SPAIN REVOLT - Thousands Protest Austerity Cuts in Spain

Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated across Spain against new austerity measures targeting education and health care spending.

The cash-strapped Spanish government on April 20 approved reforms to scrap free medicine for pensioners and charge students higher fees, aiming to save an extra 10 billion euros ($13 billion) a year.

Spain's two biggest unions, the CCOO and the UGT, said Spaniards marched in 55 cities on Sunday.

"Cuts in health care and education, that's the last straw for us, the working class," said Domingo Zamora, a 60-year-old civil servant in Madrid. "Without that, what's left? We don't even have work."

"They're pushing us to the point of asphyxiation," said another protester, Pilar Logales, also 60.

The protesters carried banners reading "It's a Crime to Cut Health Care" and "People of Europe, Rise Up." One simply read "No."

Many banners bore a drawing of a pair of scissors symbolising the budget cuts.

"These cuts are atrocious," said Alba Sanchez, 30, a journalism graduate.

"I can't find any work and my parents are suffering because both of them are working in the public health sector. Whatever they have obtained in over 30 years of struggle, Rajoy destroyed in a month," he said, referring to cuts pushed through by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Rajoy admitted that "many are those who do not understand the adopted decisions."

"But the problem is the crisis, unemployment, the recession, the mess in the public accounts. These structural changes must be implemented," the prime minister said, stressing that his government will continue the reforms.

Small turnout

Unions put the turnout in a rainy Madrid at 40,000.

In Andalusia, Spain's biggest southern region, unions counted 30,000 protesters while police said there were 11,500.

In Valencia, between 15,000 and 40,000 people assembled, said unions.

In Barcelona, police said 700 demonstrators had gathered, while unions gave a figure of 4,000.

Nevertheless, the overall turnout was small compared with other demonstrations that have hit Spain in recent months, including on March 29 when hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

Unions have called a new demonstration on Tuesday, Labour Day.

Madrid has promised to slash its public deficit to 5.3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2012 from 8.5 per cent last year.

Spain's jobless rate hit 24 percent in the first quarter of this year, with 5.64 million people out of work, its highest level since 1996.

Source: Aljazeera - Thousands protest austerity cuts in Spain

Spain: tens of thousands protest austerity cuts

Contour Crafting: Automated Construction | Behrokh Khoshnevis [TEDx]

Behrokh Khoshnevis is a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and is the Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC). He is active in CAD/CAM, robotics and mechatronics related related research projects that include the development of novel Solid Free Form, or Rapid Prototyping, processes (Contour Crafting and SIS), automated construction of civil structures, development of CAD/CAM systems for biomedical applications (e.g., restorative dentistry, rehabilitation engineering, haptics devices for medical applications), autonomous mobile and modular robots for assembly applications in space, and invention of technologies in the field of oil and gas. His research in simulation has aimed at creating intelligent simulation tools that can automatically perform many simulation functions that are conventionally performed by human analysts. His textbook, "Discrete Systems Simulation", and his simulation software EZSIM benefit from some aspects of his research in simulation. He routinely conducts lectures and seminars on invention and technology development.

TEDxOjai - Behrokh Khoshnevis - Contour Crafting: Automated Construction

MUST READ! Singularity University: Meet the people who are building our future

Take top thinkers from Silicon Valley and science, mix them with scientists, innovators and philanthro-capitalists, and you've got the Singularity University – on a mission to seek technological solutions to the world's great challenges

It's day one at the Singularity University: the opening address has just been delivered by a hologram. Craig Venter, who was one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome and created the first synthetic life form, is up next. And later, we will see two people, paralysed from the waist down, use robotic exoskeletons to rise up and walk.

But first, the co-founder of the Singularity University, Peter Diamandis, gives us our instructions for the day. Your task, he says, is to pick one of the "grand challenges of humanity" – the lack of clean drinking water, say. And then come up with an idea that "can positively impact the lives of a billion people".

It's 9.30 in the morning. Some of us haven't even had coffee yet. There's about 50 of us present and the room has been divided up into tables, one for education, another for poverty, another for water, and I'm not sure where I should sit. Diane Murphy, the university's PR executive, hesitates for a moment and then directs me over to the table marked "food". "Tell you what," she says. "Why don't you take Ashton Kutcher's chair over there. He's not coming until later." (When he does arrive, he pulls up a chair at the next table over. What can I say? If Ashton Kutcher fails to solve global hunger, it will be my fault.)

The Singularity University is really not much like a regular university. And not just because it's a place that manages to accommodate the likes of both Venter and Kutcher (and where, during a Q&A session, somebody asks a question about taking the Singularity University into the ghetto, and it turns out to be from the musician will.i.am).

