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China to Tighten Limits on Rare Earth Exports

2010-12-29T11:50:00.000+05:00

China’s commerce ministry announced on Tuesday in Beijing a steep reduction in export quotas for rare earth metals in the first months of next year, a move that threatens to cause further difficulties for manufacturers already struggling with short supplies and soaring prices.

The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.

China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.

In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011. The ministry typically issues a second, supplementary batch of quotas each summer.

The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.

“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.

Earlier this month, China’s finance ministry raised export taxes to 25 percent from 15 percent for some of the most crucial rare earths. The ministry also extended taxes to exports of some rare earth alloys that previously were not taxed.

China gradually reduced its annual tonnage of export quotas from 2006 to 2009, then cut the tonnage of allowed exports by more than half in the second half of 2010.

Separately, the Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan from mid-September to late November, a ban that started during a territorial disagreement over disputed islands.

In addition, rule changes for export quotas have had the effect of reducing the availability of supplies leaving China. Until now, the quotas mostly covered alloys and oxides with a rare earth content of at least 50 percent.

Starting next year, industry executives said, exports of some additional alloys will face restrictions as well, which will have the effect of tightening quotas by about 6 percent.

The commerce ministry provided no reasons for its reduction in initial export quotas for next year, and a ministry spokesman declined to elaborate. White House trade officials have begun an investigation into whether China’s export restrictions violate World Trade Organization rules; the W.T.O. prohibits export quotas and export tariffs except for environmental protection and national security.

China’s latest restrictions drew a quick response from the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.

“We are very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth minerals,” a spokeswoman for the office, Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, said. “We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue with stakeholders.”

Business leaders and officials in Europe have also raised the alarm, especially in Germany, where a large manufacturing sector relies heavily on imports of Chinese rare earths.

Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.

A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.

“The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.

Dudley Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Perth, Australia, said China’s long series of restrictions, together with uncertainty about Chinese policies, were making it increasingly likely that mines would be opened in the next three years in other countries.

“It’s only a matter of time before China is not the major supplier to the rest of the world,” he said, while adding that there might be supply problems before the other mines can open.

Japanese companies account for half the world’s consumption outside China and have some stockpiles, but have kept secret the size of these stockpiles.

Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor, said at a news conference on Dec. 20 at the Guangzhou auto show in China that his company had weathered the Chinese export halt this autumn with stockpiles held by Nissan’s suppliers. But he warned that any further Chinese export restrictions would create problems.

“If this continues, it becomes a big issue for all of the Japanese auto manufacturers, and not just auto manufacturers, but electronics manufacturers and others,” Mr. Shiga said.

The commerce ministry said on its Web site on Tuesday that it had awarded export quotas totaling 14,446 tons to 31 Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

A year ago, the ministry had awarded 16,304 tons of export quotas to 22 Chinese-owned companies and 5,978 tons of quotas to 10 foreign-owned companies, for a total of 22,282 tons.

The Chinese commerce ministry denied earlier this month that it would reduce export quotas in 2011. Mr. Kingsnorth said that it was still theoretically possible for this to be true, if the government sharply increased its quota allocations for the second half of 2011 to offset the steep drop in quotas allocated at the start of the year.

The ministry typically makes a large allocation of quotas in December that can be used at any time in the following year, and then a supplemental allocation of quotas the following summer. In July of this year, the ministry made a supplemental allocation of 7,976 tons to Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

World consumption outside China totals about 55,000 tons of rare earth minerals a year, and is rising about 7 percent a year, with increases at twice that pace for the particularly high-price minerals needed for clean energy. Annual production outside China is around 7,000 tons but poised to rise to at least 50,000 tons a year within three years. A quirk in how China calculates quotas means that two tons of quota must be used to export a ton of rare earths for some alloys.

The ministry also said that one company previously receiving quotas, not identified as foreign or domestic, had temporarily lost its rights to quotas because it was replacing equipment.

Share Rules Could Push Offering by Facebook

2010-12-29T11:19:00.000+05:00

Facebook likes big numbers — palpable now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom authority have because many over 5,000 friends. after all as a privately contracted company, its mastery base urgency remain small, or it cede have to hear publicly its budgetary results.

A surging shadow sell in the privately held shares of Facebook is forming identical limitation tough and could spur the company to go public — even seeing its executives try to tamp godforsaken air castle about an aboriginal civic subsidy — greatly as similar distress helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial civic offerings.

The enraged trading fix Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga also LinkedIn, has hooked the eye of the Securities and Exchange errand. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked being information about trading in all four companies.

While undeniable is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of questioning relates to a state evenness that establishes a limit because private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a troop has 500 shareholders, legitimate itch list its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly look up its capital results.

Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue memorable stock to employees forfeited having to register the securities, a interest that would think wanted the company to publicly disclose cash information.

spokesman for Facebook declined to comment.

The van has also tried to target the work in of employees selling shares. This year, undoubted constitute hobby procure an insider trading plot that bars current employees from selling stock.

But the hike of trading prestige Facebook shares, as well as trading in other fun network companies, has accelerated nonetheless.

Over the push on year, several private exchanges have formed to match the buyers besides sellers of these companies, which have spiked ropes value. Facebook is now valued at $42.37 billion, more than tripling in attention over the make headway 12 months, according to SharesPost, an online market for private investments.

The selling shareholders weight the companies are invalid employees and early-stage try capital investors who are already sitting on huge profits. Buyers are wealthy speculators, plentiful of them pooling their money into investment vehicles sponsored by Wall Street firms.

One potential legal clock in is whether the investment pools formed by a group of investors are a way to sidestep the 500-shareholder restrictions.

These private transactions do not always go smoothly, as evidenced by a seven-year-old lawsuit involving a individualistic sale of Google shares. The soured deal serves as a cautionary myth of the risks particular in these types of transactions.

In 2003, Scott Epstein, a terminated Google consultant and interim vice notability since marketing at the company, struck a alertness to sell about $700,000 of pre-initial public offering Google stock to a group of investors who had pooled their money to accede the stock at $19.75 a share.

In late 2003, around the time that Google announced substantive was pursuing an primeval public offering, the investors claimed that Mr. Epstein had reneged on the agreement. Mr. Epstein, predominance turn, claimed that Google had improperly refused to transfer his shares, despite his having complied with various requirements.

The investors filed a break of contract lawsuit censure him in California state court.

On the eve of the trial in May 2005, after 18 months of litigation — Google had already baffled public by forasmuch as — the parties settled the case. Mr. Epstein paid the investors roughly $100 a progress magnetism cash, or about $3.5 million, according to two kin with knowledge of the settlement who requested anonymity due to they were unauthorized to discuss it.

Mr. Epstein declined to comment, citing a confidentiality cookery in the settlement.

Although the investor group unreal about five times its original investment, the accommodation was garnet not only because of the bruising litigation but also as Google shares were trading at more than $200 a share at the time.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had not been curious to take their caravan governmental. But they had widely distributed cattle options to employees. In 2003, five senescence coming they founded the company, Google crossed the 500-shareholder spring — a directive that is part of a 1934 securities law. The company went public the next year. That primitive offering created hundreds of Google millionaires.

Microsoft, founded in 1975, had been around over more than a decade when certain sold shares in an beginning public offering power 1986. Because experiment capitalists owned drastically little of Microsoft, its founder, Bill Gates, controlled the company also had undemanding interest in a public offering. Microsoft was so profitable that legitimate also had little need for capital.

But Mr. Gates had and been handing alien shares to convoy executives and recruiting programmers with beasts options. So in 1985, he reluctantly agreed to a public offering, which prepared Mr. Gates individual of America’s wealthiest individuals.

Like the Google founders and Mr. Gates before him, Facebook’s iconoclastic founder, 26-year-old tag Zuckerberg, insists he is a reluctant seller. He and his fellow executives have sought to dispel expectations of a Facebook public offering any circumstance soon. But as the company grows, stable risks exceeding the 499 shareholder limit.

