news20091225jt

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 25, 2009
Contrite Hatoyama refuses to resign over scandal
Prime minister sorry for 'sloppy' funding, says he will pay gift tax
By JUN HONGO and ALEX MARTIN
Staff writers

Following the indictment of his two former secretaries, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama apologized to the nation Thursday for his political funds scandal and promised to pay some \600 million in gift taxes on donations made to him by his mother that were first deemed as "loans."

"A large amount of falsified reports were brought to light today (by prosecutors). I take this judgment seriously and realize keenly my responsibility," Hatoyama, who had refused to comment on the issue, told reporters Thursday.

While refusing to quit over the scandal, the prime minister said he is ready to pay the gift taxes, including arrears.

Hatoyama's former secretary, Keiji Katsuba, 59, was indicted without arrest Thursday for falsifying reports of the prime minister's fund management body. Daisuke Haga, 55, a secretary in charge of accounting, also received a summary order of a \300,000 fine for failing to oversee the malpractice.

But the prosecutors decided not to indict Hatoyama due to lack of evidence to prove he was a party to the false entries.

Katsuba was indicted for allegedly violating the Political Funds Control Law, faking an accounting report for Hatoyama's fund management body, Yuai Seikei Konwakai. He listed approximately \400 million as coming from fictitious donors — including some who were deceased — which in fact derived partly from the more than ¥1 billion that Hatoyama's mother, Yasuko, provided to the fund management body between 2003 and 2008.

Hatoyama also admitted he may have paid Yuai Seikei Konwakai more than the \10 million individual limit he is allowed, but claimed it was his understanding that funds in excess of the limit constituted a loan that would later be repaid to him.

"I completely entrusted Katsuba with my assets," Hatoyama repeated Thursday, claiming he passed his own money to his former secretary without being aware of how it was being used.

"Accusations that things were handled far too sloppily can't be denied," he said.

Although Hatoyama revealed he handed a written statement on Dec. 18 denying his involvement in cooking the books, he said he avoided speaking in public because his comments would have interfered with the ongoing investigation. On Thursday, Hatoyama chose to face reporters at a Tokyo hotel instead of at the prime minister's office in an apparent effort to separate the scandal from his office.

"I felt impatient being unable to explain the details" during the investigation, he said.

Hatoyama's 87-year-old mother, heiress to tire maker Bridgestone Corp., submitted a statement to prosecutors earlier this month claiming she was not aware of how the money was going to be used.

Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Kunio Hatoyama, the prime minister's younger brother, has already paid gift taxes and resigned from key party posts after it was revealed he also received shady donations from their mother.

Hatoyama chose to follow his brother in paying the gift tax but not in stepping down.

Resigning as prime minister "would be abandoning my responsibility to the nation, which has high expectations" for the Democratic Party of Japan-led administration, he said, repeating in the news conference that unlike past cases of bribery, his mismanagement was not intended to profit from the private sector.

"I will take criticism sincerely, correct what needs to be corrected and fulfill my mission as a lawmaker," he said.

While the prosecutors are likely to terminate the investigation into the falsified reports, opposition parties are ready to bring Hatoyama down going into January's ordinary Diet session. The indictment is an additional blow to the his administration, which is already seeing support rates dip below 50 percent after 100 days in office.

"I don't think (the two indictments) will not affect" the Diet proceedings, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Thursday. But he backed Hatoyama, saying he does not need to step down.

The task of the Cabinet is to handle the economic downturn and provide social care for the nation, Hirano said, adding it is important for Hatoyama to "show his leadership and push forward the government."


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 25, 2009
Susan Boyle to sing on NHK's 'Kohaku'
Kyodo, staff report

Singer Susan Boyle, who made a sensational debut in April on popular TV contest "Britain's Got Talent," will sing on "Kohaku Uta Gassen" ("Red and White Singing Battle") on Dec. 31, NHK said Thursday.

Boyle, 48, stunned the British show's judges, including Simon Cowell, who had made fun of her age, with her ability when she sang "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical "Les Miserables."

The video clip of her singing the song was soon uploaded to video-sharing Web site Youtube and became its most watched video this year, receiving more than 100 million page views.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Friday, Dec. 25, 2009
Kirin-Suntory merger expected in 2011
Kyodo News

Kirin Holdings Co. and Suntory Holdings Ltd. are arranging to merge around April 2011 and are expected to make an official announcement of the basic agreement in January, sources said Thursday.

An asset management company, which owns about 90 percent of Suntory shares and is operated by Suntory's founding family members, is likely to be the top shareholder with more than 33 percent of shares in the new holding company the two firms plan to establish, the sources said.

In July, the two Japanese brewers said they entered talks for a merger, which would create one of the world's largest food and beverage makers, and are now close to ironing out the details on the integration ratio, believed to be the key to inking an accord.

They intend to maintain both of their Kirin and Suntory product brands and their top executives are likely to take either the position of chairman or president of the new holding company, the sources said.

The two firms have applied with the Fair Trade Commission for a preliminary investigation on whether their merger would face antitrust hurdles since they would dominate more than half of the share in the domestic beer market and more than 30 percent in the domestic soft drinks market, if they integrate.

Kirin and Suntory had originally intended to ink an agreement before the year's end.

news20091225gdn

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
LG Electronics to enter increasingly crowded solar market
Company will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells as well as traditional crystalline cells.
From Tom Young for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 December 2009 12.55 GMT Article history

The growing attractiveness of the global solar energy market was underlined this week when South Korea's LG Electronics (LG) announced that it is to start commercial production of solar cells and modules next month.

The company said that it plans to manufacture approximately 520,000 solar modules a year using silicon wafers, at a plant 200 kilometres to the south east of Seoul with a total capacity of 120MW.

LG said that it planned to set up another production line for operation by 2011, increasing total output to 240MW.

Kwan-shik Cho, vice president of the solar business team at LG Electronics, explained that the goal is to become a global player in the world's solar industry.

"While we recognise this is a crowded playing field, LG has the necessary skills, know-how and business strategy to make this a profitable venture for the long-term," he said.

LG sees the solar business as a key area of growth, and claimed that it had been preparing to enter the market since 2004.

The firm will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells, as well as the more widespread crystalline solar cells.

In July 2009, LG announced that the company had achieved the world's most energy efficient large-area thin-film solar cells in a trial.

LG's solar operation will be administered by its air conditioning division, which it says has the necessary experience in managing energy resources and developing products efficiently.

The solar market is estimated to be worth around $11bn in 2010, with crystalline solar cells expected to make up 80 per cent of the market, according to LG.

The move will take the company into direct competiton with a raft of solar energy firms, as well as electronics rivals Sharp and Mitsubishi, both of which already operate large solar energy divisions.


[News > From the Observer > The big issue]
The big issue: Food shortages Population control must not be ignored
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009 Article history

Robin McKie says the Australian drought sent food prices soaring ("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", Science). However, the World Bank attributed 70% of the rise to the use of grain for vehicle fuel ethanol.

