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Missing boy found staying with friends

ChuckKnowl — Fri, 18 May 2012 05:09:27 +0000

Abu Dhabi For his worried parents, learning that Mohammad Fazil was safe was all the relief they needed.

The 12-year-old boy, who had disappeared from Al Wahda Mall on Saturday, was found by family friends late on Sunday night, his father T.P. Mustafa told Gulf News.

“
For now, we are happy to have him home and will slowly work towards helping him understand how much of a worry his disappearance caused us

T.P. Mustafa, boy’s father

"Mohammad had returned to the mall with a friend at whose place he had stayed the night. My friends, who had been looking out for my son, called us as soon as they spotted him. We rushed there immediately," Mustafa, a 48-year-old businessman from India, told Gulf News.

"For now, we are happy to have him home and will slowly work towards helping him understand how much of a worry his disappearance caused us," he added.

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An Invisible Revolution in Rural India

ChuckKnowl — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:09:27 +0000

By MADHUKAR SHUKLA

Mahua Devi is a petite woman in her early twenties. She cycles through 10 to 12 villages of the Koraput district in Orissa everyday.

“I help these women keep their accounts,” she tells me as we walk towards a group sitting in the shade under a tree.

Madhukar Shukla

When she says “these women” she is referring to one of India’s millions of self-help groups, or SHGs. Each group has 15 to 20 women who pool their tiny savings of only 5 rupees to 10 rupees at a time. They use the money to give loans to members for income-generating investments like chickens, seeds or goats. The interest on the loans then adds to their savings pool.

Driving from the nearest city to the village, I don’t see any bank branches. Even if there is a branch, it’s unlikely it would be equipped to open even simple savings accounts for these women, given their meager savings, lack of assets and inability to read or write. For most of the village women the SHG is the only bank they have ever had.

Ms. Devi keeps the accounts for 20 groups, for which she gets a commission of 2% of the value of all the transactions. “On average, I earn about 5,000 rupees per month,” she tells me.

That, I quickly calculate, works out to 250,000 rupees in cash transactions per month – an amazing economic engine, silently working in one of India’s poorest regions.

Self help groups are a transformational phenomenon which has swept the Indian countryside over the last decade and a half. The groups are India’s own social innovation. In a country where almost two-thirds of the population have no access to formal financial services, SHGs are a unique route to financial inclusion, increasing incomes and helping build productive assets among the poor.

Though similar groups were promoted by many non-government organizations in the 1980s the turning point of the SHG movement was a pilot project by the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) in the early 1990s.

Despite India’s network of around 30,000 bank branches in rural areas, a majority of the poor still remained outside the fold of the formal banking system. NABARD studies showed this was because existing bank policies, systems and products were not aligned to meet the financial needs and constraints of the poor. What the poor can earn and save varies widely each day. Meanwhile their tiny savings – as little as 50 rupees per month – make providing banking services to them too expensive for banks.

“The self help groups have gone beyond financial inclusion and become a platform to provide a voice to a marginalized section of society.”

To bridge this gap, NABARD and a group of NGOs started a pilot project o 500 groups of women to be used a vehicle for financial intermediation through its SHG-Bank Linkage Program. Typically, these were informal groups of up to 20 women, who would meet regularly and pool their savings.

After saving for six months and proving the group had developed the required fiscal discipline through consistent savings, on-time loan payments and maintaining records the group becomes eligible to be “linked” to the local bank branch. The innovation here was that the group, rather than the individuals in it, could open an account with the bank and use that account to save and take loans.

The pilot was a remarkable success and within a year more than half of the first groups had become eligible for the bank-linkage. Even more impressive was the fact that 90% of the loan payments were on time and there were no defaults. The success of this pilot project sparked the SHG movement which has been an unparalleled, albeit under-reported, revolution in financial inclusion.

