Category: Fall 2009 Newswire
Terra Cotta Warriors Watch over National Geographic
TERRA
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
11.18.2009
WASHINGTON—The greatest number of the famous Chinese terra cotta warriors ever to travel to the United States will be on display beginning Thursday at the National Geographic Museum in Washington.
Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor, includes 15 life-size terra cotta figures and 100 sets of objects from the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi.
In the media preview of the exhibition, Terry Garcia, National Geographic’s executive vice president for mission programs, said that 96,000 tickets had been sold and that he hopes to reach 100,000 by this weekend.
Garcia said this has been an important week for China-U.S. relations, highlighted by President Obama’s visit to China.
Feng Xie, the deputy chief of mission of the Chinese Embassy, who was at the preview, called Obama’s visit a “great success” and indicated that China-U.S. relations have reached a new historic starting point.
“Obama’s visit to China is historic, and so is the Terra Cotta Warriors” exhibition he said.
The terra cotta warriors have been described as the “eighth wonder of the world.” Discovered after being buried for more than 2,000 years, the warriors are said to reveal secrets of the Qin dynasty.
The exhibition began its U.S. tour in California last year and then visited Atlanta and Houston. Washington, where the warriors will on display through March 31, is the final stop.
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Women More Vulnerable to Global Warming, UN Report Says
UNFPA
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
11.18.2009
WASHINGTON- Women are likelier to be affected by and to suffer from climate change than men are, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released Wednesday.
Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, said bringing women’s issues into the climate change debate is essential since women are already the greatest victims of AIDS, violence and refugee problems. “Climate change is making these problems worse and worse,” Wirth said at a press conference at the National Press Club.
Wirth noted that as the temperature of the Earth’s surface increases, food production will decline across the world, which will add enormously to the pressure on women who are responsible for sustaining their families.
The report supports the idea that family planning, reproductive health care and gender relations, particularly in developing countries, have the potential to influence the future of climate change.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., emphasizing the unequal burdens climate change places on women, said women are likelier than men to die from conditions related to climate change.
Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, a globally focused environmental research organization based in Washington, said integrating gender considerations into the climate change framework is a new but crucial concept.
He said women who are in charge of their own lives have the power to change global warming by contributing to slower population growth, and their own efforts are “practical, necessary and hopeful.”
Rapid population growth and industrialization affect the levels of gas emissions, he said, and the world is running out of time to reverse this trend. This is a long-term problem, which is not only a governmental commitment but also a “fundamental human issue,” Engleman said.
Jose Miguel Guzman, chief of the population and development branch of the fund, said the way people organize their lives and achieve sustainable life styles is relevant to climate change.
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Collins, Lieberman Plan Congressional Investigation into Forth Hood Shooting
INVESTIGATION
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Nov. 18, 2009
WASHINGTON—The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold hearings beginning Thursday as part of an investigation into whether what some have called a “homegrown terrorist attack” at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas this month could have been prevented.
Thirteen are dead and dozens were injured when Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, allegedly opened fire on Nov.5.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., held a joint press conference Wednesday to preview the hearings. Lieberman, the committee’s chairman, and Collins, its top Republican, focused on whether the guidelines for sharing information among government agencies should be changed to prevent future attacks.
Lieberman said that after the investigation is finished, the committee will provide a report and recommendations based on its findings.
Collins said that congressional investigation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon revealed that if information had been coordinated among agencies, the country could have been more prepared for the attack or even prevented it.
“Vital information was scattered throughout the government, confined by agency silos, that might have prevented the death and destruction of that terrible day, if only the dots had been connected,” she said. “Once again, in the wake of mass murder, we must confront a troubling question. Was this, once again, a failure to connect the dots?”
“It’s a fair question to ask what those [agencies] know,” she said.
Thursday’s hearing will “examine the threat of homegrown Islamic extremism and its history of targeting the military,” Lieberman said. Witnesses will include former Army and Department of Homeland Security personnel, as well as representatives of the New York City Police Department and two think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and RAND.
Since 2006, the committee has held 11 hearings on “violent Islamist extremism” and “homegrown terrorist threats.”
Lieberman said that the shooting at Fort Hood “was a terrorist attack, the most destructive terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.”
“I support those investigations and look forward to their outcome and have no intention of interfering with them in any way, shape or form. But that does not mean that the rest of us, including the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, should just sit back and watch,” Lieberman said.
