train.pred

A Republican strategy to counter the re-election Obama
Republican leaders justified their policy the need to combat electoral fraud.
However, the Centre considers this a myth, stating that electoral fraud is rarer in the States than the number of people killed by
Indeed, Republican lawyers identified only 300 cases of electoral fraud in the United States in a decade.
One thing certain: these new provisions will have a negative impact on voter turn-out.
In this sense, the measures will partially undermine the American democratic system.
Unlike in Canada, the American States are responsible for the organisation of elections in the United States.
It is in this spirit that a of American governments have new laws since 2009 making the registration or voting more
This phenomenon gained momentum following the November 2010 elections, which saw 675 new Republican representatives added 26 States.
As a result, 180 bills restricting the exercise of the right to vote in 41 States were introduced in alone.
The new election laws require voters to show a photo ID card and proof of citizenship.
Furthermore, laws also reduce early voting periods, invalidate the right to register as a voter on election day and withdraw the right to vote of citizens with a criminal record.
Before the elections, no US State required voters to show a photo ID card.
Indiana was the first State to impose such a requirement.
In 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States the constitutionality of the Indiana law.
The Republican authorities were quick to extend this practice to other States.
Over the past two years, they sponsored bills in States to force voters to show a photo ID card.
It is to note that, unlike Quebec, American citizens do not have a universal ID card such as the health insurance card.
In fact, 11% of American citizens, i.e. 21 million people of voting age, do possess a photo ID card issued by a government agency of their
In addition, five million new voters in do not have such
And it often costs over a hundred dollars to obtain the required identity card.
The new restrictions disproportionately affect young people, minorities and people with low incomes.
In fact, 25% of Americans, of those earning less than $35,000; 18% of citizens over 65 and 20% of voters 18 to 29 years do not the required photo ID card.
And that's not all.
Students, voters considered to be voting more Democratic candidates, are not allowed in several States to use the photo ID card issued by their institution.
On the other hand, these same allow fishing or hunting club members, who vote more Republican, to use the cards issued by these clubs when they vote.
Prior to no State required proof of citizenship to vote.
Arizona was the first to introduce such a requirement.
Since 2011, a dozen States have adopted laws requiring voters to prove they are citizens.
These measures are intended to limit the Hispanic vote.
However, it appears that two out of three Hispanic voters favour the Democratic party.
What is more, in 2011 Republican legislators sponsored laws abolishing the registration of on in eight States.
In addition, they limited the right of individuals and groups to provide assistance to voters wishing to register.
These restrictions are not without consequence.
For example, the 2004 general election, voter campaigns contributed to registering around 10 million
However, the measures adopted since 2009 have led a 17% drop in the registration rate of new voters 2010 compared to 2006.
In addition, Republican legislators have enacted laws in five other States at reducing early voting period.
For example, during the 2008 general in Florida, 33% of early voters were African-Americans, who accounted however for only 13% voters in the State.
The same applied to Hispanics.
These represented only 11% of voters, but 24% of citizens who voted early.
On the other hand, 76% of voters were white but these represented only 46% of early voters.
Of course, Democratic legislators and their supporters vigorously opposed the adoption of laws restricting voter registration.
Several bills were blocked by vetoes of Democratic governors.
The United States Attorney General intervened to suspend the most controversial laws.
They were able to partially limit the damage.
For example, only 16 out of 34 States have adopted laws requiring the presentation of a ID card.
However, the new rules put in place will make it more difficult to exercise the right to vote in 2012.
Democratic critics denounce the partisan character of the laws that have been passed and they see a clear objective of influencing the results in key States.
A 2011 Brennan Centre report shows that the States that have adopted these laws represent 171 of the 270 needed in the electoral to win the Presidency.
It is too early to say with certainty that these changes in the electoral system will have significant impacts on the the 2012 presidential elections.
But thing is certain: these new provisions will have a negative the turn-out.
In this sense, the measures will partially undermine the American democratic system.
Prostate cancer screening: take the test or not?
Indeed, the PSA test sometimes shows erroneous results false negative or even false positive results, which involve unnecessary medical interventions.
Enough to make reluctant men to take screening tests.
Take the test or not?
We asked two specialists for their opinion.
In studies conducted in the United States, there was a lot of contamination between control groups, so it is to interpret the data and make firm recommendations.
Another study, this time a European one, concluded that there a in mortality between patients who screened and those who were not.
This study also showed, with follow-up after 12 years, that it is 30 and 40% more likely for metastases to occur in absence of screening.
