Attacks on Muslims rise in wake of Woolwich killing

Fears are growing that the killing of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich will lead to a long-term rise in attacks on Muslims in this country

Bridge collapse in Washington raises construction fears – video

Rescuers check water beneath a four-lane highway bridge that collapsed halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, British Colombia, on Thursday

Giro stage cancelled because of snow

Friday's 19th stage of the Giro d'Italia is cancelled because of heavy snow and Saturday's stage 20 is re-routed.

As rain continues to fall, Government publishes its heatwave plan

As people face hailstones and temperatures well below average for May, Public Health England publishes its heatwave strategy for 2013.

South Korean newspaper says Hiroshima 'divine punishment' for Japan's wartime acts

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki wartime atomic bombings were "divine punishment" on Japan, a South Korean newspaper has claimed

The Japanese Chart That Has People The Most Freaked Out

The big story in global markets is Japan.
On Thursday, the Nikkei crashed 7%.
Then on Friday it gained less than 1% after a bizarrely volatile day.
But the chart garnering the most interesting is not on the equity side. And it's not a chart of the yen, which has been famously diving.
The chart getting the most attention is the yield on Japanese Government Bonds, which have spiked in recent weeks (albeit from an extremely low level, to a still extremely low level).
Here's a 3-year chart of yields on the 10-year Japanese Government Bond (via Bloomberg).

Again, the actual yield is not enormous, and the yield is still back where Japan was a year ago, and not even that much higher than it was in the beginning of 2013.
But when you have a country that's famously so much in debt, this kind of volatility in such a short time makes people queasy.
All that being said, rising yields are a generally good sign. Japan's primary battle is about fighting deflation, and reversing the years and years of declining rates that have coincided with a weakening economy. So just like other markets that have been shocked into a reversal, JGBs are seeing a similar phenomenon.
But without a doubt, this is the market that's got people paying the most attention.

France wants Hezbollah armed wing on EU terror list by end-June

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it hoped an initiative could be agreed by the end of June to put the armed wing of Hezbollah on the EU's list of terrorist organizations on grounds the group is importing Syria's war into Lebanon

Nissan recalls Miicras after steering problems

Nissan has recalled nearly 134.000 Micras because of a manufacturing problem which could see the steering wheel come off

Heathrow runways reopen after emergency landing

178 flights cancelled during shutdown after Oslo-bound plane turns back shortly after takeoff due to technical fault
Both of Heathrow airport's runways have reopened after a British Airways plane trailing smoke made an emergency landing on Friday morning, leading to a temporary shutdown and the cancellation of hundreds of flights.
The flight, heading to Oslo from Heathrow, returned to the airport shortly after taking off at 8.16am due to a technical fault. Airport officials initially shut both runways but soon reopened the southern strip. The northern runway was reopened at 10.45am.
BA said it had cancelled all of its short-haul flights in and out of Heathrow until 4pm. The airline had been expecting its busiest day of the bank holiday period with 128,000 passengers due to travel.
It had planned to carry more than 463,000 customers over the extended weekend, with 116,000 due to fly on bank holiday Monday.
Witnesses under the flightpath saw flames and smoke coming from the Airbus A319 plane as it came in to land over west London.
One man who was working in a garden in Chelsea when the plane flew overheard said he feared something terrible was about to happen when he saw flames coming from the engine.
"It was very low and horrendous to watch," a man named Jamie told Sky News. "It's the kind of thing you see on Seconds from Disaster.
"There was loads of flames coming from the back of the right engine as it came over us. The noise was like a fighter jet … [The engine] was on full fire when we saw it."
Another witness, named only as Aiden, said he was driving to Heathrow and had to slow down as he was worried debris might fall from the plane.
He told LBC 97.3's Nick Ferrari: "I thought to myself it was just the swirl of the wingtips and then I thought it was just too much for one side and I realised it was smoke. The plane's coming right over the top of my head and I've had it."
David Gallagher, who was a passenger on the flight to Oslo, said "big flames" were visible from the cabin.
Gallagher told BBC News: "About eight or nine minutes into the flight there was a loud popping sound – not an explosion but definitely not usual sounds.
"There was some concern from passengers – people gasping and louder exclamations. The captain came on very calmly, said he was aware of the situation and that everything was running normally and he was going to run some tests to see what the right course would be.
"Then another five minutes after that there was a loud sound, and this time the right engine was clearly on fire. I mean, big flames, very visible from the rest of the cabin and lots of black smoke.
"There was no disruption to the flight at all, even when it was clear we were down to one engine.
"A few passengers were upset understandably, especially those on the right side of the plane. The cabin crew and the ground crew were outstanding and completely calm, reassuring and professional during the whole incident."
Gallagher, who works in communications and tweeted pictures of the incident, joked: "I will definitely pay attention to the [safety] briefings from now on."
Emergency services arrived at the scene and 75 passengers and crew were safely evacuated on emergency slides. Three people were treated for minor injuries, according to the London ambulance service.
London Fire Brigade said a crew from Heathrow fire station assisted the airport's fire service with an aircraft fire, which had been put out.
A Heathrow spokeswoman said 178 flights had been cancelled as a result of the incident. She added that departures were suffering an average delay of 22 minutes but the disruption to arrivals was within the normal range of about 15 minutes.
British Airways said it was caring for its customers and would be carrying out a full investigation into the incident, which will also be examined by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Pictures taken from inside the plane in Friday's incident showed an inspection cover loose on the left-hand engine.
David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight Global publication, said: "This cover is to a plane what a bonnet is to a car. It should not have been open. Something caused it to be dislodged.
"Pictures of the plane flying with smoke coming from it indicate that the aircraft was being powered entirely by the left-hand engine. Most likely there was external damage to both engines.
"Damage of this kind is consistent with a bird strike although at this stage we just don't what happened."
Captain Mark Searle, chairman of airline pilots' association Balpa, said: "This was a professional job done by professional people. As pilots we spend our whole career training to manage incidents such as this in order to avoid an incident becoming a disaster.
"Balpa representatives will be assisting the pilots involved in this incident and providing whatever support they need. And, as always, we will all learn whatever lessons we can."
There was speculation that the aircraft might have run into a flock of birds, but there was no official confirmation. Bird strikes are a serious problem for aircraft and have been known to bring planes down
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Piden citar a Granier por fajos de billetes, la próxima semana

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO, 23 de mayo.- El procurador de Justicia de Tabasco, Fernando Valenzuela, solicitará al Ministerio Público que cite a comparecer la próxima semana al ex gobernador de la entidad, Andrés Granier, para que declare sobre el caso de presunto desfalco a las arcas estatales durante su administración, que este miércoles cobró fuerza con el hallazgo de 88.5 millones de pesos en efectivo en una propiedad vinculada con el ex tesorero estatal.

“Hay elementos necesarios para requerir su comparecencia la próxima semana”, declaró el funcionario estatal a una emisora de radio.
Precisó que la cantidad decomisada, una vez contabilizada por peritos de la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), asciende a 88 millones 570 mil 650 pesos.
Fernando Valenzuela hizo referencia al origen de los fajos de billetes encontrados el miércoles en cajas de cartón y dijo que la hipótesis es que se trata de recursos correspondientes a participaciones federales que eran depositadas en banco al gobierno tabasqueño.
Explicó que, con base en las investigaciones, se sabe que la instrucción que tenían quienes custodiaban el dinero era mantener las cajas en la casa donde fueron localizadas para después entregárselas a una persona a la que no se identificó.
Apuntó también que el domicilio en el que fueron encontradas las cajas con decenas de fajos de billetes no está a nombre de José Manuel Saiz, secretario de Finanzas en el gobierno de Granier Melo; sin embargo, el propietario es hermano de una contadora que trabajó en el mencionado gobierno.

German brewers warn fracking could hurt beer industry

BERLIN (Reuters) - German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel's government that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country's cherished beer industry.

German brewers warn fracking could hurt beer industry

BERLIN (Reuters) - German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel's government that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country's cherished beer industry.

