Central bank official Thilo Sarrazin, already under fire in Germany for using shock talk about the country's Muslim immigrants, has sparked a new uproar by saying that "all Jews share a common gene."  

German central bank executive Thilo Sarrazin has stirred fresh controversy over the weekend with discriminatory remarks concerning religious minorities.

 

"All Jews share a particular gene," Sarrazin said in an interview published on Sunday, August 29. "That makes them different from other peoples."

 

Sarrazin, who is currently promoting his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" ("Germany does away with itself"), remained undeterred in expressing his views despite criticism and calls for his resignation from the board of the Bundesbank.

The increasingly bitter "battle of the Milibands" reaches new heights today as younger brother Ed dramatically ditches New Labour and calls for an end to the party's drift towards "brutish" and "unjust" US-style capitalism.

As the two brothers enter the final lap of the Labour leadership race, David Miliband, by contrast, declares New Labour to be "living and breathing in every community" as he announces himself "ready to lead" its renewal.

All five candidates will step up campaigning this week as ballot papers are sent out to some 200,000 Labour supporters. The winner will be announced on 25 September, the day before Labour's annual conference in Manchester.

Writing in today's Observer, Ed Miliband raises the stakes as he positions himself firmly to the left of his elder brother, who is more closely associated with the Tony Blair era. Drawing a deliberate distinction with the joint architect of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, who once said he was "supremely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", the former energy and climate change secretary also promises an assault on pay inequality that will consign such views to history.

The former head of the Catholic Church in Belgium tried to stop a victim of sex abuse from going public with their story, Church officials have confirmed.

During a meeting in April, Cardinal Godfried Danneels advised the victim to delay a public statement until the bishop who abused him had retired.

Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was also at the meeting, admitted to the abuse in April and resigned.

The victim recorded the meeting, and released the tape to Belgian media.

The extent of austerity measures facing Britain is laid bare today as the Treasury chief secretary reveals there will be no cut in the overall burden of taxation for at least five years.

The message from Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat in charge of slashing the record £155bn deficit, will alarm Tory MPs and others who hoped that the government's programme of savage spending cuts would create room for tax reductions before the next election.

But speaking to the Observer in his first national newspaper interview since entering the Treasury, Alexander makes clear that total tax revenue will have to remain at least at current levels throughout the parliament to put the nation's finances back in order.

"I think the tax burden is necessary as a significant contribution to getting the country's finances in order," he says. "So it will have to stay at that level for quite some time."

A NEW Tory MP tried to help a former Conservative colleague who sells giant penis statues get £30,000 in Government aid.

Stockton South MP James Wharton is facing criticism after he wrote to jobs quango One North East asking them to speed up a grant to Trocabart, a company run by his former Conservative party pal Jason Hadlow.

The newly elected MP asked spending chiefs to hand over £30,000 as "a priority" to his mate whose other company Simply Dutch was at the centre of a media storm earlier this year when police seized a four-foot tall sandstone statue of a penis following indecency complaints.

MOSCOW -- Russian news agencies say scores of skinheads have attacked about 3,000 people at a rock concert in central Russia, beating them with clubs.

TV news channel Rossiya-24 cited witnesses as saying a 14-year-old girl was killed and possibly dozens of people wounded on Sunday evening Miass city, 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) east of Moscow.

The motive for the attack was not known, and authorities couldn't be reached for comment.

Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in on Germany's ongoing nuclear energy debate. She said the country needs to run its nuclear energy plants for at least 10 more years to keep energy costs down and ensure demand is met. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel foresees keeping Germany's nuclear power plants running for at least another decade past their current phase out date. In 2002, the then-ruling SPD-Greens coalition passed a law that said all of Germany's nuclear power plants were due to go off line by 2022.

 

But Merkel, coming off a recent tour of energy facilities around Germany, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD that "on technical grounds, [an additional] 10 to 15 years is reasonable."

