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Japan to Make Concessions on Senkaku Islands, First Meeting Between Japanese and Chinese Leaders Possible

January 26, 2021October 18, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

Japan Caves on Senkaku Islands, First Meeting Between Japanese and Chinese Leaders Possible

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President Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Xi Jinping of China may meet for the first time at the upcoming APEC summit. Abe has reportedly agreed to significant concessions regarding the disputed Senkaku Islands. The leaders of Japan and China have not met since taking their current positions on the status of the Islands in 2012.

Abe is prepared to acknowledge that China has a case in their claim to the Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyu Islands, altough Abe maintains that the Senkakus are an inherent part of Japanese territory, according to Japanese government sources.

Previously, Japan has refused even to acknowledge that a territorial dispute exists, repeating on numerous occasions, “There exists no issue of territorial sovereignty to be resolved concerning the Senkaku Islands.”

Abe intends to propose settling the issue through mutual dialogue, according to the sources.

Abe and Xi have not met since the two leaders were elected in 2012, but it is reported that the two plan to meet for 15 minutes at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing next month.

The main roadblock to a meeting between the two leaders has been Japan’s refusal to acknowledge a territorial dispute. China has made repeated calls for such an acknowledgment, and the two governments engaged in a public dispute over the issue last year during the UN General Assembly meeting.

“Japan needs to recognize that there is such a dispute. The whole world knows that there is a dispute,” stated Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in September, 2013.

Shortly thereafter Abe stated, “Senkaku is an inherent part of the territory of Japan in light of historical facts and based upon international law, and the islands are under the valid control of Japan.”

Abe insisted that “Japan would not make a concession on our territorial sovereignty.”

However, both governments have asserted their desire for better relations.

The dispute over the Senkaku Islands, which Japan has administrated since 1895, intensified last year when China announced new borders for its air defense zone which overlapped existing Japanese air defense zones.

During that time, the Chinese economy has slowed, and Japanese investment in China dropped 40 percent on an annual basis in the first half of 2014 after dropping one-fifth last year.

Obama Scrapped Disease Quarantine Regulations for Airlines Four Years Ago

October 20, 2014October 15, 2014 by Heidi Woolf

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In 2010 the Obama administration did away with proposed quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considered to be critical to protecting Americans in the event of deadly diseases being spread by travelers. The regulations, which had been proposed in 2005 as a reaction to the H5N1 avian flu virus that spread globally that year, would have given additional responsibilities to airlines dealing with passengers who could be infected with deadly diseases.

The regulations would have given federal government powers to detain sick airline passengers and people exposed to certain diseases. The regulations would have also created stricter airline policy with regards to reporting ill passengers to the CDC, and airlines would have been mandated to collect contact information from passengers in case that information was later needed to trace infection in the event of an outbreak.

The CDC would have been empowered to detain people involuntarily for three business days if they suspected certain diseases–namely pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, plague, cholera, SARS, smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria and Ebola.

The regulations were initiated under the Bush Administration. In 2008, CDC spokesperson Christine Person said of the measures, “It’s important to public well being to move forward with the regulations. We require to update our quarantine regulations, and this final rule is an important step.”

Although CDC officials said that the additional powers would only be used in rare circumstances of health threats, the regulations were opposed by airlines and civil liberties organizations, which complained of the costs associated with the responsibilities, as well as the potential for privacy rights violations.

By Heidi Woolf

First Travel Restrictions in US Due to Ebola

January 26, 2021October 15, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, working with county officials, will enact a control order limiting travel for people who have been exposed to Ebola, Jenkins said Wednesday, calling the situation in Texas a “very serious public health Ebola crisis.” Travel will be restricted on public transportation, including buses and airliners, and further restrictions are being explored by local and state governments.

“I’m not considering it. I’m going to do it,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, speaking of a legal order restricting travel for health care workers involved in the treatment of Thomas Duncan, who died of Ebola last week in Texas Presbyterian Hospital.

“We have the ability to have our county medical director sign a control order. I’m also working with the state–‘one team, one fight’–to join us in that, because some of the people under the order don’t live in Dallas County. They live in the surrounding counties.

“At a minimum,” Jenkins said, “it will follow the CDC guidelines on traveling by public conveyance.”

“This is a fluid and very serious public health Ebola crisis,” said Jenkins. He said that his office was doing something to stop travel–putting in place a control order that would restrict people from getting on public transportation. He was also working with higher levels of government to look at “other public venues where movement would be restricted.”