IT'S NOT JUST APPLE: The Ultra-Complicated Tax Measures That Microsoft Uses To Avoid $2.4 Billion In U.S. Taxes

Today, Apple executives will testify before Congress about the details of their expansive tax-minimization system.
Major tech companies exploit differences between taxation policies in different nations in order to pay as few taxes as possible.
Apple isn't the only one. In fact their competitor Microsoft has a massive system by which to avoid taxation, detailed in another Senate report from last September.
American companies keep sixty percent of their cash overseas and untaxed, some $1.7 trillion, according to a U.S. Senate HSGAC Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released in September 2012. 
That report used Microsoft as a case study for the leaps and bounds that U.S. corporations go through to minimize their tax exposure, and illustrate the current flaws with the international corporate tax regime.
The Senate investigation found that Microsoft reduced its 2011 federal tax bill by a whopping $2.43 billion — or 44 percent — by using a wide, international network of controlled foreign corporations and the exploitation of various loopholes in the U.S. corporate tax code. 
According to Microsoft, the company paid $3.11 billion in federal taxes in 2011. 
According to the full Senate report, Microsoft Corp does 85 percent of its research and development in the United States. Of its 94,000 employees, 36,000 are in product R&D. The company had reported income of $23.2 billion, but with a federal tax liability of $3.11 billion only paid an effective federal tax rate of 13.4 percent. That's much lower than the top statutory rate of 35 percent for corporations.
The way the group accomplished this is through a wide variety of foreign groups in tax havens like Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore, and by exploiting a recently updated tax loophole.
In fairness to Microsoft, they're doing what nearly every other major technology company does. A Microsoft representative commented on the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to maximize value.
The company accomplished this by selling the intellectual property rights for its retail businesses to different controlled companies in tax havens.
The report found that Microsoft has three main revenue sources resulting from its intellectual property. The first is retail software which is comprised of the sale of products to consumers, retailers, and enterprise licenses to governments and businesses. The second is web products like Microsoft Bing and Xbox Live. The third is licensing to computer manufacturers who pre-install Microsoft on the products they sell.
In the 1990s, Microsoft established three regional retail operating centers in Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore. These offices regionally oversee the first revenue stream, retail sales. The Ireland office oversees all retail operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Singapore oversees all operations in Asia, and Puerto Rico oversees all operations in North America.
These three retail operation centers — plus Microsoft U.S. — all buy in to R&D cost sharing pool, which in turn gives them the right to sell Microsoft products in their respective zones. Each sector pays a percentage of the $9.1 billion Research & Development budget equivalent to their percentage of retail sales.
The Ireland office pays approximately 30 percent, Puerto Rico pays 25 percent, Singapore pays 10 percent and Microsoft U.S. — which oversees the third revenue stream, bulk sales to computer manufacturers like Dell and HP — pays 35 percent.
In exchange, Microsoft Ireland, Singapore and Puerto Rico get the right to sell the retail products in their corner of the world and Microsoft U.S. gets the right to sell licenses to manufacturers.
The foreign offices are actually comprised of multiple different, interconnected companies. The exploitation of the tax code is made possible by a complex arrangement between these companies.
These are the major controlled foreign corporations involved in the scheme:

Puerto Rico

Microsoft Operations Puerto Rico (MOPR) is the company that pays for the right to sell Microsoft products in the Americas. MOPR makes digital and physical copies of Microsoft software and sells it throughout the United States and the rest of the Americas through different regional distributors.
When an American buys a copy of Microsoft Office in a Best Buy in Manhattan, that was produced in and shipped from Puerto Rico.
MOPR is owned by a Bermuda-based entity, MACS Holdings, which in turn is owned by Round Island One, a fully owned Microsoft subsidiary that is based in Bermuda but operates in Ireland.
To review: An American buys a copy of Microsoft Office at Best Buy in Manhattan. Best Buy bought that copy of Office from a Microsoft distributor. The regional distributor bought that copy of Office from Microsoft Operations Puerto Rico. Microsoft Operations Puerto Rico is owned by MACS Holdings, which itself is owned by Round Island One, which itself is owned by Microsoft Corp.
The reason for that convoluted supply chain — the reason why that copy of Office wasn't just shipped from Microsoft Corp in Redmond, Washington to Manhattan — is that 47 percent of the profits from that sale go to Puerto Rico, untaxed by the U.S. federal government.
Those profits were taxed by Puerto Rico at an effective rate of 1.02 percent in 2011, a massive savings from the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Over three years, Microsoft saved $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the U.S. alone. The company saved $4 million per day by routing domestic operations through Puerto Rico.

Ireland

Microsoft Ireland Research (MIR) is the entity that buys into the R&D cost sharing agreement in exchange for the right to sell Microsoft in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
MIR doesn't actually create or sell any products to any customers. Instead, MIR immediately licenses the Microsoft intellectual property rights to Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited (MIOL) — a wholly owned subsidiary — for $9 billion.
MIR and MIOL are fully owned by Round Island One — the Bermuda company that operates in Ireland and also owns MACS Holdings.
MIOL manufactures copies of Microsoft products and sells them to 120 distributors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. MIOL has 650 employees and MIR has 350 employees in Ireland, where they have an effective tax rate of 7.3 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively. MIR reported profits of $4.3 billion in 2011 and MIOL reported profits of $2.2 billion. Microsoft did not pay any U.S. tax on any revenues made by the Irish groups.
No U.S. tax was paid on the $9 billion license payment from MIOL to MIR.

Singapore

In Singapore, Microsoft Asia Island Limited (MAIL) is the group that pays into the cost sharing agreement. MAIL is actually located in Bermuda and has no employees.
MAIL paid $1.2 billion to Microsoft Corporation for retail sales in Asia. MAIL licenses its rights directly to Microsoft Operations Pte. Ltd (MOPL) for $3 billion. Again, no taxes are paid on this amount. MOPL duplicates the Microsoft software and sells them to distribution entities around Asia.
MAIL and MOPL are both wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd, which is itself a wholly owned controlled foreign subsidiary of Microsoft U.S.
MAIL had no employees but $1.8 billion in earnings. MAIL paid an effective tax rate of 0.3 percent. MOPL had $4.8 billion in revenues from the sale of Microsoft products, with a profit of $592 million and an effective tax rate of 10.6%. MOPL has 687 employees.

The Law

Both the Ireland and Singapore arrangements are designed to subvert U.S. taxes entirely. Despite the fact that Microsoft can report these profits to investors — since every single company is technically a subsidiary of Microsoft — they don't need to report these revenues to the IRS because of the way that Ireland describes its relationships to these companies.
Typically, any passive income — such as the licensing arrangements for intellectual property —paid from one separate legal entity to another separate legal entity was immediately taxable, even if both entities are within the same legal structure.
Because of a loophole in the tax law, Microsoft and other companies are able to have the lowest-tiered controlled foreign corporation disregarded and ignored for federal income tax purposes. Essentially, even though MOIL is a separate entity from MIR and all transactions between the two should be taxed, because of the "check the box" loophole MOIL and MIR are not considered separate entities in the eyes of the IRS so there is no tax.
A representative from Microsoft explained that the complex structure was a response to the complex tax code. "Microsoft has a complex business and we must comply with the complicated tax code of the United States, resulting in an exceedingly complex tax structure."
Microsoft has to compete globally. For the company, it makes sense to make the best use of that international presence to mitigate their tax liability. "One of the business imperatives faced by Microsoft and many US-based businesses today is that we must operate in foreign markets in order to compete and succeed as a company," the company said. "Foreign revenue growth helps support the growth of our U.S. operations, creating additional U.S. jobs and supporting an economic ripple effect that leads to greater growth in local communities.
The company is one of many firms urging corporate tax reform. "We’ve advocated for reforms to simplify the US tax code and make it more competitive with the rest of the world," the representative said. Microsoft abides by the law every step of the way, and when it comes to expenses Microsoft has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to minimize spending. 
Microsoft also holds the federal government responsible for establishing conditions where companies are forced to move operations to far-fetched islands in order to stay internationally competitive.
"US international tax rules are outdated and not competitive with the tax systems of our major trading partners," Microsoft said. "We believe the US should reform its tax rules to support the ability of worldwide American businesses to compete in global markets and invest in the US."
The details of those reforms, though, are crucial before moving forward. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report found that a shift to a territorial taxation system — which would not tax any annual income made in foreign countries, but would tax any and all repatriated income at a 35 percent rate — would only exacerbate current problems.
It would create even greater incentives for U.S. multinationals to book profits overseas, potentially reduce wages domestically, could drain revenues from corporate income tax and would risk higher taxes on American small businesses.
So despite the fact that both Microsoft and policymakers want to pursue a better system than the current tax regime, it's increasingly difficult to navigate a solution when literally billions of dollars hang in the balance.
Most importantly, Microsoft is far from the only company that has developed a complicated corporate structure to reduce their tax liability. Almost every major U.S. corporation does this, and there's no reason for the companies to stop.
It makes perfect business sense to maneuver the corporate structure to minimize taxes, and there is a compelling argument that current conditions are set up so that companies would be financially irresponsible not to do it. Until a better taxation solution emerges, it's the only way to do business.

15,000 people die every year because of cancer treatments, Lord Saatchi says

More than 15,000 people die every year because of cancer treatments rather than the illness itself, Lord Saatchi has said

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs pose "catastrophic" risk

Doctors must stop prescribing antibiotics to people with colds to avert the "catastrophic threat" of superbugs, says Chief Medical Officer.