Only punitive interest rates during the boom years could have prevented the "great recession," and they would have caused a significant fall in growth, according to Bank of England deputy governor Charles Bean.

In a paper on the lessons of the financial crisis prepared for the annual conference of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Saturday, Mr Bean said further policy action might be necessary to keep the recovery on track.

But despite the fragility of the recovery and a considerable margin of spare capacity it was not too soon to analyse the responses to the credit crunch.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 presented central bankers and finance ministers in the advanced economies with one of the toughest challenges that they were ever likely to face, he said.

"Policymakers would be remiss if they did not re-examine their own decisions in the lead-up to to the crisis and strive to learn the lessons for the future conduct of policy," Mr Bean said.

The U.S. economy remains "weak" and "fragile" and has a "significant" chance of falling back into a recession, Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio.

"I would say there's still a significant risk, maybe one chance in three, that there will be a double dip, real GDP falling, before we're in the clear," said Feldstein, member of the committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research that dates the beginning and end of recessions.

The U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter, less than previously estimated, based on revised Commerce Department figures released today. A separate report showed confidence among consumers rose less than forecast in August from an eight-month low, indicating the biggest part of the economy will be slow to recover.

"We see a weak economy," Feldstein said. "We see a fragile economy that is growing at a slower pace."

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Gulf Navigation Holding PJSC, Dubai's only publicly traded oil-tanker owner, is seeking to buy new crude carriers as an improving global economy boosts shipping volumes, the company's chief executive officer said.

Gulf Navigation may acquire two very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, this year, Per Wistoft said in an interview Aug. 26. Oil output that's set to rise by 2011 will bring enough added crude supply onto the market to necessitate 45 more VLCCs, Wistoft said at his Dubai office.

"If the price is right we can buy ships tomorrow," he said. "I'd probably like to see another two VLCCs come into the fleet," with delivery of the vessels before 2013, Wistoft said. A VLCC can haul 2 million barrels of oil.

LAKE CHARLES, La. -- The only new start-up bank to open in the United States this year operates out of a secondhand double-wide trailer, on a bare lot in front of the cavernous Trinity Baptist Church. A blue awning covers the makeshift drive-through window.

Called Lakeside Bank, it is run by a burly and balding former tackle for Louisiana State's football team named Hartie Spence, who doles out countrified humor along with deposit slips and the occasional loan.

"This is the one place where the cause of death is mildew," he quipped, standing outside the trailer in withering heat.

Asked how his bank in this steaming town of oil refineries and oversize casinos managed to win over federal regulators, Mr. Spence, 70, said, "I'm still thinking it's my looks that did it."

PROTRACTED unemployment is eating away at millions of people. And the economy's failure to create enough jobs for them is part of a vicious circle that could keep turning for years to come.

In my last column, I called for big, temporary government programs aimed directly at putting people back to work. But how might we best accomplish this? The clock is ticking, and we don't have time to create new national organizations to employ people. Instead, the most efficient approach is to use existing organizations for specific ideas and projects.

State and local governments as well as nonprofit and other organizations need to be mainstays in this effort. We need to enlist their help -- without telling them exactly what to do. As for a framework, think of the general revenue sharing program adopted by Congress in 1972.

Deep into the dog days of August, a rather unpleasant scenario is unfolding among the ranks of professional investors on Wall Street. Against the backdrop of unusually low equity trading volumes, even for a typically sleepy August, continued strong flows out of equities into bonds, and high-profile hedge funds shutting down, a bitter truth is dawning for investment professionals.

Namely, that the ranks of retail investors, commonly derided as "dumb money" by the Street, have made the right call on US equity and bond markets in 2010.

As recently as July, much of Wall Street was awash with bullish research notes for the second half of 2010 calling for higher stocks and warning about low government bond yields.

Such bullish research is a staple of the industry and, flush with their bonuses from 2009, the Street simply thought the massive stimulus from the Federal Reserve and US government would translate into a sustainable recovery this year. But since the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008, retail investors, like Odysseus, have stuffed their ears with wax so as to silence the allure of such sirens.  (Emphasis added.)