I therefore recommend the test from age 50, or 40 if you have a direct relative who previously had prostate cancer.
African-American men are also more at risk.
The key is to the right decision once cancer has been detected.
are aggressive cancers and others that are indolent.
The patient really needs to be made to understand the degree of risk of his cancer, by offering him the available, not treating prostate cancers that are not long-term life threatening, and opting instead, in such cases, for active monitoring of the disease.
Today, many men whom cancer has been detected will not be treated because their cancer is not aggressive and is not life threatening.
Active monitoring will be suggested, and if the disease progresses, they will be offered treatment.
More and more, specific criteria are being determined in order to decide who should or should not treated.
Therefore I recommend taking the test.
But the important is to have a discussion with your doctor to determine whether or not to take it.
In collaboration with the Société internationale d'urologie [SIU], Movember has created a tool that makes it possible evaluate the pros and cons of the PSA test.
You can download the document (in for time being, a [French] translation will be available at this address: http://ca.movember.com/fr/mens-health/prostate-cancer-screening
Preventing the disease
Unfortunately, there is no miracle for preventing cancer.
Despite the progress in research, the adoption of healthy living habits remains the best way to the risk of suffering from it.
It estimated that if everyone ate well and exercised enough, 30% of cancers could be prevented.
"If no more people smoked, this rate increase to at least 50%," says André Beaulieu, spokesman for the Canadian Cancer Society.
On the other hand, it is estimated that roughly 10% of cancers are hereditary.
Some are also completely unexplained.
For Canadian Cancer Society, the fight against tobacco remains a despite the decrease in the number of smokers.
Cigarettes are linked to 85% of lung cancer cases.
It is also a risk factor for a number of
This massively damages people's health.
"Even today, there are 1.5 million Quebec" deplores spokesperson André Beaulieu.
Encouraging data: 10 years after giving up smoking, the risk of dying from cancer drops by half.
Weight
Overweight and obesity are also conducive to the onset of the disease, according to the SCC.
They can increase the risks cancer of the breast, colon and rectum, oesophagus, pancreas and uterus.
"Research shows that the regular practice of physical activity throughout your life protects against colon cancer" it is also said.
Diet
The organisation also recommends limiting your consumption of red meat.
In large amounts, it increases the risks of developing colo-rectal cancer.
Likewise, so do cured meat products, and these should be avoided.
The conservation meat by drying or can cause the formation of carcinogens.
"They can damage cells the body and lead to the development of cancer" it explained.
Vitamins
In recent a number of scientists have studied the links between vitamin supplements and cancer.
For the time being however their research is inconclusive.
Studies on vitamin E are contradictory, according to the SCC.
While one noted a decrease in the risk of prostate cancer, another noted an increase.
Also the effect vitamin D on cancer is not clear.
In Mr Beaulieu emphasises the importance of discussing your concerns and family history with your doctor.
"Taking a screening test doesn't give you cancer."
The Higgs boson revealed
The announcement of the probable discovery of the Higgs boson created quite a stir last summer, and with reason.
Indeed, it is believed that this is part of the mechanism responsible for the mass of everything in the Universe, no less.
Also it is the particle whose existence is predicted by the Standard Model - our or "less worse" of the and behaviour of matter - but which has not yet been observed empirically.
But for physicists, it is still not completely sure that it really is the Higgs.
We know without a shadow of a doubt that it is a new authentic particle, and greatly the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model.
In new data unveiled this week at a large physics Congress in Kyoto seem confirm this, but there are still insufficient data to be perfectly sure.
But let's suppose that it really is the Higgs, since the chances of being mistaken seem slim, and see what it is.
In our world, there is a fatally unavoidable law which states that two things cannot meet at the same place at the same time.
no way break this rule - and don't try too hard, you'll go mad.
However, even though particle physics is a very strange world, turns that it also has a law of the same kind: the exclusion principle, which that two particles cannot the same space at the same time if they in same "quantum state" - this "state" consisting roughly of certain of their characteristics.
Based on this, physicists classify particles into two categories.
In one corner we have good citizens fermions, who wisely obey the Pauli principle.
While lurking in the other are the bosons, a nasty band of anarchists who respect nothing - at all events, not this principle, which means that they can indeed be found in the same place at the same time.
These bosons are then divided into two groups, according to the Berkeley Labs Particle Adventure site (absolutely extraordinary, by the way): mesons, which we will not discuss and "force particles" by which the great forces of are and to which the Higgs boson may be somehow related.