Piden a Cisen datos de viáticos durante sexenio de FCH

El IFAI instruyó al Cisen revelar los montos de los viáticos y capacitaciones en el extranjero de sus funcionarios en el periodo 2006-2012

Drop in U.S. underground water levels has accelerated: USGS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Water levels in U.S. aquifers, the vast underground storage areas tapped for agriculture, energy and human consumption, between 2000 and 2008 dropped at a rate that was almost three times as great as any time during the 20th century, U.S. officials said on Monday.

New plans for secret arrests introduced

Police chiefs defy the Home Secretary and push ahead with a new system that will protect the anonymity of arrested suspects.

Vaccine developed for farm disease

A vaccine to protect sheep and cattle from a livestock virus spread by midges has been approved by government vets.

Treatment of Obesity and Diabetes Using Oxytocin or Analogs in Patients and Mouse Models

by Hai Zhang, Chenguang Wu, Qiaofen Chen, Xiaoluo Chen, Zhigang Xu, Jing Wu, Dongsheng Cai

Obesity is important for the development of type-2 diabetes as a result of obesity-induced insulin resistance accompanied by impaired compensation of insulin secretion from pancreatic beta cells. Here, based on a randomized pilot clinical trial, we report that intranasal oxytocin administration over an 8-week period led to effective reduction of obesity and reversal of related prediabetic changes in patients. Using mouse models, we further systematically evaluated whether oxytocin and its analogs yield therapeutic effects against prediabetic or diabetic disorders regardless of obesity. Our results showed that oxytocin and two analogs including [Ser4, Ile8]-oxytocin or [Asu1,6]-oxytocin worked in mice to reverse insulin resistance and glucose intolerance prior to reduction of obesity. In parallel, using streptozotocin-induced diabetic mouse model, we found that treatment with oxytocin or its analogs reduced the magnitude of glucose intolerance through improving insulin secretion. The anti-diabetic effects of oxytocin and its analogs in these animal models can be produced similarly whether central or peripheral administration was used. In conclusion, oxytocin and its analogs have multi-level effects in improving weight control, insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion, and bear potentials for being developed as therapeutic peptides for obesity and diabetes.

Vargas Llosa recibe el 'doctor honoris causa' de una universidad en Rumania

BUCAREST, 20 de mayo.- Mario Vargas Llosa recibió el título de "doctor honoris causa" de la Universidad "Babes-Bolyai" de Cluj, en Rumania, ante la que dijo que "la literatura tiene el papel de dar sentido al mundo y de enriquecer la vida".

"Se trata de un reconocimiento que implica una obligación en el futuro de trabajo intelectual y cívico", señaló el autor en su discurso.
"Siempre escribiré, no puedo parar de escribir. Es un honor para mí recibir este título por parte de una universidad prestigiosa", indicó el premio nobel.
El decano de la Facultad de Letras de la Universidad, Corin Braga, subrayó que "las mentiras verdaderas de Vargas Llosa están inspiradas del realismo mágico, de la novela caballeresca, de la literatura de los aventureros que hablan del paraíso terrestre, del folclore amazónico y la antigua literatura española".
El autor de "La tía Julia y el escribidor" asistió en el Teatro Nacional de Cluj a la primera puesta escena en rumano de su obra "Las mil y una noches", una adaptación de la célebre recopilación de cuentos árabes.
La visita de Vargas Llosa a Rumania termina mañana con una charla abierta en Cluj con el filósofo y escritor rumano Gabriel Liiceanu, denominada "¿Podríamos vivir sin evadirnos con la ficción?".

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Tech finds profit in poo in Dubai

Finding profit in poo in the Middle East

China breaks ceasefire, restarts hacking US government

Officials say it's time to move beyond 'jaw jaw'
After a three-month hiatus, Chinese hackers are once again targeting US government sites, according to government officials and the security firm that first uncovered the attacks.…

M.I.T. Scholar’s 1949 Essay on Machine Age Is Found

“The Machine Age,” an essay written for The New York Times by Norbert Wiener, a visionary mathematician, languished for six decades in the M.I.T. archives, and now excerpts are being published.

Apple Used Loopholes To Skip Paying U.S. Taxes On $44 Billion In Offshore Income, Senate Committee Claims

Corrects first paragraph to specify that taxable offshore income was $44 billion. Image via CrunchBase Apple relied on a "complex web of offshore entities" and U.S. tax loopholes to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes on $44 billion in offshore income over the past four years, according to excerpts from

Researchers uncover new global cyberespionage operation dubbed Safe

Security researchers from Trend Micro have uncovered an active cyberespionage operation that so far has compromised computers belonging to government ministries, technology companies, media outlets, academic research institutions and nongovernmental organizations from over 100 countries. The operation, which Trend Micro has dubbed Safe, targets potential victims using spear phishing emails with malicious attachments. The company's researchers have investigated the operation and published a research paper with their findings.

Immigrant Death Rate Rises on Illegal Crossings

Migrant deaths remain high even as apprehensions have fallen, with tighter borders pushing people to take riskier routes from Mexico to the United States.

El Popocatépetl registra 53 exhalaciones en las últimas 32 horas

PUEBLA, 20 de mayo.- Un total de 53 exhalaciones registró el Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (Cenapred) en el Popocatépetl durante las 32 horas monitoreadas y reportadas este lunes a través de dos comunicados oficiales
En el boletín de las 10:00, el organismo federal destacó 19 fumarolas de mediana amplitud en el volcán; además, agregó que, "debido a las condiciones climáticas del día de ayer no se pudo observar el cráter, sin embargo por la noche se observaron emisiones de fragmentos que caían dentro del cráter alcanzando una altura aproximada de 500 metros".
Asimismo, registró a las 05:44 horas de este lunes un evento volcanotectónico y, adicionalmente, unas seis horas de tremor de alta y baja frecuencia de mediana amplitud, por lo que mantuvo el semáforo de alerta volcánica en Amarillo Fase 3.
Al terminar la tarde, el Cenapred reveló que el coloso sumó 34 exhalaciones de mediana amplitud en las últimas ocho horas; empero, "las condiciones climáticas no han permitido observar al volcán y con ello confirmar la emisión de vapor de agua, gas y ceniza".
Finalmente, subrayó que este día 20, a las 15:41 horas, "se pudo observar con una emisión de vapor de agua y gas en dirección al suroeste; "adicionalmente se ha registrado un evento volcanotectónico".

Infosys vows to fight Indian tax claim

Domestic bill lands with a thud
It’s not just Western technology giants that are being targeted by the Indian government, now local IT services behemoth Infosys has been forced to challenge a Rs.5.77 billion (£68.7m) tax demand by the authorities.…

Una ola de fuertes sismos sacude la península rusa de Kamchatka

Una serie de sismos de 5,9 y 6,1 grados de magnitud en la escala de Richter ha sacudido la zona frente a la costa este de la península rusa de Kamchatka, en el Oriente Lejano ruso, según el Servicio Geológico de EE.UU. (USGS, por sus siglas en inglés).

El sismo más fuerte se localizó a una profundidad de 47 kilómetros y a 136 kilómetros al sureste de la ciudad rusa de Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. No se ha informado de pérdidas humanas ni materiales. Tampoco se ha emitido advertencia de tsunami.

Según los sismólogos, hasta el 27 de mayo se esperan más sismos, incluso de magnitud mayor a 7 grados, aunque en las urbes se sentirán como si fueran de unos 2 o 4 grados.

Little hope for Greece's jobless youth

Nearly two-thirds of young Greeks are currently jobless. The unemployment rate in the country has reached a record 27 percent. Experts are warning of dramatic consequences for Greek society.

Marine Harvest agrees to limit pesticides and seal killings

The company, which grows 25% of Scottish farmed salmon, will join Aquaculture Stewardship council's strict new scheme
One of the world's largest fish farm companies, Marine Harvest, has voluntarily agreed to much tougher limits on its pesticides use and seal killing by joining a strict new environment scheme.
Marine Harvest will join the Aquaculture Stewardship council, a new accreditation scheme championed by WWF, after coming under repeated attack for heavy use of toxic chemicals, seal-killing and major outbreaks of sea lice and salmon diseases.
The Norwegian-owned company, which grows 25% of all Scotland's farmed salmon, has promised to put all its UK fish farms through ASC accreditation by the end of this decade in what supporters of the scheme believes could transform the environmental sustainability of salmon farming.
It will force the firm to put a strict cap on escapes of farmed salmon – a problem with critics believe threatens the survival of wild salmon stocks – and cut chemical treatments. Under the scheme, the killing of seals as a precautionary measure to protect salmon will be drastically reduced but not entirely stopped. It would also require the company to only use fishfeed derived from Marine Stewardship Council-accredited wild fish stocks or other, non-wild sources of protein.
The move follows increasing criticism by environment and conservation campaigners about the Freedom Foods scheme operated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which only applies the minimum legal standards on environmental protection and has been widely criticised for failing to penalise fish farms that breach standards.
Under the ASC scheme, said Lang Banks, director WWF Scotland, the company's farms would lose it accreditation if it fails to meet standards.
Guy Linley-Adams, of the Salmon & Trout Association, which has been highly critical of the fish farming industry, said: "This isn't the end of the story. Marine Harvest still have fish-farms in the wrong places, as do all fish-farmers. They are too near to wild salmonid rivers threatening wild fish conservation and those farms need to be relocated."
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Germany's Westerwelle urges Serbia Kosovo progress

Germany's Foreign Minister has called for further progress in normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo. Bipartisan talks are set to take place, with Serbia keen to strengthen its case for EU accession.

