Headline May 20th, 2012 / Hacking Hedge

HACKING HEDGE

Respectful dedication Carl Bernstein/Washington Post - Madeleine Albright – Dr Paul Krugman

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Carl Bernstein

Madeleine Albright

Dr Paul Krugman

In the natural scheme of things James wanted to replace his father, but never wanted to be him. Obviously in James eyes, Rupert was the past ; James was to be the future. In no way does James represent the values that got the company into the hacking mess - he self consciously regrets them. It's a class issue.

In many ways, James total focus was on being a new kind of a media executive. That's what he truly saw as his self appointed mandate; to remake News Corp as an elite company. All of News Corp defining traits - its tabloid newspapers, its conservative politicking, its low life associations - would , sooner, or later, undergo a makeover in James image.

Sky was his model ; an aggressive but anodyne modern media company. Under James you would not know what News Corp stood for. Except its own success. To achieve this, one could argue, James had in many ways, gone to war with News Corp.

The stakes could not have been higher ; how to move the company out from under his father's influence. Or said in a different way, how to become his father's main influence. Rupert Murdoch is most moved by the last person he has spoken to.

As the hardened and guilty father - Rupert - henpecked to , suffering the admonitions of his wives was never too comfortable with James, but was more comfortable and understood his grand children better, - this might well have caused him , unsurprisingly, to overcompensate in his embrace of James.

But all in all, to those who knew and understood them best - found Rupert clumsy , tongue-tied , inarticulate and , ultimately , real. But James they considered a made-up character out of his own ambition.

Great and kind readers, the plot thickens! Don't miss morrow's post in which we delight you on the planning of the hacking.

With many thanks to !WOW!. Good night and God bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless!

Mulhenberg Holds Second Annual Entrepreneurial Studies Innovation Challenge

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – (April 24, 2012) – The third annual Muhlenberg College Entrepreneurial Studies Innovation Challenge will be held on April 24 from 6:15 – 8:00 p.m. in Seegers Union Room 113

The Office of Entrepreneurial Studies invited all current Muhlenberg students to develop and submit a comprehensive plan for an original, innovative idea that solves a current social or market problem or fills a gap in the marketplace. Any significant social issue or market opportunity can be addressed in this competition. Individuals and/or teams will compete for a chance to win "seed money" to help get their ideas off the ground.

Join judges: Cathy Bernard P'15, President of HCM Corporation and Member of Parents Council; Linda Freedman, Owner of Advanta Strategies in Allentown; Matt Tuerk, Assistant Director of the Allentown Economic Development Corporation; and Mark Margulies '14, winner of last year's Innovation Challenge. Students competing this year include sophomores, juniors and seniors, and representatives from business, finance, psychology and sustainability studies.

Original source here.

Facebook IPO Investors Confused By Technical Error

Some investors who thought they had bought Facebook shares at the opening of trading were left without knowing for hours whether they had received the shares.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the glitches in the trading of Facebook's initial public offering around the time of its scheduled debut Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

The glitches caused traders problems changing and canceling their orders. Nasdaq said around noon that it was "investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages" for Facebook stock.

The SEC will review the incident with Nasdaq "to determine its cause and steps that will be taken to address it," agency spokesman John Nester said.

Technical glitches at the Nasdaq Stock Market had already delayed the trading of Facebook's stock by half an hour. The stock, which was expected to start trading at 11 am, opened at 11:32 a.m. at $42.05 and ended the day at $38.23.

Joseph Saluzzi, co-founder of broker Themis Trading, said it's understandable that a delay at the opening might occur with a large IPO like Facebook's. "The problem is when people don't know if they had bought or sold a certain number of shares and that affects how people manage risk," Saluzzi said.

Brokers who might have wanted to sell after the IPO was priced weren't sure if they had received a piece of the highly-anticipated offering from the online social networking phenomenon.

Nasdaq didn't respond to requests for comment, but the exchange posted a message on one of its websites telling investors who had problems buying or selling Facebook stock between 11:11 and 11:30 a.m. to call Nasdaq before 5 p.m. with their order information.

"Our intention is to reach resolution of those trades today through an offline matching process," Nasdaq said in a comment posted on its website. "If at the end of that process, a firm continues to have questions or concerns, the firm needs to submit a formal accommodation request to us through the normal channels."

In March, there was a far worse technical foul-up at the intended IPO of BATS Global Markets Inc., a Kansas-based company that competes with Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange in offering stock trading services.

BATS tried to list its stock on its own trading systems, but a series of snafus prevented the stock from ever opening for trading. The company wound up canceling its IPO and its CEO, Joe Ratterman, issued a public apology.

Collaborative Effort to Measure Food Waste Moves BMC One Step Closer to Composting

Letting nature take its course sometimes requires a surprising level of effort.

Bryn Mawr College produces a substantial quantity of food waste, and composting it—allowing natural processes to transform it into nourishment for growing plants—has long been an appealing prospect to environmentally conscious members of the college community.

Daniele Arad-Neeman and Karen Leitner sponsored a Plenary resolution supporting the composting of food waste.

Last year, a group of students investigated composting options for the College as part of a senior seminar in environmental studies. The students estimated that the incineration of the College’s food waste releases about 9,000 lbs. of carbon per year, a figure that could be reduced by composting. According to their calculations, the potential benefits of composting outweighed the costs—but they discovered a number of challenges to be overcome.

Now, with the support of key staff members and patrons of the College’s dining halls, the student Self-Government Association’s Sustainable Food Committee has taken a critical step toward confronting those challenges: measuring the amount of compostable waste produced by the dining halls.

A preliminary three-day trial last November established a rough figure of about 350 lbs. of compostable food waste per day for each of Bryn Mawr’s two dining halls. Students who supervised this effort made a report to the College’s Board of Trustees, which expressed its support for the effort.

A more extensive, two-week trial was completed on April 1. This second test involved an agreement with the College’s waste-disposal contractor, which collected the compostable material separately and hauled it to its closest composting facility.

Getting This Far

Nora Schmidt and Jasmine Arnold worked with students and staff on a composting trial.

The idea of composting the College’s food waste has prompted interest for years, says Director of Dining Services Bernie Chung-Templeton, but municipal waste-disposal regulations complicate the issue.

Lower Merion Township supports closed-container composting of household food waste, and any residential landscape waste the township collects at curbside is composted and offered to township residents as a soil amendment free of charge. But food waste on the commercial or institutional scale at which the College operates is subject to a different level of sanitation regulation.