These bosons, it must be stressed here, are not all exotic bugs as you might think.
In fact, if you can read this it is thanks to an extraordinarily banal boson: the photon, or the "light particle" which is the "messenger" of the electromagnetic force.
When, in fact, a particle having an electric charge accelerates or changes direction, this "disturbs" the electromagnetic field in this specific place, rather like a pebble thrown in a pond.
This "disturbance" produces an electromagnetic wave (of light, infrared, ultraviolet etc.), and this wave is nothing other than a photon - and thus one of the "force carrier" bosons.
More stable field
The same applies to the Higgs boson, with the that it is another the Higgs field, which must be "disturbed" for the boson to appear.
Now, this Higgs field is much, much more stable than the electromagnetic field; to it is to achieve very high energy levels, rather like a frozen pond which would need a very large rock to wrinkle the surface.
Which is why a huge particle accelerator the one at CERN - Large Hadron Collider is a ring with a 27km circumference! - is needed to achieve such energy levels.
The analogy with the electromagnetic field is again useful explaining the relationship between the Higgs and
In fact not all particles, all materials, with electromagnetic field.
Some, such as magnets, do so, but others don't - a piece of paper, for example, will never stick to a fridge.
And likewise, not all particles interact with the Higgs field: those that do so have mass, while the others (such as the photon) do not.
Now, what is it that all this research "can bring"? asks Plamondon.
For science, it serves to check the validity of the Standard Model (SM), and also allows physicians to examine any discrepancies between the observations and predictions of the SM.
A number of people, moreover, fervently hope that some will be found, because the slightest difference could open a door to a "new physics" and plug certain holes in the Model.
This, it must be still has huge shortcomings, offering no explanation for gravity (oops!) or dark matter, which forms approximately 80% of the matter in the Universe (re-oops!).
But to date such discrepancies have been found at CERN.
Repercussions
The of this research on daily life of the man in the street are more difficult to predict, it would be wrong assume that there won't be any.
Remember: in the very early 60s, the pioneers of the laser at Bell Laboratories not suspect the revolution that would be triggered by their work.
They had an inkling of the scientific applications, but nothing as to the rest.
In fact, the late Willard Boyle - a physicist who worked at Bell Labs, where the laser was invented in 1960, and who himself developed the first continuous laser (the first pulsed) 1962 - told us that initially the laser was as a gadget."
Just imagine...
And then, applications can also come from all the instrumentation that surrounds research.
For example, the same Willard Boyle developed a small light sensor in 1969, during his work in
This sensor, although this was not at all the original intention, serves as an "eye" to all digital cameras worldwide, and earned him the Nobel physics prize in 2009.
This does not of course mean that the activities of the LHC will necessarily transform our lives, it does that, actually, you never know...
Palliative care - The best way to die... | Le Devoir
With its Dying with Dignity Commission, recently discussed the delicate issue of the end of life.
The debate is due to resume as a bill is being prepared.
However, in this vital area, much remains to be done.
Le Devoir attempted to look more closely.
Just a few weeks ago Mr L. lived alone in his Montérégie apartment.
The festering prostate cancer had allowed him a two-year respite.
"They me five years to live, I've made it to seven," he says, with mixed emotions, lying in his bed at the Victor-Gadbois care home in Beloeil, where he arrived the previous day.
"But it's still a shock, you can never be prepared for it" he adds.
The disease is doing its work: huge weakness which prevents him going to toilet alone, and even eating alone.
Sitting in front of an appetising lunch, he consents to helped to eat, resigned.
Courageous, even to smile, talks to the strangers bustling around him, bringing him his medication, him a bath.
The courage of ordinary death.
"What I want most is to be cured of my diarrhoea, it's humiliating" he confided.
A few hours later, the team found a cure for this illness.
"During our lives, we learn that a man pisses standing up," says Pierre Brodeur, psychologist at the Victor-Gadbois home.
to the stage a child, for some people, is an unacceptable humiliation.
"It depends on the person's ability" to accept the he says.
Because, in the opinion of a number of people working in palliative care, great moments occur at the heart of such regression.
Patients at the Victor-Gadbois palliative care home all suffer from cancer.
They have a maximum life expectancy of three months.
At this the team of doctors and nurses surrounding them no longer provides so-called "curative" care.
Mrs A., 89 years old, the worst fear is to die "conscious and suffocating."
But the disease has me discover my children.
"I have fine children" she adds.
"I don't wish anything more in life" she says, before accepting having a mask put to help her breathe.
