My Daily Inquirer

Atlas Service Corps (Atlas Corps)is a completely new kind of social venture taking a new approach to facilitate international cooperation in the citizen sector. As you learn more about Atlas Corps, We hope you find ways that you can get involved as a Partner, a Fellow, a Volunteer or a Supporter. One of the fundamental underlining beliefs of Atlas Corps is that the problems we face in this world are too big to ignore, too overwhelming not to work together to address.

The Atlas Corps Fellowship Program strengthens leaders and organizations in the nonprofit sector through a 12 or 18 month international exchange for skilled, nonprofit professionals. Atlas Corps is helping to create a world where talented individuals and good ideas in the nonprofit sector cross borders to share best practices, learn new perspectives, and address the world’s most pressing social challenges. Applying to be an Atlas Corps Fellow is a competitive process, but one that provides for a fantastic educational opportunity.

Timeline: Spring Fellowship:

* Applications Accepted: August 15th – October 15th
* English Test and Interviews for Semi-Finalists: October 15th – December 15th
* Fellowship Start Date: March 1st

Fall Fellowship:

* Applications Accepted: February 15th – April 15th
* English Test and Interviews for Semi-Finalists: April 15th – May 15th
* Fellowship Start Date: September 1st

Eligibility Requirements:

* 3 or more years of relevant experience in the nonprofit/NGO/social sector
* Bachelor's degree or equivalent
* English Proficiency (oral, writing, reading)
* 35 or younger
* Applying to volunteer in a country other than where you are from
* Commitment to return to your home country after the 12-18 month fellowship

Application Process:

1. Eligibility – Candidates who meet the eligibility requirements above can apply to become a Fellow.

2. Online Application – Download the application and fill in your responses. Once you have filled in all of the required information in the word document, please fill out the online application. (Please note that you are unable to save your progress in the online application form so be sure to complete and save the word document with your answers just in case). We do NOT accept any applications in a Word Doc format but we encourage you to save this application for your records.

3. Essay Questions – Download the essay questions and submit them to apply@atlascorps.org at the same time as you submit your online application. We will not review your application until your essays are submitted.

4. Recommendations – Atlas Corps requires two (up to three) letters of recommendation from individuals who know you in a professional capacity and can write about your skills and experiences as well as your potential for success as an Atlas Corps Fellow. In the online form please indicate who your recommenders will be. Download the recommendation form and send it to your recommender with the appropriate deadline. Applications without at least two recommendations will NOT be considered.

5. Review - Applications will be reviewed by a selection committee including Atlas Corps staff and nonprofit sector, government, and business leaders from multiple countries.

6. Interviews - Phone interviews and English writing tests will be conducted with semi-finalists. Host organizations will conduct Skype video interviews with selected finalists. Host organizations will make their final recommendations to Atlas Corps, and Atlas Corps will notify the selected candidates in January for the Spring Fellowship and June for the Fall Fellowship.

7. Visa - After selected, the candidates will go to the U.S. Embassy in their respective countries for their J-1 / Special visa interviews. Once a candidate receives his/her visa, he or she will become an Atlas Corps Fellow!

Contact detail: apply@atlascorps.org
Moreinfo: http://www.atlascorps.org/apply.html

The National Humanities Center is a private, nonprofit institution for advanced study in the humanities.

Most of the Center's fellowships are unrestricted. Several, however, are designated for particular areas of research. These include one fellowship for a young woman in philosophy and fellowships for environmental studies; English literature; art history; Asian Studies; and theology.

The National Humanities Center does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national or ethnic origin, handicap, sexual orientation, or age.

Stipends
Fellowships are individually determined, according to the needs of the Fellow and the Center's ability to meet them. The Center seeks to provide at least half salary and also covers travel expenses to and from North Carolina for Fellows and dependents.

Applicants must hold doctorate or equivalent scholarly credentials. Young scholars as well as senior scholars are encouraged to apply, but they must have a record of publication, and new Ph.D.s should be aware that the Center does not support the revision of a doctoral dissertation. In addition to scholars from all fields of the humanities, the Center accepts individuals from the natural and social sciences, the arts, the professions, and public life who are engaged in humanistic projects. The Center is also international and gladly accepts applications from scholars outside the United States.

