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Tuesday, 25 August 2009
1. Hundreds gather to honor Punjabis who helped spark India rebellion
Sacramento Bee
August 23, 2009
The seeds of Indian independence from British rule were planted in Northern California nearly a decade before Mahatma Gandhi began his civil disobedience campaign in 1922.
At the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, in 1913, several Punjabi students – on scholarships funded by a Sikh potato farmer from Stockton – helped launch the Gadar independence movement, a violent rebellion against the British overlords. About 700 South Asian Americans – most of them Sikhs with roots in the Punjab region of India – gathered at Sheldon High School on Saturday to honor the memory of the Gadar rebels....
Several thousand, including TWO UC BERKELEY STUDENTS, were hanged by the British, who didn't grant India freedom until 1947....
On Nov. 1, 1913, the first issue of GADAR, THE PARTY NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED AT UC BERKELEY, declared war on the British raj: "What is our name? Revolution. What is our work? Revolution. The time will soon come when rifles and blood will take the place of pens and ink."
One of the authors, KARTAR SINGH SARABHA, 16, had come to Northern California in 1912. He returned to India to trigger the revolution and was captured and hanged in 1915.
The Gadar Memorial Punjabi Conference was held in Sacramento because the region is home to 35,000 Sikhs, said ONKAR S. BINDRA, A RETIRED PROFESSOR WHO ATTENDED UC BERKELEY and now lives in Gold River. Many have heard stories of the Gadar rebels from their parents and grandparents, farmers and laborers who settled in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1890s and helped finance the rebels....
"The Berkeley students were folk heroes, the shadows of the farmers who organized everything," said Amrik Singh, who teaches Punjabi language and Sikh American history at California State University, Sacramento. "Wherever there is oppression, Punjabis raise their voice."... Full Story
2. Leah Garchik
San Francisco Chronicle
August 25, 2009
...City Arts & Lectures mogul Sydney Goldstein, who has presented more than 50 events a year for 29 years, hosted a dinner for 26 friends, writers, librarians and supporters at UC BERKELEY'S BANCROFT LIBRARY. The event was to mark her giving her programs' archive to Bancroft, and more will be in the paper about this when the archive becomes available online.
The guests included poet Kay Ryan, radio interviewer Terry Gross, and novelists Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. All went well at dinner, but getting ready for it had been hugely stressful, said Goldstein. "You'd think I never do an event. I've worked with Nobel Prize winners, famous comedians, Academy Award-winning actors. But that's nothing compared to the stress level I felt here."
Why was she so nervous? "I think because these people were coming with nothing in it for them. They were coming out of the kindness of their hearts." Full Story
3. Obama to Nominate Bernanke to 2nd Term
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
August 24, 2009
Oak Bluffs, Mass. (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, widely credited with taking aggressive action to avert an economic catastrophe after the financial meltdown last fall, will be nominated by President Barack Obama for a second term, The Associated Press learned Monday night....
BRAD DELONG, a Treasury Department official under President Bill Clinton, said Monday night he couldn't think of anyone better for the appointment even though he was surprised.
''He has made only one big mistake: buckling under to pressure from all those yelling at him for enabling moral hazard and not finding a way to takeover Lehman Brothers, and he is not going to make the same mistake again,'' said DELONG, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY.
Another term for Bernanke was hardly a given. Obama has built a team of economic advisers with high profiles and strong personalities, including Summers and [UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR ON LEAVE] CHRISTINA ROMER, a top Obama economic adviser. Others mentioned included [UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR] JANET YELLEN, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Roger Ferguson, the former No. 2 Fed official....
[This story appeared in dozens of sources nationwide, including the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
4. Earning Power: The World's Best-Paid Cities
Forbes
August 24, 2009
Residents of Swiss financial center Zurich know that their country has more to offer than world-class chocolate and precision watches. They can now brag that, on the whole, they earn more than anyone in the world....
UBS arrived at its rankings by studying the wages, taxes and working hours of 14 occupations across 73 world cities....
To accurately measure each city's quality of life, the researchers looked not only at gross salaries, but what workers brought home after taxes, based on the number of hours typically worked in their city.
To determine how far citizens could stretch this amount, they then calculated the cost of a generic shopping basket, comprising 154 commonly consumed products and services in each city. The basket was priciest in Oslo, at $112.
"The prices of goods are higher in Oslo because it's relatively remote, it's expensive for companies to operate there, and because taxes are high," says ROBERT HELSLEY, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS....
