he U.S. House approved the most far- reaching changes to the nation’s health-care system in four decades, voting to require all Americans to get coverage and to subject insurers to new restrictions and new competition from a government program.

The House voted 220-215 last night to approve the measure, which would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Just one Republican, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, backed the plan, and 39 Democrats broke ranks to oppose it.

blog on surveillance, etc.

website on microfinance

علنت جمعية"روح الشباب لخدمة البيئة" في منشية ناصر عن مشروع" الفصل من المنبع" للتخلص من بقايا الطعام بطريقة عملية، من خلال العمل علي توعية المواطنين بفصل الأكل عن باقي القمامة لسهولة التخلص منه وتوجهيه بعد ذلك إلي مصانع الأسمد

Online base for collaboration and sharing related to learning and capacity development

Observers of Egyptian politics had predicted the annual convention of the ruling National Democratic Party would address the issue of "succession."
What most NDP officials did in their speeches, however, was wage scathing attacks on the opposition, with the popular Muslim Brotherhood receiving the lion's share.
The NDP's recent escalation against the Muslim Brothers seems to be driven by anxiety about the prospects of ensuring a smooth power transition from Hosni Mubarak to his son as much as by the Islamists' weak leadership. The plan misses two critical aspects about Egyptian politics, however. First, the Muslim Brothers will continue to remain the most potent and popular political force in Egypt for the foreseeable future, thanks in no small measure to the services they provide to the populace. Second, Mubarak and his son are profoundly resented by Egyptians who are exasperated with their ever-declining living standards, and diminishing political freedoms.

Bravo Mr Buffet. I agree. US must extract itself from highway-connected, car-dependent transport network. It will have to rely on upgrading its inter and intra city rail systems. As must the rest of the world. It is as necessary for US national security as it is for the global environment.

- "Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway said Tuesday it will buy railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $44 billion.
- "Widely regarded as both one of the world's richest men and the investment community's more brilliant minds, Buffett called his firm's investment an "all-in wager on the economic future of the United States."

"Our country's future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system," Buffett said in a statement. "

Initiative to promote change for the better by making things fun. The front page videos include an arcade like bottle-bank; piano stairs to encourage them over escalator and a bin that sounds like it's bottomless.

- "Saudi Arabia and Turkey will hold talks to map out a future strategy for cooperation in the agriculture sector on Tuesday. The talks, to be held within the framework of a major initiative launched by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to ensure food security, will be led by Minister of Agriculture Fahd Balghunaim, while Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Mehdi Eker will attend from the Turkish side."
- "The move is significant keeping in view the Kingdom's efforts to ensure food security, which has led to the acquisition of farmlands in several countries and the formation of joint agriculture projects with partners abroad.

Turkey, today, has emerged as one of the most favorite destinations for Saudi investments in agriculture projects. Turkey is one of the few self-sufficient countries in the world in terms of food. It's fertile soil, adequate climate, and abundant rainfall permit the farming of almost all kinds of crops."

Aggressive moves [..] to buy vast tracts of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa could soon be limited by a new global international protocol.
The [FAO], [UNCTAD] and the World Bank are now discussing a new code of conduct for land buyers in Africa. Amid increasing concerns over food security, it could include ensuring consent is given prior to selling land from local people as well as ensuring smallholders do not lose out. A first draft is expected to be released next spring.

Earlier this year, legendary hedge fund speculator George Soros highlighted a new farmland buying frenzy caused by growing population, scarce water supplies and climate change. [..] He said: "I'm convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time. Eventually, of course, food prices will get high enough that the market probably will be flooded with supply through development of new land or technology or both, and the bull market will end. But that's a long ways away yet."

