Obama uses tax proposals for his political message

FILE - In this Dec. 16, 2011, file photo, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, speaks to reporters as Republican Senators emerge from a closed-door negotiation on the payroll tax cut extension and other measures, at the Capitol in Washington. Aiming tax increases at millionaires and companies that ship jobs abroad may help frame the fairness theme of President Barack Obama?s re-election campaign, but it?s a plan that stands virtually no chance of passing Congress. "He?s got to know that none of those things he proposed really have much of a chance of going through both houses of Congress," said Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 16, 2011, file photo, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, speaks to reporters as Republican Senators emerge from a closed-door negotiation on the payroll tax cut extension and other measures, at the Capitol in Washington. Aiming tax increases at millionaires and companies that ship jobs abroad may help frame the fairness theme of President Barack Obama?s re-election campaign, but it?s a plan that stands virtually no chance of passing Congress. "He?s got to know that none of those things he proposed really have much of a chance of going through both houses of Congress," said Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Aiming tax increases at millionaires and companies that ship jobs abroad may help frame the fairness theme of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, but it's a plan that stands virtually no chance of passing Congress.

Republicans have enough votes in the GOP-run House, and almost certainly in the Democratic-controlled Senate, to kill Obama's proposals. They say his ideas would discourage investment and job creation and further hurt an already ailing economy.

"He's got to know that none of those things he proposed really have much of a chance of going through both houses of Congress," said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

"I don't think he's intending on passing any laws this year," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "He's in a campaign. That was his re-election speech."

The GOP's dismissiveness hardly matters to Obama and his Democratic allies.

After last year's hyper-partisanship bogged down routine business like financing the government and paying its debts, few expect much to move through Congress before November's election anyway ? especially not tax hikes that Republicans solidly reject.

"Even if there is little prospect of getting Republicans to agree with these proposals, they're important reference points for the public in identifying Obama as someone who's on their side," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin.

Obama offered his plans, with scant detail, in Tuesday's State of the Union address. He used the word "fair" seven times to describe tax increases aimed at groups the Occupy movement has branded as the "one percent" of Americans who are doing extremely well while the rest of society struggles.

The president proposed ending tax breaks for U.S. companies moving jobs or profits to foreign countries and creating a minimum tax on their overseas profits. He also suggested new tax breaks for businesses that move jobs back to the U.S., for domestic manufacturing and for companies that invest in towns that have suffered major job losses.

Getting most attention was his plan to tax incomes above $1 million annually at a rate of at least 30 percent. That's a sharp and convenient contrast with the 15 percent tax rate enjoyed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, who earned about $21 million each of the past two years.

The proposals quickly became fodder for the GOP presidential contenders. Romney said the next day on CNBC's "Kudlow Report" that Obama's plan was "designed to come at me if I'm the nominee," and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said during last Thursday's presidential debate, "His proposal on taxes would make the economy worse."

Democrats immediately made clear that there will be Senate votes this year on the subject.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, part of the Senate Democratic leadership, said he was relishing a push on "some kind of Romney rule, I mean Buffett rule." Obama has embraced a Buffett rule, named for billionaire Warren Buffett, who has cited the inequity of laws that let him pay a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Such proposals, along with any efforts to deny tax breaks to U.S. companies that outsource jobs and profits, would never get the 60 votes they would need to prevail in the Senate this year, let alone win approval from the GOP-run House.

"If the president has proposals that will help create jobs, we'll take a look," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "But tax hikes on small businesses will make it even harder for them to invest and grow."

Republicans say boosting taxes on millionaires would hurt many of the people who run small businesses and create jobs, a claim Democrats call exaggerated. The GOP and business groups also marshal their own fairness argument, calling it unjust and impractical to raise taxes on companies that set up operations overseas.

"They locate their facilities to be close to the customer," said Dorothy Coleman, vice president for tax policy for the National Association of Manufacturers. "That's a big concern for us, targeting multinational companies as if there is something wrong with doing business overseas."

Democrats challenge that argument as well, saying many pharmaceutical and high technology companies that set up shop abroad are drawn by lower labor costs and taxes and still sell the bulk of their products in the U.S.

Those disputes underscore a political climate so difficult that neither the House nor Senate seem likely to even try advancing pre-election legislation that each party calls their top tax priority: overhauling and simplifying the tax code.

Even so, Obama's tax proposals can also be read as an opening gambit in what looms as a titanic partisan struggle to be waged after the November elections, perhaps in a lame duck session of Congress in December.

Next January, broad tax cuts will expire that were enacted under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 and were temporarily renewed by Obama and Congress in 2010. At the same time, $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts will kick in unless lawmakers vote otherwise.

Congress will also need to renew the government's authority to borrow money. And action will be needed on a package of expiring smaller tax cuts, mostly for businesses, and on preventing the alternative minimum tax, originally aimed at the wealthy, from trapping middle- and upper-middle-income families as well.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-30-Congress-Taxes/id-1f3612a7d1c74cbd934c3f0aaa3ef7e2

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Severe python damage to Florida's native Everglades animals documented in new study

ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2012) ? Precipitous declines in formerly common mammals in Everglades National Park in Florida have been linked to the presence of invasive Burmese pythons, according to a study by Michael Dorcas, an associate professor of biology at Davidson College, and colleagues. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, the first to document the ecological impacts of this invasive species, strongly supports that animal communities in the 1.5-million-acre park have been markedly altered by the introduction of pythons within 11 years of their establishment as an invasive species. Mid-sized mammals are the most dramatically affected, but some Everglades pythons are as large as 16 feet long, and their prey have included animals as large as deer and alligators.

"The magnitude of these declines underscores the apparent incredible density of pythons in Everglades National Park and justifies the argument for more intensive investigation into their ecological effects, as well as the development of effective control methods," said Dorcas, lead author of the study and author of the 2010 book Invasive Pythons in the United States.

He continued, "Such severe declines in easily seen mammals bode poorly for the many species of conservation concern that are more difficult to sample but that may also be vulnerable to python predation."

The most severe declines, including a nearly complete disappearance of raccoons, rabbits and opossums, have occurred in the remote southernmost regions of the park, where pythons have been established the longest. In this area, populations of raccoons dropped 99.3 percent, opossums 98.9 percent and bobcats 87.5 percent. Marsh and cottontail rabbits, as well as foxes, were not seen at all.

The researchers collected their information via repeated systematic night-time road surveys within the park, counting both live and road-killed animals. Over the period of the study, researchers traveled a total of nearly 39,000 miles from 2003 to 2011 and compared their findings with similar surveys conducted in 1996 and 1997 along the same roadways before pythons were recognized as established in Everglades National Park.

The authors also conducted surveys in ecologically similar areas north of the park where pythons have not yet been discovered. In those areas, mammal abundances were similar to those in the park before pythons proliferated. At sites where pythons have only recently been documented, however, mammal populations were reduced, though not to the dramatic extent observed within the park where pythons are well established.

