Iran Urges West To Drop Conditions Ahead of Nuclear Talks

qua tang cuoc song | harvard university |

Iran has confirmed it will meet with Western powers in Istanbul Saturday but is urging them to take pre-conditions off the table ahead of the nuclear talks.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council confirmed Monday it will meet with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France -- plus Germany.  Iran wants a further round of talks held in Baghdad at a later date to discuss its controversial nuclear program.

There was no immediate response from the world powers. Iran has been balking at holding talks in Istanbul because it says Turkey has turned against its ally, Syria.

World powers say the talks, the first since January 2011, should bring a curtailment of Iran's high-level uranium enrichment and the closing of an underground nuclear development site,

But Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told Iranian media Monday that pre-conditions on the talks are "meaningless."

Western powers suspect Tehran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons.  Iran denies the allegation and maintains its nuclear activities are purely for power generation and medical research purposes.

Iran's nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi told Iranian media Sunday the country may scale back production of highly enriched uranium. Abbasi said Iran may eventually reduce production of 20 percent enriched uranium to 3.5 percent enrichment levels -- the purity needed for power generation -- once enough fuel is created to keep its research reactor going.

Iran's uranium enrichment lies at the heart of the dispute between Tehran and Western powers.  Uranium enriched to 20 percent could be turned into weapons-grade material within months.

Earlier this year, Iran confirmed it had started enriching uranium at an underground facility near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom.  The Fordo complex is beneath a mountain and is better protected from potential air strikes by nations suspicious of the intent of Iran's nuclear program.

^{_{Some information for this report provided by AFP and Reuters.}}

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Op-Ed Contributor

bat dong san | harvard university |

Dental Insurance, but No Dentists

By LOUIS W. SULLIVAN

Published: April 8, 2012

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WE know that too many Americans can't afford primary care and end up in the emergency room with asthma or heart failure . But in the debate over health care coverage, less attention has been paid to the fact that too many Americans also end up in the emergency room with severe tooth abscesses that keep them from eating or infections that can travel from decayed teeth to the brain and, if untreated, kill.

More than 830,000 visits to emergency rooms nationwide in 2009 were for preventable dental problems. In my state of Georgia, visits to the E.R. for oral health problems cost more than $23 million in 2007. According to more recent data from Florida, the bill exceeded $88 million. And dental disease is the No. 1 chronic childhood disease, sending more children in search of medical treatment than asthma. In a nation obsessed with high-tech medicine, people are not getting preventive care for something as simple as tooth decay .

It's easy to understand why. Close to 50 million Americans live in rural or poor areas where dentists do not practice. Most dentists do not accept Medicaid patients. And the shortage of dentists is going to get only worse: by 2014, under the Affordable Care Act, 5.3 million more children will be entitled to dental benefits from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program . Little is being done — by the dental profession or by the federal or state governments — to prepare for it.

During the physician shortage of the middle of the last century, the federal government began creating about 50 new medical schools , doubling the number of graduating doctors. Today our government can and should train more dentists to address the long-term problem. But there is no guarantee that the new recruits would practice in underserved areas, and we need practitioners now.

A more immediate solution is to train dental therapists who can provide preventive care and routine procedures like sealants, fillings and simple extractions outside the confines of a traditional dentist's office. Dental therapists are common worldwide, and yet in the United States they practice only in Alaska and Minnesota, where state law allows it. Legislation is pending in five more states.

The dental profession has resisted efforts to allow midlevel providers to deliver this kind of care, and the government has so far failed to push for the change. It must do so now. The federal government could encourage states to pass laws allowing these providers to practice by calling for demonstration projects proving their worth.

The best model for how this system can work is found in remote Alaska Native villages, many accessible only by plane, snowmobile or dogsled, where high school seniors once graduated with full sets of dentures. Unable to recruit dentists to these areas, Alaska has been training its own dental therapists.

