April 8, 2007

Happy Easter!

Easter and the Primates http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Pope_decries_world_s_suffering_as_m_04082007.html
Catholic Primate Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday lamented "suffering" in the world's strife-torn and poorest regions as millions across the globe marked Easter, the holiest day in the Christian calendar. Speaking from the loggia of St Peter's Basilica to a crowd of tens of thousands, the pope evoked the plight of victims of last week's tsunami in the Solomon Islands and added that "nothing positive comes from Iraq" which is "torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees." The pope rarely speaks about the situation in Iraq, where attacks continue despite a massive security operation since February 14 to quell daily bloodshed that has left thousands dead in the last year alone. He also expressed "apprehension" at "the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa," the world's poorest continent, notably Darfur, Somalia and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has been wracked by a political and economic crisis which shows no sign of abating. In Sudan's restive Darfur region, at least 200,000 people have died according to the United Nations, since a conflict erupted in 2003. The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the Primate of the world's Anglicans, meanwhile urged Christians to embrace forgiveness and reconciliation, saying they could help resolve conflicts around the world. Recalling recent progress in the Northern Ireland peace process, where rival Protestant and Catholic parties agreed last month for the first time to share power in the British-run province, Williams said: "Going forward requires us all to learn a measure of openness to discover things about ourselves we did not know, seeing ourselves through the eyes of another." In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin marked Easter by returning a long-lost icon of Our Lady of Vladimir to Russia's Primate, Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II and pledged to return other religious relics lost in the Soviet era. Alexy II on his part put aside long-running differences with the Roman Catholic Church to send Easter greetings to Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter quoted by the Interfax news agency Saturday. For the first time this Easter an icon -- a holy work of art venerated by Orthodox Christians -- was placed near the altar as Benedict XVI presided over Easter mass in the Vatican's St Peter's Square decked out in spring flowers. In Ukraine, Easter had political undertones with hundreds of protesters against President Viktor Yushchenko celebrating with traditional cakes and eggs sporting the blue-and-white colours of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who has defied Yushchenko's order to dissolve parliament. Easter was celebrated with great fervour in Poland, where more than 90 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, prompting the priest of a leading Warsaw church to say there could be need to increase its capacity in future. Iraq's dwindling Christian minority donned their Sunday best but held quiet festivities, fearful of the bombings and abductions terrorising Baghdad's streets.


Hezbollah warns against attack on Iran http://rawstory.com/news/dpa/Hezbollah_warns_against_attack_on_I_04082007.html
The secretary general of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, warned Sunday against any attack on Iran. "If anyone in Lebanon is building hopes that Iran will be attacked I tell them if this happens the whole region will not stay the same and counting on such calculations will prove to be wrong," Nasrallah, who is backed by Iran and Syria, told a group of his followers during a ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs. Nasrallah, whose group is leading the opposition against Lebanon's Western-backed government headed by Premier Fouad Seniora, accused some members of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority of deluding themselves by counting on major regional changes to change the current situation in Lebanon. Lebanon has been locked in a political crisis since six pro-Syrian ministers resigned from the Seniora government in November. The opposition have been calling on the cabinet to resign and form a national unity government by granting the pro-Syrian opposition veto power. The demand is widely rejected by the anti-Syrian camp, who accuse the opposition of trying to block the formation of a national unity government to protect their Syrian allies who are widely believed to have been behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri.


British sailors to sell stories http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626726.ece
The 15 British military captives who were released by the Iranians have been authorised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sell their stories. MoD officials claimed that the move to lift the ban on military personnel selling their stories while in service was justified because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the case. The hostages are expected to earn as much as £250,000 between them. The story of Faye Turney, 26, the only female among them, is expected to be the most lucrative. She could profit by as much as £150,000 from a joint deal with a newspaper and ITV. The MoD bracketed the hostages’ 13-day captivity in Iran — including appearances on state television by some to admit straying into Iranian waters — with winners of the Victoria Cross. This weekend relatives of victims killed or injured in the Iraq war and opposition politicians criticised the authorisation as “inappropriate” and “undignified”. It comes only three days after their release and before they have given detailed evidence to an official inquiry. The story over the money came as it emerged that the White House had intervened to boost the British captives’ chances of release despite official denials of a deal. The White House involvement in the hostages’ release has been confirmed. When the crisis broke, the US and Iraqi governments offered to help. Several initiatives were under way before the release, allowing officials to say that developments were coincidental. First came the release last Tuesday of Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat missing in Iraq since February. A US administration source said he had been in a joint Iraqi and American facility, though this was denied by a British source. On Wednesday the Red Cross was granted access to five Iranians who were detained by US forces in January in Iraq. Iran’s President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad announced the same day that the British captives could go home. The Iraqi foreign minister said yesterday that he was pressing the Americans to release the five Iranian detainees, or at least to transfer them to Iraqi custody.