She looks forward nevertheless, in the next few days, to a last visit by her son coming from Italy.
At Victor-Gadbois, a group of volunteers provides bodily care and help with feeding.
is palliative care, given when there is nothing else that can be done.
To make death comfortable.
In Quebec, there are palliative care beds for 11,700 inhabitants.
This is very few when we know that we will all die one day.
Here, life continues the best possible conditions, explains Dr Christiane Martel, one of the doctors at the home.
Whether a physical comfort, emotional or spiritual level.
A person who is dying will accept being helped drink brandy or Pepsi, whatever is their tipple.
Diabetics no longer need to control their blood sugar.
And death is part of everyday life.
Yesterday evening, a beer was served to Mr X, who died during the night.
This morning, it is son who will finish the beer at the feet of the deceased.
"We help relatives as much as patients" says Nathalie Savard, Director of Care.
At the Victor-Gadbois home, one day follows another but no two are alike.
Along with a 93-year-old man who is savouring his last meeting with his family, sitting firmly wedged in his pillows while toasts are drunk in his a man is dying tragically, surrounded by his parents, his wife and his two children, after having tried everything to survive.
"For six months, there have always been three to five beds which are occupied by cancer patients less than 45 says concerned Dr Christiane Martel.
53% of patients admitted to the Victor-Gadbois home come from their homes, 47% from hospital.
Lack access to palliative care
It is said that 77% of simply have no access to palliative care, which is care designed to ease the pain when a patient has reached the terminal stage of life, be it at home, in hospital or in a care home.
And a number of organisations, such as the Victor-Gadbois home and Palliative Care Society in Greater Montreal, specialise more or less exclusively in care provided to cancer patients.
It is precisely large gap in Quebec health care which has made a number of palliative care fear the adoption of a law on euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Since October, a manifesto, signed by palliative care luminaries including Dr Balfour Mount and Dr Bernard Lapointe, has been to demonstrate their opposition to such an initiative.
According to Dr Christiane Martel, the Quebec health system is not effective enough to ensure that everyone will be entitled quality palliative care before it is accepted to proceed to euthanasia.
Recently, she says, I saw patient spend 14 days in emergency, in great pain, without anything being done to ease her suffering.
I'm afraid that patients ask to die because they don't receive adequate care.
And at the same time, some oncologists work relentlessly on their patients until the last day, despite the worst prognoses.
Hélène Richard's survival hopes were already minimal when she ended her gruelling chemotherapy.
When I announced to my oncologist that I was stopping the treatment, she told me she that I had given up fighting, she said.
However, she had told me I was finished!
all-powerful care
Dr Martel believes that 90% of patients asking to die thank care-givers for not having acceded to their request after they have been relieved of their pain by a palliative team.
But it must be said that palliative care is not absolutely all-powerful in treatment of pain.
According to Elsie Monereau, Palliative Care Director with the Palliative Care Society in Greater Montreal, patients are resistant to against pain in 8% of cases.
At the very end of life, physicians then often resort to palliative sedation, which is equivalent to putting the patient to sleep until the time of death, either sporadically or
We can no longer pretend to understand part of their suffering.
Increasingly, an unrelieved patient will have the option of having palliative sedation.
Patients who relieved always say the same thing: "I want to die."
But this does not necessarily mean "I want you to euthanise me," it means "I to be relieved."
This report was made possible thanks to a journalism award from the Canada health research institutes.
Widespread real estate scandals in Quebec
Day after day highway officials, building contractors, political party fund-raisers and Italian mafia specialists tell what they know of a formidable "system," combining the building industry, government officials, politicians, trade unionists and organised crime.
An "industry" which has cost Quebec taxpayers dearly, especially the 1990s and 2000s.
"It is curious how system is crumbling since we took drastic measures" says Duchesneau ironically, a Quebec politician and former Montreal of Police.
It was through him that the scandal broke in 2011, in an in-depth investigation into corruption related to road construction contracts in Quebec, to which the liberal Prime Minister the time, Jean Charest, had consented only reluctantly.
The "Duchesneau report" established a direct link between industry, under-the-table financing of parties and bribery officials.
"Since the inquiry opened in 2010, he says, the Ministry of Transport alone reportedly saved a billion dollars on contracts," with certain people curbing their get a share!
The Charbonneau Commission "has already brought down two mayors" he adds, hoping that it will succeed in "revealing the schemes behind the individuals."
A permanent anti-corruption unit, created in 2011
The Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit, created in 2011, is also coupled with its army of analysts, and auditors.