The number of bank-linked SHGs crossed 10,000 in five years. By 2004, there were more than one million groups with their own bank accounts. By the year ended this March, the number of groups had grown to about 4.7 million, touching 59 million rural families through their members. Meanwhile, the average loan size per group has increased from 1,137 rupees in 1992 to 74,000 rupees this year. That shows the women’s rising capacity to manage, utilize and pay back loans.

So is everything fine with the SHG movement? Not entirely.

According to one 2006 study (EDA Rural Systems and Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhivruddhi Society’s “Self Help Groups in India: A Study of the Light and Shades”) the groups still suffer from many inadequacies. For instance, the study found that a large proportion of SHG members remained poor even after being in the groups for seven years. Another report (Access Development Services’ “Microfinance in India: The State of the Sector Report 2009″) underlined the popularity of SHGs has so far been a regional phenomenon tilted towards the southern and eastern states of India.

In spite of such inadequacies, however, self help groups have emerged as a critical vehicle for creating social equity and empowerment.

I once sat with women from three SHGs in the community hall of Madanpur in Haryana. The women had assembled for a workshop on “legal literacy” organized by a Delhi NGO. There was jubilation in the air and the village women were talking animatedly.

“We got the license of the local liquor shop stopped yesterday,” one of the members told me with glee. “It was a drain on us because the men-folk would squander away their earnings, spoil their health, and often physically abuse us. This time we protested and kept the liquor license from being renewed.”

The self help groups have gone beyond financial inclusion and become a platform to provide a voice to a marginalized section of society. Some SHGs have become forums for women to discuss everything from health and sanitation to legal rights and human trafficking. They are also being used to promote education and skill building. The groups are so respected now that they have been called upon to implement government and donor-driven programs such as the mid-day meal program for school children and HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.

Between 2006 and 2008, more than 600,000 new self help groups were linked to banks. Assuming an average group size of around 13 or 14 members, that means more than 400 women are joining a SHG every hour!

Now if that’s not a revolution, then what is?

—Madhukar Shukla is a professor of organizational behavior and strategic management at the XLRI School of Business & Human Resources in Jamshedpur.

Avengers hits £40m in UK chart

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:09:27 +0000

Superhero movie The Avengers has topped the UK box office for the third week in a row, taking over Â£40m to date in UK and Ireland.

The film took Â£4.17m in UK box offices to stay at the top this week.

The Avengers was directed and co-written by Joss Whedon, creator of the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

An Oscar-winner for his work on Toy Story, Whedon has had a notoriously rough decade – with TV series Firefly and Dollhouse cancelled, and his horror film Cabin In The Woods delayed by three years due to financial trouble at MGM.

After The Avengers took $207.4m in the US last week – the biggest opening weekend on record – Whedon posted a public letter on his website, thanking his supporters.

"Topping a box office record is super-dope," he wrote.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company was planning an Avengers sequel sometime after the release of Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 next year, and Captain America 2 in 2014.

Elsewhere in the UK box office, American Pie: Reunion stayed in the number two slot in the second week of its release.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's Dark Shadows, was a new entry at number three, taking Â£2.4m.

And action film The Hunger Games is now at the number 10 slot after eight weeks in the charts.

Shock-seekers snap up new Aussie art dare

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:09:27 +0000

By Cecile Lefort

SYDNEY |
Mon May 14, 2012 12:11am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Smelling excrement may not be everyone’s idea of fun, but for those who like to push the boundaries, Australia’s most controversial new museum may be just what they are looking for.

Dubbed “the subversive adult Disneyland”, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is located in Tasmania and features around 400 works of art from Egyptian mummies to Young British Artists including Chris Ofili and Jenny Saville.

But the most talked-about piece is the Cloaca Professional, labeled the “poo-machine.” It was built by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to mimic the actions of the human digestive system.

A series of glass receptacles hang in a row with the machine being “fed” twice a day on one end. The food is ground up “naturally,” the way it is in the human body, and the device produces feces on the clock at 2 pm at the other end.

The smell is so powerful that not many visitors can take it.

“It put me off because of the overwhelming assault on the senses,” said Diane Malnic, a Sydney-based accountant.