Every means will certainly be needed to raise cereal yields whose annual increase has dropped from over 2% to around 1%, but if fertiliser and chemical use are to be curtailed, the suggestion that inefficient small farms should be incorporated into larger units needs to be treated with caution. The Future of Food TV series (BBC2) showed the vulnerability of current large-scale methods using, as they do, five calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. The only ray of hope was shown by a holding at San Antonio, Cuba, where one calorie of mostly human energy managed to produce five calories of food on a very intensive mixed crop and livestock holding

It is only in western society that this seems remarkable. Hanoi, Calcutta, Shanghai and Caracas all produce a high proportion of their food from adjacent, intensively small-scale farmed land. They may be in better shape to face the predicted perfect storm in food supply than our cities fed from distant large farms.

John Watson

Totnes, Devon

> The science of genetics is not the only answer to food shortages – there is also the science of ecology (as the planting of the nettles around wheat fields exemplifies), but this requires work on the relation of farm products to each other, both in space (eg minimising spread of disease) and in time (as in crop succession or rotation). The social sciences also are involved, with the inevitable change in farm economics and the possibility of more labour-intensive farming.

Further input from social sciences may bear upon whether there should be rationing by price or by more interventionist methods. This, in turn, involves the science of nutrition. And we can learn not only from science, but also from history, not least that of the war of 1939-45.

Dr Jeffrey Boss

Stroud, Glos

> Robin McKie mentions, more in passing than in alarm, that the UK's population is predicted to rise to 75 million in the next 40 years. The consequences of such a rise during the lead up to a period of serious world food shortages needs to be understood. This is an increase of 25% in our population. Not only is this an enormous extra number of people to feed, but it also means that a large additional area of farmland will be lost under urban development. We already lose roughly a moderately sized English county every decade.

There seems to be a belief that population increase is outside of the influence of policy, but this is nonsense. Our health, education and immigration policies all have an effect, both direct and indirect, on the numbers of unwanted pregnancies, on how the choices of how many children to have are made, and on the net balance of migration.

We can and should take population into account. Without this, pontificating about food shortages is hypocritical.

Chris Padley

Market Rasen, Lincs

> A whole page on the coming food crisis("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", 13 Dec), and the only mention of population growth is the bald statement that in 40 years it will "leap... from 6.8 billion to 9 billion", as if it was written in stone. In fact, it could be anything between 7.6 billion and 11 billion, depending on the actions we take between now and then, since the 9 billion is only the middle of three projections by the UN Population Fund.

Did any of your editorial staff watch David Attenborough's documentary on population in the Horizon series last Tuesday, and if so, why doesn't this article make any mention of the need to bring down the reproductive rate?

Roger Plenty

Stroud, Glos

news20091225nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 24 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1165
News
Researchers claim most distant galaxies yet
Deep-field image from Hubble triggers competing reports.
Lizzie Buchen

Astronomers have caught a glimpse of galaxies that existed a mere 500 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago.

In August, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made the deepest image ever of the Universe in near-infrared wavelengths using its new set of eyes, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) installed by astronauts in May. In the near infrared astronomers can detect galaxies that are so distant, and receding so quickly, that their light is stretched longer — or redder — than visible light. The more distant an object, the more its light is shifted red and the higher its 'redshift'.

For the past few months, researchers have been poring over this new data set — a sliver of sky about one-twelfth the diameter of the full Moon, viewed for 173,000 seconds over four days — searching for ancient galaxies that might deepen understanding of how the Universe evolved. The current record-holder for distance is a gamma ray burst, discovered in April, with a redshift of 8.2.

Now, astronomer Garth Illingworth at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues have found tentative evidence of three galaxies with redshifts of around 10. These would have existed when the Universe was just 3-4% of its current age, and would be among the oldest objects ever seen. The findings have been posted on the preprint server arXiv.org¹.

"Even though it's not really unexpected, finding galaxies at such early times is hugely exciting," says Illingworth, who also helped to create the publicly available Hubble image and data set. "There's no smoking gun, but we're confident that this is what we're really seeing."

Older than thou

The team's report of galaxies with a redshift of 10 isn't the first. For instance, Rogier Windhorst at Arizona State University in Tempe and his colleagues have reported finding 20 galaxies with a redshift near 10 in the same data set, although this 20 did not include Illingworth's three. Windhorst and his colleagues posted their findings on arXiv.org in October².

The various teams disagree over how exactly to define these distant galaxies, and what constitutes a definitive detection. Illingworth argues that Windhorst's standards were not stringent enough, and that some of the galaxies the other team detected were close to large, bright galaxies that could have contaminated the results. "That could have confused their software and caused them to get a lot of objects that just were not real high-redshift galaxies," he says.

Illingworth also notes that 20 galaxies of redshift 10 in such a small region of space indicates a higher rate of star formation than has been predicted for that time. "It doesn't accord with what we would expect theoretically or logically," he says.

Windhorst acknowledges that his group "may have overshot", but adds that Illingworth's group was "overly conservative". Even so, Windhorst noted that two of the galaxies detected by Illingworth's team did not meet his team's criteria as high-redshift, and the third was not detected after the data were processed. "Being conservative is good, but I think they haven't reduced the data as good as they could have," Windhorst says.

Let there be light

But Illingworth's team "appears to have done a more careful job than Windhorst's", says astronomer Richard Ellis at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who in 2007 reported candidate galaxies with redshifts between 8 and 10 using the Keck telescope in Hawaii. He added that Illingworth's team "goes to great lengths to justify their candidates", although he is cautious because the camera detects high-redshift objects only in one filter, and because many such claims, including his, have been revisited by other groups with mixed results.

"The history of claims for finding redshift-10 galaxies is a chequered one, but it's exciting," he says. "Ultimately, we will still have to verify these claims. It's going to be very hard, as it has turned out to be with [other] candidates."

The lack of many bright galaxies at redshift 10 offers clues to what kicked off the Universe's "reionization epoch" — a period between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang during which luminous objects such as galaxies and quasars ionized the intergalactic medium. The lack of bright galaxies at the start of this timespan suggests that they did not initiate the reionization process, Windhorst says.

"There are still a lot of questions to address," says Illingworth. "This is very tantalizing, but we need to understand the properties of those galaxies. That's where the real scientific interest is."

References
1. Bouwens, R. J. et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4263 (2009).
2. Yan, H. et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0077 (2009).


[naturenews]
Published online 24 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1164
News
Why it's hot in the city
Heat wave in Baltimore made worse by hot air from Washington DC.
Katharine Sanderson

{{Hot air blowing in from neighbouring metropolises may make some cities hotter during heat waves.}
Punchstock}

While most of Europe and much of North America are currently in the middle of a cold snap, researchers trying to understand a heatwave that hit the northeastern United States in 2007 have found that Baltimore's sweltering temperatures were exacerbated by the presence of its neighbours, Washington DC and Columbia.

Meteorologist Da-Lin Zhang at the University of Maryland in College Park and his colleagues used a three-dimensional meteorological model to investigate how weather and temperature change over time across the Baltimore and Washington DC region. Baltimore sits about 100 kilometres northeast of Washington, with Columbia about halfway between them.

Zhang wanted to look at the urban heat-island effect, a well-known phenomenon where built-up areas become much hotter than surrounding rural areas in warm weather. His models included data showing what the land in this large area was used for. The roughness of the surface — whether it is covered by trees or water or buildings — affects the weather at the surface and he was able to put detail down to 500 metres into the model.

Then, using data for 7–10 July 2007, when the area was hit by a heatwave, Zhang ran the models to simulate the weather at that time.

This heatwave was "horribly hot, dangerously hot," according to Russell Dickerson, an atmospheric chemist and a co-author of the paper, which is published in Geophysical Research Letters¹.

