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Pak SC denies making ISLAMABAD, Oct 2: Pakistan Supreme Court has denied reports of making observations that laws brought in by the Musharraf Government .....more ‘General
skills WASHINGTON, Oct 2: General knowledge is even more important than specialized knowledge in determining the progress of human cultures, .....more India’s
kidney sellers are CHICAGO, Oct 2: India’s desperately poor who are most tempted to illegally sell a kidney for cash end up worse off both financially and medically, a study said. ....more |
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Lanka conference puts COLOMBO, Oct 2: Sri Lanka may be on the road to peace, but the scars of war are still imprinted on the hundreds of children kicking up dust as they .......more Chandrika
asks LTTE to COLOMBO, Oct 2: Welcoming the dialogue process between the Government and the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lankan President Chandrika .......more All over for TV pop LONDON, Oct 2: "American idol" Kelly Clarkson tops the US pop charts, British "pop idol" duo will young and Gareth Gates bestride the British hit parade — yet the days of manufactured TV pop stars could be numbered...........more |
Pak SC denies making observations on legality of Govt’s laws ISLAMABAD, Oct 2: Pakistan Supreme Court has denied reports of making observations that laws brought in by the Musharraf Government were not valid without the approval of the Parliament to be elected after forthcoming polls, terming it as "misreporting". "It is clarified that this is misreporting and no such observation was made by the Supreme Court of Pakistan during hearing of the aforesaid election petition," the registrar of Supreme Court said in a statement late last night. Media here yesterday said a full bench of the apex court, while hearing an election petition on Monday, observed that laws promulgated under Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) brought in by President Pervez Musharraf to replace the constitution after the 1999 military coup had no legal status without validation by Parliament. Pakistan bar council which was agitating against the recent constitutional amendments brought in by Musharraf, had also welcomed the court’s observations. Despite the denial by the court, the papers here came out with lengthy editorials today on the reported observations as the comments had significant bearing on the Oct 10 elections. "The bench of the Supreme Court has apparently set a legal booby-trap to General Pervez Musharraf’s three-year rule by holding that the PCO under which he had ruled the country since 1999 would not be legally binding unless the next duly elected Parliament validated it," the Daily Times said in its editorial. "The PCO is the `shadow’ constitution under which General Musharraf has been making and breaking laws. His legal framework order issued in 2002 bars any court from calling in question any orders issued by him," it said. Stressing the sovereignty of the Parliament, another daily ‘Dawn’ said in its editorial that the search for a "new formula of governance" by the military regime has led to "one extra-constitutional step being followed by another". "If the regime had not set itself on a collision course with the country’s leading political parties and shut off all possibility of conciliation, a compromise might have been reached on some of the steps on which the military had its mind set. In that event, room for bargaining, in the interest of a return to civilian rule, might have been possible. "Instead, the Government chose to work in isolation and went through the motions of consulting political leaders only after it had already made up its mind on the fundamentals," the paper said. "The course it followed has, as is now becoming increasingly evident, created serious problems for everyone, even for those politicians who are believed to enjoy official patronage. Getting out of the bind is still possible if the Government accepts the right of unfettered sovereignty of Parliament and seeks the cooperation of political parties on that basis. "Otherwise, there will be only more bad blood after the elections, with consequences that will weaken, not strengthen, democracy in the country," the paper said. (PTI) |
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‘General skills most important’ WASHINGTON, Oct 2: General knowledge is even more important than specialized knowledge in determining the progress of human cultures, according to an economist. Specific knowledge has very short shelf life. General knowledge tends to be what drives overall growth and productivity and earnings, Anthony Carnevale, vice president for Education and Careers at the Educational Testing Service, which produces such instruments as the sat and the graduate record examinations said on Monday. Carnevale’s words challenge the conventional wisdom in two ways. They run counter to what some parents teach their children about the practical necessities of earning a living, and they refine what Anthropologists have believed about cultural evolution. Increasingly, parents have been steering their children away from the arts and humanities in the belief that employers want specialized skills. And one index anthropologists have used to measure cultural evolution is the number and complexity of occupational specialties. But carnevale told the forum that, in general, employers don’t hire specific curriculums. Rather, they’re trying to get their hands on the ability to use knowledge. He said that the