Plus the "Marteau squad" policemen who, since 2009, have apparently led the Montreal "sewer soft pedal on the inflation of contracts...
In recent weeks, it has conducted a series of searches and brought charges fraud and corruption against municipal politicians, such as Frank Zampino and Richard Marcotte, Mayor of a suburban town.
Next on the list is apparently Gilles who has just resigned from his post as Mayor Laval, third largest city in Quebec.
He is suspected of pocketing repeated bribes in exchange for public contracts.
Others formally accused are Montreal highway engineers and Italian entrepreneurs, including Tony Accurso and Lino Zambito.
The latter caused a sensation by explaining mechanics of the contracts "system" to the commission.
He himself paid 3% of the value of the contracts obtained in Montreal to an intermediary linked to the mafia who turn paid the money to Union Montréal, Mayor Gérald Tremblay's party.
Mr Zambito has handed money out freely in the 2000s, giving over 88,000 Canadian dollars (roughly 68,000 euros) to provincial parties, especially the Liberals then in power.
He also admitted having organised an illegal for former Liberal Deputy-Prime Minister, Nathalie Normandeau.
Sewer contracts with inflated costs
In Montreal, the corruption "system" ran smoothly.
Gilles Surprenant, former public works engineer, it in detail in front of the commission: in ten years, he from construction companies gifts, invitations to trips, golf tournaments, restaurants, hockey and bribes totalling 736,000 dollars, in exchange for sewer contracts of which he inflated the costs.
Other highway officials admitted having their palms greased by inflating invoices by 30 to 40%, and by false
Then an organiser of the Mayor's party, Martin Dumont, accused Mr Tremblay of deliberately closed his eyes to a parallel budget feeding his coffers with dirty money.
Following revelations, Mr Tremblay resigned in early November, plunging Montreal into a major crisis.
Chantal Rouleau was one of first women in Montreal to raise the alarm.
Mayor of borough of Rivière-des-Prairies, to the East of the island, she in 2010 against the sale of municipal land bought for 5 million dollars and resold for... 1.6 million to developers, at the height of the real estate boom.
70% dirty money in election
On the investigation which will eventually be she says she "is following a thread in order to find out how the system - infiltrated by ants - works, to put a stop to the gangrene and catch the culprits."
The process, says, is "painful but positive."
The wound is cleaned, but Montreal would need its own investigative unit ongoing monitoring, to avoid the return of these questionable practices.
How to clean house.
Properly.
Jacques Duchesneau notes for his part "officials stole hundreds of millions of dollars," he is especially concerned about the role of "elected people aware of the scheme," when they were not up to their necks in the scam!
Estimating the share of dirty money in the financing of election campaigns in Quebec at 70%, he dryly: "I was told that it was only a pale reflection of
The Quebec government proposes to limit donations to parties to 100 dollars, but this will not change the situation, he says: "Until election expenses are strictly limited, there will be dirty money in politics."
He advocates a complete overhaul of the system for granting public contracts and funding: "We can't go any lower; getting the bottom of things, with courage, will help to rebuild the house on more solid foundations, with controls and laws."
Although this story tarnishes the international image of Quebec and Montreal, Mr invites anyone laughing look their own backyard...
"PSG is not FC Barcelona!"
This season, you have taken on a new stature with PSG.
How do you explain this
It can be explained by individual awareness but also by the new dimension PSG.
Some great players have arrived.
Every day I'm making progress alongside them.
The technical staff has also brought me a lot.
Day by day, all these things help me raise my level of play.
in a match, it's easier.
Everything moves very fast in football.
But I don't get worked up.
From my debut at the INF pre-training centre to my transfer to Saint-Etienne, I've moved step by step.
So you benefit from the competition brought in by Carlo Ancelotti...
This summer's recruits are used to playing matches at a high level.
They also know that every training session is crucial.
Which is what makes a like me want to face up and my best.
On the other hand, Carlo Ancelotti gives a lot as regards my position.
He's supported by deputies like Makelele, who played in the same position as me.
Is Ancelotti the man for job?
Definitely.
Ancelotti inspires respect among all the experts.
Today he has no equal in Ligue 1, and he's one of the best coaches in Europe.
He has masses of experience and has won many titles with clubs.
He's worked with great players.
I think he will bring titles Paris.
In January, I had an encouraging discussion with him.
I was just coming back from a series of injuries.
The confidence he gives me also explains my performance.
What importance do you attach to the first part of the season for PSG?