- "Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — Asias two biggest polluters from burning carbon-based fuels announced their collaboration on renewable power and energy-efficiency projects in a memo of understanding yesterday in New Delhi. They again rejected limits on emissions blamed for global warming that industrialized nations have proposed."
- "The New Delhi accord shows how support may be eroding for a global treaty that United Nations negotiators aim to conclude this December in Copenhagen. Led by China and India, developing nations are devising similar regional agreements after failing to convince wealthier countries including the U.S. to share clean-energy technology or to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent in 2020 from 1990 levels. "
- "India and neighboring countries may sign a regional environment treaty next year, Ramesh said at a meeting of officials from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, known as Saarc."

- "Based on an assumption that global temperatures would rise at least two degrees Celsius over the next four decades, adaptation costs for the developing world in such sectors as infrastructure "climate proofing" are to cost $75-90 billion a year, the bank said on the sidelines of UN climate-change talks being held this week and next in Bangkok. "
- "According to the study, adaptation costs for the Asia-Pacific under the so-called wetter scenario amount to about $25 bn a year.

For Latin America, the estimated annual sum is $21.5 billion, Sub-Saharan Africa $18.1 billion, South Asia $12.6 billion, Europe and Central Asia $9.4 billion, and Middle East and North Africa $3 billion. "

"One of Canadas top Arctic experts, recently returned from an expedition in the far north, has told the Canadian parliament that the Arctics thick, multi-year sea ice has largely vanished.
[..]
David Barber, Canadas Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, said his expedition aboard an icebreaker was looking for a huge pack of thick ice that has existed for tens of thousands of years in the Beaufort Sea. But that multi-year ice, often dozens of feet thick, has largely been replaced by one-year-old rotten ice less than 20 inches thick, which is not an impediment to navigation. We are almost out of multi-year ice in the northern hemisphere, Barber told Parliament. Ive never seen anything like this in my 30 years of working in the high Arctic… From a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now.

As America gets serious about the twin crises of oil dependency and climate change, many analysts believe that wind power and eventually solar power will make the largest carbon-free contributions to a new energy supply. But Americas aging electrical transmission system is renewable energys Achilles heel, and unless a broad policy consensus to upgrade our electrical grid is forged soon, the potential of wind and solar power will be vastly diminished.

Three things are needed to solve the challenge of renewable energy transmission: good technical planning, permitting and siting processes that can win public support, and broad agreement on how to pay the high cost of new power lines. Of these issues, the last one gaining agreement on how transmission costs are spread among players is currently the most contentious.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $3.4 billion in grants to help build a "smart" electric grid meant to trim utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power generated by solar and wind energy.
[..]
The money will pay for about 18 million smart meters that will help consumers manage energy use in their homes, 700 automated substations to make it faster for utilities to restore power knocked out by storms and 200,000 smart transformers that allow power companies to replace units before they fail, thus avoiding outages.

The winning companies have secured an additional $4.7 billion in private money to match their government grants, creating $8.1 billion in total investment in the smart grid.

more or less, says God is necessary and that atheists should stop being so negative.

Welcome to the new shadow financial system, a world where regulators are hampered and bankers are bold. The "old" shadow financial system, before the bubbles burst, thrived on ample liquidity and lax regulations. The new one will be less liquid but will flourish thanks to the many new and incomplete regulations that will characterize the post-crisis world.
[..]
U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to "make certain that markets foster responsibility, not recklessness … [and] reward those who compete honestly and vigorously within the system, instead of those who try to game the system." These are fine moral sentiments. But if past is prologue, there will still be plenty of opportunities for the gamers.

[..]Surely, the financial system that emerges from the current crisis will be more regulated, and more cautious, than it was. But the post-crisis world will still include a large, diverse, and underregulated shadow financial system where vast wealth will be made. Until the next crash.

Yet if a viable opposition is to take shape with the assistance of electronic media like Twitter and Facebook, that opposition will have to pay much more careful attention to the kinds of small-scale struggles over freedom taking place every day in the courts, the press, the labor sector, and the professional associations. [..] Electronic activists will have to pick up the banner of the struggle for an independent labor federation and to pay closer attention to the kinds of battles that can and cannot be won in the courts. [..]