When Alaska began the project in 2003, there were no training programs in the country, so the state first sent students to New Zealand, which had a rigorous training program for dental therapists. These therapists now travel to small clinics and schools, often carrying their equipment with them. They consult with a supervising dentist from the region but do most procedures themselves. Many were raised in the communities in which they now work, so they understand the culture, children trust them and they have quickly become local health care leaders. Thanks to the program, around 35,000 people now live in communities where there is regular access to dental care .

We have two years to prepare before millions of children will be entitled to access to dental care, and Alaska shows us the way forward. Access means more than having an insurance card; it means having professionals available to provide care. Public officials should foster the creation of these midlevel providers — and dentists should embrace the opportunity to broaden the profession so they can expand services to those in need.

Louis W. Sullivan, a physician, was the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Burma, S. China Sea Dominate ASEAN Summit Discussions

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This week leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are meeting in Phnom Penh, where competing claims to parts of the South China Sea, Sunday"s election in Burma and North Korea's planned satellite launch are dominating discussions.

Photo: AP

Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN Foreign Ministers from left, K. Shanmugam of Singapore, Surapong Tovichakchaikul of Thailand, Pham Bihn Minh of Vietnam, Hor Namhong of Cambodia and Lim Jock Seng of Brunei wait for their counterpart from Myanmar Wunna Maung Lwin, bottom, prior to the photo session of their meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia April 2, 2012.

Burma's political reform process has been a high-profile objective for the 10 member bloc of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Last November the group agreed to grant Burma the chair of the bloc in 2014 on the basis of its democratic reforms.

After Sunday's by-election, which Burma had invited ASEAN representatives to observe, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa praised the vote's execution.

"As far as Indonesia is concerned, this is a very good development. An important step in further making irreversible the democratization process in Myanmar," Natalegawa said.

This year's chair, Cambodia, released a statement calling the election "successful" and "peaceful" and urged the international community to consider lifting longstanding economic sanctions.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said he was "encouraged" by the vote in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

"We hope that this will contribute to a more effective integration of Myanmar [Burma] in the global community and Myanmar and ASEAN will be able to work on other issues that will be more meaningful and contributing to the well-being of the people of Myanmar, rather than being stuck on the issue of instability and lack of political reconciliation in Myanmar," he said.

During the leaders summit this week, territorial disputes in the South China Sea are also expected to be a high-profile issue.

Four ASEAN members claim rights to parts of the South China Sea, along with China and Taiwan.

At a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday, the Philippine's secretary of foreign affairs, Albert del Rosario, urged his counterparts to take concrete steps forward on a collective code of conduct, or COC, for dealing with the dispute. Del Rosario said he hopes ASEAN will formulate its stance by the end of the year, but acknowledged the group remains divided over how to proceed.

"I think the difference of opinion lies in the fact that we are advocating a draft of the COC be prepared before we sit down with China," del Rosario said. "Others are taking the view that China should be invited to come in for the initial discussions."

ASEAN ministers also expressed concern over North Korea's announcement of a planned satellite rocket launch. Observers have said the rocket trajectory could see it head south near Philippines, Australian or Indonesian territory.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Natalegawa called on North Korea to refrain from the launch.

"We are obviously deeply concerned by the prospect of the launch of the satellite, both in terms of the safety and security issues," Natalegawa said. "But most of all, and not least, in terms of the disruption it is causing to the conditions conducive for the resumptions of six party talks."

Monday's meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers is ahead of Tuesday's main leaders' summit.

Theo www.voanews.com

Memo From Mexico

Lap nghiep | school of medicine |

A Race Recast by YouTube and Twitter

Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI campaigning in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico. Limits on political advertising are forcing presidential candidates to adapt.

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and ELISABETH MALKIN

Published: April 29, 2012

MEXICO CITY — It sounds like the typical hardball, American-style campaign. The presidential candidate from the incumbent's party calls the front-runner a "liar" in television and Internet advertisements. Supporters of the front-runner retaliate with a Web site and Twitter posts that say his top opponent "lies." And the third-place candidate wraps the gaffes of both of them into a YouTube video cheekily titled "Excuses Not to Debate."