“The regulations are strict about speedy removal of food waste,” says Grounds Director Ed Harman, who has worked closely with the students and Chung-Templeton on the composting trials. “Even if we could obtain a variance, the quantity of waste we generate would require a good deal of space if we kept it on campus through the composting cycle.”

Rising juniors Daniele Arad-Neeman and Karen Leitner, who joined the SGA’s Sustainable Food Committee as first-year students, were aware of these issues, thanks to a senior-project presentation given in the spring of 2011 by senior environmental-studies concentrators Hope Fillingim, Julie Griffin, Dawn Hathaway, Hannah Payne, and Larken Wright-Kennedy.

But Arad-Neeman and Leitner were sure there was enough community support for composting to find a way around those obstacles. To demonstrate student support, the two presented a resolution in favor of composting food waste at the SGA’s Plenary meeting in the fall of 2011. The resolution passed easily, giving the project a new momentum.

Meanwhile, seniors Nora Schmidt and Jasmine Arnold had been investigating composting possibilities on their own. Because of their part-time jobs in the dining hall, they had a sense of how much food waste the College generated.

The passage of the Plenary resolution brought Arad-Neeman, Leitner, Schmidt, and Arnold together, and the composting project became the main focus of the Sustainable Food Committee’s efforts during the 2011-12 academic year.

Support from all sectors of the community was necessary to make the measurement project work, the students say, and they got it.

“We inherited this project from older peers who let us know that it was going to be hard—but also that there were amazing resources for it,” says Leitner.

During both the first and second trials, the Sustainable Food Committee recruited student volunteers to stand near the trash cans in the dining halls to remind diners to scrape their compostable waste into the designated containers.

After the successful completion of the first trial, which set a baseline for post-consumer food waste, Dining Services stepped in, providing posters and other educational materials for the second, longer trial.

Prep cooks in Dining Services were also involved in the second trial, which measured pre-consumer, as well as post-consumer, waste.

“Composting requires some extra effort on the part of Dining Services workers,” says Schmidt. “But they were happy to contribute to the project. Everybody seems to be enthusiastic about reducing waste.”

Communication of the project’s goals and progress were critical to its success, says Arnold: “I learned to think about all the ways in which people might be affected. Keeping everyone in the loop is really important.”

Next Steps
Now that the College has established a reliable figure for the amount of compostable waste it generates, it is in a better position to weigh its options, says Harman who plans to investigate several alternatives over the summer.

One possibility is collaborating with other local institutions to establish a composting route with the College’s current trash hauler. Harman will also look into finding a suitable composting facility that is closer to campus than the Delaware facility used during the trial; collaborating with other institutions on hauling to a closer facility is also on the table.

“I was not really expecting to have made this much progress by this time,” says.

Original source here.

Love of Liberal Arts Drives Professors’ Donation

Retired Sweet Briar professors Sue and Lee Piepho recently committed to a bequest of $1.5 million to the College. The endowed fund will support programs and facilities that have been part of the Piephos’ lives here for more than 40 years.

There’s the Lower Lake they used to swim in during the summers, and the campus gardens Sue adores. Part of the money is going toward preserving Sweet Briar’s natural and landscaped environment.

An avid gardener, Sue cultivates her love of nature in their home, as well. The Piephos’ living room is like a botanical garden, with a variety of plants climbing almost to the ceiling, and giant windows framing the greenery outside. The house, designed by local architect Hal Craddock in 1990, sits in a field above the lake. Local river stone embellishes the fireplace in the living room, which was built to face the fireplace in the historic boathouse.

While the connection between the two structures was Craddock’s idea, the Piephos put a lot of thought into the design of their home, as well. Making sure that it fit into the existing landscape was one important aspect. Utilizing its environment was another.

“[We wanted to] bring the outside in,” Sue explains, and she’s not just talking about plants. The living room windows face south, thus allowing for plenty of light and the use of solar energy. “The quarry tile and southern exposure of the solarium gives not only a delightful environment for my plants, but low energy bills in the winter. On a sunny day in mid-winter, the house gets warmer than our thermostat setting, and it is fun to feel like you are in the Caribbean on sunny days.”

All over the house, stacks of books rich with travel destinations, history and literature in foreign languages bear witness to the world outside of Sweet Briar. Not surprisingly, the Piephos have decided to reserve some of the endowment for international scholarships. It’s also a very personal connection: Their love story began at sea.

“We met on a boat going to Europe, between sophomore and junior years in college,” Sue says.

Sue stayed with a German family for six weeks to advance her knowledge of the German language, while Lee road-tripped across Europe in a Volkswagen convertible. They later met up in Paris and London.

“The experience in my case was transformative,” Lee says. “I learned a vast amount about people and cultures.” For Sue, this was her second time abroad; she spent ninth grade at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland, and traveled through Europe at that time.

The Piephos have since traveled to various places around the world, including Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Sweden, China, Central America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

“We can appreciate how much you gain from going to another country, and I think you look at your country in a different way after you’ve been abroad for an extended period of time,” Sue says. “I think it’s an experience we want students to have — both foreign students coming here and Sweet Briar students going abroad.”

Another project dear to the Piephos’ hearts is the planned addition to Sweet Briar’s library. For many years, Cochran has served as an extension of Lee’s own library at home. A former English professor with a focus on Shakespeare and Renaissance culture, Lee still uses it frequently for his research, but also donates his own books to it.

“Historically, I’ve been a big supporter of the library,” he says. “It probably comes with the discipline. I’ve always thought that libraries have a special place. A library is and should be a cultural center of a college.”

Lee, who is the only professor to have won the Student Government Association’s Excellence in Teaching award twice, came to Sweet Briar in 1969 and retired from teaching in 2005 — two years before Sue stopped teaching chemistry.

When planning how to divide up the endowment, it was clear that the sciences should receive part of it, too. The discipline had grown up with the Piephos over the years.

http://sbc.edu/news/love-drives-donation

Triplets Share Uncommon Variety Of Common Interest

WOOSTER, Ohio — Triplets are known to have a lot in common — well beyond their physical resemblance — but The College of Wooster’s Haug sisters have taken their similarities to an entirely new level.

For starters, Melissa, Priscilla, and Rebecca are identical — a rarity for triplets. But that’s only the beginning. All three majored in neuroscience with minors in chemistry, and all three earned honors on their Senior Independent Study (I.S.) project (Wooster’s nationally renowned undergraduate research experience). They all swam competitively at the varsity level for four years, and they all chose to live in the same residence halls all four years. They also shared the same circle of friends and took similar classes. In addition, all three plan to attend medical school after graduation. Melissa is looking to pursue sports medicine or emergency medicine; Priscilla is thinking about neurology; and Rebecca is considering neurosurgery.