Apple denies using ‘tax gimmicks’

The maker of iPhones and iPads seeks to pre-empt accusations of tax avoidance from an influential US Senate committee

Padre anglicano é condenado a 10 anos de prisão por abuso sexual de crianças

LONDRES - Um padre anglicano já aposentado foi condenado a dez anos de prisão nesta segunda-feira, ao ser considerado culpado em dezenas casos de abusos sexuais contra crianças, ocorridos entre 1962 e 1973. Gordon Rideout foi condenado em 34 acusações de ação indecente e duas de tentativa de estupro, envolvendo 16 meninos e meninas dos condados de Hampshire e Sussex. Foi inocentado de apenas uma, envolvendo um menino de 5 anos.
Rideout tem hoje 74 anos e nega as acusações. Os casos ocorreram em sua maioria no lar para crianças Ifield Hall, em Crawley, quando o sacerdote trabalhava como padre assistente na Igreja de St. Mary. De acordo com a promotoria, ele visitava as crianças quando elas estavam doentes e acamadas.
O padre foi preso em 2012 e acusado formalmente cinco meses depois, após uma investigação policial. Ele já havia sido denunciado em 1972 por abusos em uma base do Exército, quando era o pároco da capela de St. Michel, mas foi inocentado em um inquérito militar. Foi ainda alvo de outra investigação em 2001.
Segundo o novo inquérito, “como cura e capelão, Gordon Rideout estava numa posição de confiança, da qual sistematicamente abusou, com ataques indecentes contra jovens vulneráveis que encontrou por anos”.
De acordo com a promotoria, uma das vítimas se lembrou de como as crianças se escondiam embaixo das cobertas quando o padre entrava nos dormitórios.

Supplier investigated after top-grade caviar contained cheaper variety

UK's largest supplier of caviar investigated after sought-after product was mislabelled as top-grade when it contained cheaper, low-quality type.

Elmbridge residents paid 200 times more tax than Google

Residents in the Surrey borough of Elmbridge, home to Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, paid the most in tax per head in the UK - 200 times more in total than Google.

Teenage burglar with electronic tag pulls a fast one on G4S security official

A 16-year-old burglar sentenced to a home curfew puts one over on the security company which was setting up his electronic tag.

China's One-Child Policy Affects Personality

In 1979 China instituted the one-child policy, which limited every family to just one offspring in a controversial attempt to reduce the country's burgeoning population. The strictly enforced law had the desired effects: in 2011 researchers estimated that the policy prevented 400 million births. In a new study in Science , researchers find that it has also caused China's so-called little emperors to be more pessimistic, neurotic and selfish than their peers who have siblings.
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To Conform or Not to Conform: Spontaneous Conformity Diminishes the Sensitivity to Monetary Outcomes

by Rongjun Yu, Sai Sun

When people have different opinions in a group, they often adjust their own attitudes and behaviors to match the group opinion, known as social conformity. The affiliation account of normative conformity states that people conform to norms in order to ‘fit in’, whereas the accuracy account of informative conformity posits that the motive to learn from others produces herding. Here, we test another possibility that following the crowd reduces the experienced negative emotion when the group decision turns out to be a bad one. Using event related potential (ERP) combined with a novel group gambling task, we found that participants were more likely to choose the option that was predominately chosen by other players in previous trials, although there was little explicit normative pressure at the decision stage and group choices were not informative. When individuals' choices were different from others, the feedback related negativity (FRN), an ERP component sensitive to losses and errors, was enhanced, suggesting that being independent is aversive. At the outcome stage, the losses minus wins FRN effect was significantly reduced following conformity choices than following independent choices. Analyses of the P300 revealed similar patterns both in the response and outcome period. Our study suggests that social conformity serves as an emotional buffer that protects individuals from experiencing strong negative emotion when the outcomes are bad.

Invasive Asian stink bugs threaten fruit crops in Michigan

Detroit (UPI) May 18, 2013



An invasive insect from Asia first spotted in Michigan two years ago could pose a major threat this year to fruit growers, officials say.
The brown marmorated stink bug was reported in 12 counties last year, The Detroit News reported Saturday. While it has not yet been seen in Macomb County, just north of Detroit, growers there are apprehensive.
Paul Blake grows strawberries, pea

Free software to help develop business in Argentina

Argentinean companies and cooperatives have launched a free-software initiative to help develop products for public and private sectors.

Frog once imported for pregnancy testing brought deadly amphibian disease to US

San Francisco CA (SPX) May 20, 2013



African frogs, originally imported for early 20th century pregnancy tests, carried a deadly amphibian disease to the U.S., according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

African Clawed Frogs have long been suspected of introducing a harmful fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd to new populations that haven't been exposed to this pathogen before. The fungus has le

Brain frontal lobes not sole centre of human intelligence

Durham UK (SPX) May 21, 2013



Human intelligence cannot be explained by the size of the brain's frontal lobes, say researchers. Research into the comparative size of the frontal lobes in humans and other species has determined that they are not - as previously thought - disproportionately enlarged relative to other areas of the brain, according to the most accurate and conclusive study of this area of the brain.

It con

France: Un avion en provenance de Zurich dérouté

Un vol de la compagnie US Airways qui effectuait la liaison Zurich-Philadelphie, a dû être dérouté lundi à Paris en raison d'une intoxication alimentaire frappant des membres d'équipage.

Keeping fruit, vegetables and cut flowers fresh longer

Washington DC (SPX) May 20, 2013



New technology offers the promise of reducing billions of dollars of losses that occur each year from the silent, invisible killer of fruits, vegetables and cut flowers - a gas whose effects are familiar to everyone who has seen bananas and other fruit ripen too quickly and rot. That's the conclusion of an article in the ACS journal Chemical Reviews.

Nicolas Keller, Marie-Noelle Ducamp, Di

African soil diversity mapped for the first time

An atlas of a key natural resource, Africa's soil, aims to give people outside the science world insight into its importance and management.

UC Santa Barbara scientist studies methane levels in cross-continent drive

Santa Barbara CA (SPX) May 20, 2013



After taking a rented camper outfitted with special equipment to measure methane on a cross-continent drive, a UC Santa Barbara scientist has found that methane emissions across large parts of the U.S. are higher than currently known, confirming what other more local studies have found. Their research is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas,

Industrialized fishing has forced seabirds to change what they eat

The bleached bones of seabirds are telling us a new story about the far-reaching impacts of industrial fisheries on today's oceans. Looking at the isotopes of 250 bones from Hawaiian petrels (Pterodroma sandwichensis), scientists have been able to reconstruct the birds' diets over the last 3,000 years. They found an unmistakable shift from big prey to small prey around 100 years ago, just when large, modern fisheries started scooping up fish at never before seen rates. The dietary shift shows that modern fisheries upended predator and prey relationships even in the ocean ocean and have possibly played a role in the decline of some seabirds.