Twist in climate-change fight pits corporations against each other http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003657174_warming08m.html
Big electricity users, including Boeing and Microsoft, are locked in a showdown with Washington state's biggest utilities. The companies say the utilities have been offered too much latitude over prices to quell their opposition to restrictions on coal power and the resulting greenhouse-gas emissions. And the whole dispute, involving some of Olympia's most powerful lobbies, has become big enough that backers of 'global warming' legislation worry the whole effort may be in jeopardy. The legislation at issue aims to get Washington to mount a comprehensive assault on climate change. It would set goals for reducing statewide emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Two bills now in the Legislature would tackle the issue in essentially the same way. While the Senate has voted in favor of the legislation, the House has yet to vote on it. Generally, the bills would forbid Washington utilities from making new investments or signing long-term contracts to get power from plants that produce a lot of greenhouse gases. That would have the most immediate impact on utilities by essentially declaring new coal power off-limits. So to get the state's biggest utilities not to resist, lawmakers have added several provisions to the bills relating to how highly regulated power rates get set. Taken together, the provisions would give for-profit power companies, such as Puget Sound Energy and Spokane-based Avista, permission to raise electricity rates to recover more expenses, and more certainty that they would be able to pay off new investments. However, some of the biggest power users in the state contend the provisions would hand too much power to the utilities, potentially translating into higher power bills.

India's tech firms hunting for help http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003656681_indiaworkers08.html
Nearly two decades into India's phenomenal growth as an international center for high technology, the industry has a problem: It's running out of workers. There may be a lot of potential — Indian schools churn out 400,000 new engineers, the core of the high-tech industry, every year — but as few as 100,000 are actually ready to join the job world, experts say. Instead, graduates are leaving universities that are mired in theory classes, and sometimes so poorly funded they don't have computer labs. Even students from the best colleges can be dulled by cram schools and left without the most basic communication skills, according to industry leaders. So the country's voracious high-tech companies, desperate for ever-increasing numbers of staffers to fill their ranks, have to go hunting. From the outside, this nation of 1.03 billion, with its immense English-speaking population, may appear to have a bottomless supply of cheap workers with enough education to claim more outsourced Western jobs. But things look far different in India, where technology companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a frantic attempt to ensure their profit-making machine keeps producing. Much of India's success rests on the fact that its legions of software programmers work for far less than those in the West — often for one-fourth the salary. If industry can't find enough workers to keep wages low, the companies that look to India for things like software development will turn to competitors, from Poland to the Philippines, and the entire industry could stumble.

Gingrich: Gonzales should be gonzo http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Embattled_Bush_loyalist_loses_key_c_04082007.html
Until now, pressure for the long-time ally of President George W. Bush to resign -- after evidence emerged implicating Gonzales in the firings of the attorneys for allegedly partisan reasons -- has come mainly from Democrats in Congress. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives and one of the most influential conservative US Republicans, told Fox News on Sunday it was time for a new attorney general. The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating why the US attorneys were fired, even as several of them were in the middle of sensitive corruption investigations, and to what extent Gonzales and the White House were involved. Although US attorneys, who are powerful regional prosecutors appointed by the president, are often replaced at the start of a new presidential administration, it is not common to do so in mid-term. Gonzales is heavily focused on preparing for his April 17 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine reported. Preparations include mock question-and-answer sessions with advisers filling in the roles of questioning senators. In a related scandal, the Post reported that Gonzales overlooked key ethical questions surrounding former New York city police commissioner Bernard Kerik, nominated in December 2004 to be secretary of homeland security. Kerik, a close associate of former New York city mayor Rudolph Giuliani, withdrew his name when it surfaced that he hired an undocumented migrant as a nanny. But the Post reported that Gonzales also overlooked Kerik's friendship with a businessman linked to the mafia -- and that federal prosecutors are now likely to charge Kerik with several felonies, including lying to the government.

Quake lifted Solomons island metres from the sea http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Quake_lifts_Solomons_island_metres__04072007.html
The force of this week's Solomons earthquake lifted an island in the South Pacific archipelago and pushed out its shoreline by tens of metres, exposing surrounding reefs. The remote island of Ranongga in the western Solomon Islands used to have submerged coral reefs that attracted scuba divers from around the world. But since Monday's massive earthquake in the Solomon Islands, the reefs are now exposed above the water and are dying. The 8.0-magnitude quake, caused by a shift in the Earth's tectonic plates, triggered a tsunami that killed at least 34 people in the remote western Solomons and left 5,500 homeless. Aid agencies have yet to reach Ranongga, but the AFP team saw the devastation that has permanently altered the geography of the island, 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres wide. Although Ranongga escaped the fury of the tsunami, the seismic upheaval from the quake pushed out the shoreline by up to 70 metres, local resident Hendrik Kegala also said. The loss of the reefs was a huge blow for the fishing communities that are dotted along Ranongga's coast, said the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) squadron commander in the Solomons.