Born in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, the family moved to Lexington, Ky., when the triplets were 9 years old. Several years later they moved to Charlotte, N.C., where the family still resides. But when it came time to choose a college, the three selected Wooster because of its academic credentials — and, believe it or not, because they actually like the weather in northeast Ohio.

“We like the snow, but that’s not the only reason we came to Wooster,” says Melissa. “Our high school counselor highly recommended it because of Senior I.S. We had other Ohio schools on our list, but we chose Wooster because of its academics, especially Independent Study, and because it was a place where we could participate in a very competitive swim program.”

Initially, the three sisters appeared to be headed down different paths of study. Rebecca planned to major in neuroscience, but Priscilla and Melissa had other ideas. Priscilla was interested in biochemistry and molecular biology, while Melissa was originally thinking about biology, but switched to chemistry. Then a mutual friend suggested that they take a class in human neuropsychology, which was taught by Amy Jo Stavnezer, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience. “We learned about neurological disorders and diseases, as well as how the brain controls the body and behavior,” says Priscilla. “The subject was not only interesting, but it was also challenging, and it led Melissa and I to join Rebecca as neuroscience majors.”

Since that decision, the triplets excelled academically and athletically. Their grade-point averages range from 3.5-3.8, and all three had considerable success as members of the varsity swim team. In fact, Melissa and Priscilla set school records and qualified for the NCAA Division III Championship Meet this year.

Sometimes their competitive nature gets the best of them, but for the most part they are able to manage their emotions. “We’re competitive in all facets of our lives, especially academically,” says Rebecca. “It is this competitiveness that has allowed us to excel, both in and out of the pool.”

Put them together in a room, and things are much more relaxed as the sisters seem to complete each other’s sentences, like a monologue but with three people. Their older brother calls it “triplet surround sound,” according to Priscilla.

As similar as they appear, there are a few differences among the three, ranging from their personalities to their favorite foods. Each has pursued their individual interest in neuroscience in different directions. Priscilla’s I.S. project used a mouse model to investigate the effects of stress on Alzheimer’s disease, while Rebecca explored the restorative effects of swimming on a rodent model of Parkinson’s disease. Melissa’s project, “Life’s Tough, Wear a Helmet”, investigated the lasting effects of multiple concussions on college athletes.

Whatever differences they may have, it never seems to weaken the bonds of sisterhood. “We sometimes argue about wearing each other’s clothes or jewelry,” says Melissa, “but it usually doesn’t last for more than a few moments.”

As serious as they have been about swimming and their studies, the Haugs have not been above a little mischief every once in a while. Although they’ve never tried to pull a switch on one of the other’s boyfriends or in one of their classes, they have been known to trade swim caps and switch lanes during practice, just to confuse their teammates and coaches.

After graduation, this talented trio will split up and go in different directions, but not just yet. After receiving their diplomas Monday morning at Wooster’s commencement ceremony, the three will embark upon a summer research internship at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which is affiliated with the medical school. Then they will go their separate ways, but not without a few reflections on the past four years. “We’ve really enjoyed our time at Wooster,” says Melissa. “It was an unforgettable experience, and I am glad I could share it with my sisters

Source article here.

Macalester students receive U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarships

St. Paul, Minn. – Salman Haji ’14 from Albuquerque, N.M.,and Patrick Snyder ’13 from Versailles, Ky., have been awarded U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) to study critical languages this summer. Both will study Arabic.

Haji and Snyder were among the approximately 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received a scholarship from the State Department’s CLS Program this year to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu languages. U.S. students will spend seven to 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in 14 countries where these languages are spoken. The CLS Program provides fully funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.

Haji will be in Amman, Jordan, from June 10 – August 12,and Snyder will be in Tunis, Tunisia, from May 28 – July 30. Both will be immersed in intensive Arabic language programs.

The programs cover approximately one academic year of university-level Arabic coursework during the eight-week program, and are designed to meet the needs of students from a variety of language levels and backgrounds. Extracurricular activities are designed to supplement the formal curriculum, including regular one-on-one meetings with peer tutors for conversational practice, as well as cultural activities and excursions designed to expand students’ understanding of Jordanian/Tunisian life and culture within the broader tapestry of the Arab world.

The 2012 CLS Program received over 5,200 applications. Representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, students from a range of academic disciplines and 239 institutions were selected for scholarships in 2012 through a merit-based selection process.

The U.S. Department of State launched the Critical Language Scholarships for Intensive Summer Institutes in 2006 to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. During CLS Program outreach activities, particular attention is paid to states/regions of the U.S. that have been historically under-represented in the CLS applicant pool and to students from diverse backgrounds and academic majors.

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,958 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.

University Press Release here.

Frankfurt sees 20,000 protest austerity

Around 20,000 people marched through the centre of Germany's financial capital Frankfurt on Saturday, police said. They were protesting against European austerity programmes.
It was the only demonstration of the anti-capitalist movement "Blockupy Frankfurt" that was authorised by the city and justice authorities.

The other protests over the past four days were held despite being banned by city officials. "Blockupy Frankfurt" had called for four days of protests, from Wednesday to Saturday, to paralyse Germany's financial capital and hinder the work of private banks and the European Central Bank (ECB).

Organisers put the turnout for Saturday's peaceful march at more than 25,000 people, some of whom carried placards saying "The eurozone is in ruins" and "When unfairness becomes the rule, resistance becomes a duty."

Police arrested more than 400 people in the city on Friday ahead of Saturday's main protest.

The city has been filled with 5,000 police officers since Wednesday, who even suggested bankers going to work should not wear suits and keep a low profile.

Many banks were closed for a public holiday on Thursday, but some suggested their employees work from home on Friday. A number of central metro stations were closed and shops barricaded.

Commerzbank, one of Germany's top banks, which occupies one of the biggest skyscrapers in Frankfurt, has said it would close until Sunday.

The ECB's huge Eurotower building was the focus of a number of protests on Friday, while there was some disruption in the city centre too, a police spokeswoman said.

Police said most demonstrations were peaceful, atlhough some activists claimed those who had been arrested were left for hours in police buses.

The city's mayor banned most demonstrations over public order concerns, though protesters have been given permission to march on Saturday.