"Pythons are wreaking havoc on one of America's most beautiful, treasured and naturally bountiful ecosystems," said U.S. Geological Survey director Marcia McNutt. "Right now, the only hope to help halt further python invasion into new areas is swift, decisive and deliberate human action."

The authors suggested that one reason for such dramatic declines in such a short time is that these prey species are "na?ve" -- that is, they not used to being preyed upon by pythons since such large snakes have not previously existed in that ecosystem.

"It took 30 years for the brown treesnake to be implicated in the nearly complete disappearance of mammals and birds on Guam; it has apparently taken only 11 years since pythons were recognized as being established in the Everglades for researchers to implicate pythons in the same kind of severe mammal declines," said Robert Reed, a USGS scientist and co-author of the paper. "It is possible that other mammal species, including at-risk ones, have declined as well because of python predation, but at this time, the status of those species is unknown."

Another coauthor of the study was John Willson '02, a research scientist at Virginia Tech University who has worked with Dorcas on several studies, and co-authored the book Invasive Pythons in the United States.

Willson commented, "Our research adds to the increasing evidence that predators, whether native or exotic, exert major influence on the structure of animal communities. The effects of declining mammal populations on the overall Everglades ecosystem, which extends well beyond the national park boundaries, are likely profound, but are probably complex and difficult to predict. Studies examining such effects are sorely needed to more fully understand the impacts pythons are having on one of our most unique and valued national parks."

On January 23 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a rule in the Federal Register that will ban the importation and interstate transportation of four non-native constrictor snakes that threaten the Everglades, including the Burmese python. These snakes are being listed as injurious species under the Lacey Act.

In addition to Dorcas and Willson, authors of the study are Robert N. Reed, USGS; Ray W. Snow, NPS; Michael R. Rochford, University of Florida; Melissa A. Miller, Auburn University; Walter E. Meshaka, Jr., State Museum of Pennsylvania; Paul T. Andreadis, Denison University; Frank J. Mazzotti, University of Florida; Christina M. Romagosa, Auburn University; and Kristen M. Hart, USGS.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Davidson College.

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Journal Reference:

1. Michael E. Dorcas, John D. Willson, Robert N. Reed, Ray W. Snow, Michael R. Rochford, Melissa A. Miller, Walter E. Meshaka, Jr., Paul T. Andreadis, Frank J. Mazzotti, Christina M. Romagosa, and Kristen M. Hart. Severe mammal declines coincide with proliferation of invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades National Park. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1115226109

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120130193241.htm

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UN nuclear inspection gets under way in Iran (AP)

TEHRAN, Iran ? U.N. nuclear inspectors began a critical mission to Iran on Sunday to probe allegations of a secret atomic weapons program amid escalating Western economic pressure and warnings about safeguarding Gulf oil shipments from possible Iranian blockades.

The findings from the three-day visit could greatly influence the direction and urgency of U.S.-led efforts to rein in Iran's ability to enrich uranium ? which Washington and allies fear could eventually produce weapons-grade material. Iran has declined to abandon its enrichment labs, but claims it only seeks to fuel reactors for energy and medical research.

The International Atomic Energy Agency team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection from possible airstrikes. Earlier this month, Iran said it had begun enrichment work at the site, which is far smaller than the country's main uranium labs but is reported to have more advanced equipment.

The U.N. nuclear agency delegation includes two senior weapons experts ? Jacques Baute of France and Neville Whiting of South Africa ? suggesting that Iran may be prepared to address some issues related to the allegations that it seeks nuclear warheads.

In unusually blunt comments ahead of his arrival, the IAEA's Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts ? who is in charge of the agency's Iran file ? said he wants Tehran to "engage us on all concerns."

Iran has refused to discuss the alleged weapons experiments for three years, saying they are based on "fabricated documents" provided by a "few arrogant countries" ? a phrase authorities in Iran often use to refer to the United States and its allies.

"So we're looking forward to the start of a dialogue," Nackaerts told reporters at Vienna airport. "A dialogue that is overdue since very long."

In a sign of the tensions that surround Iran's disputed nuclear program, a dozen Iranian hard-liners carrying photos of slain nuclear expert Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan were waiting at Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport early Sunday.

Iranian state media allege that Roshan, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, was interviewed by IAEA inspectors before being killed earlier this month in a targeted bomb attack that Iran claims is part of an Israeli-led covert campaign of sabotage and slayings. Roshan was at least the fourth member of Iran's scientific community to be killed in apparent assassinations.

In Vienna, the IAEA said it does not know Roshan and has never talked to him.

But the IAEA team will be looking for permission to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on a weapons program. They also plan to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits. It's unclear how much assistance Iran will provide, but even a decision to enter a discussion over the allegations would be a major departure from Iran's frequent simple refusal to talk about them.

Iran also has accused the IAEA in the past of security leaks that expose its scientists and their families to the threat of assassination by the U.S. and Israel.

The visit was to coincide with a vote in Iran's parliament on a bill that would require the government to immediately cut the flow of crude oil to Europe in retaliation for sanctions. Lawmakers postponed the vote Sunday to further study the bill, and no date for a vote has been set.

The draft bill is Iran's response to an EU decision last week to impose an embargo on Iranian oil. The measure is set to take full effect in July.

The head of Iran's state oil company said Sunday that pressures on Iran's oil exports ? the second biggest in OPEC ? could drive prices as high as $150 a barrel.

"It seems we will witness prices from $120 to $150 in the future," Ahmad Qalehbani was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. He did not give a timeframe for the prediction, nor any other details.

The price of benchmark U.S. crude on Friday was around $99.56 per barrel. About 80 percent of Iran's foreign revenue comes from exporting around 2.2 million barrels of oil per day.

Oil prices have been driven higher in recent weeks by Iran's warnings that it could block the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, the route for about one-fifth of the world's oil. Last week, the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, joined by French and British warships, entered the Gulf in a show of strength against any attempts to disrupt oil tanker traffic.

___

Associated Press writer George Jahn in Vienna contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear

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Grammy-winning composer Clare Fischer dead at 83 (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? Clare Fischer, a Grammy-winning composer who wrote scores for television and movies and worked with legendary musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, has died. He was 83.

Fischer died Thursday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after suffering a heart attack two weeks ago, family spokeswoman Claris Sayadian-Dodge said.

An uncommonly versatile musician, Fischer worked as a composer, arranger, conductor and pianist for more than 60 years.

He is best known for his arrangements for Prince, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Branford Marsalis, Raphael Saadiq, Usher and Brandy.

Nominated for a Grammy 11 times in the Best Instrumental Arrangement category, Fischer won in 1986 for his album "Free Fall" and in 1981 for "Salsa Picante plus 2+2."

Born in Durand, Mich., Fischer got his start playing piano and writing jazz-inspired arrangements for the group The Hi-Lo's, an a capella quartet popular in the 1950s.

He worked as the arranger on Gillespie's "Jazz Portrait of Duke Ellington."

Fischer recorded 51 albums over his lifetime with his son Brent Fischer. The music ranges in style from jazz to salsa to symphonies.

"Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept," Herbie Hancock is quoted as saying on Fischer's website.

"(Fischer) and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were," Hancock said.

Clare Fischer is survived by his wife, Donna; sons Lee and Brent; daughter Tahlia; and three grandchildren.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120128/ap_en_tv/us_obit_fischer

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Prejudices? Quite normal!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Girls are not as good at playing football as boys, and they do not have a clue about cars. Instead they know better how to dance and do not get into mischief as often as boys. Prejudices like these are cultivated from early childhood onwards by everyone. "Approximately at the age of three to four years children start to prefer children of the same sex, and later the same ethnic group or nationality," Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) states. This is part of an entirely normal personality development, the director of the Institute for Psychology explains. "It only gets problematic when the more positive evaluation of the own social group, which is adopted automatically in the course of identity formation, at some point reverts into bias and discrimination against others," Beelmann continues.

To prevent this, the Jena psychologist and his team have been working on a prevention programme for children. It is designed to reduce prejudice and to encourage tolerance for others. But when is the right time to start? Jena psychologists Dr. Tobias Raabe and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann systematically summarise scientific studies on that topic and published the results of their research in the science journal Child Development (DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.).

According to this, the development of prejudice increases steadily at pre-school age and reaches its highest level between five and seven years of age. With increasing age this development is reversed and the prejudices decline. "This reflects normal cognitive development of children," Prof. Beelmann explains. "At first they adopt the social categories from their social environment, mainly the parents. Then they start to build up their own social identity according to social groups, before they finally learn to differentiate and individual evaluations of others will prevail over stereotypes." Therefore the psychologists reckon this age is the ideal time to start well-designed prevention programmes against prejudice. "Prevention starting at that age supports the normal course of development," Beelmann says. As the new study and the experience of the Jena psychologists with their prevention programme so far show, the prejudices are strongly diminished at primary school age, when children get in touch with members of so-called social out groups like, for instance children of a different nationality or skin colour. "This also works when they don't even get in touch with real people but learn it instead via books or told stories."

But at the same time the primary school age is a critical time for prejudices to consolidate. "If there is no or only a few contact to members of social out groups, there is no personal experience to be made and generalising negative evaluations stick longer." In this, scientists see an explanation for the particularly strong xenophobia in regions with a very low percentage of foreigners or migrants.

Moreover the Jena psychologists noticed that social ideas and prejudices are formed differently in children of social minorities. They do not have a negative attitude towards the majority to start with, more often it is even a positive one. The reason is the higher social status of the majority, which is being regarded as a role model. Only later, after having experienced discrimination, they develop prejudices, that then sticks with them much more persistently than with other children. "In this case prevention has to start earlier so it doesn't even get that far," Beelmann is convinced.

Generally, the psychologist of the Jena University stresses, the results of the new study don't imply that the children's and youths attitudes towards different social groups can't be changed at a later age. But this would then less depend on the individual development and very much more on the social environment like for instance changing social norms in our society. Tolerance on the other hand could be encouraged at any age. The psychologists' "prescription": As many diverse contacts to individuals belonging to different social groups as possible. "People who can identify with many groups will be less inclined to make sweeping generalisations in the evaluation of individuals belonging to different social groups or even to discriminate against them," Prof. Beelmann says.

###

Raabe T, Beelmann A.: Development of ethnic, racial, and national prejudice in childhood and adolescence: A multinational meta-analysis of age differences. Child Development. 2011; 82(6):1715-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.

Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena: http://www.uni-jena.de

Thanks to Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117152/Prejudices__Quite_normal_

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New Communications Director, Kate Keune

Today, I am very pleased to announce that Kate Keune has accepted the leadership position within the Office of the CIO, as Director of OCIO Communications, effective February 1, 2012.? In this role, she will be responsible for leadership of the communications team and creation of the strategic direction for communications, both internal and external to the OCIO.? The focus of our communications team is to influence OSU leadership and the general community to more favorably recognize the OCIO organization as leaders in technology.

Kate is a seasoned leader within the Office of the CIO with over 10 years of service. Her broad experience with training and development, culture, project management, organizational change management, and communications provides the correct balance of technical and strategic skills required to excel in this position.

Kate earned a Bachelor of Arts, Speech Communication, from Augustana College and Master of Arts, Communication Studies, from Northern Illinois University.

As the Director of OCIO Communications, Kate will join the Customer Experience Leadership Team, reporting directly to me.? Richard Wofford, Lisa Calcara, Ric Hunter, Robyn Ness, Margo Garcia-Hunter, and Lucy Ramos will be her direct reports.

Kate can be reached at?Keune.1@osu.edu?or (614) 946-0676 and her permanent office will be located in Baker Systems Engineering.

Please join me in extending a warm OCIO Congratulations to Kate!

Bob Corbin

This entry was posted in Announcements and tagged personnel. Bookmark the permalink. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Source: http://ocio.osu.edu/blog/team/2012/01/26/new-communications-director-kate-keune/

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Video: Facebook IPO Impact on Social Media

News that Facebook could launch its IPO next Wednesday is lifting stocks with exposure to Facebook. CNBC's Kayla Tausche & Julia Boorstin, and Harry Rady, Rady Asset Management, discuss the ripple effects of its IPO on social media stocks.

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46168495/

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Reuters Magazine: Wheatley: What's going right (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? With the British economy flat on its back, the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) factory in Birmingham, the second largest city in England, is doing something unusual: hiring. The company is doing well. With exports to China and other big emerging economies rising strongly, Britain's largest automotive manufacturer recently said it would hire another thousand workers and build a new engine plant, creating a further 750 fifty jobs.

The Jaguar plant, which manufactured Spitfire fighter aircraft and Lancaster bombers during World War II, is an amalgam of state-of-the-art robots and old-fashioned craftsmen intent on their work. Electric carts laden with parts buzz across the factory floor, passing beneath big screens that flash the number of cars completed that shift. It takes 48 hours to process the top-of-the-line XJ model. As sedans roll off the assembly line, each customer's specifications are given a final check, and the cars are driven away to be shipped everywhere from Australia and Azerbaijan to the United States and China. The company, bought by India's Tata Motors from Ford Motor in 2008, exports 75 percent of its output. Britain and the United States remain JLR's biggest markets, but China has sped into the third spot and now accounts for 14 percent of the company's sales, which reached 232,704 vehicles last year.

That the luxury tastes of newly rich Chinese are generating employment in the birthplace of the industrial revolution is a powerful expression of Asia's rising clout and a reminder that the West's protracted debt crisis has not sucked all life out of the global economy. JLR's sales to China have risen by more than 750 percent in the past five years. "Nearly everybody's cutting back because of the recession, but China is still an expanding market," said Jim Kearns, an experienced assembly-line worker at JLR's Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham. "They've got their heads screwed on over there."