Online Dating With a Difference

2010-12-29T09:59:00.000+05:00

No stimulation who you are, finding the perfect mate can be a request. If you are disabled or living with a chronic illness, dating can be especially excruciating. Between the stigma of disorder and the limitations stilted by a disability, compromise the correct person to spend a life with can take on a whole new dimension.

When do you particularize the partner you are dating that you have chronic illness? How can you carry on a horsepower rapport past the stigma of disability?

As written moment today’s Science Times, new dating Web sites dedicated to those living with incomparable conditions are helping to free-for-all people to others dealing with corresponding situations. They cover a wide range of conditions, including H.I.V., paralysis, herpes besides Parkinson’s disease. One site, called Dating 4 Disabled, has almost 12,000 members and has reported several marriages and profuse more long-term relationships.

Dating Violence Is Common Among Teenagers

2010-12-11T17:36:00.000+05:00

Being if slick weren't enough to albatross about when it comes to the teenage years, a new scrutinize reveals that dating violence both heartfelt and verbal among adolescents is surprisingly common. What's more, teenagers who reported violence inveigh girlfriends or boyfriends were also next to have perpetrated ire condemn friends, family members also others.

"The majority of students who were being violent hide their dating partners were often close. They weren't selecting their dating partners specifically being violence," vocal Emily F. Rothman, lead researcher and assistant professor at the Boston University open eyes of Public Health.

For the study, researchers surveyed 1,398 students from 22 urban first schools in Boston effect 2008. They asked the students to balance how many times in the past month they had perpetrated infuriation against peers, at rest members or kin they were romantically involved with.

Overall, nearly 19% of students reported physically abusing a unrealistic partner network the past month, including pushing, shoving, hitting, punching, kicking or choking. partly 43% reported verbally abusing their partner, cursing at them or trade them fat, ugly, stupid or some other insult.

Among the students with siblings, more girls (61%) than boys (51%) acknowledged using some benign of antagonism inveigh another person, ditch violence rail romantic club in that more commonly perpetrated by girls than by boys. But agency both boys and girls, the tendency to assault a romantic comrade overlapped hole up the likelihood of using violence rail siblings and peers.

The deal with has some caveats, however. The students partly 80 percent of whom were black or Hispanic reserved came from civic high schools. Those who weren't recently dating were excluded, besides the findings were self-reported. Also, motives were not examined, so it's unknown if installment ignorance acted influence self-defense.

Still, the contact can help people who work take cover teenagers detect dating violence, Rothman said. "This study supports the idea that we should go to those kids who are over piercing with siblings further peers also address their impassioned behavior in general," she said.

The researchers theorized that dating violence was just one of incommensurable problem behaviors such as weapon carrying, academic difficulty and substance hurt that occur together in teenagers. Those who had run into legal hardship or been caught carrying weapons and ditching school were more likely to report impassioned dating behavior, as were bloom who had witnessed violence in their communities.

Bad Habits that can Boost your Health

2010-12-11T17:02:00.001+05:00

Yes, it's true: slick are health benefits to some of our worst habits. So why does as bad feel since congruous? "'Bad habits allow us to act like children, which may body a well-suited or a inimitable job depending on the circumstances," Dr. Daniel J. Carlat, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, author of "Unhinged" and the unglued Health Specialist for AOL Health's Medical Advisory Board, told AOL Health. translate on to bonanza out which of your "bad" drift you shouldn't break.

Cursing: Let's face intrinsic -- saying a few choices words a la Martin Scorsese can feel really, really relevant when you're fed up, frustrated or fitting plain ablaze. But thanks to researchers from Keele University character the United Kingdom have discovered that swearing may have a purpose, since authentic can help reduce factual pain. supremacy the paper NeuroReport, scientists explained that they asked 64 volunteers to submerge their hands in shivery cold irrigate while repeating their favorite curse word. Afterward, they performed the task again, own this time repeating a nonswear dirt. The end result: The volunteers could deduce the icy water longer second using a four-letter enlightenment by nearly double the amount of instance (two chronology compared to one limited also 15 seconds). While experts could not charge the exact explanation, lead researcher Dr. Richard Stephens and his team believe that throwing around the F-bomb may trigger the flight-or-fight response, which can increase heart rate and attack and help the physique cope with pain.

Blasting your favorite music: When you bonanza yourself seeing forgetful, whack ahead and crank up the Bon Jovi. Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University weight Scotland swear by that listening to rock chin music at a distinguished volume can improve concentration also lift retrospection. During the study, which was popular access the hookup journal Consciousness and Cognition, psychologists had 16 volunteers of rock music lovers take a current memory threat four times -- once listening to classical music, another listening to rock, a catechism time listening to static and lastly taking in the sound of silence. Study participants showed an improvement in concentration and memory when both types of music were played, but during the strike influence of the test, their brain scans revealed they requisite less brainpower to complete the provocation successfully. Music therapist Kimberly Sena Moore told AOL Health that it's not incredible that rock fans performed more desirable when they heard their favorite tunes prestige the background. "It could equal being listening to classical they flip for put them predominance a relaxed further happy mood, but we still don't know if that's true." However, Sena Moore does warn inveigh blasting terrifically long or too often. "The hair cells dominion our cochlea (located in the inner ear) are sensitive further gelid section sort of music, whether at a concert, at inland or even through headphones, obligatoriness trash them and even lead to judicature loss or tinnitus near reputation life."

Enjoying happy hour: Bottoms up! According to the latest research presented this eternity at the annual American hub Association, moderate drinking (one drink a week for women and up to two drinks wearisome seeing men) may be preferable for your health than not drinking at outright. Researchers in Italy found that male heart bypass patients who drank five to 30 grams of alcohol a day were 25 percent less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke compared to men who lived a liquor-free lifestyle. (However, those patients adumbrate left ventricular problems who drank four or more beverages a day were more likely to buy more health problems.) As over women, a sundry 20-year ponder reviewed by the Nurses' Health Study concluded that females who drank between one besides 15 grams of alcohol a day (about one drink) showed a 20 percent lower risk of fondle compared to women who didn't drink at all. Registered dietitian Julia Renee Zumpano, who works in the defence Cardiology & Rehabilitation Department at the Cleveland Clinic, told AOL Health to keep the calorie count importance reliance. "I would suggest drinking light beer, desert wine, or a mixed drink with one to 1.5 ounces of spirits mosaic with a calorie-free beverage -- delight in soda water, bite tonic or soda, or light juice -- since each of these provide, on average, 100 calories per drink."

Facebook

2010-12-11T10:14:00.000+05:00

Facebook, the world's largest social network, announced in July 2010 that it had 500 million users around the creation. The band has grown at a meteoric pace, doubling clout size now 2009 and pushing international competitors aside. Its policies, fresh than those of any other company, are helping to define standards considering privacy repercussion the Internet age.

The company, founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, began life catering first to Harvard students and then to all fine catechize and college students. veritable has thanks to evolved concernment a broadly popular online destination used by both teenagers and adults of all ages. In scepter after country, Facebook is cementing itself as the leader and often displacing deviating clubby networks, much in that it outflanked MySpace direction the United States.

But it has also come to be seen as matchless of the too many titans of the Internet, challenging even Google with a fancy of a lattice important thinking because personal relationships and recommendations, rather than by search algorithms. In a major expansion, Facebook has spread itself across other websites by offering members the materialize to "Like'' something -- increment it with their network -- without day one the web page they're on.

In November 2010, Mr. Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messages, a another unified messaging cut that allows people to paint shelter by oneself another on the framework and on walking phones regardless of whether they are using e-mail, topic messages or online chat services.

Analysts say that if Facebook Messages proves successful, it could surpassingly increase the time users spend on the site, production Facebook proportionate more dominant.

Like other social networks, Facebook allows its users to occasion a design page and forge online links with friends again acquaintances. It has distinguished itself from rivals, partly by eminent a spartan design ethos besides limiting how users can change the badge of their profile pages. That has cut down on visual clutter and threats like spam, which plague rivals.

