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1st topic:Kerala vows to provide free WiFi to all state citizens after declaring it a basic human right
The Indian state of Kerala has declared that internet is a basic human right and that all citizens should have access to WiFi.
Finance Minister Thomas Issac made the announcement and said the government would look to provide free internet access across the state.
The move is line with the direction provided by the UN, which believes all people must be able to access the internet to exercise their right to freedom of expression and opinion.
"Internet will now become a right for the people and within 18 months the internet gateway would be set up through the K phone network at a cost of one billion Rupees (£12.5 million)," Mr Issac said, according to Your Story.
The government wants to extend broadband connectivity to every house in the state and have WiFi hotspots at a range of public places.
The project has been named K-Fon and plans have been made to lay optical fibre cables parallel to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) lines.
2nd topic:Defector urges S. Korea to be predictable on N. Korea
Thae Yong-ho, a former Pyongyang diplomat who defected to Seoul last year, on Thursday urged South Korea to be "predictable" when it comes to inter-Korean issues.
"(The conservative and liberal parties) must reach consensus to let North Korea know that it will pay dearly for any provocations against South Korea," Thae said during a meeting with lawmakers.
"Only then will North Korea not roll out thoughtless policies against the South."
Thae Yong-ho, a former Pyongyang diplomat who defected to Seoul (Yonhap)
Thae Yong-ho, who was Pyongyang's No. 2 diplomat in Britain, also said he was impressed about how South Koreans protect the value of the Constitution through street protests and the impeachment of the president, referring to the ouster of Park Geun-hye from presidential office last week.
The defector urged South Koreans to pay more attention to the human rights issues in the North in the spirit of the Constitution.
"As defined in the Constitution, North Koreans belong to South Korea," Thae said.
Thae said South Korea's political circle should approach the North Korean human rights issue in the context of protecting the Constitution.
3rd topic:China Will Replace All 67,000 Fossil-Fueled Taxis In Beijing With Electric Cars
Taxis are the bane of all urban areas. Typically, they are poorly made, poorly maintained, and spew tons of carbon dioxide into the air every day as they shuttle people from place to place. Beijing has nearly 70,000 taxis. It also has an intractable problem with smog. While it has embarked on an aggressive program to encourage private citizens to buy what it calls “new energy vehicles” — hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-operated cars — that push has not made much of an impact on the taxi fleet in China’s capital. Now it has announced a plan to replace all 67,000 fossil-fueled taxis in the city with electric cars.
The changeover won’t happen right away. It begins with a mandate that any new taxis placed in service must be electric, but that means it could be a decade or more before all older vehicles are replaced. The project is expected to cost taxi operators $1.3 billion before it is complete. The entry-level fossil-fueled cars in use today cost about $10,000. Equivalent electric cars cost twice as much.
China is paying the price for its rapid economic expansion, most of which has been powered by electricity generated in coal-fired facilities. During the recent Olympic games in Beijing, it ordered many factories to shut down for weeks and banned buses and vehicles from its streets. The plan worked, as millions of Beijing residents saw the sun for the first time in months, but it came at a huge economic cost.
A study in 2015 found that air pollution was responsible for up to 4,000 premature deaths a day throughout China. Last month, government officials ordered a local company called Air Matters to stop reporting pollution levels that exceed the government’s official air quality index of 500. No better way to solve a problem than by officially ignoring it.
The plan to electrify Beijing’s taxi fleet has one drawback, however. There are not enough charging stations for the hundreds of electric taxis already in service in the capital city. Drivers often have to wait hours to get access to a charger. “There are 200 electric taxis on the streets of Tongzhou in Beijing, but only about 100 are on the road, while the other 100 are waiting to be charged,” a driver told business newspaper
4th Topic:Universal basic income is becoming an urgent necessity
The 20th century income distribution system has broken down irretrievably. Globalisation, technological change and the move to flexible labour markets has channelled more and more income to rentiers – those owning financial, physical or so-called intellectual property – while real wages stagnate. The income of the precariat is falling and becoming more volatile. And chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits or workfare. In short, a basic income is becoming a political imperative.
There has recently been a surge of interest in basic income. The idea is that a monthly income should be paid, unconditionally, to either every resident citizen or legal resident, perhaps with legal migrants required to wait before qualifying. Long derided as unaffordable and conducive to idleness, basic income is now attracting support from many quarters and standard objections have been robustly challenged.
This interest has prompted the launch of several basic income pilots around the world. One started on 1 January in Finland with others planned in Ontario, Canada, Oakland, California, Aquitaine and Catalonia, and discussions are ongoing in Fife and Glasgow. A US NGO, GiveDirectly, is raising $30m for a 12-year experiment in Kenya.
It is important to stress that pilots can only test certain behavioural aspects of paying a basic income and seeing what people do differently, whereas its proponents rest their case on more fundamental justifications – social justice, freedom and economic security. None of these can be tested by pilots, which by definition are short-term and involve relatively small numbers of people.
Most pilots do not conform to a universal basic income system, in which everyone in a given community receives it, so these benefits cannot be tested. And if only a few people are given a basic income, recipients may soon find themselves under pressure from relatives and neighbours to share it.
At the moment, Finland’s pilot is receiving global attention. It is not a true basic income experiment, which is not to imply it will have no value. Instead, 2,000 randomly selected unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 have started to receive €560 (£475) as a tax-free monthly unconditional benefit, paid for two years. It will not be reduced if they earn income, and they will not be obliged to search for jobs.
The reasoning behind the experiment is that the Finnish social security system, designed for an industrial society, has become dysfunctional. As in the UK, it is overcomplex and has created severe poverty traps. A basic income removes onerous benefit conditions to seek and take employment, yet increases the incentive to take low-wage jobs because it is not withdrawn as income rises. Thus the pilot’s designers pose the question: could a basic income simplify the social security system and increase employment?
And in an “accidental” basic income pilot in North Carolina, where a longitudinal study of child development coincided with the decision of a Cherokee community to distribute casino profits to all tribal members, children in recipient families had fewer behavioural disorders, performed better in school, and were less likely to drift into crime. This was attributed to more economic security and better family relations, partly because parents spent less time arguing about money and more time with their children. Alcohol and drug abuse also fell.
In developing countries, experiments coming closest to a test of basic income have been conducted in Namibia and, on a larger scale, in India. In the largest Indian pilot, about 6,000 men people in eight villages received a small basic income for 18 months, and their experience was compared with what happened in 12 similar villages where nobody received the basic income.
Four positive effects were observed: First, there were benefits to welfare – improved nutrition, better health, improved schooling. Second, there were positive equity effects; the basic income helped the disabled more than others, women more than men, and scheduled caste households more than high-caste ones. Third, there were positive economic effects; having a basic income led to more work and labour, raised productivity and output, and reduced inequality. In particular, there was a growth in secondary, self- employed work.
One unanticipated result was that the emancipatory value of the basic income, in terms of transforming people’s lives, was greater than the very modest monetary value. I would argue that this emancipatory effect would apply wherever a basic income system was instigated, whereas most other forms of benefit, by being selective, conditional and inefficient, have an emancipatory value less than the monetary value.
Critics may say that what happens in India would not happen in the UK. However, I would wager my future basic income that, although many pilots are not true basic income experiments, the results will be similar to what has been shown in other places. That should help to win the argument. It will then be up to the courage and integrity of politicians to build a basic income system.
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