Israel is world's largest drone exporter

Half of Israel's drone exports are to Europe, including a substantial number to the UK, according to a recent study
Israel is the world's largest exporter of drones, mainly to Europe, Asia and Latin America, in a trade worth more than $4.6bn (£3bn) over the past eight years.
A study by the business consultancy Frost and Sullivan found that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) account for almost 10% of Israel's military exports. Sales have declined from a peak in 2010, but Israel has recently signed a $100m deal, not included in the figures, with India to upgrade its drones.
Just over half of Israel's drone exports were to Europe, including a substantial number to the UK. Less than 4% of UAV sales were to America.
Israel is considered at the forefront of military technological development. It regularly uses drones to monitor activity in Gaza and carry out targeted assassinations.
The use of drones by the United States to carry out military strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan has attracted widespread criticism. UAVs are controlled remotely by military personnel.
The next generation of autonomous weapons will be fully controlled by robots. The United Nations human rights council is due to discuss a new report on "lethal autonomous robotics" in Geneva later this month.
Israel's military exports are worth more than $6bn a year, according to the Frost and Sullivan study.
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Worst natural disasters of 2012 by numbers displaced – in pictures

Flooding, often during monsoons and sometimes accompanied by typhoons, displaced the most people last year

Shooting of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura 'staged', claims Israeli report - video

Middle east editor Ian Black discusses the Israeli report into the death of Muhammad al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot in Gaza in 2000

Climate change: human disaster looms, claims new research

Forecast global temperature rise of 4C a calamity for large swaths of planet even if predicted extremes are not reached
Some of the most extreme predictions of global warming are unlikely to materialise, new scientific research has suggested, but the world is still likely to be in for a temperature rise of double that regarded as safe.
The researchers said warming was most likely to reach about 4C above pre-industrial levels if the past decade's readings were taken into account.
That would still lead to catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves, and drastic effects on agricultural productivity leading to secondary effects such as mass migration.
Some climate change sceptics have suggested that because the highest global average temperature yet recorded was in 1998 climate change has stalled. The new study, which is published in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows a much longer "pause" would be needed to suggest that the world was not warming rapidly.
Alexander Otto, at the University of Oxford, lead author of the research, told the Guardian that there was much that climate scientists could still not fully factor into their models. He said most of the recent warming had been absorbed by the oceans but this would change as the seas heat up. The thermal expansion of the oceans is one of the main factors behind current and projected sea level rises.
The highest global average temperature ever recorded was in 1998, under the effects of a strong El Niño, a southern Pacific weather system associated with warmer and stormy weather, which oscillates with a milder system called La Niña. Since then the trend of average global surface temperatures has shown a clear rise above the long-term averages – the 10 warmest years on record have been since 1998 – but climate sceptics have claimed that this represents a pause in warming.
Otto said that this most recent pattern could not be taken as evidence that climate change has stopped. "Given the noise in the climate and temperature system, you would need to see a much longer period of any pause in order to draw the conclusion that global warming was not occurring," he said. Such a period could be as long as 40 years of the climate record, he said.
Otto said the study found that most of the climate change models used by scientists were "pretty accurate". A comprehensive global study of climate change science is expected to be published in September by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, its first major report since 2007.
Jochem Marotzke, professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and a co-author of the paper, said: "It is important not to over-interpret a single decade, given what we know, and don't know, about natural climate variability. Over the past decade the world as a whole has continued to warm but the warming is mostly in the subsurface oceans rather than at the surface."
Other researchers also warned that there was little comfort to be taken from the new estimates – greenhouse gas emissions are rising at a far higher rate than had been predicted by this stage of the 21st century and set to rise even further, so estimates for how much warming is likely will also have to be upped.
Richard Allan, reader in climate at the University of Reading, said: "This work has used observations to estimate Earth's current heating rate and demonstrate that simulations of climate change far in the future seem to be pretty accurate. However, the research also indicates that a minority of simulations may be responding more rapidly towards this overall warming than the observations indicate."
He said the effect of pollutants in the atmosphere, which reflect the sun's heat back into space, was particularly hard to measure.
He noted the inferred sensitivity of climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations based on this new study, suggesting a rise of 1.2C to 3.9C, was consistent with the range from climate simulations of 2.2C to 4.7C. He said: "With work like this our predictions become ever better."
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Police retain DNA from thousands of children

Some 120,000 gene samples taken in two years, as police forces argue they are acting within the law

The DNA of thousands of innocent children is being taken by police and stored on the national database, campaigners say on Monday, citing new figures.
Police have taken the DNA of 120,000 children in the last two years, according to figures obtained by the Howard League for Penal Reform.
A total of 4,000 children under the age of 13 had their DNA taken in 2011. Police can take DNA from anyone arrested and store it on the database even if they are not charged or convicted of a criminal offence. The Howard League says the figures show a child's DNA is being taken by the police once every 10 minutes.
It says since most people arrested are not charged, it means the DNA of tens of thousands of innocent children is being stored on the national database every year.
Police do not challenge the figures but say they include children whose DNA has been taken when they are victims of crime, or to rule them out from crime scenes, as well as when they are arrested as suspects.
The figures were compiled from freedom of information requests sent to forces in England and Wales.
A total of 53,973 samples were taken from children aged 10-17 in 2011. In 2010 the figure was 69,796.
Children aged under 10 fall below the criminal age of responsibility. The figures do not distinguish between children arrested on suspicion of committing a crime and those who have had their DNA taken in other circumstances.
The figure for the taking of child DNA samples by police is expected to decline as new laws come in later this year tightening the rules on when police can retain DNA profiles from child suspects.
A total of 6 million people have their samples on the national DNA database, which is one of the largest in the world. Of those, 156,000 are children aged 17 or below, according to government figures. Altogether, 1.25m samples on the database were taken from people when they were children.
The FoI request asked forces "how many children aged 17 years and under had DNA samples taken by the police and stored in 2010 and 2011?"
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League, said: "When public money is tight and police forces are shrinking, it is disappointing to see valuable crime-fighting resources being wasted on taking DNA samples from thousands of innocent children while serious offences go undetected.
"Children who get into trouble with the police are usually just up to mischief. Treating so many like hardened criminals by taking their DNA seems excessive.
"We welcome the government's decision to stop storing innocent people's DNA indefinitely, but it remains unclear how this will affect the number of children having their DNA taken needlessly."
Amanda Cooper, who leads on the DNA database for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "DNA may be taken from children in a number of circumstances with the intention of preventing or detecting crime.
"These may be when a child has been a victim of crime, when police would take DNA to confirm an incident took place and check whether it can be linked to a perpetrator.
"Others will be as part of criminal investigations where a child is the suspect. DNA samples are also taken to conduct criminal paternity tests as part of sexual offence investigations. The taking and retention of DNA from people of all ages is set out clearly under law."
The figures show four instances of police taking DNA of children below the age of criminal responsibility. One child was less than a year old; another was two. The forces concerned, Thames Valley, Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire, say the samples were not taken because the children were suspected of crimes.
Stuart Jeffries, of Avon and Somerset CID, said: "We took DNA from a five-year-old girl because she was the victim of a serious sexual assault and we believed her sample would help us convict her attacker. The sample has been destroyed.
"We only take DNA from children under 10 in serious cases and only where they have been the victim."
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

North Korea fires two more missiles

Missile launches bring total to six in three days as Pyongyang defends right to carry out drills
North Korea has fired two more short-range missiles, making six launches in three days, and condemning South Korea for criticising what it said were its legitimate military drills.
South Korea's defence ministry said North Korea had fired one missile on Monday morning and a second one in the afternoon. Both were fired into the sea off North Korea's east coast, a ministry official said.
The launches followed more than two months of threats from North Korea that it would wage a nuclear war against South Korea and the US if it were attacked. The North condemned joint US and South Korean military exercises, that ended in late April, as a rehearsal for an attack on its territory.
"We are conducting intense military exercises to strengthen our defence capacity," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the body that handles inter-Korean issues, as saying on Monday.
"Our military is conducting these exercises in order to cope with the mounting war measures from the US and South Korea, which is the legitimate right of any sovereign country."
North Korea frequently fires short-range missiles, although the current spate of launches has drawn criticism from Seoul and Washington after the recent threats from the North.
Seoul condemned the launches for stoking tension in the region while Beijing, the North's sole major ally, called for restraint.
"These launches are its tactic of signalling to the world that the regime is willing to negotiate now, while at the same time saving face," Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defence University in Seoul, which is part of the defence ministry, said of North Korea. Kim said North Korea had an arsenal of hundreds of short- and medium-range missiles.
There appears to be little prospect of talks between North Korea and the US as Washington insists Pyongyang needs to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, something the isolated and impoverished state has said it will not do.
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Rice seeds sown in former Fukushima evacuation zone

The first sowing was on Saturday in Tamura’s Miyakojimachi district which had been part of the Fukushima evacuation zone- where locals are still banned from staying overnight. Three farms have plans to seed six hectares.
Immediately following the accident, the area was completely sealed off, but day-visits without authorization became possible in April last year.
Local farmer Tsuboi Hisao reported “some honest anxiety,” to the Okinawa Times as he laid one of the first seedlings in the ground.
Because locals are banned from remaining in the area overnight, Hisao is concerned about having to leave his temporary base to tend his crops at 4.a.m. and is pessimistic about whether he will be able to keep it up.
“I want to ask the municipal authorities to allow me to stay at my own house for several days a week,” Hisao told the Japan Times.

Farmers will use fertilizer containing potassium on the crops, in order to counterbalance any remaining radioactive caesium which could be absorbed by the plants.
The radioactive isotope of caesium is produced through the nuclear fission of the element and has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.