"Tax systems provide very different public services in different cities. In Copenhagen, I'm assuming health care is included in public tax contributions. In Los Angeles it wouldn't be," says Helsley. "Public safety, the quality of the public transportation system, lots of things could be influenced by government spending that would be germane to a person's choice of place to live."
There's no doubt that a sweet compensation package does a great deal to lure workers to any international location. But salary isn't everything. Employers determining where to locate their businesses and workers deciding where to live must consider a lot more. "Looking at just earnings is deceptive," says Helsley. "The same person is not going to locate in Mexico and Helsinki." Just because a city makes the top five, "It doesn't say it's the best place to locate a firm, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the best place to be a worker." Full Story
5. Bay Area mortgage delinquencies soar
San Francisco Chronicle
August 25, 2009
Nearly 1 in 10 Bay Area homeowners will be at least 60 days behind on their mortgages by the end of the year, according to a forecast being issued today.
The projection by the credit reporting agency TransUnion covers Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties....
Mortgage delinquencies are often a precursor to foreclosures, and as more Bay Area homeowners fall behind, more foreclosures will follow, said KEN ROSEN, CHAIR OF THE FISHER CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN ECONOMICS AT UC BERKELEY.
"Foreclosures will continue to be a drag on the housing market for the next 18 months or so," said Rosen, who thinks the outlying suburbs will be hardest hit while areas like San Francisco and the inner East Bay will suffer less.... Full Story
6. Not so fast, say economists, pundits on ABC's 'This Week'
Broadcasting & Cable Online
August 25, 2009
Signs of recovery aside, The New York Times’ economic columnist Paul Krugman says we’re in “purgatory” as far as the economy goes....
“There’s no evidence that this economy is doing much better,” agreed ROBERT REICH, former Secretary of Labor and [current] PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY. “The best that can be said is that we’re getting worse more slowly and that is small consolation for people who are losing their jobs. We’re still going to be in double-digit unemployment in 2010.”... Full Story
7. UC Berkeley: Origin of bones from Saipan a mystery
Saipan Tribune
August 26, 2009
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY yesterday said there is no evidence indicating that the human bones removed from Saipan in 1945 by a U.S. Navy doctor and donated to the university's museum in 1974 were of Japanese origin and whether they perished in the Battle of Saipan during World War II.
DANIEL MOGULOF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, said all that the university's physical anthropologist can tell is that the bones are of East Asian descent due to a very scanty record that was left with the museum when the remains were donated 35 years ago.
The bones are stored at UC BERKELEY'S PHOEBE A. HEARST MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Mogulof said the university is “engaged in discussions with Japanese authorities” on the matter, but reiterated that no evidence suggests that the bones are those of Japanese soldiers or civilians and whether they died before or during the war....
Mogulof said more than a year ago, both Japan's Yasukuni Shrine and its governmental War Victims Relief Bureau were made aware that UC Berkeley's museum holds the human remains.
“We received a letter from the shrine stating their lack of interest in the remains and never heard a word from Japanese government officials,” he said....
“But we have sent new letters to a variety of Japanese government agencies re-stating the lack of evidence regarding the remains' origins, and reiterating long standing policy: we are now, and always have been, ready to honor any legitimate request for repatriation,” Mogulof added....
[Another story on this topic appeared in Stars & Stripes] Full Story
8. Another Gift to the Bottled Water Industry
Huffington Post
August 24, 2009
The New York Times ran a front page story yesterday on atrazine in drinking water (part of its series on worsening water pollution) and the state of federal tap-water regulation of this super-common weed killer (not good). The chemical is worrisome because of its ubiquity, its links with birth defects and low birth weights, and because it may have effects at levels lower than those previously suspected. (U.C. BERKELEY'S DR. TYRONE HAYES, who correlated low-level atrazine exposure to deformities like extra legs in frogs, was absent from the Times story. You can read about his research in this article I did for Discover.)...
I predict that learning more about low-dose effects of ubiquitous chemicals (perchlorate, MTBE, trichloroethane, perfluorochemicals -- all of which have been found in municipal water supplies) will give even committed tap-water drinkers pause. The Times says, "Sometimes, the only way to avoid atrazine during summer months, when concentrations tend to rise as cropland is sprayed, is by forgoing tap water and relying on bottled water or using a home filtration system." If I were living in farm country and pregnant, nursing, or the mother of a young child, I'd certainly get the best filter I could afford and be sure to use it during spring runoff.... Full Story
9. Wild pigs increasing damage to Fresno Co. ag
Fresno Bee
August 24, 2009
Fresno County farmers and ranchers are accustomed to dealing with tiny insects and plant diseases. But their latest pest is a big one, weighing in at more than 100 pounds. And it has a voracious appetite.
