CSM Broadcast Alert

Christian Science Monitor White House Correspondent Linda Feldmann will be a guest on MSNBC today, May 14 at 12:30 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. Linda will discuss Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

Linda's recent article, "No lockstep within the GOP's big '08 field, debate showed" can be read online.

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(c) 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved

Former weed may fill world's fuel tanks

In the world's most arid agricultural environments, jatropha is emerging as an alternative to ethanol.

Germinal industry: A woman tended a jatropha plant last October northeast of Mumbai. Foreign firms are contracting villagers to grow the oil-rich plant. Reuters/Newscom

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Reporters on the job: Mark Sappenfield shares the story behind the story .

JAGDALPUR, INDIA - In an overgrown corner of Moolchand Sethia's plantation, runty and unloved, stands what could be the next revolution in the world's search for renewable fuel.

From China to Brazil, countries have begun setting aside tens of thousands of acres for the cultivation of jatropha – a plant many experts say is the most promising source for biodiesel. At the same time, companies from Europe and India have begun buying up land throughout Africa to establish jatropha plantations.

Report: Israel's Shin Bet uses torture illegally in interrogations | csmonitor.com

posted May 07, 2007 at 11:40 am EDT - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0507/p99s01-duts.html

Two human rights groups say Palestinian prisoners routinely abused, though Israel dismisses the charges.                                      

By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

                   
The Israeli security service agency Shin Bet routinely violates international law by torturing Palestinian prisoners, according to a new report released by two Israeli human rights organizations.

B'Tselem and HaMoked, both of which work to fight violations of Palestinians' human rights, write in their joint report that their findings came from interviews with 73 West Bank Palestinians who were arrested and interrogated by Shin Bet, also known as the Israel Security Agency (ISA), between July 2005 and January 2006. The report, published Sunday, found that Shin Bet's interrogations, which averaged 35 days long for the 73 Palestinians interviewed, routinely included physical and mental abuse that approached torture, as well as outright torture in many cases. continue...

CSMonitor-This Week's Backstory Articles

Now everyone's a comedian
From stockbrokers to firefighters, more people are pursuing stand-up comedy as a hobby - or even a second career.

Spain's collection agents practice public humiliation
Debtors may be visited by collectors disguised as monks, bagpipe players, bullfighters, or even Zorro.

The iPod generation in stitches
Young people discover a traditional domestic art tailor-made for them - sewing.

The sharks of Australian suburbia
The prime waterfront real estate on Australia's Gold Coast is not just habitat for humanity - even sharks want a piece of the action.

Having a (broom) ball
The sport with the air of a snowball fight may be the biggest thing to sweep college campuses since streaking.

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

Having a (broom) ball

Having a (broom) ball

The sport with the air of a snowball fight may be the biggest thing to sweep college campuses since streaking.

Mike Eruzione played his college hockey in this hallowed rink before he skated to Olympic glory at Lake Placid, netting the game-winner against the Soviets to set up a gold-medal game and a triumph for true amateurs. If there's a miracle on ice here tonight it will involve someone – anyone – not falling down and then laughing about it.

With 2:24 left in the second period, a player from the FUBs (no one seems eager to decode the acronym) swats a regulation orange ball backward from between his shoes. On the bench, his teammates – even a student coach who had looked Pat Riley-serious in his suit – erupt in laughter. Seconds later a helmeted player from Poison Ivy heads the ball, soccer-style. All seven spectators in the cavernous rink go wild.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

The gambling scam on America's poor

from the May 2, 2007 edition

What kind of government spends millions of taxpayer dollars peddling false hope to confiscate cash from its poorest citizens to fatten state coffers?

By Mark Lange

 

San Francisco

Some scandals don't involve illegal activity – they're just outrageous and unjust. Take gambling in America. Abetted by Congress, legislatures from 48 states now sponsor gambling operations and lottery monopolies to balance their budgets on the backs of their poorest and most vulnerable citizens – while basking in the virtue of fighting tax increases.

Three decades ago, there were no casinos outside Nevada, and only 13 states ran lotteries. Today 19 states support commercial gambling in densely populated markets near interstates, 28 states host Indian casinos, 41 run lotteries, and 43 allow track-side betting. Even so-called riverboat casinos have expanded rapidly as states lift wager limits to permit casinos they couldn't sanction on solid ground. Only Utah and Hawaii still ban gambling.