Europe's debt malaise is prompting talk of a lost decade for the economy, like Japan in the 1990s. In the United States, deadlocked debt reduction talks, high unemployment, and long-stagnant incomes are sapping confidence. But many less affluent countries, though not immune to the West's woes, have displayed remarkable resilience. While advanced economies are likely to expand just 1.6 percent this year, emerging and developing countries should notch up growth of 6.4 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. For the past five years, developing countries have contributed as much as 65 percent of world growth and 70 percent of the growth in global imports, the World Bank estimates. Nor is this growth purely a function of final demand in the West. South-South trade - for instance between China and India or Brazil and Africa - now makes up 45 percent of developing country imports, up from about 23 percent in the early 1990s.

The BRIC countries are in the vanguard of this reordering of the world economy. Brazil, Russia, India, and China accounted for just 8.5 percent of global GDP at market exchange rates in the period between 2000 and 2004, according to the IMF. Between 2005 and 2009 that share rose to 13.1 percent, and by 2015 it will have overtaken that of the euro zone to reach 20.7 percent, just shy of the United States at 21.1 percent. "We're in the early days of the rise of the BRICs," said Jim O'Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who coined the concept a decade ago. Trade tells a similar story. Over the past two decades, the share of world exports among the BRIC countries has nearly tripled, while their share of global imports has nearly doubled. At the same time, the gulf in productivity between industrial and developing economies - what economists call the "convergence gap" - remains very large. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of dire poverty thanks to the 10 percent annual growth China has enjoyed since the late 1970s, but an estimated 300 million Chinese still do not have access to clean water. Measured at purchasing power parity, annual income per head in China is just 16 percent of that in the United States. In India, the figure is just 7 percent. It's this catch-up potential that has businesses salivating.

"I'm still optimistic. We will continue to see hyper growth in these markets," said Yang Yuanqing, the chairman of Lenovo, the world's number two personal computer maker. In China, for example, many people in the biggest cities already own a computer, Yang said, but the penetration rate in smaller cities and townships remains very low. His confidence is broadly shared by the man in the street in China even if there is resentment towards officials suspected of having acquired their wealth through connections or corruption. Zhu Lijun, a postgraduate student in Beijing, said he was satisfied with his standard of living. "As a college student, I feel optimistic about my future," Zhu said. "What matters is not whether other people get wealthy faster than me, but the way they get wealthy."

Economic growth in China is slowing but incomes are still rising fast; the government is committed to boosting household consumption's share of the economy so that growth relies less on investment and exports. HSBC reckons 40 percent of China's urban households now fall into the middle-class category, with annual income of 60,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan ($9,450 to $78,600). Five years ago, the proportion was just 10 percent. "This group has both the capacity and the desire to buy branded products and more expensive consumer durables as well as spend money on travel and culture," said HSBC's chief China economist, Qu Hongbin. That's good news not only for Jaguar Land Rover, Lenovo, and the thousands of other companies currently flogging their wares in China, it also bodes well for other companies, and entire countries, that would like to feed China's voracious demand for components, energy, and minerals.

Australia owes much of its long economic expansion to sound policy-making, but credit is due as well to China's hunger for iron ore, coal, and other natural resources. China accounted for 27 percent of Australia's exports in the first nine months of 2011, up from just 5 percent in 2000. Because the price of natural resources has soared while the cost of manufactured goods has fallen, a shipload of iron ore from Australia in 2010 could buy about 22,000 flat-screen television sets, 10 times more than just five years earlier.

The commodity boom is also helping Africa. Excluding countries with fewer than 10 million people, six of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world between 2001 and 2010 were in Africa. Between 2010 and 2015, seven of the top 10 countries, the IMF reckons, will be African. One of them will be Zambia, the continent's largest producer of copper. The $13 billion economy has grown at more than 6 percent annually over the last five years, and the benefits are slowly starting to trickle down. Kemmy Chaande, a reserved, soft-spoken man in his forties, has received a 3.2 billion kwacha ($625,000) government loan to expand his roofing sheet plant in Kabwe, about 140 kilometers north of the capital, Lusaka. With the government planning to spend more on construction in 2012, Chaande is eyeing a bigger market and hopes gradually to increase his workforce to 150 from 28 today. "The future looks very bright," he said. "It is companies like this one which employ people, and if we can be supported then even poverty levels will come down." Foreign direct investment, especially from China, has also been a powerful driver of Africa's growth, contributing an additional one half of a percentage point or more to GDP growth, according to Aaron Weisbrod and John Whalley of the University of Western Ontario. In the case of Zambia, which drew more Chinese investment relative to the size of its economy than any other country the researchers studied, the extra growth came to 1.9 percentage points in the years 2003 to 2009.

Research by IMF economists corroborates the notion that the BRICs are acting as a locomotive for poorer nations such as Zambia. Issouf Samake and Yongzheng Yang estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in BRIC demand and productivity leads to a cumulative 0.7 percentage point increase in low-income countries' output over three years. And that has translated, they argue, into a surprising economic resilience in the face of the worst recession for developed nations since World War II.

Not everyone in Zambia is prospering, of course. "It's just hand to mouth," said Gertrude Tembo, a 38-year-old mother of five who sells vegetables on the streets of Lusaka. "I've been selling on this street for the past 10 years and I am still here the way I started." What is enthusing Africa optimists, though, is that governance is generally improving too. The number of conflicts has fallen and power is increasingly changing hands peacefully through the ballot box, as it did in Zambia in September. "Since the new government has introduced pro-poor policies, such as the decision to reduce taxes for thousands of workers, a lot of people should feel the benefit of Zambia's positive economic growth," said Gervas Malibata, a rural development worker.

The picture is roughly the same in Peru. A commodity boom fueled by demand from Asia has laid the foundations for a surge in domestic consumption. Per capita income more than doubled from $2,000 in 2000 to $5,000 in 2010 and it is set to reach $6,700 in 2015, the IMF says. Peru has come a long way from the hyper-inflation and violence of leftist Shining Path insurgents that scarred the 1990s. "There are job opportunities now and, above all, there is stability," said Magra Trujillo, a 50-year-old nurse outside a middle-class shopping mall in Lima, the capital. "I know there will be opportunities for my children and grandchildren." Many poor Peruvians who propelled the leftist former army officer Ollanta Humala to victory in elections last June are still waiting for growth to trickle down from the construction, shopping, and real estate bonanza under way in Lima. Still, optimism prevails. "It's an incredible turnaround from 10 years ago, and lots of Peruvians are moving back home," said Javier Ugarte, a restaurant owner who was visiting his native Lima from San Diego. "The American dream actually seems to be more real in Peru now."

This rosy picture of demand from China and other emerging powerhouses extending across the globe invites an obvious question: How long can these countries' strong demand last? Maria Pinelli, global vice chair of strategic growth markets at consultants Ernst & Young, expects that the global middle class - people with daily per capita incomes between $10 and $100, expressed at purchasing power parity - will expand from around 2 billion now to 5 billion by 2030. Annual spending in this group will leap to $56 trillion from $21 trillion, offering juicy opportunities to multinational companies if they can outrace fast-moving local rivals on their home turf. "Speed to market will be absolutely essential because people in those countries are too entrepreneurial to let an opportunity pass. They'll figure it out before the multinationals do," she said. "That's a fundamental change."