Jenkins clarified the risks people faced with regards to travel.

“It’s not a problem for you to ride next to a diseased contact in a car–if it were, I wouldn’t have driven people who were disease contacts to their new home. But it is a problem if you are in an enclosed area like an airplane on a cross-country flight and someone gets symptoms, and then they have body fluids that get on other people. And so, restricting long-distance buses or public transportation–there may be other sorts of venues where you’re kind of locked into an area. So that’s what we’re looking at.”

Jenkins stated that it was “very disappointing” to him that someone with a fever, such as Amber Vinson was reported to have had, would have been allowed on an airplane. “It is unacceptable that that happened.”

Jenkins spoke about the problems that he had been dealing with in Dallas, as well as the evolving challenges. “I feel good about what we thought was the scary problem last week, and that is Eric Duncan for five days with Ebola in my community, where I’ve got to go find everybody that touched him. We did that. Now we’ve got a breach at the hospital.”

Jenkins made the point that the health care workers were not at fault. “That’s a procedure, protocol or supervision problem–Those nurses are heroes.”

“This new problem with the hospital causes us to fight a two-front war,” said Jenkins.

Jenkins said that he thought that they had achieved a significant level of control over the hospital breach as well.

The current problems officials were dealing with, Jenkins said, were the two families of the infected health care workers, as well as the 75 people who were away from the patient population.

Of those 75 hospital workers, most were at home on furlough, Jenkins said. Officials were working on a situation in which those exposed people could choose whether to stay at home, or, if they were concerned about family members, they could transfer to a safer location.

“Two options. You can stay at home under the orders we’re putting there. Or you can go to a place where you’ll be cared for.

Some of the exposed health care workers, however, continue to treat Amber Vinson, because they have already been exposed, Jenkins said.

Jenkins stressed that those people affected by the ban had done nothing wrong.

“These are not criminals. These are heroic health care professionals. They are not trying to get out into the community and cause any harm. And they don’t need to be vilified, and their children don’t need to be vilified. If an order is in place, I expect it to be followed, and we would use the law to enforce it, but that won’t be necessary.

“These are heroic health care professionals who just need some guidance on what they can and can’t do in a very difficult time in their life.”

Jenkins current interest was, he said, keeping the two and a half million people who live in Dallas safe.

“My job is to correct mistakes as fast as I find them, whoever made them. ‘One team, one fight.’ To find those mistakes. We’ll worry about whose fault it was later. Let’s get it corrected. Let’s make sure nobody else gets on an airplane. Let’s move forward and keep this community safe.”

WHO Update on Ebola: “The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago–It’s entrenched”

November 9, 2014October 10, 2014 by Andrew Stern

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WHO officials provided an update Friday on the progress of the Ebola epidemic gripping West Africa and outpacing all efforts to control it. The WHO warned that without immediate, concerted action Ebola could become a global pandemic on the scale of HIV, and added that the current response was only half of what it needed to be.

“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the [infected] people are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” said Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization.

Aylward offered three numbers: 70, 70 and 60. To control Ebola, 70 percent of Ebola-victim burials must be conducted safely, 70 percent of those infected must be in treatment, and within 60 days.

“The virus is moving on virus time; we’re moving on bureaucracy or program time,” commented Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “The virus is actually picking up the pace. Even as we add resources, we get farther behind.”

Ebola cases are doubling every three weeks in West Africa, and global health officials are watching closely the “reproduction number” of the virus. This number estimates the number of people, on average, who will contract the virus from each person already stricken. The current number is estimated to be 1.5 to two. In order for the epidemic to decline, the number must be below one.

“The speed at which things are moving on the ground, it’s hard for people to get their minds around. People don’t understand the concept of exponential growth,” said Frieden. “Exponential growth in the context of three weeks means, ‘If I know that X needs to be done, and I work my butt off and get it done in three weeks, it’s now half as good as it needs to be.'”

“Maybe we can bring [the reproduction number] from two to 1.2 or 1.3, which would indicate that the number of new cases will be dramatically reduced, and that will give you time,” commented Gerardo Chowell, a mathematical epidemiologist at Arizona State University, who worked on the current reproduction number estimate. “Even modest gains in lowering the number could give health officials and the military a better chance of controlling the epidemic,” considered Chowell.