In Ligue 1, Lyon overtook us at the top.
But we're waiting on the sidelines.
One of our main goals is the Champions League: we qualified for the last 16 in the right way.
What is club's goal this competition?
We'll try to go as far as possible.
now on, anything can happen.
But have something say against some very good European teams.
First of all, we want to finish top in our pool, ahead of Porto, to have home in the last 16 match.
Can PSG become a top European club in the short term?
It already has the budget...
To become a European club, Paris needs to win titles and keep it up over time.
Today, isn't the case.
Financially, PSG has the means to make it happen.
In Ligue 1, would not winning the title, like last season, be a big failure?
Definitely, it would be a major disappointment.
This year, we're really committed to winning championship.
We weren't far away last season.
In May, there was great disappointment because we were good enough to finish first.
It was a terrific season.
We finished with 79 points.
Normally, 79 points is good enough to be top...
But another team, Montpellier, had an even more fantastic season.
I think this the year.
Even if big teams like Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux are competing for the title, I think we have the weapons to win.
Do you think the media expect too of
It's normal for them to expect a lot from us given what's been and the players we have.
We totally accept
After we won 4-0 at home against Troyes and still found things to blame us for, that's definitely a bit frustrating.
You wonder what more people expect.
You're never going win every weekend.
We're not FC Barcelona!
We're trying to implement a game project.
It time to build a team.
The Champions League proved we could hold our own.
at Manchester City who, for two seasons, have failed to qualify for last 16, despite also having spent huge amounts!
Based on the amounts invested, you should be 15 points ahead at the winter
That would be to ignore our opponents and the French Championship.
Lyon and Marseille, who were no good last season, were "boosted" by the new PSG.
This that Ligue is exciting.
I hope that in May we will be able to smile in saying that, despite all the difficulties, we finally did it.
PSG seem totally dependent on the exploits of Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
So much so that people say there is a dependence."
This means Ibrahimovic is very and scores a lot of goals.
That's why he came, and he's proving he's the star of Ligue 1.
He's everywhere he went that he a great a world star.
Within the group, we respect the man and the player.
And also he respects the men he has around him.
What he has done is truly
It pushes others to raise their level of play.
Thiago who is one of the best defenders in the world, also helps everyone else progress.
How did you get on Euro 2012 with the France team?
A disappointment.
I really wanted to play in this Euro.
my injury prevented from getting any game time.
I saw some things there and came out stronger.
Today, I'm playing well in selection matches.
Which is what I've been hoping for since my baptism with the Blues.
I've learned the lessons from what happened in the Ukraine and I now owe it to myself to have exemplary behaviour.
What do think about Didier Deschamps's first few months in charge of the Blues?
He has the results he wanted.
We're well placed in the World qualifying
The coach is tough, to the players, and inspires them to win.
Like Laurent Blanc was.
But I don't want to make any comparisons.
Blanc had achieved his goal when we qualified for the Euro.
I hope Didier Deschamps will take the Blues to Brazil.
Did the good draw (1-1) snatched Spain, on 16 October, represent a founding match?
That match gave us confidence.
Everybody fought for everybody.
Before that shock in Spain, I'd never experienced a match in my
With Bitcoin, pay and sell without banks
The opposite of current monetary exchanges, based on central banks, transactions and processing fees among the parties involved.
In addition, as often in these technologies, a political vision is palpable: the belief that the current monetary system, made banking monopolies, leads to financial crises.
In fact, Bitcoin, invented by Nakamoto pseudonym), is both a virtual currency (but convertible into dollars, euros) and a secure exchange protocol like BitTorrent, which allows peer-to-peer file exchange.
Around 200,000 transactions have already been recorded via 15,000 computers on the network.
Close to a thousand web sites accept bitcoins as donations or means of payment.
The bitcoin exchange rate, after reaching a peak of 30 dollars (23 euros) in June 2011, fell to 2 dollars five months later, returning today to around a dozen dollars (rates are listed on the bitcoincharts.com site).
Nothing very impressive, compared to global transactions in real currency or financial products.
the European Central Bank (ECB) took an interest in it in a report on currencies published in October.
It describes bitcoin as "the most successful virtual currency," "in competition with the dollar or the euro" and "similar to conventional currencies."
Bitcoin differs from other types of virtual currency such as 'credits', used to progress in a video game which you win by playing or which you can buy (and sometimes exchange in return).
The social network Facebook has also developed this kind of system.
But, on each occasion, a central authority controls and handles the exchanges.