Yet this was her second visit in five months, following a family holiday in Tasmania earlier in the year. This time, she flew without her husband and children just to have another look at the collection, interested in Delvoye’s other pieces.

She took great care to avoid the “smelly” parts and still talked vividly about the “vomit room” which was part of an earlier exhibit no longer on display.

“I wouldn’t go back to see them,” she said, laughing.

The Cloaca is part of a series of at least five similar machines built by the artist, another of which will soon be exhibited at the Louvre. It is the most hated piece in the museum but also the most visited.

The museum, which opened in January 2011, is owned by eccentric and philanthropist David Walsh, who made his fortune as a professional gambler, and features one of the largest private art collections in the world with an estimated value of around A$100 million.

Its motto is to shock, offend, inform and entertain.

“It definitely challenges your interpretation of what art is,” said Malnic.

Pieces include Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, which features elephant dung and porn-magazine cutouts of genitals. It caused controversy in 1996, with then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reportedly describing Ofili’s work as “sick”.

Another much-talked-about piece is the Matrix by Jenny Saville, a full-frontal large painting of a naked transgender man with his modified genitals exposed.

“It’s confronting,” said Margarita Silva, a Melbourne-based dentist making during her third trip to the MONA.

Detractors argue that some of the pieces don’t belong to a museum, which is also what Malnic initially thought. But upon reflection, she said the Cloaca machine opened her mind and argued that perhaps it was the future of art.

For Silva, her favorites were a soundproof room of 30 Madonna fans who were individually filmed singing a capella the artist’s Immaculate Collection album. The other was a waterfall with droplets spelling out a series of words.

Keeping with the MONA’s sensibility, none of its art work is grouped or chronological, leaving viewers to walk at random.

“Overall, it’s a fantastic experience,” said Silva.

The museum charges A$20 ($20) for entry and has drawn around 389,000 visitors in its first year ($1 = 0.9887 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Cecile LeFort, editing by Elaine Lies)

Republic of Congo profile

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:09:27 +0000

Civil wars and militia conflicts have plagued the Republic of Congo, which is sometimes referred to as Congo-Brazzaville.

After three coup-ridden but relatively peaceful decades of independence, the former French colony experienced the first of two destructive bouts of fighting when disputed parliamentary elections in 1993 led to bloody, ethnically-based fighting between pro-government forces and the opposition.

A ceasefire and the inclusion of some opposition members in the government helped to restore peace.

But in 1997 ethnic and political tensions exploded into a full-scale civil war, fuelled in part by the prize of the country's offshore oil wealth, which motivated many of the warlords.

The army split along ethnic lines, with most northern officers joining President Denis Sassou Nguesso's side, and most southerners backing the rebels. These were supporters of the former president, Pascal Lissouba, and his prime minister, Bernard Kolelas, who had been deposed by President Sassou Nguesso in 1997.

By the end of 1999 the rebels had lost all their key positions to the government forces, who were backed by Angolan troops. The rebels then agreed to a ceasefire.

Remnants of the civil war militias, known as Ninjas, are still active in the southern Pool region. Most of them have yet to disarm and many have turned to banditry.

The Republic of Congo is one of sub-Saharan Africa's main oil producers, though 70 percent of the population lives in poverty. Oil is the mainstay of the economy and in recent years the country has tried to increase financial transparency in the sector.

In 2004 the country was expelled from the Kimberley Process that is supposed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the world supply market. This followed investigations which found that the Republic of Congo could not account for the origin of large quantities of rough diamonds that it was officially exporting.

IMF debt relief to the country was delayed in 2006 following allegations of corruption.

Revising America’s ‘Secret Heroes’

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:09:27 +0000

The stories sneak up on him while he’s on other quests, such as the time Martin was trying to find the first American awarded a military medal and found Hercules Mulligan, a forgotten spy who saved George Washington’s life twice.

Martin has collected the stories of 30 Americans left out of the history textbooks in his new book, “Secret Heroes: Everyday Americans Who Shaped Our World.”

