Chen Guang-who? Chinese official claims ignorance of blind activist
Label: LifestyleBEIJING (Reuters) – Despite causing a huge diplomatic incident between the world’s two largest economies earlier this year, the Chinese official in charge of the hometown of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng said on Friday that he has no idea who he was.
Chen, one of China’s most prominent human rights advocates, slipped away from under the noses of guards and eyes and ears of surveillance equipment around his village home near Linyi in eastern Shandong province in late April.
He then sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing for six days, embarrassing China and creating an awkward backdrop for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit which happened to fall at the same time.
But asked on the sidelines of a party congress in Beijing about Chen, Linyi’s Communist Party boss Zhang Shaojun deadpanned.
“I’ve never heard (of him),” Zhang told Reuters, before hurrying away into a closed-door meeting.
In May, Chen told Reuters that an unnamed central government official had promised to investigate accusations that local officials engineered his jailing on false charges and subsequent 19 months of extra-judicial house arrest and abuse.
But Zhang, a portly man with thinning hair, said he knew of no such investigation.
“I’ve never heard of this matter,” he said.
Robbed of his sight as a child, the rural-born Chen taught himself law and drew international attention in 2005 after accusing officials of enforcing late-term abortions and sterilizations.
Following intense negotiations between Chinese and U.S. officials, Chen left the embassy and was allowed to apply for a visa to study abroad. He is currently a visiting fellow at the New York University School of Law.
(Reporting by Gabriel Wildau; Editing by Ben Blanchard)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
States given more time to work on health exchanges
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration gave states extra time to work toward setting up new health insurance exchanges on Friday, days after President Barack Obama‘s re-election ensured the survival of his healthcare reform law.
The move is seen as a concession to dozens of states that delayed compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act until after the November 6 election. Opponents of the plan had hoped a victory for Republican Mitt Romney would ultimately result in the law’s repeal.
But with Obama now heading into a second term, and a November 16 federal deadline to declare their plans looming, many states needed more time to prepare for exchanges, complex marketplaces meant to offer working families private insurance at federally subsidized rates beginning in 2014.
Since Tuesday’s election, seven states including Texas, Kansas, Virginia and Florida have said they will not pursue state-operated exchanges and conservative political donors are mounting a publicity campaign to encourage more defections.
But there are also signs that opposition could be waning in some states.
In cases where states decide not to participate, the federal government says it will go in and build an exchange on its own.
“The administration would like to do whatever it can to bring states in,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health issues.
“It’s always been expected that if the president got reelected, a lot of states sitting on the sidelines would realize they don’t want the federal government building a state health insurance system. That’s what we’re seeing happening.”
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a November 9 letter to governors that the administration still expects states to declare whether they intend to operate their own exchanges by next Friday.
But they now have until December 14 to file blueprints showing how they would operate the marketplaces. So far, about 13 states are well on their way to setting up their own exchanges.
States can also choose to develop their exchange in partnership with the federal government. As many as 30 could go that route.
Sebelius said states that prefer a partnership now have until February 15, 2013, to declare their intentions and prepare the appropriate paperwork. She said states can still apply to run exchanges in subsequent years but emphasized that the start date for coverage has not changed.
“Consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have access to insurance through these new marketplaces on January 1, 2014, as scheduled, with no delays,” she said in the letter, which described the deadline extension as a response to state requests for more time.
Analysts characterized the extension as a substantial offer from the federal government.
“It’s about as far as they reasonably could extend, knowing that the systems have to be ready by Oct 1, 2013,” said Patrick Howard, who advises states on healthcare issues for Deloitte.
The Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping health legislation since the 1960s, would extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. About half would receive coverage through a planned expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor, and the other half through the exchanges.
The list of states that say they will not participate in the healthcare exchanges grew this week when Virginia and Kansas added their names.
Texas, South Dakota, South Carolina, Alaska and Florida confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they will not participate in exchanges. Louisiana had also opposed the plan before the election, but officials there did not respond to inquiries about their plans under Obama’s second term.
But Maine, which advised the administration last April that it did not intend to pursue a state-based exchange, said on Friday that further guidance from Sebelius’ department could make a difference.
