Response:Your Guide to the Main Political Players in Kenya’s Elections

Excited for the results this year- not that it will affect me in any way. Since I'm leaving to college in a couple of months, this elections should mean nothing to me. However, I love Kenya and is interested in how things turn out. By the looks of it, the main figures are actually son of the first president (Jomo Kenyatta), son of the first vice president(Jaramogi Odinga) and others. Even Korea's previous president (President Park) was the daughter of a dictator who ruled Korea for 25 years. Although this is not the case for Kenya necessarily, we can see these figures highlighted as they are descendants of iconic figures.  Anyways I hope the election goes well and there is no violence involved throughout the entire process.

Your Guide to the Main Political Players in Kenya’s Elections

by 

Michael Cohen

Kenyans are gearing up for elections in August with trepidation. Four of the six votes held since the advent of multiparty democracy in 1991 have been marred by violence and intimidation. The lead-up to this year’s contest has been characterized by discord over the electoral rules and the impartiality of the electoral commission. The presidential race is set to be a cliffhanger, adding to the tension.

These are the main players and their party associations :

President Uhuru Kenyatta

Kenyatta, 55, who won power in 2013 after joining forces with one-time rival Wiilliam Ruto under the banner of the Jubilee Alliance, is seeking a second term. The son of the nation’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, he worked as a bank teller, studied politics, economics and government at Amherst College in Massachusetts and ran his own export business before entering politics. A member of the Kikuyu community, the largest of more than 40 ethnic groups in Kenya, he won election as a lawmaker in 2001 and served as minister of local government, trade and finance, as well as deputy prime minister. The International Criminal Court charged Kenyatta and Ruto with crimes against humanity for instigating violence after the 2007 vote that claimed more than 1,100 lives, but the cases were dropped in 2014 and 2016 respectively for a lack of evidence. Both men denied any wrongdoing.

Vice President William Ruto

Ruto, 50, is backing Kenyatta’s re-election with the understanding that he’ll get support when he runs for the top job in 2022. Ruto has been pivotal in rallying his native Kalenjin community, the country’s fourth-largest ethnic group, to support Jubilee. He served as agriculture minister and higher education minister in President Mwai Kibaki’s coalition government that was formed after the violence-plagued 2007 election. He was dropped from the cabinet in 2011, returning as vice president in 2013 after standing as Kenyatta’s running mate. Ruto has been implicated in several scandals besides the ICC case, including allegations that he defrauded the Kenya Pipeline Co. of millions of shillings in a 2011 real-estate deal. Kenya’s High Court acquitted him of all charges due to a lack of evidence.

Raila Odinga

Odinga, 72, has had three unsuccessful runs at Kenya’s presidency. He came closest to winning in 2007, when he and many observers maintained that he secured the most votes even as Kibaki was declared the winner. Odinga eventually agreed to become Kibaki’s prime minister under a power-sharing deal that helped end two months of violence. Odinga alleged he was cheated out of the presidency again in 2013, when he won 43 percent of the vote because there was widespread rigging, a contention rejected by the Supreme Court. It’s unclear whether Odinga will run for a fourth time -- his Coalition for Reforms and Democracy agreed to unite with three other parties last month to contest the elections under the banner of the National Super Alliance, or Nasa, and it has yet to choose a candidate. The son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila Odinga commands strong support among the Luo, the country’s third-biggest ethnic group.

Kalonzo Musyoka

Musyoka, 63, who trained as a lawyer, ran for the presidency in 2007 when he finished third behind Kibaki and Odinga. He was named vice president in the coalition government that was formed the following year and held the post until the 2013 vote, when he was Odinga’s running mate. He is the leader of the Wiper Democratic Movement, which also signed up to Nasa.

Musalia Mudavadi

Mudavadi, 56, served as former president Daniel arap Moi’s vice president in 2002 and as deputy prime minister to Odinga from 2008 to 2012. He also held several posts in Moi’s cabinet, including that of finance minister. He contested the 2013 presidential elections, finishing third behind Kenyatta and Odinga. Mudavadi, the leader of the Amani National Congress he founded in 2015, spearheaded the formation of Nasa and has signaled he’s prepared to be its presidential candidate.

Moses Wetang’ula

Wetang’ula, 60, is a leader of the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy-Kenya party, which is also part of Nasa. He trained as a lawyer and was previously chairman of Kenya’s Electricity Regulatory Board, foreign minister, trade minister and minority leader in the Senate.

