Asia, Europe pull together to ease financial crisis

October 25, 2008 at 12:40 pm (Today's Highlights)

Asian and European leaders closed ranks on Saturday to try to bolster confidence among investors who fear that a global credit crunch has ushered in a deep and damaging worldwide recession.

The worst financial crisis in 80 years has forced countries to work together to find ways to help shore up a financial system crippled by banks fearful of lending to each other.

But with evidence mounting that Europe is already in recession, analysts worry that cooperation in shoring up banking systems could be threatened as governments begin to turn their attention to reviving domestic demand.

“We need to enhance cooperation between all countries, because only with cooperation can we create the strength to overcome hardships,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at the end of a two-day summit of 43 Asian and European leaders in Beijing.

Governments have pledged around $4 trillion to support banks and restart money markets to try to stem the crisis and have looked into introducing tougher financial rules to guard against any repeat.

Wen said countries needed to strike a balance between innovation and regulation and between savings and consumption.

“We need financial innovation, but we need financial oversight even more,” he said, adding that China’s priority was to spur domestic demand to ensure the country maintained fairly fast, steady growth.

GULF MEETING

In the Gulf, finance ministers and central bank governors said at a meeting to discuss coordinating policy that they would discuss directing more government funds into banks and regional stock markets, Al-Arabiya television reported.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and four other Gulf states have so far adopted separate responses to ease the pressures of the liquidity crunch on their banking sectors.

They would also look at possibly revising investment plans abroad, Al-Arabiya said, without giving a source.

Any significant redirection of Gulf investment to domestic markets could be a concern for banks and other firms in the West which have eyed the huge sums in the region’s state-run sovereign wealth funds as a potential source of capital while European and U.S. credit and share markets are seized up.

A senior Gulf official at the meeting said most were worried about the oil price.

Oil fell nearly $4 a barrel on Friday, dampened by fears of global recession and slowing fuel demand despite an OPEC agreement to cut output.

On Friday, private-sector activity in the euro zone’s economy contracted at the fastest pace in at least a decade and data showed Britain’s economy shrank 0.5 percent in the third quarter — a much worse performance than economists

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Jennifer Hudson’s Mother and Brother Found Dead, Suspect In Custody

October 25, 2008 at 12:37 pm (Today's Highlights)

A suspect in the shooting deaths of Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother is in custody and is being questioned. The Oscar-winning actress’ nephew was not with the suspect. Court records show Balfour pleaded guilty in 1999 to attempted murder and vehicular hijacking. He also was convicted in a 1998 case of possession of a stolen motor.

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India’s ‘Moon Craft’ Launches

October 22, 2008 at 12:53 pm (Uncategorized)
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Lunar mission called Chandrayaan-1 (from the ancient Sanskrit) is the country’s first and yet another milestone in now-global effort to explore the solar system. “You’re seeing India lifting its sights,” said Scott Pace, director of space policy at the George Washington University. The robotic probe, which will map the still-poorly-known moon, left the planet early Wednesday local time.

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Chandrayaan-1 launched | Sends signals across world

October 22, 2008 at 12:51 pm (Uncategorized)
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India’s first unmanned flight to the moon blasted off from Sriharikota, off the Andhra Pradesh coast, early morning on Wednesday.

A 44-metre-tall and 316-tonne rocket called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11) carried the 1,380-kg lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at exactly 0622 hrs IST.

IANS reports the PSLV started to move into its designated orbit within minutes, to sling Chandrayaan into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), as scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) cheered on.

From the GTO the satellite’s onboard liquid apogee motor (LAM) will be fired to take it to the lunar orbit—387,000 km from earth—around November 8.

Once the 1,380-kg Chandrayaan gets near the moon its speed will be reduced to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit.

At the earliest possible opportunity Chandrayaan will drop its Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which will land on the moon’s soil carrying India’s flag, among many scientific instruments. After that, the spacecraft will also activate its cameras and other instruments on board.

ISRO scientists said the launch was perfect and there was zero error during the four of its phases. Speaking minutes after the successful liftoff ISRO Chairperson G Madhavan Nair described the moment as “historic”.