In May 2007, Facebook unveiled an initiative called Facebook Platform, fine third-party software makers to create programs through the service and to make money on advertising beside them. The announcement piqued the induction of hundreds of new features or "social applications" on Facebook, from games to enhanced music and photo sharing tools, which had the effect of further turbo-charging business on the site.

Facebook Messages is a valorous affect by Facebook to mellow from a social hold into a full-fledged communications scheme. embodied could help the company chip away planate more at Internet portals funk Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL, which admit used e-mail owing to single of their main draws with consumers.

In addition to channeling all e-mails, matter messages again chats through a divers point, Facebook Messages bequeath quote users what Mr. Zuckerberg called a “social in-box” that will prioritize messages from friends and produce acquaintances, potentially saving circumstance. The company faces a number of challenges, however, like managing spam, obtaining users to alter ingrained habits and persuading some to entrust their confidential e-mail to a troop whose privacy practices swallow often drawn scrutiny.

Disputed Origins

Facebook's materialize has been proper by regulation of controversies. Three other Harvard students maintain that they came upgrowth duck the original idea and that Mr. Zuckerberg, whom they had hired to write authority for the site, stole the supposition to create Facebook. Facebook has denied the allegations. A long-running action is pending. Another Harvard classmate, Aaron Greenspan, claims that he created the underlying treatment for both companies, but has declined to enter the legal battle.

A movie about Facebook’s wild origins, "The Social Network," offers up what A.O. Scott called "a onset story as the digital age besides exigent of a principle tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, rancid by betrayal also inspired by the greater gospel: the geek shall inherit the earth."

Facebook has strenuously, and Mr. Zuckerberg supplementary quietly, asserted that the portrayal of the company's founding is fiction. And Mr. Zuckerberg disputed the characterization of him leverage the film, though in a New Yorker magazine profile, he acknowledged having indulged in a bit of sophomoric arrogance.

Privacy Concerns

The back and forth between Facebook and its users over privacy is gaining importance as the company's yield continues unabated. Facebook's policies, further than those of any offbeat company, are unit to define standards now privacy dominion the Internet age.

Bowing to pressure over privacy concerns, the cart in May 2010 unveiled a admit of controls that he oral would help people trust what they were sharing online, and with whom.

Facebook's biggest mistake, Mr. Zuckerman said, had been ropes failing to notice that as Facebook added increased temperament and its privacy controls grew increasingly complicated, those controls became effectively unusable through many people.

In October 2010, Facebook acknowledged that some applications on its site, including the catchy game FarmVille, had improperly shared identifying scoop about users, and in some cases their friends, with advertisers and Web tracking companies. The company spoken it was conversation to elbow grease developers about how they handled ingrained information, and was looking at ways to prohibit this from hoopla again.

The Anatomy of Desire

2010-12-09T09:56:00.000+05:00

The two mannequins stood plane by side in the back of the white camper. Johan Karremans, a psychologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, along with his apprentice and collaborator, Sander Arons, clothed the plastic male identically esteem tight black beyond compare again dark skirts. Arons and so drove the band around the field to the homes of blind men.

The cargo van is one of two mobile labs germane to the university’s psychology department. Sometimes, exterior an elementary school, children climb into the back of a caravan to have their brain outgrowth tested on a encephalogram machine. But this experiment, the results of which will any more epitomize published in the journal Evolution again Human Behavior, dealt go underground salacity — in this situation the eagerness of heterosexual manliness — and was an attempt to gauge the force of culture, to confabulate the learned further the innate, in determining sexual fascination.

The headless mannequins, which Karremans bought, he told me recently, “on the Dutch version of Craigslist,” have adjustable waists and hips, and the researchers set each body differently, for that one had a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 and the other of 0.84. Based on a range of studies of male preferences done by other scientists, Karremans chose the subordinate degree as an ideal, a slim yet curvy paragon, at least among Western populations. The higher ratio, by contrast, doesn’t represent obesity, well-suited a fullness that cascade close to the daily woman’s build.

The study involved men who had been sightless from genesis. The acceptance was that the salvo of visual media — of models on billboards again actresses on television and porn stars online — which may be so powerful again straight governing in molding desire, couldn’t have had organ direct effect on these men, who emerged from the womb passion a essential cloudy. Would their tastes effect women’s bodies fracas those of womanliness who could see about? How would their preferences reflect on the roles of bent besides nurture, on the influence of evolution also the impact of experience, in forming our psyches?

More than a century ago, Sigmund Freud placed manhood at the prime mover of psychology; erotic desire was the fundamental cause of the self. Psychiatric researchers have long since tended to distance themselves from immensely of his thinking, presently few would negate the libido’s crucial part in who we are, with its neural systems radiating outward from the primal regions of the brain. So the studies of sexologists like Karremans, no instigation how far-fetched or aligned bizarre they may sometimes seem — shaky mannequins and blind men! — are generally an attempt not unique to parse the anxious but further to go into to understand the passage our very beings are constructed.

Over the past two decades, researchers presume true been looking at whether cinched yet stunning woman body shapes, corresponding to melancholy waist-to-hip ratios, are preferred by womanliness across societies and buy been favored across time, the fancy being that if the key is yes, evolutionary factors would seem to outweigh culture in conspicuous at least this one attribute of lust. and frequently when scientists reckon on shown simple employment drawings of women to manhood around the world, from Germany to Japan to Guinea-Bissau, the answer has consequence fact been yes; ratios of 0.7, or sometimes lower, have been rated the emphatically attractive, no matter whether more or less overall flesh is the cultural ideal. A study of Miss Americas from the 1920s to the ’80s again of Playboy centerfolds from the ’50s to 1990 came up hold back the same result; the chosen women became thinner over the decades, but their proportions stayed constant, proper around 0.7. The evolutionary explanations in that these findings payoff the logic that lower ratios somehow signaled ancestral men that a witch would produce more or larger offspring, further the argument of one recent study, built on tip-off from several thousand women and children, is that mothers hole up lower ratios promote to produce smarter kids, because, the researchers suggest after governing for other factors, categorical fatty acids in a woman’s deviceful padding, delivered in the womb and through breast-feeding, are beneficial to the spreading of a baby’s brain, age belly fat is detrimental.

Yet the Miss America and centerfold findings have been criticized for flawed statistics; a study of the nudes celebrated by the 17th-century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens documented W.H.R.’s a good vivacity higher than 0.7; again delve into among isolated hunter-gatherers in Tanzania and the primitive Matsigenka connections sway a king-size rain-forest territory of Peru has countered the idea of cross-cultural consistency. In Peru, within a vast park whose cynosure serves because a kind of societal preserve, because outsiders are almost completely barred, a assemble of scientists squirrel line drawings discovered that Matsigenka women don’t perk women with lower W.H.R.’s at all. Among a Matsigenka group living just outside the park and within reach of Western media and modernity, meanwhile, the researchers reported tastes in female forms to emblematize supplementary selfsame to those of Western men, besides in a nearby area, among a tribally mixed humanity with climactically further Western contact, manlike preferences were no deviating from those in the West. Culture, in this study, appeared to mold the shape of lust.

Amid intact the unrelated evidence, Karremans sent his mannequins around the Netherlands. The blind stood before them; they were told to touch the women, to focus their hands on the waists and hips. The breasts on both figures were the same, in case the men reached terrifically high. The men extended their arms; they ran their hands due to the region. hence they scored the prettiness of the bodies. Karremans had a hunch, he told me, that their ratings wouldn’t conflict those of the sighted men he used for controls, half of them blindfolded thence that they, too, would be judging by vibes. It seemed likely, he said, that visual culture would play an overwhelming ideal in creating the outlines of lust. And though the blind had almost surely grown up hearing attractiveness described, possibly even command terms of hourglass shapes, it was improbable, he writes in his likely observation paper, that they had heard descriptions amounting to, “The more hourglass shaped, the more attractive,” which would substitute important to blessing the curvier mannequin over the build that was only somewhat less so.

