People stage a protest against Foxconn, which manufactures Apple products in mainland China, in May 2011 in Hong Kong

Last week, The New York Times gave us an inside look at what it’s like to work at Foxconn, the manufacturing company that owns several China-based factories that crank out Apple’s iPads, iPhones and iPods by the millions.

The story is full of examples of horrifying working conditions in Foxconn’s factories that would never fly here in the United States. Here are some of the more troubling ones from the Times story:

Foxconn is a 24-hour operation. Employees work six days a week, sometimes in 12-hour shifts. They’re on their feet for so long that their legs begin to swell. There are underage workers. They live in crowded dorms on the factory’s campus. In recent years, there have been reports of workers leaping from buildings in apparent suicides.

And so on.

The story even describes the gruesome death of one Foxconn worker after an explosion in a facility that made iPads in Chengdu, China. The worker’s “skin was almost completely burned away” by the blast, the Times reports. He died a few days later with his family by his side.

Foxconn denies the reports that working conditions are like what the Times describes. Apple refuses to comment on the record, but a leaked e-mail from CEO Tim Cook to all Apple employees says the company is committed to worker safety and that it takes all those claims very seriously.

So knowing all that, should we be concerned about where our iPhones and other gadgets come from and how they’re made? Or is the human cost so far removed from us here in the United States that we’re willing to look over it in favor of whatever fancy new touchscreen gadget Apple releases next?

The issue even has some people throwing around the idea of a boycott. One effort, hosted on the website Change.org, has collected more than 145,000 signatures from people calling on Apple to better protect its workers.

While those efforts sound noble, there’s no way boycotting Apple gadgets will actually work.

Let’s start with why people keep snapping up Apple’s iPhones and iPads by the millions each week in the first place.

When it comes to smartphones and tablets, Apple still makes the best there are. With the iPhone and the iPad, the company set a new standard that other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are still struggling to imitate. Apple can’t make them fast enough. On launch days, people queue up in massive lines so they can be one of the first to get a new iPhone or iPad.

Even if consumers do know about what it took to make their new gadget, as many likely do thanks to the widespread reports on working conditions overseas, it’s obviously not enough to keep them from getting caught up in the fervor of an Apple product launch.

I can’t see that ending just because of a new story in The New York Times or a proposed boycott.

But it’s not just about the massive popularity of Apple’s gadgets that keep people buying. It’s the price.

The latest and greatest iPhone model, the 4S, costs $199. iPads start at $499. One of the biggest reasons Apple can sell its stuff at such low prices is because they’re produced on the cheap in China, sometimes by sacrificing good working conditions to make it happen. (If you believe the reports.)

Those cheap production costs are why a lot of the anger comes from the fact that Apple is a massively profitable company. Right now it has almost $100 billion sitting in the bank. It could use some of that cash to put more pressure on Foxconn and others to improve working conditions overseas.

A successful boycott could force Apple to make those changes, but consumers will have to sacrifice something, too.

In a poll from the Times that ran with its Foxconn story last week, most consumers thought companies such as Apple should make products in the U.S. but still absorb the added manufacturing costs.

In other words, consumers don’t want to pay more for iPhones and iPads than they already do just to ensure factory workers get better working conditions. It’s all about money.

So even if Apple moved production to the U.S. or managed to heavily invest in China and improve working conditions there, it would likely result in higher prices for consumers. For a profit-driven company such as Apple, there’s almost no chance it would want to absorb those costs itself.

Yes, a lot of the heat on this issue has been put on Apple. But keep in mind it’s not alone. Foxconn and similar manufacturers in Asia make gadgets for several other major consumer brands. It’s not like suddenly switching from the iPhone to another smartphone will improve the lives of those who make it.

You may feel guilty buying an Apple product, but the problem won’t be fixed until all electronics makers change, too.

In the end, consumers would be the ones who have to pay to make working conditions better for the people who make your iPhone. And it seems unlikely there are enough of you out there willing to do that.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Steve Kovach.