To date, over 4,000 people have died in West Africa out of 8,000 reported cases. The current assumption regarding the numbers is that they are significantly underreported, and that for every four known cases, six more go unreported.

By Andrew Stern

Men and Women Judge Art Differently, According to New Study

October 14, 2014October 10, 2014 by Joseph Reight

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Whose art is worth more? The ordinary painter who just took up the craft or the authentic artist who has spent 20 years working at it and believes he will paint until he dies? According to a new joint marketing study, women and men judge the value of art differently, and how an artist is presented could have a significant effect on how much of the $65bn worldwide art market he or she will claim.

The research looked at the responses of 518 subjects–male and female–to two unfamiliar paintings which were each accompanied by a fabricated artist biography. Some participants read a biography that described the artist as an ordinary painter who only recently took up art. Other participants read a biography that described a much more authentic painter.

Men and Women Judge Art Differently (2) — Stephanie Mangus

“The more authentic artist was described as having been painting for over 20 years and believes they will paint ‘until he dies,'” Stephanie Mangus, assistant professor in MSU’s Broad College of Business and an author of the report, told The Speaker.

Both male and female subjects were found to be more willing to buy the more authentic artist’s work and to pay a higher price for that work.

However, males were much more likely to base their decisions on the artist’s “brand” than females, according to the research.

Women were more likely to “go through a complicated process of actually evaluating the artwork,” the researchers found.

“Regarding the complicated process,” Mangus explained to us, “women rely more heavily on the attitude they form toward the art itself, even if they are not an art expert, when determining their behavioral intentions toward the art (purchase and purchase price). Women rely more strongly than men on their own judgments of the actual piece of artwork. Men, in contrast, place more emphasis on the attitude they develop toward the artist when making these same downstream decisions related to purchase and price.”

The research has several implications, for both business and the everyday art viewer, Mangus told us.

“On the management/business side, we would like the folks that manage artists and other creative sorts (and even brands) to understand that authenticity is important to consumers. Consistency between an artist’s authentic ‘story’ and the image/brand they present to the outside world factors into how consumers judge them and their work. Ultimately, whether or not artists make any money off of consumers is partially a function of their authenticity and ability to convey it.

“On the consumer side, it’s a nice note to the non-connoisseur that they can still make evaluations of art and not shy away from making these types of decisions.”

The findings may extend to other creator-based product industries as well, such as clothing, shoe, jewelry and restaurant and food industries.

“While designers and chefs oftentimes operate in the background, this research suggests that more emphatically communicating their passion and commitment to their craft could significantly benefit that brand’s image and sales,” the team found.

The report may also help to fill in the dearth of consumer research relating to the steadily growing art market, according to Mangus, which has outperformed the equities market during the past 10 years of growth.

“For the average person trying to purchase art, knowing something about the artist–and knowing that the artist is authentic–can reduce the risk of buying a worthless piece,” Mangus stated. “All consumers in the study, but especially men, evaluated art with a strong emphasis on how motivated and passionate the artist was. So if you’re an artist or if you’re managing an artist, developing that human brand–getting the message across that you’re authentic–becomes essential.”

The report was authored by Julie Guidry Moulard from Louisiana Tech University, Dan Hamilton Rice from Louisiana State University and Carolyn Popp Garrity from Birmingham-Southern College, in addition to Mangus, and was published in Psychology & Marketing.

By Joseph Reight

McDonald’s Wins in Russia

October 14, 2014October 10, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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McDonald’s has won a ruling in Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court after Russia’s Federal Agency for Consumer Rights Protection (Rosportrebnadzor) shut down a dozen McDonald’s in Russia, claiming that the fast food restaurant sold products that violated national dietary standards.

“The lawsuit was filed due to the chain’s violation of the legal requirements. An examination of samples revealed that the information on energy values and the composition of the products provided to consumers was not correct. This is consumer fraud,” stated the plaintiff in court.

Rospotrebnadzir had requested a court order to “stop [McDonald’s] unlawful activity” and remove violating products from menus.

“The results of a second inspection showed that the products fully complied with the regulations. We do not understand what violation is being committed. The information that is not included in the energy value tables on the customer’s trays are posted in the customer’s dining area. You can see everything,” the defendants responded.

At least a dozen McDonald’s were shut down in Russia afer Rospotrebnadzor began filing suits against the restaurant chain in May. Rospotrebnadzor conducted examinations of over 100 of Russia’s 430 McDonald’s restaurants in August, and claimed that the restaurants violated the listing standards for protein, fat, carbohydrate and energy values.