Gideon Moi

Moi, 53, is the youngest son of Daniel arap Moi and the leader of the Kenya African National Union party. While Moi is backing Kenyatta’s re-election, his party has entered into an alliance with Isaac Ruto’s Chama Cha Mashinani party to contest the legislative vote. Like Deputy President William Ruto, Moi is a Kalenjin and could undermineJubilee’s support in the Rift Valley, a key voting block. Moi has served as a senator since the 2013 elections.

Cited:

Cohen, Michael. "Your Guide to the Main Political Players in Kenya's Elections."Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 16 Mar. 2017. Web. 06 June 2017. <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-16/kenya-s-elections-who-s-who-guide-to-the-main-political-players>.

Response: Deforestation in Brazil increased 30% in 12 months, agency says

It's quite ridiculous how many trees people can cut down in such a short amount of time. I also read this other article that talked about how people lost the motivation to preserve the amazon rain forest. It was like a movement for a while and then it kind of stopped. A lot of things can get done once the media gets the world's attention and it goes viral. When that heated viral subject disappears in the news people often forget and move on. I personally like trees and this is really disheartening. As part of my research project this article was a good read. No bias, just good informative article.

Deforestation in Brazil increased 30% in 12 months, agency says

RIO DE JANEIRO –  In the 12-month period that ended last August, deforestation in Brazil increased in almost 30 percent.

It is an all-time record that has set off a loud alarm among scientists, environmentalists and everyone who knows that the region is not only the so-called “lung of the planet” but also home to about 2.5 million species of insects, tens of thousands of plants and about 2,000 birds and mammals.

According to the latest report by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazilian agency that monitors deforestation, between July 2015 and August 2016 roughly 3,100 square miles went up in smoke mostly to give way to farmland and further cement the country’s position as the world’s top exporter of meat products.

Activists and experts agree that such depredation has been in large part possible to the loosening of the nation’s environmental laws and also to budget cuts that have left vast stretches of rain forest to the mercy of greed.

Cristiane Mazetti, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, said the Forest Code of 2012 brought about a sort of “deforestation amnesty” that contributes to the increase of tree felling by creating a sense of impunity.

She said the issue is hardly getting any government attention and that apathy seems to have taken over.

"We live a political moment in Brazil that puts the environmental issue in second, maybe third,” she told Fox News. “Congress spent a year focused on the impeachment vote of former President Dilma Rousseff and now prioritizes the approval of austerity measures. It has not allowed this issue to advance," she said. 

In addition, the allocation of funds for surveillance, monitoring and prevention has been dropping dramatically. In 2015 approximately $22 million were devoted to this end; in 2016 only $7 million were used for this purpose, according to the Environmental Ministry data.

To put an end to what some are calling an epidemic, in 2015 Greenpeace introduced a bill in Congress calling for a “zero deforestation policy.” It was filed along with 1.4 million signatures supporting the initiative. 

The bill is currently in the consultation phase, which means the population has until the end of 2017 to issue opinions and recommendations.

Environmentalists hope that the new law will reinstate some of the regulations that they say protected the land. Before 2012, any tree-cutting had to be justified and explained by a number of government agencies. Today, all that is required is a single permit issued by the Ministry of Agriculture in a matter of weeks.

Greenpeace has dubbed Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi “the largest forest destroyer in Brazil.”

According to Paulo Barreto, a researcher at the Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia (Imazon), the steady expansion of the country's farming borders is also being stimulated by an increase in cattle prices.

However, he said Brazil could still benefit from its oversized livestock – the largest in the world – without dilapidating the Amazon rain forest if “the government was vigilant, if it didn't change the rules. But when the [deforestation] threat increases and government weakens protection — that mix leads to this escalating situation," he said.

Large infrastructure projects in the Amazon region, such as the new Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant, in the state of Para, have worsened the problem by “leading to a disorderly urban growth of the site, pollution and even the flooding of various areas," according to the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA).

No wonder that in the INPE report released recently, Para is at the top of the list, with approximately 1,200 square miles (38 percent of the state) of deforested land in just 12 months.

Environmentalists say the magnitude of the threat demands a serious effort by the government and the world.

"There is also a lack of ambition to combat the problem,” Mazetti said. “Last year, the government set a goal to end illegal deforestation by 2030. But if we [continue to] allow this practice, admittedly illegal, for another 15 years, how can we achieve this goal?" she said.


Work Cited:
Torres, Carolina. "Deforestation in Brazil Increased 30% in 12 Months, Agency Says." Fox News. FOX News Network, 16 Feb. 2017. Web. 07 Mar. 2017. <http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/02/16/brazil-lost-almost-one-third-its-amazon-rain-forest-in-12-months-agency-says.html>.