Stagnant heat

The models confirmed that it had been hotter in Baltimore than in Washington — Baltimore reached 37.5 °C while Washington basked in a relatively balmy 36.5 °C — and that the air quality over Baltimore was also much worse, with ozone levels of 125 parts per billion (ppb) compared with 85 ppb over Washington. The US Environmental Protection Agency recommended maximum for ozone at ground level is 75 ppb. The amounts of small particulate pollutants over Baltimore were also higher than over Washington.

"The heat-island effect was worse in Baltimore than in Washington DC," says Dickerson, and this can't be explained simply by the physics of the buildings and road surfaces in Baltimore, he adds. The effect has to be a consequence of the weather dynamics in the area.

The prevailing winds over the region in July 2007 were southwesterlies. There was also an easterly breeze coming off Chesapeake Bay to the east of Baltimore. The model showed that the hot air from the two heat islands of Washington and Columbia was moved up to Baltimore by the prevailing wind, where it stagnated because of the incoming bay breeze, making temperatures soar and pollution stay put over the city, which was also subject to its own heat-island effect.

When Zhang and his team ran a model in which Washington was bulldozed and replaced by trees, things got cooler in Baltimore. The heat-island effect there was reduced by 25%, and the city was cooler by 1.25 °C.

"The urban heat island is a well-known phenomenon, but was thought to be quite local," says Gabriele Curci, who studies air quality and pollution transport at the University of L'Aquila in Italy. He suggests that this work will help to decide where best to place air-quality monitoring balloons.

"It's good to know that [the urban heat island] is not only a local effect," says Susanne Grossman-Clarke at the Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University in Tempe. "Urban planners only think about the local aspect of the heat island," she adds. "The city is in the context of other cities."

Dickerson agrees that in the light of this work, planners should pay more attention to outside influences on urban heat islands. And they might — the research was supported in part by Maryland's Department of the Environment to determine how planting trees might help to improve air quality, Dickerson says. Zhang is currently working in China to advise on that country's heat-island problems.

"A little state like Maryland can't do much to help global climate change, but there are things you can do to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate locally," says Dickerson.

References
1. Zhang, D.-L. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L24401 (2009).

news20091225nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 24 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1162
News
Whatever happened to ...?
Nature looks back on a selection of last year's news stories to find out what happened next.
Alison Abbott , Geoff Brumfiel , Elie Dolgin , Eric Hand , Katharine Sanderson , Richard Van Noorden & Meredith Wadman

Liberia's caterpillar plague

Panic struck Liberia in early 2009, after a plague of caterpillars struck villages around the country, munching trees and leaves and polluting water supplies. By late January, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the country's president, had declared a state of emergency and appealed for international aid, while the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned of further attacks to come (see 'Halting the African armyworm').

While some 400,000 villagers had to temporarily abandon their caterpillar-saturated homes, the impact of the pests turned out to be less calamitous than at first suggested. "The initial exaggerated report of the outbreak by villagers and some unqualified staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, led to rather disproportionate alarm and caused serious national panic," says Winfred Hammond, an entomologist and the FAO's representative in Liberia. The situation was exacerbated by an early misidentification of the caterpillar as an armyworm (a devastating crop pest that regularly attacks eastern Africa, but not the western side of the continent). In fact it turned out to be Achaea catocaloides, a less threatening caterpillar that feeds mostly on the Dahoma tree. "Apart from the initial destruction of a few tree crops like cocoa, coffee and plantain, Achaea did not pose any threat to food crops like rice, cassava and maize that were cultivated later in the year," says Hammond.

{{Army worms were not behind Liberia's woes in early 2009, as was first thought.}
FAO}

The Liberian ministry of agriculture has now contracted Africare, a non-governmental organization, to improve the capacity of rural communities to manage such attacks. "A lot of things went wrong; there was little access to information and what there was, was taken out of context," says Julius Sele, a project manager at Africare and currently in the field in Liberia, of January's alarm and panic.

As for the armyworm, it continues to cause devastation in eastern Africa each year. Outbreaks and high moth catches have already been reported in northern Tanzania, says Ken Wilson, an ecologist at Lancaster University, UK. Together with the UK-based development organization CABI, he and fellow researchers have just received around £500,000 (US$800,000) over the next 18 months from the UK government to develop an armyworm early warning and control system in Tanzania. This includes building a processing plant to produce an experimental biological control agent, a nucleopolyhedrovirus, which can be sprayed on the worms and, if successful, would reduce the need to use chemical insecticides.

Patients at the last chance clinic

In February, artist Dunham Aurelius and accountant Sally Massagee got a thorough check-up at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. The reason — both were suffering from unrelated, unexplained diseases. Aurelius had had upwards of 18 kidney stones in about as many years and Massagee was baffled by an extraordinary and painful build-up of muscles in her body that left her weighed down and fatigued. The two were enrolled in the NIH's new Undiagnosed Disease Program, a collaborative project designed to identify previously undiscovered diseases and characterize them at a molecular level (see 'Last Chance Clinic').

Massagee, whose symptoms hinted at a novel condition involving genes that control muscle formation, in fact received a diagnosis that already exists in the medical literature, although one with a rare presentation. She received treatment for AL amyloidosis, a build-up of protein in the walls of her blood vessels, on 19 June, and says she is still recovering, albeit slowly. She has not yet gone back to work, but has been walking up to 2 miles each day. Little progress has been made on Aurelius's case, although the team is investigating some related cases in which patients have high vitamin D levels and calcification in parts of their kidneys.

William Gahl, the director of the programme and clinical director at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda says that of approximately 2,500 inquiries, the programme has seen about 140 patients. So far, one new disease with a genetic underpinning has been discovered in a family with blood-vessel calcification below the waist. The team hopes to publish on the condition soon. The genetic pathway involved, says Gahl, "was not known to be associated with ectopic calcification. I think it's important". A handful of patients, like Massagee, were diagnosed with known conditions. But the majority, like Aurelius, are still being studied.

Satellites smash debris threatens Hubble

An active communications satellite owned by Iridium Satellite of Bethesda, Maryland, slammed into a defunct Russian military communications satellite 800 kilometres above Siberia on 10 February 2009. The collision sent hundreds of pieces of debris flying at high speed across low-Earth orbit, threatening other satellites and increasing the risk to a NASA shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope (see 'Kaputnik chaos could kill Hubble' and 'Collision debris increases risk to Earth-observing satellites').

{{Hubble is safe from orbital debris... for now.}
NASA}

In the end, the Hubble mission went off without a hitch, and other satellites have yet to be influenced by the shrapnel from the collision. But the debris has had a big impact here on Earth, according to Brian Weeden, an orbital debris specialist at the Secure World Foundation, in Superior, Colorado, which promotes cooperation in space. Before the collision the US Air Force was tracking just a handful of vital American satellites. Now, "they are pretty much screening all active satellites for collisions," Weeden says.

But there's still much to be done before Earth's orbit can be declared safe, Weeden says. In the near term, the Pentagon must warn private companies and other nations about possible collisions. Ways must also be found to remove the roughly 750,000 pieces of debris flying around Earth. To that end, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hosted a conference this month to look at strategies for removing debris. The solutions floated include space tugs and Earth-based lasers.