“We are not interested in political theater. We are interested in getting the facts and correcting the system so that our government can provide the best homeland security possible for the American people,” he said.”
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Green Jobs Training Grants for Connecticut Announced
GREEN JOBS
Norwalk Hour
Katerina Voutsina
Boston University Washington News Service
11/18/09
WASHINGTON – Federal grants of $130,000 to create “green” jobs in Connecticut, including $60,000 for The WorkPlace Inc., a private non-profit in Bridgeport, were announced Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4.
The grants also include $4 million, authorized by this year’s stimulus law, for the Northeast Consortium—which Connecticut is a part of—for state labor market information improvement. The Northeast Consortium also includes Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
“The grant will allow this region to create an infrastructure to allow businesses and workers – who will employ, train or work in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energy – to have access to reliable information to make career and employment choices,” Solis said during a conference call with Connecticut reporters.
WorkPlace Inc.’s goals are to help people prepare for careers and to strengthen the workforce for employers. Joseph M. Carbone, the group’s president and chief executive officer, said the Labor Department grant will allow the organization to coordinate construction job training and education to meet the needs of residents and employers in the 20 communities of the Valley-Bridgeport-Norwalk-Stamford region.
“This grant will enable us to build capacity in our region to offer opportunities in the green sector of the economy as a result of having the best trainers in the region that can respond as free markets develop opportunities in the green economy,” he added.
Carbone said the grant will pay for 20 students, 17- to 24 years-old, who are currently enrolled in the Youth Build project. It will also pay for the training of five local instructors by trainers from the Home Builders Institute.
This is an emerging and evolving sector of our economy, he said. “It is basically training people for where there are jobs.”
Himes, in the conference call with the Labor secretary, said, “This money comes at a really critical time. It is smart money, as much as it is also focused on developing the capacity in people to have the jobs of tomorrow. That is to say, green jobs.”
“It is important for Bridgeport because the unemployment rate is 12.1 percent,” Carbone said, adding that this is the official number and that “probably the real number is close to 18 percent. You are looking at a city that needs sort of an economic generator, like the green sector, to help us to transition people from being unemployed or underemployed into good, solid, high-wage jobs.”
Students in the training programs will learn and earn leadership in energy and environmental design, Solis said, expressing confidence that “successful completion of the program will qualify these graduates to enter apprenticeship programs in the Carpenters Union, Local 210, as a second-year apprentice.”
Jim Lohr, deputy director of that union’s labor-management program, which coordinates the Local 210 project for unemployed and underemployed 16- to 24-year-olds, said the unemployment rate in the area’s construction sector is now 20 to 25 percent.
“The timing couldn’t be better in terms of getting training in any job opportunities,” he said. “This is where we need the jobs.”
“Investments such as these in the workforce not only help to jump-start our economy but will lay the foundation for America’s long-term recovery,” Solis said. “The President and I strongly believe that green jobs will be a key driver behind America’s economic revitalization and sustain economic stability. At the Department of Labor, we are investing $500 million in projects that prepare workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy industry.”
Carbone thanked Himes for helping obtain the grant. “If we needed an advocate to help us to develop this green economy in Bridgeport, you couldn’t have found any better person than Congressman Himes,” he said. “He has been with us every step of the way.”
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More H1N1 Vaccine Expected in the Following Weeks
H1N1
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
11.17.2009
WASHINGTON—Leaders of a Senate committee expressed disappointment and frustration Tuesday over the slow pace of distribution of the H1N1 vaccine.
Speaking at a committee hearing Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said there have been “more flu deaths than previously realized and fewer vaccine does than originally promised.” He said this created public frustration and confusion among those with the highest risk.
He cited a report last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 22 million people have been made ill by the H1N1 virus, with 98,000 people needing hospitalization and about 4,000 people dying from the flu or from complications associated with the virus.
Lieberman noted that the estimated 120 million to 160 million doses promised to be available were not delivered. Instead, he said, there are now 42 million doses, equal to the number of highest-risk individuals.
“Things looked better two weeks ago, when 11 million more doses were delivered, with another 8 million doses projected to be available this week,” he said. “But by last Friday only about 5 million more were available.”
Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), the committee’s senior minority member, criticized the shortfall and expressed her frustration and anger.
“It is mid-November, and we know that supply production is still lagging behind those repeated assurances,” Collins said. She invited the administration to work more closely with state and local public health officials.
