Our World News
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Οι προκλητικές δηλώσεις του επικεφαλής του γερμανικού Ινστιτούτου Παγκόσμιας Οικονομίας του Αμβούργου (HWW), Τόμας Στραουμπχάαρ, προκαλούν αντιδράσεις ακόμα και μέσα στη Γερμανία.
Ούτε λίγο ούτε πολύ ο Τόμας Στραουμπχάαρ ζητά απερίφραστα η Ελλάδα να μετατραπεί σε ευρωπαϊκό προτεκτοράτο προκειμένου η χώρα να προστατευθεί από όσους επωφελούνται από την κρίση.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
May 7 (Bloomberg) — Researchers from the Disney Research Lab and Carnegie Mellon University have released findings around gesture technology that could turn body parts and ordinary household surfaces such as door knobs and bathwater into interactive mediums similar to tablet screens. The new system, known as Touché, will be presented at a conference in Austin, Texas on Monday, May 7.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
New moves to reduce subsidies for fitting solar panels on homes are jeopardising Britain’s hopes of hitting renewable energy targets and threatening thousands of jobs, David Cameron was warned last night.
Some 400 senior figures in the solar energy industry said demand for panels has collapsed since the Government started slashing financial incentives for families that want to go green.
In a joint letter to the Prime Minister, seen by The Independent, they protested that the sector faced a bleak future without dramatic action to demonstrate his support for solar energy. They said that more than 6,000 people working in solar energy had lost their jobs since last summer – and 43 per cent of companies in the sector are planning redundancies.
Ministers provoked fury last year when they more than halved the subsidy for the feed-in tariff for households which feed excess electricity from their solar panels into the national grid.
Critics said the move would deter people from buying panels, which cost an average of £12,000, because it would double the time it took them to recoup their initial investment.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is now consulting on a further cut in feed-in tariffs to come into effect in July. It argues that the scheme still amounts to a generous subsidy for prosperous people who can afford panels, funded by less well-off consumers. But the solar energy firms told Mr Cameron, who promised to lead the «greenest government ever», that demand for solar panels has halved in the past year because of the uncertainty over subsidies.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Roaring trade in often smuggled charity castoffs in African street markets risks ruining domestic textile industries
As a boy growing up in Sierra Leone, Kemoh Bah prized his Michael Jackson T-shirt. «I was the only one who had this kind of T-shirt in my village, and I felt like I was part of American culture,» said Bah, dressed head-to-toe in clothes emblazoned with logos outside his roadside secondhand clothes shack in the capital, Freetown.
Nicknamed «junks» in Sierra Leone, hand-me-downs account for the majority of outfits in a country where seven out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day. The industry has ballooned to $1bn in Africa since 1990. And yet the combination of western charity and African brand enthusiasm is not always a force for good. Quite apart from the ethical issue of donated goods becoming tradeable commodities on which middlemen can turn a profit, there is the threat to local textile markets to consider.
About a third of globally donated clothes make their way via wholesale rag houses to sub-Saharan Africa, where they end up lining the streets or filling small boutiques. Hawkers say Christmas time, when westerners flock to offload clothes to charity shops, brings in the biggest bales. The lucrative industry has even spawned fake charity clothes collectors in the west.
But critics say the billion-dollar trade risks swamping fragile domestic textiles markets, and 12 countries in Africa are among 31 globally that have now banned their import.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Vladimir Putin took the oath as Russia’s president today with a ringing appeal for unity at the start of a six-year term in which he faces growing dissent, economic problems and bitter political rivalries.
Putin, 59, was sworn in with his right hand resting on the Russian constitution in a glittering ceremony in the Kremlin’s former throne room attended by 2,000 dignitaries who applauded his every step along a long red carpet to the podium.
Outside the Kremlin’s high red walls, police rounded up men and women in cafes wearing the white ribbons symbolising their growing protest movement against Putin, having detained more than 400 people during clashes with protesters on Sunday.
«We will achieve our goals if we are a single, united people, if we hold our fatherland dear, strengthen Russian democracy, constitutional rights and freedoms,» Putin said in a five-minute speech after taking the oath.
«I will do all I can to justify the faith of millions of our citizens. I consider it to be the meaning of my whole life and my obligation to serve my fatherland and our people.»