Turkey's sacked science editor

The editor of Turkey's most popular science magazine Bilim ve Teknik, published by Turkey's science-funding agency TÜBİTAK, was removed from her post after she sought to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in the March issue (see 'Turkish scientists claim Darwin censorship'). The articles on evolution and the cover with its picture of Darwin were pulled from the issue at the last minute.

An international outcry from scientists concerned that TÜBİTAK's actions had been politically motivated prompted an apparent change of heart — the editor, Çiğdem Atakuman, was reinstated and the agency promised a new special issue on Darwinism (see 'Funder moves to quell Turkish censorship row').

But in May Atakuman was stripped of editorial — and all other — duties. Her role on the magazine is reduced to one of 'adviser'. She remains a TÜBİTAK employee.

TÜBİTAK produced a special Darwin issue in June, which included translations of articles from Scientific American and no Turkish authors. On 23 June, a court in Ankara dismissed a censorship claim against TÜBİTAK. The anti-evolution movement remains strong in Turkey.

Earthquake-hit university begins recovery

In April, an earthquake hit the central Italian town of L'Aquila. More than 50 students at the University of L'Aquila were killed when their new residence building collapsed. More than 70% of the university's staff and 90% of the staff at the nearby — but undamaged — underground national particle physics laboratory at Gran Sasso were left homeless. A few weeks later teaching resumed in tents and temporary accommodation around the region (see 'Research from rubble').

The Gran Sasso National Laboratory offered shelter to physics students and teachers from the university and conditions slowly improved over the summer. The sea of tents around the university has now disappeared. The new university year was able to open just two weeks later than usual on 19 October. Around 60% of the usual number of students registered — more than expected.

The Faculty of Science buildings are now being used for teaching, and research is starting up there again. Teaching has also resumed in the Faculty of Medicine building, but the badly damaged teaching hospital itself is not completely functional. Buildings of the faculties of engineering and humanities are two years away from completion.

CONTINUED ON newsnn3

news20091225nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 24 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1162
News
Whatever happened to ...?
Nature looks back on a selection of last year's news stories to find out what happened next.
Alison Abbott , Geoff Brumfiel , Elie Dolgin , Eric Hand , Katharine Sanderson , Richard Van Noorden & Meredith Wadman

CONTINUED FROM newsnn2

{{L'Aquila is slowly recovering from the April earthquake.}
G. Melino}

The May G8 meeting, transferred from northern Italy to L'Aquila after the earthquake, brought no long-term benefit, according to Paola Inverardi, dean of science at the university. But a web initiative offering the historic town as an open laboratory for the testing of new scientific ideas during reconstruction has led to a series of grant applications to the European Union for interdisciplinary projects, she says, such as the development of three-dimensional modelling of scene representation which can be automatically extended and maintained.

The Gran Sasso National Laboratory is also organizing a joint graduate school in particle physics with the science faculty.

Butterfly paper bust-up

In August, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a paper online by Donald Williamson, a retired zoologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, reporting that ancient butterflies accidentally mated with worm-like animals to give rise to caterpillars. The study — which was 'communicated' by Lynn Margulis, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, via a soon-to-be-obsolete submission route that allows academy members to manage the peer review of a colleague's manuscript — was held up from print publication for more than two months after PNAS editor-in-chief Randy Schekman raised questions about the review process (see 'Row at US journal widens').

The paper eventually appeared in print in the issue of 24 November, but not alone. It was accompanied by a short challenge from an invertebrate zoologist and a rebuttal from Williamson. The issue also included a four-page report by two evolutionary biologists, who disputed Williamson's hypothesis on the basis of published genome size data. In response to this second affront, Williamson prepared a brief response but, earlier this month, Schekman declined to publish it.

Two other PNAS studies linked to Margulis also got caught up in controversy. One, which Margulis co-authored, was eventually published in November, but another, which Margulis communicated, was questioned by a member of the academy's board after three anonymous reviewers recommended acceptance. The paper is still awaiting a final decision.

Margulis maintains that Williamson's and the other papers are scientifically sound and are only being censured because they don't adhere to Darwinian orthodoxy. "We don't ask anyone to accept Williamson's ideas — only to evaluate them on the basis of science and scholarship, not knee-jerk prejudice," says Margulis, who is threatening to bring the PNAS editorial board before the Academy's advocacy committee if the final paper is rejected.

Orbiting Carbon Observatory plan re-emerges after splashdown

On 24 February, a payload shroud stayed stuck to a Taurus booster rocket, and NASA's US$280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the sea, dashing the hopes of scientists who wanted to use the satellite to measure sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (see 'Climate researchers in a spin after satellite loss').

But in a funding bill for 2010, the US Congress ordered $50 million to be spent on an OCO replacement — enough to re-start the programme (see 'Budget win for climate probe').

However, only about half of the money from Congress is new — the rest must be gleaned from other NASA Earth science accounts. Moreover, NASA's budget is likely to be flat or trimmed in the coming years — and demands for the agency to launch other Earth-monitoring satellites continue undiminished.

Fall-out from funding crisis

What has become of two scientists struggling to keep their labs alive in tight funding times, who were profiled by Nature in February (see 'Closing Arguments')?

Darcy Kelley, 61, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York, got desperately needed money at the eleventh hour. On 1 March, she received the first dollars of a new R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health. It is worth $250,000 a year for four years. She is now ramping up the project — a study of the neural basis of social communication in the frog Xenopus.

"I was never in despair," says Kelley, who is currently interviewing postdocs and is considering hiring a lab technician. "But it is very hard to function without any money. So now I have money and now I'm functioning. It makes a huge difference."

For example, says Kelley, "I was able to meet my animal-care costs, so I don't have to clean frogs any more. It's not bad to clean the frogs for a while, but at some point it keeps you from being productive."

The other scientist who was profiled, Jill Rafael-Fortney, 40, works with mouse models of muscular dystrophy at Ohio State University in Columbus. She declined an interview request.

And finally… Rampant rabbits

In November we reported that artificial and fully functional penises had been built and grafted onto male rabbits whose penises had been surgically removed. The fake penises were built by stripping donor rabbit erectile tissue of cells, leaving behind a scaffold of collagen onto which the rabbits' own muscle and skin cells were grown. The work was done by Anthony Atala at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Those penises were successfully used to do what male rabbits do best — impregnate female rabbits (see 'Engineered penis raises reproduction hopes').

Since then Atala has presented preliminary, as yet unpublished, results at the Materials Research Society meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in December hinting that his team has successfully constructed and implanted an artificial uterus in an animal which subsequently conceived and carried a pup to full term.

news20091225cnn

[Top stories] from [CNN.com]

[World]
December 25, 2009 -- Updated 0231 GMT (1031 HKT)
U.N. official urges China not to execute Briton
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> U.N. official: China should not execute a British man convicted of smuggling heroin
> Akmal Shaikh, 53, is due to be executed Tuesday, having exhausting all his legal appeals
> Campaigners argue Shaikh has bipolar disorder, say mental condition not taken into account
>British government has called for China to show clemency in the case

London, England (CNN) -- China should not execute a British man convicted of smuggling heroin, a top United Nations official said Thursday, days before the execution is scheduled to take place.

Akmal Shaikh, 53, is due to be put to death on Tuesday, having exhausting all his legal appeals. Campaigners say he is mentally ill, and that Beijing did not take that into account when trying him.

Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said it would be a "major step backwards for China" to execute a mentally ill man.

"Both Chinese and international law clearly indicate that a person who committed a crime while suffering from significant mental illness should not be subjected to the death penalty," Alston said in a statement released by Reprieve, a British legal group. "I very much hope that the government will grant clemency in this case."

The British government also has asked China not to execute Shaikh.

But China says it has followed the law.

"This case has always been handled according to law. During the trial, the defendant has been guaranteed his legal rights," Jiang Yu, spokeswoman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday. "Everyone knows that international drug smuggling is a grave crime."

Shaikh was convicted of carrying up to 4 kilograms (almost 9 pounds) of heroin at the Urumqi Airport in September 2007. His final appeal -- to the People's Supreme Court -- was rejected Monday.

He would be the first European Union citizen executed in China in 50 years, Reprieve said.

The organization claims Shaikh may be suffering from bipolar disorder, a severe mental condition characterized by delusional and manic behavior. The group claims Chinese authorities have refused requests for Shaikh to be examined by a doctor and for his mental condition to be taken into account during his trial and sentencing. Watch how Reprieve says Shaikh was duped into carrying drugs

"We deeply regret that mental health concerns had no bearing on the final judgment despite requests by Mr. Shaikh's defense lawyer and repeated calls by the prime minister, ministers, members of the opposition, as well as European Union," the British Foreign Office said earlier this week.

A spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN in October there was no evidence of mental illness.

"The British Embassy and a British organization proposed to have a psychological exam but could not offer any proof of mental illness," the spokesman said. "The defendant himself said that his family does not have a history of mental illness."

Shaikh claimed he was given a suitcase to carry by another man who had duped him into believing he was traveling to China to become a nightclub performer, and he said he was unaware of the drugs concealed inside.

Reprieve campaigners have revealed details of Shaikh's erratic lifestyle prior to his arrest -- including traveling to Poland to start an airline and then on to Central Asia to become a pop star.

While living in Poland, Shaikh was approached by a man who helped him write a song that Shaikh believed would bring world peace, according to Reprieve.

The man said he knew people in Kyrgyzstan who could help Shaikh become a pop star. Once there, Shaikh was introduced to another man called Okole who told him he owned a nightclub in China where they would launch his singing career.

The pair traveled together to Tajikistan, staying in a five-star hotel.

Okole then told Shaikh he would have to travel on to China himself because there was only one seat available on the plane -- and gave him the suitcase to carry, according to Reprieve.

A forensic psychologist said he strongly suspected Shaikh is suffering from a severe mental disorder.

Dr. Peter Schaapveld traveled to Urumqi earlier this year for Shaikh's appeal hearing but was unable to meet Shaikh or attend the appeal. He said British consular staff told him court officials had been "bemused and amused" by Shaikh's "incoherent" testimony.

Schaapveld also examined hundreds of pages of rambling e-mails sent by Shaikh to the British Embassy in Poland and various public figures, including then-U.S. President George W. Bush and singer Paul McCartney.

He said the evidence "very clearly" suggested Shaikh was "probably suffering from bipolar disorder and may also have an additional delusional psychosis."


[World]
December 25, 2009 -- Updated 1424 GMT (2224 HKT)
British monarch reflects on 'difficult' 2009
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> Queen Elizabeth reflects on war in Afghanistan and global economic crisis in Christmas message
> Queen said she was "saddened by the casualties suffered by our forces"
> Christmas is a time to "reflect on what confronts those less fortunate than ourselves" Queen said

London, England (CNN) -- Queen Elizabeth II addressed the economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan on Friday in her annual Christmas Day message.

"Each year that passes seems to have its own character. Some leave us with a feeling of satisfaction, others are best forgotten. 2009 was a difficult year for many, in particular those facing the continuing effects of the economic downturn," the queen said in videotaped remarks.

"I am sure that we have all been affected by events in Afghanistan and saddened by the casualties suffered by our forces serving there. Our thoughts go out to their relations and friends who have shown immense dignity in the face of great personal loss. But, we can be proud of the positive contribution that our servicemen and women are making, in conjunction with our allies."

More than 13,000 soldiers from Britain and across the Commonwealth -- including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore -- are currently serving in Afghanistan, she said. "The debt of gratitude owed to these young men and women, and to their predecessors, is indeed profound."

The queen committed the bulk of her 6-minute message to praising the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 54 countries, including some of the largest and poorest. Its aim is to help spread democracy and increase development.

"It is, in lots of ways, the face of the future," she said. "And with continuing support and dedication, I am confident that this diverse Commonwealth of nations can strengthen the common bond that transcends politics, religion, race and economic circumstances."

The queen added, "We know that Christmas is a time for celebration and family reunions; but it is also a time to reflect on what confronts those less fortunate than ourselves, at home and throughout the world... We may ourselves be confronted by a bewildering array of difficulties and challenges, but we must never cease to work for a better future for ourselves and for others."

news20091225reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
NEW YORK
Thu Dec 24, 2009 3:44pm EST
NRG wants CPS decision on new South Texas reactors
NEW YORK (Reuters) - NRG Energy Inc's nuclear development partnership wants San Antonio's CPS Energy to decide whether it is in or out of the planned expansion of the South Texas nuclear power plant to help keep the project's place in line for federal loan guarantees.

The CPS municipal utility is a 50-50 partner with Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA), a partnership between NRG and Toshiba Corp, to build two new reactors at the South Texas nuclear plant.

"Time is of the essence in making the determination of whether CPS Energy is in or out of the project," said Steve Winn, CEO of NINA, in a release late Wednesday.

"The Department of Energy is only going to select two projects for loan guarantees. STP was number one and now is second with another project close behind. Further delays could move STP to third place, losing the loan guarantee and reducing the value of both parties investment to zero," Winn said.

The U.S. Department of Energy has the authority to dole out $18.5 billion in loan guarantees to jump start construction of the first new nuclear plants since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

NINA and CPS planned to spend about $10 billion to have Toshiba build two 1,350 megawatt reactors at South Texas, but a spate of higher cost figures leaked in October made some officials in San Antonio, which gets 14 percent of CPS' revenue, question the project's cost and its impact on customers' bills.

Citing the higher cost estimates, CPS said it would reduce its ownership in the project and earlier this month, the municipal utility filed a lawsuit against NINA to clarify the partners' liability if either tries to withdraw from the venture.

Both NRG and CPS have said they are looking for partners to help fund the new units.

The lawsuit escalated late Wednesday when CPS amended its filing, claiming NRG, NINA and Toshiba failed to disclose critical cost information and disparaged CPS to hurt the utility's ability to sell part of its stake in the nuclear project. CPS seeks $32 billion in damages, according to court documents.

Winn denied the allegations in a statement Thursday.

"The petition is filled with silly conspiracy theories, unfounded accusations and personal attacks," Winn said.

Despite the legal wrangling, both sides said they would favor a settlement to avoid lengthy litigation.

While the cost of new nuclear may not fit in the CPS rate structure, NINA said it believed the cost would continue to move lower and be very competitive to meet future demand.

"There are a variety of options available that would protect CPS from losing its investment and help meet San Antonio's future need for electricity, should the utility decide to pursue a strategy other than full participation in the project," Winn said.

Southern Co, Constellation Energy Group Inc, NRG and SCANA Corp have projects on the short list for federal financing. An announcement could come before year end.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino and Eileen O'Grady; Editing by Christian Wiessner)


[Green Business]
Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM
Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:07am EST
Israel needs to cut electricity demand growth
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel must significantly curb growth in electricity usage or the country will ultimately face higher financial and health costs from its mostly coal-based generation, a RAND Corporation analyst said.

Steven Popper, an economist at the U.S. non-profit group, said RAND has been analyzing Israel's energy sector for a few years as part of a privately funded study.

"There is a quiet energy crisis in Israel in delivering electricity," Popper said in an interview with Reuters while in Israel to deliver the final report to government officials.

"Unless Israel gets control of growth of demand for electricity, it will pay heavy penalties -- financial penalties and air quality penalties," he said.

He noted that growth in Israel's electricity demand has been as much as 6 percent a year on average for more than a decade. That has pushed demand very close to total generating capacity of 11 gigawatts during peak periods and brownouts have occurred.

Ideally, there should be a reserve of 20 percent, Popper said.

"They are pushing so close to the red line that if any one of Israel's five, six power plants went out, you would have a tremendous mess," he said. "The problem is that the ability to generate electricity has not kept up with demand."

While the study was not publically financed, RAND analysts -- in the group's first project in Israel -- worked closely with various ministries, who sought strategies for the use of natural gas through the year 2030, Popper said.

Israel's main problem is that it is isolated and not tied to any other electricity grid in the region. Since electricity demand has grown rapidly, it leaves Israel largely reliant on outside sources for its energy.

"If there is any glitch in the supply stream, it gives power to others who control the supply," Popper said.

About 70 percent of Israel's electricity is produced from coal with the rest from natural gas. State-run utility Israel Electric Corp aims for natural gas to comprise 40-45 percent by 2020 and 5-10 percent from renewable sources, such as solar.

SOLAR ENERGY

Popper believes that while natural gas is better in terms of emissions, coal is a "great fuel" for Israel since it can be easily stockpiled, while natural gas pipelines are expensive.

Exploration groups led by Noble Energy have recently found large quantities of natural gas off Israel's Mediterranean coast. Popper said Israel should increase gas in generating electricity but energy sources -- fossil fuels and renewable -- should be diversified to limit supply shocks.

He recommended to the government that Israel aim for solar thermal to generate 20 percent of electricity by 2030. Many Israeli homes already have solar panels to heat hot water.

RAND also believes Israel should store sufficient quantities of diesel to guard against natural gas supplies. It also says the state should prepare, but not yet build, a liquefied natural gas terminal.

Demand for electricity is set to continue growing. Israel is in the process of setting up a grid to charge electric cars and a drought has led Israel to start building a number of plants to desalinate sea water, which will require electricity.

Popper also noted that in any future peace deal, Israel will likely still supply electricity to the Palestinians.

But demand growth can still be curbed by Israelis switching to more energy efficient appliances and fluorescent light bulbs. Electricity rates could be priced higher at peak times, which would encourage car-charging and using other appliances in the middle of night when demand is low.

"It's possible to do without strangling growth," Popper said. "We recommend they change the way they plan so they can be more adaptive to take advantage of opportunities and avoid unfortunate surprises."

He added that Israel can continue with the status quo. "But Israelis will pay higher and higher prices in economic terms, health terms -- the more you burn the more crud is in the air to breathe -- land use, and energy security terms."


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:29pm EST
Beef group challenges U.S. EPA climate finding
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A beef industry group has challenged a ruling by U.S. environmental regulators that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, saying the move would hurt agriculture.

The ruling earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency earlier opens the way for regulation of six heat-trapping gases without new laws passed by Congress.

Livestock farms emit carbon dioxide from the tailpipes of machinery and trucks, while waste from cattle also emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association filed a petition in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week, saying EPA climate regulations would hurt large farms.

"This unilateral move by the EPA jeopardizes our ability to remain competitive in the global marketplace," said Tamara Theis, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

She said potential EPA rules could force many farms to get permits to emit greenhouse gases or slow operations. If farms had to buy the permits in a market or curtail beef output it could help force many of them to close.

The Obama administration has always said it favors climate legislation in Congress over action by the EPA. But the agency made the move as the climate bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate amid opposition from lawmakers in states that produce and burn large amounts of fossil fuels.

By spurring the EPA to act, the administration indicated greenhouse gases will be regulated one way or another. The move was designed to spur businesses to lobby Congress to act on climate legislation, as companies have a bigger say in that process.

But analysts have said that nearly any action the EPA takes on climate before a new bill gets passed would be vulnerable to litigation and Congressional action.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Jim Marshall)

news20091225reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Leslie Josephs
ABANGARES, Costa Rica
Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:32pm EST
Costa Rica assails big risks taken by small miners
ABANGARES, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rica is pushing to legalize hundreds of small-scale miners who scrape out tiny amounts of gold from abandoned mine shafts using dangerous and polluting techniques.

Lured by record prices for gold, which topped $1,200 an ounce this year, some 600 informal miners around the town of Abangares in hilly northern Costa Rica use toxic mercury to extract gold from rocks chipped out of narrow tunnels.

The environment ministry estimates the miners produce around 500 ounces of 14 carat gold a month and sell it to local dealers at cut rates below the market, around $476 an ounce.

Informal mining is practiced in many parts of the world but Costa Rica is as the forefront of a trend to regulate the miners by urging them to form cooperatives, apply for official mining concessions with environmental permits and pay taxes.

The government of the lushly forested Central American nation, which touts its strict environmental rules, is worried unchecked informal miners are dumping dangerous chemicals into water supplies.

"This is a social problem caused by unemployment in the tourism sector," said Jose Castro, head of mining at the Environment Ministry. The economic downturn has hit the tourism industry at beaches and nature reserves in the region.

"What we're trying to do is organize (the miners) and monitor their activities," Castro said.

Top mining officials toured the area around Abangares this month and want to push through the tougher regulations before President Oscar Arias' term ends in May 2010.

The government campaign has made headway, with about half of the miners already organized into officially recognized cooperatives and one in the process of applying for a formal concession.

PROFIT OUTWEIGHS RISK

Better known for its exports of bananas and high-quality coffee, Costa Rica's does not have the mineral resources of other Latin American countries. Metallic mining comprises less than 1 percent of the gross domestic product.

There are no major operational gold mines and the only big project, Las Crucitas, which is being built by Canada's Infinito Gold Ltd, has been suspended pending a supreme court ruling on whether it is environmentally safe.

But with gold prices soaring, informal miners are willing to take big risks to scrape a living out of deep caves, some a century old, abandoned by international mining companies.

Miners have died when weakly supported tunnels collapsed during rainy season. And they regularly handle mercury with their bare hands, even though the liquid metal can cause birth defects, miscarriages, nerve damage and renal failure.

"There is no other work. You can earn more here than in any kind of company," Jose Campos, a 29-year-old miner said.

(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)


[Green Business]
LONDON
Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:19am EST
EU carbon falls on lower German power
LONDON (Reuters) - European carbon prices fell on Thursday, pressured by lower German power prices.

EU Allowances for December 2010 delivery lost 22 cents or 1.7 percent at 12.78 euros a tonne on around 160 lots traded by 0935 GMT.

The benchmark futures opened unchanged at 13.00 euros, but then lost ground in thin pre-holiday business.

"There's no real activity or sentiment ... There are no buyers so there's no support out there," one trader said.

