News Stories

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by killer3000ad

Thailand to have first female PM

when is the next Yellow shirt protest scheduled?

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

when is the next Yellow shirt protest scheduled?

Already happened I bet.

[iLney]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

when is the next Yellow shirt protest scheduled?

She's hot

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Solace

Most politicians are lawyers, not scientists. You know this. When you have candidates running for the highest office in the country who can't even get basic historical facts correct (let alone Constitutional law), there's a problem.

I have an appreciation for the complexities of getting hundreds of people to agree on anything, and then crafting definitive language of that into the law of the land while also listening to the demands of millions of your citizens and special interests while also stressing over election financing, but really...some of these people are genuinely scary.

Lawyers should be banned from politics =P

[ganbaru]

^ Should, but isn't likely to happen.

Exxon Mobil says oil leaked into Yellowstone River
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76203120110703

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by iLney

She's hot

Dayyum, that's got to be one of the hottest national leaders out there! Right up there with Tymoshenko.

[flying ^]

looks like Japan won't become a slave to Chinese rare earths stuff in the near future

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76300320110704

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by flying ^

looks like Japan won't become a slave to Chinese rare earths stuff in the near future

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76300320110704

It'll cost too much to be competitive with Chinese rare earths. We're talking about deposits under roughly 2-4 miles of water. Not to mention the US is looking to reopen its rare earth mine using a new process which will make extracting them cheaper than the Chinese operations, and the deposits found in Australia, which the article doesn't seem to mention.

[JMvS]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

It'll cost too much to be competitive with Chinese rare earths. We're talking about deposits under roughly 2-4 miles of water. Not to mention the US is looking to reopen its rare earth mine using a new process which will make extracting them cheaper than the Chinese operations, and the deposits found in Australia, which the article doesn't seem to mention.

Problem with REE (Rare Earth Elements) are not finding deposits: these are relatively common, and the US and Australia have large reserves, but the fact that mining it and refining requires high operating costs, unless you're not too concerned abouth severe pollution: massive acid leaching is used during extraction, and refining is problematic for REE deposits are generally asociated with a substantial radioactive Thorium content.

[Vexx]

I believe Japan is partnering with both the US and Australia to develop multiple sources of rare earths.... a sort of "cooperative" (heh! I guess its okay when corporations via governments band together for better terms).

[SeijiSensei]

The Euro Crisis Depicted in Two Minutes

Spain looks a lot better off in terms of the interest rates it's facing than what I'd been led to believe from media reports.

While you're there, take a look at the rather disturbing piece on prostitution in Northern Ireland that appears in the sidebar. Trafficking, especially in young Asian girls, appears rampant. The explanation at the end of the story on why Thursdays are the peak day is pretty remarkable, too. You'd think if the BBC knows the reason, the wives and companions would have caught on by now. Maybe revealing this secret is part of the BBC's commitment to public service!

[ganbaru]

Back in Venezuela, Chavez vows to win cancer battle
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76325D20110705
He should worry more about recoverty than pissing of the US

[SaintessHeart]

Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees aging cured

(Reuters) - If Aubrey de Grey's predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

"I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I'd call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so," de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain's Royal Institution academy of science.

"And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today."

De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular "maintenance," which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.

De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.

He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.

"The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic," he explained.

CHALLENGE

Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.

To date, the world's longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.

Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.

De Grey's ideas may seem far-fetched, but $20,000 offered in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review journal for any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey's SENS theory was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate" was never won.

The judges on that panel were prompted into action by an angry put-down of de Grey from a group of nine leading scientists who dismissed his work as "pseudo science."

They concluded that this label was not fair, arguing instead that SENS "exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt."

CELL THERAPY

For some, the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, either, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope.

But de Grey says that's not what he's working for. Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus.

"This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health," he told Reuters. "This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health."

De Grey divides the damage caused by aging into seven main categories for which repair techniques need to be developed if his prediction for continual maintenance is to come true.

He notes that while for some categories, the science is still in its earliest stages, there are others where it's already almost there.

"Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It's designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it's already in clinical trials (in humans)," he said.