"Blockupy" demonstrators hailed the action as a success, with spokesman Erik Buhn telling German television channel Phoenix, "We have revitalised civil disobedience."

On Wednesday, police cleared a group of protesters from the "Indignant" movement who had camped for seven months in front of the ECB.

73-year-old Japanese woman scales Mount Everest

KATHMANDU — A 73-year-old Japanese mountaineer who became the oldest woman to conquer Mount Everest a decade ago smashed her own record on Saturday, organisers said.

Tamae Watanabe, who set off from Kathmandu early in April and climbed the world’s highest peak from the Tibet side, was accompanied by four team members including Japanese mountaineer and photographer Noriyuki Muraguchi.

“This morning at 7 a.m. she reached the top. She climbed from the north side and now she is descending,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, of the Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking mountaineering agency.

Watanabe made history when she scaled the 8,848-meter peak on May 16, 2002, taking the title of world’s oldest female Everest summiteer from Poland’s Anna Czerwinska.

Min Bahadur Sherchan, from Nepal, is the oldest man to conquer the mountain. He reached the summit in 2008 at the age of 76 years and 340 days.

Around 3,000 people have climbed Everest, which straddles Nepal and China, since it was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Every year hundreds of people set out in April to attempt the climb.

Google brings further tweaks to Gmail

Google announced two new tweaks to Gmail this week, including further integration with Google+.

Among other things, the changes bring Google profile photos of your friends and contacts to the top of your in-box under certain circumstances, and in a blog post, Product Manager Itamar Gilad said they were meant to "continue to bring people front and center in Gmail." Gilad spelled out the tweaks:

Quick access to contact details
When you search for an e-mail address [in Gmail], the search results will now show you contact details in addition to that person's [Google] profile photo [if he or she has one] and the e-mails sent from and to them. From here, you can start a chat, call their phone and more. Plus, if your contacts have a Google+ profile, this information will stay up to date automatically. You can get to these same results in a variety of ways including from the people widget, contacts, and the chat list search menu.

Improved circle integration and circle search
In addition to adding contact details to search results, we've made some improvements to the [Google+] circles integration announced in December. When you select a circle, you'll now see profile photos of people in that circle at the top right of the page. Plus, when you click on these images you'll be taken directly to search results with contact details.

Circles are also now supported in search and filters. Find messages from a specific circle by typing circle:[circle name] in the search box. You can also find mail from any of your circled contacts by searching with has:circle. You can refine your search even further with other criteria and create filters based on circles. This means you can now view all the unread e-mails from your "Friends" circle or automatically star every message that comes from your "VIP" circle.

Google juiced up Google+ notification e-mails in Gmail earlier this month, and before that had already started integrating Google+ into Gmail -- recent new features include being able to add people to circles directly from the desktop and viewing recent Google+ content in the people widget.

When Google first launched Google+ last June, the company said its goal was to move toward the integration of its products with its social network (presumably to get the hot breath of Facebook off its neck). In addition to the recent Gmail tie-ups, Google+ has been connected up with Google News and YouTube, moves not everyone has been happy about.

Source

Microsoft wins import ban on some Motorola phones

The U.S. International Trade Commission handed Microsoft a victory in one of its patent disputes with Motorola, banning the import of some Motorola phones.

The agency found that Motorola violated a Microsoft patent for that software that creates meeting requests and schedules them on mobile devices. Motorola will likely need to alter the software in the phones before they come into the United States.

The ruling is now subject to a 60-day presidential review. Motorola has to post a bond of 33 cents for each phone that has entered the United States.

"Microsoft started its ITC investigation asserting nine patents against Motorola Mobility," Motorola said in a statement. "Although we are disappointed by the Commission's ruling that certain Motorola Mobility products violated one patent, we look forward to reading the full opinion to understand its reasoning.... We will explore all options including appeal."

The dispute revolves around Motorola's use of the scheduling technology in some of its devices, including Droid phones and Xoom tablets, that run Google's mobile Android operating system. Microsoft argued that the software infringed on its ActiveSync technology.

An administrative law judge ruled in December that Motorola infringed on one of the nine patents that Microsoft had cited. Today's decision, from the full commission largely upholds that ruling.

"We're pleased the full Commission agreed that Motorola has infringed Microsoft's intellectual property, and we hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the US by taking a license to our patents," Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel David Howard said in a statement.

Technology companies in recent years have increasingly turned to the ITC to settle their disputes. Companies can pursue an ITC case in parallel with civil lawsuits, and the threat of an embargo on products typically forces companies to settle more quickly.

Source

Mitsubishi builds i-Miev Evo electric car

Mitsubishi Evos, performance-modified versions of the Lancer model, became legendary on the offroad rally circuit for their exceptional handling. Now Mitsubishi takes the Evo designation into the future with the first i-Miev Evolution, a performance version of its pod-like i-Miev electric city car.

Mitsubishi built the i-Miev Evo for the annual Pikes Peak Hill Climb, a race featuring 156 turns over 12.42 miles with a 4,700 foot ascent. The company says it started with a stock i-Miev, but the specs show heavy modification. Along with a completely new, carbon fiber body, the i-Miev Evo gets three 80 kilowatt electric motors, one for the front wheels and two at the rears. These motors get juice from a 35 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.

The stock i-Miev, one of which will also run the course, uses a single 49 kilowatt motor on the rear wheels, powered by a 16 kilowatt-hour battery pack. It seems obvious which one should win.

At last year's Hill Climb, the Nissan Leaf conquered its division of one car. Nissan has not entered this year's event as of yet.

The Hill Climb, which takes place on July 8, will see seven cars competing in the Electric division. This new division seems to be open to production and custom-built cars. The i-Miev Evo will face tough competition against the likes of Summit's Her-02, HCE's Lightning XP12, and Tajima Motor's Monster Sport Pikes Peak Special.

Toyota Motorsport also has an undisclosed vehicle in the Electric division, which could be a race-modified version of the recently unveiled RAV4 EV.

Source

Sea Shepherd leader Watson freed on bail while extradition decided

BERLIN — A German court on Friday granted bail to Paul Watson, the founder of marine conservation group Sea Shepherd, while authorities decide whether he can be extradited to Costa Rica.

The higher regional court in Frankfurt said in a statement a Costa Rican extradition request would be considered on charges stemming from a high-seas confrontation over shark finning in 2002.

Watson, a Canadian national whom Sea Shepherd members affectionately call “the captain”—and who looks the part with a thick shock of white hair and beard—is accused of “putting a ship’s crew in danger”.