German calendar 2010 baseload power shed 15 cents to 44.55 euros per megawatt hour.

U.S. crude oil futures rose above $77 after surging more than 3 percent the previous day, lifted by a deeper-than-forecast drop in crude and fuel stocks in the world's top energy consumer and as the dollar paused.

Dec-10 EUAs are down 5.9 percent for the week after the market plummeted on Monday following a disappointing outcome to U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.

The European Climate Exchange will close at 1200 GMT on Thursday, and will reopen on Tuesday, December 29.

Benchmark CER prices also fell in light volume, with the Dec-10 contract losing 6 cents or 0.5 percent at 11.30 euros a tonne on volume of 10 lots.

The EUA-CER spread now stands at 1.43 euros.


[Green Business]
Michael Szabo
LONDON
Thu Dec 24, 2009 6:47am EST
Copenhagen blame game not helpful: U.N. climate chief
LONDON (Reuters) - Countries should stop blaming each other for the weak outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks and sit down together to move the process forward, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Wednesday.

It is still possible to reach a legally binding global treaty, and bickering among countries like China and Britain is unproductive, Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN's climate change secretariat, told Reuters.

Britain accused a handful of states including China on Monday of hijacking efforts to agree deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. China replied that the allegations were an attempt to sow discord among emerging countries.

"These countries have to sit down together next year, so blaming each other for what happened will not help," de Boer said.

The Copenhagen summit ended with a non-binding accord between the U.S., China and other emerging powers that sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius and offers funding to help poor nations adapt to climate change, but the details are scant.

"It can be an important guiding light or foundation for moving the process forward, and criticizing it or blaming each other for how it came about is not helpful," de Boer said.

A legally binding treaty is still possible and next year should be used to decide its content, which in turn should determine its legal nature.

"It's the classical 'form follows function'," he added.

Some 28 nations signed the final Copenhagen Accord, but de Boer expects more to step forward and officially support it.

"A letter will be going out from the Danish government to all countries informing them of the accord, telling them they have the opportunity to subscribe to it and reminding them of the agreed deadlines."

The accord sets a January 31, 2010 deadline for rich nations to submit economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 and for developing countries to present mitigation actions.

De Boer said subscribing to the accord does not oblige countries to make pledges nor are there penalties for late submissions. "Commitments are always warmly received," he said.

U.N. climate talks will resume in Bonn, Germany in May 2010.

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Responding to claims that a few countries had "hijacked" negotiations in Copenhagen, de Boer said it was a lack of understanding rather than pure objection that prevented delegates from agreeing a robust climate pact.

"For developing countries it wasn't clear what a legally binding treaty would mean for them, how it would impact their ability to grow their economies or eradicate poverty," he said.

"To commit to a legally binding treaty when you don't know what it means for your country is quite a leap of faith."

De Boer said the countries that denounced the U.S. and China-led plan, including Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, felt they had not been included in the decision-making process and that they did not have enough time to evaluate the offer.

"(The accord) enjoyed very broad support but it didn't enjoy consensus," he said.

De Boer identified four steps which would advance the negotiating process to ensure a comprehensive deal is agreed at next year's UN talks in Mexico:

"Taking good stock of Copenhagen, seeing if the accord receives broad support, discussing if a more intensified meeting schedule is needed ... and getting ready for the meetings in May in a solid way."

(Reporting by Michael Szabo; editing by Tim Pearce)

news20091225reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:43pm EST
CORRECTED: Alaska tanker-escort grounds at notorious wreck site
(Corrects width of diesel slick to 30 yards from 30 feet)
By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A tugboat used to help oil tankers travel safely through Alaska's Prince William Sound has run aground at the site of the Exxon Valdez disaster and is leaking diesel fuel, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday.

The tug, called the Pathfinder and owned by Crowley Maritime Corp, hit Bligh Reef on Wednesday evening. The submerged reef, a notorious navigation hazard, is where the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, leaking 11 million gallons (42 million liters) of crude oil in the country's worst oil-tanker spill.

Fuel tanks holding up to 33,500 gallons (127,000 liters) of diesel were breached in the grounding, and aerial surveys show that a sheen about three miles long and 30 yards (meters) wide has formed, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Dana Ware said.

Tanker traffic out of Valdez, site of the marine terminal for the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, was temporarily interrupted but resumed Thursday morning, Ware said.

The 136-foot (41-meter) tug, part of the tanker-escort system set up after the Exxon Valdez disaster, had been scouting the tanker route for ice buildup, the Coast Guard said. It was not escorting a tanker at the time.

It is unclear what caused the grounding. All six crew members passed the alcohol test that was administered, the Coast Guard said.

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; editing by Bill Rigby and Eric Beech)


[Green Business > COP15]
BEIJING
Fri Dec 25, 2009 2:44am EST
China defends Wen Jiabao's role in Copenhagen talks
BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday defended the role played by premier Wen Jiabao at climate change talks in Copenhagen this month after a barrage of international criticism blaming China for obstructing negotiations.

The Copenhagen meeting ended with a broad political agreement but left specifics to be ironed out in 2010, angering many of the poorest nations as well as Western groups who had hoped for a more ambitious commitment.

China insisted that firm targets agreed to by European nations not be included in the final deal, and Wen himself was absent from a final round of direct negotiations between national leaders. British climate minister Ed Miliband said China and its allies had "hijacked" talks, according to the Guardian newspaper.

In a long account of the Copenhagen meeting, Xinhua gave Wen credit for "the last minute attempt to exchange ideas and reach consensus" despite his belief that it was "impossible" to reach a legally binding agreement.

"China showed the greatest sincerity, tried its best and played a constructive role," Xinhua said.

Issues of verification of emissions cut pledges plagued the meeting, with rich nations saying China's efforts to slow greenhouse gas growth should be subject to international verification to ensure that Beijing is keeping its word. China has said such checks would violate its sovereignty.

"On the transparency issue in self-mitigation actions, Wen said China was willing to conduct talks and cooperation," Xinhua said.

China has made its own pledges to reduce carbon intensity, or the amount of emissions produced per unit of GDP, but blocked European countries from including their commitment to cut absolute emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as well as commitments to specific dates when emissions would peak.

Other Reuters sources had also said China blocked the inclusion of specific targets.

Xinhua acknowledged Wen's absence from the late night meetings on Dec 17, saying that Wen had not been informed, and had learned the Chinese delegation was included in the meeting list from another, unidentified foreign leader.

"Premier Wen felt quite astonished and was vigilant," Xinhua said, adding that China sent a vice foreign minister instead.

The U.S. administration has played up President Barack Obama's role in breaking through a deadlock by arriving unannounced at a meeting of the heads of China, Brazil, India and South Africa, all powerful developing countries concerned that emissions concessions could impede growth.

Xinhua said that meeting -- which occurred as the U.S. sought a meeting with China and was rebuffed from meeting the others -- represented Wen's efforts to reach consensus before bringing a final deal to the Western nations and poorest developing nations.

(Reporting by Lucy Hornby; Editing by David Fox)


[Green Business]
Katherine Baldwin
LONDON
Fri Dec 25, 2009 2:22am EST
Tsunami early warning must start at community level
LONDON (Reuters) - Five years on from the Indian Ocean tsunami, the region has its own early warning system but experts say the new technology will not save lives unless local communities are more involved in planning how to respond.

