For New Minister of Education, a Mission to Relish

http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/new-minister-education-mission-relish/
By Kennial Caroline Laia

Man for the Job: Anies Baswedan will continue where he left off with ‘Indonesia Mengajar’ — by ensuring access to schools for all


President Joko Widodo, center, followed by Anies Baswedan, left, emerge from Friday prayer at a mosque at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Oct. 24, 2014. (AFP Photo/Romeo Gacad)

Jakarta. Anies Baswedan, the hugely popular rector of Jakarta’s Paramadina University and a pioneering educator, was widely expected to become Indonesia’s next education minister under President Joko Widodo, and Sunday’s cabinet announcement laid to rest any doubt that he would be passed over for the post.

“I accept this responsibility,” Anies said on Monday after his inauguration as minister for primary and secondary education. “My principle is: I don’t fight to get a job, but I fight to do my job,” he added.

Anies, whose “ Indonesia Mengajar ” (“Indonesia Teaches”) program sends promising young university graduates out to remote parts of the country to teach for a year, praised Joko’s decision to spin off tertiary education to the ministry for research and technology, which he argues would allow his now-leaner ministry to put more focus on improving access to primary and secondary education for students nationwide.

“I will push for openness and active public participation,” he said.

“There are many issues surrounding education. I want to encourage everyone to own these issues and together actively become involved in finding the solutions.”

Mohammad Abduhzen, the executive director of the Institute for Education Reform, agreed that ensuring universal education to all school-aged Indonesians remained a huge challenge.

“Access to schools is still a serious problem that needs to be addressed, particularly in remote areas,” he said.

“This is important for Joko because that was one of his main campaign promises.”

Joko pledged during the campaign to expand the Jakarta Smart Card program, which he introduced while governor of the capital to provide students with monthly stipends to buy books and uniforms, to the national level.

Although public schools in Indonesia are ostensibly free of charge, students are still required to pay for a range of ancillary items and services, including books and uniforms, which education observers have long argued add up to hinder access to education for the country’s poor.

“There must be a blueprint for education that address problems like access to and quality of education in Indonesia,” Abduhzen said.

Joko has also touted extending the current nine-year mandatory basic education program to 12 years — something that his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, also attempted but failed to achieve.

Also on Sunday, Joko named Muhammad Nasir, the little-known rector of Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, as minister of tertiary education and research and technology.

Abduhzen said he was skeptical that the merger was the best solution for improving the performance of Indonesia’s institutes of higher education.

“It’s hard to say whether the merger will bring advancements in both sectors, universities and research,” he said.

“The downside is that now universities will be more focused on research activities. While research is indeed important, universities should ideally be more focused on theoretical and scientific advancements.”

Joko’s justification for the merger was to get Indonesian universities to work with the private sector in generating research and technology that could be applied in real-world situations.

Clean your iron with toothpaste and cook with Pyrex: Six ways to cut your energy bills by making your appliances more efficient

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2804743/Clean-iron-toothpaste-cook-Pyrex-Six-ways-cut-energy-bills-making-appliances-efficient.html
By RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS

As households get set for another winter of eye-watering energy bills, we’re all looking for ways to shrink our costs as best we can.

While there are many conventional methods out there that require more or less effort, we’ve come up with a list of six easy kills that simply involve tweaking your household appliances.

1. Could toothpaste make your iron more energy efficient?

You can make your iron work more efficiently by following these six steps, according to research from British Gas:

Saving money: A few simple steps could save you money on the cost of using an iron

1. When your iron is cool, wipe and polish the plate with a soft cloth.

2. Rub marks with a damp cloth when the iron is warm.

3. Use white toothpaste for more stubborn marks.

4. Rub the toothpaste off with a clean cloth.

5. Set iron on steam.

6. Steam a cloth for five minutes to ensure iron is completely clean.

Once you've done all that, your iron should work more efficiently, which in turns could help drive your electricity bill down. 

2. Save money every time you bake

Peering in: If you find yourself opening the door of the oven to check on your baking you could be adding to cooking time - and bumping up electricity costs

Every time you open your oven door it loses ten degrees of heat, which can significantly add to cooking time and pushing up your energy consumption.

So if you find yourself opening it to peer in at your cakes and roast dinner – clean the oven door! Over the course of a year it could add up to a significant saving.

A clean oven works far more efficiently than a dirty one, so you may as well clean the whole thing if it isn’t already. And make sure the seal on the door is tight so no heat is going to waste.

There are times when only a tin tray will do, but could you sometimes use Pyrex or ceramic instead?

3. Swap baking trays for Pyrex

Choosing the right dishes for cooking can also help you save energy and money. 

Metal baking trays heat up quickly, but they also lose heat quickly. Pyrex and ceramic, on the other hand, retain their heat well.

