Latest News Clips 2012.04.27

           

1.      How will French election be decided? - CNN.com CNN    April 16, 2012

Photo credit: Getty Images

Paris (CNN) -- French voters are preparing to elect a new president. CNN's Senior International Correspondent Jim Bittermann explains what the main themes of the election are, how the system works and who is likely to win.

What are the issues?

The economy, economy, economy. Basically, for months now the top issues have been unemployment and purchasing power. To a lesser extent -- and for some candidates, a greater extent -- immigration figures in the debate. On the extremes -- both left and right -- Europe is an issue that relates to the economic problems.

Who are the front-runners? Who is expected to win?

The polls at the moment are giving Socialist candidate Francois Hollande victories in both the first and second rounds of the voting. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been gathering support in the past few weeks, was slipping back in the most recent polls. There are three other candidates in double digits: Jean-Luc Melenchon on the extreme left; Marine Le Pen on the extreme right and Francois Bayrou, a centrist.

How does the election system work?

In French presidential elections there are two rounds of voting, with a two-week break between the two votes that take place on Sundays. There are at the moment 10 candidates. After the first round of voting on April 22, eight candidates will be eliminated with only the two with most votes making it into the runoff election May 6.

2.  The third industrial revolution

    The Economist   2012.04.21

The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too.

The first industrial revolution began in Britain in the late 18^th century, with the mechanisation of the textile industry.  Tasks previously done laboriously by hand in hundreds of weavers’ cottages were brought together in a single cotton mill, and the factory was born.  The second industrial revolution came in the early 20^th century, when Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of mass production.  The first two industrial revolutions made people richer and more urban.  Now a third revolution is under way, Manufacturing is going digital.  As this week’s special report argues, this could change not just business, but much else besides. 

A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes(notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services.  The factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black.  But the cost of producing much smaller batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each customer’s whims, is falling.  The factory of the future will focus on mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line. 

3. Nestlé's Bespoke Chocolate

Bloomberg  February 16, 2012

Nestlé (NESN) has long been known for making chocolate treats for the common man. Think Kit Kat or Crunch bars. But demand for pricier premium chocolates is growing faster than that of plain old candy. So the Vevey (Switzerland)-based company has devised a novel strategy to move up the value chain: customized confections. Internet shoppers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein can now order a taster pack from Nestlé’s Maison Cailler line of expensive Swiss chocolates. After nibbling the samples of five kinds of Ecuador-sourced chocolate with various cocoa content, consumers complete an online survey to determine their “chocolate personality.” They then can order larger boxes of the candies, marrying their favored chocolate with preferred fillings ranging from peppercorn and vanilla to raspberry and verbena.

The bespoke chocolate experience doesn’t come at Baby Ruth prices. A 16-piece box of the Maison Cailler chocolates costs 26 Swiss francs ($28.30). That’s just 128 grams of chocolate, or slightly more than 4 ounces, so these custom sweets price out to more than $100 a pound. Yet such luxe pricing can succeed even amid the economic downturn, says Laurent Freixe, head of Nestlé’s European business. “It may sound counterintuitive, but what’s happening in the [financial] crisis is a quest by consumers for value, for more-affordable product, but also for products that overtake their expectations.”

Latest news clippings 2012.04.19

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New View of Depression: An Ailment of the Entire Body

Wall Street Journal   April 09, 2011

Scientists are increasingly finding that depression and other psychological disorders can be as much diseases of the body as of the mind.

Shirley Wang on Lunch Break discusses the impact of depression on aging and why people with a history of depression are also known to be at greater risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other aging-related diseases.

People with long-term psychological stress, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder tend to develop earlier and more serious forms of physical illnesses that usually hit people in older age, such as stroke, dementia, heart disease and diabetes. Recent research points to what might be happening on the cellular level that could account for this.

Scientists are finding that the same changes to chromosomes that happen as people age can also be found in people experiencing major stress and depression.

The phenomenon, known as "accelerated aging," is beginning to reshape the field's understanding of stress and depression not merely as psychological conditions but as body-wide illnesses in which mood may be just the most obvious symptom.

"As we learn more…we will begin to think less of depression as a 'mental illness' or even a 'brain disease,' but as a systemic illness," says Owen Wolkowitz, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who along with colleagues has conducted research in the field.

Gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that link physical and mental conditions could someday prove helpful in diagnosing and treating psychological illnesses and improving cognition in people with memory problems, Dr. Wolkowitz says.


  

1.      How Green Are Electric Cars? Depends on Where You Plug In

New York Times    April 13, 2012

IT’S a lot like one of those math problems that gave you fits in sixth grade: a salesman leaves home in Denver and drives his electric car to a meeting in Boulder. At the same time, a physicist driving the same model electric car sets out from her loft in Los Angeles, heading to an appointment near Anaheim.

For both, the traffic is light, and the cars consume an identical amount of battery power while traveling the same number of miles. Being purely electric, they emit zero tailpipe pollutants during their trips.

The test question: are their carbon footprints also equal?

The answer may be a surprise. According to a report that the Union of Concerned Scientists plans to release on Monday, there would be a considerable difference in the amount of greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide — that result from charging the cars’ battery packs. By trapping heat, greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.

The advocacy group’s report, titled “State of Charge: Electric Vehicles’ Global Warming Emissions and Fuel Cost Savings Across the United States,” uses the electric power requirements of the Nissan Leaf as a basis for comparison. The Leaf, on sale in the United States for more than a year and the most widely available electric model from a major automaker, sets a logical baseline.

2.  China Loosens Grip on Yuan

The Wall Street Journal    2012.04.15

Central Bank Widens Currency's Trading Range; Move Could Ease Trade Tensions

BEIJING—China made one of its strongest moves yet to show that it believes the yuan is ready to become a global currency by loosening daily trading limits.

The move to widen the currency's trading range, which went into effect Monday, doesn't eliminate Beijing's tight grip on the yuan. China's central bank still sets a daily reference rate for its currency. On Monday in China, the yuan opened modestly weaker in currency trading, after the central bank set a reference rate for the yuan stronger than Friday's market close.

Nonetheless, the change is seen as an important step toward addressing foreign complaints about China's currency policies. The U.S. and other advanced economies have pressed Beijing for years to relax its hold on the yuan and allow it to appreciate at a faster pace. The hope is to boost consumer demand in China as consumers in advanced nations, such as the U.S. and Europe, pull back amid still-fragile economies. China long had resisted a loosened yuan, fearing it would hurt the country's powerful export market. A stronger yuan makes Chinese products more expensive overseas, while making imports more affordable for Chinese consumers.

A freer currency market is the latest step from China's leaders to overhaul the country's financial system. Beijing has moved to bring the country's informal lending sector out of the shadows; has openly questioned the dominance of state-owned banks; and has eased its capital restrictions, amid complaints from both inside and outside the country that the financial system is inadequate to sustain the world's No. 2 economy.

The decision to widen the yuan's daily trading range was cautiously welcomed by Washington and the International Monetary Fund. "We've obviously over the course of the last several years pressed the Chinese to take additional steps to appreciate their currency and to come in line with international markets," said Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. "They've made some progress."

3.  Gunman in Norway Claims Self-Defense as Trial Begins

New York Times  April 16, 2012

OSLO — By turns defiant, impassive and, just once, tearful, a self-described anti-Islamic militant who admitted carrying out Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity last year, killing 77 people including scores of young people at a summer camp on a tranquil, wooded island, went on trial here on Monday proclaiming that he had acted in self-defense, bore no criminal guilt and rejected the authority of the court.

In remarkable evidence played to a packed and shocked courtroom, recordings of cellphone calls made by the gunman to the police suggested that he had tried twice to give himself up and had simply gone on killing in the absence of officers to accept his surrender. In the period after the first call to his final shot, prosecutors said, 41 people died.

The gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted on several occasions that he carried out the rampage on July 22, in which 69 people were shot and killed on Utoya Island, near Oslo, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding a summer camp. Hours earlier, a car bombing in central Oslo killed eight people.

As the grisly evidence unfolded, and some of the bereaved families and survivors in the courtroom sobbed, Mr. Breivik remained mostly impassive, and at one point seemed to discreetly stifle a yawn. Only as the court viewed a video that Mr. Breivik had made before the attacks to publicize his cause, did he break down in tears, dabbing at his face.