“India has started its journey to the moon. The first leg has gone perfectly. The spacecraft has been launched into orbit,” he said.

Mission statement

Chandrayaan will orbit the moon for two years. A principal objective of Chandrayaan is to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth but is sought to power nuclear fusion and could be a valuable source of energy in the future, some scientists believe. It is thought to be more plentiful on the moon, but still rare and very difficult to extract.

The Rs 386-crore mission is also expected to carry out a detailed survey of the moon to look for precious metals and water. “We are going to get a three-dimensional atlas of the moon’s surface, which will be used for chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface,” Bhaskar Narayan, an ISRO director told Reuters.

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History of 22 October

October 22, 2008 at 12:47 pm (Uncategorized)
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1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

President John F. Kennedy announces on national television that military spy planes had discovered the existence of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. He ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and demanded the removal of the missiles. During the next six days, the crisis escalated to a breaking point as the world feared a nuclear war. Finally, on 28th October in exchange for a secret U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced his country’s willingness to remove the weapons. The crisis ended as suddenly as it began, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. In November, Kennedy called off the naval blockade, and the missiles were removed from Cuba by the end of the year.

What Happened

2006
Seven times Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher finishes fourth at Brazilian Grand Prix in his last professional race.
2005
In Nigeria, a Bellview Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashes just after taking off from Lagos airport, killing 117 people.
1983
An estimated one million people gather in London, England for a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally.
1975
American Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, is discharged by the air force after publicly declaring his homosexuality.
1974
A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in a London club, injuring four people.
1969
Rock band Led Zeppelin release their classic album, Led Zeppelin II.
1968
Apollo 7, the first manned mission in the NASA Apollo program, returns safely to Earth.
1966
In England, Soviet double agent George Blake escapes from Wormwood Scrubs in London where he was serving a 44 year sentence for spying against the British Government.
1964
French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but declines the award.
1957
The Vietnam War: U.S. military personnel suffer their first casualties in the war when 13 Americans are wounded in bombing incidents in Saigon.
1913
A coal mine explosion in Dawson, New Mexico, U.S.A. kills more than 250 workers.
1910
In England, American-born doctor Hawley Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey Court in London of poisoning his wife Cora. Crippen is the first person ever to be captured with the aid of wireless communication.
1883
In New York, America the Metropolitan Opera House opens with a performance of Gounod’s ‘Faust.’
1877
In Scotland, 207 miners are killed the Blantyre mining disaster.
1797
Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the world’s first parachute jump – launching himself from a balloon over the Parc Monceau in Paris.

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Workout for brain just a few clicks away

October 16, 2008 at 12:52 pm (Today's Highlights)
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Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles studied people doing Web searches while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.

“What we saw was people who had Internet experience used more of their brain during the search,” Dr. Gary Small, a UCLA expert on aging, said in a telephone interview.

“This suggests that just searching on the Internet may train the brain — that it may keep it active and healthy,” said Small, whose research appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Many studies have found that challenging mental activities such as puzzles can help preserve brain function, but few have looked at what role the Internet might play.

“This is the first time anyone has simulated an Internet search task while scanning the brain,” Small said.

His team studied 24 normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half were experienced at searching the Internet and the other half had no Web experience. Otherwise, the groups were similar in age, gender and education.

Both groups were asked to do Internet searches and book reading tasks while their brain activity was monitored.

“We found that in reading the book task, the visual cortex — the part of the brain that controls reading and language — was activated,” Small said.

“In doing the Internet search task, there was much greater activity, but only in the Internet-savvy group.”

He said it appears that people who are familiar with the Internet can engage in a much deeper level of brain activity.

“There is something about Internet searching where we can gauge it to a level that we find challenging,” Small said.

In the aging brain, atrophy and reduced cell activity can take a toll on cognitive function. Activities that keep the brain engaged can preserve brain health and thinking ability.

Small thinks learning to do Internet searches may be one of those activities.

“It tells us we probably can teach an old brain new Internet tricks,” he said.