In January, it was reported that levels of caesium in seafood around the disaster area had not decreased since 2011. The same month, a fish was caught at a port in the area which contained over 2,500 times Japan's legal limit for radiation.
All of the rice will be monitored for radiation levels prior to shipment across the country.
The 9.0 earthquake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami and caused nuclear meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant killed at least 16,000 people.
A further 87,000 people within a 20km-radius of the plant were forced to evacuate their homes because of the possibility of radiation poisoning.
In the effort to rid the Tamura region of its high radioactivity, buildings had been doused with high-pressure water, and earth and plants have been removed from the affected areas.
Levels in the Miyakoji district were reported to be as high as 0.7 μSv/h (micro Sieverts per hour) in March by Global Post – three times the eventual government target of 0.23 μSv/h.
Workers spent time drilling into the earth, put it in waste sacks, and adding a new layer of topsoil from non-contaminated areas.
By Monday, readings for Miyakoji from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority stood at 0.182μSv/h, meaning that the area was below government targets, at 15.95 mSv/y (milli-Sieverts per year).
The average human being absorbs around 2.4 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation a year from nature and their surroundings.
In comparison, Chernobyl’s Monday radiation levels stood at 0.19 μSv/h. Ukranian officials last year began to consider growing crops in the 30 - km evacuation zone around the site of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster.
During Chernobyl, a total exposure of 0.35 sieverts (350 millisieverts) was used as the relocation threshold. At Fukushima, the dose was much lower, with radiation exposure of between 3–170 μSv/h being measured within 30km of the plant.
Among the former exclusion zones, Miyakojimachi is the only district where decontamination has been completed, and the reintroduction of life to the area has been a slow process, with the first school opening last August, alongside permission being granted for visits to family graves.

Swedish extradition request for Assange ‘a fit-up’ - UK intel chatter

The Australian, who has been stranded at Ecuadorian embassy in London for almost 12 months, cited instant messages he received from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signal intelligence body.
One message from September 2012, which Assange read out in a Sunday night interview with Spanish TV program Salvados, says: "They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate."
Another conversation he cited goes: "He reckons he will stay in the Ecuadorian embassy for six to 12 months when the charges against him will be dropped, but that is not really how it works now is it? He's a fool… Yeah… A highly optimistic fool."
Assange did not explain who the people exchanging the messages were, but said he managed to obtain them because they were not classified.
"[GCHQ] won't hand over any of the classified information," he said. "But, much to its surprise, it has some unclassified information on us."
GCHQ confirmed to RT that it released the info to Assange under the Data Protection Act. It can be used by individuals to obtain personal information that UK bodies have about them. The agency is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the usual mechanism for getting information of interest released by officials.
It stressed that the comments Assange received do not reflect GCHQ’s official stance in any way.
“As was made clear to Mr. Assange when the information was disclosed to him, the comments that he refers to in his recent interview were a small number of casual observations on a current affairs issue made by a handful of staff on GCHQ's internal informal communication channels. The comments were entirely unrelated to the individuals' official duties,” a spokesman for the agency said in an email.
A British court ordered that Assange be extradited to Sweden, where authorities want to question him on sex-related allegations. He refuses to go to there unless it guarantees that it won’t extradite him to the US, where he faces espionage charges over data released by WikiLeaks.
Ecuador has given Assange asylum and houses him in a small basement room in its London embassy. UK law enforcement keeps a close eye on the embassy, ready to arrest Assange should he leave the diplomatically-protected building.
The cost of the surveillance, which is believed to involve two police vehicles and eight officers on duty at all times, is now over $16,500 a day, Scotland Yard recently reported. The operation cost British taxpayers over $5 million since Assange got his refuge on June 19, 2012. By the time the anniversary falls, the sum is expected to have gone over $6.3 million.

Rusia creará una base de datos con el ADN de todos sus prisioneros

El Servicio Penitenciario Federal de Rusia (FSIN, por sus siglas en ruso) ha puesto en marcha un proyecto a gran escala para crear una base de datos genéticos de todos los prisioneros del país, informa el periódico ruso 'Izvestia'.

Primeramente se recopilarán muestras de ADN de los condenados por delitos graves y muy graves (como asesinatos, robos y asaltos), para lo cual el Servicio Penitenciario Federal ha encargado alrededor de 200.000 muestras, en las que gastará más de 2,5 millones de dólares.

A esta base de datos podrán tener acceso todas las fuerzas de seguridad rusas. Los marcadores de ADN serán utilizados para resolver crímenes, localizar prisioneros que se hayan escapado o prevenir intentos de fuga. Según la representante oficial del Servicio Penitenciario Federal, Kristina Beloúsova, esta base de datos genética empezó a elaborarse el año pasado.

Descubren 90 kilos de hachís en militares españoles que iban de maniobras

Las autoridades españolas informan de que en el marco de un control rutinario previo a la salida del contingente militar de la Base Alfonso XIII para unas maniobras en Granada, descubrieron el sábado en seis mochilas pertenecientes a los efectivos un total de 90 kilogramos de polen de hachís. Según informa la agencia de noticias EFE, haciendo referencia a sus fuentes en la Guardia Civil, por el momento no se han hecho detenciones, sino que se ha abierto una investigación.

Mexican opposition dispute goes public, threatening reforms

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Divisions within Mexico's main conservative opposition party have erupted into a bitter public dispute that threatens to undermine the reform agenda of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

The Overwhelming Odds Of Climate Change

If you listen to global warming deniers, or even much of the public , it seems like there is some stack of scientific studies somewhere that refute anthropogenic--human-caused--climate change. If someone would just let them reach into that pile and pull out a paper, we'd all see that climate change is "a hoax," or so it seems in our fractured discourse.

[More]

Cancer, genomics and technological solutionism: A time to be wary

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism", the philosopher of technology Evgeny Morozov develops the concept of "technological solutionism", the tendency to define problems primarily or purely based on whether or not a certain technology can address them. This is a concerning trend since it foreshadows a future where problems are no longer prioritized by their social or political importance but instead by how easily they would succumb under the blade of well-defined and easily available technological solutions. Morozov's solutionism is a more sophisticated version of the adage about everything looking like a nail when you have a hammer. But it's all too real in this age of accelerated technological development, when technology advances much faster than we can catch up with its implications. It's a problem that only threatens to grow. [More]

U.S. pesticide makers seek answers as bee losses sting agriculture

(Reuters) - Monsanto Co is hosting a "Bee Summit." Bayer AG is breaking ground on a "Bee Care Center." And Sygenta AG is funding grants for research into the accelerating demise of honeybees in the United States, where the insects pollinate fruits and vegetables that make up roughly a quarter of the American diet.

Thousands of British police sent to Northern Ireland amid fear of terror attack at G8 summit

More than 3,500 UK police officers are being deployed to Northern Ireland for next month's G8 conference amid fears that dissident Republicans are plotting a terrorist outrage.

Non-native goats and iguanas threaten Pacific islands

Feral goats and green iguanas wreaking havoc with the ecosystems in the small islands in the Pacific, biologists warn, in two separate studies published in Pacific Science last month, calling for control or elimination of these animals. The animals have been introduced there by humans, but are now threatening the survival of native wildlife.