Latest news clippings 2012.04.12

1.      The Earth is full - CNN.com

CNN    2012-04-08

(CNN) -- For 50 years the environmental movement has unsuccessfully argued that we should save the planet for moral reasons, that there were more important things than money. Ironically, it now seems it will be money -- through the economic impact of climate change and resource constraint -- that will motivate the sweeping changes necessary to avert catastrophe.

The reason is we have now reached a moment where four words -- the earth is full -- will define our times. This is not a philosophical statement; this is just science based in physics, chemistry and biology. There are many science-based analyses of this, but they all draw the same conclusion -- that we're living beyond our means.

The eminent scientists of the Global Footprint Network, for example, calculate that we need about 1.5 Earths to sustain this economy. In other words, to keep operating at our current level, we need 50% more Earth than we've got.

2.      Chinese Medicine Goes Under the Microscope

The Wall Street Journal    April 2, 2012, 

There's growing acceptance that herbal medicines could be effective for medical conditions, but the scientific evidence to vault such a treatment into an approved drug is often lacking. As Shirley Wang explains on Lunch Break, researchers are making progress on a cancer treatment based on a common herbal combination in Chinese medicine.

Scientists studying a four-herb combination discovered some 1,800 years ago by Chinese herbalists have found that the substance enhances the effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients with colon cancer.

        Chinese peony                                        Chinese licorice     

Early studies show a traditional four-herb combination has cancer-treatment benefits. The herbs are Chinese peony (pictured), Chinese jujube, Chinese licorice and baikal skullcap.

The mixture, known in China as huang qin tang, has been shown in early trials to be effective at reducing some side effects of chemotherapy, including diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. The herbs also seem to bolster colon-cancer treatment: Tests on animals with tumors have shown that administering the herbs along with chemotherapy drugs restored intestinal cells faster than when chemo was used alone.

The herb combination, dubbed PHY906 by scientists, is a rare example of a plant-based product used in traditional folk medicine that could potentially jump the hurdle into mainstream American therapy. A scientific team led by Yung-Chi Cheng, an oncology researcher at Yale University, and funded in part by the National Cancer Institute, is planning to begin Phase II clinical trials to study PHY906's effectiveness in people with colon cancer.

     Chinese jujube                                        Baikal skullcap.

                       

Many conventional medications are derived from individual chemical agents originally found in plants. In the case of huang qin tang, however, scientists so far have identified 62 active chemicals in the four-herb combination that apparently need to work together to be effective.

"What Dr. Cheng is doing is keeping [the herbal combination] as a complex entity and using that as an agent," says Josephine Briggs, head of the federal National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is helping fund some of the PHY906 research. "It's polypharmacy," or the equivalent of several drugs being administered at once.

Dr. Cheng began his research on huang qin tang about a dozen years ago when he sought a better way of dealing with the chemotherapy's side effects. A variety of medications are currently used to treat these symptoms, but with varying success. A more effective technique could improve patients' quality of life and possibly allow them to tolerate a larger dose of chemo, which might speed up their course of treatment, he says.

3.      India links better ties to Pakistan's counterterrorism efforts

      DW-TV    April 09, 2012

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Pakistani President Zardari has met with the Indian prime minister in New Delhi raising hopes for further reconciliation between the nuclear rivals. Both agreed to work at improving the bilateral relationship.

The high-voltage political meet between the leaders of India and Pakistan went according to script. Over a mouth-watering spread of delicacies, tastefully selected from various regions, Sunday's lunch meeting in New Delhi between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the visiting Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have set the stage for an early and productive visit by the former to Islamabad.

Fresh hope

Singh and Zardari had a 40-minute meeting before the lunch that was described as "very constructive and friendly."

"We have a number of issues and we are willing to find practical and pragmatic solutions to all those issues and that is the message President Zardari and I would wish to convey," said Prime Minister Singh.

In response, Zardari, who hoped to meet the Indian leader on Pakistani soil very soon, said, "We have had very fruitful bilateral talks."

Latest news clips 2012.04.05

1.       Boom or bust?

March 30, 2012

It is not easy for an average middle-class Thai to buy an apartment in Bangkok. The economy is growing and incomes are rising but the price of real estate has, in the past few years, grown much faster.

