Education blog

Austria is planning to increase its investment in colleges, particularly in the field of information technology because IT graduates are in great demand, officials said Friday.

Minister of Science and Technology Beatrix Karl said the plan is still under negotiation between the Austrian Federal Economy Chamber (WKO) and the Austrian College Conference (FHK).

Kurt Koleznik, general secretary of the Austrian College Conference (FHK), said after a meeting with Karl that other majors such as biology, environment technology and engineer science should also receive more funds.

Austria was also facing a shortage of qualified staff in the technical natural sciences and about 400 additional graduates from the field are required until 2015, said Michael Landertshammer, director of the educational department of the WKO.

Landertshammer said the government plans to increase the number of FH graduates to 15,000 each year until 2030.

FH is a higher education institution in Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece that sometimes specializes in certain areas such as technology and business. An FH education usually takes a shorter time to finish, with an annotation of “FA” in the diploma.

The Austrian government established the FH education in 1990. Since FH students already obtain some work experience during their studies it is sometimes easier for them than college graduates to find skilled jobs in Austria.

The 16th Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Summit concluded here on Friday with a chairman’s statement which shows strong commitments of all member countries to build a sustained ASEAN Community in 2015.

The statement came out after two-day discussions by ten ASEAN members, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The chairman’s statement said the ten member countries agreed to effectively implement the existing ASEAN cooperation agreements to achieve sustained economic recovery and development for ASEAN and towards the ASEAN Community in the next five years.

To achieve a resilient, dynamic and sustained ASEAN Community, all parties agreed to give education cooperation as a priority in the process of community building.

ASEAN leaders noted the important progress in the implementation of the ASEAN Charter, serving as a legal and institutional framework for the ASEAN Community, stressing the importance of bringing the Charter into life at the earliest.

For the implementation of the ASEAN Charter, progress has been made in developing legal documents, especially the signing Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement Mechanisms.

Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, has died aged 64.

McLaren died in a Swiss hospital on Thursday, after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, last October.

Former lead singer with the Sex Pistols John Lydon paid tribute to McLaren saying, “I will miss him, and so should you.” Meanwhile McLaren’s ex-partner and designer Vivienne Westwood described him as a “very charismatic, special and talented person”.

McLaren was born in London and left home as a teenager. Following a series of jobs, including one as a wine taster, he went on to attend several art colleges through the 1960s, being expelled from several before leaving education entirely in 1971. It was during this time that he began to design clothing, a talent he would later utilise when he became a boutique owner.

He was attracted to the Situationist movement, which promoted absurdist and provocative actions as a way of enacting social change. In 1968 McLaren had tried unsuccessfully to travel to Paris to take part in the demonstrations there. McLaren would later adopt many of the movement’s ideas into his promotion for the various pop and rock groups with whom he was soon to involve himself.

In 1971, McLaren and his then girlfriend, the designer Vivienne Westwood, opened a London clothing shop called Let It Rock on the Kings Road in west London. McLaren’s son by Westwood, Joseph Ferdinand Corré, co-founded the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur. After a stay in New York where he managed a group called the New York Dolls he returned to his store in London renaming it SEX. It was here that he met John Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook who were to become the Sex Pistols.

The band courted much controversy during its short history. After their debut single Anarchy in the UK was released in December 1976, the band gained notoriety when they swore on Bill Grundy’s TV show. Their concerts faced difficulties with promoters and authorities and they were fired by both EMI and A&M record companies before eventually signing with Virgin Records. In 1977, their single God Save the Queen was banned by the BBC. The band broke up at the end of a U.S. tour in January 1978 and McLaren then created his disputed film version of the Sex Pistols’ story, the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.

Music journalist Jon Savage said, “Without Malcolm McLaren there would not have been any British punk. He’s one of the rare individuals who had a huge impact on the cultural and social life of this nation.” Savage, who wrote a definitive history of the Sex Pistols and punk, England’s Dreaming, said McLaren was a “complex” and “contradictory” character who had influenced British culture in many ways.

After the Sex Pistols, McLaren went on to manage Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow before pursuing a solo career and venturing into writing and film production. However he will be most remembered for the Sex Pistols and being the self styled ‘inventor’ of Punk rock.