The 230,000 people killed in Africa and Asia by the 2004 tsunami received no formal warning of the approaching waves.

Since then, millions of dollars have gone into building a vast network of seismic and tsunami information centers, setting up sea and coastal instruments and erecting warning towers.

But studies show that the closer the warning gets to those it is designed to help, the more it fades out, and much more needs to be done to connect the technology to the people.

"The weakest link remains at the interface between the early warning system and the public, and in ensuring there's enough preparedness at the local level to react appropriately," said Bhupinder Tomar, senior officer for disaster preparedness at the International Federation for the Red Cross (IFRC) in Geneva.

In terms of technology, the region has made great strides since December 26, 2004, and is much better prepared, experts say.

Warning centers in Japan and Hawaii receive seismological and tidal data and send out alerts to national agencies in Indian Ocean countries. These agencies then warn the population, via SMS, radio, television, watch towers and loud speakers.

By 2010, regional centers in Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are set to take over primary responsibility from Hawaii and Japan for issuing the warnings.

START WITH COMMUNITIES

Many relief workers, however, believe the system's design is too top-down and that local communities should be the starting point, not the end point, in any early warning network.

Local people should be the 'first mile' in early warning, rather than the 'last mile' as they are often called, the workers say.

"You need to start with the people and move outwards," said Ilan Kelman, a senior research fellow at CICERO, the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

In a June 2009 report, the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction found community participation in the decision-making process was insufficient.

It said the emphasis must shift from international and national policy-making to policy execution on the ground.

Similarly, Oxfam found in a recent report, "Collaboration in Crises," that disaster-affected communities wanted the chance to play a more decisive role in programs designed to help them.

Evacuation routes and drills need to be integrated into communities' day-to-day activities, experts say.

"In a heavily vegetated area, people need paths to get from the coast to inland ... and there's no reason why those paths should be different from an evacuation route," said Kelman.

"Having a development project to create more paths and maintain them is actually useful for the communities every day, as well as every decade when there's a tsunami warning."

Other community-based measures that need to be developed further include the teaching in some schools of "Shake, Drop, Run" -- when the earth shakes, drop everything and run.

Teachers and children must be taught what most fishermen know, that when the sea recedes you should run, said Kelman.

Thailand has put tsunami education on its national curriculum and more countries should do this, the experts say.

MULTI-HAZARD APPROACH

Communities must also design their own warning messages.

"We don't want to see panic, we don't want to see people taking the wrong action. So getting the words right, getting the message right and getting it delivered are key components," said Al Panico, head of the tsunami unit at the IFRC.

In order to maintain the tsunami early warning system, at the community, national and international level, it is vital to extend it to other hazards like cyclones and storm surges.

"Any warning system you don't notice is a dormant system, and treasuries don't like anything that they cannot justify," said Peter Koltermann, head of the Tsunami Coordination Unit for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), which began coordinating the Indian Ocean system in 2005.

The best approach to saving lives, however, is better urban and coastal planning to move people away from high risk areas. But experts agree this is the hardest thing to accomplish when communities and livelihoods are established.

"That is by far the best approach," said Panico. But "it's the individual who decides where to live."

(Additional reporting by Thin Lei Win in Bangkok; Editing by Jerry Norton)

news20091225reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Peter Murphy
SAO PAULO
Thu Dec 24, 2009 3:31pm EST
Bunge doubles Brazil sugar bet with $452 million deal
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - U.S. agribusiness giant Bunge Ltd will buy Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Moema for $452 million, its biggest bet yet on the fast-growing cane and ethanol industry in the world's top exporter.

The takeover, the second deal of its size in three months after Louis Dreyfus bought into the sector, is the latest in a wave of consolidation in Brazil's massive sugar industry, where heavily-leveraged mills struggling to cope with the global economic crisis are vulnerable to buyouts.

The deal will more than double Bunge's cane milling capacity in Brazil, where it has operated for a century and already has two mills and is building a third.

Under the terms of the deal, Moema's controlling shareholders will get 7.3 million shares in Bunge, which includes a $36 million payment for working capital.

The deal includes $480 million in debt owed by Moema Participacoes, as the Brazilian group's holding company is formally known.

"The fragile state which some groups were in is allowing a bigger influx of foreign capital and an increase in consolidation," said Plinio Nastari, president of Datagro, a sugar and ethanol consulting firm based in Brazil.

"High production costs this season, caused by the excess rains that hit cane yields, made the situation even worse for several groups," he added.

Bunge, a powerhouse grains trader, becomes a leading player in sugar with the deal, this year's hottest commodity.

It is the latest in a string of foreign companies to secure a stronger foothold in Brazil's sugar and ethanol sector, long dominated by family-owned firms reluctant to share ownership.

In October, French commodities group Louis Dreyfus unveiled plans to acquire Brazil's Santelisa Vale to create the world's second-largest cane processor.

Multinationals such as Cargill Inc and even oil majors like BP are investing in Brazil's cane industry, seeking to benefit from an expected surge in demand for biofuels like cane-based ethanol.

OPTION TO INCREASE STAKE

The deal will give Bunge full ownership of one of Moema's mills and a stake in four of the five other mills in which the group is a partner. Moema's stake in the mills gives Bunge access to 9.3 million metric tons of annual crushing capacity and potentially 15.4 million metric tons if it obtains full ownership, which it said may be possible within 90 days.

Brazil's Cosan, the world's largest sugar and ethanol producer, has an annual crushing capacity of around 60 million metric tons. The Louis Dreyfus venture in Brazil, called LDC-SEV, has annual capacity of 40 million metric tons.

If Bunge acquires all the remaining stakes in the mills in which Moema is a partner, that could lift the total value of the deal to $1.48 billion, including $710 million in debt and excluding working capital.

Bunge said the deals would add to its earnings per share in the first 12 months of closing.

Moema's mills are clustered in the north of Sao Paulo state, the heartland of Brazilian sugar cane country.

Alex Oliveira, senior sugar analyst at the Newedge brokerage in New York, said the deal would enable Bunge to lower their own costs and improve profit margins.

"The whole idea is to rely less on producers. They want to do their own thing," he said.

Still, some voiced doubts about the deal. Moody's Investors Service revised Bunge's rating outlook to negative from stable, citing concerns about the company's financial health.

Demand for cane-based ethanol in Brazil has soared this decade with the advent of so-called flex-fuel cars, which can run purely on ethanol, gasoline or any mixture of both.

Bunge expects ethanol demand in Brazil to rise sharply in the coming years, based on forecasts the country's flex-fuel car fleet could expand at about 18 percent a year by 2015.

"For sugar and energy, Brazil is the ideal place to invest," Bunge Chairman and Chief Executive Alberto Weisser said in a statement.

"Its domestic market is growing rapidly. Since the country has the lowest production cost in the world, it is well positioned to increase its exports as much for sugar as for ethanol."

Moema, 35 percent of which is owned by Brazilian sugar and ethanol tycoon Maurilio Biagi Filho, was also in the sights of Brazilian cane milling rivals Cosan, Sao Martinho and Acucar Guarani, local newspaper Valor Economico reported.

Bunge shares rose 1.7 percent on Thursday in New York, closing at $63.

(Additional reporting by Ashutosh Joshi in Bangalore, Inae Riveras in Sao Paulo and Rene Pastor in New York; Editing by Todd Benson and Tim Dobbyn)