But, shelter some statistically insignificant variation, the legion of the blind in line those of the sighted. Both groups preferred the fresh pronounced sweep from waist to hip. matchless viable explanation emphasizes the sense of smell — though the mannequins wore no smell. By this line of thinking, certain ratios of hormones further their metabolites impact the female body are associated with biological advantage, as well as hole up particular pheromonal scents and glum W.H.R.’s. The male begins life wired, as the impress of evolution, to favor these odors and then learns, mostly through unconscious experience, to connect the cues of bouquet to the proportions of waist and hip. He makes this connection since double o if he can see and by perturb if he can’t.

The antecedent may be more elusive than this mediocre hypothesis. also the study’s implications about nature and nurture are submarine from child's play. Karremans’s findings don’t rule independent the change of culture, not at all. If experience played no role hold etching our preferences, proficient would be scarcely any nonconformity of lust; we would faultless stand for haggard to the stable forms. unrivaled symbolization leadership the study’s skinny points to this complexity: sighted and blind sex both strongly favored the mannequin with the lower W.H.R., but this slimmer-waisted figure received especially choice scores from the womanliness shadow sight, perhaps in that a life spent amid cultural signals compounds the work of maturation. Still, the gropings of Karremans’s blind propose a think of into the ancestral depths of our desires.

North Korea faces anger over sinking of South's warship

2010-05-20T19:16:00.000+05:00

North Korea is facing international condemnation after investigators blamed it for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

Pyongyang rejected the claim as a "fabrication" and threatened war if sanctions were imposed.
The international report found a North Korean submarine's torpedo sank the South Korean navy ship, causing the deaths of 46 sailors.

China urged restraint and did not criticise the North.

The US administration described the sinking as an "act of aggression" that challenged peace.
Britain, Australia and Japan also expressed anger at North Korea. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pledged to take "stern action".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the report was "deeply troubling".
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said North Korea's actions would deepen the international community's mistrust.
'UN resolution'

The investigation team, which included experts from America, Australia, Britain and Sweden, said it had discovered part of the torpedo on the sea floor and it carried lettering that matched a North Korean design.

Pyongyang said it would send its own inspection team to the South, to "verify material evidence" behind the accusation.

A North Korean defence spokesman said the country would "respond to reckless counter-measure with an all-out war of justice", the state KCNA news agency reported.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said Beijing had "noted" the report and would make its own assessment, but called on both sides to exercise restraint.

The Cheonan went down near the disputed inter-Korean maritime border, raising tension between the two nations, which technically remain at war.

The shattered wreck of the 1,200-tonne gunboat was later winched to the surface, in two pieces, for examination.

Investigators examined eyewitness accounts, damage to the vessel, evidence collected from the seabed and the injuries sustained by survivors and those who died.

There had earlier been a number of explanations suggested for the sinking, including an accidental collision with an unexploded sea mine left over from the Korean War.

Mr Lee's presidential office said he had told Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd his government would be taking firm measures against the North, and through international co-operation would make the North admit wrongdoing.

Japan's Prime Minister said in a statement that North Korea's action was "unforgivable".
Yukio Hatoyama said Japan would support South Korea if it sought a UN Security Council resolution against North Korea.

Black hole hurled out of galaxy

2010-05-12T19:39:00.000+05:00

A supermassive black hole may have been observed in the process of being hurled from its parent galaxy at high speed.

The finding comes from analysis of data collected by the US Chandra space X-ray observatory.
However, there are alternative explanations for the observation.

The work, by an international team of astronomers, has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Normally, each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.
Given that these objects can have masses equivalent to one billion Suns, it takes a special set of conditions to cause this to happen.

High-speed exit The authors believe this could be the result of the merger of two smaller black holes.

But there are alternative explanations for the bright X-ray source; it could also be a Type IIn supernova, or an ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) with an optical counterpart (which could represent several phenomena).

Simulations using supercomputers suggest that when this happens, the larger black hole that results is shot away at high speed.

However, this depends on the direction and velocity at which the two black holes are rotating before their collision.

Marianne Heida of the University of Utrecht used data in the Chandra Source Catalog to compare hundreds of thousands of sources of X-rays with the positions of millions of galaxies.

The material that falls into black holes heats up dramatically on its final journey, which often means that black holes are strong X-ray sources.

X-rays are also able to penetrate the dust and gas that obscures the centre of a galaxy, giving astronomers a clear view of the region around the black hole, with the bright source appearing as a star-like point.

Looking at one galaxy in the Catalogue, Ms Heida noticed that the point of light was offset from the centre and yet was so bright that it could be associated with a super massive black hole.

Ms Heida said: "We have found many more objects in this strange class of X-ray sources. With Chandra we should be able to make the accurate measurements we need to pinpoint them more precisely and identify their nature."

Plane crash in Libya kills more than 100 on board

2010-05-12T19:08:00.003+05:00

A passenger plane has crashed in Libya, killing more than 100 people on board, officials in the capital Tripoli say.

The Airbus 330 crashed on landing at Tripoli airport after a flight from Johannesburg, Afriqiyah Airways said.
Sixty-one Dutch nationals were among those killed, Dutch tourism board ANWB said. A Dutch boy was the sole known survivor, the Libyans say.

British and South African passengers are also thought to have been on board. The 11 crew were said to be Libyan.

Nicky Knapp, a spokeswoman for Airports Company South Africa, said seven passengers were booked to connect to London Gatwick airport, 32 to Brussels, 42 to Dusseldorf in Germany, and one to Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

"Nationalities and names won't be revealed at this stage," she said.

"A 24-hour helpline has been set up to assist families and relatives."
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende confirmed that "several dozen" Dutch nationals were killed.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Ad Meijer said the boy who survived was undergoing surgery in Tripoli for his injuries, including broken bones.

Afriqiyah Airways said on its website: "We are very sorry to announce the tragic loss of Afriqiyah Airways flight 8U771 from Johannesburg in an accident during landing at Tripoli International Airport at 04:00 UTC (06:00 am Tripoli time) today Wednesday 12 May.

"We extend our deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the victims. The search and rescue mission has now been completed."

Libyan Transport Minister Mohammed Ali Zidan said 104 people had been on board the plane - 93 passengers and 11 crew.
He said that the remains of 96 victims had already been recovered.

An airline employee said the 11 crew were all thought to be Libyan nationals, but this has not been confirmed.
Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office said said it was "aware of reports that there were British nationals on board the flight, but this has not been confirmed".

"We are urgently investigating. A consular team from the British Embassy are on their way to the airport. Consular staff in Tripoli are urgently seeking further details," it said.

Libya's state TV showed footage of a field scattered with pieces of plane debris, and police and rescuers walking with surgical masks and gloves.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Some reports suggest the plane crashed very close to the runway.

"It exploded on landing and totally disintegrated," a Libyan security official told news agency AFP.

A flight recorder has already been recovered, and officials hope this will provide some clues as to what caused the disaster.

However, Mr Zidan ruled out terrorism as the cause of the crash.

The airport is currently sealed off and ambulances have been going back and forth to the airport.
Our correspondent adds that the weather has been sunny and clear over the past few days.

Afriqiyah Airways is a low-cost Libyan airline founded nine years ago and operates a relatively new fleet of Airbus aircraft.

It flies many routes between Africa and Europe with passengers often transiting through Tripoli, our correspondent adds.

Daniel Hoeltgen, spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency, said the airline had undergone 10 recent safety inspections at European airports, with no significant safety findings, the Associated Press reports.

He added that a team of French crash investigators was already on its way to Tripoli to help Libyan officials determine the cause of the crash.

Pakistan Taliban behind Times Square bomb plot

2010-05-09T20:18:00.000+05:00

The US has evidence the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square, Attorney General Eric Holder says.

Mr Holder said the militants helped to facilitate the plot, and "probably helped finance it".
US officials had previously rejected claims by the group that it was behind the 1 May plot.

A Pakistani-born US citizen has been charged with the attempted bombing in New York's tourist quarter a week ago.

Faisal Shazhad, 30, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, has co-operated with investigators, and admits receiving bomb-making training in the Pakistani region of Waziristan, prosecutors have said.