To which Zero Hedge responds responds:

When Zero Hedge first admonished our readers in June of 2009 to stay away from markets in light of a general deterioration in market structure, which included a regulator-authorized form of structural frontrunning in the form Flash trading (not to be confused with the imminently following Flash crash), an unprecedented mismatch between stock valuations and economic reality, and Wall Street continued attempts to reflate the ponzi merely for the sake of proving that it can be done, we never expected that retail would take to our warning with the ensuing solemnity. Yet with 16 consecutive outflows from domestic equity mutual funds, shut downs by legendary hedge fund managers such as Druckenmiller and Pellegrini (and many more Tiger derivative blows up to be disclosed soon, once the full extent of the carnage of the flattening of the steepener bandwagon trade is fully appreciated), virtually everyone is asking themselves how did Wall Street not only get it all so wrong, but how on earth is the primary business of the post-facelift Wall Street, which is no longer investment banking, but merely trading (with or without flow-facilitated prop frontrunning) going to sustain the recent record headcount levels (hint: it won't, and many more banks will soon let go thousands of additional staffers as key revenue sources have now disappeared forever), and most importantly, why is this time different? Why did the "dumb money" for the first time ever, not bite on the Wall Street siren song lure of an economic "rebound", but instead has hunkered down, proving that not only is Wall Street nothing more than a pure-play enabler of the ponzi regime's status quo, but that all those who were warning that the economy is far more dire than Wall Street represents, were proven right. These same individuals (and bloggers), first validated in predicting the downward direction of the economy, will see their pessimistic forecasts about stocks validated next. Yet while that happens, all those who still somehow find this a surprising development, are now left proposing hypothesis as to what went wrong.

Well, Zero Hedge was early to descry the baleful effects of propriatary computers co-located at exchanges and that could be used for prop desk trading and was persistent and emphatic that this was bad news for small traders. While they might not have brought on this withdrawal of retail investors by themselves, there is precedent for claiming credit for developments which one has advocated in response to dangers of which one has warned.  

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

John Hempton has just read The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich, wherein it is revealed how Rich, operating out of Switzerland managed to sell Iranian oil to Franco's Spain on the cheap via a pipeline that ran from Iran through Israel, thence to Albania and on to Spain and turn $1 million into $200 million in a few years via "regulatory arbitrage". He uses this example to discuss the problems of regulation.

A plea

As a plea then I want a debate about the right form of regulation - a regulation that controls agency problems but does not allow arbitrage opportunities to people with "Ayn Rand morals".  

We are not going to get that from the current Tea Party Republicans.  They simply argue that regulation (they say but do not mean all regulation) impinges on "freedom" (something that is clearly a good but hard to define).  However many of the same people want planning regulations to ban a mosque in downtown New York because it is an insult to the victims of 9/11 (and banning mosques is not a restriction on "freedom").  

If that is the level of debate we are not going to get good re-regulation - we are just going to get pandering to whichever lobby group manages to garner most support.  And that is a real risk because we will leave agency problems in place (they benefit the rich and powerful) and we will introduce the same sort of (dumb) regulation that made Marc Rich and Pincus Green astoundingly wealthy.  That sort of regulation also benefits the rich and powerful - especially those with "Ayn Rand morals".  [The rich and powerful - if you have not noticed - are good lobbyists.  Unless we are careful many amongst them will get their way.]

I don't know how to do this well - but I thought I would state the obvious.  The most obvious things that need regulation are things with a government guarantee (implicit or explicit).  If you have an implicit guarantee (as we now know almost all large financial institutions have) then regulation really matters.  If there are large agency problems (small shareholders, large management) then regulation should be deliberately biased to put power in the hands of shareholders not managers (eg banning staggered board elections).  

