After masterminding the Democratic Party of Japan's historic victory last year, the party's co-founder and Secretary General, Ichiro Ozawa, has once again found himself in the national spotlight. But rather than basking in the glory of pulling off a successful election, he finds himself under investigation by the powerful Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of wrongdoing in a controversial land purchase. Business as usual is not what the public expects from an underdog party that just won the people's mandate on a platform of regime change, says Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at the Temple University, Japan Campus.

January 20, 2010 | WHYY-FM, Philadelphia Inquirer

Representative Joe Sestak will introduce legislation that he thinks will get more defendants to show up for court. Temple criminal justice professor John Goldkamp, a leading expert on the Philadelphia courts, said bail decisions should be based strictly on a defendant's risk of flight and potential threat to the public. Turning the matter over to private firms, he said, has drawbacks: It jails the poor solely because they are poor and cannot make bail, or it gives richer defendants a shortcut out of prison.

January 20, 2010 | Philadelphia Inquirer

Poverty increased nearly 1 percent in Philadelphia's suburbs between 2000 and 2008, partly because of two recessions, according to a report being released today. The suburban poverty rate of 7.4 percent compares to a 24.1 percent rate within Philadelphia. Sociologist David Elesh, a principal investigator for Temple's Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project, called the suburban poverty increase modest and not unexpected. He believes that when suburban poverty in 2009 is measured, a greater increase would be found. "It was in 2009 that we saw the bulk of jobs losses in this area, and we're not through."

January 20, 2010 | BBC World News

Large quantities of oil spilled during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster can still be found beneath gravel beaches in Alaska, a study has discovered. Researchers led by Michel Boufadel of Temple's College of Engineering carried out a three-year study on a number of beaches to find out the cause behind the lingering deposits. He said the gravel beaches they examined were made up of two layers: a top level that was highly permeable, and a lower level that had very low permeability. "You have a high amount of oxygen in the seawater, so you would think that the oxygen would diffuse in the beach and get down into the lower layer and get to the oil," said Boufadel. "But the outward movement of [fresh groundwater] in the lower level is blocking the oxygen from spreading down into that lower level."