Senators reach agreement on immigration reform

source: www.news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of leading senators has reached agreement on the principles for a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, including a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.

The deal, to be announced at a news conference Monday, also covers border security, non-citizen or "guest" workers and employer verification of immigration status.

Although thorny details remain to be negotiated and success is far from certain, the development heralds the start of what could be the most significant effort in years toward overhauling the nation's inefficient patchwork of immigration laws.

President Barack Obama also is committed to enacting comprehensive immigration legislation and will travel to Nevada on Tuesday to lay out his vision, which is expected to overlap in important ways with the Senate effort.

Passage of legislation by the full Democratic-controlled Senate is far from assured, but the tallest hurdle could come in the House, which is dominated by conservative Republicans who've shown little interest in immigration reform.

Still, with some Republicans chastened by the November elections which demonstrated the importance of Latino voters and their increasing commitment to Democrats, some in the GOP say this time will be different.

"What's changed, honestly, is that there is a new, I think, appreciation on both sides of the aisle — including maybe more importantly on the Republican side of the aisle — that we have to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"I think the time is right," McCain said.

Besides McCain, the senators expected to endorse the new principles Monday are Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Several of these lawmakers have worked for years on the issue. McCain collaborated with the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on comprehensive immigration legislation pushed by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, only to see it collapse in the Senate when it couldn't get enough GOP support.

The group claims a notable newcomer in Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate whose conservative bona fides may help smooth the way for support among conservatives wary of anything that smacks of amnesty. In an opinion piece published Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Rubio wrote that the existing system amounts to "de facto amnesty," and he called for "commonsense reform."

According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, the senators will call for accomplishing four goals:

—Creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here, contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people here on visas.

—Reforming the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain advanced degrees in science, math, technology or engineering from an American university.

—Creating an effective employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants in the future, including requiring prospective workers to verify legal status and identity through a non-forgeable electronic system.

—Allowing more low-skill workers into the country and allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can demonstrate they couldn't recruit a U.S. citizen; and establishing an agricultural worker program.

The principles being released Monday are outlined on just over four pages, leaving plenty of details left to fill in. What the senators do call for is similar to Obama's goals and some past efforts by Democrats and Republicans, since there's wide agreement in identifying problems with the current immigration system. The most difficult disagreement is likely to arise over how to accomplish the path to citizenship.

In order to satisfy the concerns of Rubio and other Republicans, the senators are calling for the completion of steps on border security and oversight of those here on visas before taking major steps forward on the path to citizenship.

Even then, those here illegally would have to pass background checks and pay fines and taxes in order to qualify for a "probationary legal status" that would allow them to live and work here — but not qualify for federal benefits — before being able to apply for permanent residency, a critical step toward citizenship. Once they are allowed to apply they would do so behind everyone else already in line for a green card within the current immigration system.

That could be a highly cumbersome process, but how to make it more workable is being left to future negotiations. The senators envision a more streamlined process toward citizenship for immigrants brought here as children, and for agricultural workers.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that the framework agreed on by the senators could provide important protections for illegal immigrants who are exploited by employers and live in "constant fear" over their immigration status.

But the ACLU took issue with the proposal to require employers to use an electronic employment-verification system, calling it "a thinly disguised national ID requirement" that would undermine employees' privacy and lead to discrimination against those "who look or sound 'foreign.'"

The debate will play out at the start of Obama's second term, as he aims to spend the political capital afforded him by his re-election victory on an issue that has eluded past presidents and stymied him during his first term despite his promises to the Latino community to act.

"As the president has made clear for some time, immigration reform is an important priority and he is pleased that progress is being made with bipartisan support," a White House spokesman, Clark Stevens, said in a statement. "At the same time, he will not be satisfied until there is meaningful reform and he will continue to urge Congress to act until that is achieved."

For Republicans, the November elections were a stark schooling on the importance of Latino voters, who voted for Obama over Republican Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent, helping ensure Obama's victory. That led some Republican leaders to conclude that supporting immigration reform with a path to citizenship has become a political imperative.

