve been a global force,” he added.
Today, as part of its effort to prepare for microbial storms unleashed by nature and by adversaries, DOD works internationally and domestically to improve global biosurveillance cooperation, Weber said.
“While we worry a lot about nonstate actors launching a bioterrorist attack,” he added, “we also have to worry about rogue states like [North] Korea, Iran and Syria that have biological/chemical weapons programs.”
To enhance biodefense capabilities on the Korean peninsula, Weber said DOD and South Korea launched the Able Response exercise in May 2011 and ran it again in May 2012.
“This is a whole-of-government to whole-of-government tabletop exercise focused on a biological incident, not during a conventional war but some type of a covert release, … that could have a major impact on the civilian population … but also on our 28,000 forces deployed on the peninsula,” the assistant secretary said.
At the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Ryan Madden is a science and technology manager in the chemical and biological technologies directorate’s physical science and technology division. Since 2007, DTRA, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies have worked with the cities of Seattle and Denver, and now are working along with the State Department and with Poland on biosurveillance exercises, Madden told American Forces Press Service.
The first exercise, called the Interagency Biological Restoration Demonstration, or IBRD, ran from 2007 to 2010 in Seattle, he said, calling the demonstration “a very unique partnership” between DOD and Homeland Security.
The exercise was prompted by anthrax attacks that killed five people in the United States in 2001, Madden said.
The scenario involved a large biological anthrax release in a large city. The objective, he explained, was to get “from the baseline of more than 10 years for restoration [of the city after the attack] to a manageable number [of months or years for anthrax cleanup] that allows the city to maintain some form of viability.”
IBRD was conducted in partnership with the Seattle King County Urban Area Security Initiative, Madden said, “and at the end of the program, we had a number of toolsets for decision support or efficacy.”
The IBRD team had done studies on the efficacy of various solutions on bacillus anthracis -- the bacterium that causes anthrax -- on various surfaces, Madden said. “So there was technical data and decision toolsets that help you use that data to inform sampling approaches or decontamination strategies,” he added.
As a result of the exercise, he said, “the [Seattle Urban Area Security Initiative], and their partnership with Joint Base Lewis-McChord as a key military installation there, have a regional consequence management plan that addresses catastrophic biological incidents.”
For a large city like Seattle, the community resilience factor -- based on how long leases and businesses can stay viable if people can’t get to work -- is about six months. “And we’re still not at six months,” Madden said.
Last year, Homeland Security took the lead, working with DOD, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services in a follow-on effort in Denver, Madden said, working with the Denver Urban Area Security Initiative.
The Denver recovery and resilience program, which wraps up this year, “expanded on IBRD with anthrax, but added a blister agent and a radiological dispersion device, and it still focuses on physical contamination [and cleanup],” the science and technology manager said.
During the Denver program, Madden added, “we started looking at how this could apply in working with a partner nation.”
The international effort began in October as a partnership among DOD, the State Department, Homeland Security and Poland.
“I think [it] ties very closely with both the National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats as well as the National Strategy for Biosurveillance,” Madden said, both of which recommend leveraging international collaboration.
Between October 2011 and September 2014, the exercise will use the release of two agents -- one contagion and one environmentally persistent biothreat -- to develop and demonstrate a capability for resilience in countering a threat that affects U.S. and Polish civilians and military personnel and key infrastructure, Madden said.
“[The international effort] is a capability integration and demonstration program, so we’re looking at technical feasibility and then operational utility,” he added. “We’re working so the U.S. European Command, and warfighters are part of it. And later in the program, [we’ll have] field demonstrations and utility assessments.”
The first technical demonstration will be held in August 2013, he said, and the second in the early spring of 2014.
The final operational demonstration, involving the 773rd Civil Support Team in Germany, Eucom assets and Polish officials working together, will be in September 2014, Madden said. In the meantime, he added, “we’re funding Sandia National Laboratory to help with a methodology and a toolset we call Threat Probability to Action. The big gap we’re trying to bridge is between earlier warning and rapid response.
“The quicker you’re warned about something and the quicker you can make decisions about what to do,” he said, “all of that has an impact on [saving lives].”