progress of human cultures depends largely on a curious relationship between the increasing specialization of knowledge — which always serves to produce wealth in the short term — and an underlying increase over time in general knowledge, which, he said, is much more important. The findings are robust, he said. The given assets of any nation at any point in time in terms of the specialized knowledge of its population may explain as much as 20 to 25 percent growth. But fully 60 percent is explained by the general application of specific knowledge. Specific knowledge provides a fairly flat landscape of fact, the ETS vice president said. What really moves societies in economic terms is the ability to organize those facts with purpose — the kinds of purpose that comes from values, from a need for broader understanding, in the capitalist west from greed, from a variety of sources and subjective perspectives that we might more commonly associate with the humanities and more aesthetic studies. So you can find rather easily in the economic literature very powerful proof of the value of general knowledge of the sort that is intended in liberal education, although it’s difficult to make specific connections between that knowledge and earnings and productivity over five- or, even, 10-year cycles. Carnevale said tests show that as societies become more complex, the average intelligence — or what we would call general ability —of populations increases by about 3 points per year. We are getting smarter in a more general way even as we become more specialized. The bad news is that what your children tell you is true: they are a little smarter than you are. But, Carnevale was asked, didn’t the cohort that took the first sat in 1941 have a higher level of general knowledge than a like number of students taking the test today? his answer drew an implicit distinction between individuals and populations. The first takers of the sat were drawn from America’s Social Elite. But as we have moved from educating elites to mass education, the store of general information in the US population has increased dramatically. The electronic revolution also must be taken into consideration. The stimulus-rich environment in which our children live has changed them in ways we don’t yet fully understand, carnevale said. The economist traced the path of the earnings premium of those Americans who have at least some college education. During the depression and through most of the 1950s, when relatively few people had post-secondary education, the premium was high. But between 1959 and 1974, the premium declined by half. During that period, the number of people entering the workforce with at least some college — most of them baby boomers — increased by about 60 percent. The economy worked the way it’s supposed to, Ccarnevale said. That which was increasingly supplied was reduced in value. ... What is remarkable is that since 1974, we’ve increased the supply of people with at least some college by 60 percent, and over the same period we’ve increased the wage premium for those people by 70 percent. And so even though we’ve increased the supply of college-educated adults in America dramatically ... The wage premium continued to rise rapidly. Between 1974 and 1999, even when the supply of college educated people was increasing, employers were still bidding up the price of their labor — which is to say, we’re not producing enough general skill in the overall economy. That is the final evidence that what employers are after is not just degrees, but they’re trying to get their hands on the ability to use knowledge, because they don’t hire specific curriculums, generally speaking. Carnevale said this trend will grow in importance because over the next 20 to 25 years, 49 million Americans with some college-level skills will retire. About 46 million people with at least some college education will be produced during that period. The deficit is greater than 3 million because the bureau of labor statistics anticipates the demand for college-level workers to grow by 22 percent. Importing college-educated immigrants to fill that gap carries political risk, carnevale said. The only solution to this is some skill-based strategy that moves us more toward a system of mass higher education than the one we have now. The Gi bill of 1944, which facilitated the education of non-elites at US colleges and universities, produced what some believe was —person for person — the most brilliant cohort of graduates in American history. The United States educates a substantially higher percentage of its population beyond the secondary school level than the European norm. Carnevale was one of seven panelists at an association of American colleges and universities forum that presented a 60-page report titled greater expectations: a new vision for learning as a Nation goes to college. Among many other things, the report notes that 53 percent of college students need remedial instruction and points to a disturbing misalignment between high school exit requirements and college entry expectations. (UPI) |