The bans instituted included cheeseburgers, royal cheeseburger, filet-o-fish, chicken burger and berry ice cream and milkshakes.

McDonald’s is thriving in Russia. Although the company reported poor Q4 sales globally, and 1.4% decline in the US, sales in Russia have been up, thanks to promotions like the current “American Classics” cheeseburgers, according to industry experts.

By James Haleavy

First Sitting President Arrives for Hearing at International Criminal Court, Allies Warn Trial Risks Destabilizing Already Threatened Nation

October 14, 2014October 8, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, arrived at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague Wednesday for a hearing over his indictment on charges of crimes against humanity. Kenyatta is the first sitting leader to appear at the ICC, and his trial court proceedings are taking place as Kenya is under threat from active militant groups in the region.

Kenyatta is accused of orchestrating a wave of violence in Kenya in 2007. The violence followed a set of contested elections. Kenyatta has denied the charges.

Kenyatta and his allies have warned that the trial poses a risk of destabilization for Kenya, where an active threat exists. Al-Qaeda-linked militant Islamists in Somalia are conducting ongoing attacks in the region.

“This is no time to weaken a country and a region by removing its President for trial,” said Mahboub Maalim, head of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regional organization, who attended the hearing.

The ICC has secured only two convictions in its 11 years of service. Both convictions were of Congolese warlords for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

All of the ICC’s cases to date have been in Africa. Many Africans leaders continue to ignore the court, and the African Union has decided not to cooperate with the ICC.

The ICC has 34 judges, over 700 staff, and a budget of $166 million annually. To date, the court has cost $2 billion.

By Sid Douglas

Spread of Ebola Across Europe “Inevitable” – WHO Chief

October 7, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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[BRIEF] According to the World Health Organization, the spread of Ebola across Europe is “quite unavoidable.”

WHO European Director Zsuzsanna Jakab commented Tuesday on the recent first case of Ebola contracted in Europe and said, “Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely.”

“It is quite unavoidable … that such incidents will happen in the future because of the extensive travel both from Europe to the affected countries and the other way around.”

Read more: First Ebola Case in Europe

Jakab warned that more cases will spread across Europe and that the continent should be well prepared to control the disease.

At the top of the list of those at risk for infection are health workers, according to Jakab, who added, “The most important thing in our view is that Europe is still at low risk and that the western part of the European region particularly is the best prepared in the world to respond to viral haemorrhagic fevers including Ebola.”

After Death Consciousness Suggested by Largest Near-Death Experience Study

October 14, 2014October 7, 2014 by Cheryl Bretton

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According to the largest study ever conducted treating near-death experiences, evidence suggests that there is consciousness after clinical death.

A University of Southampton team spent four years examining 2,060 cardiac arrest patients at 15 different hospitals on three continents.

The report, “AWAREness during CPR: Be careful with what you say!” was authored by Drs Edgardo Olvera-Lopez and Joseph Varon, and was published in Resuscitation magazine.

Overall, the team found that 40 percent of people who survived cardiac arrest–140 of 330 people–described some kind of awareness during the time they were clinically dead.

The kinds of experiences reported by the survivors included an unusual sense of peacefulness and alterations in time perception. Some said time slowed down while other said it speeded up.

Some survivors reported seeing a bright light. Some described it as a golden flash or like the Sun shining.

Others, however, reported feelings of fear, of drowning or being pulled down through deep water.

Of the survivors, 13 percent reported experiences commonly referred to as out-of-body. Another 13 percent reported that their senses had been heightened.

“We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York. However, Parnia went on to describe specific instances of patients who reported things that suggested that after death consciousness was possible, including accounts of out-of-body like experiences.

Dr Jerry Nolan, Editor-in-Chief at Resuscitation said: “Dr Parnia and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the completion of a fascinating study that will open the door to more extensive research into what happens when we die.”

By Cheryl Bretton

World’s First Big Carbon Capture Coal Plant Will Sequester 90% Of Its Emissions

October 7, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan the world’s first big carbon capture coal power plant has begun. The project will sequester almost all of its emissions–about a million tons of carbon per year.

Canadian utility SaskPower is undertaking the project at the 110 megawatt Boundary Dam power station near Estevan, Saskatchewan, where it will retrofit one of its units.