Its courses aren't accredited, and it has no undergraduates. Stanford University might have been the cradle for a hundred Silicon Valley startups and the hothouse for some of its greatest technical innovations, but the Singularity University is an institution that has been made in the valley's own image: highly networked, fuelled by a cocktail of philanthro-capitalism and endowed with an almost mystical sense of its own destiny.

It is both Silicon Valley's elite future thinktank and its global outreach arm: Google and Microsoft both came to the founding conference and gave money, Nasa provided the campus space, and emblazoned across the website is a quote from Google's co-founder, Larry Page: "If I was a student," he says, "this is where I'd want to be." Its aim is "to assemble, educate and inspire a new generation of leaders who strive to understand and utilise exponentially advancing technologies to address humanity's grand challenges".

So, no pressure then. Although, of course, the easiest thing would simply to be British about all this and scoff. Ashton Kutcher! (I read later that he's been cast to play Steve Jobs in a forthcoming film and slightly suspect that he thinks he might actually be Steve Jobs.) A billion people! It's the kind of thing you can imagine someone in a white coat writing down as evidence just before they decide to commit you. What's more, Diamandis is the kind of can-do entrepreneur that, as a nation, we're inclined to lampoon and shun. (He's good friends with Richard Branson.)

The only problem with this as a strategy is that half the people in the room actually have done things which have had a positive impact on a billion people. Or, in some cases, more. Not just Venter, who has flown in on his private jet; there's also Vint Cerf, who is considered one of the fathers of the internet – he worked on Arpanet, the internet's predecessor – and is now "chief internet evangelist" at Google. And Sebastian Thrun, the man behind one of Google's latest and potentially most disruptive technologies yet, the self-driving car. He's also the head of the top-secret Google X lab, part of the firm that most employees didn't even know existed until the New York Times ran a piece on it last November.

And then, there's Elon Musk, the co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, who created the world's first electric car, and is working on a replacement for the space shuttle. In the audience is Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. And Troy Carter, Lady Gaga's strategist. Later in the day, Buzz Aldrin shows up. He is, in this company, a genuine celebrity. All the scientists want to have their photo taken with him, and even Kutcher has the good grace to look a bit bashful. "What do you make of the Singularity University?" I ask Aldrin. "I'm a pretty high achiever," he says. "But I come here and think 'Gosh. I've just got to do better.'"

Continue reading - Guardian - Singularity University: Meet the people who are building our future

MALAYSIA-GLOBAL REVOLT - Global Bersih 3.0 Protests Against Electoral Reform

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MOUNT EVEREST



Malaysian riot police have fired tear gas and used water cannon on a crowd of demonstrators demanding an overhaul in electoral policies in the centre of the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

At least 25,000 demonstrators have swamped Malaysia's largest city on Saturday in one of the Southeast Asian nation's biggest street rallies in the past decade.

They massed near the city's historic Merdeka (Independence) Square that police had sealed off with barbed wire and barricades.

Authorities say Bersih, or Coalition for Free and Fair Elections - the opposition-backed pressure group that organised the rally - has no right to use the square.

Some of the demonstrators apparently breached the barriers and police began firing tear gas at them.

The rally reflects concerns that Prime Minister Najib Razak's long-ruling coalition will have an unfair upper hand in elections that could be called as early as June.

Activists have alleged the Election Commission is biased and claimed that voter registration lists are tainted with fraudulent voters.

March to the barricades

"We will march to the barrier," Ambiga Sreenivasan, Bersih's chairwoman, said.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting earlier from Kuala Lumpur, said: "The police say they will intervene if people defy the order and cross into the square."

Saturday's gathering follows one crushed by police last July, when 1,600 people were arrested.

That rally for clean elections prompted a police crackdown with tear gas and water cannon.

A resulting backlash prompted Najib, Malaysia's prime minister, to set up a parliamentary panel whose eventual report suggested a range of changes to the electoral system.

But Bersih and the opposition are demanding a complete overhaul of a voter roll considered fraudulent and reform of an Election Commission they say is biased in favour of the governing coalition.

Najib has launched a campaign to repeal authoritarian laws in a bid to create what he called "the greatest democracy".

His ruling coalition has governed Malaysia for more than five decades but made a dismal showing against the opposition in 2008, and Najib is under pressure to improve on that.

Source: Malaysian police fire tear gas at protesters

Bersih 3.0 Same Day Edit


'Police violence' at Malaysia reform rally


Bersih 3.0 - 1500 hrs to 1700 hrs - Dataran Merdeka [Full Report]


Crowd From Masjid Negara Bersih 3.0 Part 1


Crowd From Masjid Negara Bersih 3.0 Part 2


280412 Himpunan BERSIH 3.0 - DATARAN MERDEKA (SERANGAN GAS PEMEDIH MATA & WATER


Protesters overturn police car after being hit


Global Bersih 3.0 (from around the world)


Global Bersih 3.0 Part 2