As other revolutions have demonstrated, unity around issues of democracy must precede struggles over the post-revolutionary landscape. However, it is up to individual activists to turn the possibilities of social media into reality, and even the most tech-and-politically savvy individuals will continue to face determined resistance from a regime that has so far confounded any and all attempts to challenge its hegemony.

The General Assembly adopted a resolution late yesterday on improving system-wide coherence within the UN, and the text spells out the support of Member States for a new consolidated body to be headed by an under-secretary-general to deal with issues concerning women.

The resolution means the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI) and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) will be merged.

"The IMF /World Bank 2009 Annual meetings were, as every three years, held outside of Washington, this time in the city of Istanbul. The meetings came on the heels of the recent summit of the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh, giving follow up to several of its decisions.

Some of the outcomes were perplexing. Around this same time last year, the world was grappling with the potentially catastrophic consequences of a crisis in which developing countries had no responsibility but that would significantly set back their progress towards the MDGs. Several leaders spoke of a New Bretton Woods, anticipating a shake-up of global governance structures. But to take the global governance results from Istanbul as a benchmark, there is little progress and, some might say, even some signs of retrogression. "

"A new study has revealed that Ali is [..] one of many of poor Egyptians who have been shut out of the countrys economic revival. The boom, spurred by private and foreign direct investment, has paid off primarily for the countrys richest, according to the new report by the General Authority for Investment (GAFI).

[..The] GAFI board of trustees, the independent body that issued the report and sets the strategic direction of Egypts investment authority.
[..]
Between 2005 and 2008 a red-hot investment climate drove GDP growth rates to over 7% annually. But the overall poverty rate increased as inflation drove down the purchasing power of most Egyptians. About 44% of the people in this country live on less than $2 (LE 11) a day as of 2008[..].
The GAFI report blamed official corruption, underdeveloped infrastructure, low literacy levels and lack of professional training for the shortfall.

The Gamal Show aired online tonight, and I watched it live with loads of people on Twitter. Was fun.

The Gamal Show is Gamal Mubaraks attempt to convince us that hes Barack Obama. He appears in a studio with a load of hand-picked young people in a dialogue, on this occasion moderated by Lamis El-Hadidy, a television presenter married to Amr Adeeb, brother of Emad Adeeb, head of the executive board of newspaper Nahdet Misr, which recently published a story in which it stated that all Egyptian Bedouins (except direct descendents of the Prophet Mohamed) are criminals.

Aliens peering down on Earth yesterday would have possibly thought humans collectively worship the number 350. Indeed, the figure was at the heart of over 5000 events in 181 countries. What these curious aliens might not have known, however, was that 24 October is the International Day of Climate Action.
In the case of Cairo, 24 October saw Rawabet Theater present a sci-fi/documentary called The Age of Stupid, as well as several speakers discussing climate change. The event drew some 150 of Egypts youth and kicked off with a short stand-up comedy gig where [..].
The highlight, however, was The Age of Stupid, an hour and a half long film meshing documentary elements with potentially non-fictional science fiction. It starts 13 billion years ago and quickly fast forwards through the history of the universe and life on Earth, finally stopping in the freshly post-apocalyptic year of 2055 AD.
"

"A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.

Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say.
[..]
The man behind the petition, Dieter Lehmkuhl, told Berlin's Tagesspiegel that there were 2.2 million people in Germany with a fortune of more than 500,000 euros.

If they all paid the tax for two years, Germany could raise 100bn euros to fund ecological programmes, education and social projects, said the retired doctor and heir to a brewery. "

"A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.

Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say.
[..]
The man behind the petition, Dieter Lehmkuhl, told Berlin's Tagesspiegel that there were 2.2 million people in Germany with a fortune of more than 500,000 euros.

If they all paid the tax for two years, Germany could raise 100bn euros to fund ecological programmes, education and social projects, said the retired doctor and heir to a brewery. "