“It’s too soon to tell,” said Adrienne Bennett, spokeswoman for Republican Governor Paul LePage.
“We’re willing to look at the information and move forward. But we can’t move forward if we don’t have information from the Obama administration. So we’re in a holding pattern,” she said.
Several Republican advocacy groups are expected to push against the implementation of Obama’s healthcare law. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative non-profit in part funded by billionaire Koch brothers, on Friday urged U.S. governors to reject the state-based exchange options, calling them “flawed” and “bloated bureaucracies” that put states’ budgets at risk.
(Writing by David Morgan; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Eric Walsh, Claudia Parsons and David Gregorio)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
IAG reveals 4,500 Iberia job cuts
Label: Business9 November 2012 Last updated at 06:19 ET
British Airways-owner IAG has announced 4,500 job cuts at Iberia as part of a widely anticipated restructuring of the Spanish carrier.
Iberia is cutting its 156-strong fleet by 25 aircraft, and reducing 15% of its network capacity, with the airline focusing on the most profitable routes.
The plan aims to stem Iberia’s cash losses by mid-2013, and raise profits by at least 600m euros ($ 766m; £479m).
IAG also revealed a 30% drop in pre-tax quarterly profits to 221m euros.
The drop was due to the poor performance at Iberia and at the recently-purchased UK regional airline BMI, as well as rising fuel, operating and engineering costs.
“The group performance is coming back to the levels seen in 2011 and this is particularly true if you strip out the BMI losses of 31m euros in the quarter,” said IAG chief executive Willie Walsh.
“However, there remains a strong difference between the performances of British Airways and Iberia.”
The parent company said it now expected to make an overall operating loss of 120m euros for the year – excluding any costs associated with the Iberia restructuring – with further losses likely in the remaining three months due to the impact of storm Sandy in the US.
Its pre-tax losses for the first nine months of the year have now reached 169m euros, compared with a 355m-euro profit in the same period last year.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Time is not on our side”
End Quote Rafael Sanchez-Lozano Iberia chief executive
‘Bleak’ future
Iberia has been suffering record losses, and IAG flagged up three months ago that job cuts were likely to come.
“Iberia is in a fight for survival,” said the Spanish subsidiary’s chief executive, Rafael Sanchez-Lozano. “It is unprofitable in all its markets.
“Unless we take radical action to introduce permanent structural change, the future for the airline is bleak.”
The 4,500 job losses are not as steep as the 7,000 figure that reportedly had been expected by the airline’s unions.
IAG said the restructuring would safeguard 15,500 posts at the airline.
However, the restructuring plan also includes “permanent salary adjustments to achieve a competitive and flexible cost base”.
The airline has set a deadline of 31 January next year to reach agreement with unions over the cuts.
“Time is not on our side,” said Mr Sanchez-Lozano, claiming that: “The company is burning 1.7m euros every day.
Continue reading the main story
Iberia in numbers
Founded: 1927
Employees: over 20,000
Aircraft: 156 (of which 56 at its Air Nostrum franchise)
Destinations: 140 in 43 countries as of 2011, including a leading role in Latin America
Earnings: 262m-euro loss (first nine months of 2012)
Passenger traffic: down 2.5% (year to October 2012 versus a year before)
Cargo traffic: down 13.1%
“If we do not reach consensus, we will have to take more radical action, which will lead to greater reductions in capacity and jobs.”
The restructuring plan comes a day after IAG announced that it would pay 113m euros to buy up the remaining 54% stake in Spanish budget airline Vueling that it did not already own.
Mr Walsh had said that the acquisition of Vueling would be “good for Spain” and “create new Spanish jobs”.
‘Playing hard ball’
On Wednesday, IAG released its latest passenger figures for October, which showed that traffic rose by 6.2% at British Airways from a year earlier, while at Iberia traffic was down 3.7%.
The airline’s woes in part stem from the weakness of the eurozone economy, including a sharp downturn in its Spanish home market. However, according to Mr Sanchez-Lozano, the airline’s problems are also “systemic and pre-date the country’s problems”.