Some other characters Martin brings to life include Henry Beachell, whose invention of “miracle rice” fed and supported Asia, Cynthia Ann Parker’s steadfast endurance of 24 years of Native American captivity and Jonathan Letterman, whose medical organization on the battlefield revolutionized the treatment of wounded soldiers and saved countless lives during the Civil War.

“These characters were relatively unknown, but what they did has had ripples that continue to affect us,” Martin said. “Hercules Mulligan saved the life of the father of our country. Think of what would have happened if he hadn’t been a tailor in New York City.

“Everyday Americans have had a huge impact on our history — it isn’t always presidents and generals who set the course for the country.”

The characters called to him from the pages of history books, whispered from brief mentions of TV shows and clambered from the pages of historical society records, all begging to share their stories with someone who would listen.

“Secret Heroes” is the latest offering in a continuous genre of books that aim to remind us of our forgotten past and changes how we understand it.

Martin has lived through history and has been captivated by it. He worked as a journalist during the Vietnam War, chronicling Vietnam’s struggle to reconnect itself. Then he worked for the National Geographic Society for 30 years, the last 10 as executive editor for National Geographic Traveler.

Throughout the years, a single running theme has connected his experiences: lifting the underdog. Unearthing forgotten stories from the country’s founding is a way to remind us what everyday people are capable of accomplishing.

But why do people care today?

Kenneth C. Davis, author of the famed “Don’t Know Much About …” series and “America’s Hidden History,” says that history isn’t a dead thing of the past but an actively created and revised thing that affects our decisions every day.

“In school, we focus on the ‘important people’ and Founding Fathers, but what that ‘great man version’ of history does is really leave out an awful lot of people who have tremendous impact,” Davis said.

When Davis was in high school history class in 1968, women, African-Americans and Native Americans were noticeably absent from the textbook. Revisionism is a dirty word to some, but Davis said it’s an important aspect of history.

Teachers and textbook writers still struggle today to include ethnic heritage, but some school districts aim to keep the same version of history we’ve always been taught, case being Tuscon’s suspension of Mexican-American studies.

“We need to revise history because we learn things all of the time about the stories and people who were left out,” he said.

This is especially the case in elementary school history classes, he said. Myths about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree are taught in the place of truth, so history starts on a shaky foundation of fiction, Davis said. Learning truth in the place of fiction later in high school makes history harder to grasp.

“People want to paint a picture of the past that is filled with pride and patriotism, especially for children, and that is a valuable thing,” he said. “It gives us a sense of national identity and character, but it creates a very false history that is sanitized of the stories that don’t fit in neatly with the real history.”

Retired American history teacher Jane Serkedakis watched textbooks change dramatically during her 33-year career. She doesn’t believe that children are necessarily taught “wrong” information at a young age, she said, but there’s an unbalanced emphasis on certain aspects of American history.

“It would be difficult to deal with third-graders and American history’s real nuances of slavery,” she said. “It is in high school where we examine Thomas Jefferson as a paradox — he owned slaves but was a complete champion of democracy. They aren’t taught wrong, it’s just that they can’t go into all of that detail at such a young age.”

The emphasis on military history consumes the curriculum for high school history classes. The emphasis turned off students who wanted to learn more than dates and battles; people, places and facts, not dates, make history come to life, Serkedakis said.

In her Advanced Placement U.S. history class for 11th-graders, Serkedakis included a “visitors” assignment for each era, where students played the part of important figures in American history and brought them to life in the classroom. Books such as “Secret Heroes” can be a resource for teachers to use in this way, she said.

It is this approach to teaching history that Rick Beyer, author of “The Greatest Stories Never Told” and “The Ghost Army of World War II,” finds most beneficial to students. Realizing that names and figures of the past were living, breathing human beings makes them as relatable as finding your grandfather’s address in the newly released the 1940 census documents, he said.

John Quincy Adams, son of second President John Adams, is a prime example, Beyer said. Fact tells us that Adams walked out of the White House and went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River each day.