States have stretched legal loopholes to ludicrous lengths for the same reason Jack Abramoff wielded his influence: They want the money, and the money is there for the taking. US gambling interests have seen an eightfold increase in revenues since 1982. Last year, Americans legally wagered more than $1.1 trillion. Along the way they lost more than they spent on movie tickets, recorded music, spectator sports, video games, and theme parks combined.

Clearly, America's appetite for what industry officials benignly call "gaming" has grown. It's all legal, so what's the big deal? Here's the scandal: In 1999, the bipartisan National Gambling Impact Commission found that 80 percent of gambling revenue comes from households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year.

More remarkably, players with annual incomes of less than $10,000 spent almost three times as much on gambling – in aggregate, real dollars – as those with incomes of more than $50,000. With the aggressive encouragement of state governments, US gamblers – most of them scraping by on limited incomes – had to lose $84 billion last year in casinos and lotteries for the states to raise $24 billion in new revenues.  continue...

US reconstruction 'successes' in Iraq falling apart

posted May 02, 2007 at 1:00 p.m. EDT

A government inspector report finds sectarian violence, corruption major factors in the disrepair.

By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

A report by the federal office overseeing US reconstruction in Iraq says that of eight rebuilding projects, costing some $150 million and previously declared successes, seven are now in disrepair or have been abandoned.

The New York Times writes that the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), which released its quarterly report to Congress Monday, found that the "seven projects were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting, and expensive equipment that lay idle." continue...

Liberating the inhibitors

Can obeying the Ten Commandments actually be freeing?

We recently had our gas central heating serviced. The serviceman said it needed "inhibitors" to protect us by preventing corrosion.

The use of the word "inhibitor" as something positive took me by surprise; I'm used to thinking of it as a negative term.

That set me thinking about some recent free speech issues where I felt that a little wise inhibition – or self-discipline – might have gone a long way to reducing tensions and might even enlarge the audience of those who would give these points thoughtful consideration.  Continue...

States take lead in cutting carbon emissions

from the April 27, 2007 edition

Tide power: Last December, the state of New York installed the first of six underwater turbines in New York City's East River (off Roosevelt Island, NY), to harness the energy of the tides. The other turbines will be installed by early May.

At least 21 states and the District of Columbia are on track to trim 108 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

While the US ponders whether to curb greenhouse gases, several states are pushing ahead with plans that already are bearing fruit.
At least 21 states and the District of Columbia are on track to create 46,000 megawatts of renewable power by 2020, eliminating 108 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions a year that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). While that's a drop in the bucket of 6 billion tons of CO2 emissions that vehicles and power plants spew out annually, it is beginning to have an impact. ...........

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Smells like bad cologne

A cheap marketing ploy? Sure, but a fun one. On May 3 fans of NBC's My Name is Earl will be allowed to smell their way along with the popular sitcom. The catch: you've got to own a copy of next week's TV Guide, which will include scratch and sniff panels. Scents include new-car smell and obnoxious cologne; onscreen boxes tell you when to scratch. continue...

Now everyone's a comedian

from the April 27, 2007 edition

From stockbrokers to firefighters, more people are pursuing stand-up comedy as a hobby – or even a second career.

By Harry Bruinius | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

JOHN KEHE – STAFF

NEW YORK - When Billy Bingo, New York's "bravest comic," took the stage at Comic Strip Live in Manhattan, his first joke went straight to his alliterative mic moniker: "Of course it's a stage name, right? What mother would name her kid Billy Bingo? My real name is Gary Bingo." Most of the 35 or so in the audience laughed and grinned – a good start.

Actually, his mother named him William Denis, and "Bingo" is simply an old softball name his former firefighter friends gave him. "And I'm known as 'the bravest' not because I'm a fireman, but because of my lousy jokes!" he later quips. (The "bravest," see, is what we call firefighters here in New York. Cops are NYC's "finest," and sanitation workers, not to be left out, are the "strongest.")

Like many of New York's bravest, Bingo has a walrus moustache, hangdog eyes, and a mischievous grin. "In the firehouse, I was a kitchen guy," he says. "If we were going to pull a stunt, I'd have to be a part of it."

Now he often wears red suspenders on stage – a comic cliché long dubbed "hacky" in the world of stand-up – but Bingo makes it part of a self-deprecating shtick that emphasizes his blue-collar profession and, when all goes well, endears his "lousy jokes" to his audience. (And they're not that lousy, actually. He headlines at the biggest clubs in Manhattan and has just shot a pilot for a TV show.) continue...