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The PAN candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, at a rally in Monterrey, Mexico. The election is July 1.

State-of-the-art, no-holds-barred political warfare, perhaps, except that after President Felipe Calderón narrowly won a divisive race here six years ago that featured ads calling his opponent a danger to the country, Mexico 's political establishment had vowed that it would tolerate no more of that.

But a law passed in 2007 that was intended to keep campaigning orderly and clean — it bans the Mexican equivalent of political action committees, limits spending, regulates language in advertisements and tightens the official campaign period to just 89 days — has been undercut by the unpredictable and uncontrollable Web.

On Web sites and in the online social media, a parallel battlefield has emerged as candidates vie for the support of voters, more than a quarter of whom, polls say, have not made a choice as the July 1 election nears. Many of the undecided are part of the fast-growing bloc of young middle-class Mexicans who tend to be more politically independent and may prove pivotal in determining the country's next president.

"If you want to win a campaign you need to win every space of the terrain," said Agustín Torres Ibarrola, a 34-year-old lawmaker who coordinates the digital strategy for Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of Mr. Calderón's National Action Party , or PAN, who trails by double digits in the polls.

Mr. Torres was sitting beside a large screen displaying his TweetDeck page, which manages Twitter and Facebook accounts, as a handful of young campaign workers hunched over laptops monitoring social media sites and posting material related to a dispute with the campaign of the front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Recently, Mr. Torres used his Twitter account to take a veiled swipe at Mr. Peña Nieto, alluding to suspicions that his party, which governed Mexico for seven decades until 2000, would make deals with drug gangs. The election, Mr. Torres wrote, was "about choosing between politicians who fight drug trafficking or politicians who tolerate it."

"Which country do you want?" he asked.

Just under a third of Mexico's population regularly uses the Internet (compared with 80 percent in the United States). But the campaigns have seen how social media sites can help shape public opinion — newspapers here closely track and publish the number of each candidate's Twitter and Facebook followers — and they skirt the heavily regulated airwaves.

Often using automated programs or armies of volunteers, the campaigns battle to land trending topics on Twitter and celebrate them as important discussion points. Last Wednesday, "Josefina gets confused," a reference to a verbal gaffe by Ms. Vázquez Mota, was a popular topic for much of the day.

So far, the weighty problems facing Mexico — the drug war, feeble job growth, persistent poverty and the failings of the police and judicial system — have received little attention and generated only vague pronouncements.

Instead, the campaigns expand and refine their digital attacks, often using hard-to-trace and easily disavowed volunteers and supporters to do the dirty work.

Aurelio Nuño Mayer, the media director of the Peña Nieto campaign, said his operation relied on about 20,000 volunteers to post Twitter messages and drive up the popularity of favored topics. While the volunteers are ordered not to undercut Mr. Peña Nieto's positive message of efficiency — he is broadcasting new ads this week equating the divisiveness in the race this year to that of the 2006 campaign — Mr. Nuño Mayer acknowledged that the campaign could not always control them.

"Twitter is like a jungle," he said. "With the anonymity, it is like a free-for-all."

A dizzy spell by Ms. Vázquez Mota during a speech and her failure to directly answer a student's question on education policy ricocheted across YouTube and Twitter, though none of it carried the signature of her opponents' official campaign or party.

Mexico has taken one of the more aggressive approaches toward regulating campaign speech, with the result that parties are repeatedly complaining to the election commission about opponents' ads and remarks, and then calling the decision biased when it goes against them.

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Vietnam helps raise Cambodias rice productivity

may chieu | school of medicine |

The conference, held by the Binh Dien fertilizer company, with the participation of Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam On, heard that with the widespread use of Vietnam's fertiliser, productivity on Cambodian rice fields has tripled to 5-6 tonnes per hectare during the past ten years.