CNN

People ride on top of a crowded commuter train in Jakarta, Indonesia

Indonesia has gone to imaginative extremes to try to stop commuters from illegally riding the roofs of trains – hosing down the scofflaws with red paint, threatening them with dogs and appealing for help from religious leaders.

Now the authorities have an intimidating and possibly even deadly new tactic: Suspending rows of grapefruit-sized concrete balls to rake over the top of trains as they pull out of stations, or when they go through rail crossings.

Authorities hope the balls – which could deliver serious blows to the head – will be enough to deter defiant roof riders.

“We’ve tried just about everything, even putting rolls of barbed wire on the roof, but nothing seems to work,” said Mateta Rizahulhaq, a spokesman for the state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api. “Maybe this will do it.”

Trains that crisscross Indonesia on poorly maintained tracks left behind by Dutch colonizers six decades ago usually are packed with passengers, especially during the rush hour.

Hundreds seeking to escape the overcrowded carriages clamor to the top. Some ride high to avoid paying for a ticket. Others do so because – despite the dangers, with dozens killed or injured every year – “rail surfing” is fun.

The first dozen or so balls were installed Tuesday hundreds of yards (meters) from the entrance of a train station just outside the capital, Jakarta. Painted silver, the balls hung by chains from what looked like the frame of a giant soccer goal.

But there was a glitch: the chains were too short, leaving a gap of about 16 inches (40 cm) between the balls and the roofs of the passing train carriages. Rizahulhaq said adjustments would be made.

If successful, the project will be expanded, with balls also set up near railway crossings.

Asked about worries that the balls could hurt or even kill those who defy the roof-riding ban, he insisted that wasn’t really his problem.

“They don’t have to sit on top,” he said. “And we’ve already told them, if the train is full, go to the office. We will be happy to reimburse their tickets.”

The commuters, known as “Atappers” or “Roofers,” meanwhile are hardcore in their determination to stay on top.

“I was really scared when I first heard about these balls,” said Mulyanto, a 27-year-old shopkeeper, who rides between his hometown of Bogor and Jakarta almost every day for work. “It sounds like it could be really dangerous.”

“But I don’t think it’ll last long,” he said. “They’ve tried everything to keep us from riding … in the end we always win.”

“We like it up there, it’s windy, really nice.”

Many of the roof riders – and regular passengers – say the main problem lies with Indonesia’s dilapidated railway system. There are not enough trains to meet demand, they say. And there are constant delays in service.

“People have jobs! They can’t be late,” said Parto, a trader at the Jakarta stock exchange, who can usually be found sitting inside. “If the train is late, they’ll do whatever they have to.”

Several years ago, paint guns were set up to spray those riding on the top of carriages so authorities could identify and round up the guilty travelers. But roof riders destroyed the equipment soon after. The exhortations of clerics didn’t work. Neither did the dogs.

At one point, police decided to do the expected: arrest the culprits. But their officers were pelted with rocks and they gave up.

People ride on top of a commuter train in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Indonesia has gone to imaginative extremes to try to stop commuters from illegally riding the roofs of trains, hosing down the scofflaws with red paint, threatening them with dogs and appealing for help from religious leaders. Now the authorities have an intimidating and possibly even deadly new tactic: Suspending rows of grapefruit-sized concrete balls to rake over the top of trains as they pull out of stations, or when they go through rail crossings. (AP)

huffingtonpost

Ade Namnung: (kapanlagi.com)

Comedian and TV presenter Syamsul Effendi, popularly known as Ade Namnung, died on Tuesday from a heart attack at the Mitra Keluarga hospital in Cibubur, East Jakarta.

He was 34.

“Ade had been taken to the intensive care unit about an hour before he died,” Ade’s brother Rizal Prasetyo said as quoted by kompas.com.

Ade was previously admitted to a hospital in Sidoarjo, East Java, on Dec. 19, 2011, after suffering a stroke.

Ade’s sister Dila said that his condition had improved after undergoing a variety of treatments.

“He even offered to become the master of ceremonies for the hospital’s anniversary celebration,” Dila said.