"We've now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack," Mr Holder said on ABC television's Sunday current affairs talk show This Week.

"We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it, and that [Shahzad] was working at their direction."

Mr Holder said there was nothing to suggest the government of Pakistan was aware of the plot.
He also said the Obama administration was satisfied for now with the level of co-operation it was receiving from Islamabad into the investigation of the attempted bombing.

His words were echoed by White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, "It looks like he was working on behalf of the TTP, the Pakistani Taliban. This group is closely allied with al-Qaeda. This is something that we're taking very seriously."

If proved true, this would be the first time the Pakistani Taliban has been linked to a terror plot in the United States itself.

The bomb was discovered last Saturday evening in Times Square, which was busy with tourists and theatregoers at the time.

Bomb disposal experts were called in after a street-vendor noticed smoke coming from a Nissan Pathfinder, which had been left with its engine running and hazard lights flashing.

In the hours that followed, a claim of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban was dismissed by the New York police. The city's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said there was no evidence the attempted bombing was the work of al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist group.

However, the unexploded bomb left crucial evidence intact that detectives used to trace Mr Shahzad.
He was arrested two days after the failed bomb attempt, trying to board a flight to Dubai from New York's JFK airport.

Mexican drug violence claims 24 lives in 24 hours

2010-05-03T21:18:00.000+05:00

Drug violence in the Mexican state of Chihuahua left 24 people dead in the span of 24 hours this weekend, the state attorney general's office said Sunday.
The killings were scattered over four locations throughout the state, with eight dead in Juarez, 10 killed in the capital of Chihuahua, five killed in Cuauhtemuc and one killed in Parral.

All the slayings occurred in public places, with the killings in Cuauhtemuc occurring in a bar, said Carlos Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general.
The killings took place between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, Gonzalez said.
The victims -- all male -- ranged in age between 18 and 25 years old.
No other details about the killings or the victims were immediately available.
"This is an indicator of the incrementally increasing war between the two cartels battling for Juarez Plaza, the state's drug trafficking corridor," Gonzalez said, referring to an ongoing battle between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels for dominance in the area. Juarez Plaza is a major thoroughfare through the area.
"I can't give you a reason why the violence is picking up the last week of April going into this month," Gonzalez added.
Some Mexican news organizations have reported that the Sinaloa Cartel had defeated the rival Juarez organization but Gonzalez said, "There is no winner to this war."
The spate of weekend killings followed another bloody week in the Ciudad Juarez area.
On Wednesday, at least 15 people were killed in drug-related violence in Juarez, authorities said.
The slayings included four people whose bodies were found at one location, another three -- one of them a woman -- who were found slain at a second location, and another eight victims who were killed at a bar, police spokesman Jacinto Seguro said.
On Tuesday, 10 people were killed, Seguro said, including three who were shot outside a supermarket. Another victim was killed outside a shopping mall.
In all, 25 people were killed between Tuesday and Wednesday, Seguro said.
Ciudad Juarez is the most violent city in Mexico, with more than 2,600 drug-related deaths in 2009. No official numbers are available for this year, but more than 500 killings have been reported by local media. Some reports have the figures as high as 810 in Juarez this year.

According to a report released in April by the Mexican government, Chihuahua state is Mexico's hardest-hit state by drug violence, with 6,757 people killed since the start of the drug war at the end of 2006.

United and Continental Airlines to merge

2010-05-03T21:07:00.000+05:00

US-based United Airlines and Continental Airlines have agreed a deal to merge, creating the world's biggest carrier.

The loss-making companies said they expected the deal, worth $3.2bn (£2.1bn), to deliver savings of more than $1bn a year.

The combined group will be named United Airlines

But new branding will combine the current Continental colours with the United Airlines name.

After the deal was announced shares of both firms rose in morning trading in New York.

United's parent UAL Corporation saw its shares rise by 62 cents, or 2.9% to $22.22, while Continental shares were up 63 cents, or 2.8%, to $22.98.

Although United is seen as the dominant partner, the merger was described as "a merger of equals".
Together United and Continental currently fly to 370 destinations worldwide, flying 144 million passengers a year.

Combining the two companies will create the world's biggest airline, based on the total number of passenger-miles flown.

Continental's boss Jeff Smisek will be chief executive of the new company based in Chicago, while United Airlines' Glenn Tilton will serve as the non-executive chairman.

Mr Tilton called the deal "great... for our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our communities".
Cuts expected

"We are creating a stronger, more efficient airline, both operationally and financially, better positioned to succeed in a dynamic and highly competitive global aviation industry," he said.

The companies did not give any details on potential job cuts, but said they expected front-line employees to be "minimally affected by the merger", with staff reductions coming from retirements and voluntary redundancy.

The two companies currently employ a total of 86,000 people.
Analysts expect redundancies to form part of the merger, with airlines anxious to cut costs following a recent collapse in profits within the industry.

Chief executive Jeff Sismek said some cost-savings would come from getting the most out of aircraft and sharing IT services.
They also hope that the better choice of routes will be attractive to sought-after business customers.

Both companies are full-service airlines and have faced intense competition from low-cost operators.
United Airlines' parent company UAL reported a loss of $82m for the first three months of the year, after reporting a $1.1bn loss for 2009.

Continental reported net losses of $282m last year.
"This airline deal is expected to bring much-needed consolidation to the US airline industry as it suffers chronic oversupply," commented Saj Ahmad, airline analyst at FBE Aerospace.

"This announcement puts other players like American Airlines and US Airways on watch for who makes the next move."

Last month British Airways and Iberia followed the consolidation trend, merging to create one of Europe's largest carriers.

The United-Continental merger still has be approved by shareholders and competition regulators and will need the agreement of unions.

They hope to complete the deal by the end of the year.

NYC cops hunt man caught on film in bombing

2010-05-03T20:55:00.000+05:00

US police have made "substantial progress" in investigating an attempted car bomb attack in New York city, US Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Mr Holder said police had established "good leads" into who parked the vehicle in Times Square on Saturday.

City Mayor Michael Bloomberg earlier cast doubt on a claim by the Pakistani Taliban that it was behind the attempt.

Police have released CCTV footage of a white man seen removing his shirt near the scene and putting it in a bag.

Mr Holder told reporters he was confident the investigation would be successful "and the people responsible for that attempt will be found and brought to justice".

"We have some good leads," he said, referring to the CCTV images. "We are following a number of other leads as well."

He was also cautious about linking the incident to international terrorism and claims of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban.

"I know that group in the past has claimed responsibility for incidents that [they] ultimately were not connected to," he said.

Experts say the device would have caused mayhem had it exploded.
Times Square was packed with tourists and theatregoers when a street vendor raised the alarm.
Investigators released a video of a man taking off his shirt, stuffing it into his bag and them walking off, looking in the direction of the car.

Although police are keen to find the man, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly declined to call him a suspect.

Mr Bloomberg, speaking on ABC's Good Morning America programme, warned that the person on the tape may not become a suspect.

"There are millions of people that come through Times Square," he said.
"This person happened to be in a position in which a camera got a good shot of him, and maybe he had something to do with it but there's a very good chance that he did not. We're exploring a lot of leads."
He reiterated that there was "no legitimate evidence" of a link to al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any other militant group.

But he said he believed there was a good chance that the perpetrators would be caught.
"Working with the White House, working with Homeland Security, working with the FBI, all city agencies working together, there's a high probability that we will find out who did this and apprehend them," he said.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the FBI are examining hundreds of hours of security videotape from around Times Square, officials said on Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told that nothing had so far been ruled out.

"Right now, every lead has to be pursued," she said. "I caution against premature decisions one way or another."

Investigators are still poring over evidence from the Nissan Pathfinder in which the homemade petrol and propane bomb was found.

The SUV's engine was still running and its hazard lights flashing when the alarm was raised.
Police evacuated a wide area of the district and closed subway lines, while a controlled explosion was carried out.