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Deal Or No Deal?

October 16, 2008 at 12:51 pm (Today's Highlights)

Behavioral studies have shown that emotions play an important role in decision making. However, it was not known to what extent our negotiating skills depend on our emotions.

Columbia University scientists Andrew Stephen and Michel Tuan Pham decided to explore the interplay of emotion and reason in everyday deal-making. They designed a series of laboratory experiments to see if people who trust their feelings (and those who do not) handle themselves differently in the art of negotiation.

In this study, they used a classic negotiation game called the “ultimatum game.” In the ultimatum game, one person (the “proposer”) has a given amount of cash, which he is told to divide with a second person any way he likes. The catch is that the second person must either accept the offer or reject it entirely, no negotiation allowed. If he rejects it, both players walk away with nothing.

To test how emotions influence deal-making (or in some cases, deal-breaking!), the researchers manipulated how much participants trusted their feelings before they played a series of ultimatum games for real money. They asked some of the participants to think of two occasions in their past when trusting their feelings to make decisions resulted in good outcomes. People generally find it easy to think of two such occasions, giving participants greater confidence in trusting their own emotions while making decisions. Other participants were told to think of 10 occasions when trusting their feelings to make decisions resulted in poor outcomes—this made participants wary of trusting their feelings. Then all the participants played a computerized version of the ultimatum game, in the role of “proposer.”

The results, as reported in the October issue of the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, were intriguing. The participants who were more confident in following their emotions offered somewhat less money than the others. This is because they were more focused on the “gist” of the offer itself (and what felt good), rather than on estimating the other player’s possible reaction and calculating the probabilities of payoff. In short, the immediacy of the offer trumped the more complicated calculation.

When the researchers tried two other variations of the ultimatum game (one with more room for negotiation and one with less), they found similar results. When the participants were primed to trust their emotions, they saw the transaction as simpler and cleaner — rather than complex, abstract and cognitively demanding. The researchers believe that emotional negotiators actually have an easier time visualizing the offer itself: They picture themselves offering someone $20 from their $50 pot and it feels “okay.”

“We believe that when proposers rely on their feelings, the relative power implied by the rules of the game is central to their gist representation of the negotiation, and this representation shapes whether offers ‘feel right’ to them,” the authors stated.

Interestingly, the negotiators who were guided by their emotions did not fare worse than the others financially. Indeed, they ended up with at least as much, and often more, than their more calculating counterparts, suggesting that emotional decision making may not only be simpler, but may also be more lucrative.

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Human TB Found In 9,000 Year-old Skeletons

October 16, 2008 at 12:47 pm (DIscovery)

The discovery of the earliest known cases of human tuberculosis (TB) in bones found submerged off the coast of Israel shows that the disease is 3000 years older than previously thought. Direct examination of this ancient DNA confirms the latest theory that bovine TB evolved later than human TB.

The new research, led by scientists from UCL (University College London) and Tel-Aviv University and published today in PLoS One, sheds light on how the TB bacterium has evolved over the millennia and increases our understanding of how it may change in the future.

The bones, thought to be of a mother and baby, were excavated from Alit-Yam, a 9000 year-old Pre-Pottery Neolithic village, which has been submerged off the coast of Haifa, Israel for thousands of years. Professor Israel Hershkovitz, from Tel-Aviv University’s Department of Anatomy, noticed the characteristic bone lesions that are signs of TB in skeletons from the settlement, one of the earliest with evidence of domesticated cattle.

An international collaborative team, led by Dr Helen Donoghue and Dr Mark Spigelman, UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases & International Health, conducted detailed analyses of the bones using scientific techniques that revealed DNA and cell wall lipids from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the principal agent of human TB. The DNA was sufficiently well-preserved for molecular typing to be carried out and the analysis of the bacterial cell wall lipids by high performance liquid chromatography provided direct, confirmatory evidence of tuberculosis.