Nicole Lurie, the Health and Human Services assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said an increase in the amount of vaccine is expected in the weeks ahead.
She said increasing the investments in technology and manufacture capacity is vital to preparing for and responding to threats. She added that health care facilities need to be supported during the current pandemic.
Alex Garza, the assistant Homeland Security secretary for health affairs, said the department continues to monitor the pandemic at state, local and tribal levels.
Rear Adm. Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said a national campaign to encourage domestic and international travelers to take steps to prevent the spread of flu will be launched. She added that during the holidays, reducing the spread of the H1N1 virus among those who are traveling will be important.
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Wait for H1N1 Vaccine Continues to Frustrate Congress
VACCINE
New London Day
Jeanne Amy
Boston University Washington News Service
11/17/09
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers Tuesday pressed federal officials about the impediments to distributing H1N1 vaccine to those most at risk.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard from officials that vaccines are slowly catching up with the demand, but lawmakers said that there is still too much confusion surrounding who should be vaccinated.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the committee, called the hearing “on the backdrop of two crucial numbers going the wrong way – more flu deaths than previously realized and fewer vaccine doses than originally promised.”
Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, had told the committee on Oct. 21 that there would be enough vaccine by early November for every American who needed to be vaccinated.
Connecticut was set to receive more than 500,000 doses by mid-October and has only seen a fraction of the targeted amount, according to the office of Gov. M. Jodi Rell. The vaccine was prioritized to go to children ages 2 to 4 and to health care workers and caregivers who work with children younger than 6 months old. The second tier of priority included pregnant women and persons under 18 with high-risk medical conditions.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that nationwide 120 to 160 million doses could be supplied for the at-risk population. To date, 48.5 million doses are available for the states, according to center officials.
The delays were attributed to there being five companies supplying the vaccine, only one of which is in the United States, and to equipment failures. Employees of the Department of Health and Human Services are monitoring the situation, according to Dr. Nicole Lurie, the department’s assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
“What we heard pretty consistently was the need for flexibility for state and locals, let them decide whether to self-prioritize in a number of ways or go broader,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
While state and city officials were charged with distributing the vaccine from the beginning, Lieberman called for more federal involvement in directing the distribution of the vaccine.
“This is a national problem, and there was a focus on national alerts about this, so the fact that you gave the states some latitude didn’t really sink in nationally,” Lieberman said. “I think this is a case really where it would have been better to have a national answer.”
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Early Child Education Discussed in Washinton
CHILDHOOD
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
11.13.2009
WASHINGTON – Viewing early childhood education as an economic issue was the focus of a national conference in Washington this week. Partners in Early Childhood and Economic Development, a program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, convened experts to discuss and share ideas about the future of early childhood education in the country.
Participants said in order to make early care a priority across the nation proponents should come together more systematically at the federal and state levels to help policy makers understand the economic and education importance of early care.
Shannon Rudisill, associate director of the Child Care Bureau, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said they are trying to build a common perception about early child education by bringing a range of ideas together while they are working on the policies. She emphasized that cooperation is vital for quality improvement.
During the “Taking Early Care and Education Policy Forward” panel, participants said they appreciate the Obama administration’s concerns about early child education across the nation.
The economic recovery bill passed by Congress in February created new early care and education jobs and included more than $5 billion for early learning programs, including Head Start, Early Head Start, child care, and programs for children with special needs.
Barbara Gault, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the role of the state and federal governments should be defined and that there should be public and private funding for early child care.
John Williams, a consultant at Development Communications Associates, emphasized the importance of working at the community level for early child care. Williams expressed the need of working together with school districts. “Early care education support is critical,” he said.
Williams also said the policies should be targeted to be “inclusive” for all children, regardless of the family profile.
Danielle Ewen, of the Center for Law and Social Policy, made remarks about the need of a change in the financing aspect of the current system. She said there should be an economic model to make early child care a public good. Ewen said a “revenue based investment” should be constructed in the long term.
In the short term, she said public and private partnerships are important and better data should be constructed about outcome, impact and providers in early child care.
“First, we need to understand and translate it into economic terms,” she said, regarding the significance of political pressures for better results on the issue.
She then pointed out that a new tax policy and a revenue based system is crucial to invest in early childhood education.