Of course there are times when only a metal baking tray will work. 

But where it makes no difference, if you switch from metal to Pyrex you may be able to cut down on cooking time or bake on a lower heat.

4. Fill your fridge with bottles of water

Every time you open your fridge it loses heat. It then takes energy to cool it back down again to the target temperature. 

But if the fridge is full, it takes longer for the heat to escape. If you don’t have a full fridge, just fill it with bottles of water to bulk it out.

5. Bleed your radiators

This can make a huge difference to the efficiency of your central heating and only takes a few minutes. It takes any trapped air out of the system to make it work much more efficiently. 

6. Defrost your freezer

Earlier this year we revealed how the Lewis family from Leeds shaved around 60p a day off their energy bills just be defrosting the freezer. 

A frost-coated freezer has to work harder to keep cold, which uses up more electricity.

Removing the frost could save a good £100 on energy bills.  

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Brings a Message to Indonesia

http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2014/10/13/facebooks-zuckerberg-brings-a-message-to-indonesia/?mod=newsreel
by Sara Schonhardt

Mark Zuckerberg addresses Indonesian app developers and media at an event in Jakarta aimed at expanding access to the Internet. / 

Sara Schonhardt/The Wall Street Journal

Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring Indonesia to the world via the Internet and make millions more prosperous along the way.

The chief executive of Facebook FB -0.41% gave his social media site’s followers a glimpse of the diverse Southeast Asian country by posting a picture of himself at a famed Buddhist temple Sunday and then made a media splash Monday by appearing in an uncharacteristic suit alongside incoming president Joko Widodo, who relied heavily on social media to help with his campaigning.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckenberg (C-R) speaks to journalists next to Indonesian president-elect Joko Widodo (L) during a press conference in Jakarta on Oct. 13./ 

Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mr. Zuckerberg said the president-elect’s success in connecting to people in Indonesia made him  excited to visit. “It’s really been an unprecedented thing around the world and it’s an honor to be here and witness it firsthand how’s that happening,” the young billionaire said after meeting Mr. Widodo at City Hall.

Later in the day, Mr. Zuckerberg swapped his suit for a t-shirt and sneakers to attend a developer summit aimed at making it easier and cheaper for tens of millions of Indonesians to get online.

“Getting businesses here on the Internet is one of the biggest levers that the government has for growing the economy and it’s one of the biggest ways we at Facebook feel we can help grow the economy,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

The summit is part of Internet.org, a partnership between Facebook and several global technology companies that aims to break down barriers to online access in places where Internet penetration remains low. In Indonesia, where many people get online through their mobile phones, the focus will be making access to mobile networks cheaper and more efficient.

“The vast majority of people who are going to come online in  the Internet in the future are going to come via mobile device … so mobile devices are the future,” said Chris Daniels, the vice president of Internet.org.

Indonesia’s internet penetration rate is less than 20%, but around 85% of the population of 250 milllion is covered by a mobile data network. Challenges remain to bring all those mobile users online in an archipelago nation of more than 17,500 islands where around 40% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a speech during a workshop for application developers in Jakarta on Oct. 13./ 

Associated Press

Mobile coverage is still patchy in places and costs for smartphones and data plans remain high for many.

Solving those problems represents a huge opportunity for Indonesia and for Facebook. Currently 69 million of Indonesia’s 250 million citizens have active Facebook accounts, and Mr. Zuckerberg admits that it will benefit Facebook to see more users in Indonesia get online.

Through Internet.org, Facebook is working with local telecoms to offer free services, such as health and education information, basic financial services, and chat apps like Facebook messenger, over the Internet.

It also partnered with Ericsson to set up a lab that developers can use to simulate network conditions on the apps they’re building. At the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, where Mr. Zuckerberg posted the picture to his Facebook page, he said the mobile connection passed the litmus test.

“There are places where you travel and you can’t do basic things like take a photo and share it with someone else or upload it,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, adding later: “There are all these different parts of culture and innovation that the world could have from Indonesia that we are being robbed of because a lot of people don’t have a way to share that.”

– Linda Silaen contributed reporting.

Jokowi’s Principles Could Derail His Reforms During Presidency

http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/jokowis-principles-derail-reforms-presidency/
By Kanupriya Kapoor

Jakarta. Two weeks before he is due to take office, Indonesia’s president-elect is refusing to compromise his principles by building support in legislature in exchange for plum jobs.

Joko Widodo, the popular former governor of the capital, narrowly won a July election with promises to voters jaded by generations of graft that he would bring effective government free of the old horse-trading among the political elite.

But Joko has the backing of only 37 percent of members of legislature and without more support he faces a hostile opposition dominated by the old elite that could derail his reform program.