With Bitcoin, all nodes the network are both custodians the book of currency issuers, and buyers and sellers.
How does the network operate?
Each transaction between two users is actually carried out between two electronic addresses like with an e-mail.
Except that a user can choose a different address for each payment, thereby ensuring anonymity.
A set of information associated with this is signed electronically by a dual-key encryption system.
So the network can the authenticity of the transaction.
Using the contents of the file, it is also possible to that the exchanged bitcoins exist in the public book of accounts, broadcast across entire network.
The key step is entering the new transaction in the book.
It passes through the resolution of a mathematical challenge issued to the computers, and the winner, a kind of interim central banker, will have the privilege of adding this extra line.
This is a file hashing phase, i.e. the transformation of a large file into a shorter and unique digital imprint.
Computers "take" the new transaction and add a number to it, then "hash" it all up.
goal being to find the number that gives a special imprint (lots of zeros at beginning).
Once this number has been found, the other nodes can easily check that it is the right one.
The transaction is then to the chain of all the other transactions; any modification would alter the imprint.
If a user wanted to defraud by paying twice with the same money very quickly than minutes), only one of the two transactions would be validated by the network - the other would remain an orphan because the two have different imprints.
The computer that resolves the challenge wins 50 bitcoins.
To avoid inflation, this award is regularly divided by two, probably by the end of 2012.
The number of bitcoins in circulation is therefore limited to 21 million, but they are divisible down to the hundred millionth, which leaves some margin...
The difficulty of the challenge is also raised with each in computing power.
The life of the network has had its ups and downs.
Websites providing services for Bitcoin have been and bitcoins in deposits stolen.
"The loophole used is not the protocol itself" says Pierre Noizat reassuringly, who has just launched Paymium, a real currency payment company that uses the Bitcoin network.
The ECB also highlights the possibilities of money laundering using this anonymous service.
But cash also has this weakness.
Major players like Wikipedia donations of nature.
Others, such as the WordPress blog platform, accept them.
Recently, Adi Shamir and Dorit Ron, from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, analysed the accounting books and showed that almost 80% of bitcoins do not circulate.
In November, "huge were launched.
"Thirty thousand were exchanged" Jon Holmquist, who works for Coinabul, which converts bitcoins to gold.
Pierre Noizat, also author of an educational book on this currency, has a lot of faith in the potential of this technology as a transaction network.
His system, Paytunia, is equivalent to a credit card (in real money) or a contactless payment by mobile, but it uses to validate transactions, which are thus cheaper.
Also the user manages his identity and can therefore be anonymous.
The system is easy to implement by merchants, who do not need to install new terminals or software.
They just need to provide an address a phone can "photograph and recognise" says Pierre Noizat, who he has thousands of users.
There is a general movement to reappraise hierarchical systems for more horizontal systems.
"It take time for Bitcoin to become firmly established, but 2013 be turning point," he predicts.
The ECB, in its says it reassess the various risks, currently regarded as high, in the event of the currency's success.
We got out of Afghanistan.
What now?
French troops have left their area of responsibility in Afghanistan (Kapisa and Surobi).
and the Americans are due to follow in late 2014.
It is time for the Afghan army to resume possession of its territory and the Afghan people to choose their future, without expecting us to do everything.
It is mainly Afghan peasants that we have punished by regarding them as terrorists.
And ourselves, with our 88 soldiers killed, plus the wounded, the maimed.
The Taliban is composed of foreign extremists, former leaders in refuge in Pakistan, but often peasants who the presence of foreign armed forces, like in the time of the Soviets.
They want to their traditions, both ancient and archaic, even though they have been joined by Jihadists, Pakistanis, Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks.
Tolerated, sometimes assisted, by local insurgents, the latter will no longer be so when Westerners become more scarce.
The departure of French troops from the Nijrab base, which I observed from the top of hills of almond trees planted with French funding, was carried out in an fashion.
Convoys of trucks armoured vehicles reached Kabul without being attacked, overflown by helicopters.
There will be no wave of the Taliban in by the end of 2014.
Circumstances have changed their irresistible advance between 1994 and 1996.
At that time Kabul empty, the country being torn apart by the struggles between different
Their takeover of the country had been perceived then as a sort of liberation, a return to safety.
Afghanis paid the price of the obscurantism of these peasants by the organisation of Al-Qaeda, but their situation has not improved today.
Former Mujahidin, the Afghan Government and the current Taliban are allied in the desire to keep women in inferior position.
main anti-Soviet leaders returned to power in 2001.
