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CWI voorspelt paniek op arbeidsmarkt
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Over vier maanden breekt op de arbeidsmarkt “echt de paniek uit” onder werkgevers. Door de aantrekkende economie is er al sprake van krapte op de arbeidsmarkt. Maar het toenemend tekort aan personeel zal in het voorjaar extra voelbaar zijn, omdat werkgevers dan traditioneel meer werknemers nodig hebben door veel seizoenswerk.
Dat voorspelde bestuursvoorzitter Rens de Groot van het Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen (CWI) maandag bij de presentatie van het rapport Vacatures in Nederland 2006 in Amstelveen. Daar pleitte De Groot in de CWI-vestiging voor een “winteroffensief” om zoveel mogelijk mensen aan het werk te krijgen.
wacheffe, wacheffe… even kijken of ik het goed begrijp. Over vier maanden zal er zware krapte op de arbeidsmarkt ontstaan, en raakt elke werkgever in paniek. En daarom start het CWI een “winteroffensief” om nu mensen aan het werk te helpen? Dus, om de krapte over vier maanden nog groter te maken? Toch?
Extreme Resolution Photography
Gigapixel photos with a Google Maps-style interface. The photo of Boston is 95,000 by 40,000 pixels.
Introducing the iPhone—But Not from Apple
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A joke making the rounds on the Web Dec. 15 said the iPhone will be released on Dec. 18.
Here’s the punch line: It’s true. Not only that, but the company unveiling the device isn’t Apple Computer. Instead, the manufacturer behind a series of new products bearing the iPhone name is Linksys, a unit of networking equipment maker Cisco Systems.
The company is announcing a series of Web-enabled telephone handsets designed to work with Internet calling services such as Skype, a division of eBay, and other services, including SIP Phone’s Gizmo Project.
Bush Admin Won’t Release Iraq Attack Numbers
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Sometimes numbers tell a story better than any amount of words can. But that’s only if the public gets to see them.
This chart was just produced by Congress’ watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. It shows the number of attacks in Iraq, month by month, based on statistics kept by the military. It was contained in correspondence released today:
You can see a larger version of the chart here. It tells a pretty compelling story — part of a compelling story. It was produced in December, but it’s missing data for the months of September, October and November of this year — a period of increased violence, according to news reports. What gives?
I called Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO official who produced the document. “I have all [the Pentagon's] data” for those months, he told me. But the military stamped it classified, he said. And despite making weeks of phone calls, he can’t convince anyone there to declassify the numbers.
“They give conflicting reasons,” Christoff told me. “For some reason, they haven’t gotten through their bureaucracy.”
News accounts from the period indicate that violence has increased since August, and the rate of U.S. casualties has accelerated. October was said to be particularly bloody.
Do as I say, not as I do
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A recently appointed member of the Pennsylvania gaming board was a longtime critic of gambling when he was a legislator but he has won thousands of dollars at casinos, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Former state Rep. Mark McNaughton voted against the state’s slot machine law in 2004 and opposed gambling for years before that, but at the same time he won $15,500 from 2003 to 2005, according to tax returns obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The five-term Republican from Harrisburg disclosed his winnings on his federal income taxes but not on state ethics forms, the newspaper
You
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Time’s “person of the year” is “You”, probably the biggest cop out in the magazine’s history. Al Gore was my pick, but if they want to go with people-powered media, why not the YouTube guys? Or the hackers behind the tools that make people-power media possible?
But as I went to read the piece, a Chrysler ad took over my screen before I could get to the article. And check out the opening line of the ad:
Oops.
Clandestine military teams clash with CIA, allies
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U.S. Special Forces teams sent overseas on secret spying missions have clashed with the CIA and carried out operations in countries that are staunch U.S. allies, prompting a new effort by the agency and the Pentagon to tighten the rules for military units engaged in espionage, according to senior U.S. intelligence and military officials.
Yes, that is not a misprint. The U.S government has been conducting secret anti-terror operations in countries which are allies of the United States.
Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment
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One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.
American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.
The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.
Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.
The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.
But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.
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About a week later, two weeks into his detention, Mr. Vance was allowed to make his first call, to Chicago. He called his fiancée, Diane Schwarz, who told him she had thought he might have died.
“It was very overwhelming,” Ms. Schwarz recalls of the 12-minute conversation. “He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, and was kind of turning to me for answers and I was turning to him for the same.”
She had already been calling members of Congress, alarmed by his disappearance. So was Mr. Ertel’s mother, and some officials began pressing for answers. “I would appreciate your looking into this matter,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois wrote to a State Department official in early May.
On May 7, the Camp Cropper detention board met again, without either man present, and determined that Mr. Ertel was “an innocent civilian,” according to the spokeswoman for detention operations. It took authorities 18 more days to release him.
Mr. Vance’s situation was more complicated. On June 17, Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for the American military’s detention unit, Task Force 134, wrote to tell Ms. Schwarz that Mr. Vance was still being held. “The detainee board reviewed his case and recommended he remain interned,” he wrote. “Multi-National Force-Iraq approved the board’s recommendation to continue internment. Therefore, Mr. Vance continues to be a security detainee. We are not processing him for release. His case remains under investigation and there is no set timetable for completion.” Over the following weeks, Mr. Vance said he made numerous written requests — for a lawyer, for blankets, for paper to write letters home. Mr. Vance said that he wrote 10 letters to Ms. Schwarz, but that only one made it to Chicago. Dated July 17, it was delivered late last month by the Red Cross.
“Diana, start talking, sending e-mail and letters and faxes to the alderman, mayor, governor, congressman, senators, Red Cross, Amnesty International, A.C.L.U., Vatican, and other Christian-based organizations. Everyone!” he wrote. “I am missing you so much, and am so depressed it’s a daily struggle here. My life is in your hands. Please don’t get discouraged. Don’t take ‘No’ for answers. Keep working. I have to tell myself these things every day, but I can’t do anything from a cell.”
The military has never explained why it continued to consider Mr. Vance a security threat, except to say that officials decided to release him after further review of his case.
“Treating an American citizen in this fashion would have been unimaginable before 9/11,” said Mike Kanovitz, a Chicago lawyer representing Mr. Vance.
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ePassports ‘at risk’ from cloning
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The ePassport is one of the many measures pursued by the United States and governments internationally after the horror of 11 September.
It will, we are promised, keep the unwanted and dangerous outside our borders, while streamlining entry for those welcome to come and visit.
But as the implementation of the scheme gets underway it is becoming clear that there could be serious problems with it.
With the old passport, we knew where we stood. If you lost it you knew you had lost it, but with the new, machine readable passports the story is very different.
When you take a digital photo the image is, in effect, a code, which means that however many prints you make they are all exactly the same.
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Using a standard off-the-shelf component you can just buy at a component store you can have a cloned ePassport in less than five minutes.
When the cloned ePassport is read and compared to the original one it behaves exactly the same.
The UK Home Office however dismissed the ability to get hold of the information on the chip.
A spokesman said: “It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip. ”
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Researchers working within the Future of Identity in the Information Society (FIDIS) network say European governments have forced a document on its citizens that dramatically decreases security and increases the risk of identity theft.
RFID chips can be read at a short distance and tracked without their owner’s knowledge, while the key to unlocking the passport’s chip consists of details actually printed on the passport itself.
It is almost like writing your pin number on the back of your cashpoint card.
Ziet er vreemd uit. Volgens mij bedoelen ze dat ze nu een offensief starten om mensen beter voor te bereiden, zowel de werkelozen als de begeleiders. Of zo. Duister.
Inderdaad. Artikel: “Zodat mensen op een juiste manier begeleid en geschoold worden.”