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India’s kidney sellers are poorer for it -US study CHICAGO, Oct 2: India’s desperately poor who are most tempted to illegally sell a kidney for cash end up worse off both financially and medically, a study said. The survey conducted by US researchers in Chennai, a city in Southern India, easily located 305 people who had sold one of their kidneys for fees that averaged about 1,000 dollars. "We found widespread evidence of the sale of kidneys by poor people in India despite a legal ban on such sales," study author Madhav Goyal, of geisinger health system in State college, Pennsylvania, wrote in the journal of the American Medical Association. "Selling a kidney did not lead to long-term economic benefit for the seller and was associated with a decline in health status," he concluded. The finding could sharpen the debate over how best to find donors for the growing number of patients awaiting transplants. But legalizing the sale of human body parts creates nightmare scenarios of body snatching on behalf of the rich, medical ethicists say. "The whole idea of using incentives to obtain organs ... Appeals only to the desperately poor, who don’t wind up making money. It is not money that will make a liver or kidney available, it’s altruism," said University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan when asked to comment on the study. The kidney sellers in the study received fees ranging from 450 dollars to nearly 6,300, which they said they used to pay debts. But six years after the surgeries, called a nephrectomy, the sellers’ family incomes fell by an average of one-third and many remained in debt. Eighty-six per cent of the sellers reported that their health deteriorated and 79 per cent said they would not recommend selling a kidney, which has become common in India over the past decade. "By demonstrating that the sale of organs does not serve as an escape route from poverty, indeed, that its aftereffects may even make escape more difficult, Goyal (and his colleagues) explode the proposition that sale is a win-win situation that benefits buyer and seller," said an editorial in the same journal written by David Rothman of the college of physicians and surgeons of Columbia University in New York. In the United States alone, there are more than 50,000 people waiting for a healthy kidney, with 15,000 transplants performed annually. A total of 6,200 US patients died last year awaiting a healthy organ, while officials estimate that less than half of potential donors actually have their organs harvested. India has an even greater kidney shortage, where 4,000 kidney transplants are performed yearly. In June the American Medical Association proposed studying the impact on organ availability if families of potential organ donors were compensated with a few hundred dollars or enough, say, to pay funeral expenses. A pilot program allowing a token compensation would require congressional approval. But some ethicists argued that any payment for human organs could hurt donations, which are essentially acts of charity. Of the Indian kidney sellers surveyed, just 5 per cent said they were motivated by a desire to help someone else. "I think it is incumbent upon medicine not to allow that kind of, quote, ‘false liberty’ — the liberty to sell an organ — ever to become standard practice," Rothman said. But Rothman acknowledged the impetus behind the debate. "If you face a life-and-death situation, you’re going to cast ethics to the wind and find yourself absolutely ready to buy someone’s body part," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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Lanka conference puts children on peace agenda COLOMBO, Oct 2: Sri Lanka may be on the road to peace, but the scars of war are still imprinted on the hundreds of children kicking up dust as they play in the courtyard of one of Colombo’s many orphanages. Mala Damayanthi was five years old when she came to this orphanage after she lost her entire family and was nearly killed when the island’s conflict began almost 20 years ago. Now 25, she is one of hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan children directly affected by the 19-year ethnic conflict that pitted separatist Tamil guerrillas in the North and East against the Sinhalese-majority South. The Government and Tamil Tiger rebels have been observing a Norwegian-brokered truce since last February and met for an initial round of talks earlier this month. But aid workers at a conference on war-affected children that opened in Colombo on Tuesday said children must be included in the peace process and stressed the effects of war would not disappear just because the guns fall silent. "Children need to be involved in a peace process in a number of ways,’’ Ted Chaiban, resident representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told media. " First, they should be consulted and participate. They frequently think of issues and focus on priorities that are different from adults,’’ he said at the conference. For Mala, whose family was killed by a Tamil faction in the Northern Trincomalee district when riots swept the country in 1983, the war meant a break with her Tamil heritage. " As I grew up in the orphanage I came to hate the war. I also hated the Tamil community for what they did to me,’’ she said, fingering the puckered scar on her arm. Mala was the first girl sent to the orphanage run by a Buddhist priest, Hunupolagama Vagirasri, where she is now a teacher. After Vagirasri heard of children being orphaned by the riots, he travelled to the eastern city of Batticaloa with the intention of bringing back 25 children. He returned to Colombo with 100, both Tamil and Sinhalese, and since then estimates about 1,300 children have graduated from his care. The issues faced by Vagirasri and the children he looks after are among those being addressed at the three-day conference organised by the aid group save the children. "Children miss out on the opportunity of being a child. They are separated from their families and communities, and there is an increased chance they will be subject to violence, recruitment and exploitation,’’ UNICEF’s Chaiban said. For the children at Vagirasri’s orphanage, the peace bid is too late to bring their families back, but it may bring hope of a brighter future. " What had to happen to me has happened,’’ said Mala." There is no point in hating them (Tamils). If there is peace it will help my future.’’(UNI) |