Dr Donoghue said: “What is fascinating is that the infecting organism is definitely the human strain of tuberculosis, in contrast to the original theory that human TB evolved from bovine TB after animal domestication. This gives us the best evidence yet that in a community with domesticated animals but before dairying, the infecting strain was actually the human pathogen. The presence of large numbers of animal bones shows that animals were an important food source, and this probably led to an increase in the human population that helped the TB to be maintained and spread.

“We were also able to show that the DNA of the strain of TB in these skeletons had lost a particular piece of DNA which is characteristic of a common family of strains present in the world today. The fact that this deletion had occurred 9000 years ago gives us a much better idea of the rate of change of the bacterium over time, and indicates an extremely long association with humans.”

Dr Spigelman added: “Examining ancient human remains for the markers of TB is very important because it helps to aid our understanding of prehistoric tuberculosis and how it evolved. This then helps us improve our understanding of modern TB and how we might develop more effective treatments.”

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Future of Human Spaceflight and Space Tourism

October 15, 2008 at 12:08 pm (DIscovery)
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Dennis Tito, a California-based multi-millionaire, became the first ever space tourist. Launched into space in a Russian Soyuz capsule, Tito proved that traveling beyond Earth’s gravity was not just the province of a select few, but that anyone with drive, determination – and at this point in history, a lot of money – could become an astronaut.

Space tourism is a fledgling industry, born out of necessity, yet driven by the same curiosity and ambition that took humanity to the Moon; it appears to be here to stay. In Russia, Europe and the United States, private companies are already vying to become space tourism leaders.

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October 10 is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years)

October 10, 2008 at 9:16 am (Today's Highlights)
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Events

* 680 – Battle of Karbala: Shia Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi’a Muslims as Aashurah.
* 732 – Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.
* 1471 – Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with help of farmers and miners, repels an attack by Christian I, King of Denmark.
* 1575 – Battle of Dormans: Roman Catholic forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeated the Protestants, capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.
* 1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
* 1631 – A Saxon army takes over Prague.
* 1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.
* 1845 – In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.
* 1860 – The original cornerstone of the University of the South is laid in Sewanee, Tennessee.
* 1868 – Carlos Céspedes issues the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba’s independence.
* 1889 – Barnard College is founded.
* 1910 – Tau Epsilon Phi Fraternity is established at Columbia University.
* 1911 – Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.
* 1911 – The KCR East Rail commences service between Kowloon and Canton.
* 1913 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.
* 1919 – Richard Strauss’ opera Die Frau ohne Schatten receives its debut performance in Vienna.
* 1920 – The Carinthian Plebiscite determines that the larger part of Carinthia remained part of Austria.
* 1933 – United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.
* 1935 – A tornado destroys the 160 metre tall wooden radio tower in Langenberg. As a result of this catastrophe, few wooden towers are constructed after this date.
* 1938 – The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.
* 1942 – Soviet Union establishes diplomatic relations with Australia.
* 1943 – Double Tenth Incident in Japanese controlled Singapore
* 1944 – Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are systematically murdered at Auschwitz death camp.
* 1945 – The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China. Later, the pact is commonly referred to as the Double-Ten Agreement.
* 1954 – The Communist Party of Honduras is founded.
* 1957 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he was refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.
* 1957 – The Windscale fire in Cumbria, UK becomes the world’s first major nuclear accident.
* 1963 – France cedes control of the Bizerte naval base to Tunisia.
* 1964 – The 1964 Summer Olympics opening ceremony at Tokyo, Japan, with first time of live Olympic telecast program by geostationary communication satellite.
* 1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, enters into force.
* 1969 – King Crimson releases their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, considered by many to be the first progressive rock album.
* 1970 – Fiji becomes independent.
* 1970 – In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
* 1971 – Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, the London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
* 1973 – Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.
* 1985 – United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.
* 1986 – An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.
* 1997 – An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.
* 2005 – Negotiations between the CDU/CSU and SPD in Germany had concluded that both parties would form a grand coaltion with Angela Merkel of the CDU as chancellor after both parties lost seats in the 2005 German federal election. She was subsequently elected in the Bundestag as chancellor on November 22 of the same year.

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