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UNH Professor’s Love of the Ocean Brings Him on Course to Help White House
ROSENBERG
New Hampshire Union Leader
Joseph Markman
Boston University Washington News Service
11/12/09
WASHINGTON – University of New Hampshire professor Andrew Rosenberg’s trip to the Galapagos Islands to survey sea turtles when he was 17 may not have sparked his desire to work on the ocean, but it certainly helped cement it.
“His focus was always on the water and on marine stuff, ever since I met him,” said Peter Thomas, a friend of Rosenberg’s since high school and now an official with the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission.
“As his friend I probably didn't realize how intense he was academically,” Thomas said.
Rosenberg, a marine sciences professor and former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, is working as a temporary adviser to a White House task force on the use of the nation’s coastal waters and the Great Lakes. The Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, which President Obama created in June, is working to set rules for marine spatial planning, which many officials refer to as ocean zoning, to deal with disagreements among commercial, recreational and conservation interests competing for use of the nation’s waters.
Sailing with his father at an early age helped Rosenberg develop a strong connection to the sea.
“I always knew that I wanted to work on the ocean,” he said in an interview at a Washington hotel between meetings of the nonprofit environmental group Conservation International. “I liked science. I definitely didn’t want to be a lawyer like my father and my sister and my brother.”
Rosenberg, who is 54, was born in Boston and grew up in Newton, Mass., where his father, brother and sister live today. His mother, a speech therapist, died a few years ago.
As a teenager visiting his family’s home on Cape Cod, Rosenberg said he found himself fascinated with marine biology when he helped a neighbor analyze invertebrate samples and examine oil dispersion on a man-made lake.
That neighbor was Dr. Shields Warren, known for leading a team to Japan after World War II to study and aid atomic-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though the experiments were “small-scale stuff,” Rosenberg said, the time working with Shields was very influential.
Rosenberg graduated with a bachelor of science degree in fisheries biology in 1978 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and earned a master’s in oceanography in 1980 from Oregon State University and a doctorate in biology in 1984 from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
He will be working in Washington part-time, commuting back home to Gloucester, Mass., his wife, Marian, and his UNH graduate students for part of the week. He is also taking on the position of senior vice president for science and knowledge at Conservation International, where he will oversee 70 scientists in 40 countries.
Paul Sandifer, who served with Rosenberg on the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, said Rosenberg is a good negotiator.
“He tends to push for as much conservation in order to sustain a resource,” Sandifer said. “But he’s also very realistic about what we need to do to make sure people still get to use the resource.”
The commission’s findings are now being used to help the Ocean Policy Task Force, which Rosenberg will be advising, to set up a transparent, public process for deciding how the ocean can be used, depending on the environmental, economic and social effects of proposed projects. Rosenberg said that there are a number of federal agencies that deal with the ocean and that the task force will try to figure out how they can work together.
Lynn Rutter, a program coordinator at UNH’s Ocean Process and Analysis Laboratory, said that she started working in the field just as ecosystem-based environmental management first began to take off, and that it has thrived in large part because of Rosenberg’s efforts.
Rutter has worked with Rosenberg both as a student and a co-worker at the university, and said she is constantly amazed by his ability to connect with and drive students to succeed.
“He gets people to really work to their greatest potential with a lot of autonomy,” Rutter said. “It’s a very special skill to both be able to personally do well with people and have success with [analysis].”
“I don’t know how he manages to do everything he does,” said Lindsey Fong, a UNH graduate student who studied for a degree in natural resources under Rosenberg. “He is the reason for all my success in graduate school.”
Christine M. Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement, “His experience as a member of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, as well as his expertise on many relevant ocean-related issues, makes him a valuable addition.”
At the end of the year, when his advising duties come to an end, Rosenberg will take a leave of absence from the university and continue to work in Washington for Conservation International, where, he joked, he is “in charge of all knowledge” though not necessarily wisdom.
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Biometric Information Used in Identifying Criminals
CRIMINAL
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
11.12.2009
WASHINGTON – Federal agencies and local law enforcement departments have identified more than 111,000 criminal aliens in the first year of a joint program that checks the digital fingerprints of persons arrested and booked at the local level against immigration and FBI records.
The announcement was made by Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, and John Morton, assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement, at a press conference Thursday.
“Technology is the heart of this new capability,” Morton said.
The program, known as Secure Communities, is operated jointly by the Homeland Security and Justice Departments and participating law enforcement partners. They automatically check the digital fingerprints of all individuals arrested at the local level against Homeland Security’s biometrics-based immigration records in addition to FBI databases. This allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take action to ensure that criminal aliens are not released.