. Application Form (PDF file)
. Financial Form (PDF file)

Complete application instructions and forms are available from this website. Applicants must submit the Center's application and financial forms (which may be filled in and printed from this site) supported by a curriculum vitae, a 1,000-word project proposal, a one-page tentative outline of chapters, a short bibliography, and three letters of recommendation. Applications and letters of recommendation must be postmarked by October 15.

To have application materials mailed to you, please write to:

Fellowship Program
National Humanities Center
7 Alexander Drive
P.O. Box 12256
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2256
Phone: (919) 549-0661

Contact detail: nhc@nationalhumanitiescenter.org

Moreinfo: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellowships

The Justice Department says it may sue BP for damages from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a filing made Monday night with the U.S. District Court in New Orleans, Louisiana.

"At this juncture, the United States expects that it may file a civil complaint related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster," the court document says.

While the legal wording of the filing presents some ambiguity, the Justice Department has gone as far as to signal its intent by requesting that the court establish a track separate from the many private lawsuits. The government says its claims, "may involve complex scientific and economic expert testimony" that may not be needed to quantify claims from private parties.

BP told CNN it has no comment.

Other companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon drilling accident also might be subject to a federal lawsuit.

Justice Department attorneys told the court they may seek claims under the Oil Pollution Act, which was enacted in 1990 after the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, and the Clean Water Act, which gives the government the right to seek potentially huge penalties.

"The Clean Water Act authorizes the United States to seek civil penalties from various entities for oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon spill, in amounts potentially up to $1,100 (and in some circumstances up to $4,300) per barrel of oil spilled," the filing states.

Justice attorneys argue the government may seek compensation for the cost of removing oil; economic damage such as the cost of increased public services and loss of tax revenue; and destruction of natural resources and assessment of that damage.

The Justice Department has been conducting both civil and criminal investigations into the Deepwater Horizon accident. A department official would not give a timetable for legal action.

BP has already agreed to set aside $20 billion over several years to pay for claims resulting from the oil spill.

The company has paid the U.S. government $390 million for the cost of cleanup and last week received an additional bill for $128.5 million from the Obama administration.

Source: CNN

Posted by Jessie James

A bomb threat that led authorities to use sniffer dogs to inspect the Eiffel Tower and surrounding areas Tuesday turned out to have been a hoax, CNN affiliate BFM-TV reported, citing police.

The police press office said the telephone threat was reported at 8:20 p.m. and was treated as a routine occurrence; the tower was inspected to determine whether the threat was real.

A telephoned bomb threat also led authorities to briefly evacuate the St. Michel metro station, police said, according to BFM-TV. It was reopened within 30 minutes.

Some 2,000 people had been in the area of the Eiffel Tower and the park in which it sits when the evacuation was ordered, police said, according to BFM-TV. Briefly evacuated were a number a nearby apartment buildings and businesses, according to news reports.

"One person on the scene said the police came by and said there was a problem and they had to leave the area quickly, and that's what they did," CNN's Jim Bittermann reported.

A taxi driver said he drove to the tower two tourists who were planning to eat at the Jules Verne Restaurant, where they had made reservations two months ago, but they were turned back by police.

More than 100 cameras -- more than a third of which are infrared for nighttime surveillance -- are located on the monument, according to the tower's website.

It also includes a network of sprinklers, and more than 150 extinguishers. A water pipe from the ground feeds hydrants on the first two floors; the top floor's hydrants get water from pressurized water tanks.

The 324-meter-high (1,063-foot-high) tower is usually open from 9:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. in September. It was built for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, and was intended to last for 20 years, according to the tower's website. But it was saved by the advent of wireless telegraphy -- and its use as a platform for antennae. It currently holds 120 antennae.

The tower weighs 10,100 tons and is held together by 2.5 million rivets.

Source: CNN

Posted by Jessie James

Polar bears clinging to melting ice sheets have become one of the most frequently used images to portray the perils of climate change.

But a new report by the U.S. Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and UK-based Care for the Wild International (CWI) is bringing attention to the predicament of other equally endangered Arctic species.

Seventeen Arctic animals are highlighted in "Extinction: It's Not Just for Polar Bears."

Shaye Wolf, lead author and climate science director of the CBD told CNN: "The plight of the polar bear due to global warming is very well known and familiar. But many other Arctic species are suffering a similar fate -- from plankton all the way to the great whales."