Ade was transferred to the Mitra Keluarga hospital not long after, before succumbing to a heart attack. (swd/mtq)

JAKARTAPOS

The move comes against a backdrop of anger and despair over Chinese rule, culminating in a growing number of protests and clashes with police, as well as a string of acts of self-immolation by Tibetans.

What is the dispute about?

The Dalai Lama is the traditional religious and temporal head of Tibetan Buddhists. He was made head of state at age 15 in 1950, the same year that Chinese troops occupied Tibet, enforcing what Beijing says is a centuries-old claim over the region. The Dalai Lama held negotiations with Chinese officials on Tibetan self-rule with little success. In 1959, he fled Tibet for exile in India after a failed uprising against Beijing’s rule left an estimated 85,000 people dead.

Over the years, the Dalai Lama has led calls for self-rule in Tibet, saying China has made life “hell on Earth” for Tibetans since the uprising.

Timeline of

Tibetan protestors rally near the Chinese embassy in New Delhi on December 7, 2011

an protests

“These 50 years have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and people of Tibet,” he said in 2009 from exile in Dharamsala, India. “Today, the religion, culture, language and identity … are nearing extinction; in short, the Tibetan people are regarded like criminals deserving to be put to death.”

Pro-Tibetan groups such as the International Tibet Network, claim hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of China’s rule, through torture, execution, suicides and starvation.

The groups also claim Tibetans have gradually become the minority population in their own homeland, as Han Chinese — China’s main ethnic group — have migrated to the region. London-based Free Tibet claims the construction of a rail link to Tibet’s capital, Llasa, in 2006 — part of China’s Western Development Strategy (WDS) — was intended to cement its control over the restive western regions of China, particularly Tibet and Xinjiang, where separatism remained strong.

Why are tensions so high now?

Resentment among Tibetans spilled over in 2009 when a protest in Lhasa turned violent, as Tibetan mobs burned vehicles and shops and attacked ethnic Chinese. Tibetan exiles say more than 200 people died when Chinese security forces clamped down, but Beijing denies this, saying 22 people, mostly Chinese civilians, died during riots. Activists say tensions have remained high ever since.

Last March, a young Tibetan monk died after setting himself on fire in protest against Chinese rule. Phuntsog, a 20-year-old monk from the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province, was the first of 12 protesters — including the first woman — to die by self-immolation for the same cause.

Earlier this month, protesters took to the streets in western China to mourn the latest person to die by setting himself ablaze. Citing witnesses, pro-Tibet rights groups said thousands of Tibetans marched on government offices before the police opened fire into the unarmed crowd, killing at least two protesters and injuring dozens.

CNN crew detained in China crackdown

The Tibetan government-in-exile has called on the international community to take action to halt violence.

“The Central Tibetan Administration urges the international community to not remain passive before the current situation,” Lobsang Sangay, the new head of the government-in-exile, said in a statement. “It is high time for it to intervene to prevent further bloodshed.”

What does China say?

The reports of the recent protests, which could not be independently verified, contrasted with the account given by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. It reported that “dozens of people, including some monks, stormed and smashed some stores along a main street and a police station” in the autonomous Tibetan prefecture of Ganzi in Sichuan.

“The mob, some armed with knives, threw stones at police officers and destroyed two police vehicles and two ambulances,” Xinhua reported, saying that the violence left one of the marchers dead and four wounded. Five police officers were also wounded, Xinhua said.

The same Xinhua report went on to accuse the rights groups’ accounts as “ill-intentioned hype.”

Beijing rejects accusations of oppression of Tibetans, saying its rule has greatly improved living standards for the Tibetan people.

It accuses the Dalai Lama of being a “wolf in monk’s clothing” who seeks to destroy the country’s sovereignty by pushing for independence. The Dalai Lama maintains that he does not advocate independence but wants genuine autonomy that would allow Tibetans to maintain their cultural, language and religion under China’s rule.

China remains unconvinced.

“The Dalai Lama states that he is not seeking Tibetan independence, but Beijing sees this as a mere cover, because he has never openly given up the demand for so-called ‘Greater Tibet’ autonomy, so Beijing sees his meetings with world leaders as pushing for political goals,” Wenran Jiang, political science professor at University of Alberta, told CNN.

