Inmigration

UC Berkeley Students Offer Drug Offenders Scholarships

(U-WIRE) EUGENE, Ore. - The biggest problem with question 31 on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, which asks whether a student has been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs, is not that it will strip students of their financial aid, but rather that it will scare people off from applying to college in the first place - at least according to University of Oregon Director of Student Financial Aid Elizabeth Bickford.

In her experience, the extreme minority of students who initially answered yes to the question soon realized that their convictions didn't affect their aid. Those who do answer yes - that they were convicted of selling or possessing drugs when they were older than 18, while they were receiving federal financial aid and have not completed a drug treatment program - can easily get their aid reinstated, Bickford said.

But the political opposition to question 31 is gaining momentum.

On Jan. 24 at UC Berkeley, the student government passed a bill creating a small scholarship for students who have lost their aid because of drug convictions. The scholarship - a one-time payment of $400 to an affected student - is the brainchild of Associated Students of the University of California Senator David Israel Wasserman. In an interview, Wasserman said he campaigned for office on the platform of creating this scholarship.

"It's an unjust penalty to deprive someone of the means to an education," he said. "We're putting our money where our mouth is."

In terms of a college education, especially at UC Berkeley, $400 is not a great deal of money, but it's enough to pay for a semester's books, Wasserman said.

However, a similar scholarship at Western Washington University has existed for four years with no applicants, the school's student government Board Programs assistant Erin O'Reilly said.

He also said he had not encountered any students requesting the scholarship, and that UC Berkeley's financial aid office told him that no students currently on campus had lost their aid. But the scholarship is not just a scholarship.

"It's a very important statement," Wasserman said.

The Aid Elimination Provision of the Higher Education Act that created question 31 is the target of the scholarship's political aims.

"We plan to use this as a larger lobbying tool," Wasserman said. "It's important that we take a stand. It's important that we use our voice so they can hear us in Washington."

The Aid Elimination Provision has been the object of several lawsuits on behalf of the lobbyist group Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, with which Wasserman worked closely to draft the bill, both he and a spokesman for the group said. SSDP is currently heading a campaign to repeal the law - a campaign supported by more than 70 groups including the United States Student Association, the National Education Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the Washington State Bar Association and the National Black Police Association.

But does the university need such a scholarship? Bickford, the university's director of financial aid, said no.

"In my experience, I don't know if a scholarship would be helpful or necessary," Bickford said.

Associated Students of the University of Oregon President Jared Axelrod said he is against the Aid Elimination Provision and supports Wasserman's scholarship.

"I think it's great," Axelrod said.

UC Berkeley's student senators "really put their neck out there and took a stand," Axelrod said. "It [took] a lot of courage."

Many Roses Coated in Chemicals

Feb. 13, 2007 — It's probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses — by the time the bright, velvety flowers reach your Valentine, they will have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in a battery of potentially lethal chemicals.

Most of the toxic assault takes place in the waterlogged savannah surrounding the capital of Colombia, the world's second-largest cut-flower producer after the Netherlands. It produces 62 percent of all flowers sold in the United States.

With 110,000 employees — many of them single mothers — and annual exports of $1 billion, the industry provides an important alternative to growing coca, source crop of the Andean nation's better known illegal export: Cocaine. But these economic gains come at a cost to workers' health and Colombia's environment, according to consumer advocates.

The U.S. requires imported flowers to be bug-free, but unlike edible fruits and vegetables they are not tested for chemical residues.

The tropical climate that drew U.S. flower growers to Colombia and neighboring Ecuador is a haven for pests. So growers facing stiff competition from emerging flower industries in Africa and China apply pesticides and fungicides, some of which have been linked to elevated rates of cancer and neurological disorders and other problems.

Colombia's flower exporters association responded by launching Florverde, which has certified 86 of its 200 members for taking steps to improve worker safety and welfare. Florverde says its members have reduced pesticide use by 38 percent since 1998, to an average of 213 pounds of active ingredient per 2.4 acres per year.

"Every day we're making more progress," said Florverde director Juan Carlos Isaza. "The value of Florverde is that these best practices have now been standardized and are being adopted by the industry."

Nevertheless, 36 percent of the toxic chemicals applied by Florverde farms in 2005 were listed as extremely or highly toxic by the World Health Organization, Isaza acknowledged.

A survey of 84 farms between 2000 and 2002, partly financed by Asocolflores, the exporters' association, found only 16.7 percent respected pesticide manufacturer recommendations to prevent workers for 24 hours from re-entering greenhouses sprayed with the most toxic of pesticides.

Carmen Orjuela began suffering dizzy spells and repeated falls in 1997, while working at a flower farm outside Bogota. During the peak season before Valentine's Day, she said her employer forced workers to enter greenhouses only a half-hour after they had been fumigated.

"Those who refused were told they could leave — that 20 people were outside waiting to take their job," said Orjuela, who quit in 2004.

Orjuela's employer, Flores de la Sabana, denied ever disregarding manufacturer-recommended re-entry times, but a 2005 toxicology study from Colombia's National University obtained by The Associated Press confirmed that Orjuela's illness was "directly related to an important exposure to potentially toxic chemical substances." A government arbiter finally ordered the company to pay her a pension equal to the $200 monthly minimum wage earned by most workers.

Government oversight is relatively strict in the United States — in California, each flower farm's pesticide use is available for review on the Internet. But there are no reliable statistics about chemicals used by Colombia's 600-plus flower farms, in part because only a third belong to Asocolflores, which does keep good records.

Although the industry has made huge strides thanks to Florverde, accidents continue to happen.

Iran accuses US over seized diplomat

Gunmen wearing Iraqi uniforms seized an Iranian diplomat in central Baghdad at the weekend, the government in Tehran said today, blaming the kidnapping on troops acting on US orders.

Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy, was seized on Sunday by forces operating "under the supervision of the American forces in Iraq", an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns this aggressive act, which is in violation of international law," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the spokesman as saying.

"Iran holds American forces in Iraq responsible for the safety and life of the Iranian diplomat."

However, a US military spokesman denied that any of the country's troops, or Iraqis reporting to them, had been involved and said he could not even confirm that the incident had taken place.

"We've checked with our units and it was not an MNF-I [Multi-National Forces - Iraq] unit that participated in that event," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said.

The incident threatens to further escalate tensions between the US and Iran. Washington accuses Tehran of providing significant support to Shia militants fighting US forces in Iraq - an accusation it vehemently denies.

Last month, US forces detained five Iranians in northern Iraq, accusing them of having links to an Iranian military faction blamed for funding and arming Iraqi militants. Iran insisted they were diplomats and should be released.

An official at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad said Mr Sharafi had been travelling to check on the planned opening of an Iranian bank in the central Karradah area of Baghdad when he was seized by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms.

An Iraqi government official said Iraqi soldiers in two vehicles intercepted the diplomat's car, put him in one of their vehicles and drove off.

Iraqi police, apparently suspecting a kidnap attempt, opened fire on the second vehicle and detained the occupants, who were released into Iraqi military custody yesterday.

According to the Iraqi official, the detained troops were part of an army unit that receives direct orders from the US military.

A US embassy spokesman in Baghdad said he could not confirm the reports. "There appear to be conflicting accounts of this alleged incident, and we are in the process of trying to determine the facts," he added.

The White House has also authorised US troops in Iraq to kill or capture Iranian agents deemed to be a threat.

It claimed there was growing evidence that Iran was supporting terrorists inside Iraq and was a major supplier of bombs and other weapons used to target US forces.