'Good vibration' hand pumps boost Africa's water security (Response Included)

The simple up-and-down motion of hand pumps could help scientists secure a key water source for 200 million people in Africa.

Growing demand for groundwater is putting pressure on the resource while researchers struggle to accurately estimate the future supply.

But a team from Oxford University says that low-cost mobile sensors attached to pumps could solve the problem.

Their study shows that pump vibrations record the true depth of well water.

While fresh water from Africa's rivers and lakes is hugely important for people, it is dwarfed by the amount of groundwater available, estimated to be 100 times greater than the annual renewable fresh resource.

Groundwater lies in aquifers under the surface of the earth and is often extracted from wells by pumps. In many places these are simple devices, operated by hand.

In 2012 the Oxford research team started a trial in Kenya where hand pumps in 60 villages were fitted with data transmitters.

The idea was they would monitor the motion of the pump and the amount of water extracted on an hourly basis - if the pump wasn't working, a message was sent to a repair company and workers were dispatched to fix the problem.

The innovation cut the average repair time from over a month to less than three days.

Now the scientists have found another way to interpret the data from the accelerometers fitted to the pump handles.

They discovered that when the water is being drawn from a deep aquifer, it produces different vibrations than when the liquid comes from a shallow one.

"It's quite a simple and elegant solution to estimating groundwater and how it varies over time," co-author Dr Rob Hope from Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment told BBC News.

"In East Africa at the moment there's quite a severe drought, in South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and a lot of this might be dealt with earlier with these sorts of systems.

"If you can predict that groundwater levels are going down rapidly, rather than getting to problem and dealing, with it you can predict it much earlier on."

While the accelerometers and mobile data technology in the system is a fairly simple arrangement, the statistical analysis of the information is quite sophisticated.

Researchers took recordings of pumping lasting between 20 seconds and three minutes at different sites in Kenya and Oxford.

The scientists say the vibration value analysis is akin to the complex systems that monitor vibrations in aircraft.

"This project is a great example of using the latest developments in low-cost mobile sensors and machine learning," said lead author Dr David Clifton, associate professor of engineering science at Oxford.

"Working closely with development experts, we can help tackle water security, which is an issue of huge importance in the developing world."

There are now about 300 sensors installed across Kenya as an early warning system and some 15,000 people who are paying small premiums for rapid repairs. There has been very little damage or attempts to steal the technology in the communities in which they are installed, as people value the service.

The researchers believe the system can be rapidly scaled up and rolled out to other communities. With up to a million hand pumps dotted around Africa, they believe there is now a great opportunity to capture highly useful groundwater data.

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What is groundwater?

When water falls as rain or snow, much of it either flows into rivers or is used to provide moisture to plants and crops. What is left over trickles down to the layers of rock that sit beneath the soil.

And just like a giant sponge, this groundwater is held in the spaces between the rocks and in the tiny interconnected spaces between individual grains in a rock like sandstone.

These bodies of wet rock are referred to as aquifers. Groundwater does not sit still in the aquifer but is pushed and pulled by gravity and the weight of water above it.

The movement of the water through the aquifer removes many impurities and it is often cleaner than water on the surface.

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This "accidental infrastructure" could allow a network of hand pumps across the region to transmit data to the cloud to create a public dataset that would be widely used.

"Rather than just seeing these pumps as concrete and iron littered around Africa, these systems could be the little sentinels giving you this very valuable information," said Dr Hope,

"Mining companies, agriculture, institutional investors and communities could all benefit from this.

"I've been working in Africa for 15 years and I think it's one of the most exciting things that we've been working on and the results that we've had have been very promising."

Response

This article talks about how the 'Good vibration' hand pump is saving so many lives around Africa by providing a close water source. I experienced this first hand as I lived in a place called Namulanda (Uganda) and the first two years or so, we had no tap water. We used rain water that was clean or semi-clean water from a 'Good vibration' hand pump nearby when rain water from the tanks ran out. It was funny because you would see a line of native Ugandans and a random Asian in the middle. Water truly is the most important aspect in solving poverty in Africa as it provides sanitation, surplus of time (for jobs and other activities etc), and literally life (agriculture, just drinking water etc.) This article had no bias except for the fact of praising the British for helping out Africa with these pumps. They are doing a good job to be honest. Go water. 