Not everyone is so optimistic. Dani Rodrik, a professor of international political economy at Harvard University, is skeptical of assumptions that developing countries will maintain very high growth rates as they catch up with the West. Widespread convergence is a relatively recent phenomenon, he argues. "It would be nice if governments simply had to stabilize, liberalize and open up and markets would do the rest," Rodrik wrote in a paper. "Alas, that is not how sustained convergence was achieved in the past." Continued rapid expansion will require the kind of policies that advanced economies harnessed on the way to becoming rich, such as keeping currencies undervalued, controlling the financial sector, and favoring selected industries - in short, the Chinese recipe for growth. A Western backlash against the Beijing model, sparked perhaps by austerity fatigue, is a real risk. For now, though, people inside and outside China are making the most of the country's economic rise.

"In China there are plenty of opportunities for everyone to increase their standard of living," said David Zhang, who was born into a farming family and is now chief financial officer of a company listed in Hong Kong. "The Chinese will have cars and luxuries they haven't dared to dream about for centuries," said Zhang, who owns two BMWs.

Back in Birmingham, taxi driver Mohammed Iktias said the news that JLR's profits were up and the firm was taking on more workers had put a smile on his face. "When I heard that, it made me genuinely feel happy. It was good news for a change," Iktias said. "It didn't bring a tear to my eye, but it was close."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120126/bs_nm/us_davos_reutersmagazine_wheatley

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America's next star? Could be anyone

FILE - In this July 25, 2011, file photo, U.S. Michael Phelps, right, and Ryan Lochte look at the scoreboard after a men's 200m Freestyle semifinal at the FINA Swimming World Championships in Shanghai, China. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Weiber. Ryan Lochte. Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" _ at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - In this July 25, 2011, file photo, U.S. Michael Phelps, right, and Ryan Lochte look at the scoreboard after a men's 200m Freestyle semifinal at the FINA Swimming World Championships in Shanghai, China. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Weiber. Ryan Lochte. Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" _ at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - In this July 25, 2011, file photo, U.S. Michael Phelps, foreground, and Ryan Lochte look at the scoreboard after their races in a heat of the men's 200m Freestyle event at the FINA Swimming World Championships in Shanghai, China. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Weiber. Ryan Lochte. Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" _ at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - In this May 15, 2011, file photo, Missy Franklin starts the 200-meters backstroke final at the Charlotte UltraSwim competition in Charlotte, N.C. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Weiber. Ryan Lochte. Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" _ at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2011, file photo, USA's Jordyn Wieber performs on the balance beam during the women's team final at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Tokyo, Japan. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Weiber. Ryan Lochte. Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" _ at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) ? Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordyn Wieber. Ryan Lochte.

Any of those athletes could be the defining face of the U.S. Olympic team in the run-up to the London Games. So far, though, none stands alone as "The One To Watch" ? at least not according to people who make a living out of watching the Olympics.

With 2012 under way and only six months left before the flame is ignited at opening ceremonies, The Associated Press sent emails to sports agents and executives, public-relations people and others with strong Olympic ties, asking them who America's so-called face of the Olympics would be as the games approach.

Unlike past Olympic cycles, when Phelps or Marion Jones or Bode Miller or Lindsey Vonn were the clear-cut Americans to watch, there was no consensus this time around.

Phelps got the most votes with four, followed by Franklin with three, then Wieber (gymnastics) and Lochte (swimming) with two apiece. The rest of the 16 responses were spread among five athletes: gymnast Nastia Liukin, sprinter Allyson Felix, swimmer Dara Torres and soccer players Abby Wambach and Hope Solo.

That the question produced such a scattered list makes clear that generating buzz for the Olympics will take more this year than simply plastering a single person's face on a 50-foot billboard in Times Square.

"I think we have 10 or 20 athletes who could be that face," said Scott Blackmun, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee. "As I sit here today, I don't know who that face is going to be."

The people who received the AP questionnaire were assured their names would be kept confidential, in an attempt to get the most candid answers possible.

They were asked for American athletes only, which precluded them from naming Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who owns world records in the 100 and 200 and could have come close to sweeping the survey if nationality were no factor.

"Clearly, the world will be watching Usain Bolt, for obvious reasons and deserved reasons," said Olympic historian David Wallechinsky, author of "The Complete Book of the Olympics." ''Clearly, people will be keeping their eye on Michael Phelps, as a record setter, even if he's not as dominant as he was before."

Phelps already owns more Olympic gold than anyone and needs three more medals of any color to become the most decorated athlete in history. His quest will, of course, be compelling, but it will also be mixed in with his competition against Lochte, who won five gold medals at the 2011 world championships and beat Phelps in their two head-to-head matchups.

If viewing patterns stay similar to what they were in 2008, Phelps vs. anybody in the pool will draw the best ratings. All of NBC's prime time telecasts that drew more than 30 million viewers in 2008 came on nights when swimming was featured. (Track and field didn't fare as well, though most of that coverage was shown on tape delay while most swimming coverage was live.)

"It's an intriguing story," Wallechinsky said of the Phelps-Lochte drama that could develop. "But trying to sell a U.S. versus U.S. rivalry, where the characters don't really hate each other, sometimes that's a little rough. It pains me when, sometimes, you see media pitching a rivalry between two athletes who are actually friends, just for the sake of creating a rivalry."

That's very much the way the 2008 gymnastics competition was fed to the public ? Nastia Liukin vs. Shawn Johnson. They battled back and forth in the years leading up to Beijing, and their head-to-head in the Olympic all-around was high theater, barely won by Liukin.

Both are trying to make the 2012 team, but unlike 2008, this year's star isn't permanently affixed to anyone just yet.

Wieber, the 16-year-old world champion is the front-runner to become America's top all-around gymnast, and she already has an appearance on "Ellen" and a deal with Kellogg's as signs of what some people think of her potential. But the health of Rebecca Bross, who was touted as the "next big thing" before injuries derailed her, could still factor into the big picture.

Of course, the U.S. team can't depend on any single athlete to make the Olympics an overall success, though Phelps' eight golds in 2008 certainly helped matters.

Americans have won the most medals at the past four Summer Olympics, but with China and Russia improving and with smaller countries, such as Brazil, Great Britain and Australia, chipping away from the other side, there's a sense that the United States is under more pressure this time.

"The medal count is going to be the medal count," said Alan Ashley, going into his first Olympics as the USOC chief of sport performance. "To us, it's all about how we support the athletes and coaches and help them put their best foot forward when they get to London. If we do our job, then the medal count will take care of itself."

Key to that medal count will be the fate of the track and field team, which won a disappointing 23 medals in Beijing, but improved to 25 at last year's world championships ? an upward trend team leaders hope will continue.