At the event

More than 15% of Binh Dien's annual fertiliser output of 1 million tonnes of NPK is sold in Cambodia.

Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam On said the Cambodian government is prioritising agricultural development to ensure food security, reduce poverty among farmers, and gradually increase rice exports.

( VNA )

Theo en.baomoi.com

Corrections April 28

religionchung.name.vn | school of medicine |

Because of an editing error, an article on April 20 about the halting of fraternity pledging at Binghamton University because of hazing complaints overstated what is known about the cause of death of a student at Cornell University in 2011. While the student, who was not named in the article, died after drinking at a fraternity kidnapping ritual, the cause of his death is the subject of current criminal and civil cases. It has not been determined that forced drinking indeed killed him.

Published: April 27, 2012

NEW YORK

BUSINESS DAY

Because of an editing error, the Advertising column on April 18, about marketers' rapid embrace of the image-sharing Web site Pinterest, misstated the number of Twitter posts that could be made of a thousand words. The number would vary according to word length, but would almost certainly be more than "about seven posts." (Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, not 140 words. While that number of characters could yield a thousand words in about seven posts, they would have to be single-letter words like "a" and "I." This would result in a post not much worth retweeting.)

SPORTS

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about the Rangers' 2-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of their playoff series described incorrectly in some copies the shots the Senators took in the final 7 minutes 40 seconds. They had six shots on goal, not six shots. (They took 14 shots over all, including, as the article correctly noted, five that were blocked and three that missed the net.)

•

A report in the baseball roundup on Thursday about the season-ending shoulder injury of Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda misstated his age in some copies. He is 23, not 22.

WEEKEND

An entry in the Spare Times for Children listings in some editions on Friday misstated the number of free family films that will be screened today at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The center is showing one film, "The NeverEnding Story," not three.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Friday about the disc jockey Pete Fornatale misidentified the area of Long Island where he had lived for many years. It is Port Washington, not Port Jefferson.

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African Economists Push to Sever Colonial-Era Monetary Ties with Europe

may quay phim | medical school interview questions |

While weak European economies create concerns around the world, economists in Africa are pushing to sever ties binding the continent to former colonial powers. One idea is to decouple the CFA franc, the currency in 14 African countries, from the euro.

Photo: VOA - N. Colombant

Some economists say ending the peg between CFA francs, shown here on a bus in Abidjan, and the euro would help West and Central African economies.

One of the speakers at the Revival of Pan-Africanism Forum was economist Salomon Samen, who advises several African countries on economic policy.

Samen calls the post-World War II CFA franc, which is used in West and Central Africa, an umbilical cord that needs to be cut. A good start, he says, would be to loosen the fixed relationship between the euro and the CFA franc.

"The fixed parity between the CFA and the euro is no longer justified because trade between Africa and Europe has changed drastically over recent years with the greater role being played by Asian countries and China, and with a lot of trade being done with the United States as well. So it is not acceptable to have a simple fixed parity between the CFA franc and the euro. It has got to be overhauled," he said.

Another African economist, Ivory Coast national Nash Kpokou, wants CFA franc countries to have their own currencies, so that African economies can increase their competitiveness and not be so influenced by the uncertain standing of the euro. "If we have our own currency, this will really help our economies to deal with most of the countries and they will be able to sell their goods to the rest of the world," he said.

Kpokou calls the current system "banking tourism" that has benefited France and French-backed leaders, not African populations, even when their countries post solid economic growth. "When we talk about growth it should be inclusive.  They miss that it should take into consideration reducing poverty. So when growth is not taking into consideration the population, then there is no growth," he said.

Kpokou also notes that the current system requires participating countries to hold most of their foreign reserves in accounts held at the French Treasury. Other participants at the forum said that instead of relying on this system to reassure investors who are wary of doing business in a highly-indebted region, African states need to improve their business and investment environments, and increase intercontinental trade.

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