The impacts of climate change are "unfolding far more rapidly in the Arctic than any other area on the planet" threatening its ecosystem, the report said.

A 2009 study by Donald K. Perovich and Jacqueline A Richter-Menge -- "Loss of Sea Ice in the Arctic" -- reported that the sea ice extent in 2007 was one million square miles below the average figure recorded between 1979 and 2000.

This, and other data suggests, say scientists, that summer sea ice could completely disappear in the Arctic by 2030.

The ice retreat is already spelling trouble for marine mammals like the Pacific walrus and the harp seal.

Pacific walruses, like many of the mammals in the report, are sea ice dependent says Wolf, with many having already suffering population declines.

"As we speak, there are 10 to 20,000 walruses holed up on Alaskan Arctic coastline. And that is attributable to sea ice loss," Wolf says.

"Walruses need sea ice for resting because they can't swim continuously. When they lose that sea ice, especially moms and calves, they are forced to come to shore -- where calves are very vulnerable to be trampled in stampedes."

Last year, Wolf says the stampede claimed 131 young walruses.

The number was even higher off the Russian coast in 2007 where several thousand calves died when around 40,000 walruses were pushed ashore.

Ocean acidification -- caused by increased uptake of carbon dioxide -- is happening more quickly in the Arctic than in warmer waters, says Wolf.

Shell-building marine creatures like the sea butterfly (Clione limacina) are particularly vulnerable to acidification.

Their loss would be potentially devastating for other species.

On land, the Arctic fox -- found on the southern edges of the Arctic tundra -- is facing "myriad threats from climate change," including shrinking sea ice and tundra, declines in lemming prey and increased competition from the larger, more dominant red fox -- which is edging north as temperatures rise.

All the animals in the report are at risk of extinction due to climate change says Wolf.

"What is going on in the Arctic isn't something that we can consider completely remote from ourselves. Actually, it's a fantastic barometer of what is going to happen in the rest of the world," CWI's Rebecca Taylor told CNN.

"The Arctic is ground zero for climate change and we're already pushing many species towards extinction. The key to preventing their loss is reducing our greenhouse gas emissions -- specifically carbon dioxide -- to a level of 350ppm or below. That is a level many leading scientists have called for to restore Arctic sea ice," Wolf said.

Source: CNN

Posted by Jessie James

Gates Cambridge Scholarship at University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is normally ranked in the top three universities worldwide. It typically receives over 9,000 applications for graduate study from non-British applicants, approximately 1,700 of whom take up their place at Cambridge. Gates Cambridge Scholarships are awarded to outstanding students from outside the UK to study at the University of Cambridge. The programme aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.

Eligible

* may be citizens of any country outside the United Kingdom.
* may apply to study any subject available at the University of Cambridge.
* may apply to pursue one of the following full-time residential courses of study:
o PhD (three year research only degree)
o One-year post-graduate course (e.g. MPhil, LLM, Diploma, MBA etc.)
o MSc or MLitt (two year research only degree)
o MBBChir Clinical Studies (3 year taught degree)
* must be admitted to one of the degrees above at Cambridge through the University's normal admission procedures. The Trust does not admit students.
* must be well prepared for the Cambridge course for which they are applying and must meet all of the conditions for admission specified by the University (e.g. academic, English language proficiency, if required, and any other conditions set).
* must be able to show evidence of high academic achievement, leadership potential, social commitment and a good fit with Cambridge.
* who are already studying at Cambridge are only eligible to apply for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship if they are applying for a new course of study (e.g. a one year ‘MPhil only’ student may apply for funding to continue on to the PhD). Candidates already studying at Cambridge who are not applying for a new course of study (e.g. have already started their PhD) are not eligible to be considered for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

How Competitive

* c. 7,000 eligible applicants apply for admission and funding
* c. 300 are highly ranked by Departments
* c. 100 are invited to interview
* c. 55 offered a Gates Cambridge Scholarship after interview

Once applicants have applied for admission and a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, the Trust asks academic departments in Cambridge to rank their very best candidates. A shortlisting committee then applies the four main criteria of the scholarships to produce a final interview list. Gates Scholars are selected after interview.

Contact detail: info@gates.scholarships.cam.ac.uk
Moreinfo: http://www.gatesscholar.org/apply

Afghan and coalition forces killed five insurgents in Nangarhar province overnight, including a Taliban operational commander who participated in intimidation campaigns and assassinations, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Sunday.