According to Sea Shepherd, the incident took place in Guatemalan waters when the organisation encountered an illegal shark finning operation run by a Costa Rican ship called the Varadero.

Sea Shepherd says that while escorting the Varadero back to port, a Guatemalan gunboat was dispatched to intercept the Sea Shepherd members after the crew of the Varadero falsely accused the Sea Shepherds of trying to kill them.

The court said the alleged crimes would also have been against the law in Germany and had not passed the statute of limitations, and therefore ordered Watson to be placed in custody awaiting an extradition decision.

This decision can only be taken by the German justice ministry after several more legal steps, Ingo Noehre, a court spokesman, told AFP.

At the same time, the court ruled that Watson should be released on bail of 250,000 euros ($318,000).

“He may however not leave Germany while the extradition process is being decided and must adhere to further conditions,” the court said in a statement.

The veteran environmentalist was detained in Frankfurt on Sunday.

Sea Shepherd is best known for its annual pursuit of the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctica, using increasingly militant ways to halt the hunt.

Watson has said that his organization was the only navy in the world that defends the oceans. “Our goal is to protect the oceans because if they die, we will all die,” he told AFP in a 2010 interview.

Teenager killed, 4 gravely injured in Italy school blast

ROME — A 16-year-old girl died and four other teens were gravely injured Saturday in a powerful bomb blast outside their school named after a woman killed by the mafia with her judge husband in 1992.

School officials said the blast, which went off outside the building as students were arriving for class at the all-girls Francesca Morvillo Falcone vocational school in the southern city of Brindisi, knocked several of them to the ground.

“I had just gone into the bar in front of the school. I saw everything falling. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. There’s something missing now,” one survivor told local television.

An employee at the prosecutor’s office next to the school told the Repubblica daily: “I was opening the window and the blast wave hit me. I saw kids on the ground. All blackened. Their books on fire. It was terrifying.”

Local emergency official Fabiano Amati told the news channel Sky Tg24 one 16-year-old girl “did not survive”.

Hospital official Paola Ciannamea told reporters that one of the injured girls, also 16, who had initially been reported as dead by police sources cited by Italian media, was alive but in a “very serious condition”.

A second injured girl could lose her legs and two others have burns all over their bodies. Five other students were reported suffering only light injuries.

Italian media cited officials saying that the device was composed of gas canisters hidden in a container near a wall at the entrance of the school.

The school’s director Valeria Vitale was quoted as saying by the daily La Repubblica: “The first people to come to the aid of the injured were a teacher, a monitor and a technician… The students are in shock.”

Police quickly cordoned off the school and bomb disposal experts rushed to the scene. The area was strewn with debris and one wall was blackened.

The blast went off around 7:45 a.m. Most Italian students have classes on Saturday morning. Other city schools sent their students home.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Reports said investigators were looking into a possible mafia connection but also the hypothesis that it could be linked to a jealous row.

Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri said there was no clear motive, pointing to “numerous hypotheses” and cautioning against hasty conclusions.

A bomb attack near Brindisi blamed on the mafia earlier this month narrowly missed killing the head of an anti-racket association.

Saturday’s attack caused shock across Italy, where the memory of a spate of mafia bombings against civilians in the early 1990s is still raw.

“This is a horrific attack that feels like sacrilege. We must act firmly and with determination,” said Nichi Vendola, governor of the local Apulia region.

Local authorities are planning a large demonstration later on Saturday in Brindisi in solidarity with the victims of the attack.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the bombing was “an absolutely horrific and vile act.”

“The entire country must react decisively against the temptation of violence and terrorist provocations,” he said.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he was following developments “with apprehension” and reached out to the families of the victims.

The school is named after the wife of the famous anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who was killed in a bomb attack in Sicily along with her and their three bodyguards 20 years ago on Wednesday.

A procession was set to pass near Brindisi on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary.

The local mafia in the Apulia region, which is heavily involved in drug and arms smuggling and human trafficking, is known as the Sacra Corona Unita (United Sacred Crown) which has been targeted in police raids in recent days.

Japan urges citizens to cut down on electricity use

Japan has urged businesses and households in parts of the country to cut electricity use by up to 15% to avoid possible blackouts.

The country is facing power shortages this summer because its 50 nuclear reactors have been taken offline.

Public confidence in nuclear safety was shaken by the meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant, triggered by last year's earthquake and tsunami.

The call for electricity reduction will take effect from July to September.

This time around the move to save power is not mandatory, unlike cuts imposed in the eastern parts of the country last summer after the nuclear crisis.

'Appeal'
It is in the heavily industrialised area of western Japan, served by Kansai Electric Power, that customers have been asked to cut electricity usage by 15%.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, after a government meeting discussing power shortages, said that there was a "need to widely instigate power-saving measures" due to the shutdown of nuclear facilities.

"The government will try hard to figure out how to implement the measures decided today so that the power savings will affect the economy and people's livelihood as little as possible," he said.

"But I would like to repeat here our appeal to the nation to save power this summer."

Japan's last nuclear reactor went offline for routine maintenance two weeks ago and none have been switched back on so far.

The government has been reluctant to order restarts of the nuclear plants against the public's wishes, even as the scarcer and more expensive electricity could have a severe effect on Japan's economy, reports the BBC's Roland Buerk.

Surveys show that almost all big businesses expect their earnings to be affected, with some preparing to move more manufacturing abroad.

Before the Fukushima meltdowns, nuclear energy powered up to 30% of the country's electricity.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Thursday that he would decide soon on the restarting of two idle nuclear reactors at Kansai Electric's Ohi nuclear plant.  (BBC.co.uk)

Montreal student protest turns violent after Molotovs cocktail tossed

Montreal riot police moved in on student protesters Friday night after at least one Molotov cocktail was tossed at authorities.

The protesters - estimated at nearly 8,000 at the start of the march - gathered initially for a peaceful demonstration against Montreal’s law prohibiting the wearing of masks and Quebec’s special law aimed at stopping growing social unrest over the province's tuition talks.

For the first time since the beginning of the student marches, the route of the march was handed over to police. But minutes after the start of the event, which began around 9 p.m. local time, protesters began to stray from the route.

Shortly after, Montreal police arrested one person for allegedly assaulting an officer.

Police cracked down on protesters after projectiles and at least one Molotov cocktail were thrown at them near St-Laurent and Rene-Levesque Boulevards.