McLaren spent his later years living with his Korean American girlfriend Young Kim between Paris and New York. Kim, 38, McLaren’s partner of 12 years, said the family was “devastated” by his death and he would be “sorely missed”. McLaren “was a great artist who changed the world,” she said.

McLaren and Dame Vivienne’s son, Joseph Corré, said his father was “the original punk rocker” who “revolutionised the world”. Corré said funeral arrangements were not yet made but his father had wanted to be buried in Highgate Cemetery, north London.

Two landmines were discovered by utility service workers at the crossroad of two central streets in Kyrgyz capital city of Bishkek on Friday.
Several apartment buildings, a theater and an educational institution were located in the area, said the Interfax news agency.

Sappers were now working to defuse the landmines, said the report.

Officials from the interim government said law and order has been retained with no more looting.

“The situation in the capital city was under control by 01:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) on April 9 and streets were cleared of crowds of young rioters,” according to the press service of the interm Interior Ministry.

On Friday, traffic police officers were working on the streets to regulate the traffic and help clear the messed streets. Some of them also worked together with more than 50 patrol teams within the city.

The service of public transportation has resumed on Friday in Bishkek after Wednesday’s unrest, Xinhua correspondents witnessed.

On Thursday, the Manas International Airport near Bishkek reopened and flights had been resumed.

The situations in the Central Asian country have raised global concerns, as several countries demanded return to peace as soon as possible.

The 16th Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Summit concluded here on Friday with a chairman’s statement which shows strong commitments of all member countries to build a sustained ASEAN Community in 2015.

The statement came out after two-day discussions by ten ASEAN members, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The chairman’s statement said the ten member countries agreed to effectively implement the existing ASEAN cooperation agreements to achieve sustained economic recovery and development for ASEAN and towards the ASEAN Community in the next five years.

To achieve a resilient, dynamic and sustained ASEAN Community, all parties agreed to give education cooperation as a priority in the process of community building.

ASEAN leaders noted the important progress in the implementation of the ASEAN Charter, serving as a legal and institutional framework for the ASEAN Community, stressing the importance of bringing the Charter into life at the earliest.

For the implementation of the ASEAN Charter, progress has been made in developing legal documents, especially the signing Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement Mechanisms.

Under the joint statement, ASEAN leaders called on enhancement of the bloc’s connectivity in Mekong and other sub-regions of ASEAN and promoting future East Asian connectivity.

To that aim, the bloc is exerting efforts in developing a Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity to be submitted to the 17th ASEAN Summit in October 2010.

All parties also showed strong commitment to intensifying efforts to address climate change and other transnational challenges by adopting the ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on Joint Response to Climate Change.

The statement said that significant progress has been achieved in the implementation of the ASEAN Political-Security Community ( APSC) Blueprint, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) Blueprint.

Under the APSC, ASEAN leaders stressed the enhancement of utilization of ASEAN’s existing tools and mechanisms, especially the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Treaty.

Regarding progress in AEC, the 16th ASEAN Summit saw commitment of members to promote the development of an integrated ASEAN capital market, the entry into force of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM), the proposed establishment of the Credit Guarantee Investment Facility and the Asian Bond Market Initiatives.

Under the ASCC, all parties showed efforts to promote rights of women and children by forming the ASEAN Commission on Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC). The chairman’s statement also said that narrowing development gap between member countries and strengthening ASEAN’s external relations to accelerate ASEAN integration continue to be top priorities.

Regarding external relations, ASEAN is actively exchanging views with partners on holding the second summit between ASEAN and Russia, the third summit between ASEAN and the United Nations, and regular ASEAN plus One summits with four partners including China, Japan, South Korea and India, and the second ASEAN U.S. summit in 2010.

Finally, the statement expressed ASEAN’s commitment to international and regional issues by working closely with the Group of 20 and others.

During the Summit, ASEAN leaders have adopted two statements: ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on Sustained Recovery and Development and ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on Joint Response to Climate Change.

Editor:Jiang Yuxia

A training program initiated by the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation has covered more than 3,000 primary school teachers and principals in the country’s western rural regions to boost their teaching quality.

The “Western Gardener Training Program” started in 2006 with a 12 million yuan (1.76 million U.S. dollars) donation from the Starbucks Corporation.

Currently, the program plans to train 500 rural teachers, 250 rural school principals and 200 teachers of ethnic groups, according to a statement released after a seminar opened Saturday on education in the western regions.