Likewise other agency problems should be strongly policed and the regulation should be of the form that allows that policing.  When Elliot Spitzer found that Marsh - a large insurance broker - was participating in bid rigging against schools buying insurance that was shocking - and is precisely the sort of thing in financial markets that should be policed strongly.  But it took Elliot considerable effort to find and prove his case.  The rules should be established so that sort of behaviour is really difficult to hide.

But it will still take regulators that are willing to regulate and politicians that are willing to support them.  

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Includes handy charts...

For starters, China is buying gold. And not just a little bit either. They bought 454 tonnes of it during the last five years and have shown no signs of stopping.

  More than anything, China has been on a worldwide buying spree this year. But instead of buying our debt, they've been buying up natural resources.
The deals have allowed China to lock up supplies of oil, minerals, metals and other strategic natural resources it needs to continue to fuel its growth. The sheer scope of the agreements marks a shift in global finance, roiling energy markets and feeding worries about the future availability and prices of those commodities in other countries that compete for them, including the United States.

   They've also spent $586 Billion on themselves, stimulating their own economy rather than ours.

   Adding to that, China has been making currency swap agreements with nations around the world. That means that they will be able to trade with foreign nations in their own currency, and not have to use dollars.

 And this bit: "As a region, Asia has created a $120 Billion Asian Monetary Fund - directly undermining the IMF, which has the same mandate. America holds veto power in the IMF, but no power in this new international body."


You can't be me, I'm taken

There's just one element missing from these snapshots of America's ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the "death panel" warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You've heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs' banner may not know who these brothers are.

Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch's, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate's unchecked anger and the Obama White House's unfocused political strategy, they might.

All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled "Invisible Hands" in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League's crusade against the New Deal "socialism" of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our "socialist" president.

GEORGE J. MITCHELL, the United States Middle East envoy, tried to counter low expectations for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations by harking back to his experience as a mediator in Northern Ireland.

At an Aug. 20 news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, announcing the talks that will begin this week, Mr. Mitchell reminded journalists that during difficult negotiations in Northern Ireland, "We had about 700 days of failure and one day of success" -- the day in 1998 that the Belfast Agreement instituting power-sharing between pro-British unionists and Irish nationalists was signed.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- One of the country's most senior prosecutors said Saturday that President Hamid Karzai fired him last week after he repeatedly refused to block corruption investigations at the highest levels of Mr. Karzai's government. Enlarge This Image Omar Sobhani/Reuters

Western officials confirm reports that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and others in his government have repeatedly thwarted prosecutions against senior Afghan government figures. Related

• Insurgents Attack NATO Base and Camp in Afghanistan (August 29, 2010)

Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, the former deputy attorney general, said investigations of more than two dozen senior Afghan officials -- including cabinet ministers, ambassadors and provincial governors -- were being held up or blocked outright by Mr. Karzai, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko and others.

Mr. Faqiryar's account of the troubles plaguing the anticorruption investigations, which Mr. Karzai's office disputed, has been largely corroborated in interviews with five Western officials familiar with the cases. They say Mr. Karzai and others in his government have repeatedly thwarted prosecutions against senior Afghan government figures.

An American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Afghan prosecutors had prepared several cases against officials suspected of corruption, but that Mr. Karzai was "stalling and stalling and stalling."

KYOTO, Japan -- The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.

Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters' entry.

The December episode was the first in a series of demonstrations at the Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School that shocked conflict-averse Japan, where even political protesters on the radical fringes are expected to avoid embroiling regular citizens, much less children. Responding to public outrage, the police arrested four of the protesters this month on charges of damaging the school's reputation.

More significantly, the protests also signaled the emergence here of a new type of ultranationalist group. The groups are openly anti-foreign in their message, and unafraid to win attention by holding unruly street demonstrations.