Intelligence reports indicate the commander, Qari Wali, was planning to conduct rocket attacks against area voting centers during elections next week, the force said.

Afghan and NATO troops found him in a compound in the village of Kambu, they said in a statement.

They first called by loudspeaker for everyone to come out peacefully, but some residents "were unresponsive," the military said.

As troops moved in, "several armed insurgents inside the compound displayed hostile intent," the force said.

They engaged and killed the five insurgents, including the Taliban commander, they said.

ISAF did not say whether its forces sustained casualties in the firefight.

There was no immediate Taliban comment regarding the incident.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/12/afghanistan.insurgents.killed/index.html?hpt=T2#fbid=bMRW93a6wVy&wom=false

Brazilian officials have said they will continue to crack down on farms accused of forcing workers into slave-like conditions, the country's labor ministry said after authorities rescued nearly 150 workers.

Brazil's labor ministry announced it had coordinated with law enforcement agencies to rescue 95 workers in Campo de Goytacazes, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and 51 workers in Cambui, in the Minas Gerais state.

In Minas Gerais, the 51 rescued strawberry pickers included adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17, ministry officials said in a statement on its website.

In Rio de Janeiro, the 95 rescued sugarcane harvesters had been denied basic sanitation, water and were carted around in dangerous modes of transport, the ministry said.

Officials added both rescue operations took place in August.

According to ministry officials, both sets of workers were toiling under inhumane conditions around the clock without breaks. The workers were exposed to high level of pesticides. Many were minors, the ministry said.

The employers of the rescued workers will be fined, the labor ministry said, though it was not immediately clear whether criminal charges would be pressed.

According to Reporter Brasil, a Brazilian anti-slavery reporting agency, recent crackdowns have exposed several high-profile sugarcane and soy landowners, resulting in the freeing of hundreds of slaves. Reporter Brasil has said that in 2010 more than 200 slaves have been freed in Rio de Janeiro alone.

At least 12.3 million people around the world are trapped in forced labor, according to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization. Brazil's large-scale agriculture, a colonial style system where a few families own huge swaths of land, makes it difficult for authorities to crack down on slavery, the ILO reports.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/11/brazil.slavery/index.html?hpt=T2#fbid=bMRW93a6wVy&wom=false

The mayor of El Naranjo, Mexico, in the central state of San Luis Potosi was gunned down and killed inside his office Wednesday, officials said.

Witnesses say that four armed and hooded men stepped out of a white truck at city hall, the San Luis Potosi government said in a statement. Two of the men posted themselves outside, and two went inside and to the top floor of the building, where they entered the mayor's office and shot him, the statement said.

The attack happened in broad daylight, at about 1:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), and was brazen even by the standards of Mexico's violent drug cartel wars.

At least seven mayors in various Mexican states have been assassinated in 2010.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned the "criminal and cowardly" killing of the mayor.

"The federal government reiterates that it will continue working for the security of the citizens, with all the available resources of the state," Calderon said.

Alexander Lopez Garcia assumed office in October of last year as a candidate for an alliance between the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the Ecologist Green Party.

The United Nations' climate body needs to "fundamentally reform" if it is to prevent a repeat of the error that led to the publishing of a report warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, an international committee reported Monday.

The five-month review called for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to "fundamentally reform its management structure" and strengthen its procedures to handle "increasingly complex climate assessments."

The InterAcademy Council, a scientific umbrella organization, also called for the setting up of an executive committee to replace the IPCC's largely part-time structure.

It also asked for checks on conflicts of interest by board members and stricter limits on the terms of the chairman, a position now held by Rajendra Pachauri.

The report says said the post of IPCC chair and that of the executive director should be limited to the term of one climate science assessment.

"Operating under the public microscope the way IPCC does requires strong leadership... an ability to adapt, and a commitment to openness if the value of these assessments to society is to be maintained," said Harold T. Shapiro, president emeritus and professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University in the U.S. and chair of the committee that wrote the report.

On Monday Pachauri said that member nations of the IPCC will decide whether he should stand down in the wake of the report, Agence-France Presse reported.

"This will be debated by all the governments of the world and they will decide what is to be implemented and when it is implemented," Pachauri told a news conference at the U.N. headquarters.