A small studio apartment of about 28 square meters (around 300 square feet) can cost almost $100,000 while a luxury three-bedroom apartment or a house is worth millions. A mid-level white-collar employee, say an assistant or a real estate agent, makes less than $1,000 a month.

“For the middle class, it is very difficult. Look at me,” says Patcharin Manyuen, a real estate agent in Bangkok. “I am working but I can’t afford to buy.”

Bangkok is a good example of how resilient Asian real estate markets are. In the past few years, Thailand has gone through coups, political scandals and unrest, outbreaks of disease and massive flooding. “Yet the overall trend has been continued demand expansion and that has been met with a supply response,” says Dan Tantisunthorn, head of research for Thailand at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a real estate management and consulting company.

The foretold butchering of real estate prices across many Asian markets at the end of 2011 did not happen. Some markets have gone softer and conditions in some places are difficult but any drops in value have been relatively mild and perhaps even beneficial, say economists. Several governments have spent the last couple of years trying to cool property prices without sending them spiraling down.

2.      France asks: Were warnings missed on Toulouse killer? - CNN.com

CNN     2012-03-23

   France asks: Were warnings missed on Toulouse killer?

 

Could more have been done in Toulouse?

(CNN) -- Did French intelligence services miss vital clues as Mohammed Merah showed signs of growing radicalization? In the words of the French newspaper, L'Express, on Thursday: "Did the security services fail in their surveillance?"

How do western intelligence agencies choose who to focus on as terror suspects, amid hundreds that express or harbor militant views? Do they have sufficient resources; and where lies the balance between surveillance and the protection of civil liberties?

These are just a few of the questions emerging after Merah's killings.

Merah had been on the radar of the French intelligence service for several years. He'd been detained in Afghanistan in 2010 and repatriated to France -- only to return to the Afghan-Pakistan border area in August of last year. He'd been interviewed by the French security services last November after returning from the Af-Pak area a second time. But he had apparently persuaded them, even showing photographs he had taken, that he had been on a tourist trip.

Gunman's attack videos reportedly found

In addition, it has emerged that Merah was on a U.S. no-fly-list, according to U.S. officials, which would have prevented him from boarding any U.S.-bound flight.

3.         ‘I’m Definitely Not a Wolf’

The Wall Street Journal  March 29, 2012,  

Bloomberg News

Leung Chun-ying, a former Hong Kong government adviser, gestures during a news conference after winning the chief executive election in Hong Kong, China, on Sunday, March 25, 2012.

“Are you a wolf?”

It’s not an ordinary question to hear at a press briefing, but by this point, Hong Kong’s next top leader is used to it. For years, Leung Chun-ying has been dogged with criticisms that he’s too sly, too mysterious, and perhaps most damning of all, too close with Beijing.

Looking both amused and wearied by the reporter’s question, Mr. Leung laughed. “People who know me know that I’m definitely not a wolf. Not in any way,” he said in a Wednesday briefing with overseas media, the first since he was tapped to lead the city over the weekend.

Local media may have dubbed him a lupine character, but over the course of an hour-long briefing, he cracked jokes, smiled frequently and made a point of shaking hands with every one of the 30-odd reporters assembled around the table.

Still, despite his open demeanor he remained guarded in his comments. “Over the next three months, I’m not going to address any policy issues,” said Mr. Leung, who takes office on July 1. “I said it publicly, there’s only one chief executive in Hong Kong, one government and one set of policies.” For the next three months, he said, current chief executive Donald Tsang’s policies “will rule Hong Kong.”

Asked about whether he thinks the city’s property market is currently overheated, Mr. Leung smiled. “I don’t want to comment on the issue right now,” he said. “You have to ask Donald Tsang.” When pressed once more, Mr. Leung again declined to comment. “Ask me the question in three months and I will tell you in three months.”

He was likewise tight-lipped when asked whether he thought that Hong Kongers’ views of the Communist Party might shift in the coming decade—so that one day, being called a Communist (as Mr. Leung has) won’t be seen as an insult. Mr. Leung denied being a Communist Party member, as he has repeatedly in the past, but declined to comment further.

“I don’t want to comment on other aspects of the Communist Party or peoples’ views of the Communist Party in Hong Kong,” he said. However, he committed himself once again to protecting rule of law in the city, as well as Hong Kongers’ freedom of expression