Why self-immolation?

Activists say the disturbing acts reflect an increasingly repressive environment under Beijing’s control.

Sixteen people, all monks, former monks and nuns, have set themselves alight in the past year. Most of the suicide attempts occurred in Aba Prefecture and the Kirti monastery, also in Sichuan, which has become a focal point for Tibetans angry at the erosion of their culture.

“The incidents are a clear indication of the genuine grievances of the Tibetans and their sense of deep resentment and despair over the prevailing conditions in Tibet,” said new Tibetan leader in exile, Lobsang Sangay, in quotes carried by Free Tibet.

“It is therefore of the utmost urgency that every possible effort be made to address the underlying root causes of Tibetan grievances and resentment.”

Prominent Tibetan writer and activist Tsering Woeser told CNN last year that this kind of protest will continue as long as the Chinese government’s Tibet policy remains the same.

“If there is no improvement Tibetans will feel it’s better to die than be alive. They commit suicide to protest,” she said.

“The international community should impose pressure and condemn the Chinese government,” she added. “But so far, the pressure is not enough, the international community only appeals to Chinese government but there are no real actions such as an economic boycott.”

She added that Tibetan Buddhists can’t use violence against others to protest, so they harm themselves to get people to pay attention to their plight.

“This is not suicide. This is sacrifice in order to draw the world’s attention,” she said.

But China has accused “pro-Tibetan independence forces” overseas of encouraging the practice.

“Everyone knows that nowadays, except for the very few evil cults and extremist forces, all religions advocate respect for human life and oppose violence,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement in November.

“It is a challenge to the moral bottom line of all human beings if, instead of condemning the extreme act of self-immolation, some people are hyping or instigating it.”

CNN

Deadly cat and mouse game in Syria

Ten months into the uprising in Syria, deadly clashes between opposition fighters and government forces have now spread to suburbs just 15 minutes from the heart of the capital Damascus.

What’s the latest on the ground?

The opposition said heavy fighting continued between Syrian forces and the rebel Free Syria Army in Damascus suburbs, where Syrian forces have been battling to take back neighborhoods in Saqba and Maleiha located uncomfortably close to President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power in the capital.
At least 100 people were killed across Syria on Monday, with deaths in Homs, Daraa, Damascus and Idlib, according to the opposition Local Coordination Committees. A resident of Homs said six members of one family were found dead.

Another opposition group reported violence in Rastan, Daraa, and other towns and cities across Syria.

In one part of Homs, Syrian forces battled to take back a neighborhood from the rebel army and anti-government protesters, according to an opposition activist who asked that his identity be withheld over a fear of government reprisal.

The dead and wounded littered the streets of the neighborhood, which was under siege, the activist said.

More than 5,000 people have died since March, when the government launched a crackdown against demonstrators, according to the United Nations. Opposition groups estimate a higher death toll, with counts near or exceeding 7,000 people.

How is the international community reacting?

The Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria on Saturday, recalling all of its observers around the country to Damascus as violence escalates.

While some Arab League monitors will leave the country, others will stay in Damascus, but none will be conducting missions at this time, according to Ali Erfan, senior advisor to Arab League Secretary General Nabil el-Araby.

El-Araby is set to address the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday as it considers a draft resolution that would call on embattled president Bashar al-Assad to step down and transfer power.

Russia, which maintains trade relations with Syria, has proposed its own draft U.N. resolution that assigns equal blame for the violence on both al-Assad and the opposition, an option dismissed by the West.

In October, Russia and China issued a rare double veto of a resolution that lacked sanctions but would have condemned the violence in Syria. The draft that will now be considered also lacks sanctions but is tougher than the earlier version, which said nothing about transfer of power.

The Syrian regime has been under international pressure to stop the crackdown — and the U.N., the United States, the European Union and some members of the Arab League have called for President al-Assad to step down.

What did the Arab League monitors achieve in Syria?