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Pakistani couple kill daughter who talked to a boy - chicagotribune.com

Pakistani couple kill daughter who talked to a boy

Reuters

12:43 p.m. CDT, November 1, 2012

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani couple killed their teenage daughter by pouring acid on her face and body after they caught her talking to a boy, police and a doctor said on Thursday.

The parents of the 16-year-old confessed to police in Kotli, a town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, that they attacked their daughter after she had spoke to the boy outside their house, said Mohammad Jahangir, a local doctor at the hospital where she was brought.

"There were third-degree burns on her scalp, face, eyes, nostrils, both arms, chest foot and lower part of legs. Even her scalp bone was exposed," he said, adding that the mother initially told the hospital their daughter tried to commit suicide. Police have arrested the parents.

Almost 1,000 women lost their lives last year in so-called "honor killings" in the conservative South Asian nation, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Activists say the actual number is much higher as most cases go unreported.

(Reporting by Mehreen Malik; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Haqqani network hit with U.N. sanctions: U.S. envoy - chicagotribune.com

Haqqani network hit with U.N. sanctions: U.S. envoy

U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice speaks with the media after Security Council consultations at U.N. headquarters in New York (ALLISON JOYCE, REUTERS / June 7, 2012)

Louis Charbonneau Reuters

3:26 a.m. CST, November 6, 2012

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council's Taliban sanctions committee on Monday added the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, to a U.N. blacklist, the United States said.

The Security Council committee's move also singled out Qari Zakir, an operational commander involved in many of the network's highest-profile suicide attacks, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said in a statement.

"These sanctions oblige all U.N. member states to implement an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo against Zakir and the Haqqani Network," Rice said.

New additions to the Taliban sanctions list are relatively rare, since such moves are usually agreed upon unanimously. Council diplomats said it was especially significant that Pakistan, a member of the 15-nation council until the end of 2013, did not stand in the way of the moved.

The U.N. blacklist now contains 131 individuals, including Zakir, and three entities, one of which is the Haqqani network.

The United States designated the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization in September, a move the group's commanders said proved Washington was not sincere about peace efforts in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of supporting the network, an allegation Islamabad denies.

The Haqqanis, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban, are some of the most experienced fighters in Afghanistan and have carried out several high-profile attacks on Western targets.

"Today's action by the Security Council expands upon these (U.N.) sanctions and confirms the international community's resolve to end the Haqqani Network's ability to execute violent attacks in Afghanistan," Rice said.

"It also reflects the Security Council's commitment to use and enforce sanctions against those who threaten peace in Afghanistan, in conjunction with a strong commitment to support Afghan-led peace and reconciliation," her statement added.

Rice said that as well as organizing suicide attacks, Zakir had trained militants to use small and heavy weapons and improvised explosive devices.

The U.S. State Department said separately on Monday that it added Zakir to the U.S. list of specially designated terrorists, a move aimed at freezing any property he might have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any U.S. transactions with him.

"He has been involved in many of the Haqqani Network's high-profile suicide attacks and is partially responsible for making some of the final determinations on whether or not to proceed with large-scale attacks planned by local district-level commanders," the State Department said in a statement.

It said attacks using personnel selected and trained by Zakir included the 2010 attacks on coalition force bases in Afghanistan, the June 2011 attack on the Intercontinental Hotel, and the September 2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which killed 16 Afghans, including at least six children.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

Monday, 5 November 2012

Free Exchange: What to expect tomorrow: The Economist

Forecasting

What to expect tomorrow

Nov 5th 2012, 15:47 by R.A. | WASHINGTON

TOMORROW Americans will go to the polls to select a new president. (Technically, they'll go to the polls to select a slate of "electors", who will in turn choose the president, because that's just how clever the founding fathers were.) Months—years actually—of intense polling on how Americans are likely to vote will finally be put to the test; have the pollsters been measuring opinion accurately or not?