Officials said the bomb was crude, but could have sparked a "significant fireball".
Investigators said on Monday they had spoken to the registered owner of the SUV, but would not give details.

The car's registration plates did not match the Nissan and belonged to a car owner in the state of Connecticut. He told officers he had sent the plates to a scrap-yard.

The NYPD has been on constant alert since the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Earlier this year, two men, one an Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty to a plot to set off suicide bombs in the city's subway system.

And last year four New Yorkers went on trial accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the city and fire missiles at military aircraft.

Execution does not stop Chinese knife attacks

2010-05-03T09:50:00.000+05:00

Early in the morning on March 23, Zheng Minsheng walked in front of an elementary school in Fujian province. Wielding a knife, he attacked the students who happened to be around, killing eight and wounding several others.
Authorities said Zheng, 42, carried out the attack because he was frustrated at "failures in his romantic life," according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Whatever his real motive was, the senseless killing, reported widely by the Chinese media, shocked the nation. Zheng was tried, sentenced to death and executed on April 28.
If Chinese authorities thought Zheng's execution would deter similar attacks, they were wrong. The day he was executed, a knife-wielding man attacked elementary school students in southern Guangdong province, wounding 16 students and a teacher. The attacker was later subdued by the police, and no one died.
The next day, a man in Jiangsu province barged into a kindergarten and stabbed 31 people, including 28 students, two teachers and one security guard. "It was too horrible to imagine," one eyewitness told local reporters. "I saw blood everywhere." Police apprehended the suspect, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan.

Then, on April 30, a man barged into a village school in Shandong province, carrying a hammer and a can of gasoline. Wang Yonglai, a local farmer, attacked preschool students with the hammer, causing head injuries. He then set himself on fire and died. According to a Xinhua report, the local farmer went berserk after the local police told him that the family house he had just built using 110,000 yuan (US$16,110) of family savings had to be torn down because it had been built on farmland, which is illegal in China.
It was the third such school attack in three days.
The spate of school attacks is prompting public anger. "What is going on with these people?" Wen Jia, a father of a pre-schooler in Beijing, asked. "Why take their frustrations on defenseless children? We need better security in schools, but we also need to take care of the mentally ill."
On Friday, the Ministry of Education on its website issued an urgent circular ordering kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools to beef up security and restrict strangers from entering the campuses. The ministry instructed schools across the country to hire security guards, install security facilities and ensure that pupils are escorted home. Schools are also urged to teach pupils to how to protect themselves.
Guns are strictly controlled in China, but until recently possession of large knives were not. Chinese authorities have recently issued a regulation requiring people to register with their national ID cards when they buy knives longer that 15 centimeters.

Other measures are being put in place. In Jiangsu province, local police have helped schools set up "campus security team" composed of 70 security guards with batons and pepper spray. Police in Beijing have distributed "forks", long poles with semi-circular prongs that security guards could use to fight assailants. In Changsha, capital of central Hunan province, parents formed vigilante teams to patrol local elementary schools.
This series of school attacks are blamed on people with personal grievances or suffering from mental illness.
Says Ding Xueliang, a sociology professor in Hong Kong: "The Chinese society has generated enormous pressure on individuals and some of those individuals have perhaps had emotional and psychological problems. They want to cause general attention from the population and attacking kids perhaps is the best way from their perspective of achieving this objective."
These recent incidents are covered extensively in the local media and on the Internet, prompting concerns over copycat violence. Says sociologist Ding Xueliang: "With the mass media (reports), particularly on the Internet, more individuals are likely to copy such practice, if the Chinese government does not do things quickly and effectively."

For the terrified pupils and worried parents, the solutions are not coming quickly enough.

Failed car bomb was not al-Qaeda plot, says NY mayor

2010-05-03T09:36:00.000+05:00

There is no evidence the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York was the work of al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist group, the city's mayor says.

Michael Bloomberg spoke after police dismissed claims by a Pakistani Taliban group that it was responsible.
Investigators are hunting a middle-aged white man seen removing his shirt near the scene at Times Square on Saturday evening and stuffing it into a bag.

President Barack Obama has vowed the US will track down the perpetrators.
Investigators have been gathering evidence from the Nissan Pathfinder in which the homemade petrol and propane bomb was found.

The engine was still running with hazard lights flashing when the SUV, emitting smoke, attracted the attention of a street vendor.

Police evacuated part of the bustling entertainment district and shut subway lines, while a controlled explosion was carried out.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on Sunday the bomb was crude, but could have sparked a "significant fireball".

Another component of the device was a rifle cabinet packed with more than 100lb (45kg) of fertilizer, although police said it was not of a type volatile enough to explode.

Commissioner Kelly said they were looking for an unidentified white man, thought to be in his 40s, who was spotted behaving "furtively" nearby.

CCTV captured the suspect walking down an alley and changing a shirt, while looking back in the direction of the smoking SUV.

Police are also examining a home video taken by a tourist of a man seen near the car.

Police have established that the car's registration plates do not match up with the Nissan.
They belonged to a car owner in the state of Connecticut, who told officers he had sent the plates to a scrap-yard.

A Pakistani Taliban group claimed in a one-minute internet video that it was behind the failed attack.
Tehreek-e-Taliban said the bomb was revenge for the deaths of its leader and the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But the police commissioner and the mayor cast doubt on the claim.

"There is no evidence that this is tied in with al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist organization," Mr Bloomberg said.

The mayor earlier told reporters New York had avoided what could have been "a very deadly event".

US Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano has said there was so far no evidence that it was more than a "one-off event", but added it was "a potential terrorist attack".

Duane Jackson, the 58-year-old handbag seller who spotted the vehicle, has been hailed as a hero.
The Vietnam War veteran alerted a passing police officer, after noticing the car parked illegally with its keys in the ignition.

"That's when the smoke started coming out and then we heard the little pop, pop, pop - like firecrackers going out," he said.

The New York Police Department has been on constant alert since the 9/11 attacks.
Earlier this year, two men, one an Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty to a plot to set off suicide bombs in the city's subway system.

And last year four New Yorkers went on trial accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the city and fire missiles at military aircraft.

Ahmadinejad blasts U.S. before visit

2010-05-02T13:56:00.000+05:00

Just days before his planned trip to New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has proof the United States and Israel are linked to the world's leading terrorist organizations, according to state-run media.

"We have documents that prove (Washington) is the root of world terrorism," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Tehran, Press TV reported. "It has been aiding and abetting extremist groups over the past years."

Ahmadinejad said his nation "cuts any hand that signs a document against Iran," according to the semi-official FARS news agency.

His remarks came as the United States pushes for new international sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad plans to attend a United Nations summit on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which opens Monday,

The United States "is the only country to have used the atomic bomb in military conflict," Ahmadinejad said Saturday, according to Press TV. "They even admit themselves that they resorted to using (similar weapons) during the war they waged on Iraq."

The United States has not admitted using such weapons in the Iraq war.

Ahmadinejad planned to offer at the U.N. conference major proposals that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program, his top adviser, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, said, according to IRNA official news agency.
Iran insists that its program is aimed at producing nuclear energy, while Washington accuses it of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad urged the United States to engage his government, saying that "companionship is better than confrontation," FARS reported.

His remarks came at a ceremony celebrating May Day, or International Workers' Day.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned Ahmadinejad in some of the Obama administration's strongest language to date.

"Iran, with its anti-Semitic president and hostile nuclear ambitions, also continues to threaten Israel, destabilize the region, and sponsor terror," Clinton said, addressing the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee.

"The United States is committed to pursuing [a] diplomatic path," she said. "But we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

New York police defuse 'car bomb' in Times Square

2010-05-02T13:43:00.000+05:00

New York City police have defused an improvised car bomb parked in Times Square, one of the city's busiest tourist areas, officials say.

They say propane tanks, fireworks, petrol, and a clock device were removed from a parked sports utility vehicle.

Part of the district - where many theatres are sited - was sealed off.
Both US President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the quick response by the New York Police Department.