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Last year, Irving Picard, the trustee responsible for liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm, said he hoped to pay customers victimized by the convicted swindler as much as $65 billion. He filed claims totaling $100 billion in lawsuits against investment funds that funneled money to Madoff, banks that Picard said aided the fraud, and clients who took out more money from their Madoff accounts than they put in. That strategy has collapsed as Federal judges led by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York have dismissed about $90 billion of Picard’s claims, saying he exceeded his powers or failed to prove his case. “There is a huge risk about making predictions, because you can never be sure what a court will do,” says Chip Bowles, a bankruptcy lawyer with Bingham Greenebaum Doll in Louisville, who is not involved in the matter.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
The closer Greece gets to rupturing with the euro zone, the more I am reminded of long-ago 10th grade biology, in which we learned about the process of cell division: mitosis, a word of Greek origin.
In both cases, the split is preceded by a long chain of events that are mostly invisible to an outside observer. There is a gradual disengagement. At the beginning, the thing is clearly one. At the end, it is clearly two. In between it’s all a bit murky.
There are huge differences, of course. The biggest one is that mitosis produces two daughter cells that are identical to the original. That would not be the case in a euro zone breakup. The reemergence of the drachma would be more like a birth than mitosis.
Another difference from mitosis is that nothing is certain where people are involved. Despite their drubbing at the polls, the parties that favor sticking with the euro currency may succeed in forming a government. Greece may yet stick with the single currency.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
If one wants to understand the full complicity of Wall Street in the Great Recession, look no further than the voluminous package of pre-collapse Lehman Brothers documents that have been made available by the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, which has acted as the coroner in the Lehman post-mortem.
Most important, the cache dispels the myth that Dick Fuld, chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and his close associates were unaware of the risks their business faced in 2007 and 2008. That would be bad enough, but the more devastating reality is that Fuld and his sycophants were warned repeatedly but were blinded by their hubris.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
US hostage Warren Weinstein has pleaded with President Barack Obama to meet his captors’ demands in a video released by al-Qaeda’s media arm, says US monitoring group Site intelligence.
Mr Weinstein, 70, an aid expert living in Pakistan, was kidnapped by armed men in the city of Lahore last August.
The short video was posted to Islamist websites on Sunday, according to Site.
Last year al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said Mr Weinstein would be freed if the US stopped air strikes.
‘Life in your hands’
In a video released last December, the al-Qaeda leader demanded that the US cease strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and also demanded the release of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Harsh austerity measures, high youth unemployment and a lack of economic progress has many Greeks looking for political change as they prepare for the May 6th national elections. With polls showing a rise in nationalist and anti-immigration sentiment, will extreme right wing politics play a larger role in Greece?
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07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Great news for «Avatar» fans, but not for those hoping to see director James Cameron’s take on romantic comedies. The Oscar-winning King of the World told theNew York Times that he’s only in «the ‘Avatar’ business» now.
«I’m making ‘Avatar 2,’ ‘Avatar 3,’ maybe ‘Avatar 4,'» Cameron revealed during an interview about the Chinese film industry. «I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts.»
While Cameron admitted that the all-«Avatar,» all-the-time career arc might seem a «bit restricted,» he says the films allow him to say «everything» he needs to say about «the state of the world.» He’ll also continue to produce documentaries.
While the comments might seem surprising, looking at Cameron’s resume tells you they aren’t. The director has released just two feature films since 1997 («Titanic» and «Avatar»), and a handful documentaries («Aliens of the Deep,» «Ghosts of the Abyss,» «Expedition: Bismark,» «Titanic: The Final World with James Cameron»). As a producer, Cameron has been slightly more active; beyond his own films, he’s also handled Steven Soderbergh’s «Solaris» in 2002 and the underwater cave dive adventure «Sanctum» in 2011. (Additionally, his tireless work extolling the virtues of 3D filmmaking has convinced some heavyweight Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay to use the format in new and exciting ways.)
07/05/2012 Σχολιάστε
Over two years after the disastrous BP oil spill wreaked havoc on the Gulf, Greenpeacehas received photos of the destruction inflicted on marine life in the area.
According to a Greenpeace press release, the environmental group filed a Freedom of Information request in 2010 for the photos — their request was one of over 50 FOIA requests submitted by Greenpeace to various agencies regarding the oil spill.
The spill occurred after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers on April 20, 2010. Far surpassing BP’s initial estimates, about 50,000 barrels per day flowed from the well over the course of three months, according to a government-organized scientific team.
The Greenpeace press release states that the photos, many focused on oil-covered sea turtles, «appear to be part of the effort to collect evidence for the prosecution of BP and others.»
The trial to assign damages for the oil spill has been delayed until January 2013. Last month, former BP engineer Kurt Mix became the first to face criminal charges from the disaster. HuffPost’s John Rudolf reported that more arrests related to spill estimates are likely, according to legal experts.
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