During the two-day seminar, jointly held by the foundation and the University of International Business and Economics, government officials, education experts, enterpreneurs and teachers from the program discussed issues including higher learning institutes’ role in promoting education in the western regions.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of Poland’s key civilian and military leaders died Saturday when their chartered plane crashed, killing 97, as it came in for a landing in western Russia.

The 26-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 was enroute from Warsaw to Smolensk, Russia, when it went down in thick fog with the president, his wife, the army chief of staff, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and the central bank governor aboard, said Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski.

Initial reports put the number of people on board the plane at 132, but Russia’s Emergency Ministry later corrected the total to 96, then 97 in its latest announcement.

The victims included a delegation of 88 Poles headed to Russia to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The body of President Kaczynski may have been found in the wreckage of the plane, a highly-placed police source told RIA Novosti.

Speaking from the scene, the source said however that additional tests, including DNA, would be needed to identify many of the bodies.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of Poland’s key civilian and military leaders died Saturday when their chartered plane crashed, killing 97, as it came in for a landing in western Russia.

The 26-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 was enroute from Warsaw to Smolensk, Russia, when it went down in thick fog with the president, his wife, the army chief of staff, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and the central bank governor aboard, said Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski.

Initial reports put the number of people on board the plane at 132, but Russia’s Emergency Ministry later corrected the total to 96, then 97 in its latest announcement.

The victims included a delegation of 88 Poles headed to Russia to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The deaths were not expected to directly affect the functioning of Polish government: Poland’s president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position’s domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Most top government ministers were not aboard the plane.

Sergei Antufiev, governor of the Smolensk region,told Russia-24 television news network that the plane “clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces.”

Russian television showed the plane’s wreckage scattered in a forest with parts still on fire. The plane’s two black boxes have been found and are being analyzed by Russian investigators.

Andrei Yevseyenkov, a spokesman for the Smolensk government, said Russian dispatchers asked the crew to divert from Smolensk and land instead in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, or in Moscow because of the fog.

“The pilot was advised to land in Minsk, but decided to land in Smolensk,” the spokesman said.

While traffic controllers generally have the final word in whether it is safe for a plane to land, they can and do leave it to the pilots’ discretion.

A security source told the RIA Novosti news agency that human error was most likely to blame.

“A mistake by the crew during landing maneuvers has supposedly caused the crash,” the source said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent Minister for Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu to the crash site and ordered the establishment of an investigation committee headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Putin left for the crash site to meet with his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk, who was also enroute to Smolensk.

“The Polish premier wished to travel to the scene of the tragedy. I will go to meet him,” Putin said. “We will visit the place of the crash together.”

Putin said the bodies of the crash victims would be sent to Moscow for identification, and a special center would be established to help the victims’ relatives from Poland.

Hours after the crash,the Polish government announced that there will be a presidential election before June in line with the country’s constitution. According to the constitution, Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski would take over presidential duties.

Tusk said Polish prosecutors were already in Smolensk and that he would probably host another cabinet meeting after returning to Warsaw late Saturday.

Komorowski declared a week of national mourning.

Some of the people on board the doomed plane were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers’ strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

Kaczynski, 60, took office after winning an election run-off in October, 2005. Before that, he had been mayor of Warsaw, Poland’s capital city.

The late president and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, were child movie stars who won fame in the 1962 movie “The Two Who Stole the Moon,” about two troublemakers who try to get rich by stealing the moon and selling it.

Kaczynski is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

Kaczynski, a Solidarity activist, became a senator in 1991 after serving as a representative to the National Assembly since 1989.

He had been the country’s prosecutor-general and justice minister in a previous center-right government before being elected Warsaw mayor in 2002.

Kaczynski became well known for banning gay pride parades in Warsaw in 2004 and 2005, citing a lack of necessary documentation by organizers as the reason.

Kaczynski and Jaroslaw formed the socially conservative Law and Justice party in 2001 under the banner of developing the country’s education and economy, fighting corruption and reforming rural areas.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.

Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country’s leaders but said they lacked the funds.

The presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, the general director of the Aviakor aviation maintenance plant in Samara, Russia, told Rossiya-24. The plant repaired the plane’s three engines, retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment and updated the interior, Alexei Gusev said. He said there could be no doubts that the plane was flightworthy.