Yet finding a singular star from that sport has become difficult, in large part because of the numerous drug scandals that have tainted track over the decades and more or less tagged its top sprinters with a "buyer beware" sign, regardless of their history.

Tyson Gay, possibly America's best sprinter, has no doping issues in his past, but has been hampered with injuries and missed both the finals at the Beijing Games and all of last year's world championships; he didn't garner a single vote in the AP survey. Neither did decathlete Bryan Clay, the defending Olympic champion ? a sign of how the clout of the so-called "World's Greatest Athlete" has diminished since the days of Bruce Jenner.

On the women's side, Felix is well-spoken and looks good in magazine shoots, but has been a big factor in her sport for almost a decade now and hasn't connected viscerally with the casual sports fan that makes up a big chunk of the Olympic audience.

"I don't have an explanation for that," Wallechinsky said. "It is a bit odd. There might be some Marion Jones backlash, where they don't want to get burned again, don't want to back a sprinter then have that person test positive at the Olympics. It's one of those things where you can be completely innocent and still be under the shadow of other people's transgressions."

With billions of dollars invested in televising the Olympics, NBC will shape the way most American take in the games. The network, with everything from local affiliates to the web at its disposal, can tell numerous stories on numerous platforms.

Chief Marketing Officer John Miller ? the guy who created the catchphrase "Must See TV" ? said the network learned a lot when it loaded its pre-Games hype into Bode Miller before the 2006 Olympics, only to watch him turn into a bust on the mountain and a source of controversy off of it.

"We put a significant amount of eggs in that basket," Miller said. "As a result of that, instead of going with one athlete, we decided we had to spread it around a little more. Fortunately, in the Summer Games, we have compelling stories to go after. A lot of them."

In addition to track, gymnastics and swimming, NBC also focuses a lot on beach volleyball, where Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor will go for their third Olympic gold.

"We have enough bandwidth to go after four or five sports in a big way and cover a lot of angles," Miller said.

NBC, he said, has no need to go with one athlete in the lead up. The network invited about 100 athletes out to its pre-Olympic TV shoot in West Hollywood, "because you never know who's going to come out and turn into something big."

In this case, there's no real consensus on who's big before the games, either. The USOC is accepting that fact ? trying to embrace the idea of promoting an Olympics with no clear-cut star instead of forcing a single story line.

"It's different from other years because there's not one story there that's bubbled to the top yet," Ashley said. "That's one of the things I love about the Olympics, is that you never really know the answer to that question."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-01-25-America's%20Next%20Star?/id-6823d51ed4c64e189030d09d040d82e0

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Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos dies in accident (AP)

ATHENS, Greece ? He was known for his slow and dream-like directing style and had enough stamina at 76 to be working on his latest movie.

But award-winning Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos was killed in a road accident Tuesday after being hit by a motorcycle while walking across a road close to a movie set near Athens' main port of Piraeus.

The driver, who was also injured and hospitalized, was later identified as an off-duty police officer.

The accident occurred while Angelopoulos was working on his upcoming movie "The Other Sea."

Angelopoulos had won numerous awards for his movies, mostly at European film festivals, during a career that spanned more than 40 years.

In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Ulysses' Gaze," starring American actor Harvey Keitel. Three years later, he won the main prize at the festival, the Palme d'Or, for "Eternity and a Day," starring Swiss actor Bruno Ganz.

"The atmosphere, symbolism and historical context of his cinematic storytelling went beyond the art form that he worked in and inspired young filmmakers," Greek President Karolos Papoulias said Wednesday. "(This) occurred at a time when he was extremely creative and the country was in need of his insight, making his absence all the more painful."

Survived by his wife Phoebe and three daughters, Angelopoulos is to be buried Friday at Athens' First Cemetery.

Greece's state Ambulance Service, meanwhile, has ordered an inquiry into reports that paramedics arrived at the scene of the accident 45 minutes after they were called.

Born in Athens in 1935, Angelopoulos lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II and the ensuing 1946-49 Greek civil war ? recurring themes in his early films.

He studied law at Athens University, but eventually lost interest and moved to France where he studied film at the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris.

After returning to Greece, he worked as a film critic for a small, left-wing newspaper and started to make films during Greece's 1967-74 dictatorship.

Described as mild-mannered but uncompromising, Angelopoulos' often sad and slow-moving films mostly dealt with issues from Greece's turbulent recent history: war, exile, immigration and political division.

It was not until 1984 with "Voyage to Kythera" that his scripts were written in collaboration with others.

Angelopoulos attracted mostly art-house audiences, using established actors including Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in two of his most widely acclaimed films, "The Bee Keeper" and "The Suspended Stride of the Stalk."

His bleak landscapes, slow editing pace and long spells without any dialogue meant his movies did not always please filmgoers or critics.

American film critic Roger Ebert wrote of "Ulysses' Gaze": "There is a temptation to give 'Ulysses' Gaze' the benefit of the doubt: To praise it for its vision, its daring, its courage, its great length. But I would not be able to look you in the eye if you went to see it, because how could I deny that it is a numbing bore?"

In a rare television interview last year, Angelopoulos said his next film was to be about Greece's major financial crisis. He publicly called on rival political parties to work together to try and ease the hardships facing many Greeks.

"I remain a leftist in total confusion," he told state-run NET television.

Several months later, the country's two main rival political parties agreed to form a coalition government to tackle Greece's enormous debt problems.

"This is an emergency situation. We must realize this. So we must all examine what can be done ? the left and right. This is my plea," he said in the interview. "I am afraid of what tomorrow will bring."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_en_ot/eu_greece_obit_angelopoulos

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Obama Makes 'Spilled Milk' Joke During 2012 State Of The Union (VIDEO)

Few would say that President Obama's State of the Union address was funny. But he did, at one point, try to make a joke:

We've already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years. We got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain a spill -- because milk was somehow classified as an oil. With a rule like that, I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk.

The joke wasn't really a hit. The audience let out a very audible groan, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was caught on the C-SPAN camera doing the rimshot gesture.

WATCH:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/obama-bad-joke-state-of-the-union-2012_n_1229850.html

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EU ministers push bondholders in Greek deal (AP)

BRUSSELS ? European finance ministers piled the pressure on Greece's private creditors Monday to reach an agreement with Athens to cut the country's massive debt load, with the Dutch representative warning bondholders that they may be forced to take losses.

Time is running out for Greece to reduce its debt by some euro100 billion ($129 billion) and avoid missing a vital bond repayment deadline. Talks between the country and representatives of banks and other investment firms to secure a deal hit an impasse over the weekend.

The deal would involve private creditors swapping their old Greek bonds for ones with a 50 percent lower face value. The new, lower priced bonds, would also have much longer maturities ? pushing repayments decades into the future ? and will pay a much lower interest rate than Greece would currently have to pay on the market.

It's clear that Greece needs some form of deal soon ? it faces a euro14.5 billion ($19 billion) bond repayment on March 20, which it will be unable to afford if the bond swap doesn't go through.