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Chandrika asks LTTE to dismantle its weapons COLOMBO, Oct 2: Welcoming the dialogue process between the Government and the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has, however, demanded that "LTTE decommission its weapons’’ before an interim administration is established in the North-East. "The President wants the next rounds of talks between the Government and the LTTE to go beyond the issues of rehabilitation and de-mining, and to focus on decommissioning of LTTE weapons, if they want to play a role in the interim administration in the North-East," Presidential spokesman Harim Peiris said here today at a media briefing. "If the LTTE is committed to peace and the democratic process, they do not need any weapons in their hands. It is untenable and unacceptable to any democratic society. The immediate problem is to stop rearming them,’’ Mr Peiris said. He that the Government should address the fundamental issues as soon as possible in addition to the human rights issues in the North-East such as extortion, underage recruitment and abduction. The Presidential spokesman also said the United National Front (UNF) Government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was considering President Kumaratunga’s request to include one of her nominees during the next rounds of deliberations with the rebels in Thailand. The growing animus between the President and UNF Government is visible from the bitter political confrontations and the barrage of allegations and counter allegations. A picqued Government has already placed in Parliament the 19th amendment to the constitution to initiate "executive power cuts’’. Commenting on the Governance of cohabitation, Mr Peiris said that the President did not have any problem with it but he said the Government was trying to project cohabitation as a crisis. "As far as the President is concerned there is no crisis in cohabitation. The President, exercising her executive powers vested in her according to the constitution, cannot be considered a crisis, as intrepreted by some Government Ministers. It is merely a self-induced paranoia. At the moment the only cohabitation crisis is the 19th amendment,’’ he stated. Describing the 19th amendment as a "naked attempt to grab power,’’ the Presidential spokesman said it was not conducive for the concept of cohabitation. "If the Government is ready to share powers with the LTTE, why cannot it do the same with the President, who has executive powers ?’’ he demanded to know. (UNI) b |
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All over for TV pop stars as Hear’say quit? LONDON, Oct 2: "American idol" Kelly Clarkson tops the US pop charts, British "pop idol" duo will young and Gareth Gates bestride the British hit parade — yet the days of manufactured TV pop stars could be numbered. British band Hear’say, which made UK pop history by topping the single and album charts simultaneously, was consigned to the dustbin of music history this week, spurned and abused by the adoring public that gave them their moment of fame. Less than two years ago, Hear’say — Myleene Klass, Noel Sullivan, Kym Marsh, Danny Foster and Suzanne Shaw — became instant celebrities after being picked from more than 3,000 hopefuls who auditioned for the hugely popular "popstars" TV programme in Britain. Derided by music icons such as Gorge Mchael and U2’s Bono who said people are sick of processed pop, Hear’say initially destroyed the competition. Their first single "pure and simple" became the fastest selling debut single ever in Britain, and their debut album also stormed to number one, the first time such a double had been achieved by a UK band. But then marsh announced she was quitting amid rumours of in-fighting and the band then found themselves at the centre of a stitch-up row, accused of selecting one of their own dancers, Johnny Shentall, as a replacement despite holding public auditions attended by thousands more wannabe stars. Meanwhile as the public forgot about the show and got hooked on its successor "pop idol" — a format successfully syndicated round the world — the band’s popularity faded until on Monday their record company Polydor confirmed they had decided to call it a day, accepting they had just been a passing trend. "It’s a fad thing, a novelty — it’s like a pair of trainers, one minute they’re in and the next minute they’re out," Shaw told The Sun newspaper. Foster said they were fed up with the taunts and abuse. "Myleene was being called a bitch every day by people in the street — it all got too much," he told the paper. "We were travelling three hours to a roadshow only to get booed. We knew it was time to call it a day." The demise of Hear’say follows that of Bardot, the Australian girl band which was the first to be created in front of TV viewers’ eyes. It may not spell the end for manufactured bands, which have been making a mint for the record industry since the days of the monkees, but music writers say it could be the beginning of the end for a format which is becoming staid and