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Myanmar Voting Dates Win Few Plaudits
The official announcements late Saturday of the constitutional referendum and the election were the first moves by the junta to set dates for stages of its so-called road map to democracy. "The time has now come to change from military rule to democratic civilian rule," said the announcement for the 2010 polls, broadcast on state TV and radio. But critics claim the long-delayed road map is designed to perpetuate military rule, not promote democracy. And at tea shops in Yangon, where morning news and gossip is traditionally exchanged, many seemed unimpressed with the developments. "I am not interested in their referendum because the results are known already," said 48-year old noodle salad seller Mar Mar Aye, echoing the popular belief that the government is confident its constitution will be approved.
UT building fire billows smoke, but only damages ventilation unit
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A blaze in a utility building at the University of Tennessee produced a lot of smoke but no danger to students or other structures on the Knoxville campus, officials said Wednesday. The fire was isolated to a 30-by-30-foot, stand-alone chiller unit that provides heat, air-conditioning and ventilation to education, health sciences and computer sciences programs in the Claxton Complex. .
Hotels joining in green wave
In case you haven't noticed, hotels are going green, doing their part to be ecologically friendly. You might call it the Al Gore effect, although the movement began before An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award and its star won a Nobel Prize this year. The green efforts go further than asking guests to use towels and bed linens more than once (as they do at home), to conserve water and avoid flushing more detergent-laden water into sewers. It's also more than replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs in guest rooms. Other green initiatives are more subtle - things a guest might never notice: recycling, low-flow faucets and showerheads, water-saving toilets, and the use of products that don't harm the environment or contribute to global warming.
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