Chinese cash-for-jobs scam netted £8m

College students paid large sums to gang promising posts in banks and state-owned enterprises, reports say
A gang in central China defrauded college graduates of 90m yuan (£8.4m) by claiming they could get them jobs in banks and state-owned enterprises and institutions, Chinese media have reported.
To add insult to injury, the jobseekers went through a battery of written tests, interviews and even internships designed to convince them that the employment prospects were genuine.
The case in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, has cast light on the widespread practice of paying for jobs. Police said the gang had ties to officials and people with social status, making their offer of help appear more credible.
News portals, citing the Beijing News and Xinhua, said about 500 college students had been persuaded to pay between 50,000 and 350,000 yuan for posts. The scam ran for about four years before police apprehended the suspects.
"Every process of the job recruitment was particularly clear, and each written examination and interview was rendered particularly realistically, so it made people feel it was very formal," said an officer identified only by his surname, Yuan.
"Secondly … some of the students finally got in touch with the gang through several layers of connections. This network was involved with some officials or people who had a certain social status. It made it more convincing."
Yuan said the gang had also been canny in identifying the psychological vulnerability of parents. "The current employment situation is tougher and parents generally want their children to enter the stable environment of banks, state-owned enterprises and other well paid units," he said.
Graeme Smith, of the University of Sydney, said payments for jobs were common in China, although they usually resulted in a job. "You would also have to have qualifications; you couldn't buy a job you weren't able to do," he said.
His research in rural Anhui province has shown how all sorts of work, even at the lowest level, can command a price. At one stage people had been willing to pay up to two years' wages for a factory floor job in a lightbulb plant, he said, simply because there were few other jobs of the kind available locally. People felt the price was worth it so they could earn a decent wage without becoming a migrant worker.
The scale of payments reflected the desirability of the jobs and their availability – and the number of people involved in decision-making, he said. "The big payment is someone who's a township party secretary but wants to move up to the next level; that's a very narrow bit of the pipeline," he said. "Often you are not bribing a person but a whole bunch of people."
While large sums of cash can change hands, experts say few people would offer – or accept – a bribe outright if they did not already know the other party reasonably well. The need to find someone who knows the decision-makers helps to explain why those seeking posts can be persuaded to hand over cash.
In a separate case this year, also reported by the Beijing News, a businessman was sentenced to 15 years in jail for defrauding an official who wanted to buy a provincial government position for 6m yuan. He reportedly claimed he had a former classmate working in central government who could help him win the promotion.
Ren Jianmin, who teaches public management at Beihang University, said the government had a long-term plan for reforms of the official selection system. While official positions were often not particularly well paid, he said, the related benefits were attractive.
"That's why these positions are sold – it's things like having a car and benefits in terms of property. Officials also have special privileges and powers," Ren said.
Corruption cases have shown that officials' salaries are often dwarfed by the money they can make in other ways, such as by accepting bribes for contracts, dismissing complaints or indeed selling posts themselves.
China's new leader, Xi Jinping, has vowed to fight both "tigers" and "flies" – that is, misbehaving officials at all levels – in a drive against corruption. But the party has repeatedly vowed to weed out abuses, with limited success.
In 2010 Li Yuanchao, then head of the party's central organisation commission, said: "We want those who sell offices to be utterly discredited, and those who buy offices to suffer a double loss."
Additional research by Cecily Huang
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Goldman Is Selling The Last Of Its Stake In A Chinese Bank, And Communist Officials Are Probably Pretty Annoyed

Goldman Sachs bought a stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China before it was cool — before it had the 2nd largest IPO in the history of the world in 2006, and before it was the largest bank in the world by market cap.
Initially, Goldman owned 4.9% of the bank, whose stock is up 22% over the year. The stock's up 57.95% since its listing on exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong. And adding to that good news, last month, despite signs of a slowdown throughout China, ICBC reported a 12% increase in Q1 profit, according to Bloomberg.
But not even love like that lasts forever. Goldman has been unwinding its position in this stock for years, and today the Wall Street Journal reported that the affair is officially over. Goldman could raise $9.7 billion selling its remaining ICBC shares.
It sounds like a lovely goodbye, but the relationship between Goldman and ICBC has been rocky. Goldman sold stakes in the bank five times since 2006, each time analysts have pointed to a variety of reasons — simply raising cash being one of them.
Another was that ICBC is a volatile stock — in 2010 the Goldman made $747 million on its stake. Then by late November of 2011, it had lost $905 million on the stock and was selling $1.54 billion of its stake, Reuters reported.
From a Reuters piece in 2011:

"It's likely a reflection of Goldman's own desire to book some profit and hedge their risk rather than a negative view on Chinese banks," said Warren Blight, lead analyst for Chinese bank research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in Hong Kong.

That's definitely what the Chinese government wanted to hear, but those are just words. What matters is what the government saw — banks like Bank of America and RBS selling stakes in their massive state-owned banks.
For a clue as to how much China didn't (and doesn't) like this, know that Goldman's lock-up period for selling its ICBC stake was, initially, that the stock would become free in equal installments on April 28, 2009 and October 20, 2009.
That was then changed to an agreement in which Goldman would not be able to sell 80% of its ICBC holding until April 2010.
"Today's announcement underscores our firm’s confidence in ICBC and our commitment to China. We look forward to working closely with ICBC, one of the most important financial institutions in the world, and further developing our strategic cooperation,” said Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein in a release at the time.
But again, those are just words, and even as the ICBC outperformed, Goldman carried on with its sales. As equities around the world have surged, Goldman hasn't needed ICBC to make a tidy sum in its investing and lending portfolio.
In Q4 2012, ICBC stock made up 42% of Goldman's equity securities revenue — all told, the bank made $1.9 billion in investing in lending.
Then, in Q1 2013, ICBC contributed just 2% of Goldman's equity securities revenue — all told, the bank made $2.1 billion in investing and lending.
You can check it out from the table below from Goldman's quarterly report.
All that said: It's hard to argue, as analysts have before, that these sales don't mean that Goldman is seeing serious issues with China's banking system. Yes, ICBC can point to positive earnings numbers in its last report, but China bears like hedge fund manager Jim Chanos think that's all smoke and mirrors anyway.
The real question at hand, he believes, is the health of Chinese credit — are loans being made, and how are they performing?
When you ask that question, you get a different story than you do by just looking at Chinese bank earnings numbers. Non-performing loans rose by 64.7 billion yuan ($10.4 billion) to 492.9 billion yuan at the end of 2012.
Meanwhile, even as credit expands, it's getting more expensive to get a loan in China, GDP growth is slowing, and the shadow banking sector is growing as well, making it hard to track where everyone's money is going and how its performing.
That's why usually stoic government officials are actually speaking out about how worried they are.
From an FT story last month:

A senior Chinese auditor has warned that local government debt is “out of control” and could spark a bigger financial crisis than the US housing market crash.

Zhang Ke said his accounting firm, ShineWing, had all but stopped signing off on bond sales by local governments as a result of his concerns...

“It is already out of control,” Mr Zhang said. “A crisis is possible. But since the debt is being rolled over and is long-term, the timing of its explosion is uncertain.”

The government will prop up banks if everything goes wrong, but FT's Jamil Anderlini points out that a Lehman-style run isn't the only way the Chinese banking sector could go down.
There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and in this instance, Anderlini says that a banking crisis in China could come the same way it did in the 1990s (but bigger and badder). Banks will be bogged down with tons of non-performing loans but the government will force them to lend anyway. They'll expand the country's credit without contributing to real growth.
The banks, in essence, will become zombies.
So it's possible the Goldman got out before ICBC ate its brains.

UK approved £112m of arms exports to Saudi Arabia last year

Gulf state paid British arms manufacturers almost £4bn in past four years in face of human rights concerns
The UK has granted arms export licences to Saudi Arabia worth almost £4bn over the past four years despite growing fears about the human rights record in the kingdom during the Arab spring, new figures show.
Last year the government approved licences worth £112m for 209 items, including crowd control ammunition grenades, components for military aircraft and combat vehicles, and components for electronic warfare.
The details have been set out by the watchdog Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), which pulled together figures from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) for the value and destination of licences approved in 2012.
According to the CAAT study, the UK sold £433m worth of military equipment and services to Oman last year, £306m to the US and £142m to Brazil.
But CAAT's concern focuses on continued arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which last year had licences approved worth £26.2m and £4.6m respectively.
The government insists the rules for granting licences are robust and transparent, but campaigners argue the regulations still allow substantial arms exports to authoritarian regimes.
"These figures for 2012 show the UK arms industry continues to focus on the Gulf states, despite their reputation for human rights abuse and lack of democracy," said a spokesman for CAAT.
The group points out Saudi Arabia's ranking in the The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2012fell from the previous year - it was given zero points for "electoral process and pluralism". The only countries ranked lower in the 170 strong table were Syria, Chad, Guinea-Bissau and North Korea.
Saudi Arabia's press was assessed as "not free" by the Freedom House Freedom of the Press Index 2013 which listed it as joint 182 of 197 countries listed.
"The prime minister and arms company executives visit Saudi Arabia to beg for orders and routinely roll out the red carpet for Saudi delegations to the UK, as they will be doing in September for the DSEi arms fair," the spokesman added.
"It's time to end this damaging and dangerous relationship and stop selling arms to this repressive regime."
According to government's figures, the UK last year licensed weaponry and other military equipment and components worth £111.7 million to Saudi Arabia.
This included aircraft, helicopters, and drones worth £81.4m; armoured vehicles and tanks worth £8.8m; and grenades bombs worth up to £3.2m.
A spokeswoman for BIS insisted the UK took enormous care before granting applications - and there was no evidence any British exports had been used to internal repression in any of the Gulf states.
She insisted the criteria were rigorous and the government had turned down applications where there was doubt what the equipment might be used for.
"The UK government takes is export licensing responsibilities seriously and operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world. Any application to export a product covered by an export control is assessed against internationally recognised criteria on a case by case basis. Each assessment we make takes into account the intended end use of the equipment, the behaviour of the end user, the risk of diversion and the prevailing circumstances in the country concerned. We pay particular attention to allegations of human rights abuses."
Alistair Burt, the foreign office minister for counter proliferation, has repeatedly denied that Britain has granted export licences to countries where the equipment might be used to suppress dissent.
"We do not and will not issue licences where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or where it might be used to facilitate internal repression," Burt said last year.
David Cameron visited Saudi Arabia twice last year during which he defended arms sales to Gulf countries as "entirely legitimate", particularly as the arms industry supports 600,000 jobs in the UK.
The prime minister said he had travelled to the Gulf to support British businesses and help them "to compete and thrive in the global race" .
Ministers argue defence and security exports support legitimate rights to self-defence. They concede the government does have concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia and deny the commercial relationship with the kingdom prevents the UK from speaking frankly and openly about the problems.
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Prison sentences for mock executions in barn