The Greek government and representatives for the private creditors said they are moving closer to a final deal. But any agreement also has to be signed off by the other 16 countries that also use the euro as their currency and the International Monetary Fund, who have made the deal a key condition of the country winning any further bailout loans.

Greece has been surviving on a first euro110 billion ($142 billion) batch of rescue loans since May 2010, which were conditioned on deep spending cuts and sweeping public sector reforms.

At the center of the debate is the interest rate that Greece will have to pay on the new, lower-valued bonds. The interest rate is key not only to determining the overall losses for the bondholders but also to whether the deal will work.

If the interest rate is too high, a second, euro130 billion ($168 billion) bailout for Greece may not be enough to put the country back on its feet. The other eurozone states and the IMF would have to provide more loans, but they are unwilling to do so.

But if they are too low, the losses for bondholders will become so high that it will be difficult to get them to agree voluntarily to a deal.

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager indicated that the eurozone may be moving away from its previous insistence that investors will not be forced to take losses.

"We've never pushed for a default, but we've never said it (a restructuring) must be voluntary," de Jager said as he arrived for a meeting with his eurozone counterparts in Brussels. "Our goal is a sustainable debt. It has our preference if it's voluntary, but it's not a precondition for us."

Greece needs to secure a deal quickly if it wants to avoid a disorderly default on March 20.

"Given that any debt swap deal will involve a lot of lawyers, it is estimated that around 5 weeks are needed between agreement and the bond maturing to prevent default," said Louise Cooper, markets analyst at BGC Partners. "This does not leave much wriggle room, although such pressure must focus the minds of all at the negotiating table."

A forced restructuring would likely trigger payouts on so-called credit default swaps ? a contract traded between banks and other investment firms that want to insure against potential defaults. Because the market in CDS is obscure ? with no clear data on who would owe whom how much ? the eurozone fears that a payout could lead to turmoil on financial markets similar to what happened after the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Although officials, including the French and Greek finance ministers, insisted that a deal was in the making, few expected a final agreement ahead of a key summit of EU leaders next Monday. De Jager suggested that negotiations may even drag on beyond that.

A Greek official said the government now hopes to make a formal offer on the bond swap to investors by Feb. 13. He declined to be named because talks are ongoing.

Greece's economic problems kicked off Europe's debt crisis more than two years ago and the continent's inability to resolve its troubles have raised concerns about other highly indebted countries. But positive bond auctions in Spain, Italy and France last week have eased some concerns about the region's bigger economies and have lifted stock markets and the value of the euro.

On Monday, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, called on Europe's stronger economies to do more to boost growth and beef up the defenses against the continent's debt crisis.

After meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde urged the leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro to deal with the crisis that is threatening another recession in the eurozone.

"There are three imperatives ? one is stronger growth, two is larger firewalls; three, deeper integration," she said in a speech to the German Council on Foreign Relations. "Resorting to across-the-board, across-the continent, without differentiation, budgetary cuts will only add to recessionary pressures."

Merkel insisted Monday that the debt crisis has shown that the bloc's leaders must now press for a genuine political union.

"In my opinion it is the great task of the coming years to move forward on the path of a political union," Merkel said in Berlin.

Ministers in Brussels will also seek to put the finishing touches on their permanent bailout fund ? the euro500 billion European Stability Mechanism ? which is scheduled to come into force this year. They will also discuss a new intergovernmental treaty designed to keep eurozone countries from overspending.

___

Greg Keller in Paris and Nicolas Paphitis in Athens contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

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Summary Box: Stocks end lower on shaky Greece talk (AP)

GREECE, REVISTED: Stocks fell Tuesday on concerns that a deal to prevent a default by Greece might fall through. A slew of U.S. corporate earnings did little to bolster investors' confidence.

THE NUMBERS: The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 33 points at 12,676. It has risen or fallen less than 100 points in 13 trading sessions, the longest calm stretch since March and April of last year.

MOSTLY GREEN: It's only the third time the S&P has ended lower this year, and all those declines have been less than 7 points. So far this year, it's up 4.5 percent.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_bi_ge/us_wall_street_summary_box

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UN: Allegations of abuse by UN police in Haiti (AP)

UNITED NATIONS ? The U.N. is investigating two new allegations of U.N. police abuse and "sexual exploitation" of children in Haiti, spokesman Martin Nesirky said Monday.

One case involves U.N. police officers in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Nesirky said. They have been removed from duty while under investigation, he added. The second case involves one or more members of a police unit in the northern city of Gonaives.

Nesirky did not release the nationalities of the police or provide any other details.

"The United Nations is outraged by these allegations and takes its responsibilities to deal with them extremely seriously," Nesirky said.

He said the organization's mission in Haiti alerted U.N. headquarters in New York last week about the allegations.

The new charges of abuse come just months after six Uruguayan troops with the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Caribbean country were accused of raping a young Haitian man. That case has been referred to the Uruguayan judicial system.

Nesirky said that while home countries investigate military members of peacekeeping missions, the U.N. investigates police officers.

Allegations of abuse have dogged U.N. peacekeeping missions since their inception over 50 years ago.

The issue was thrust into the spotlight after the United Nations found in early 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.

The U.N. peacekeeping department instituted a "zero tolerance" policy toward sexual abuse, a new code of conduct for its more than 110,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world, and new training for officers and all U.N. personnel.

Nonetheless, allegations of sexual abuse persist.

Among the key reasons that Ban Ki-moon won U.S. backing to become U.N. Secretary-General in January 2007 was his pledge to restore the U.N.'s reputation ? battered by corruption in purchasing and sexual abuses by peacekeepers ? through effective oversight.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/un/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_re_us/un_un_haiti

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Editorial: RIM's new CEO isn't the shakeup it needed

For a brief moment, I had hopes that RIM had made a move that would unseat it from the funk it's been sitting in for years. And then I watched the introductory video of newly-appointed CEO Thorsten Heins. Anyone who assumes that a simple CEO swap is the answer to all of RIM's issues is woefully misinformed, or worse, just blinded by false hope. Sure, removing Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis -- both of which have been rightly criticized for not responding to market pressures quickly enough -- is a start, but it's not like they're gone. In fact, the two are still situated at a pretty fancy table within Research in Motion's organizational chart.

RIM, we've been here before

RIM seems to be as lost as my BlackBerry

Dear RIM, I'm your customer and I don't wear a suit

Have a listen at this: Mike is hanging around as the Vice Chair of RIM's Board and Chair of the Board's new Innovation Committee. You heard right -- the guy who has outrightly failed to innovate at anything in the past handful of years is now championing an innovation committee. Sounds right up his alley, no? Jim's staying put as an outright director, and if you think anyone at RIM is going to brush aside the input of the founders, you're wrong. Jim and Mike may have new titles, but they're still here, and I have no reason to believe that they'll act radically different going forward than they have in the past. Oh, and about Thorsten Heins? Let's go there.