“It doesn’t change your understanding of American history, but suddenly that guy seems less like an old black-and-white photograph, and a little more like a person,” Beyer said. “If you restrict yourself to the Wikipedia version of history, you lose all of the color, delight and excitement of the adventure that is the lives of each one of these people.”

Because history is everything that ever happened, from every war to every love affair, the untold stories that turn expectations upside down are the ones worth exploring, Beyer said. And because what we care about at 26 or 36 differs greatly from the portrait of our interest at 16, discovering history for the first time a decade or two after high school can make those stories even more important.

That is what Davis, Beyer and Martin aim to remind us with their books, bursting with the people and places lost to time and rekindled in lifelike detail. Every good story is one worth retelling, and our own history is full of them, many filled with the undeniable spirit and tenacity of the patriotic principles we learn from myths.

“There really are two large categories of heroes,” Martin said of his book’s title. “Most of us think of someone as a hero who risks his or her life when there is some immediate danger — a soldier rescuing a fellow on the battlefield.

“But the other type of hero is one who simply perseveres, who overcomes overwhelming odds, even if it might take an entire lifetime.”

A Planner Plumbs for a Niche

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:09:27 +0000

By AMY PALANJIAN

Gigi Lee Chang was on a trip to California in 2004 when she had a realization that would quickly alter her career path.

Her young son wouldn’t eat jarred baby food and it was nearly impossible for her to make him meals from scratch during especially busy times or while traveling to visit her family. Ms. Lee Chang, who was then a vice president of strategic planning for Euro RSCG and on the fast track, quickly learned that many of her friends with babies were having a similar problem. Her years of experience in market research and planning for other companies kicked in and she decided to start a business to fill what she saw as a gap in the baby-food market: There was no convenient frozen organic baby food available to busy parents in the U.S.

Finance Background

It was a different animal than her previous work. But, Ms. Lee Chang grew up in an entrepreneurial household in Orange County, Calif., so her launching Plum Organics didn’t surprise her family. Her father ran an import-export business with manufacturing facilities in Hong Kong, and from an early age Ms. Lee Chang was involved in the family business. “I started checking my parents’ business letters for grammatical errors when I was about 10 years old,” she says.

After earning an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Southern California, Ms. Lee Chang joined her family’s company as a liaison between the Hong Kong and China offices and clients in the U.S. Later, she attended graduate school at the London School of Business and went on to work for Oracle Corp.’s consulting group in the U.K. and at two boutique consulting firms: Tessera, where she was exposed to branding and marketing, and Euro RSCG, where she was working when the idea for what would become Plum Organics hit her.

Ms. Lee Chang’s initial research into the organic frozen baby-food market showed that the category was already established in the U.K., Australia and Canada, but not in the U.S. With the financial security and stability of her husband’s full-time job, Ms. Lee Chang, now 41, left Euro RSCG in 2005 to make her foray into the frozen baby-food business. “From past work experience, I knew I could make Plum Organics a success because I had a good comprehension of most facets of a business,” she explains.

Doing Research

Still, Ms. Lee Chang didn’t have any experience in the food industry, the natural or organic sector, or even in starting a business. She began with research, including a class at New York’s New School called “How to Start a Specialty Food Business.” She also scoped out other products targeting her intended audience, including Healthy Handfuls, an organic kids’ snack-food line that specializes in cookies and crackers. “I realized that they were a noncompetitive business with similar positioning, so I called them for advice,” she says.

Ms. Lee Chang was referred to a consultant who specializes in organic and natural-food start-ups, and a few months later, she teamed up with a research and development firm that helped her with recipe testing and branding. She also worked with a team who helped her turn the sentiments and attitudes that she wanted her products to stand for into the design of her packaging. All told, launching the company cost nearly $1 million, financed mostly through her personal savings.

Trade-Show Launch

Within a few months, Ms. Lee Chang launched Plum Organics at Natural Products Expo West, a large trade show for the natural and organic food industry. By the time she left, Whole Foods and Wild Oats stores in almost every U.S. region had committed to carry her products.

