The World in Brief (1/12/06)

Pity Baghdad’s police: Insurgents want to blow them up and restaurants don’t want to seat… Pity Baghdad’s police: Insurgents want to blow them up and restaurants don’t want to seat them

Huda Ahmed and Dogen Hannah, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Most restaurants would be happy to have police officers as regular customers, grateful not only for the business but also for the presence of law and order.

Not in Baghdad. Not when Iraqi security forces are the target of insurgents’ bombs. In many restaurants, Baghdad’s finest are politely, albeit reluctantly, requested to walk out the door the minute they walk in.

“We ask the police not to come,” said Yasser Emad, 39, the manager of his family’s popular restaurant in the capital’s middle-class Karrada district. “We hate to do this, but we want peace for the public and the restaurant.”

Earlier this month, a car bomb blasted a south Baghdad restaurant, killing three people, including two police commandos, and wounding 12, including six commandos. In November, a bomber blew himself up in a restaurant as police were eating breakfast, killing 35 officers and civilians and wounding 25.

Rapidly shrinking Arctic ice could spell trouble for the rest of the world

By Robert S. Boyd, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Alarmed by an accelerating loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean, scientists are striving to understand why the speedup is happening and what it means for humankind.

If present trends continue, as seems likely, the sea surrounding the North Pole will be completely free of ice in the summertime within the lifetime of a child born today. The loss could point the way to radical changes in the Earth’s climate and weather systems.

The National Science Foundation, a congressionally chartered agency, last month announced an urgent research program to determine what “these changes mean for both the Arctic and the Earth.”

“The pace of Arctic change has accelerated,” the foundation declared. “Because of the Arctic’s pivotal role in the Earth’s climate, it is critical – perhaps urgent – that we understand this system in light of abundant evidence that a set of linked and pervasive changes are under way.”

The concern has heightened because last summer brought a record low in the size of the northern ice pack. “The degree of retreat was greater than ever before,” said Ted Scambos, chief scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Previous lows were set in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Drop in foreign enrollment worries U.S. educators

By Matt Krupnick, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. – It used to be that the choice between a U.S. or foreign university was a no-brainer for top international students. If they gained admission to Harvard or Berkeley, their choice was made.

But the combined effects of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and other countries’ higher-education improvements have concerned U.S. educators, who fear a drop in foreign student enrollment would threaten college engineering and science departments.

“Universities could not, in some cases, conduct research or teach classes without their very talented foreign students,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, which tracks statistics on international students.

In the mid-1950s, according to the institute, U.S. universities were attracting more than 30,000 international students per year. Last year, more than 500,000 attended U.S. institutions, generating about $13 billion in tuition.

Some recent attendance figures have concerned educators, however. Last year, colleges and universities reported the lowest international undergraduate enrollment since 1999, while graduate enrollment dropped to its lowest level since 2000.

Immigrants unite to keep dreams alive – and in Mexico

By Oscar Avila, Chicago Tribune

Fernando Fernandez was 17 when he learned that, in Mexico, dreams are too often cast aside. His dream was to become a veterinarian; reality forced him to migrate to the United States to help support his nine siblings.

Now, he and other Chicago-area immigrants from the central Mexican town of Indaparapeo want to help the next generation hold on to its aspirations.

In an unusual initiative, the association has bankrolled 40 college scholarships designed to let youth stay in Mexico, get an education and avoid a lifetime in a strange land.

“We lived this disappointment, in the flesh,” Fernandez said. “Why not create another path?”

The scholarship initiative is so unusual, Mexican federal officials and development experts say, that they are using it as a national model, one more strategy to slow the devastating exodus of Mexico’s brightest young citizens to the U.S.

The effort, which costs the group about $16,000 a year, has tapped Indaparapeo natives from Illinois and California through raffles, dinners and other grass-roots fundraisers.

Even though public university education is largely subsidized in Mexico, the small cost can tip the balance as families fight for survival. Only 14 percent of Mexico’s labor force has a college degree, according to government statistics.