Stem cell therapies are currently being trialed in people with spinal cord injuries, and de Grey and others say they may one day be used to find ways to repair disease-damaged brains and hearts.

NO AGE LIMIT

Cardiovascular diseases are the world's biggest age-related killers and de Grey says there is a long way to go on these though researchers have figured out the path to follow.

Heart diseases that cause heart failure, heart attacks and strokes are brought about by the accumulation of certain types of what de Grey calls "molecular garbage" -- byproducts of the body's metabolic processes -- which our bodies are not able to break down or excrete.

"The garbage accumulates inside the cell, and eventually it gets in the way of the cell's workings," he said.

De Grey is working with colleagues in the United States to identify enzymes in other species that can break down the garbage and clean out the cells -- and the aim then is to devise genetic therapies to give this capability to humans.

"If we could do that in the case of certain modified forms of cholesterol which accumulate in cells of the artery wall, then we simply would not get cardiovascular disease," he said.

De Grey is reluctant to make firm predictions about how long people will be able to live in future, but he does say that with each major advance in longevity, scientists will buy more time to make yet more scientific progress.

In his view, this means that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150.

"I call it longevity escape velocity -- where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on," he said.

"What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents," he said.

"But there really shouldn't be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely."

[Tom Bombadil]

Originally Posted by JMvS

Problem with REE (Rare Earth Elements) are not finding deposits: these are relatively common, and the US and Australia have large reserves, but the fact that mining it and refining requires high operating costs, unless you're not too concerned abouth severe pollution: massive acid leaching is used during extraction, and refining is problematic for REE deposits are generally asociated with a substantial radioactive Thorium content.

Pretty much the reason that Australia wants to mine the REE but have them processed in Malaysia.

[SaintessHeart]

Guess what? Plutocracy is the new international democracy! *sarcastic*

China debt woes point to bank bailout

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s banking system will require an eventual bailout by the central government, according to some analysts, who said figures released last week on the size of local-government borrowings point to the need for a rescue.

Credit Suisse economist Dong Tao said the numbers backed up concerns he’s been voicing for the past two years on China’s toxic loan problem.

“Ultimately, we believe that the central government will need to separate the local government’s bank debt from banks’ balance sheets and recapitalize the banks,” Tao said in a note following the release of data on China’s local-debt obligations by the National Audit Office.

The National Audit Office said on June 27 that local-government debt totaled 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion), or about 27% of China’s 2010 gross domestic product. The total represented the tally at the end of 2010 and marked the first time the NAO had released official data on these obligations.

Chinese real-estate prices are declining, which has investors asking whether the country's economy is over-leveraged. Could China's real-estate bubble burst in coming years — and, if it does, how might that affect other countries?

The audit office figure included debt directly and explicitly liable by the local governments and 6,576 financing vehicles established by the governments. Figures released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission in November, which counted local-government financing vehicles and subsidiaries, put the figure at 9.09 trillion yuan.

Tao said a government-led rescue wasn’t likely within the next 18 months, as there were few signs of an imminent crisis, although he added that recent press reports have indicated preliminary government steps towards a bailout.

Reuters reported last month that Beijing is considering a bailout that could see the central government accept to 2 trillion to 3 trillion yuan of local governments’ outstanding debt in an effort to ensure against a mass default, which could bring down the economy. See report on China’s initial bailout plans.

Stress is building within the system, Tao said, as local governments face a growing pile of debts coming due at a time of declining land sales, normally a key revenue stream for the provincial authorities.

Meanwhile, local governments are also having trouble finding new sources of lending as state-controlled banks grow increasingly wary of their deteriorating ability to service existing debt.

Standard Chartered said last week there were early signs of major financial distress building at the local government level.

Anecdotes of local-government investment vehicles in Shanghai and in Yunnan province struggling to meet loan payments “signal the beginning of the wave of difficulties,” Standard Chartered’s China economist Stephen Green said in a note Thursday.

Green said he was upbeat on China’s ability to grow its way out of the problem, given its relatively modest debt profile, which he estimates at 71% of GDP.

Still, he also expects painful work ahead, estimating interest expense due this year on local government debt and their vehicles at 880 billion yuan.