“Plum Organics was one of the first frozen baby-food lines, but what really caught my eye was the packaging,” says Perry Abbenate, global grocery coordinator of Whole Foods Market, who also liked the organic nature and simplicity of the foods.

Ms. Lee Chang’s company is positioned at the center of a booming organic baby-food market, which grew by nearly 22% in 2007, according to market-research company Mintel. But she isn’t stopping there. “I built the business to be able to extend into other product categories, like we’re doing with our new toddler-friendly kids’ line,” Ms. Lee Chang says.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B15

India ex-telecoms minister bailed

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:08:05 +0000

A court in India has granted bail to former Telecoms Minister Andimuthu Raja after 15 months in jail.

Mr Raja is accused of mis-selling telecoms licences, which auditors say cost the country about $40bn (Â£24.5bn).

Prosecutors say he changed licences' eligibility criteria to favour certain firms in exchange for bribes in 2008. Mr Raja has denied all the charges.

The telecoms scandal is India's biggest corruption scandal and has badly damaged the government's reputation.

Mr Raja, who was arrested on 2 February last year, is among 14 people charged in connection with the scandal, often referred to as the 2G spectrum case.

Top executives from several telecoms firms are among those charged. They all deny wrongdoing.

The 49-year-old former minister walked out of Delhi's high security Tihar jail to be met by cheering members of his DMK party, who set off crackers to celebrate his release.

Mr Raja was present in court on Tuesday morning when the court granted him bail.

"The bail application is allowed," Press trust of India [PTI] quoted judge OP Saini as saying.

Mr Raja, who is an MP from the regional DMK party, was ordered to deposit 2m rupees ($37,200; Â£23,116) for his bail.

The court also barred him from visiting his home state of Tamil Nadu or the office of the telecoms department.

He was ordered "not try to influence any witnesses while on bail".

This is the first time Mr Raja had applied for bail.

He had sought bail on the "ground of parity" as the 13 other people accused with him have already been released on bail either by the Supreme Court, the Delhi High Court or the trial court.

The court said that since all his co-accused had already been granted bail, Mr Raja's detention would not serve any purpose.

India has the world's fastest growing mobile market, with more than 900 million subscribers.

In February, the Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecommunications licences awarded to companies in 2008 during Mr Raja's tenure.

The court ruling is a source of further embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which has been hit by several high-profile corruption cases in recent months.

Iran sentences 13 "Israeli agents"

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:08:05 +0000

Published May 13th, 2012 – 16:48 GMT

An Iranian court on Sunday sentenced 13 people after finding them guilty of involvement in espionage activities for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolution Court ruled that they had been lured into spying for the Mossad by overseas-based satellite television networks and sophisticated advertisement campaigns.

The defendants reportedly accepted large sums of money from Mossad and CIA agents.

According to Press TV, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced on April 17 that it had arrested over a dozen Israeli-linked spies and terrorists. The ministry said the detainees were of Iranian and non-Iranian nationalities.

At the time, the ministry said that one of the missions of these “terrorists” was to identify and assassinate one of the country’s experts.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry has recently announced uncovering an Israeli spy base in a neighboring country, which was run by Mossad.

Jay-Z embraces Philly

ChuckKnowl — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:08:05 +0000

Jay-Z is in a Philadelphia State of Mind: The rapper announced a two-day music festival on Monday in the City of Brotherly Love.

The "Budweiser Made in America" festival will feature nearly 30 acts "that embody the American spirit" across three stages on September 1 and 2, which is Labour Day weekend in the US.

"It’s such an iconic place, so it felt like a natural fit," Jay-Z said of Philadelphia in an interview after the news conference. "You’ll get to come out and have two great days, listen to some amazing music [and] discover some new bands."

Jay-Z was joined by Mayor Michael Nutter atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous by the movie Rocky. A feverish crowd of fans was on hand, chanting his name. When one yelled out that Jay-Z was the best, the rapper paused and said: "I agree."

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