Around 10 p.m., police declared the protest illegal.

Police fired rubber bullets, noise bombs and tear gas into the crowd.

While some demonstrators decided to leave the march that continued, several others joined the movement.

Among the activists, were some 50 people wearing masks. Some protesters wore gas masks and others were dressed in black.

Montreal’s law prohibiting the wearing of masks during a demonstration comes into force on Saturday.

The law was passed after months of students protests, in which many rioters have been wearing masks while throwing projectiles at police, smashing storefronts and causing other acts of vandalism.

Quebec’s special law would increase police powers to crack down on protests and fine student groups heftily if they block schools.

The special law passed 68 to 48 in the legislature late on Friday afternoon, with the governing Liberals and the centre-right CAQ supporting it. The Parti Quebecois opposed the law, with party leader Pauline Marois saying it was “one of the darkest days in Quebec democracy.”

Computer game helps rehabilitate stroke victims

Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a computer game designed to help stroke victims recuperate.

The Circus Challenge game, created with a computer game studio, aims to help patients recover motor functions.

Players use wireless controllers to perform virtual circus acts such as lion taming and plate spinning.

It is hoped the PC-based game will serve as a cheaper and more effective alternative to existing treatments, with patients able to play at home.

The project received a £1.5m grant from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund, a partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, to allow further development.
'Trapeze artist'
One patient, who suffered a stroke in February, said the game was "something different which encourages me to keep going with my therapy".

Danny Mann, 68, from Dudley, Northumberland, said the game compared favourably with the "dull" exercises he had previously been instructed to complete.

"This is the first time I've ever played a video game - I mean, I don't even own a computer.

"When I got the controllers I tried being a trapeze artist - something I never expected to try at my time of life," he said.
Mr Mann said he was looking forward to furthering his recovery by playing the game with his grandchildren.

Janet Eyre, Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience at Newcastle University, said the game would help meet the shortfall of trained therapists who stroke victims must normally work with on a frequent basis as part of their rehabilitation.

"With our video game, people get engrossed in the competition and action of the circus characters and forget that the purpose of the game is for therapy."

Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer and chief medical adviser at the the Department of Health, said the newly-developed technology was a "remarkable innovation in the NHS".

"The government is committed to supporting such work and bringing breakthroughs from every area - even video gaming - to the front line of patient care," she said.

Circus Challenge becomes more difficult as players gain more strength as their recovery progresses. The tasks require both gross and fine motor skills and can be performed by people in wheelchairs.

About 80% of stroke patients do not fully regain their arm and hand functions, however it is hoped there will be some improvement on this figure as patients are able to continue their rehabilitation at home.

In the UK, 150,000 people suffer a stroke every year, costing the economy an estimated £4bn in care and loss of income.

A 112-megapixel consumer camera concept needs your social love

Spectral Instruments may be a small company, but it has already designed several impressive cameras, including one called 1110 series that can capture the stars and the sun even in the middle of the day. The company's products have been designed for use by research facilities and spacecraft. But this time, its employees hope to create a custom-made version of the super high-tech 1110 series that can be used by photographers on Earth.

The 1110 series is a 112-megapixel camera with ultra light-sensitive sensors that enable it to take noiseless black and white images. The employees plan to downsize the camera (it's pretty big, as you can see in the video below) and have a professional photographer try it out during a photo shoot.

Before the employees can start, though, they still have to convince the company's management that the project is worth its hefty price tag by gauging people's interest on the project over the internet. And that would've been a much easier task if they released sample pictures to show what the camera can do. Nevertheless, if you want to help them get the response they need, spread the word by tweeting or posting about the project on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Sudden wealth part of Silicon Valley's everyday

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — In Silicon Valley, where sudden wealth is hardly something new and CEOs favor hoodies over bespoke blazers, Facebook's IPO on Friday didn't bring everyday life to a halt.

Employees weren't popping champagne corks at company headquarters, at least not where anyone outside could see them. And locals had plenty to do —from finding a job to locating the next Facebook.

The company's sprawling headquarters along the southern edge of San Francisco Bay was quiet except for security guards walking the parking lots, a dozen TV satellite trucks and an onslaught of reporters who were not allowed inside.

The morning began with a ceremony attended by a few dozen people in a courtyard in the center of campus known as Hack Square. Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell to start the Nasdaq Stock Market's daily trading as chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Nasdaq executives and other employees looked on.

Afterward, employees tried to get back to business as usual. That is, building a company under immense pressure to meet shareholders' expectations. To remind everyone not to get caught up in the hoopla, Facebook's 2,000 employees were given t-shirts that read "Stay focused & keep hacking."

As is standard at large tech companies in Silicon Valley, employees were told not to talk to the press.

In the parking lot, venture capitalist Mark Siegel had come down to take a longing look at one that got away. Like many of his fellow technology startup investors with offices a short drive from Facebook on Silicon Valley's famed Sand Hill Road, Siegel said he had chances to back Facebook early on but didn't.

He said at the time, when competing social networks like Friendster and MySpace still had clout, it wasn't clear that Facebook would come out on top.

"In hindsight, any price would have been a good price to pay," said Siegel, a managing director at Menlo Ventures.

To avoid a similar fate in the future, Siegel's firm is invested heavily in Internet and social media companies, including popular blogging service Tumblr.

As for the viability of Facebook as an investment now that it's public, Siegel said he expects the stock to be in for a bumpy ride in the near future.

"I might buy a little, but I would buy it as a long-term hold," he said. "It's very fully valued, so I think in the short-term there's going to be a lot of ups and downs."

At a strip mall that includes the closest Starbucks to Facebook, the company's stock was not the first thing on everyone's minds. (Not that anyone at Facebook needs to come across the highway to Starbucks — gourmet coffee is just one of the company's many meal perks.)

Ann House, 49, an education researcher at a nearby nonprofit, said the IPO would obviously mean more rich people in the area, but she's been pleasantly surprised so far that the company's recent move to its new headquarters hasn't yet led to a big uptick in street traffic.

Though not a heavy Facebook user, she said the ads on the social network's site have started to annoy her more. She expects the IPO won't help.

"It probably means there's going to be more advertising on the site, so I'll use it less," she said.

Claire Bonnar, 22, of Pacifica became a teenager shortly before Facebook first went online, but she doesn't count herself among the Facebook generation. She has an account, but she said she only logs on once every few months. She said she communicates with her friends by text message and phone to avoid the headaches she witnessed among former co-workers who were heavy users.