Continue reading Editorial: RIM's new CEO isn't the shakeup it needed

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/23/rim-new-ceo-thorsten-heins-still-in-trouble/

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Elusive Z- DNA found on nucleosomes

Friday, January 20, 2012

New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell & Bioscience is the first to show that left-handed Z-DNA, normally only found at sites where DNA is being copied, can also form on nucleosomes.

The structure of DNA which provides the blueprint for life has famously been described as a double helix. To save space inside the nucleus, DNA is tightly wound around proteins to form nucleosomes which are then further wound and compacted into chromatin, which is further compacted into chromosomes.

But this familiar image of a right handed coil (also called B-DNA) is not the only form of DNA. At sites where DNA is being copied into RNA (the messenger which is used as the instruction to make proteins) the DNA needs to unwind, and, in a process of negative supercoiling, can form a left-handed variety of the DNA double helix (Z-DNA).

It was originally thought that Z-DNA could only be formed in the presence of active RNA polymerase (the enzyme which assembles RNA). However more recently it has been discovered that SWI/SNF, a protein involved in remodeling nucleosomes and allowing RNA polymerase access to DNA, can convert certain sequences of B to Z-DNA.

The team of researchers led by Dr Keji Zhao discovered that they could convert B-DNA to Z-DNA on nucleosomes by the addition of SWI/SNF and ATP (the cell's energy source) and that the Z-nucleosome formed was a novel structure.

Dr Zhao, from the NIH, explained, "The fact that we have found Z-DNA on nucleosomes is a new step in understanding the roles of chromosome remodeling and Z-DNA in regulating gene expression. While the Z-nucleosome is likely to be a transient structure it nevertheless provides a window of opportunity for the placement of DNA binding proteins which may recruit, regulate, or block the transcription machinery and hence protein expression."

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BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com

Thanks to BioMed Central for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116908/Elusive_Z__DNA_found_on_nucleosomes

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Why Humans Love To Keep Pets

By Krystal D'Costa
(Click here for the original article)

I?ll never forget the day S brought home a live chicken. When we lived in Queens, there were a number of fresh poultry and livestock suppliers that catered to the growing West Indian community so live poultry was readily available, but there were also a few backyard farmers in the neighborhood. S was at a gas station when he heard a cheeping noise. He knelt down to investigate and when he straightened up, found a chick sitting on the mat in the car. ?What was I supposed to do?? he asked showing me the chick later that day. ?It jumped in the car.?

His affinity with animals is nothing new. He trained goldfish. He has refused to kill mice, insisting on releasing them into the wild. At fifteen, he nursed a pigeon back to health after setting its broken wing. During a trip to Trinidad, he befriended a bull?despite being warned away by my uncles?by sitting in the mud with it for hours. And today, we are the proud parents of two cats (we did not keep Chicken Little) who can?t seem to get enough of him. I am definitely second fiddle in their feline minds?though handy to have around when they need to be fed.

S is not alone. Pat Shipman (2010) notes the significance of pets?and animals?in our lives:

In both the United States and Australia, 63% of households include pets, compared to 43% of British and 20% of Japanese households. In the United States, the proportion of households with pets is larger than those with children (522).

This relationship, dubbed the animal connection by Shipman, may have played an important role in human evolution, linking the traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other mammals. How is it that some animals transitioned from food to friends, and what is the significance of this relationship?

The animal connection is the process by which pets or livestock become companions and/or partners, and are treated as members of the family. It refers to the close relationship between animals and humans starting 2.6 million years ago (mya), beginning with the use and study of animals by humans, and leading to regular social interactions. Today this is manifested in the adoption of animals and the care provided to them in the course of that relationship. The roots of this relationship may be found in the development of three often recognized traits of humans: making and using tools, symbolic behavior (including language, adornment, and rituals), and domestication of other species. Shipman views the animal connection as a fourth trait, tying the other three together and having an immense effect on human evolution, genetics, and behavior (2010: 522).

Though tool use has been documented in other nonhuman mammals, the manufacture and use of tools by humans is an extremely complex behavior. Modern chimpanzees are often recognized for their tool usage, but this usage varies whereas humans consistently use tools. Early humans used tools to process carcasses, and we have evidence of this from the marks left on the bones after contact with implements. Stone tools gave humans an advantage: they no longer needed to compete with scavengers. They could hunt game on their own and/or drive off those scavengers if needed. The increased meat in the human diet meant that humans occupied a predatory niche, and as such necessarily needed to disperse so that their localities could support their needs. While Shipman makes clear that the fossil record supports that expansion of geographic range about 2 mya, the more interesting point, in my opinion, is that in seeking out live game, humans needed to learn about their prey, which opened the door for a more meaningful relationship with animals.

Wild animals are certainly able to communicate with each other, but language has thus far largely been relegated to humans, who have a clearly identifiable syntax and grammar (520). Animals have alarm calls, but there are limits to what they can communicate. For instance, a chimp alerting his troupe about a snake cannot provide details about the snake: The chimp cannot say it is a brown snake. (Or maybe it can, and we just don?t know.) And while educated apes may have a vocabulary of about 400 words, they don?t apply syntax and grammar to those words (520). Language allows humans to share information, and we have developed delightfully complicated means of doing so:

Ritual, art, ochre, and personal adornment are used to transmit information about such concepts as beliefs, group membership, or style, leaving physical manifestations visible in the archaeological record. Nothing interpreted as art, ritual, the use of ochre, or personal adornment has been reported in nonhuman mammals in the wild (521).

As more sophisticated stone tools were developed, humans could pursue larger game. But this might often require collaboration, which encouraged language. Perhaps the strongest example of this is prehistoric art which depicts animals extensively, revealing morphology, coloring, behaviors, and sexual dimorphism (Shipman 2010: 524). It creates a record to be shared with others.

Domestication required humans to select for desirable behavioral traits and control the reproductive and genetic output over generations. They lived in close proximity to the animals, historically even bringing them into the home. Indeed, the physical closeness of humans to animals has allowed some infectious diseases to enter the human population from animal hosts, e.g., measles (dogs), mumps (poultry), tuberculosis (cattle), and the common cold (horses) (529). However, the benefits have outweighed the costs when it comes to keeping animals near?animals are much more than a food source:

The Goyet dog is at least 17,000 years older than the next oldest domesticate (also a dog) ? animals were domesticated first because their treatment was an extension of tool making (Shipman 2010: 524).

Animals were domesticated as living tools. They expanded the reach of humans and made other resources more accessible. Animals could provide labor, milk, wool, and opportunities for the production of tools and clothing. And domestication was hedged on an understanding of biology, ecology, physiology, temperament and intelligence.

While much has been made of the monkey who appears to have adopted a cat, such cross-species alloparenting is rare. Humans are the exception. We routinely take in animals integrate them into our families, creating a beneficial relationship. Our connection to Fido may be deeply rooted in our evolutionary history.

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Reference:
Shipman, P. (2010). The Animal Connection and Human Evolution Current Anthropology, 51 (4), 519-538 DOI: 10.1086/653816

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/21/why-humans-keep-pets_n_1221181.html

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