AFP - Yemen denied on Sunday that foreign forces are involved in its battle against Al-Qaeda, as Sanaa's security forces went on high alert after nine soldiers were killed by suspected jihadists. "We are surprised at groundless allegations in several media reports lately on the presence of British soldiers and on the arrival of US forces to aid in fighting terror in Yemen," the defence ministry's 26sep.net news website quoted a Yemeni official as saying.   The official said that Yemen's cooperation with the "United States or other countries" in fighting terrorism is "restricted to the exchange of information which facilitates its hunt (for) terrorist elements and handing them over to justice."   Suspected Al-Qaeda militants have carried out several attacks in past weeks against Yemeni soldiers, the latest of which killed nine soldiers and a civilian in the town of Jaar in the southern Abyan province on Saturday, according to a security official.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said the government would not fund boycotts from within against the State of Israel. He was referring to the protest of several Israeli artists, who declared over the weekend that they would refuse to perform in the new cultural hall in the city of Ariel, which is located beyond the Green Line.

 "The State of Israel is subject to a de-legitimization attack on the part of different elements in the international arena, including attempts to launch academic and economic boycotts," Netanyahu said. "The last thing we need now is an attempt of boycotts from within."

The prime minister added, "I don't want to revoke every artist's right for a political opinion, but we as a government should not fund boycotts against Israel's citizens. I was happy to hear from the culture minister that other artists announced they would perform as planned. That's the right approach."

 Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said the government should withdraw funding from theaters which refuse to perform in Ariel.

Recently, however, two Gulf countries - Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - have provoked Morocco's ire. The Kuwaiti channel, al-Watan, has apologised to Moroccans for the animated comedy series Bu Qatada and Bu Nabeel, which sparked outrage for its improper depiction of Moroccan women as scheming witches plotting to ensnare rich Kuwaiti husbands by casting spells on them.

Last month, in another, rather under-reported incident, Saudi Arabia banned Moroccan women "of a certain age" from umra (the lesser pilgrimage), for fear they would abuse theirs visas "for other purposes" even when they are accompanied by male relatives.

This is a reference to an underground sex industry that is believed to be staffed by Arab women smuggled in from the Maghreb and north Africa. Short of calling all Moroccan women prostitutes and their men pimps, there is little more that could have been done to summarily insult the nation. The implication that Moroccans will exploit a visa for a sacred religious ritual to trade and facilitate sexual favours only serves to rub more salt into the wound.

One of the most under-reported political stories is the increasingly vehement, nationwide movement -- far from Ground Zero -- to oppose new mosques and Islamic community centers.  These ugly campaigns are found across the country, in every region, and extend far beyond the warped extremists who are doing things such as sponsoring "Burn a Quran Day."  And now, from CBS News last night, we have this:

A federal cybersecurity bill that critics say creates a presidential "kill switch" for the Internet could be added on to a defense spending bill and passed without much debate, technology news sources report.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), one of the sponsors of the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, told GovInfoSecurity.com that the Senate is considering attaching the bill as a rider to a defense authorization bill likely to pass through Congress before the mid-term elections.

"It's hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own," Carper said.

Carper, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), introduced the bill in June in an effort to combat cyber-crime and the threat of online warfare and terrorism. Critics say the bill would allow the president to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures. Future US presidents would have those powers renewed indefinitely.

The bill (PDF) states that Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet-related businesses "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security.

Colombia Reports: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday promised to return 6 million hectares of farmland that were stolen by paramilitary groups after displacing its original owners.

Honduras Photo Gallery: Police disperse demonstrators during clashes in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, Aug. 27, 2010. Demonstrators clashed with police as the government has not agreed to fulfill the former government's promise of raising minimum wage in some industries.

FM Bolivia: For the first time in its history, Bolivia will access a loan of $ 250 million of freely available funds that it will invest in social development and integration programs, said on Saturday President Evo Morales Ayma. (...) The loan from South Korea is for 40 years with a five-year grace period and just 0.1 percent interest annually; funds that are entering the country without any conditions. He said most of the loan will be invested in the construction of bridges over rivers that link the departments of East and West.