"They'd always be in each others' business," she said. "I don't want that kind of drama."

Facebook's IPO was also far from Bonnar's mind as she focused on more pressing concerns. Laid off from her job at a San Diego hospital a few months ago, she came north to be with family. She works as a cashier at a San Francisco barbecue restaurant to make ends meet while she plots her next move.

An aspiring pharmacist, she had traveled the 30 miles from Pacifica to a job training center in Menlo Park that, by coincidence, receives money from Facebook. The company does community outreach since moving into its new headquarters, which borders on neighborhoods that are far from wealthy.

Bonnar said she doesn't find it weird that Mark Zuckerberg, also in his 20s, has become one of the world's richest men thanks to an online service she doesn't even like.

"I think that it's really awesome, actually. It sucks I'm not in his position."

Olympic Torch begins UK tour

The Olympic Flame has started its 70-day tour of the UK in the run-up to the London 2012 Games.

Three-times Olympic Gold medallist and Ben Ainslie CBE was the first Torchbearer for the Relay as crowds cheered from the sidelines.

Over 100 people are expected to bear the torch throughout the day.

The Olympic Flame will travel an estimated 8,000 miles around the UK giving thousands of communities and individuals their moment to shine as the Olympic Flame comes to a place near them.

The Olympic flame arrived in the UK on board a flight from Athens last night.

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad, will take place in London, England, United Kingdom, from 27 July to 12 August 2012.

Following a bid headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe, London was selected as the host city on 6 July 2005 during the 117th IOC Session in Singapore, defeating Moscow, New York City, Madrid and Paris.London will become the first city to officially host the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and in 1948.

While budgetary considerations for the games have generated some criticism, they have also been welcomed by others as having prompted a redevelopment of many of the areas of London in which events are to be held – particularly themed towards sustainability.The main focus of the games will be a new 200 hectare Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site at Stratford in the east of London.The Games also make use of many venues which were already in place before the bid.

Lady Gaga warned to tone down Philippine show

MANILA: Lady Gaga was warned Friday to refrain from nudity, lewd conduct and blasphemy when her Asian tour reaches the Philippines next week, after her controversial act was banned by neighbouring Indonesia.

Antonino Calixto, mayor of Manila's Pasay district where the American pop phenomenon is due to perform on May 21 and 22, said inspectors will be on hand at the venue to ensure she does not overstep the mark.

"We reminded the producers of Lady Gaga's concert that the show and the event as a whole shall not exhibit any nudity or lewd conduct which may be offensive to morals and good customs," he said in a statement.

"Although we respect artistic and musical expressions, I won't allow anyone or any group to provide acts which may be questionable in (any) way."

Lady Gaga has already faced opposition elsewhere on the Asia leg of her tour, including in Indonesia where police denied her show a permit amid threats from Islamic hardliners.

Calixto said religious groups in the Catholic-majority Philippines have expressed concern over the show and that City hall was Friday picketed by several dozen members of a Bible study group offended by Lady Gaga's "Judas".

The group claimed the song "mocks and blasphemes the name and person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the central figure of each faithful Christian in the country", Calixto said.

Ovation Productions, the promoters of the Manila concert, told its president Renen de Guia was unavailable for comment Friday.

On Wednesday Lady Gaga's Indonesian promoters vowed to fight to save her show, despite police denying it a permit and Islamic hardliners threatening "chaos" if she came to the mostly Muslim nation.

Production company Big Daddy said it still hoped to find a way to hold the June 3 event after already selling more than 50,000 tickets to a concert in Jakarta.

The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said it would create havoc if Lady Gaga were allowed to perform in Indonesia, calling her the "devil's messenger" and warning they were ready to die to stop the concert.

In March the Korean Association of Church Communication vowed to take action to stop young people from being "infected with homosexuality and pornography" during the star's concert in Seoul.

But the star has so far failed to tone down her performances. In Seoul, Hong Kong and Tokyo, she rode on to the stage on a mechanical horse, wearing a black bodysuit and an enormous black metal headpiece.

After Manila, the tour heads to Bangkok and Singapore. She was due to play in Jakarta after that, before flying south to New Zealand and Australia. (AFP

London 2012 Olympics: Torch lands on British soil

(Reuters) - The flame for the London Olympics arrived on British soil on Friday on board a special golden-liveried British Airways flight from Athens.

The Airbus plane 'Firefly', Flight 2012, landed at the Culdrose naval air station with Britain's Princess Anne, Games chairman Seb Coe and former England soccer captain David Beckham among the delegation.

The flame will start a 70-day torch relay around Britain on Saturday, with triple Olympic gold medalist sailor Ben Ainslie carrying it on the first leg from Land's End on the south-west tip of England.

The Games start on July 27.

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg welcomed the Olympic torch on behalf of the British government.

"It is a fantastic moment for us, particularly at a time when there is so much anxiety and concern about the economy and other things, to be uplifted by this whole experience and to be able to showcase ourselves to the world as an open-hearted, generous, dynamic, positive country," he told the BBC.

"It's a wonderful opportunity for the country as a whole."

The arrival of the flame, with Princess Anne carrying it in a special lantern down the steps from the plane, was covered live on Britain's main BBC station.

"It's only when the torch comes into your possession that you realize," the Princess said as she handed the lantern to one of the special security team who will guard it.

Beckham then lit the Olympic torch with the flame and ignited a cauldron ready for Saturday's relay start.

On Thursday, the flame was handed over at a damp ceremony in the Athens marble stadium that hosted the first modern Games in 1896.

The flame, lit from the sun's rays at the home of the ancient Games in Olympia a week ago, was presented under grey and rainy skies to former Olympian Princess Anne by the president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee Spyros Capralos.

Spurs midfielder Gareth Bale remains Barcelona target

In what appears to be the opening shot across the bows in one of the summer's biggest transfer stories, El Mundo Deportivo, the Barcelona-based daily sports newspaper, has reported that Barça have targeted Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Gareth Bale though are not willing to pay the £36 million (€45m) valuation put on the player by his club

Spurs declined to comment on the report but Bale, who is under contract at White Hart Lane until 2015, is widely understood not to be for sale. The player’s agent, Jonathan Barnett, yesterday responded to the claims by telling the Daily Telegraph: “It'd be a lot more than that. Gareth’s very happy at Tottenham, come what may.”
Describing the supposed fee as “elevated”, El Mundo’s apparently briefed article recognises how the price puts Bale out of Barcelona’s reach. The newspaper instead talked of Bale having to agitate for a move to make it happen.
“[Barcelona] are confident that Bale will become involved in the negotiation, following the examples of Mascherano in 2010 in getting out of Liverpool, and Cesc Fábregas, in 2011 in leaving Arsenal.
“That way opens through pressuring the club, making clear the [player’s] firm decision of signing for Barça.
“That could reduce the transfer fee, or equally [he could] sacrifice part of the wages, so Barcelona could meet the amount demanded by Tottenham.”