The Arab League monitoring mission in Syria has been criticized for failing to stop the al-Assad regime’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protests across the country.

But the head of the Arab League observers in Syria, Sudanese Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi, said the mission was designed not to bring an immediate end to violence but to investigate and observe the situation.

The choice of Al-Dabi to lead the mission was controversial in itself: he was part of the Sudanese security establishment that put down the rebellion in the breakaway region of Darfur a decade ago.

Still, one expert says the Arab League mission, which began on December 26, kept the world’s attention focused on Syria at a time when attention had been slipping away.

“The presence of monitors served to galvanize the opposition, and we saw an increased number of demonstrations and anti-government activity during that time period,” Middle East professor Chris Phillips from Queen Mary, University of London told CNN. “But as a consequence we also saw the government step up its visible repression of the protesters.”

While critics say al-Assad has used the Arab League mission as a cover to continue suppression of protests in Syria, Phillips says it was important that the League be seen to be acting on the Syrian crisis before taking the issue up with bigger organizations.

“The Arab League have now exhausted their own internal options and they can be seen to have taken action themselves to try to resolve the crisis,” said Phillips. “It would now seem legitimate for the Arab League to now turn to larger bodies, certainly the U.N., to take action itself.”

Individual states in the Arab League have called for al-Assad to step down, but the organization as a whole has failed to table a similar resolution — and Phillips says that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

“While it seems likely there is going to be some internal negotiation (on a resolution) taking place, it certainly seems very unlikely Lebanon or Iraq — states who are allied effectively to Iran and Syria — will ever join calls for Assad to stand down,” said Phillips.

Will the international community intervene like it did in Libya?

Nothing will happen in terms of military intervention in Syria unless Russia changes its current stance, according to Phillips.

“Russia have said quite clearly that they’re not going to support anything that would risk al-Assad being forced from power,” Phillips told CNN.

“If Russia gave the same kind of green light for Syria that it did for Libya, there’s every possibility that you’d see military intervention, probably coming out of Turkey,” Phillips said. “But Turkey have said they’re highly reluctant to intervene unless they have NATO or U.N. backing.”

Is the opposition united against the al-Assad regime?

The longer the fighting goes on in Syria, activists and Western diplomats say, the more radicalized the revolution is becoming.

Fringe elements of Muslim extremist groups are moving in and sectarian rifts are widening as feelings of despair descend on some flashpoint Syrian cities.

While the besieged city of Homs has traditionally been a place of religious tolerance, “there is a real sense now that that is changing and being manipulated by people on both sides” of the conflict, according to Phillips.

President al-Assad belongs to the Alawite Muslim sect while Sunni Muslims form the majority in Syria.

“The older Sunni merchant class that feel the city is theirs rightfully are now turning on the Alawites, who they see as these recent migrants that don’t actually belong in the city,” said Phillips.

Many Christians have fled to Damascus as communities begin to divide on sectarian lines. Salafists — Islamic radicals, many of whom have brought terror tactics honed in neighboring Iraq — are moving into Homs.

Hard-liners inside and outside the country are already jockeying for post-al-Assad power, while the Alawite community fears the prospect of persecution if the government falls.

“The regime is trying to persuade the Alawites that if they abandon the government, they will be wiped out in the dog-eat-dog aftermath,” Phillips said.

CNN

Fight club: In this file photo, students of a junior high school arm themselves with stones they took from a damaged sidewalk. They brawled with students from another school in Jelambar, West Jakarta. The exchange of stones and missiles between the two groups disrupted traffic in the area. JP/P.J. Leo

Whether it is either a trend or a tradition, Jakarta may never be free from school brawls as the city lacks proper ways for students to express themselves.

National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said that sooner or later school brawls in the city come to a period of hiatus, but inevitably occur again.

“No fights had been recorded for some time, but we will definitely see another brawl again. It always happens because the root of the problem is never solved,” he said.

Another school brawl between SMAN 6 and SMAN 70 in South Jakarta broke out again last week, marking the first brawl of this year.

Equipped with sharpened bamboo and spare motorcycle parts, students fought for no clear reason. The melee took place for about half an hour before police officers and several residents finally managed to stop the fighting from escalating further. The fighting injured a number of students.

Arist said the brawls were actually a way of students expressing themselves.

“But they express themselves in a negative way. They don’t have a place or a way to express themselves in a positive way. The schools don’t provide it either. So they seek another way through fighting,” he said.

The condition was aggravated by doctrines that have been instilled for decades among students and the incapability of schools to instill tolerance and good behavior among students, he said.

“The so-called obligation to uphold the pride of the school and the existence of seniority are the examples of unwritten law at schools. So when pride is disturbed, they feel the need to protect it in a brutal way,” Arist said.

University of Indonesia education sociologist Paulus Wirotomo also said that most school brawls occurring in the city were a way for students to seek self-esteem, although in an unfortunately primitive way.

“Unlike the fight demanding reformation that we’ve recently seen in other parts of the world, the typical brawl here occurs for unclear reasons,” he said.

In addition, development in the city that had not focused on youth had made it difficult for the young to seek confidence outside their schools.

“They don’t gain confidence through academic achievements, but they can’t seek any achievement outside schools as there are no places to accommodate their passions — no proper youth centers,” he said.

“If the government and schools do not solve this, brawls will always be around.”

SMAN 6 and SMAN 70 have a long history of brawling between each other. Frequent brawling between the two high schools led to alleged attacks on journalists in September last year.

SMAN 6 students allegedly seized a video tape from a television journalist when the latter recorded a brawl involving students between SMAN 6 and SMAN 70. They also allegedly assaulted journalists from various media organizations who were staging a protest against the earlier attack.

Another deadly incident occurred last year when a 12th grader from SMK Satya Bhakti vocational school in Matraman, East Jakarta, died after he was stabbed in the right lung during a brawl involving students from his school and SMA 66 state high school on Jl. Dr. Saharjo in South Jakarta.

According to Komnas PA, 339 school brawls were recorded last year, almost triple the 128 cases in 2010. The fights took 82 lives, more than double from 40 in 2010.

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New skills: A former leprosy sufferer is retrained in carpentry. JP/Tarko Sudiarno

Housewife Sriyatmo has spent most of her life struggling for respect and dignity. Since first being diagnosed with leprosy at the age of eight, Sriyatmo lives with stigmatization.

She was only in second grade when she discovered scaly white blotches on her arms and, later, on her entire body. They were neither itchy nor painful.

“I just felt that my arms and other parts of my body became stiff,” she told The Jakarta Post.

Her long struggle began when doctors diagnosed her with leprosy. “People said I had contracted hereditary leprosy. But, where did it come from? I had no relatives from whom I could inherit the disease,” she said.

She also could not be sure that someone might have infected her with the diseases as none of her neighbors had leprosy, a chronic disease that affects parts of the body and the nervous system, especially peripheral nerves.

Shortly after graduating from junior high school, her parents sent Sriyatmo to live with her grandmother who helped her obtain medical treatment at Sitanala Leprosy Hospital in Tangerang, Banten.

Living with leprosy-affected people has made her understand that leprosy, often called Hansen’s disease (HD), is neither a hereditary nor contagious disease as assumed by most people.

With early diagnosis and proper treatment, leprosy can even be cured.

“The earlier the treatment is started, the better the hope of a complete recovery,” said Sriyatmo.

She was one of 40 former leprosy patients who attended the Bina Nusantara (BINUS)-Teach for Indonesia Declaration on Monday. The event was held by the university to tackle social economic problems, such as gender inequality and discrimination against disabled persons, including people with leprosy, by using Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a framework.

During the event, they shared their experience in battling stereotypes and stigma in the country that is still not accepting of people with such a disability.

According to the Health Ministry, the number of new leprosy cases detected as of Dec. 31, 2010, was 17,012 with a registered national prevalence of 7.22 per 100,000 people.

East Java recorded 4,653 new leprosy cases in 2010, or about 30 percent of total cases, making it the province with highest number of leprosy-affected people in Indonesia.

Madura and north coast areas, including Sumenep, followed by Probolinggo, Jember, Pamekasan, Bangkalan, Tuban, Lumajang, Pasuruan, Sampang, Situbondo, and Surabaya, are areas with the highest number of leprosy cases.

Indonesia itself ranks third in the list of countries with new cases of leprosy, behind India with 126,800 cases and Brazil with 34,894 cases.

Deputy Director and Migrant Human Rights Coordinator at Asian Migrant Care, Lily Purba in Hong Kong said people with leprosy, especially women, were susceptible to stereotypes and stigma.

Harry Hikmat, head of the Social Welfare Research and Development Agency at the Social Affairs Ministry, said the government had established social rehabilitation programs that included leprosy-affected people as one of the beneficiary clusters.

Citing an example, he said that only Rp 5 billion (US$560,000) of a total Rp 180 billion of social rehabilitation funds for disabled people (ODK) delivered by the ministry were allocated for people with leprosy.

During the event, the BINUS-Teach for Indonesia program gave Rp 11.1 million in financial aid for a leprosy survivor group.

“It aims to help them start businesses so they can be economically independent,” said Intan Setiady, coordinator of Teach for Indonesia.

Surviving the disease, Sriyatmo now dedicates herself to establishing informal learning groups specially designed to educate children with leprosy or those whose parents have contracted the disease.

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Tifatul Sembiring

The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is considering party member Tifatul Sembiring as one of its presidential candidates.
The party has decided to announce several names of presidential candidates amid a 0.8-percent drop in the number of party constituents from the 7.8 percent recorded in the 2009 General Elections.

PKS central executive board deputy chairman Yudi Widiana Adia said Tuesday that the party, which claimed to be the largest Islamic political party in the country, was preparing a few names to become its presidential candidates, including Tifatul – who is also the communications and information technology minister, PKS patron Hidayat Nurwahid, PKS secretary general Anis Matta and PKS president Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq.

The names will be further discussed at the party’s national meeting in Medan in March.
“Every branch is allowed to propose a candidate. For example, the Medan branch is proposing Tifatul as a presidential candidate,” Yudi said in Bandung, West Java.

However, the head of the PKS central executive board, Nasir Jamil, said his party had yet to select its presidential candidate for the 2014 General Elections.

“We are still garnering opinions from party grassroots about who should be elected as our presidential candidate at the upcoming general elections. Thus, we are still waiting,” Nasir told The Jakarta Post.
The party aims to reach 20 percent of the vote in the 2014 General Elections. (swd/mtq)

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Apriyani was under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time of the crash

The Jakarta Police will charge the driver of a Daihatsu Xenia who ran into 12 pedestrians on Jan. 15, killing nine and critically injuring three, with murder under article 338 of the Criminal Code.

The 28-year-old driver, identified as Apriyani Susanti, has already been charged with reckless driving and drug abuse.

“She may face a maximum of 15 years in prison,” City Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Rikwanto said that the police had decided to charge Apriyani with murder after considering testimony from witnesses, as well as evidence gathered from the crime scene investigation.

A police laboratory test reportedly confirmed Apriyani was under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time of the crash, which took place in the Central Jakarta area of Gambir.

Her three friends, who apparently were traveling with her in the car, have also been named as drug abuse suspects. (mtq)

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Alien of the Deep

Looking like a creature from the Alien movies, this nightmarish “longhead dreamer” anglerfish (Chaenophryne longiceps) was until recently an alien species to Greenland waters (map).

The dreamer, which grows to a not-so-monstrous 6.7 inches (17 centimeters) in length, is 1 of 38 fish species found around the Arctic island for the first time, according to a recent study led by biologist Peter Møller of the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Ten of the species new to Greenland are new to science too. All 38 were discovered since the last such survey in 1992.

Rising ocean temperatures due to global warming—which could be drawing unfamiliar fishes to the region—and increased deep-sea fishing may be responsible for the spike in fresh fish faces seen off Greenland, according to the study, published in February in the journal Zootaxa. (Learn about global warming.)

—James Owen
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