What is a Filipino? Looking at our DNA for the answers

source: www.gmanetwork.com

What's your mix? Remember that infamous advertising campaign a few months ago, which raised the ire of the Philippine public?  Extolling the virtues of Filipinos who were "mixed" —part-Filipino, part something else— it was really meant to be a celebration of diversity, but many saw it as praising the part-foreign among us.

At that time, someone asked me what I thought, and I remember being puzzled. You see, genetically I have no idea what it means to be "Filipino". 

What is 'Filipino'?

We are proud of our heritage at the rim of East Asia, the meeting point of the many Asian groups, as well as Europeans from Spain. Our culture even 100 years ago was already a mix —of Malay, Chinese, Hindu, Arab, Polynesian and Spanish, with maybe some English, Japanese and African thrown in.  And it shows up in our genes.

The genome is the complete set of DNA that carries the instructions on how to make a living being.  Genomes change and these changes tell us how life evolves. The genome sequence —the strings of the 4 letters of the DNA code in our bodies— provides the instructions on how to build the organism, and as they evolve the organism also evolves, sometimes into new species.

In the last few years, genome technologies have exploded to the point that it has become routine to sequence my genome or your genome or the genome of many different species looks like.

Looking inward

I was curious about myself.  I wanted to see who I was (and as a Filipino who we are) by looking into my own genetic code. I did not sequence my own genome but by using a 500,000 "SNP chip", I was able to get a genetic readout of who I was by looking at a part of my entire genome.

And here you find my mix.  I had European and Asian genes in the nucleus, my Y-chromosome was likely Chinese while my mitochondrial DNA probably came from Taiwan.

And here lies the answer to that infamous question.

'We are all mixes'

We are all mixes, and I think every Filipino who is genetically tested will show up as a mix.

We are products of what we evolutionary genomicists call genetic admixture, the result of several thousand years of mixing in our island archipelago at the edge of the Pacific.  We were always getting genes from everyone who came to our shores.  We are, in a genetic sense, a truly global people.

The Filipino story

The story of Filipinos, where we came from and how we came to be who we are as a people, is partly written in our DNA.  The new tools of genomics are revolutionizing the study of human history, by tracing our genetic ancestors and seeing what makes up our genomes.  It took a worldwide effort 10 years and nearly P120 B to sequence the human genome.  Today, I sit at my lab a few feet away at New York University from a sequencing machine that can do it in 10 days for about P120,000. 

The Filipino genome

It is time we sequence the Filipino genome.  A Filipino Genome Diversity Project can be launched at the newly established Philippine Genome Center, and I think for the price of a small house we can begin to unlock the secrets of our genes.

The ability to sequence our genomes will revolutionize not only how we see ourselves, but how we treat our diseases. Genetic testing has been widespread over the last few decades, and we can now reliably test for increased risk in many genetic diseases.  Doctors are now routinely sequencing the genomes of cancer cells from their patients to figure out quickly what has gone wrong and help in developing better ways to cure them. 

Any volunteers? — TJD, GMA News

Philippines to host anti-corruption summit

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

MANILA - The Philippines will share its anti-corruption practices to parliamentarians from 78 countries as it hosts a conference of the Global Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) this week.

Sen. Edgardo Angara, vice chairman of the GOPAC Executive Committee, said 429 members of parliament from various countries will attend the conference at the Philippine International Convention Center from January 30 to February 2.

Angara believes the Philippines has a lot to share to the world when it comes to measures combating corruption.

"We are very advanced in anti-corruption laws," he said in an interview last Friday, January 25. "In the whole of Southeast Asia, we lead in terms of not only numbers but also in scope covering good behavior and better governance."

Angara cited as examples the country's laws on the conduct of public servants and the declaration of public officials' wealth, the anti-graft law, and the creation of courts like the Sandiganbayan.

"We're not certainly the best in practice, but we are improving and that has been shown very dramatically in the process of cleansing the judiciary," he said, referring to the impeachment trial of former Chief Justice Renato Corona in early 2012.

Local speakers will include Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, who will speak about enforcing anti-corruption measures, and the Anti-Money Laundering Council of the Philippines' Teresita Herbosa, who will discuss anti-money laundering and bank secrecy laws.