tired-looking. "It’s over as a phenomenon, it’s no longer exciting," Andre Paine, of respected British music magazine nme told media. "Popstars and Hear’say took the magic away. The public may have given them a fair run but there’s no star quality or mystique. No one really believed it in properly." TV bosses still beg to differ. Britain’s ITVI is currently showing "popstars: the rivals" — the sequel to the programme that created Hear’say — with the aim of producing rival boy and girl bands, while on Friday the BBC launches its search for a pop sensation when 12 hopefuls begin life in reality show "Fame Academy". "They (the record companies and TV channels) will keep flogging it as long as they’re getting ratings," Paine said. "But it’s going to become an embarrassment quite quickly unless they come up with something new." (AGENCIES) |
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Meet to celebrate mountain women inaugurated PARO, BHUTAN, Oct 2: Delegates from more than 35 countries have gathered here to celebrate the spirit and diversity of women from mountainous regions across the globe. Celebrating Mountain Women (CWW), the first-of-its-kind international gathering of indigenous women, doner agencies, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and researechers got off to a colourful start yesterday. Inaugurating the meet, Bhutanese Prime Minister Lyonpo Kinzang stressed the importance of mountains which, he said, were not only home to one-tenth of the world’s population but also sources of diversity, minerals and forests. The United Nations had declared 2002 as the International Year of Mountains (IYM) to promote sustainable development of the mountain ecosystems and CMW was one of the events to mark this unique opportunity, he said. It was apt that the four-day event, aimed at drawing world’s attention to the realities of life in the mountains and providing a platform for women to articulate their concerns, was being held in Bhutan as it was a Himalayan kingdom, he added. The Prime Minister said his Government’s policies were geared towards conservation and sustainable development and achieving the ultimate goal of "gross national happiness". He said life in the mountains was hard, especially for women. "however, women were not helpless. There have been many cases where women have transformed communities by their vision and social consciousness." The involvement of women was integral to the success of policies related to the sustainable development of mountain regions, he added. Emphasising the important role played by women, Mr Dorji said they were often guardians of agricultural biodiversity and knew more than men about plant varieties as well as options for food preparations. He said the CMW needed to address the issue of preservation of this knowledge, which could be passed on and shared by other mountain communities. The CMW, organised by the International Centre for the Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a development organisation based in Nepal, and the mountain forum, will take up five broad theme areas for discussion — natural resources and environment health and well-being entrepreneurship legal, political and human rights and culture, indigenous knowledge and gender. The CMW will conclude with the adoption of the Thimphu declaration on Friday and the issues and concerns highlighted here will be taken up at the Bishkek global mountain summit in Kyrgystan later this month. Delivering the keynote address, Irene Santiago, international development expert and an eminent women’s activist, said obstacles to women’s development, identified at the 1995 fourth world conference on women in Beijing, remained even seven years later. In fact, some of those forces had "further intensified and widened". She, however, expresed hope that the CMW would create strategies to make mountain women visible and "bring them out of the shadows into the sunlight of power". Drawing on her extensive experience and involvement in various international conferences on women, Mrs Santiago urged the delegates to create public consciousness, express their demands and move ahead to create spaces in political fora. Earlier, addressing the delegates, director of ICIMOD Gabriel Campbell observed that it was the first time that mountain women were coming together to chart a future course of action to make their lives better. "Even as the world’s attention is focused on mountains this year, women who are the backbone of mountain livelihoods "are rarely heard, rarely govern or are rarely seen for what they are. Too often they are not allowed to grow, learn or energise their search for a better future," he added. Regional Director of United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Chandni Joshi said the CMW provided a platform for mountain women to voice their concerns, which had so far been absent from the development discourse. "Women know what they need - they need spaces and opportunities for equal participation like the one provided here," she said. Women all over, she said, faced barriers in their advancement but mountain women faced additional challenges such as rough terrain, climate, limited access and migration of men. Others who spoke on the occasion included representatives of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Swiss Development Corporation, Austrian Coordination Bureau and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), which is the UN’s lead agency for the international year of the mountains. (UNI) |
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