Chile, SANTIAGO, Aug 28, 2010 (IPS) - Controversial plans to build the Barrancones thermoelectric plant near a protected area in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo were cancelled Friday, but not before reviving the debate on other projects for polluting coal-fired power stations. "Now Barrancones is being talked about as if it were the only project of its kind," Lorenzo Núñez, head of the Mother Earth Defence Committee (CODEMAT) in Tarapacá region, over 1,700 kilometres north of Santiago, told IPS.  For years CODEMAT has opposed the construction of two coal-fired thermoelectric plants close to the Chanavayita fishing cove, 54 kilometres south of Iquique, the capital of Tarapacá.

MIAMI - Forecasters say Earl has strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it barrels toward several islands in the eastern Caribbean. (...) The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says Earl could make landfall over the Northern Leeward Islands as soon as Sunday night. It could become a major hurricane by Tuesday.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2010) -- A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.

Lead author Tong Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.

The scientists say the stronger El Niños help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies-a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming. While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Niño years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Niño's cool water counterpart, La Niña, was present.

"Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures," said Lee.

From 15 percent to 30 percent of the 7 billion tons of carbon that are released globally every year is unaccounted for, government scientists say. About 3 billions tons remain in the atmosphere, and the oceans absorb 2 billion tons. Vegetation, including the forests, probably absorbs the remaining 1 billion to 2 billion tons, but no one knows for sure how much and where.

Scientists suspect that the forests with the biggest trees store the most carbon, and the Northwest forests are probably among the largest carbon sinks in the world. However, they also say that while slower-growing older trees store more carbon, younger trees also absorb more carbon as they grow rapidly.

That sets up a debate about how forests should be managed, particularly whether older trees should be cut to make way for younger ones or whether they should be protected to store the carbon they contain.

"It's a hot topic," said Elaine Oneil, a research scientist at the University of Washington's School of Forest Resources and the executive director of a consortium that's been studying the issue. "We can't afford a one-size-fits-all solution. We can't lock it all up, and it's not feasible to cut it all for two-by-fours."

The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two meteorite impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.

The new findings are published in the journal Geology by a team lead by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen University.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. -- Evidence is mounting that climate change is transforming Alaska's boreal forest, an expert said yesterday.

"A biome shift is now occurring," University of Alaska, Fairbanks, forest ecologist Glenn Juday said. "You don't have to wait for the effects. They're happening."

The state's white spruce stands, which according to one recent study contain half of the genetic diversity of all white spruce in North America, are suffering.

Empirical studies of forests across Alaska show that North America's white spruce require at least 280 millimeters (11 inches) of precipitation each year, a number that rises if mean summer temperatures are higher than 15.5 degrees Celsius (roughly 60 degrees Fahrenheit).

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- If you want to know how people become addicted and why they keep using drugs, ask the people who are addicted.

Thirty-one of 75 patients hospitalized for opioid detoxification told University at Buffalo physicians they first got hooked on drugs legitimately prescribed for pain.

Another 24 began with a friend's left-over prescription pills or pilfered from a parent's medicine cabinet. The remaining 20 patients said they got hooked on street drugs.

However, 92 percent of the patients in the study said they eventually bought drugs off the street, primarily heroin, because it is less expensive and more effective than prescriptions.

(Reuters) - BP Plc's internal probe of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has placed some of the blame on mistakes by its engineers while finishing the deep sea oil well, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the report.

The probe also blamed BP engineers for misreading pressure data which indicated a blowout was imminent, the news agency said.

BP to engineers:  Under the bus wi'ye.

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.

A volcano has erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra for the first time in four centuries, sending smoke 1,500 metres into the air and prompting the evacation of thousands of residents.

There are no reports of casualties so far, and aviation in the area is unaffected.

Mount Sinabung, in the north of Sumatra, began erupting around midnight after rumbling for several days. Lava was overflowing from its crater, the head of Indonesia's vulcanology centre told Reuters news agency. The agency has placed the volcano on red alert, its highest level.