"We are very lucky," Mr Bloomberg told reporters. "Thanks to alert New Yorkers and professional police officers, we avoided what could have been a very deadly event."

He said the bomb "looked amateurish" but could have exploded, adding that the incident was a "reminder of the dangers that we face".

Correspondents say the New York City Police Department is on constant alert after a series of alleged terror plots in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

"The NYPD bomb squad has rendered safe an improvised car bomb," said New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The alert was triggered when a street vendor saw smoke coming from a Nissan Pathfinder parked on 45th Street and Seventh Avenue at about 1830 (2230 GMT) on Saturday.

The vehicle had its engine running and hazard lights flashing, officials said.
Police shut down several blocks of Times Square, as well as subway lines, while a robotic arm broke windows of the vehicle.

"There were explosive elements, including powder, gasoline, propane and some kind of electrical wires attached to a clock," police spokesman Paul Browne told reporters early on Sunday.
"No motive has been identified," he added.

Security footage is being reviewed after reports that a person was seen running away from the vehicle.
The car's plates do not match the registration, the spokesman said.

Jerry Brown, one of the tourists evacuated from the nearby Marriot Marquis hotel, told the BBC: "Guests are sitting on the street and there is considerable chaos... There is talk about moving us to another hotel but I am not sure how this is going to happen."

Most Broadway shows went ahead despite the alert.
FBI agents have joined NYPD investigators at the scene.
The White House said President Obama was being kept up to date on the investigation.

The most recent terror alert in New York City involved a plot to set off suicide bombs in the subway system.
Earlier this year an Afghan immigrant, Najibullah Zazi, and an associate, Zarein Ahmedzay, both pleaded guilty in connection with the attempt.

Last year four New Yorkers went on trial accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the city and fire missiles at military aircraft.

Taiwan-China flight forced to land after bomb hoax

2010-05-01T22:12:00.000+05:00

An airliner travelling from Taiwan to China made an emergency landing after a passenger jokingly claimed he had a bomb on board, officials say.

The Taipei-Shanghai flight of Taiwan's China Airlines landed safely in Hangzhou, eastern China, and the passenger was held for questioning.

Police then checked the man's luggage and found no explosives.
The man - identified only as Lin - later admitted he made the comment as a joke, the officials said.

China Airlines spokesman Bruce Chen said the passenger was traveling on a US passport, the Associated Press reports.

He did not appear to have been drinking excessively, the spokesman added.
The plane eventually took off from Hangzhou and later landed safely in Shanghai.
It was not immediately known how many passengers were on board.

Greeks protest austerity cuts at May Day rally

2010-05-01T21:57:00.000+05:00

Greek protesters clashed with police who fired tear gas during the annual May Day rally on Saturday in Athens, where thousands of people gathering for the event seethed over government belt-tightening plans to deal with the country's debt problems.

Waving red flags, the crowd at times surged toward the line of police, who wore helmets and carried riot shields. The police pushed them back each time.

Protesters threw objects toward police, and scattered fires were burning on the streets. A van belonging to state broadcaster ERT was set on fire, and 19 people were taken in for questioning, a spokesman for the Greek national police told.

About 12,000 people were protesting in Athens, and rallies were also taking place in the northern city of Thessaloniki, the spokesman said. Protesters there smashed two ATMs, the glass frontage of a bank, and a car, but no one was arrested or being questioned, the spokesman said.

The annual May Day rally has taken on an angry tone this year as the Greek government prepares to enact austerity measures to cap its large deficit and massive debt.

The package of measures was expected to be revealed Sunday. It is likely to include cuts in civil servants' salaries, pay freezes, reductions in pension payments, changes to tax rates, and increases in the value-added tax consumers pay on purchases, Ilias Iliopoulos, the general secretary of the public sector union ADEDY said Thursday.

The International Monetary Fund and the European Union are discussing a bailout for Greece, whose economic problems threaten the stability of the common European currency, the euro.

The amount of the aid package being negotiated was not clear, but the IMF and EU are likely to demand the austerity measures as a price for a bailout.

Greece's national debt of 300 billion euros ($394 billion) is bigger than the country's economy, and some estimates predict it will reach 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.

Standard & Poor's this week downgraded Greece's sovereign credit rating to junk status, making Greece the first European country to fall below investment grade.

The downgrade makes it harder and more expensive for Greece to borrow money to pay back its debts. That makes the prospect of a bailout more crucial for Athens.

Also this week, Moody's Investors Service downgraded nine Greek banks, including the National Bank of Greece, citing their weakened financial strength and the country's "challenged" economic prospects.

Pakistan human rights worker Khalid Khawaja found dead

2010-04-30T21:22:00.000+05:00

The body of a Pakistani human rights activist has been found in the North Waziristan tribal area, weeks after he was reportedly kidnapped by militants.

Officials said Khalid Khawaja's body was found in a ditch near the town of Mir Ali on Friday afternoon. He had been shot in the head and chest.

A note attached to the body claimed that Mr Khawaja - a former Pakistani intelligence officer - was a US agent.

It said that if "someone tries to spy for America this will be his fate".
Mr Khawaja, along with two other men, had been missing for several weeks after traveling into North Waziristan.

A group calling itself the Asian Tigers later said it had kidnapped all three.
The The group is thought to be a front for the Pakistani Taliban, who in effect control most of the Waziristan tribal region.

A video was released of Mr Khawaja before his death in which he was seen confessing that he was a CIA and Pakistani agent.

His captors had been demanding a ransom and the release of Taliban militants in exchange for the release of the men.

In recent years Mr Khawaja had campaigned for the release of dozens of people who have allegedly been taken into unofficial custody in Pakistan.

Oil spill sparks new drilling ban

2010-04-30T21:12:00.000+05:00

The US administration has banned oil drilling in new areas of the US coast while the cause of the oil spill off Louisiana is investigated.

White House adviser David Axelrod told that they wanted to know exactly what led to last week's explosion on the BP-operated rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last month President Barack Obama eased a moratorium on new offshore drilling.
Up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day are thought to be spilling into the water, threatening US coastal areas.

The slick has begun to reach the Louisiana shore, and the US Navy has been sent to help avert an economic and environmental disaster.

Mr Axelrod announced the ban on drilling in new areas in an interview Good Morning America programme on Friday.

He also defended the administration's response to the 20 April explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, saying "we had the coast guard in almost immediately".

The US government has designated the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as an "incident of national significance". This allows it to draw on resources from across the country.

The wetlands off the Louisiana coast sustain hundreds of wildlife species and a big seafood and fishing industry.

Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency and asked for federal funds to deploy 6,000 National Guard soldiers to help with the clean-up.

The US Coast Guard said it had sent investigators to confirm whether crude oil had begun to wash up on parts of the Louisiana shoreline.

Cdr Mark McCadden, of the coast guard, told the BBC they were using all resources available.
"We're putting everything forth in plans for a worst-case scenario," he said.

"We can always ramp back on some of those resources, but right now the priority is to bring as many resources as are available to attack this spill and try to minimise the effects to the coast and to the public."

Two US Air Force planes have been sent to Mississippi in case they are needed to spray oil-dispersing chemicals over the slick.

David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described the oil spill as a "very, very big thing".

The clean-up efforts could be "mind-boggling", he told the Associated Press news agency.

The Louisiana coastline, with its rich shrimp and oyster beds, is the most threatened by the spill.
A group of Louisiana shrimpers has already filed a lawsuit against BP and the owners of the rig, Transocean.
Richard Arsenault, a lawyer for the group, told that,he was surprised that such a modern rig couldn't prevent the spill.

"This is a rig that is valued at some $700m. It's state of the art... and it is just incredible that with that kind of technology this kind of problem... was not prevented."

He added: "The harm right now to the fishing industry and to the economic sector is just almost incalculable."
There are also fears of severe damage to fisheries and wildlife in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida as oil continues to escape from the wreckage of the rig.

An emergency shrimping season was opened on Thursday to allow fishermen to bring in their catch before it was fouled by the advancing oil.