The unit will be transformed into a long-term producer of 110 megawatts of base-load electricity, meanwhile reducing greenhouse gas emissions by one million tons of carbon dioxide per year–the equivalent of taking over 250,000 cars off of the province’s roads every year.

The captured CO2 will be piped to oilfields in southern Saskatchewan where it will be used for enhanced oil recovery. Unused CO2 will be stored in SaskPower’s Aquistore project.

In addition to CO2, the project will also capture Sulphur Dioxide and Fly ash. These products will be sold for industrial use.

The experiment will cost $1.35 billion, but if it works, SaskPower will retrofit two other units at a cost 20-30 percent less. The utility has already gained insights into improvements on design and engineering from the current undertaking.

According to the company, “The Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Project is SaskPower’s flagship CCS initiative. Through the development of the world’s first and largest commercial-scale CCS project of its kind, SaskPower is making a viable technical, environmental and economic case for the continued use of coal.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

North Korea Admits Labor Camps

November 11, 2014October 7, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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For the first time, North Korean authorities have publicly acknowledged the existence of labor camps within North Korea. The admission came Tuesday, seemingly in response to critical UN reports published earlier this year.

North Korean foreign ministry official Choe Myong Nam, who is in charge of UN affairs and human rights issues, qualified that North Korea had “no prison camps” or “things like that,” but he briefly commented on “reform through labor” camps.

“Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labor detention camps–no, detention centers–where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings,” said Choe.

North Korea is currently meeting with the EU in top-level meetings about rights issues, and North Korean officials have spoken of a willingness to engage the European Union in dialogue including on matters of human rights.

“We are expecting end of this year to open political dialogue between the two sides,” said North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador Ri Tong Il. Human rights discussion is expected to follow the opening of political dialogue.

North Korea has announced certain provisions, however. Among the stipulation is that the human rights dialogue will not be used as a “tool for interference” in North Korea.

The UN responded favorably to the North Korean expression of interest.

“While the North Korean human rights record remains abysmal,” said the executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Greg Scarlatoiu, “it is very important that senior North Korean officials are now speaking about human rights, and expressing even pro forma interest in dialogue.”

By Sid Douglas

Recession Means Many Women Will Never Have a Child – Study

October 7, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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Most studies have concluded that unemployment in the short run leads to a drop in fertility, but whether the negative effects persist–whether women simply postpone childbearing or if the effect is more long-term–has remained unknown. According to a recent study by Princeton University, living through a recession means that some women will never have a child, and a major recession such as that experienced in the US in 2008-2009 may cause losses of hundreds of thousands of births.

“Fertility falls when unemployment rises, but there may be no long-run effect if women simply postpone childbearing,” considered the authors of the study, but after completing their research the team concluded that unemployment not only causes drops in fertility in the short-term, but over time the negative effects actually increase. This increase was found to be characterized largely by women who did not have any children as a result of living through a recession in their early 20s.

Photo credit: Eileen Barroso — Dr Janet Currie

“The effects are actually bigger in the long run than in the short run,” Dr. Janet Currie, Henry Putnam, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Director of the Center for Health and Well-Being at Princeton, told The Speaker.

“Macroeconomic events really matter for individual people’s lives, and can have a profound effect on them,” said Currie.

She commented on those women who were most vulnerable to fluctuations in employment rates. “What matters is unemployment in the early 20s. So a deeper recession at that time of a woman’s life would lead to fewer births long-term.”

The report, “Short- and long-term effects of unemployment on fertility,” was authored by Curie and Dr Hannes Schwandt at Princeton University, and was published in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team analyzed the effect of unemployment by following fixed groups of US-born women. The team looked at year of birth and state in which the women lived, and drew on 140 million US birth records for the period 1975-2010.

They found that only a one percent decrease in the employment rate during a woman’s life from between the ages of 20-24 caused a drop in short-term fertility by six conceptions per 1,000 women.

When those women were assessed at their 40th year, that same one percent drop during their early 20s was associated with an overall drop in conceptions of 14.2 per 1,000 women.

Taking this finding to the national level, the effects of a major recession can account for hundreds of thousands of lost births.

“On a national scale effects of the magnitude we find suggest a loss of about 400,000 births stemming from the ‘Great Recession’ that started in 2008,” Currie told us.

“This larger long-term effect is driven largely by women who remain childless.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson