OPM plans to shake up charity program raise concerns about reduced donations

The Office of Personnel Management wants to shake up the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), the charitable-giving system for federal employees, but in the process the agency could risk losing donors and reducing contributions.

One rule under review by the Obama administration would “eliminate the use of cash, check and money order contributions. Instead, all donations will be required to be made through electronic means.”

This could “streamline the operations,” as proposed rules from OPM suggest, but whether it also would “increase the effectiveness of the program to ensure its continued growth and success” is questionable.

The reason: In 2011, the last year for which OPM data are available, just 22 percent of the money pledged was donated electronically. Moreover, 88.4 percent of the donors did not make electronic contributions.

So, a move to electronic-only donations would seem to put CFC at risk of losing a majority of its donors. The proposal worries executives of some charitable organizations, even as they welcome other sections of the plan.

Federal employees contribute through the CFC to various charities. Donations exceeded $272 million in 2011. That’s a lot of money, but it represents a drop of almost $10 million from 2009, the high point.

An OPM spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on rules under review. In the 53-page document that contains the proposed regulations, however, OPM Director John Berry wrote:

“These proposed changes will introduce efficiencies and cost savings into the CFC by leveraging technology that was not widely available just a few years ago. They will make the CFC more efficient, more transparent, more accountable and more relevant to Federal, Postal and military service personnel who want to make the biggest impact with their donations.”

Scott Jackson, chief executive of Global Impact, said electronic giving can save $14 a pledge, by reducing processing costs.

“That’s very, very powerful,” he added. How the change to electronic-only contributions might effect donations presents “important issues to work through,” he said. Global Impact administers the overseas campaign of the CFC.

Those issues leave Stephen M. Delfin “highly concerned.” He is president and chief executive of America’s Charities, a group that works with CFC organizations. Delfin said he is worried that the rules, previously reported by the Federal Times, could result in lower donations.

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Technology is not a panacea.”

Marshall Strauss, chief executive of the Workplace Giving Alliance, a consortium of CFC federations, agreed. Although he thinks “electronic donations are an excellent addition to the campaign,” he said he worries that relying solely on that “may dramatically reduce the number of people giving and the overall receipts of the campaign. Many thousands of people prefer to give by check or even cash, and we would hope the government would preserve these options.”

In addition to electronic-only giving, Delfin and others have concerns about a proposal to eliminate 184 local CFC committees in favor of fewer and larger regional panels.

This would require “a reduced number of Federal personnel for oversight purposes,” according to the plan.

But it also would diminish the sense of community that charitable leaders say is crucial in motivating individuals to give.

Dumping the local committees will shrink the “person-to-person feeling of the campaign, which is very, very important,” said Kalman Stein, president and CEO of EarthShare, which was recently selected to administer the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area.

Stein said that he doesn’t think OPM understands “how critical that local component is” and that he is “very concerned the campaign will decline precipitously” if the Local Federal Coordinating Committees are eliminated.

“Our history shows that more consolidation leads to less donations,” said Stein, who, along with Strauss, was a member of the CFC-50 Commission. The commission, formed in 2011 to mark CFC’s 50th anniversary, issued a report last year. A number of its recommendations were incorporated into OPM’s proposals.

But Stein said consolidating the local committees into regional ones would go “way beyond the commission’s recommendations.”

The commission said its 24 recommendations were designed to further encourage a “history of giving” by federal employees, who have “set the standard for workplace giving to charitable organizations.”

But the recent decrease in donations “is a cause for concern,” the report said.

Now there is concern that parts of the OPM plan could make the situation worse.

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

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Resurgent inflation dampens Vietnam stimulus hopes

HANOI: Vietnam's inflation accelerated in January, according to official data, reducing expectations of further monetary stimulus to boost the economy.

Consumer prices were up by 7.07 percent this month from a year earlier, following a 6.8 rise in December, the General Statistics Office in Hanoi said in a statement. Month-on-month prices gained 1.25 percent.

A further increase in prices is expected next month due to high demand before the Lunar New Year festival which starts on February 10, one Hanoi-based banker who did not want to be named told AFP.

Vietnam repeatedly raised interest rates in 2011 to prevent the economy from overheating and to rein in double-digit inflation, but with the economy cooling the authorities last year resumed monetary stimulus efforts.

The central bank in December cut interest rates for the sixth time since March as annual economic growth slowed to the weakest pace in 13 years, at roughly five percent for 2012.

Resurgent inflation is now seen as limiting the scope for further monetary stimulus that could stoke price pressures.

"It will not be easy to keep inflation below the government's initial target of 6.9 percent" in 2013, said one independent analyst who asked not to be named.

"The authorities will have to be very careful about future monetary policy. It is too early to say if they will have to raise interest rates again. They are in the middle of nowhere and don't know which path to follow."

The communist nation's economic woes are compounded by worries over toxic debts in the banking sector, falling foreign direct investment and a string of financial scandals among state-owned firms.

- AFP/al

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Deformed Dolphin Accepted Into New Family

In 2011, behavioral ecologists Alexander Wilson and Jens Krause of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany were surprised to discover that a group of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)—animals not usually known for forging bonds with other species—had taken in an adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

The researchers observed the group in the ocean surrounding the Azores (map)—about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal—for eight days as the dolphin traveled, foraged, and played with both the adult whales and their calves. When the dolphin rubbed its body against the whales, they would sometimes return the gesture.

Among terrestrial animals, cross-species interactions are not uncommon. These mostly temporary alliances are forged for foraging benefits and protection against predators, said Wilson.

They could also be satisfying a desire for the company of other animals, added marine biologist John Francis, vice president for research, conservation, and exploration at the National Geographic Society (the Society owns National Geographic news).

Photographs of dogs nursing tiger cubs, stories of a signing gorilla adopting a pet cat, and videos of a leopard caring for a baby baboon have long circulated the web and caught national attention.

A Rare Alliance

And although dolphins are known for being sociable animals, Wilson called the alliance between sperm whale and bottlenose dolphin rare, as it has never, to his knowledge, been witnessed before.

This association may have started with something called bow riding, a common behavior among dolphins during which they ride the pressure waves generated by the bow of a ship or, in this case, whales, suggested Francis.

"Hanging around slower creatures to catch a ride might have been the first advantage [of such behavior]," he said, adding that this may have also started out as simply a playful encounter.

Wilson suggested that the dolphin's peculiar spinal shape made it more likely to initiate an interaction with the large and slow-moving whales. "Perhaps it could not keep up with or was picked on by other members of its dolphin group," he said in an email.

Default

But the "million-dollar question," as Wilson puts it, is why the whales accepted the lone dolphin. Among several theories presented in an upcoming paper in Aquatic Mammals describing the scientists' observations, they propose that the dolphin may have been regarded as nonthreatening and that it was accepted by default because of the way adult sperm whales "babysit" their calves.

Sperm whales alternate their dives between group members, always leaving one adult near the surface to watch the juveniles. "What is likely is that the presence of the calves—which cannot dive very deep or for very long—allowed the dolphin to maintain contact with the group," Wilson said.

Wilson doesn't believe the dolphin approached the sperm whales for help in protecting itself from predators, since there aren't many dolphin predators in the waters surrounding the Azores.

But Francis was not so quick to discount the idea. "I don't buy that there is no predator in the lifelong experience of the whales and dolphins frequenting the Azores," he said.

He suggested that it could be just as possible that the sperm whales accepted the dolphin for added protection against their own predators, like the killer whale (Orcinus orca), while traveling. "They see killer whales off the Azores, and while they may not be around regularly, it does not take a lot of encounters to make [other] whales defensive," he said.

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Pentagon to Allow Women in Combat

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will lift a longstanding ban on women serving in combat, according to senior defense officials.

The services have until this May to come up with a plan to implement the change, according to a Defense Department official.

That means the changes could come into effect as early as May, though the services will have until January 2016 to complete the implementation of the changes.

"We certainly want to see this executed responsibly but in a reasonable time frame, so I would hope that this doesn't get dragged out," said former Marine Capt. Zoe Bedell, who joined a recent lawsuit aimed at getting women on the battlefield.

The military services also will have until January 2016 to seek waivers for certain jobs -- but those waivers will require a personal approval from the secretary of defense and will have to be based on rationales other than the direct combat exclusion rule.

The move to allow women in combat, first reported by the Associated Press, was not expected this week, although there has been a concerted effort by the Obama administration to further open up the armed forces to women.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommended in January to Secretary Panetta that the direct combat exclusion rule should be lifted.

"I can confirm media reports that the secretary and the chairman are expected to announce the lifting of the direct combat exclusion rule for women in the military," said a senior Defense Department official. "This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey sent Panetta a memo earlier this month entitled, "Women in Service Implementation Plan."

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"The time has come to rescind the direct combat exclusion rule for women and to eliminate all unnecessary gender-based barriers to service," the memo read.

"To implement these initiatives successfully and without sacrificing our warfighting capability or the trust of the American people, we will need time to get it right," he said in the memo, referring to the 2016 horizon.

Women have been officially prohibited from serving in combat since a 1994 rule that barred them from serving in ground combat units. That does not mean they have been immune from danger or from combat.

As Martha Raddatz reported in 2009, women have served in support positions on and off the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where war is waged on street corners and in markets, putting them at equal risk. Hundreds of thousands of women deployed with the military to those two war zones over the past decade. Hundreds have died.

READ MORE: Female Warriors Engage in Combat in Iraq, Afghanistan

"The reality of the battlefield has changed really since the Vietnam era to where it is today," said Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former military helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in combat. "Those distinctions on what is combat and what is not really are falling aside. So I think that after having seen women, men, folks who -- cooks, clerks, truck drivers -- serve in combat conditions, the reality is women are already in combat."

Woman have been able to fly combat sorties since 1993. In 2010, the Navy allowed them on submarines. But lifting restrictions on service in frontline ground combat units will break a key barrier in the military.

READ MORE: Smooth Sailing for First Women to Serve on Navy Submarines

READ MORE: Female Fighter Pilot Breaks Gender Barriers

Panetta's decision will set a January 2016 deadline for the military service branches to argue that there are military roles that should remain closed to women.

In February 2012 the Defense Department opened up 14,500 positions to women that had previously been limited to men and lifted a rule that prohibited women from living with combat units.

Panetta also directed the services to examine ways to open more combat roles to women.

However, the ban on direct combat positions has remained in place.

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Indian panel likely to recommend tougher rape law

NEW DELHI: A government commission tasked with looking at India's sex crime laws after the gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus is expected to recommend tougher sentences as it reports its findings Wednesday.

A three-member commission led by former chief justice of India Jagdish Sharan Verma will hand over its recommendations to the government, which faced violent protests following the fatal gang-rape on December 16.

"The report will be submitted to the home ministry today and the committee members will give details of their recommendations to the media," ministry spokesman Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia told AFP.

Judge Verma received thousands of suggestions after he set January 5 as a deadline for comments from jurists, women's groups and other forums to revamp existing legislation to deal with sex offenders.

The panel was formed in late December amid demands for greater protection for women after the brutal assault of a 23-year-old student by six rapists after she boarded a bus in New Delhi with her boyfriend.

India's 153-year-old penal code stipulates rapists should serve a minimum of seven years in prison and a maximum of life, while gang-rape convicts face a minimum term of 10 years and life imprisonment.

Media reports say India's ruling Congress party has suggested the death penalty for rapists in exceptional cases, while "chemical castration" -- using drugs to eliminate sex drive -- has also been raised.

The government, which has announced new "fast-track" courts to speed up India's notoriously slow justice system and efforts to boost the number of women police officers, has declined to comment on the panel's work.

Though sexual harassment is commonplace in India, the student's gang-rape has touched a nerve, leading to an outpouring of criticism about the treatment of women in Indian society.

Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi on Sunday condemned the "shameful" social attitudes that she said led to crimes like gang-rape. The case had "shaken the entire country", she added.

-AFP/fl

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Slight respite from cold conditions in Kashmir Valley

SRINAGAR: Residents of Kashmir got a slight respite from the bitter cold conditions as the night temperatures across the Valley registered an increase of several degrees.

The weather has remained dry even as the met department predicted light rainfall or snowfall for Wednesday and Thursday.

Most of the water bodies across the Valley, including the world famous Dal Lake, continued to be partially frozen. The summer capital Srinagar, which recorded a low of minus 5.3 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, was warmer by two notches at minus of 3.2 degrees Celsius during the night, a met department spokesman said.

He said the highway town of Qazigund in south Kashmir registered an increase of over six notches in the night temperature to settle at minus 4.0 degrees Celsius as against Tuesday's minus of 10.3 degrees Celsius.

The night temperature in Kokernag settled at a low of minus 8.2 degrees Celsius as compared to minus 8.7 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, the spokesman said.

He said in north Kashmir's Kupwara town, where the previous night's minimum was minus 4.8 degree Celsius, the minimum temperature showed an increase of three degrees to settle at a low of minus 1.7 degree Celsius during the night.

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The Promise and Perils of Mining Asteroids

Encouraged by new space technologies, a growing fleet of commercial rockets and the vast potential to generate riches, a group of entrepreneurs announced Tuesday that they planned to mine the thousands of near-Earth asteroids in the coming decades.

The new company, Deep Space Industries (DSI), is not the first in the field, nor is it the most well-financed. But with their ambition to become the first asteroid prospectors, and ultimately miners and manufacturers, they are aggressively going after what Mark Sonter, a member of DSI's board of directors, called "the main resource opportunity of the 21st century." (Related: "Asteroid Hunter to Be First Private Deep-Space Mission?")

Prospecting using miniaturized "cubesat" probes the size of a laptop will begin by 2015, company executives announced. They plan to return collections of asteroid samples to Earth not long after.

"Using low cost technologies, and combining the legacy of [the United States'] space program with the innovation of today's young high tech geniuses, we will do things that would have been impossible just a few years ago," said Rick Tumlinson, company chairman and a longtime visionary and organizer in the world of commercial space [not sure what commercial space means].

"We sit in a sea of resources so infinite they're impossible to describe," Tumlinson said.

Added Value

There are some 9,000 asteroids described as "near-Earth," and they contain several classes of resources that entrepreneurs are now eyeing as economically valuable.

Elements such as gold and platinum can be found on some asteroids. But water, silicon, nickel, and iron are the elements expected to become central to a space "economy" should it ever develop.

Water can be "mined" for its hydrogen (a fuel) and oxygen (needed for humans in space), while silicon can be used for solar power systems, and the ubiquitous nickel and iron for potential space manufacturing. (See an interactive on asteroid mining.)

Sonter, an Australian mining consultant and asteroid specialist, said that 700 to 800 near-Earth asteroids are easier to reach and land on than the moon.

DSI's prospecting spacecraft will be called "FireFlies," a reference to the popular science fiction television series of the same name. The FireFlies will hitchhike on rockets carrying up communication satellites or scientific instruments, but they will be designed so that they also have their own propulsion systems. The larger mining spacecraft to follow have been named "DragonFlies."

Efficiencies

It all sounds like science fiction, but CEO David Gump said that the technology is evolving so quickly that a space economy can soon become a reality. Providing resources from beyond Earth to power spacecraft and keep space travelers alive is the logical way to go.

That's because the most expensive and resource-intensive aspect of space travel is pushing through the Earth's atmosphere. Some 90 percent of the weight lifted by a rocket sending a capsule to Mars is fuel. Speaking during a press conference at the Santa Monica Museum of Flying in California, Gump said that Mars exploration would be much cheaper, and more efficient, if some of the fuel could be picked up en route. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Although there is little competition in the asteroid mining field so far, DSI has some large hurdles ahead of it. The first company to announce plans for asteroid mining was Planetary Resources, Inc. in spring 2012—the group is backed by big-name investors such as Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, filmmaker James Cameron, and early Google investor Ram Shriram. DSI is still looking for funding.

Owning Asteroids

While these potential space entrepreneurs are confident they can physically lay claim to resources beyond Earth, there remain untested legal issues.

The United Nations Space Treaty of 1967 expressly forbids ownership of other celestial bodies by governments on Earth. But American administrations have long argued that the same is not true of private companies and potential mining rights.

While an American court has ruled that an individual cannot own an asteroid—as in the case of Gregory Nemitz, who laid claim to 433 Eros as a NASA spacecraft was approaching it in 2001—the question of extraction rights has not been tested.

Moon rocks brought back to Earth during the Apollo program are considered to belong to the United States, and the Russian space agency has sold some moon samples it has returned to Earth-sales seen by some as setting a precedent.

Despite the potential for future legal issues, DSI's Gump said his group recently met with top NASA officials to discuss issues regarding technology and capital, and came away optimistic. "There's a great hunger for the idea of getting space missions done with smaller, cheaper 'cubesat' technology and for increased private sector involvement."

Everyone involved acknowledged the vast challenges and risks ahead, but they see an equally vast potential—both financial and societal.

"Over the decades, we believe these efforts will help expand the civilization of Earth into the cosmos, and change what it means to be a citizen of this planet," Tumlinson said.

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Al Qaeda Commander Killed for the 3rd Time

The second in command of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Yemen in December, according to a news report by Arabic television network Al Arabiya, the third time the former Guantanamo detainee has been reported dead since 2010.

According to the report, Said al-Shihri died last month after sustaining severe injuries from a joint U.S.-Yemeni airstrike that targeted a convoy in which he was riding. The al Arabiya account, based on information from "family sources," said that the airstrike left al-Shihri in a coma. He allegedly died soon after and was buried in Yemen.

On Tuesday afternoon, hours after the initial report, a Yemeni government official denied having any information regarding the death of al-Shihri, according to Arabic news site al-Bawaba.

No photos of a body have yet surfaced and no mention of his death has appeared on jihadi forums.
This is the third time al-Shihri, the second in command of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been reported killed since 2009. In 2010, the Yemeni government claimed it had captured him. In September 2012, Yemeni news sites reported he was killed in an American drone strike.

PHOTOS: Terrorists Who Came Back from the Grave

READ: Gitmo Detainee turned terror commander killed: Reports

Al-Shihri, a "veteran jihadist," traveled to Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks to fight coalition troops, only to be captured weeks later, according to West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. He was sent to the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he stayed for six years before being released to Saudi Arabia. There, he entered a so-called "jihadi rehab" program that attempted to turn terrorists into art students by getting them to get "negative energy out on paper," as the program's director told ABC News in 2009.

READ: Trading Bombs for Crayons: Terrorists Get 'Art Therapy'

But just months after he supposedly entered the fingerpainting camp, al-Shihri reappeared in Yemen where he was suspected to have been behind a deadly bombing at the U.S. embassy there.

At the time, critics of the "jihadi rehab" program used al-Shihri as evidence that extremists would just go through the motions in order to be freed.

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At second inauguration, Obama relishes the rituals, as well as the smaller moments

The second time seemed to charm him.

The choreography of President Obama’s ceremonial inauguration Monday was nearly identical to that of his swearing-in four years ago: church, motorcade to the Capitol, invocation, oath, address, luncheon, parade, dancing.

This time, however, the man taking the oath of office was an experienced president, not a first-term senator. And Obama seemed determined to relish the rituals and have himself some fun.

In his public remarks, he spoke with conviction. From the Capitol steps, he asserted his intention to bind the nation closer together. He was sober in addressing members of Congress at a luncheon.

But the president also found joy in the smaller moments. He blew kisses as he walked the parade route with his jubilant wife, Michelle, beside him. He bobbed his head and grooved watching a drill group from Iowa pass by and waved the shaka sign to the marching band from his Hawaiian high school alma mater. On the dance floor later, he nuzzled his wife’s hair and crooned in her ear.

There was a majesty and gravity to Monday’s proceedings, but this time, unlike four years ago, Obama knows what his office demands, as well as the limits on its power. His life is not in transition like it was then. He is settled.

He seemed to recognize that the next time the country pauses to inaugurate a president, the Obamas will be moving out of the White House, departing the city by helicopter and heading home. After the ceremony on the Capitol steps, as the president headed inside, he turned back and stopped.

“I want to take a look, one more time,” Obama said. “I’m not going to see this again.”

He stood still and looked out at the panorama of flags waving and people, hundreds of thousands of them, cramming the Mall and chanting his name.

It was as if he wanted to engrave the picture on his mind.

And he seemed to savor such moments throughout the day.

When the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” he turned and broadly winked at his daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, a civil rights activist whose husband, Medgar Evers, was assassinated in 1963 in his Mississippi driveway, delivered the invocation. She spoke of being challenged by adversity — “For every mountain, you gave us the strength to climb,” she said — and Obama, his eyes closed in prayer, lifted his shoulders and took a deep breath.

“Amen,” he said at the end of her prayer.

A man behind the president shouted, “Hallelujah!”

When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered the president’s oath at 11:50 a.m., Obama flubbed a word, “the office of president of the United Sta—.” But it didn’t matter. He had recited the official oath correctly a day earlier, on Jan. 20, the inauguration date mandated by the Constitution. (His daughter Sasha already had congratulated him, too: “You didn’t mess up,” she told him in the Blue Room. )

Then, once Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced him as “the 44th president of the United States,” Obama looked down and smiled. He gathered himself and pushed his chin up, understanding his role in addressing the nation far more clearly than he could have the first time around.

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RP's Jeyaretnam to hold Meet-the-People session on Wednesday

SINGAPORE: Reform Party candidate Kenneth Jeyaretnam has said he plans to hold a Meet-the-People's session on Wednesday evening.

He met Punggol East residents at Rumbia LRT Station at 7.30am on Tuesday, a day after he cancelled a feedback session with residents due to flu.

Speaking to Channel NewsAsia after breakfast, Mr Jeyaretnam said he will continue to walk the ground. So far, he has visited less than half of the 127 blocks in the ward.

Mr Jeyaretnam described the nine-day campaigning period as "inadequate", but believes he will be able to cover between 25 and 50 per cent of the remaining blocks.

He said residents have been generally positive thus far.

He added: "I think many people like our policies and they like our pledge to be a full-time MP, to live in the community and the fact that I am probably the best qualified candidate to raise the important national issues in Parliament."

Mr Jeyaretnam said the party has drawn up a list of residents' concerns on issues such as salary stagnation, housing affordability for young couples, and cleanliness and maintenance of the neighbourhood.

- CNA/al

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