Local government investigators are probing the official appointments of a south China county government after an Internet posting indicating excessive job changes drew suspicion.

No evidence of illegal appointments in Lingshan County government had been found so far, but investigations would continue, said Zhong Shiyan, a spokesman with the investigation team from Qinzhou City, which has jurisdiction over Lingshan.

An online post, citing government website bulletins, revealed Lingshan County issued 1,705 files on official job changes in three years, most of which were appointments.

The post spread quickly and became a heated topic on all major Chinese portals and forums, stirring a public debate over whether the county had too many officials and whether the appointments were lawful.

“The number of officials in Lingshan County is in line with laws and regulations. There are no redundant personnel in the government departments,” said Pan Shenkao, head of human resources in the county.

Lingshan, with a population of 1.3 million, had 912 county department level officials, including heads and senior workers of 219 government departments, townships and other government-run entities, Pan said.

The number of department level officials who were not actual leaders of government departments varied from county to county. It was normal for a county to have this number of department level officials, he said.

Officials in charge of county hospitals, schools and enterprises were also on the department rankings of the county, Pan said.

Of the 189 government department head or deputy head posts, 178 were occupied, leaving 11 vacancies, Pan said.

Lingshan has 28 government departments and 18 townships, according to the county website.

The number of appointment files did not equal the number of officials appointed, Pan said.

A county government official could also hold posts in the local Communist Party committee, the local legislature or political advisory body. One personnel change often involved several files from different organs, Pan said.

The actual number of files of official job changes issued in the past three years in Lingshan was 1,591.

He attributed most of the reshuffles to elections, employment trials, organizational reforms and officials from higher governments transferring to temporary posts in the county to gain grassroots experience.

A normal county government would have around 60 to 70 departments and townships with 150 to 200 leaders, said Zhu Lijia, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Governance.

“When I first got here, I had three appointments: head of the county new rural communities construction team, a standing member of the county Party committee and deputy county head,” said Fang Daoqiang, who was transferred from Qinzhou City in March.

Lian Yaolian, 59, Party head of Lingshan’s finance department, said, “Personnel changes are not very frequent in Lingshan.” Lian had worked as the director and Party head of the county construction department for nine years before taking up his current post.

Initial investigations showed some of Lingshan’s government departments lacked professional talent, Zhong said.

The county claimed it planned to openly advertise across China for applications to fill deputy head posts in its construction, industry and information technology, and reform and development departments, he said.

Lingshan is the third local government this year to draw public attention over its appointments.

On March 12, Wang Yali, a former member of the municipal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, was arrested for forging documents to obtain government jobs.

Wang allegedly faked all her personal information, including name, age, education and work experience, except her gender.

Internet postings ridiculed Wang’s resume, which showed that she was a pharmacist in an army hospital at the age of 12.

Despite the obviously problematic forgery, Wang had been rapidly promoted to become senior city official from 1998 to 2007.

In early February, Xintai city, in eastern Shangdong Province promoted six people born in the 1980s to deputy department heads, an action that drawn national controversy.

Internet users doubted if the post-1980s staff were experienced enough for the jobs and suspected illegal intervention in the promotions, which Xintai government insisted were lawful.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is sitting pretty. He has carried all before him as he won Thursday’s parliamentary election in the same resounding manner as the January presidential election. People have clearly spoken for the president with mandates of 60 percent plus in each of the elections.

With over half seats in the 225-member assembly Rajapaksa has achieved the near impossible under the proportional representation system of elections. All his predecessors since 1989 have struggled to barely cross the 113 mark needed for simple majority and blamed the system for it.

According to the statistics issued by the Department of Elections on Friday, the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance ( UPFA) bagged 117 seats to win the first post-civil war parliamentary election held without the presence of Tamil Tiger rebels.

The main opposition United National Front (UNF) led by the United National Party (UNP) was trailing behind with 46 seats. The pro-Tamil Tiger rebels party the Tamil National Alliance got 12 seats while the leftist Democratic National Alliance (DNA) managed to get five seats.

Election officials said the declaration of the final result will be held up pending the repoll in two areas, although the repoll can only affect the final result marginally.