“It has been a remarkable first year for Secure Communities,” Morton said.
He gave an example from Boston: a detainee identified through biometric records had been involved in a rape case in the past. Without Secure Communities, this would not have been known, Morton said.
According to the statistics, there were 1,425 matches in Massachusetts from October 27, 2008 through October 31, 2009.
Since 2008, the program has identified 11,000 aliens charged or convicted with serious crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping, and 1,900 of those have been removed from the United States.
There are currently 95 jurisdictions across 11 states using Secure Communities. Officials announced that the Washington Metropolitan Police Department will be the next to participate.
Secure Communities will be present in every state by 2011 and be available to every law enforcement agency by 2013, the officials said.
Napolitano said the top priority is to achieve strong and effective law enforcement. According to the secretary, biometrics is a new technological, accurate, cost-effective and efficient development that requires less manpower.
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Snowe’s Fellow GOPers Have Mixed Temperatures About Her
SNOWE
Bangor Daily News
Kase Wickman
Boston University Washington News Service
Nov. 12, 2009
WASHINGTON—Sen. Olympia Snowe has been in the hot national spotlight of the national health care reform debate for the past several months, and some in her party say the Maine Republican is melting away from her conservative roots.
Since her vote last month in favor of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill—the only Republican on the panel to give it a nod of approval—Snowe has been under fire from both sides: some on the left say she is attempting to hold reform hostage to her whims, while some of her colleagues on the right call her a traitor to the conservative cause.
The strongest statement came last week from Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., who on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” refused to tell host Joe Scarborough whether he was glad that Snowe was a Republican, though, he added, she was surely better than a Democrat.
“There is a process in her state that is broad-based that endorses her, and the Republicans in that state say, ‘We want her to be our candidate,’ ” Pawlenty said.
“She's somebody who has gotten into the middle of the health care debate in a way that makes Republicans mad,” he said. “They may accept that, but they’re not going to accept her deviating on many other things.”
Pawlenty made his first trip to Iowa earlier this week in what is widely assumed to be the genesis of a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and he has been hailed in some quarters as a post-Palin national face for the Republican Party.
The day after Pawlenty’s TV appearance, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele appeared on the same network and said that Snowe was “absolutely” welcome in the party, despite her record of voting along party lines only about 59 percent of the time, the greatest deviance among Republican senators.
Steele said that different districts had unique party personalities, and while Snowe “may not work in South Carolina, she works in Maine.”
Snowe, for her part, responded to Pawlenty’s criticism coolly.
“All I know is that I’ve been a life-long Republican, I [spent] 16 years toiling in the minority in the House of Representatives and [was part of] the effort to get us the majority in 1994; now we’re in the minority and I’m still here,” she told Politico.
Arden Manning, the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said that he could see “some anger” toward Snowe from the state’s conservative base.
Not only have national GOP figures spoken about Snowe, but angry conservatives from across the country staged a makeshift protest after her Finance Committee vote, encouraged by popular conservative blog RedState to send bags of rock salt to Snowe’s Maine office in an attempt to “melt” the senator.
“The Maine Republican Party is quite far to the right,” Manning said, “and in the last couple of years has really let the activist base of their party pull the Maine Republican Party out of the mainstream and further to the right.”
The Maine Republican Party and the Republican National Committee declined to respond to requests for comment.
Snowe was reelected in 2006 with 74 percent of her state’s vote.
University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer said that he didn’t see much chance of the GOP’s punishing Snowe for her defection.
“Everybody’s known all along that her views on health care [differ from the party line],” he said. “It’s not like this is some big revelation or change.”
Brewer also said that though the Republican National Committee could reprimand Snowe, if it chooses, that probably would not be a blow to her.
“I don’t necessarily think that she has aspirations to go anywhere else or up the political food chain, but probably because she’s pretty high up there as it is,” he said.
“The Senate is an institution that allows individual senators to have a huge amount of influence and power,” Brewer said. “We see that right now…. That doesn’t happen in the House. Other than being one of the nine justices on the Supreme Court or being the president or being the head of the [Federal Reserve], I don’t know where else you’d go to wield that kind of clout, other than the Senate.”
Asked if she would call herself a maverick, the label Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was happy to accept during his 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Snowe brushed the question aside with her usual answer:
Whatever people wanted to call her, she said, “I have a job to do.”
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