Violent protests greet Egypt emergency decree

source: www.reuters.com

CAIRO - A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence in Egypt that has killed 50 people and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world's biggest nation.

Under emergency powers announced by President Mohamed Mursi for the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez on Sunday, the army will have the right to arrest civilians and to help police restore order.

A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be before civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Mursi of using high-handed security tactics of the kind they fought against to oust president Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's politics have become deeply polarized since those heady days two years ago, when protesters were making most of the running in the Arab Spring revolutions that sent shockwaves through the region.

Although Islamists have won parliamentary and presidential elections, the disparate opposition has since united against Mursi. Late last year he moved to expand his powers and push a constitution with Islamist leanings through a referendum punctuated by violent street protests.

Mursi's opponents accuse him of hijacking the revolution, listening only to his Islamist allies and breaking a promise to be a president for all Egyptians. They say too many hold-outs from the Mubarak era remain in their posts.

Islamists say their rivals want to overthrow by undemocratic means Egypt's first freely elected leader.

Some opposition groups have called for more protests in Cairo and elsewhere on Monday to mark the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution that erupted on Jan. 25, 2011, and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.

Hundreds of demonstrators in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, cities which all lie on the economically vital Suez Canal, turned out against Mursi's decision on Sunday within moments of him speaking. Activists there pledged to defy a curfew that starts at 9 p.m. (1700 GMT).

Instability in Egypt has raised concerns in Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has signed a peace deal with Israel.

The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting a year ago.

In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of tear gas at stone-throwing protesters in and around Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising.

Killed by a gunshot

A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot, a security source at the Interior Ministry said. It was not clear who fired the shot.

"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from tear gas wafting towards him.

Mursi also called for a national dialog with his rivals for later on Monday, but the early response from members of the main opposition coalition suggested they saw little point.

Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Mursi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations, complicating his task of shoring up the economy and preparing for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.

"The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said, offering condolences to families of victims in the canal zone cities.

Appealing to his opponents, the president called for a dialog on Monday at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), inviting a range of Islamist allies as well as liberal, leftist and other opposition groups and individuals to discuss the crisis.

The main opposition National Salvation Front coalition said it would not attend.

Mursi's call to hold talks was "cosmetic and not substantive", a leading member of the coalition, Mohamed ElBaradei, told a news conference.

Security measures

The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Mursi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.

"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said. "His call to implement emergency law was an expected move, given what is going on, namely thuggery and criminal activity."

But other activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.

"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising said. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."

Thousands of mourners joined funerals in Port Said for the latest victims in the Mediterranean port city. Seven people were killed there on Sunday when residents joined marches to bury 33 others who had been killed a day earlier, most by gunshot wounds in a city where arms are rife.

Protests erupted there on Saturday after a court sentenced to death several people from the city for their role in deadly soccer violence last year, a verdict residents saw as unfair. The anger swiftly turned against Mursi and his government.

Rights activists said Mursi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used the sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Mursi himself.

Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.

"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger." — Reuters

Iran sends monkey into space, showing missile progress

source: www.reuters.com

DUBAI - Iran said on Monday it had launched a live monkey into space, seeking to show off missile delivery systems that are alarming to the West given Tehran's parallel advances in nuclear technology.

The defense ministry announced the launch as world powers sought to agree a date and venue with Iran for resuming talks to resolve a nuclear standoff with the West before it degenerates into a new Middle East war.

Efforts to nail down a new meeting have failed repeatedly and the powers fear Iran is exploiting the diplomatic vacuum to hone the means to produce nuclear weapons.

The Islamic Republic denies seeking weapons capability and says it seeks only electricity from its uranium enrichment so it can export more of its oil wealth.

The powers have proposed new talks in February, a spokesman for the European Union's foreign policy chief said on Monday, hours after Russia urged all concerned to "stop behaving like children" and commit to a meeting.

Iran earlier in the day denied media reports of a major explosion at one of its most sensitive, underground enrichment plants, describing them as Western propaganda designed to influence the nuclear talks.

An defense ministry said the space launch of the monkey coincided "with the days of" the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, which was last week, but gave no date, according to a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.