Work Cited

McGrath, Matt. "'Good Vibration' Hand Pumps Boost Africa's Water Security." BBC News. BBC, 24 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Feb. 2017. <http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39077761>.

Legal marijuana sales creating escalating damage to the environment (Response Included)

Marijuana sales have created an economic boom in U.S. states that have fully or partially relaxed their cannabis laws, but is the increased cultivation and sale of this crop also creating escalating environmental damage and a threat to public health?

In an opinion piece published by the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Lancaster University in the U.K. have called on U.S. federal agencies to fund studies that will gather essential environmental data from the legal cultivation farms and facilities.

This information could then be used to help U.S. states minimize any environmental and public health damage caused by this burgeoning industry and aid legal marijuana growers in making their business environmentally sustainable.

State-by-state legalization is effectively creating a new industry in U.S., one that looks set to rival all but the largest of current businesses. In Colorado alone, sales revenues have reached $1 billion, roughly equal to that from grain farming in the state. By 2020 it is estimated that country-wide legal marijuana sales will generate more annual revenue than the National Football League.

But the article, titled "High Time to Assess the Environmental Impacts of Cannabis Cultivation" co-authored by William Vizuete, associate professor of environment sciences and engineering at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public health and Kirsti Ashworth, research fellow at Lancaster University's Lancaster Environment Centre say that this expanded cultivation carries with it serious environmental effects.

Their article points out that cannabis is an especially needy crop requiring high temperatures (25-30 °C for indoor operations), strong light, highly fertile soil and large volumes of water - around twice that of wine grapes. In addition, the authors state that the few available studies of marijuana cultivation have uncovered potentially significant environmental impacts due to excessive water and energy demands and local contamination of water, air, and soil.

For example, a study of illegal outdoor grow operations in northern California found that rates of water extraction from streams threatened aquatic ecosystems. High levels of growth nutrients, as well as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, also found their way back into the local environment, further damaging aquatic wildlife.

Controlling the indoor growing environment requires considerable energy with power requirements estimated to be similar to that of Google's massive data centers. No significant data has been collected on the air pollution impacts on worker's public health inside these growing facilities or the degradation of outdoor air quality due to emissions produced by the industrial scale production of marijuana.

The authors emphasize, however, much of the data on marijuana cultivation to date has come from monitoring illegal cannabis growing operations.

Dr Ashworth of Lancaster Environment Centre said: "The illegal status of marijuana has prevented us from understanding the detrimental impacts that this industrial scale operation has on the environment and public health."

"This is an industry undergoing a historic transition, presenting an historic opportunity to be identified as a progressive, world-leading example of good practice and environmental stewardship."

The continued expansion of legalization by the states does offer significant opportunities for the US Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institutes of Health (NIH, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to fund research into legal cannabis cultivation to protect the environment.

"Generating accurate data in all the areas we discussed offers significant potential to reduce energy consumption and environmental harm, protect public health and ultimately, improve cultivation methods," said Dr Vizuete . "There are also significant potential public health issues caused by emissions from the plants themselves rather than smoking it. These emissions cause both indoor and outdoor air pollution."

Response:

Short Summary is that Marijuana is not only detrimental for public health (if it's used as drugs) but is also ruining the environment. Marijuana apparently requires a lot of nutrients and water to supply its growth and that as we all learned in biology, ruins the top soil- eventually ruining the soil altogether. I think this is another good reason people should stop cultivating Marijuana. This article wasn't really biased but took the time to explain the significance of the damage this is causing. 

Work Cited:

"Legal Marijuana Sales Creating Escalating Damage to the Environment." Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology. N.p., 21 Feb. 2017. Web. 21 Feb. 2017. <https://phys.org/news/2017-02-legal-marijuana-sales-escalating-environment.html>.

Why Do Chinese Restaurants Have Such Similar Names (Response Included)

Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous across America from big cities to suburban strip malls to dusty back roads, to highway gas stations. They are frequently the heart of small towns. They offer up a familiar menu of comfort food, but also similar-sounding names. And that’s no accident. Even though the majority of the 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States are not large chain franchises, family-owned mom-and-pop shops adhere to a tried and true gustatory tradition.

“Familiarity is one of their biggest selling points,” says Cedric Yeh, who as project head of the Sweet and Sour Initiative at the National Museum of American History, studies Chinese foodways (see artifacts below) and helped put together a 2011 exhibition on Chinese food in America at the museum.

Many Chinese restaurant names are chosen for their auspiciousness—out of the owners’ desire for success. They include words like golden, fortune, luck and garden. In Mandarin, garden is “yuan,” a homophone for money.