Some local governments, he said, were working with banks to arrange emergency funding to avoid default, Green said.

Increasingly, governments are having to pledge more collateral, in addition to other assurances, Green said, adding that “such meetings will become more problematic” as financial pressures mount.

Standard Chartered forecasts 4 trillion yuan to 6 trillion yuan of loans owed by these local-government vehicles will never be repaid. The final resolution will likely see the central government assume 5.7 trillion yuan of local-government debts, Green said, without saying how long a period the work-out would take.

“At some point the central government will have to enter the field — it cannot have rumors circulating about hundreds of local-government investment vehicle defaults undermining the banking system,” Green said.

These investment vehicles have combined debts of about 9 trillion yuan, when accounting for informal loan guarantees, according to estimates by Standard Chartered. China’s audit report last week put the debt for these entities at $4.97 trillion yuan, but their figure does not include certain type of informal loans.

Another worry for the mostly unprofitable government vehicles is the huge pile of debt obligations coming due. Of the total loans extended to these entities, 24% is due to be paid back this year, and 17% in 2012, according to the audit.

In spite of the gloom, Standard Chartered’s Green said the debt crisis appears survivable.

“China is not badly placed, and certainly not badly enough placed to warrant all the talk of ‘imminent collapse’ that has been filling the airways,” Green said.

China’s debt ratio should ease to around 45% as a share of the economy by 2015 if economic growth rates hold up, according to Green.

Macquarie Securities was similarly upbeat, saying the trend will begin to favor local-government balance sheets from the beginning of next year onward.

Only about 11% of outstanding loans will come due in 2013, part of an overall easing in the risk profile from 2011, Macquarie said, adding that the gloom over the loan picture is set for faster improvement than it had original forecast.
Laying track for bailout

Credit Suisse’s Tao said it noteworthy that the auditor report labelled 85% of the debt at the local level as guaranteed or the direct responsibility of local governments.

In classifying such a large extent of the borrowings as “government debt,” the audit report appears to be laying track for Beijing to ultimately take responsibility for the potential losses, Tao said.

“From a strictly legal standpoint, these are corporate debts and should be the liabilities of the financing vehicles only,” Tao said.

The audit, however, is not legally binding, and China’s legislature could still rule the toxic loans remain the responsibility of the local financing vehicles, Tao said.

Meanwhile, Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University, said truer figures for local-government obligations can be gleaned by combining the People’s Bank of China’s and CBRC estimates on government vehicles’ debt outstanding, along with the auditor’s report.

Combining the figures, he said, yields total local-government debt of between 15.4 trillion to 20.1 trillion yuan, or 40% to 50% of China’s GDP, according to a a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal.

“Important pieces of the local-debt puzzle remain hidden” Shih said in the commentary.

I think China probably won't collapse that fast if their exports are able to pay off their debts over the next decade. The real problem is their infrastructure and real estate - they just keep building and won't stop to think if the housing is over-supplied in their national market.

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Guess what? Plutocracy is the new international democracy! *sarcastic*

China debt woes point to bank bailout

I think China probably won't collapse that fast if their exports are able to pay off their debts over the next decade. The real problem is their infrastructure and real estate - they just keep building and won't stop to think if the housing is over-supplied in their national market.

Someone still needs to learn what happened pretty recently in the UAE apparently.

[ganbaru]

GOP uses budget, other tools to sap financial law
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...07-05-03-57-33

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's financial overhaul law is nearly a year old. For congressional Republicans, the fight to weaken it is just starting

[killer3000ad]

Thai EOD survives car bomb.

Looks like it didn't detonate fully judging by the powder being emptied from a red tank later.

[ganbaru]

Dutch state found responsible for Srebrenica deaths
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...76413M20110705

(Reuters) - The Dutch state is responsible for the deaths of three Muslim men after the fall of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war, a Dutch appeals court ruled on Tuesday, opening the door to compensation claims.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Tsuyoshi

Someone still needs to learn what happened pretty recently in the UAE apparently.

I probably do too lol. Which or what incident are you pointing to? I know plenty of black stuff hit the fan after they start increasing their oil output.