“Having given President Rajapaksa a second term, the people were obviously wary of voting either the UNF or the DNA to power as they did not want a parliament hostile to the president like in the 2001-2004 period, when the UNF government and President Chandrika Kumaratunga were at daggers drawn,” commented the local newspaper The Island.

“When I became the president my parliament was even unable to muster the majority to appoint its own speaker,” Rajapaksa told election rallies making a case for a two-thirds majority mandate. With his unprecedented success in ending the military might of Tamil Tiger rebels he won over 40 of opposition legislators to his side.

“We provided the president with parliamentary strength to do the war,” Rajitha Senaratne, one of the crossovers from the main opposition UNP said.

Rajapaksa said on Saturday that with the clear majority in parliament, the government will proceed with its policies for the strengthening of peace and reconciliation, reconstruction, greater infrastructure development, increased investment in identified areas of growth, and the overall development of the country to make it the center of economic and social progress in South Asia.

“I need a strong parliament to implement my plan of action which would see rapid development to make this country the wonder of Asia,” Rajapaksa said repeatedly in his campaign rallies.

People heeded Rajapaksa’s call — they have given him a solid legislative authority to back his executive power. Now it is the time to deliver.

“Our rapid development drive could begin right now,” D. M. Jayaratne a senior ruling party member said.

“The wonder of Asia and other lofty socio-economic goals of the government are long term. But they have immediate concerns to deal with in governance. Pledge to reduce cabinet (from 100 plus to 35) itself will be a difficult job without hurting the feelings of government MPs (members of parliament),” Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri, a history lecturer said.

The state-run newspaper Daily News said the people expect a cleaner and less expensive government.

“They expect that the new Cabinet of Ministers would be small, being limited to about 35 members. It should reflect the needs of the country rather than the needs of individual politicians. It is not necessary to be a minister to serve the people. There are numerous instances of politicians, even those in the opposition who have rendered a great service to the country. At the same time there were instances of ministers whose services, at best were mediocre if not below expectations,” said the newspaper.

Rajapaksa won the military battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from 2006 to 2009. But reaching out to the Tamils with a long lasting political solution remains a difficult challenge, Devasiri argued.

Devasiri said with the presence of Sinhala majority hardliners in Rajapaksa’s inner policy teams the new government is less likely to be flexible on the ethnic issue.

“What is necessary is to discuss soberly without raised emotions the concerns and apprehensions of each community or group at a round table and agree upon a minimum set of proposals to minimize ethnic and other tensions. Economic development of the war-ravaged areas in the north and east as well as equal treatment in employment, education and other vital needs of the population would go a long way in facilitating a successful outcome of such a national dialogue,” said the Daily News in its editorial.

Kumar Rupasinghe, an academic and activist involved in social issues said creating a knowledge rich society could provide answers to most of the island’s problems.

“This needs to be a policy priority of the new government,” Rupasinghe said, adding that a constitutional reform package is paramount to rebuilding the island nation.

Restoration of full democracy and strengthening key institutions have been issues in every election platform.

“We lack transparency in most areas. The government ought to fully implement the 17th amendment and install full democratic freedom and independence of institutions,” a retired senior military officer A. B. Soza commented.

Under the 17th amendment to the constitution, independent commissions on election, public service, police, human rights, corruption investigation, finance should be established with the participation of opposition parties. But after nearly ten years of the amendment being introduced, not a single commission has come into reality.

Rajapaksa’s agenda should also include education, health and other basic social services, analysts said.

“The education sphere has broken down. We need urgent reforms to set things right,” Devasiri stressed.

“The high cost of living and lasting peace are two key problems the new administration has to grapple with,” said Batty Weerakoon, a veteran politician.

“Government politicians do not seem to be sensitive to these issues. The internally displaced people are still suffering under poor conditions. They have no drinking water, no schools, no employment. The president needs to move on quickly to solve these problems,” Weerakoon said.

Though most of the 300,000 Tamil civilians displaced by the final battles between the government troops and the LTTE in 2009 have been resettled, nearly 100,000 of them are still living in government-run refugee camps in the north with no place to go.

“Is the Rajapaksa regime ready to make at least fundamental changes to pull the country’s politics from dire straits that it finds itself in? Is the opposition ready to extend constructive assistance to the government to fulfil a meaningful task?” Victor Ivan, a veteran political commentator probed in summing up the job ahead for Rajapaksa and his new administration.