Some Say Hawaii Farm Too Big To Fail After Farmers Convicted of Human Trafficking

AP

April 5, 2006: Mike Sou, who runs Alou Farms in Ewa, with his brother Alec, displays a pumpkin rotted by the heavy rains in Honolulu. Sou and his brother Alex will be sentenced in federal court on human trafficking charges. They pled guilty but two former state governors, community groups, fellow farmers and other supporters are trying to keep them out of prison.

HONOLULU Two prominent, popular brothers who operate the second-largest vegetable farm in Hawaii will be sentenced in federal court this week on human trafficking charges -- they pleaded guilty -- but two former state governors, community groups, fellow farmers and other supporters are trying to keep them out of prison.

The brothers were convicted of shipping 44 laborers from Thailand and forcing them to work on their farm, part of a pipeline to the United States that allegedly cornered foreign field hands into low-paying jobs with few rights.

Aloun Farms may be too important to fail in an island state that once relied on pineapples and sugar cane but grows less than 15 percent of the food it consumes, according to supporters of defendants Alec and Mike Sou.

"The incarceration of Alec and Mike Sou would threaten our food security and could endanger our future sustainability on Oahu," wrote Kioni Dudley, president of the community group Friends of Makakilo, in a letter asking U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway for leniency. "Find some method of punishment which allows them to stay in their positions at Aloun Farms."

The Sou brothers are asking for a light sentence with little or no jail time based in part on the idea that their farm is too valuable to the islands' food supply to let it go untended. The plea deal they agreed to in January called for up to five years imprisonment.

Prosecutors accuse them of manipulating the Thai workers by promising at least a year's employment at pay of $9.42 an hour, but instead delivering only a few months of work for little pay.

If the workers complained, Mike Sou threatened to send them home without any way to repay recruitment fees exceeding $30,000 that they borrowed from Thai money lenders to pay for their jobs, federal authorities claim.

The workers were trapped on the farm, forced to choose between long hours with low wages and an unpromising future in Thailand, said former farm worker Somporn Khanja, who arrived at the farm in 2004.

"I'd been lied to, but I couldn't do anything about it," the 45-year-old Khanja said through his wife, acting as an interpreter. "I hope justice is being done. I believe in American law. It takes so long, but it's good. In America, we have to wait."

In about 120 letters to the judge supporting the Sou brothers, community members praise their importance to Hawaii's agriculture industry, their ability to provide up to 200 jobs at a time and their character.

Former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano called the Sou family's immigration from Laos and creation of a farm a "remarkable success story." Former Democratic Gov. John Waihee commended the Sous' skill in transforming sugar fields into diversified farming.

Others who offered support to the brothers include the former head of the state Land Board, the state Department of Agriculture, the Hawaii Foodbank, competing farms, two banks who are owed money from the farms and former Aloun employees.

The Kapolei-based company grows a variety of foods including cantaloupe, lettuce, zucchini, apples, bananas, parsley, onions, watermelon, beans, eggplant, cabbage and pumpkin. Alec Sou is the farm's president and general manager, and Ms of Los Angeles-based labor recruiting company Global Horizons Manpower Inc., which the FBI says is the largest human trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history.

Global Horizons is accused of enticing 400 workers from Thailand to U.S. farms based on false promises of lucrative jobs. Instead, recruiters allegedly confiscated the workers' passports, disregarded employment contracts and threatened deportation -- claims similar to those in the Aloun Farms case.

Nationwide, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked to the United States annually, according to an estimate by HumanTrafficking.org, which is managed by the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development, which works to improve global education, health and social and economic development.

The brothers have steadily grown in prominence since their parents started the farm in 1977. After starting with a small 5-acre plot of land, the Sous have since extended their growing capacity and crops.

Today, the farm's 3,000 acres are the most productive in the islands. In Hawaii's mild climate, they grow crops year-round.

The Sou family also has made political contributions, and Alec Sou sits on boards for homeless advocates and for the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.

Some hospitals open ERs just for graying patients

WASHINGTON Moccia says people feel better when they can stay upright. Nonskid floors guard against falls. Forms are printed in larger type, to help patients read their care instructions when it's time to go home. Pharmacists automatically check if patients' routine medications could cause dangerous interactions. A geriatric social worker is on hand to arrange for Meals on Wheels or other resources.

"In the senior unit, they're just a lot more gentle," says Betty Barry, 87, of White Lake, Mich., who recently went to another of Trinity's senior ERs while suffering debilitating hip pain.

But Moccia says the real change comes because nurses and doctors undergo training to dig deeper into patients' lives. While they're awaiting test results or treatments, every senior gets checked for signs of depression, dementia or delirium.