The IPCC released a 938-page study in 2007 pointing to evidence that climate change was already hurting the planet, building momentum for global action to limit carbon emissions that mostly come from burning coal, gas and oil.

The study, known formally as the Fourth Assessment Report, helped earn it a Nobel Peace Prize that it shared with former U.S. vice president Al Gore.

In January this year the IPCC said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were "poorly substantiated" adding that "well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly."

A key prosecution witness said Wednesday that he heard the accused plot the murders of 57 people in what is considered the worst politically motivated killings in recent Philippine history.

The landmark murder trial started Wednesday in Manila, with the witness testifying that the accused even ordered a backhoe to bury the bodies after the planned massacre.

Witness Lakmudin Saliao was a personal aide to Andal Ampatuan Sr., the former governor of Maguindanao province. Ampatuan's son -- Andal Ampatuan Jr., former mayor of Maguindanao province -- is accused of being the ringleader in the November 2009 massacre in Maguindanao.

There are 196 accused, about 500 witnesses and more than 11,000 murder charges involved in the case, which is expected to take years.

The wife and sister of political candidate Ismael "Toto" Mangudadatu and 30 journalists were among the massacre victims.

Mangudadatu had sent his family members to file paperwork allowing him to run for governor of Maguindanao. Their convoy was ambushed, and their bodies were found in a mass grave.

The Ampatuan family plotted the killings to keep Mangudadatu from challenging Ampatuan Jr. in the May 2010 gubernatorial election, Saliao said. The witness also said the Ampatuans went on to discuss how to cover up the killings, by burying the victims in mass graves just off a highway.

The witness said he later heard the elder Ampatuan tell the younger Ampatuan, "You know what to do."

Ampatuan Jr. allegedly replied, "We will kill them all, so that no one can speak."

The Ampatuans have run Maguindanao for years. The province is part of an autonomous region in predominantly Muslim Mindanao, which was set up in the 1990s to quell armed uprisings by people seeking an independent Muslim homeland in the predominantly Christian Asian nation.

An investigation has revealed that members of the Philippine police and army also were involved in the massacre, said an eight-member commission of the Philippine justice department. Yet dozens of the 196 suspects remain at large, said attorney Harry Roque, who represents the survivors of 14 massacre victims.

"It's the job of the police to arrest them. But we all know the calibre of the police. That is part of the problem," he said, adding that the Ampatuan family still controls Maguindanao. "People who were supposed to protect the people became the murderers."

A small asteroid passed within the moon's distance from the Earth on Wednesday morning, and another will do likewise later in the day, space watchers say.

The double encounter is an unusual event that shows the need for closer monitoring of near space for Earth-threatening encounters, according to NASA.

The objects don't pose a threat to Earth, and they will not be visible to the naked eye, said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Program, which tracks potentially hazardous asteroids and comets within 28 million miles of Earth.

The objects are visible from Earth as tiny specks of light with the help of moderately sized amateur telescopes, he said.

Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30, which is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet in diameter, passed within 154,000 miles of Earth at 5:51 a.m. ET Wednesday, the website PopFi.com confirmed.

The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet in diameter, will pass within 49,088 miles of Earth at 5:12 pm ET.

In case you were wondering, that means the two asteroids will pass within 0.6 and 0.2 lunar distances from the Earth, respectively.

Roughly 50 million objects pass through near-Earth space each day, Yeomans said. But what makes this situation noteworthy is that these two asteroids are passing so close to Earth on the same day and that NASA spotted them so far in advance.

"Things like this happen every day that we simply don't know about because we don't have the telescopes large enough to find them or surveys that are looking full-time," he said. "This demonstrates the system's working on some level, but we need larger telescopes and more of them to find objects that are coming this close."

The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, discovered both objects Sunday morning during a routine monitoring of the skies, NASA said.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first received the observations Sunday morning, determined preliminary orbits and concluded both objects would pass within the distance of the moon about three days later.

Yeomans described the discovery as a warning shot in a field of study of low-probability events with global, high-impact consequences. He said that it was only when scientists began looking for near-Earth objects in the 1990s that they realized there was a "problem."

"We have only recently appreciated how many of these objects are in near Earth's space and [it's] best that we keep track of them and find them," he said. "I think this is Mother Nature's way of firing a shot over the bow and warning Earth-based astronomers that we have a lot of work to do."