The word play, says Yeh, is usually lost on American diners. To Americans, some names may make no sense or translate in a funny way, says Yeh, whose parents had a Chinese restaurant named Jade Inn in Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was younger.

One of the words that means good fortune in Cantonese is spelled most unfortunately “fuk.” Restaurants incorporating that word have gotten lots of attention, especially in the social media era, says Yeh, who also serves as deputy chair of the division of Armed Forces History.

“I don’t think they ever stopped and thought about why that might attract attention,” says Yeh.

An online Chinese Restaurant Name Generator pokes playful fun at the stew of name possibilities, spitting out “Goose Oriental,” “Mandarin Wall,” “#1 Tso,” and “Fortune New Dynasty.” Auspicious, perhaps, but maybe not the catchiest.

But Chinese restaurant names are packed with significance to Chinese people. Take “Fragrant Harbor”—the name for Hong Kong, says Andrew Coe, a Brooklyn-based author of Chop Suey, A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States. Chinese people would understand that it’s a Hong Kong-style restaurant, he says.

Names—along with menus and decor—established by the first owner of a restaurant rarely change, even if the business changes hands multiple times, as they often do, Coe says. The Chinese restaurants follow a formula. “They believe in consistency and not scaring away the customers,” Coe says. If the name changes, it could mean a change in cuisine.

Most Chinese restaurants in America also get their menus, their décor and even their workers from a small group of distributors, most based in New York, although some are in Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston, a city with a growing Chinese population, Coe says. 

Chinese restaurants—ones that also catered to Americans, and not just Chinese immigrants—didn’t start to proliferate until the late 19th century. The center of the Chinese food universe was New York City, where many Chinese ended up after fleeing racial violence in the American west. In the east, especially in the roiling immigrant stew that was New York City at the time, while anti-Chinese sentiment existed, it was no more virulent than the bigotry against other immigrants, Coe says.

Immigrants from Canton (the southern province that surrounds Hong Kong and now known as as Guangdong) opened most of the early U.S. restaurants. Cantonese influence continues to be strong, but with another wave of Chinese immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s, the cuisine and culture of Fujian province joined the American mix, along with dishes from Hunan, Sichuan, Taipei and Shanghai. And now, with growing numbers of Chinese students attending American universities, interesting regional influences are showing up in perhaps unexpected places like Pittsburgh, says Coe.

But the names all continue to be similar and say something to both American and Chinese diners, says Yeh. “You want to give the customer the idea that you’re coming to a Chinese restaurant,” he says. The restaurant also has to pitch itself as something more exotic than the Chinese place down the street, so it may become a little more fanciful with the name, he adds.

The Washington Post in 2016 analyzed the names of some 40,000 Chinese restaurants and determined that “restaurant,” “China,” and “Chinese” appeared together in about one-third of the names. “Express” was the next most popular word, with “Panda” running close behind, in part because there are more than 1,500 “Panda Express” restaurants, part of a chain.

“Wok,” “garden,” “house,” and “kitchen,” also were frequently used. “Golden” was the most-proffered color, and panda and dragon were the most well-used in the animals category.

The panda-China connection in restaurant names is a more recent thing, but both the dragon and phoenix are traditionally associated with Chinese culture and history, Coe says. “Imperial” also has deep connotations for Chinese people, evocative of its past. For restaurants, “it implies a kind of elevation of the food,” says Coe, but often, not much else might be a cut above. One of Coe’s favorite restaurants in Queens, “Main Street Imperial Chinese Gourmet,” has wonderful food, but is basically a hole in the wall, he says.

As far as Coe is concerned, the name is far less important than the food. “What most Americans seem to believe about Chinese food is that it should be cheap and not very exotic and served very quickly,” he says. They expect something a little sweet, greasy, not too spicy, no weird ingredients, and some deep-fried meat.

Cantonese food is delicate and light, with many steamed or boiled items. “It’s one of the great cuisines of the world,” says Coe.

But at restaurants that cater more to Americans, the food has been altered to fit those diners’ expectations “that it’s almost completely unrecognizable”—unlike the names.

Work Cited

Ault, Alicia. "Why Do Chinese Restaurants Have Such Similar Names?" Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-do-chinese-restaurants-such-similar-names-180961996/>.

Response:

Well, before anything else, I want to say this article was enlightening and shed light on one of the biggest misunderstanding in my life. That is actually the only thing I can say. This article doesn't have a bias as it is informational of why Chinese Restaurants sound the same. Good article, good read.