Two men who created a fake profile of a young girl on an internet dating site have been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison by the Jönköping district court for kidnapping, robbery and blackmail, local media report.
The men, aged 19 and 20, reportedly used the fake profile to contact men who showed interest in teenage girls.
On different occasions they arranged dates with at least four men who were kidnapped and brought to a deserted barn outside Jönköping.
The kidnappers assaulted the men, threatening them with a knife and subjecting them to mock executions through Russian roulette games.
The kidnapped men, who are in their twenties and are from the Jönköping area, were told they would be reported to the police for pedophilia unless they paid their kidnappers money. They were forced to pay an estimated 70,000 SEK.
None of the victims are suspected of any crime, reported Swedish Radio.

Vitamin C and Gout

Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid, or simply ascorbate (the anion of ascorbic acid), is an essential nutrient for humans and certain other animal species. Vitamin C has been advocated for many other therapeutic uses. Vitamin C functions as an antioxidant and is necessary for the treatment and prevention of scurvy, though in nearly all cases dietary intake is adequate to prevent deficiency and supplementation is not necessary. Though vitamin C has been promoted as useful in the treatment of a variety of conditions, most of these uses are poorly supported by the evidence and sometimes contraindicated. Despite previous studies touting its benefit in moderating gout risk, new research reveals that vitamin C does not reduce uric acid (urate) levels to a clinically significant degree in patients with established gout. Vitamin C supplementation, alone or in combination with allopurinol, appears to have a weak effect on lowering uric acid levels in gout patients according to the results published in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) journal, Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Rioters in Sweden protest alleged brutality, racism after police shoot elderly man

Between 60 to 100 people – most of them young men – took part in the riots which began around 10pm local time in the Stockholm district of Husby.

Police turned up at the scene after a car was set on fire. Upon arrival, officers were met with stone-throwing protesters, Police Chief Daniel Mattsson said, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

One policeman was attacked by youths kicking him and two others were injured by rocks, police officer Jorgen Karlsson told AP.
Rioters torched cars in a local parking garage. Around 50 vehicles were damaged in the fire, which forced the evacuation of a nearby building. Windows were smashed at two schools and several local businesses.

Mattson said there were 18 criminal incidents reported and that the unrest lasted for four hours.

Allegations of police misconduct

Witnesses say that police officers reportedly called rioters and residents “monkeys” on Sunday night, discriminating against their race.

Rouzbeh Djalai, editor-in-chief of local newspaper The North Side, told The Local that she spoke to a youth leader and some of teenagers after the riots. The group reportedly approached police asking if they could help.

The youth leader told her that he was called a “nigger” by police, while the boys were called “monkeys.” They also said the police attacked them with batons.

"If the police don't want to cooperate, they should just say it; they don't have to call people names and hit them with batons," Djalaie said.

Residents of Husby are angry that police are increasing their presence in the neighborhood, instead of focusing on long-term solutions to the area’s problems.

"There's frustration in Husby and it risks spiralling out of control; people want long-term solutions to social problems instead of an increased police presence," Djalai said.

"It's a neighborhood where one third of junior high school graduates leave school without adequate grades; they step straight out into unemployment. It's obvious what the consequences are," she added.

Seeking justice

The riots were in response to the fatal shooting of an elderly man last week. The man was shot and killed by police after officers responded to a call that a person was roaming Husby with a knife.

Once officers arrived, the man disappeared into an apartment, police spokesman Lars Byström told TT news agency. He then stepped onto a balcony and threatened officers.

"He screamed at police from the balcony that he wanted to kill them," a neighbor told the Expressen newspaper.

Negotiators were called to the scene and police learned that a woman was also in the apartment. After failed attempts at negotiating, police broke down the apartment door in an effort to secure the woman’s safety.

But things took a turn for the worse once officers arrived inside the residence.

"Then the person in question appeared holding a machete. Officers felt cornered and threw a flash grenade so they could overpower the man. That didn't work either and they then felt forced to open fire," said Byström.
It is unclear how many officers fired shots and how many shots were fired, but witnesses say police fired five or six shots in total.

"We saw the flashes when they shot. Even if you'd never seen an actual shooting before, you knew what it was," a witness said.
Police say the 69-year-old man was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds.
However, local youth organization Megafonen reported on May 15th that neighbors said there was never an ambulance. Instead, they say a hearse turned up to cart away the body at 2am.
The woman inside the apartment escaped with no injuries, according to police. Her relationship with the man remains unknown.
Megafonen arranged a protest against the alleged police brutality last week, in response to the fatal shooting. The group - a community-based organization aimed at organizing residents to fight for social justice - demanded an independent investigation and public apology.
"Last week, the police shot an old man who was holding a knife. How can they do this without taking responsibility? I can understand the reaction (riots)," Megafonen founder Rami al-Khamisi said.
Prosecutors from the Swedish National Police Crimes Unit are currently investigating the shooting.

Los Angeles goes after Vegas hospital for dumping 1500 patients

About one third of these patients, some of which were homeless, were given one-way bus tickets to cities in California. About 200 of the 1,500 mentally ill patients were sent to Los Angeles County, 150 of whom arrived in downtown L.A. Since 2008, patients were bused to cities in every continental US state, even though some had no family, friends or housing at their destination. After the Sacramento Bee published an exposé on the dumping practices of the Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital, the city of Los Angeles announced it would launch a probe investigating the matter.
“It’s just an abhorrent practice,” Gil Cedhillo, a candidate for the L.A. City Council and a former state senator, told the Bee. “You can’t just take someone from a facility and dump them downtown.”
L.A. has one of the strictest patient-dumping laws in the US, which was adopted in 2007 after a homeless schizophrenic was found walking the streets in his hospital gown while still connected to a catheter bag.
The Bee obtained bus receipts from the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services and found that the hospital sent its patients away on Greyhound buses, equipped with a small supply of medication and several bottles of a nutritional supplement that only lasted a few days.
Health officials claim that most of the patients were sent off to cities where they had a place to stay, but the Bee discovered several cases in which mentally ill patients were forced to go to cities that they had no connection to.
James Flavy Coy Brown, a 48-year-old homeless man who had received treatment at Rawson-Neal, was put on a bus that dropped him off in Sacramento – even though he had never been there and knew no one in the city.
The former psychosis patient had only been treated for three days before doctors sent him out of state, despite his protests.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to leave Nevada,’” Brown told ABC News. “[The doctor] said, ‘California sounds like a really nice state. I think you’ll be happy there.’”
Equipped with a $306 one-way bus ticket, six Ensure nutrition shake bottles, and a three-day supply of psychiatric medications, he was sent away, only to end up on the streets of Sacramento – without medication. The man had no Social Security card, food stamp card or Medicaid card, and checked into a homeless shelter, feeling the effects of medication withdrawal and the return of his psychosis.
“If I don’t take my medicine, I get really confused and I start hearing voices in my head, and they tell me to, like, jump off a bridge or to do something to purposefully get arrested or go to prison or jail,” he said.
The Bee claims that as a result of its initial exposé last month, the hospital modified its procedures to require dispatched patients to be accompanied by a chaperone when bused out of state. In response to the investigations, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval also said that state officials have implemented a new policy that requires at least two physicians and a hospital administrator to approve a dispatch order – rather than just one physician.
Still, the Joint Commission, an independent agency that certifies US hospitals, is considering pulling Rawson-Neal’s accreditation for its history of patient-dumping. The city attorneys in L.A. and San Francisco have also launched probes into the hospital’s practices. If the allegations are true, Rawson-Neal would lose federal funding and face steep financial penalties.
L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and his team are currently scouting out former patients to see if they were released in violation of the city’s ordinance against patient-dumping.
“This is 150 people allegedly on the streets of L.A.,” Trutanich said, referencing the number of mentally ill patients that the hospital sent to the city. “We’re already stretched as it is.”
But if Rawson-Neal is found guilty, the hospital could be convicted of a criminal misdemeanor and charged a hefty fine.