An example: A diabetic was treated for low blood sugar in a regular ER. A few weeks later she was back, but the newly opened senior ER uncovered that dementia was making her mess up her insulin dose, repeatedly triggering the problem, says Dr. Bill Thomas, a geriatrician at the University of Maryland Baltimore County who is advising Trinity Health Novi's senior ER program.

It doesn't take opening a separate ER to improve older patients' care, says New Jersey's Rosenberg, who calls better overall geriatric awareness and training the real key. Still, he says his center saw a 15 percent rise in patients last year.

"Those hospitals that have the money and space and the luxury to do something like that are going to get a definite advantage down the road," predicts John at the American College of Emergency Physicians, who says his own Boston hospital didn't have the money to try it.

Boat made of 12,500 plastic bottles arrives in Sydney after 4-month journey across Pacific

SYDNEY A sailboat largely constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles has completed a 4-month journey across the Pacific Ocean meant to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

The Plastiki, a 60-foot (18-meter) catamaran, and its six crew weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8,000 nautical miles at sea. It left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa. It docked Monday in Sydney Harbour.

"This is the hardest part of the journey so far getting it in!" expedition leader David de Rothschild yelled from the boat as the crew struggled to maneuver the notoriously tough-to-steer vessel into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum.

A crowd of about 100 erupted into cheers after the Plastiki finally docked. De Rothschild a descendant of the well-known British banking family exchanged high fives and hugs with his crew, pumping his fists into the air in victory.

"It has been an extraordinary adventure," he said.

De Rothschild, 31, said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a United Nations report in 2006 that said pollution and particularly plastic waste was seriously threatening the world's oceans.

He figured a good way to prove that trash can be effectively reused was to use some of it to build a boat. The Plastiki named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl is fully recyclable and gets its power from solar panels and windmills.

The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, which are held together with an organic glue made of sugar cane and cashews, but includes other materials too. The mast, for instance, is recycled aluminum irrigation pipe.

"The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph," said Jeffrey Bleich, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team after they docked.

During their 128-day journey, the six crew lived in a cabin of just 20 feet by 15 feet (6 meters by 4.5 meters), took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden.

Along the way, they fought giant ocean swells, 62-knot (70 mile-an-hour) winds, temperatures up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and torn sails. The crew briefly stopped in Queensland state last week, after battling a brutal storm off the Australian coast.

Skipper Jo Royle also had the particular challenge of being the only woman on board.

"I'm definitely looking forward to a glass of wine and a giggle with my girlfriends," she said.

Vern Moen, the Plastiki's filmmaker, missed the birth of his first child though he managed to watch the delivery on a grainy Skype connection. He met his son for the first time after docking in Sydney.

"It was very, very surreal to show up on a dock and it's like, 'here's your kid," he said with a laugh.

Although the team had originally hoped to recycle the Plastiki, de Rothschild said they are now thinking of keeping it intact, and using it as a way of enlightening people to the power of recycling.

"There were many times when people looked at us and said, 'you're crazy,'" de Rothschild said. "I think it drove us on to say, 'Anything's possible.'"

___

Online:

http://www.theplastiki.com

Helicopters used to save Fla. crop from rare chill

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. Dozens of helicopters are whirring above Florida's valuable and sensitive veggie crops, an unusual approach by farmers worried that an uncommon freeze could wipe out their harvests.

The choppers hover low over green bean and sweet corn fields, moving back and forth in the early morning hours to push warmer air closer to the plants and, the farmers hope, save the plants from a deadly frost.

Farmers are especially nervous because an 11-day freeze in January wiped out many crops, from corn to kumquats. Florida is the largest winter producer of sweet corn in the U.S. the kind people eat.

John Hundley, a corn, bean and sugar cane farmer in Palm Beach County, said that if winds are too high as they were expected to be early Tuesday he won't be able to hire the helicopters. When asked what he will do to protect his crops, Hundley sighed.

"I can get on my knees and pray right now," he said. "It looks like it's pretty much out of our hands."

The stakes are high: in 2009, the value of production of sweet corn from Florida was $227 million.

"They have hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in crops," said Paul Allen, president of the Florida Sweet Corn Exchange.

The helicopters may be the last line of defense if temperatures dip below freezing as expected Tuesday night, though it's an expensive technique. It costs about $2,500 an hour to fly one helicopter over the crops, and the length of flights depends on a mix of temperatures and wind conditions.

Here's how it works: The air 50 feet above the crops is warmer than the air near the plants. The helicopter blades push the warm air down and the temperature goes up, said David Sui, a University of Florida expert on vegetables and tropical fruits. The warmer air prevents cold and frost from settling on the plants.

"Even if it raises the temperature a couple of degrees it may save the crops," he said.

The technique isn't a new one, as farmers have long hired helicopters to keep their crops from freezing. And growers in California also have used helicopters. But it's still dangerous.