For now, the first businessman to become president of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and his idealistic young supporters seem unperturbed by the prospect of the reforms falling victim to the principles.

“It’s not a problem to have a minority. I had a similar experience in Jakarta and it was not a problem to get things done,” Joko told reporters recently, referring to his term as the capital’s governor.

“It’s the same at the national level,” he said.

Joko’s direct approach and success in cutting red tape appealed to ordinary voters and investors who welcomed his victory by pushing the stock market up to record highs.

But his support could evaporate if the opposition blocks the changes his supporters expect, all because he refuses to engage in “transactional politics” as the old-style of support in exchange for lucrative cabinet posts is called.

“What Widodo wants to say is that the transactions shouldn’t be monetary as they usually are in Indonesia,” said Achmad Sukarsono of the Habibie Center think-tank.

“But the consequence is that Widodo would have to deal with a lot of rejection if his policies do not meet with interests of the opposition or if they are not packaged as if they are urgent for the public interest.”

The former furniture businessman is due to take office on Oct. 20 and an early test will be getting enough political support to cut fuel subsidies.

Energy subsidies eat up 17 percent of the state budget and leave little room to kickstart the economy by developing much-needed infrastructure.

But opposition parties, most in a loose alliance led by the challenger Joko defeated in the July election, retired general Prabowo Subianto, are ignoring Joko’s efforts to expand his coalition.

“Jokowi-JK have not offered any political incentive,” Romahurmurziy, secretary general of the United Development Party, Indonesia’s oldest Islamic party, told reporters recently. Jokowi is Joko’s nickname and JK is Vice President-elect Jusuf Kalla.

“They cannot pull together a majority coalition like this,” he said, adding that the inability to do so could jeopardize the new government’s stability.

‘Overwhelmed’

Already Joko is starting to feel the sting of a hostile legislature. Opposition parties last week installed their members in main legislative posts including the speaker, meaning they will likely control the legislative agenda.

Worry that an opposition-dominated legislature will hold up reforms is spilling into an investment community already jittery about a large current account deficit and a weak currency.

The Jakarta stock index fell to its lowest in three months last week as foreign investors pulled out funds because of the political uncertainty.

Prabowo’s tycoon brother and top aide, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, told Reuters on Tuesday Joko would have to compromise: “That’s maybe something he didn’t expect.”

But Hasto Kristianto, a member of Joko’s transition team, said Joko would head a government “that doesn’t compromise when faced with corruption”.

“The house leadership is indeed something that we recognize as quite important and strategic, but what is happening in parliament will not shake Jokowi-JK’s steps to build a clean government,” he said.

Joko seems to be banking on the hope that no-one would block reforms to improve areas such as education.

“Our new government is optimistic that management of the country will run smoothly,” he told reporters.

“The public and investors should not doubt that we guarantee there will be no problem. There won’t be anybody who will reject a program that’s for the good of the people,” he said.

But he added he had not shut the door on expanding his coalition: “Politics can change at any second.”

Whether such optimism is justified remains to be seen. In the end, he will probably have to compromise to accomplish the things he wants to do, analysts say.

“He is a bit overwhelmed by national politics,” said Sukarsono. “Nobody expects him to just suddenly work miracles and clean up Indonesian politics … He just needs to learn the ropes. It’s normal.”

Reuters

Boy Kidnapped By ISIS Comes Home, Shocks Family And The World With This Statement

http://youngcons.com/boy-kidnapped-by-isis-comes-home-and-shocks-family-and-the-world-with-this-statement/

Joshua Riddle

This young boy was one of more than 140 Syrian Kurdish schoolboys who were kidnapped by the sickos known as ISIS. They were kidnapped nearly 4 months ago on their way home from taking final exams at school.

Merwan Mohammed Hussein talked with CNN, “When ISIS first grabbed me I was terrified.” What he went on to reveal is truly horrible.

Merwan described how ISIS forced him to go to the mosque. “They took us to the mosque and they had us pray. They taught us to pray and we went to the school.”

This school ended up becoming their prison and brainwashing camp.

From The Federalist Papers

The school would become their prison where they were interrogated, beaten and indoctrinated with ISIS’ version of Islam. They were forced to watch beheadings and amputations.

“They hit me with cables… Others were more severely beaten, some electrocuted, even hung from the ceiling,” Merwan said. “We were afraid of them. When are they going to kill us? Today? Tomorrow?”

But then something changed. According to Merwan, “We found out the truth, that they don’t just slaughter someone without evidence without finding out if they are infidel or not.”

When asked by the reporter what Merwan thought of his ISIS captors and their beliefs…

Merwan responded “They are right.”

The scariest and saddest part about this is it means that their brainwashing is working. That means we need to take more extreme efforts in preventing the kidnapping of people in the first place. We are dealing with pure evil here folks.