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Tuna (right) may be a mainstay of Japanese cuisine, but the country’s fishing fleets have agreed to suspend tuna fishing due to sharply declining stocks. It was one of many recent news stories of oceanic declines caused by overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and climate change.Photo: Tsukiji Fish Market/tph567
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A bill working its way through the state legislature would make California the first state to mandate paid sick leave for employees. In Ohio, citizens will take the matter into their own hands with a vote on the Healthy Families Act, a public referendum on the November ballot that would require businesses with 25 or more employees to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave for employees. California’s AB 2716 would affect more than 5.4 million workers who don’t receive sick leave from their job, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and was inspired by an ordinance passed by the city’s board of supervisors that took effect in February 2007. If passed, the bill would provide one day of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, the Sacramento Bee reported, and the state’s department of industrial relations would enforce it at a cost of about $600,000 per year. Small businesses do get a small break — firms with fewer than 10 employees would only have to grant employees five day of paid sick leave per year, while businesses with more employees are required to provide as many as nine days.
Inexpensive mobile technology is opening doors in the developing world for communities that have previously been shut out of the information revolution due to the high cost of desktop computers. Mobile devices are increasingly used to provide financial information and business services to low-income communities, as well as to report human rights abuses or drive political campaigns in emerging democracies. Writing for India’s Business Standard, Guruduth Banavar said cell phone use in India has exploded past 200 million subscribers, with 7.5 million new users added monthly, while cell phone users in Africa are expected to number 600 million by 2011. The numbers have already surpassed traditional land-line telephones, Banavar said, and sales of mobile phones in India have rocketed past personal computer sales. Mohammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate for his work developing microlending programs for the developing world, is developing a new program in India to offer mobile payment and banking services via cell phone.
In the biggest demonstration in almost twenty years, tens of thousands of Muslims gathered in Indian Kashmir’s main city in mid-August following the fatal shooting of 22 protesters by Indian police. According to Agence France-Presse, one of the dead was a senior Kashmiri separatist, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, whom one demonstrator was quick to lionize. “He is our hero — he has laid a fresh foundation for our freedom struggle with his martyrdom,” demonstrator Ayub Laway said. The unrest began in June when a piece of land was given to a Hindu trust. When Muslims — the majority population in the Kashmir valley — protested, the government rescinded the land offer.
Following years of turbulence and the end of its traditional monarchy, the newly minted Republic of Nepal swore its first prime minister into office on August 18 in Kathmandu. The Times of India reports that former Maoist rebel Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known popularly as Prachanda, took his oath of office “in the name of the people” rather than “in the name of God” — a break from tradition that acknowledges his communist leanings. In his mid-fifties, Prachanda was once a guerilla fighter that led the Maoists’ decade-long insurgency to abolish the monarchy. His Communist Party of Nepal won a majority in the nation’s Constituent Assembly in April, and his swearing-in ceremony brought dignitaries from the United Kingdom and the United States. Both countries formerly supported Nepal’s monarchy in the fight against Prachanda’s Maoists.
Australia is breaking new ground with plans to build its first retirement village for gays in Ballan, Victoria. The Moorabool Leader, a newspaper in nearby Melbourne, says the multimillion-dollar facility will feature 120 units, with construction beginning spring 2009. The village, Linton Estate, is the first of its kind in Australia. Developer Peter Dickson said Linton will be marketed “to the gay community but it will be a facility that is tolerant of all people, if they are tolerant of others.” It will feature typical retirement home facilities, including a pool, tennis courts, open-air theater, and spa.
The FBI has apologized for monitoring the telephone records of Washington Post and New York Times journalists in 2004 — but exactly why the phones records were monitored, and nature of the “exigent” letters used to gain that information — remain unanswered. Reporters Without Borders said in an Aug. 13 statement they want an explanation why the FBI deemed it necessary to catalog incoming and outgoing calls at the newspapers’ Indonesian bureaus. At the time, the reporters in question were working in southeast Asia on stories about Islamic terrorism. In 2007, the Justice Department’s Inspector General unearthed thousands of cases in which the FBI improperly issued national security letters — a type of administrative subpoena that bypasses the court system, and which imposes a gag order preventing recipients from disclosing the letter’s existence — to gain access to phone records in terrorism investigations.
The military junta that rules Burma has changed its currency conversion rules, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid intended for victims of Cyclone Nargis, according to reports. Between May and July, the junta sharply devalued the foreign exchange credits, or FECs, used by international agencies working in the country. As a result of the devaluation, financial aid from the United Nations and other organizations loses roughly 20 percent of its value before finally being delivered to the Burmese street, a situation that one U.N. official described as “odd.” FECs were established under decades-old regulations intended to keep overseas currency out of the black market, and are the only acceptable currency for local purchases by international organizations, reports the Bangkok Post. Speaking anonymously to Mizzima, a source in the “military establishment” said that the while the one U.S. dollar trades for 1180 Myanmar kyat on the street, the junta has valued FECs at just 880 kyat, bringing in a profit of 200 to 300 kyat for every dollar traded.
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“There are insufficient safeguards on the agency’s use of national security letters and other intrusive surveillance tools.” — ACLU spokesman Jameel Jaffer on an FBI apology for monitoring journalists’ phone records (see “Top Stories,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Myanmar Junta’s ‘Odd’ Rules Sap Cyclone Aid: Reports
FBI apology spurs further questions
Australia breaks ground on gay retirement home
*The Roof of the World*
World’s youngest republic swears in Maoist Prime Minister
Hindu and Muslim conflict rocks Kashmir
*Economy & Labor*
Will mobile phones vault the digital divide? Businesses decry paid sick leave push in California, Ohio
TOP STORIES
* Myanmar Junta’s ‘Odd’ Rules Sap Cyclone Aid: Reports
The military junta that rules Burma has changed its currency conversion rules, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid intended for victims of Cyclone Nargis, according to reports.