"Despite decreasing activities since the eruption, we haven't downgraded the status level," said Surono, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

"This is the first time since 1600 that Sinabung has erupted, and we have little knowledge in terms of its eruptive patterns and general forms."

LONDON, Aug 29 - Play will start as scheduled in the fourth test between England and Pakistan at Lord's on Sunday after a man was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said.

On Saturday, police said they had arrested a 35-year-old man for offering bribes to some Pakistan players for spot fixing during the test after allegations in the Sunday tabloid newspaper, The News of the World. Spot fixing involves betting on individual incidents during a match.

In a statement on Sunday, the ICC said its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit was assisting the police with their inquiries.

"No players nor team officials have been arrested in relation to this incident and the fourth test will continue as scheduled on Sunday," the ICC said.

KATHMANDU: Six years ago, a section of Nepal's media showed its dark side when it falsely attributed anti-Nepal statements to Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan, triggering anti- India riots in the Himalayan kingdom. Now, anti-India sentiments are being stoked afresh with a new virulent media campaign deliberately twisting the Indian government's concern over the protection of Indian investment in Nepal.

Smarting under falling circulation and dwindling revenue, the Kantipur Group, a private media house with dailies, magazines and a television as well as FM station in its stable, has begun spearheading an anti-India campaign after the Indian Embassy in Nepal warned that it would not be a silent spectator to the murky drama of Indian joint ventures in Nepal being maligned by media organisations disgruntled at not receiving advertisements from the JVs.

Science News Share   Blog   Cite Print   Email   Bookmark Liver Cells Created from Patients' Skin Cells

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2010) -- By creating diseased liver cells from a small sample of human skin, scientists have now shown that stem cells can be used to model a diverse range of inherited disorders. The University of Cambridge researchers' findings, which will hopefully lead to new treatments for those suffering from liver diseases, were published August 25 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Because liver cells (hepatocytes) cannot be grown in the laboratory, researching liver disorders is extremely difficult. However, today's new research, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC), demonstrates how to create diseased liver-like cells from patients suffering from a variety of liver disorders.

By replicating the organ's cells, researchers can not only investigate exactly what is happening in a diseased cell, they can also test the effectiveness of new therapies to treat these conditions. It is hoped that their discovery will lead to tailored treatments for specific individuals and eventually cell-based therapy -- when cells from patients with genetic diseases are 'cured' and transplanted back. Additionally, as the process could be used to model cells from other parts of the body, their findings could have implications for conditions affecting other organs.

Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen is suing Apple, Google, Facebook and eight other companies through his current firm, Interval Licensing LLC.

The lawsuit alleges that 11 different companies, including YouTubeYouTube, Netflix and AOL, have violated four different patents associated with web search and e-commerce.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, Interval Licensing LLC is a firm that holds IP developed at the now-defunct Interval Research. Interval Research was an incubator that Allen financed during the InternetInternet bubble of the late 1990s.

Germany's rail operator Deutsche Bahn has paid 2.7 million euros in compensation to passengers affected by air conditioning failures on high-speed trains during a heat-wave in July. 

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn has so far paid out 2.7 million euros ($3.5 million) to passengers affected by air conditioning failures on its high-speed trains.

 

A heat-wave in July exceeded the capabilities of the air-conditioning units on Inter-City Express (ICE) trains. Temperatures inside the trains were above 32 degrees Celsius (89 degrees Fahrenheit), causing some passengers to be hospitalized to due dehydration and the extreme heat.

More in our continuing coverage of why the British media is increasingly worth less than zero pence, courtesy of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph and avid (if somewhat bewildered) Bitterwallet reader Joff:

Paris Hilton was booked into jail and then released after Las Vegas police arrested the socialite for allegedly having cocaine in her purse Friday night.

The Las Vegas Police Department has released few details about the case. But a police official told CNN she was riding in a black Cadillac Escalade near the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel when police smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle and pulled it over. Both Hilton and the driver were arrested.