Rice price may trigger unrest

March 23, 2008
Rice price may trigger unrest
Govt in denial about ‘crisis’
By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter

Senator Loren Legarda warned Sunday of social unrest and political instability if the price of rice, now on a 34-year high, continues to surge.

Another senator, Mar Roxas 2nd, is also concerned about rice supply, saying the Arroyo government is in denial about the rice crisis. Like Legarda, he is proposing several measures to address the problem.

Legarda said, “Rice is an extremely sensitive political commodity. There is no question a big surge in the staple’s price is bound to spur social unrest and political instability going forward.”

Legarda, chairman of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs, said the Philippines set off the big surge by awarding a tender for rice at $708 per metric ton or about P30 a kilo, up nearly 50 percent from the price it paid in late January.

The Department of Agriculture earlier acknowledged that rice retail prices rose at least P3 per kilo versus a year ago, and some of the rice supplied by the National Food Authority was being repacked by unscrupulous traders and sold at much higher prices in the open market as commercial rice.

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Prostitution in America

Tonight, Diane Sawyer takes an intimate look at the business of prostitution, from the most expensive New York penthouses to the streets of Reno, Nev. At left, Sawyer visits the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Carson City, Nev. About 800 women work legally as prostitutes in Nevada, but there are many more who work against the law. There are an estimated 10,000 illegal prostitutes in Las Vegas.

Sawyer speaks with Max, one of the highest-earning workers at Dennis Hof’s legal brothel, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nev. To attract clients, Max created a Web site that gets almost 300,000 hits a month.

Hof, the owner and moneymaker of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, hires the brothel’s "bunnies" and allows men to take part in the fantasy world he has created. "We all want to be studs, even though we’re paying for sex," he said.

According to the latest FBI figures, almost 80,000 people were arrested in 2006 for prostitution-related crimes in the United States. Besides Nevada, the only other place in the U.S. that allows prostitution is Rhode Island, but only if it’s conducted entirely indoors, due to a loophole in the law that state legislators are threatening to close.

(ABC)

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Be the Best of Whatever You Are

 
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
by: Douglas Malloch

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill
Be a scrub in the valley - but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway some happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass -
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do,
And the task we must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail -
Be the best of whatever you are!

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Olympics chief rejects boycott over Tibet

 

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (AP) — The president of the International Olympic Committee rejected the idea of boycotting the Summer Games in Beijing over China’s crackdown in Tibet, saying it would only hurt athletes.

"We believe that the boycott doesn’t solve anything," Jacques Rogge told reporters Saturday on this Caribbean island. "On the contrary, it is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing."

Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet on Friday — the most violent riots there in nearly two decades — left at least 30 protesters dead, according to a Tibetan exile group. Tibetan exiles in India reported as many as 100 dead.

China ordered tourists out of Tibet’s capital and troops patrolled the streets on Saturday.

On a six-day tour of the Caribbean, Rogge expressed condolences for the victims and said he hopes calm will be restored immediately. He declined to say whether the committee would change its stance if violence continues or more people are killed.

"The International Olympic Committee has consistently resisted calls for a boycott of the Olympic games," Rogge said. He declined to comment further on Tibet during a brief news conference.

The head of the Swiss Olympic Committee told state-owned DRS radio that he is against a boycott but wants the IOC to intervene with China over the troubles in Tibet.

"The Rubicon has been crossed," Joerg Schild said. "I can’t bring myself to say that we’re going to go there and do sport."

CNN 

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Philippines “Most Corrupt” in Asia

 

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and China are among the most corrupt Asian economies, according to results of a regional poll of expatriate businessmen released March 10.

Singapore and Hong Kong retained their rankings as the cleanest economies, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said.

The annual survey covers only 13 economies in Asia and excludes other countries notorious for corruption, such as Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Some 1,400 expatriates were polled in January and February this year, PERC said.

Corruption remains a problem in the region despite huge economic progress made over the years, with governments generally lacking the political will to tackle the problem, the Hong Kong-based PERC said.

“The Philippines is a sad case when it comes to corruption,” the consultancy said in a summary report made available to AFP.

The Philippine situation is “probably no worse than in places like Indonesia and Thailand” but corruption has become politicized and is openly discussed in the media, unlike in authoritarian countries like China and Vietnam, it said.

The Philippines scored 9.0 out of a possible 10 points under a grading system used by PERC under which zero is the best score and 10 the worst.

Inquirer.net

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