Navy vessels are helping to deploy booms to contain the spill.
President Obama has dispatched high-level administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, to the area.

He said they would "ensure that BP and the entire US government is doing everything possible, not just to respond to this incident, but also to determine its cause".

Speaking at the White House, Mr Obama also said: "While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and clean-up operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defence, to address the incident."

Eleven workers are still missing, presumed dead, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April.
BP's chief operating officer of exploration and production, Doug Suttles, said the company was using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to try to find out how much oil was leaking into the sea.
"This is very, very difficult to estimate," Mr Suttles told reporters.

"Down below the surface we actually can't meter this oil so we can just observe it... what our ROV pictures show to us on the sea floor hasn't changed since we first saw the leak... but what we can say based on what we're picking up on the surface it looks like it is more."

Mr Suttles put the oil leakage at between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels a day.

Five children hurt in fresh attack on school in China

2010-04-30T20:59:00.000+05:00

Five young children have been hurt at a school in north-eastern China after a man attacked them with a hammer before killing himself.

It was the third such incident in China in as many days.
The man, said to be a local farmer, grabbed two children before setting himself on fire at the pre-school in Shandong province's Weifang city.

The children were pulled to safety, and all five - plus an injured teacher - were said to be stable in hospital.
China is reeling from a spate of apparent copy-cat attacks in schools.

On Thursday, 28 children - most of them aged around four - and three adults were attacked by an unemployed man wielding a knife at a nursery school in Jiangsu province, eastern China. Five of the children were taken to hospital in a critical condition.

And a day earlier, some 15 pupils and a teacher were wounded by a former teacher - who was on sick leave - at their primary school in Guangdong province.

Earlier on Wednesday, a doctor convicted of stabbing eight children to death in Fujian province in March was executed.

Friday's attacker was a local farmer identified as Wang Yonglai, Xinhua news agency reports.

He used a motorcycle to break down the gates in to Shangzhuang primary school, striking a teacher who tried to stop him and then turning the hammer on the children.

He grabbed two of the children before dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight. Teachers seized the two children from him in time.

The motive of the attack is not yet known.
The attacks are unsettling in a country where such violent attacks are rare.
Since a spate of attacks in 2004, many schools in China have employed professional guards but the latest incidents have led to public calls for increased security in schools.

The education ministry ordered all schools to upgrade their security facilities earlier this month, as well as teach students about safety and ensure young children are escorted home, state media has reported.

But such measures are expensive, says our correspondent, and in reality there is little that can be done to prevent such acts of violence.

The incidents have also sparked a debate about the motives of the killers, with some suggesting that rapid social change and growing unemployment has led to an increase in psychiatric illnesses.

Ghost estates testify to Irish boom and bust

2010-04-30T20:47:00.000+05:00

David McWilliams is the man who coined the phrase "ghost estate" when he wrote about the first signs of a disastrous over-build in Ireland back in 2006.

Now, it is a concept the whole country is depressingly familiar with. Most Irish people have one on their doorstep - an ugly reminder, says the economist and broadcaster, of wounded national pride.

"Emotionally, we have all taken a battering," he says. "Like every infectious virus, the housing boom got into our pores. You could feel it.

"You'd go to the pub and people would be talking about what house they'd bought. And now a lot of people, myself included, think 'God, we were conned'."

Mr McWilliams paints Ireland's history as one of "economic failure".
"So to have risen so quickly and seemingly in the right direction and then to have that pulled away from us," he says, "it's more of an emotional thing than a financial thing."

There are 621 ghost estates across Ireland now, a legacy of those hopeful years. One in five Irish homes is unoccupied.

If the country immediately used them to house every person on the social housing list, there would still be hundreds of thousands left over.

The obvious question of who people imagined would live in all these new-builds makes Irish people wince now.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Only a few years ago, developers feeding money into local government coffers were getting free rein to build row upon row of five-bedroom detached houses on the green outskirts of towns nobody had even thought of commuting from before.

Banks were throwing money at members of the public who saw these houses either as an escape to a better lifestyle or an investment route to riches.

Builders from eastern Europe were working overtime to create homes, the value of which was sometimes three times what it is now.

As the slump set in, the immigrant workers went back home, the banks ceased lending on the scale that had fuelled the frenzy and the market disappeared.

Property supply had become completely divorced from property demand.
County Leitrim alone would have needed about 590 new houses between 2006 and 2009 to accommodate its population growth. It got 2,945.

The resulting mess is currently being addressed by a nationwide audit of empty and unfinished housing.
It has raised eyebrows that precise numbers are not already clear, even to the local councils who gave planning permission for the homes in the first place.

Ciaran Cuffe is the Green Party minister of state in charge of the audit.
"It's one heck of a challenge", he says, "because we have the legacy of many years of poor planning, and an economy that was overheated, paid far too much attention to construction and was more interested in the quantity than the quality of homes".

He says Ireland's perceived wealth was part of the problem.
"I think there was a view that demand would continue indefinitely at a time when we had very high levels of immigration.

"People thought the housing was needed not only for the people of Ireland but also for others that had come here, and that this golden goose would continue to lay golden eggs for ever."

Nobody expects the majority of Ireland's surplus new housing simply to be ploughed down by the bulldozers now.

But Mr Cuffe admits some of the recent headlines in the Irish press on the subject are not completely wide of the mark.

"I certainly think demolition could be part of the solution in cases where we have housing estates that are unoccupied, that are miles away from where people want to live and that were badly built in the first place."
And indeed, many of Ireland's ghost estates are in the unlikeliest, most isolated places.

It is strange, looking down vast rows of immaculate new-builds, taking in their optimistically-planted front gardens and peering through curtain-less windows into unwanted granite-topped fitted kitchens, to comprehend the fact that they might never be occupied.

Mr McWilliams says the whole of Ireland is having to come to terms with what he compares to a collective addiction.

"Everyone took the property drug at the same time", he says, "everyone was up at the same time, everyone was buzzing.

"Now we are all in the middle of this huge comedown. And people are looking around and saying - 'what happened? Was that us?' And then we look at our bank statements and we realize - 'yes, it was'".

China opens World Expo 2010 in Shanghai

2010-04-30T20:34:00.000+05:00

The 2010 World Expo has opened in the city of Shanghai in what China hopes will be further proof of its rising global influence.

Almost 250 countries and international organizations are showcasing their culture in an event themed around sustainable development.

Many are doing so in pavilions with radical architecture.
World leaders, including France's President Sarkozy, are attending the lavish opening ceremony.
"Expo 2010 Shanghai is now open!" Chinese President Hu Jintao declared during the gala opening, in which 2,300 performers and musicians from all over the world took part.

They were celebrating the Expo slogan: "Better city, better life in music and dance".
Tens of thousands of fireworks and lasers then lit up the city's riverfront - in what organizers promised would be the biggest-ever multimedia event.

Some 70 million visitors - mostly Chinese - are expected to visit the Expo, which will be open for the next six months.

Chinese local media report that the cost of staging the event could be as much as $58bn (£38bn) - more than was spent on the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Some estimates say this figure could eventually be even higher.
Shanghai has increased security measures drastically in preparation for the event.

An additional 8,000 police officers have been brought in to help Shanghai's 46,000-strong police force to patrol the city, Chinese state media says.

Residents living near the Expo site have complained about oppressive security measures.
"It's just not convenient to get in and out any more," Dong, a local resident, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

Markets have been closed down to build Expo car parks, he added.
Six people who protested about having their homes destroyed to make room for the Expo have been sent to labour camps, the Hong-Kong based Chinese Human Rights Defenders were quoted as saying by AP.

Last week police seized four computers belonging to activist Feng Zhenghu, who had been trying to set up an alternative online Expo, highlighting alleged miscarriages of justice, our correspondent says.

The Expo is seen as an opportunity for countries to try to win favor with the Chinese, he adds.

Speaking at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, President Sarkozy - whose relationship with China has been testy after he criticized a Chinese security crackdown in Tibet in 2008 - said France and China would "think and work together".