The cost of the restructuring will be borne by Iberia itself, IAG said, and by implication will not be subsidised by the more profitable British Airways.
“IAG and Iberia are now playing hardball with Spanish unions,” said Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers.
“As a global industry, airlines and governments are unable to duck the issue of labour competitiveness.”
Iberia’s loss contrasts with the success of budget airline Ryanair, which raised its full-year profit forecast earlier in the week by 20%.
“Consumer demand for low-priced fares continues to apply pressure across the industry, with flexible labour laws now lying at the heart of the issue,” added Mr Bowman.
BBC News – Business
Assad says will live and die in Syria
Label: WorldDOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.
Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.
The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.
“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”
Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.
The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.
The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.
“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.
“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”
QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION
Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.
Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.
“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”
An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”
Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.
Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.
International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.
Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.
“VICIOUS CIRCLE”
The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.
But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.
The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.
Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.
Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.
The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.
Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.
A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.
“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.
(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Mark Wahlberg to star in next ‘Transformers’ movie
Label: LifestyleLOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Wahlberg, roll out.
“Transformers” director Michael Bay says the 41-year-old actor will star in the franchise’s fourth film.
Bay called Wahlberg the “perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers‘ legacy” in a post on his blog Thursday. He previously squashed rumors that Wahlberg was joining the film franchise about warring robots.
Bay worked with Wahlberg on his upcoming film, “Pain and Gain.”
“Transformers 4″ is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures on June 27, 2014.
Bay has said the next film will take a new direction in the series. The first three movies starred Shia LaBeouf and featured Peter Cullen as the voice of Autobot general Optimus Prime.
The third “Transformers” film, “Dark of the Moon,” was the second highest-grossing film of 2011.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Tiny Tick May Be Spreading Vegetarianism
Label: HealthA tiny tick might be to blame for a rash of meat allergies in central and southern regions of the U.S.
A bite from the lone star tick, so-called for the white spot on its back, looks innocent enough. But researchers say saliva that sneaks into the wound might trigger a reaction to meat agonizing enough to convert lifelong carnivores into wary vegetarians.
“People will eat beef and then anywhere from three to six hours later start having a reaction; anything from hives to full-blown anaphylactic shock,” said Dr. Scott Commins, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “Most people want to avoid having the reaction, so they try to stay away from the food that triggers it.”
Cases of the bizarre allergy are cropping up in areas ripe with lone star ticks, according to research presented today at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. But whether the bugs cause meat allergies remains unclear.
“It’s hard to prove,” said Commins. “We’re still searching for the mechanism.”
Allergies are immune reactions to foreign substances, from pet hair to peanuts. As antibodies attack the substance that caused the reaction, they trigger the release of histamine, a chemical that causes hives and, in severe cases, life-threatening anaphylaxis.
Commins said blood levels of antibodies for alpha-gal, a sugar found in beef, lamb and pork, rise after a single bite from the lone star tick. He said he hopes experiments that combine tiny samples of tick saliva with the invisible antibodies will prove the two are directly connected.
“It’s complicated, no doubt,” said Commins. “But we think it’s something in the saliva.”
The long lag between exposure to meat and the allergic reaction complicates things even more.
“Most food allergies occur very quickly,” said Dr. Stanley Fineman, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. “It’s also a bit unusual to see adults develop a food allergy.”
But the tick bite theory could help explain the sudden onset of some meat allergies, Fineman added.
Other Common food allergens include peanuts, shellfish, milk, eggs, soy and wheat. And most food allergy sufferers are glad to discover the source of their misery, even if it means upheaval for their diets.
“Avoidance is the best way to handle any food allergy,” he said.
But meat allergies are hard for some brawny barbecuers to swallow.
“Some people are totally destroyed,” said Commins. “Others say, ‘Maybe I’m better off without it.’”
Also Read
Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Bank hands QE income to Treasury
Label: Business9 November 2012 Last updated at 09:18 ET
The Bank of England has said it will give the Treasury the interest it earns on certain government debts it holds.
The Bank owns £375bn in gilts due to its quantitative easing (QE) policy of buying up debt to boost the economy.
The transfer will cut the government’s borrowing needs and the net debt it reports in its financial accounts.