College loan scandal widening http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08sun3.html?ex=1176609600&en=f919703e84a776f2&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY
The New York Times reported last week that a senior official at the Department of Education who helped oversee the federal student loan program held shares of the parent company of the student loan company Student Loan Xpress. That came one day after financial aid officials at three universities that listed Student Loan Xpress as a preferred lender — Columbia University, The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California — were found to have sold shares in the company. The official at Columbia, who earned more than $100,000 on the sale, bought his shares for about $1 each and sold them for about $10. These cases show what lenders will do to win a slice of the business — last year students took out $85 billion in loans — and the all-too-frequent willingness of universities to go along. Financial aid officers are offered gifts and trips, and universities are offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments, if they place a company on their list of preferred lenders that most students use when looking for loans. Universities have also been offered large payments to switch from the government’s student loan program to private lenders whose huge profits are based in part on government subsidies.

Chinese painting sells for record price http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Chinese_painting_sells_for_record_p_04072007.html
A protest painting by Xu Beihong sold at auction Saturday for 72 million Hong Kong dollars (9.2 million US dollars), setting yet another record for Chinese painting. Auctioneers Sotheby's had expected the 1939 painting of an anti-Japanese street play, "Put Down Your Whip," to fetch at least 30 million Hong Kong dollars. Another painting by Xu, "Slave and Lion" set the previous record of 53.9 million dollars. The patriotic Xu, who was renowned for his horse paintings, was inspired to paint "Put Down Your Whip" after watching a street play in Singapore about a father and his daughter in wartime exile due to the Japanese invasion. Some art historians have criticised the recent explosion in the prices for Asian art, which 10 years ago was struggling to attract any interest. Some have criticised irrationally exuberant first-time Asian buyers for artificially sending prices sky-high.

Matsushita to set up software research centre in Vietnam http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Matsushita_to_set_up_software_resea_04052007.html
Japanese electronics giant Matsushita said Thursday it will set up a research centre in Vietnam to develop key software installed in cellular phones and flat-panel televisions. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., maker of the Panasonic brand, plans to begin operation of the new company, the Panasonic R and D Center Vietnam Co., by the end of April in Hanoi, the company said. Matsushita will invest 500,000 dollars to create the facility, which will develop and design system chips and control software for Matsushita plants around the world, the company said. The company also sees Vietnam as a growing market, Matsushita spokesman Akira Kadota said. It will be Matsushita's third research and development centre in the region of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) following similar facilities in Singapore and Malaysia. Matsushita is shifting research and development to the region to gain lower labour costs at a time when it is also difficult to secure software researchers and engineers at home, Kadota said. Nineteen employees will initially work at the centre, with the number possibly going up to around 200 in the future, Kadota said. In a bid to recruit newly graduated engineers in Vietnam, Matsushita said it will also send Japanese technicians to train workers and start a software development course at the Hanoi University of Technology.

Effort to Catalog Species Tops 1 Million http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070408/D8OCLUE80.html
A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped the 1 million milestone. Six years into the program the total has reached 1,009,000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75 million species. The finished catalog will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses. The listing does not include fossil species from the past. The Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life provides access to data maintained by a variety of scientific organizations, each specializing in a certain area. For example, information on dipteran flies is maintained by the Agriculture Department's Systematic Entomology Laboratory at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Natural history museums in London, the Netherlands and New York maintain clothes moth, dragonfly and spider data. Experts in Canada and Paris keep the data on Ichneumon wasps and longhorn beetles. These lists are peer-reviewed and checked technically, and then integrated into special software for the catalog. Only rarely is there competition among names, such as occurred with sea anemones, hard corals and spiders, and occasionally an element of subjective opinion plays a role among the peer reviewers with various taxonomic expertise. The biggest section of the database currently is LepIndex, listing 253,680 species of lepidoptera, which are butterflies and moths. At the small end of the scale is a database that covers 86 species of krill, the tiny shrimplike creatures that whales eat. The U.S. Geological Survey's National Biological Information Infrastructure is providing support for the effort.

Seals Found Dead on Caspian Sea Shores http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070408/D8OC6JFG1.html
Nearly 250 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan in the past week, emergency officials said Saturday. Authorities were conducting tests to determine what killed the 247 seals found by oil workers inspecting the shore in western Mangistau region, the Emergencies Agency said. Last year, 350 seals and thousands of sturgeon died in a northern part of the Caspian region as a result of a heavy metal leak from the Kashagan oil field. Also, several epidemics of a viral disease have killed thousands of Caspian seals since the late 1990s.

NY Times blog names Saturn's mystery hexagon
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/and-saturns-hexagon-shall-be-called/