Wild pigs are ranging over more of Fresno County and causing more damage....
Several dry years have forced pigs to search farther from their foothill homes to find food. They prefer acorns from oak trees that are plentiful in wet years, but will also munch on Valley crops.
"If they had a good supply of acorns they could live in the foothills for months, but once they run out of food they will go looking for it," said REGINALD BARRETT, A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY.
Barrett has studied California's wild pig population for more than 40 years, watching the pigs establish themselves in nearly every county.... Full Story
10. Swine flu goes to college
CNN.com
August 24, 2009
Classes resumed last Thursday at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, and by Monday 47 students had swine flu, a college official said....
KU students are not the only ones catching swine flu, Thompson said: "If you called any university of this size around the country it's probably going to be about the same."...
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA has been stocking up on supplies for each of its 10 campuses over the past several months, university system officials said.... Full Story
11. Politics Blog: Berkeley, Iran and Diplomacy 2.0
San Francisco Chronicle Online
August 25, 2009
There has been little progress in getting three UC BERKELEY GRADUATES released from detention in Iran, where they have been held since July 31. But family members are taking steps to keep the case on the front burner.
Family members and friends of SHANE BAUER, SARAH SHOURD AND JOSHUA FATTAL have launched a new Web site and have made a round of media appearances -- including an appearance on the Today Show by all three detainee's mothers -- to call attention to the trio's plight.
They even have promulgated a Twitter hash tag based on the three prisoners' names: #ssj....
The new Web site set up for the three emphasizes the accidental nature of their trespass from its name -- http://FreeTheHikers.org -- to bios of the three that detail their respect for other cultures, their human rights work and their loving families, complete with family photo galleries dating back into childhood.... Full Story
12. Digital Rules: Our Health Care Crisis: Age, Obesity, Lawyers
Forbes
August 20, 2009
...Global Warming Arrogance
Last month I spent a night at the university of California Alumni Camp's Lair of the Golden Bear, Camp Gold. (My wife is a UC, Davis grad.)
The guest lecturer on Sunday night was DANIEL KAMMEN, AN ENERGY PROFESSOR AT UC, BERKELEY. I knew his lecture would be ... revealing. It was. For an hour Professor Kammen swigged from a Corona beer and issued dire climate-change warnings, such as: "Enjoy your camping now, people, because the Sierra forests will be burned up by 2050. ... Greenland's ice cap will melt. ... The oceans will rise 21 feet. ..." For an hour Professor Kammen went on about the end of the world as we know it.
Oh, and the politics. Like a teen who swerves down the road hitting mailboxes, Professor Kammen dinged "selfish" Republicans and "ignorant" Red Staters as often as he could....
It must be said that Professor Kammen's lecture was not geared toward scientists or policymakers. He assumed he was giving it to an after-dinner audience of like-minded Cal alums. Professor Kammen thus revealed how the hard eco-left really talks when it knows its words will go unchallenged. Full Story
13. Green & Glover: Nick in time
Washington Times
August 25, 2009
...Grand old rally
Attention, Granny: If you've been looking for an excuse to visit your grandkids in the nation's capital, former Secretary of Labor ROBERT REICH is happy to provide one.
We hear that Mr. Reich, who served under President Clinton and is a PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, will hold a rally on Sept. 13, Grandparents Day, demanding that President Obama include a "public option" in his highly polarizing health care package....
"I've just become a grandparent, and I'm worried ... about the kind of world my little granddaughter is inheriting," Mr. Reich has been quoted as saying.
Our friends at grandparents.com are elated that the holiday honoring our elders is getting some love. After all, most people just send a card or call, but Mr. Reich wants to put the nanas and grampies of the world in the center of a national debate.
"If Grandparents Day can be hijacked, by political groups of either stripe, or, for that matter, by car dealers or charity telethons, that means the holiday, now in its 30th year, has finally arrived," says Gary Drevitch, senior editor of grandparents.com. ...
No word on whether wheelchairs and dentures will be provided by Mr. Reich at the rally.... Full Story
14. Quarterback Riley to start season opener for No. 12 California
USA Today
August 25, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. (AP) — COACH JEFF TEDFORD announced that KEVIN RILEY (FSY) will be his starting quarterback when No. 12 California opens the season against Maryland on Sept. 5....
Riley started nine games for the Golden Bears a year ago and has made 10 starts in his career at Cal. He has completed 53.4% of his passes with 19 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
[This story appeared in dozens of sources nationwide] Full Story