Last week, three helicopters crashed within a matter of hours in South Florida during missions to protect crops from the cold. All three pilots survived.

One helicopter went down shortly after midnight last Wednesday near a rural airport in Palm Beach County. A second helicopter crashed before dawn when the pilot made an emergency landing after a tail rotor broke. He suffered minor injuries. A third pilot was seriously hurt when his helicopter crashed in a field a few hours later.

Green beans and sweet corn are cultivated in the nutrient-rich muck soil located near the Florida Everglades, though farmers in other parts of the state are also scrambling to protect their fruits and vegetables, many of which are near harvest.

Strawberry farmers are spraying water on the plants, so the heat lost from the crop to the surrounding air is replaced with the heat released as water changes to ice. Citrus farmers are using ground-level heaters to warm the air near tree trunks. And tropical fish farmers are moving their fish or covering the outdoor tanks.

January's cold snap damaged large swaths of Florida's crops, including strawberries and tomatoes. Nearly all of the kumquat crop died.

When Florida's crops die, shoppers pay more at the grocery store because replacement produce is usually imported from outside the U.S.

Already this year, several hundred acres of green beans have been lost.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Sunday declared a state of emergency because of the threat of severe crop damage. That news prompted orange juice futures to rise over concerns the weather would damage this year's crop.

It's unusual for temperatures to be this cold this early in the season, said Lisa Lochridge, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association.

Temperatures are expected to dip into the teens in north Florida, and in the high 20s in central and South Florida though temperatures between 60 to 78 degrees are more common this time of year.

"When you're talking about temperatures as cold as those predicted, virtually everything is in peril," she said.

Google pays $14,000 for high-risk Chrome security holes

Google has shelled out more than $14,000 in rewards for critical and high-risk vulnerabilities affecting its flagship Chrome web browser.

The latest Google Chrome 8.0.552.237, available for all platforms, patches a total of 16 documented vulnerabilties, including one critical bug for which Google paid the first elite $3133.7 award to researcher Sergey Glazunov.

“Critical bugs are harder to come by in Chrome, but Sergey has done it,” says Google’s Jerome Kersey. “Sergey also collects a $1337 reward and several other rewards at the same time, so congratulations Sergey!,” he added.

Here are the details on the latest Chrome patch batch.

• [58053] Medium Risk: Browser crash in extensions notification handling. Credit to Eric Roman of the Chromium development community.
• [$1337] [65764] High Risk: Bad pointer handling in node iteration. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [66334] High Crashes when printing multi-page PDFs. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [66560] High Risk: Stale pointer with CSS + canvas. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$500] [66748] High Risk: Stale pointer with CSS + cursors. Credit to Jan ToÅ¡ovský.
• [67100] High Risk: Use after free in PDF page handling. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [67208] High Risk: Stack corruption after PDF out-of-memory condition. Credit to Jared Allar of CERT.
• [$1000] [67303] High Bad memory access with mismatched video frame sizes. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined) and David Warren of CERT.
• [$500] [67363] High Risk: Stale pointer with SVG use element. Credited anonymously; plus indepdent discovery by miaubiz.
• [$1000] [67393] Medium Risk: Uninitialized pointer in the browser triggered by rogue extension. Credit to kuzzcc.
• [$1000] [68115] High Risk: Vorbis decoder buffer overflows. Credit to David Warren of CERT.
• [$1000] [68170] High Risk: Buffer overflow in PDF shading. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG.
• [$1000] [68178] High Risk: Bad cast in anchor handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68181] High Risk: Bad cast in video handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68439] High Risk: Stale rendering node after DOM node removal. Credit to Martin Barbella; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
• [$3133.7] [68666] Critical: Stale pointer in speech handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.

Google is withholding technical details on the vulnerabilities until the patches are released to its users.  Google ships updates via the browser’s silent/automatic update mechanism.

Researchers use LCD projector for mind control

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have announced that, using inexpensive components from a liquid crystal display (LCD) projector, they’re able to control the brain circuits in tiny laboratory animals, including freely moving worms.

This is a first in the field of optogenetics, a mix of optical and genetic techniques that has allowed researchers to probe and control genetically targeted neural circuits in laboratory animals.

Until now, the technique could be used only with larger animals by placement of an optical fiber into an animal’s brain, or illumination of an animal’s entire body.

But the experiments from Georgia Tech demonstrate that it is possible to control brain activity by the red, green and blue lights from a projector.  The lights activate light-sensitive microbial proteins that are genetically engineered into the worms, allowing the researchers to switch neurons and muscles on and off.