Neither Barnett nor Spurs expect Bale to do that, even though Tottenham’s participation in the Champions League next season hangs on Chelsea’s result in tonight’s final in Munich.
The Champions League was the competition where Bale rose to international prominence with a hat-trick against Internazionale two seasons ago.
If Tottenham are denied entry to next season’s competition it would intensify Barcelona’s efforts to recruit him.
Indeed El Mundo claimed he would find it “inconceivable not to play in the Champions League next season.”
The Daily Telegraph exclusively revealed last month that Bale had been made a transfer priority by Barcelona’s board. At the time the final decision on the transfer rested with the manager, Pep Guardiola.
However in the intervening weeks Guardiola has quit the Camp Nou and it appears his successor, Francesc Vilanova, has approved the approach for Bale.  (Telegraph.co.uk)

Serena Williams goes into last four as Pennetta quits

(Reuters) - Serena Williams enjoyed an easy passage into the semi-finals of the Italian Open tennis on Friday when her opponent Flavia Pennetta retired with a right wrist injury.

The Italian, ranked 21, had treatment at 3-0 down and decided to quit when Williams was leading 4-0 and 40-0.

Williams, who won last week's title in Madrid, will play either China's Li Na or Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia in the last four.

Holder Maria Sharapova was due to play Venus Williams later on Friday while Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was scheduled to face Angelique Kerber of Germany.

Memristors in silicon promising for dense, fast memory

Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.

The device is a "memristor", a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component.

A memristor's electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory.

Researchers at the European Materials Research Society meeting now say it can be made much more cheaply, using current semiconductor techniques.

There has been significant interest in memristors since the first prototype was unveiled in 2008, not least because it took 37 years for the device to make it from theoretical proposition to reality.

The name is a portmanteau of memory and resistor, because its resistance changes depending on how much current has passed through it; it "remembers" that value even after power is turned off.

In Chile, thousands of students protest anew

THOUSANDS of students demonstrated on the streets of Chile's capital Wednesday seeking an overhaul of what they call one of the world's priciest and most unfair educational systems.

The students, joined by some parents and professors, thronged the Plaza Italia square, following up on more than 40 demonstrations last year against the system which is a legacy of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

They marched, singing and chanting, through Santiago streets to a cultural centre for a closing ceremony.

"We will keep on being rebels, because the student movement is not going to settle for a few excesses having been corrected. We want to fix all of them," argued Gabriel Boric, head of the students' union, which said 100,000 people had joined the demonstration. Police would not confirm the figure.

Students, backed by professors and labor unions, are demanding that President Sebastian Pinera's conservative government overhaul the education system to guarantee free, quality public education for all Chileans.

"This government has been unable to respond to the students' basic requests," added Boric.

The Pinochet regime, which ended in 1990, slashed to less than half the government's funding of public higher education.

Last year some of the protests drew more than 100,000 people, making them the country's largest rallies since the end of the dictatorship.

Some of the protests last year were interspersed with violent confrontations between students and police.

A March 15 demonstration in Santiago ended with the arrest of at least 50 people after some of the roughly 5,000 students reportedly became violent.

Pinera has proposed taking private banks out of the student loan system and creating a state organization to admininster student loans.

Until now, student loan interest rates have topped six percent but the government has pledged to reduce them to two percent and only allow students to have to pay a maximum of 10 percent of their salary a year in loan reimbursements once they are in the working world.

Congress has yet to take up the government's proposal, which also includes a 15-year maximum repayment timeframe, after which remaining student debt would be forgiven.   (AFP)

China's food manufacturing to exceed 1.4 trillion dollars

ZHENGZHOU - An official from a national food industry association said Thursday that the industry's output value is expected to exceed nine trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) this year.

Xiong Bilin, deputy head of the China National Food Industry Association, made the remarks at an industry conference held in the city of Luohe in Central China's Henan province.

The food manufacturing sector has seen stable growth in the first quarter of the year, Xiong said.

The sector's output value increased 26.1 percent year on year to 2.02 trillion yuan in the first quarter, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Profits reached 145.6 billion yuan, up 24.9 year on year.

"If the growth maintains its speed, the total output value will exceed nine trillion yuan this year," Xiong said.

Xiong said increased prices for raw materials, mounting dependence on imports of raw materials, unstable pork prices and food safety are the major issues to be addressed by the food industry this year.

The fact that the food manufacturing sector has grown despite a drop in the overall industrial production growth rate indicates that the industry has played a significant part in China's economic development, according to Yao Jingyuan, a researcher from the Councillor's Office of the State Council, or China's cabinet.

(Xinhua)

Vancouver Island Red Cedar: 800-Year-Old Tree Hacked Down

VANCOUVER - A giant 800-year-old red cedar tree has been poached from a provincial park on southern Vancouver Island, but the culprits who repeatedly returned to the site to hack it down may never be brought to justice.

Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee said consistent budget cuts over the last decade mean park rangers rarely monitor remote sites such as the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, from where the cedar was chopped.

"Whoever's doing this knows that no one's going to have eyes on this park for months at a time so it's exceptionally easy to do what they've done," Coste said Thursday.

He said that last month, a member of the environmental group became aware of the poached tree and took a photo of about 20 per cent of its remains.

But when Coste went to the park about two weeks ago, more of the cedar had been cut and removed, he said.

"In the first photo, there were two big sections of the trunk beside the stump and when I went up there, there was only one."


He said a stump measuring about three metres in diameter is all that remains of the tree that was dragged across a parking area, where steel cables were left lying around.

"It's an example of how poorly protected our parks are that people can come and take our trees, without fear of repercussions, from our provincial parks."

Coste said 10 full-time park rangers monitor about 1,000 parks and protected areas across British Columbia, down from about 40 full-time positions in 2001.

Don Closson, who supervises the Cowichan area for B.C. Parks, said Parks officials at the site a year ago noticed that about 80 per cent of the tree had been cut through and that a professional faller was hired to bring it down because it posed a safety hazard.      (thecanadianpress.com)