New research from David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers suggests that however accurate the polling, it's less accurate than it could be if opinion firms asked different questions. In particular, they should worry more about what voters think will happen than what voters intend to do themselves:

We find robust evidence that polls probing voters’ expectations yield more accurate predictions of election outcomes than the usual questions asking about who they intend to vote for. By comparing the performance of these two questions only when they are asked of the exact same people in exactly the same survey, we effectively difference out the influence of all other factors...

Our alternative approach to political forecasting also provides a new narrative of the ebb and flow of campaigns, which should inform ongoing political science research about which events really matter. For instance, through the 2004 campaign, polls of voter intentions suggested a volatile electorate as George W. Bush and John Kerry swapped the lead several times. By contrast, polls of voters’ expectations consistently showed the Bush was expected to win re-election. Likewise in 2008, despite volatility in the polls of voters’ intentions, Obama was expected to win in all of the last 17 expectations polls taken over the final months of the campaign. And in the 2012 Republican primary, polls of voters intentions at different points showed Mitt Romney trailing Donald Trump, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich and then Rick Santorum, while polls of expectations showed him consistently as the likely winner.

The intuition behind the result is that expectations polls are tapping into a broader vein of information. Individuals responding to polls actually know much more about the election than just their own voting intentions. They also have a sense for how people across their social networks are leaning. Aggregating this broader information flow in a poll is more informative and useful than just collecting from respondents comparatively meagre data on how they intend to vote.

The logic is similar to that underlying prediction markets, for which Mr Wolfers is an evangelist. The authors note that prediction markets like Intrade often outperform inidividual polls and even forecasts built on skillfully aggregated polls. Participants in prediction markets not only provide their own assessment of the probable outcome of a question, but provide information weighted by conviction, measured monetarily.

As of this moment, Barack Obama is favoured to win across several betting markets and in polls of expectations. Most polls of voter intentions give Mr Obama a slight edge, but are comparatively unsure about the race; some continue to show a lead for Mitt Romney. And so tomorrow will provide a bit more information on how best to assess the state of critical political races.

Diplomatic Diary: Terrorism can cause delay in elections? Roznama Dunya

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Sunday, 4 November 2012

Little Describes Pentagon's Benghazi Decision Process

11/02/2012 02:19 PM CDT

Little Describes Pentagon's Benghazi Decision Process

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2012 - Two U.S. service members did participate with a CIA team in the mission to rescue Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters today.
Little spoke of the events of that night during a press availability in his Pentagon office. Four Americans -- including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens -- were killed in a terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that night.
The two American service members were based in the Libyan capital of Tripoli and volunteered to join the team that traveled to Benghazi. Little could not say what position the service members held, but did say DOD is proud that they volunteered to perform the mission.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey and U.S. Africa Command commander Army Gen. Carter F. Ham discussed the situation in Benghazi soon after they were notified of the assault.
"There were discussions here at the highest levels including the secretary as to what kind of response we might be able to provide," Little said.
"The secretary ordered appropriate forces to respond," he said. "Those forces included FAST (Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team) platoons from Europe, a special operations unit in Central Europe, and another contingent of U.S. troops from the United States."
It takes time to notify troops, organize them and then transport them, Little said. It also takes time to develop an intelligence picture of what they might face on the ground.
"The fact of the matter is these forces were not in place until after the attacks were over," he said. "Let me be clear. This department took swift action. We did respond. The secretary ordered forces to move. They simply were not able to arrive in time."
DOD was preparing for a range of contingencies that day.
"We were readying for the need to augment security measures at our facilities in Libya, we were prepared for the possibility of a hostage situation as well," Little said. "These were all the things we were looking at in the midst of an event that we did not know was going to happen in Benghazi that night."
Little put one rumor to rest. There were no AC-130 gunships anywhere near the continent of Africa the night of Sept. 11, he said.