“This illumination instrument significantly enhances our ability to control, alter, observe and investigate how neurons, muscles and circuits ultimately produce behavior in animals,” said Hang Lu, an associate professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The illumination system is described in a recent edition of the journal Nature Methods. The prototype system includes a modified off-the-shelf LCD projector, which is used to cast a multi-color pattern of light onto an animal. The independent red, green and blue channels allow researchers to activate excitable cells sensitive to specific colors, while simultaneously silencing others.

“Because the central component of the illumination system is a commercially available projector, the system’s cost and complexity are dramatically reduced, which we hope will enable wider adoption of this tool by the research community,” explained Lu.

The researchers connected the illumination system to a microscope and combined it with video tracking, enabling them to track and record the behavior of freely moving animals, while maintaining the lighting in the intended anatomical position. When the animal moves, changes to the light’s location, intensity and color can be updated in less than 40 milliseconds, according to a news release.

For their first experiment, the researchers illuminated the head of a worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) at regular intervals while the animal moved forward. This produced a coiling effect in the head and caused the worm to crawl in a triangular pattern as illustrated in the image above. To see a video of the worm’s motion click here.

In another experiment, the team scanned light along the bodies of worms from head to tail, which resulted in backward movement when neurons near the head were stimulated and forward movement when neurons near the tail were stimulated.

Additional experiments showed that the intensity of the light affected a worm’s behavior and that several optogenetic reagents excited at different wavelengths could be combined to control a variety of functions.

“This instrument allowed us to control defined events in defined locations at defined times in an intact biological system, allowing us to dissect animal functional circuits with greater precision and nuance,” said Lu.

Netflix: We're still a tech company

The thing to remember about Netflix is that, despite looking like a distribution company for a Hollywood-centric industry, the company is all Silicon Valley.

The company is poised for growth, especially now that it’s restructured itself to put more emphasis on streaming movies, TV shows and other video content and pull back on the traditional DVD rental side of the operation.

But when it comes to growth, the executives are interested in global markets where broadband penetration is high and diversifying the catalog to include more foreign language content. They’re eyeing different devices for streaming and how families - versus individuals - use the service. They’re well aware that the next wave of competitors could include heavy-hitters such as Google, Amazon or Apple.

But, no, they have no interest in getting into the Hollywood side of the business, possibly creating content of their own or taking an equity interest in a studio. In a Q&A session to discuss fourth-quarter results yesterday, CEO Reed Hastings responded to a question suggesting such a move:

When we start taking creative risks, that is reading a script and guessing if it was going to be a big hit and who might be good to cast in it, it’s not something that as fundamentally a tech company or a company run by at tech CEO like myself is likely to build distinctive organizational confidence in. And so we think that we’re better off on letting other people take creative risks, get the rewards for when they do that well. And then what we do is focus on matching the different products that are made with the right consumers the sort of very technological aspect of matching it and streaming it. So I would say, that the scenario that you outlined would be quite a change in direction and quite unlikely.

It’s a smart approach for a company that seems to have nothing but an open road of growth opportunities in front of it. ֲ Because Netflix has shifted into the world of streaming, it’s riding out some of the turbulent waves that are crashing in other parts of the industry.

Consider DVD rentals: Redbox, for example, works on a different model of video distribution because it’s more new-release centric. With reports of home video content - DVD, VOD, etc - slipping, Netflix’s model doesn’t feel as much of the impact. The streaming model adds value for the customers because they tend to consume more content. Because the plans are designed for all-you-can-eat consumption for a flat monthly rate, the company doesn’t feel the pinch that comes a price-per-movie model found at video stores and Redbox-like kiosks.

At the same time, Netflix is also ripe for some competition with its model. The company is just starting to dip its toes into International markets - and it’s got a jump start on the front because it already licenses foreign-language content for the U.S. market. Still, asked about whether Google, Amazon or Apple could be a competitive thorn in its side this year, Hastings replied:

Definitely, there’s a lot of firms, including the ones you mentioned that could be more direct competitor with us. The Internet’s creating a ton of opportunity for a lot of firms and there’s all different models between the pay-per-view models for new releases, the ad-supported model. So there’s a lot of different companies with different strengths. But as you know, we’ve been through a lot of competition in the past. We view that as a natural part of the process and we’re just focused on building our business as best as we can.

Certainly those companies are already interested in being part of the video viewing experiences. The upside for Netflix, unlike the other guys, is that it is focused on expanding its video distribution network from a technological point of view, whereas the others have their fingers in a lot of different technology sauces, making it harder for them to devote the kind of detailed attention to the market the way Netflix can.

And, of course, there’s the whole head-start thing. Netflix has done a good job of shifting the focus of the company quickly and has made great strides at getting apps into set-top boxes, mobile devices and gaming consoles.

It’s that sort of technology that Netflix sees as a driver for its next wave of growth.