A country-western Muslim

from the April 4, 2007 edition

Muslim cowboy: Kareem Salama grew up in Oklahoma and Texas, where his Egyptian parents settled. He says thethemes he sings about - unadulterated love, family, and religion - areas key to Islam as they are to country music. photo courtesy of kareem salama

With Egyptian roots and a southern drawl, Kareem Salama sings at a very American crossroad.

By Tom A. Peter | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Cambridge, Mass. - Kareem Salama – the main act on this evening's Muslim Student Association program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – nervously sips a bottle of water backstage as his guitarist/producer tunes a 12-string guitar.

The crowd buzz softens to a deferential hush as a bearded student takes the stage to start the evening with readings from the Koran in an Arabic melody that sounds like a medieval hymn.

It's Koranic recitations like these that inspired Mr. Salama, the son of Eygptian immigrants, to become a musician. But it's the peculiarly American circumstances of his life that drove this devout Muslim with a Southern drawl to his musical passion – country.

And so on this evening Koranic verse dissolves into the main act: the upbeat twang of what is perhaps the first Muslim country singer. In a down-home sound that seems at total odds with his look – an elegantly built man with a goatee style popular with young Arabs in his parents' Middle Eastern homeland – Salama croons to the enthusiastic audience. "Baby, I'm a soldier and I hear those trumpets calling again ... It's time for this simple man to be one of the few good men," go his original lyrics to a war ballad about the shared humanity of two soldiers on opposing sides. continue...

Subtracting a 'gifted' gap in math education

from the April 5, 2007 edition
Math whizzes: Fifth-graders at the Charter Oak School in West Hartford, Conn., participate in a class designed to nurture math talent in a diverse group of children.|Joanne ciccarello – staff
Project M3 steers often-overlooked students from low income and minority backgrounds into advanced math classes.

By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WEST HARTFORD, CONN. - When Katherine Gavin taught algebra to seventh-graders with advanced math skills, she found it was almost too late to tap into their potential. Accustomed to math coming easily, they sometimes resented the work. The key, she decided, is to grab kids when they still believe "the fun part of math is the challenge ... and persisting [until] you get that 'aha!' moment."
Now she's witnessing those treasured discoveries among third- to fifth-graders as director of Project M3: Mentoring Mathematical Minds. Based at the University of Connecticut's Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, it's designed to nurture math talent in a diverse group of students. About half come from low-income families, and many are not native English speakers.

Ms. Gavin recalls a girl whose family spoke Spanish at home. When she was chosen for Project M3, her teacher was surprised, having planned to hold the girl back because she wasn't doing well at reading. "We said, 'We see a lot of good creative and critical thinking skills in her' ... and she ended up being one of the top students when she left fifth grade."

An independent evaluation shows students have significantly outperformed control groups in the 10 Connecticut and Kentucky schools where Project M3 has been piloted. continue...

Step cautiously into an online bank

Interest rates and convenience are high, but so are security concerns. And customers have to be especially vigilant.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent

For savers looking to get the highest possible interest rates on their cash holdings, the call of the Internet keeps getting louder.

In March, ING Direct launched nationwide the first completely electronic checking account. Depositors receive 4 percent interest on balances up to $50,000 and have no minimum requirements. This month, HSBC plans to roll out its own high-yield electronic checking account with an interest rate that's soon to be announced.

High-yield checking accounts mark the latest enticing offer from a universe of about 60 domestically registered virtual banks, which conduct business online rather than in brick-and-mortar operations. Virtual savings accounts now routinely pay 5 percent or more. Deal hunters are also finding mortgages with reduced fees and higher than average rates on certificates of deposit. conitnue...

Look Out, Al!

Look Out, Al!

With 'affordable housing' buildings for sale, tenants worry | csmonitor.com

The US blocked the sale of Brooklyn's Starrett City complex until the buyers can prove it will stay affordable.

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

 

NEW YORK

With dozens of 20-story apartment towers looming behind her, Lashonda Carmichael looks out over a frozen inlet to the bay and the world beyond Brooklyn.

"This is where I come for peace of mind," she says as she balances her 2-year-old son on her hip.

Since she was a child, Ms. Carmichael has roamed these shores on the edge of this massive, affordable housing complex where she grew up. Most New Yorkers know it as Starrett City. Global economic forces now threaten to disrupt her calm and that of the almost 14,000 other tenants, almost 90 percent of whom pay rents below market rates.

That's because the complex is still on the auction block for a whopping $1.3 billion, despite Friday's decision by the federal government to block the sale. While the decision is a major blow to the proposed buyers, they insist they are committed to making the deal work...more