The launch was "another giant step" in space technology and biological research "which is the monopoly of a few countries," the statement said.

The monkey was sent up in a Kavoshgar rocket dubbed "Pishgam" (Pioneer), reaching a height of more than 120 km (75 miles), IRNA said.

"This shipment returned safely to Earth with the anticipated speed along with the live organism," Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the semi-official Fars news agency. "The launch of Kavoshgar and its retrieval is the first step towards sending humans into space in the next phase."

Iran's English-language Press TV displayed photographs of the monkey inside its capsule, but did not say if these were from before or after the launch.

There was no independent confirmation of the launch.

Significant

The West worries that long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be put to delivering nuclear warheads.

Bruno Gruselle of France's Foundation for Strategic Research, said that if the monkey launch report were true it would suggest a "quite significant" engineering feat by Iran.

"If you can show that you are able to protect a vehicle of this sort from re-entry, then you can probably protect a military warhead and make it survive the high temperatures and high pressures of re-entering," Gruselle said.

The monkey launch would be similar to sending up a satellite weighing some 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds), he said. Success would suggest a capacity to deploy a surface-to-surface missile with a range of a few thousand kilometers (miles).

The Islamic Republic announced plans in 2011 to send a monkey into space, but that attempt was reported to have failed.

Nuclear-weapons capability requires three components - enough fissile material such as highly enriched uranium, a reliable weapons device miniaturized to fit into a missile cone, and an effective delivery system, such as a ballistic missile that can grow out of a space launch program.

Iran's efforts to develop and test ballistic missiles and build a space launch capability have contributed to Israeli calls for preemptive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and billions of dollars of U.S. ballistic missile defense spending.

Maneuvering over next talks

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the powers had offered a February meeting to Iran, after a proposal to meet at the end of January was refused.

"Iran did not accept our offer to go to Istanbul on Jan. 28 and 29 and so we have offered new dates in February. We have continued to offer dates since December. We are disappointed the Iranians have not yet agreed," Michael Mann reporters.

He said Iranian negotiators had imposed new conditions for resuming talks and that EU powers were concerned this might be a stalling tactic. The last in a sporadic series of fruitless talks was held last June.

Iranian officials deny blame for the delays and say Western countries squandered opportunities for meetings by waiting until after the U.S. presidential election in November.

"We have always said that we are ready to negotiate until a result is reached and we have never broken off discussions," IRNA quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as saying.

Salehi has suggested holding the next round in Cairo but that the powers wanted another venue. He also said that Sweden, Kazakhstan and Switzerland had offered to host the talks.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference: "We are ready to meet at any location as soon as possible. We believe the essence of our talks is far more important (than the site), and we hope that common sense will prevail and we will stop behaving like little children."

Ashton is overseeing diplomatic contacts on behalf of the powers hoping to persuade Tehran to stop higher-grade uranium enrichment and accept stricter U.N. inspections in return for civilian nuclear cooperation and relief from U.N. Sanctions.

Iran denies Fordow blast

Reuters has been unable to verify reports since Friday of an explosion early last week at the underground Fordow bunker, near the holy Shi'ite Muslim city of Qom, that some Israeli and Western media said wrought heavy damage.

"The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome," IRNA quoted deputy Iranian nuclear energy agency chief Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi as saying.

In late 2011 the plant at Fordow began producing uranium enriched to 20 percent fissile purity, well above the 3.5 percent level normally needed for nuclear power stations.

Western governments say the higher-grade enrichment marks a notable step towards weapons-grade uranium, even though it is below the 90 percent level suitable for nuclear bombs.

Iran says its enhanced enrichment is to make fuel for a Tehran research reactor that produces isotopes for medical care.

Diplomats in Vienna, where the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is based, said on Monday they had no knowledge of any incident at Fordow but were looking into the reports. One Western diplomat said he did not believe them to be correct.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which regularly inspects Iranian nuclear sites including Fordow, had no immediate comment.

Iran has accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage its nuclear program with cyber attacks and assassinations of its nuclear scientists. Washington has denied any role in the killings while Israel has declined to comment. — Reuters