As of last March, the Bank held £24bn in cash received from government interest payments, a figure expected to rise to £35bn by next March.
The Bank has been purchasing government debt from the market with newly printed money as part of its QE policy since March 2009.
The interest income ultimately belongs to the government under the terms of an indemnity provided to the Bank, but until now, the cash has been sitting unused in a dedicated account – the Asset Purchase Facility (APF) – at Threadneedle Street.
“Holding large amounts of cash in the APF is economically inefficient as it requires the government to borrow money to fund these coupon payments,” said the Treasury upon announcing the agreement.
In future, any additional interest payments received by the Bank will be handed back to the Treasury at the end of each quarter, after deducting the Bank’s own cost of borrowing.
Continue reading the main story
George Osborne has decided that it is bonkers for the Treasury to borrow £11bn a year to generate spare cash that sits at the APF doing nothing”
End Quote
This is likely to reduce the government’s budget deficit by about £11bn a year, based on the Bank’s current cost of borrowing, according to the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston.
That compares with the £116bn public sector net borrowing for the current tax year that was forecast in March by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
In a letter to Chancellor George Osborne, the Bank’s governor, Mervyn King, pointed out that, because of the way that the APF functions, the Treasury may well end up having to repay the cash, and more, in future.
This would occur if the Bank of England raised its own interest rate – which it uses to set monetary policy – to a level where it was paying more interest on its own borrowings than the AFP was earning on the government debt it holds.
The move comes a day after the Bank decided at a monthly policy-setting meeting not to extend its QE programme.
The Treasury said that the agreement was in line with the practice in the US and Japan, where central banks have been buying up their respective governments’ debts as part of a QE programme.
BBC News – Business
Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1
Label: WorldACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.
Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.
The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.
Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.
An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.
A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.
“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.
President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.
The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.
The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.
Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Harvard Students Send First Burger Into Space
Label: TechnologyOne burger has gone where no burger has gone before: the edge of space.
Five Harvard students, sponsored by a local burger restaurant, spent about 30 hours total over two weekends sending the first burger toward the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
The students, juniors Renzo Lucioni, Nuseir Yassin, Daniel Broudy, Jamie Law-Smith and Matt Moellman, spent a weekend brainstorming ideas.
The five, mostly science majors, decided they wanted to send a hamburger into space and contacted Jon Olinto, co-founder of B.good burger.
Yassin told ABC News, “School just got a bit repetitive.” He said they came up with the idea as a “purely fun project.”
Olinto was immediately interested and asked his secretary to send over a check to the students. She thought Olinto was joking at first and didn’t send the check until after he told her the students were serious about the project.
“This is the most incredible thing that could happen to us ,” said co-founder Jon Olinto to ABC News.
Two weekends, a GoPro Hero camera, a HTC Rezound phone and a 600-gram weather balloon later, the students were ready to launch the project. They had gotten the burger two days before, varnished it, super-glued the layers together and screwed it to the pedestal.
SLIDESHOW: 9 Over-the-Top Cheeseburgers
Launched in Sturbridge, Mass. on October 27 at 12:22 P.M., the B.good burger took about two hours to ascend to an altitude of 30,000 meters (19 miles), and an hour to descend.
“There were so many things that could go wrong,” said Yassin. He listed issues with the camera or where the burger landed as some of their concerns.
Once it landed, it was recovered about 130 miles north of Boston. The phone transmitted GPS data to the students every 30 minutes, but they also used wind data to predict where it would land. The burger landed high up in a tree and B.good had to hire a tree climber to get it down.
They checked their video. “We were nervous that all of it was blurry and we couldn’t see space,” said Yassin. Luckily, he said, they “actually found 2 to 3 minutes of clear footage.”
The students already have the funds for another mission and hope to involve a local high school.
“All of us have aspirations in doing something in the private sector of space,” said Yassin.
The restaurant, which offered a special buy one burger, get one free promotion in conjunction with the launch, spent about $ 1,000 on the project.
“Definitely the best 1,000 bucks we ever spent,” Olinto said.
Also Read
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Copyright © News nephew. All rights reserved.
Design 