They became profiteers, seizing government land to resell as building land to refugees returning from Iran and Pakistan, benefiting from huge American outsourcing contracts.
They have become discredited; what is more, most of them did not fight themselves.
The people, as I heard the countryside, want a Government that is not made up of thieves.
Many young people want to leave, as those who were able to benefit from American will leave: the flight of capital is considerable.
The young people are tired of war and its ideologies.
They have rubbed with the modern world during their exile in Iran or Pakistan, and appreciated the benefits.
Roughly 65% of the population is less 25; Kabul now has 5 million people, a fifth of the total population.
In towns and cities, the state schools are full, with girls and boys alike.
It will be necessary to provide work for those young who no longer want to return to the obscurantism of the former parties or the corruption of certain leaders.
of them, including the armed opponents, are partial to mobile phones; television, with its Turkish soap operas that show a world, is everywhere.
The army is now present.
Will the authorities who command be considered legitimate?
Former commanders of the anti-Soviet struggle are already thinking about restoring provincial militias, which escape the central power.
Afghanistan, of mountains, with strong local identities, should be able to benefit from a certain decentralisation, in the image of the Western nations, but the United States wanted to turn it into a centralised with presidential power, abolishing the post of Prime Minister, which had existed since the 1964 Constitution.
President Karzai does not any foreign controls, particularly on the occasion of the elections in 2014.
But, since the 50s and already well before, his country has been dependent on foreign aid.
No industries have been re-established, no dams are in good condition, no major irrigation systems have been repaired.
Everything imported; nothing is produced, apart fruit and vegetables.
The Priority left to private initiative.
In a country ruined by thirty years of war, government control over the infrastructure would have been necessary.
The rumour was spread that Afghanistan had huge mineral wealth.
This only added to the feeling that the Westerners were only there to seize it.
no energy to process the iron ore or copper on site, or means of transport to export it across the mountains, there no mining.
The Chinese have already almost left the Mes Aynak mine, leaving international archaeologists (funded by the World Bank) to search the huge Buddhist site and remain the largest employers in the province.
One day it will also be necessary for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on which imports and exports largely depend, to restore normal relations.
The departure of French combat troops was completed on 20 November.
The new cooperation treaty provides for the continuation of traditional aid: girls' high school, high school, French Department at the University, French Institute, cooperation in the military, legal, medical and fields, support to the archaeological Delegation.
Since 2009, to try to "win hearts and minds" and achieve the impossible task reconciling aid and offensive actions, a "civil-military service from the Ministry of defence (Cimic), closed in 2012, has carried out, and continues to carry out successfully, through a small French NGO, many community and agricultural rehabilitation projects in dozens of mountain villages.
These projects, involving large numbers of local labour, have helped to contain the insurgency: irrigation, wells, drinking reforestation, fruit trees, soil protection and increase in cultivable areas.
What will we leave a souvenir, after two billion euros of military spending?
much more modest budget would contribute to improving local living which are hard in these valleys often located over 2,000 metres sea level.
The Embassy has received of written requests for small agricultural projects from local communities in Kapisa province.
To be in a position to free themselves from uprising led by foreign which is what farmers told me they want, a small amount of civil aid be in their favour, well controlled and directly affecting them.
A Constitution by force in
A new gamble for President Mohammed Morsi.
While Egypt remains more divided than ever around the constitutional declaration, which temporarily grants him full powers, he has decided to go for broke.
Taking everyone by surprise, he announced on Wednesday that the Constituent Assembly would vote on its text the following day.
Just a week ago, the head of State had given the Assembly two more months to its work.
For two years has relied on a provisional text, several times this has weakened institutional stability and led to legal imbroglios.
new initiative only served to enhance the divide in the country.
According to his opponents, the President is persevering in his "autocratic delirium," continuing to "go back on his word" and the law."
His supporters affirm that this is the quickest way to put an end to the institutional and political crisis, by speeding up the transition process.
referendum is due to be held within the next two weeks.
A very short period, which forces the Brothers to abandon their plan to explain text, article by article, to the Egyptians.
For the President, it is also a way to popular and democratic legitimacy while the rages throughout the country.
Mohammed seems convinced that Egyptians will vote favourably, as he stated in an interview with the American weekly Time.
Particularly since a hasty vote smacks of an ultimatum to the Egyptian people: "Either you vote for my text, or I keep full powers," these supposedly expiring following of Constitution.
It in a strange atmosphere that 85 members of Constituent Assembly, with a large Islamist majority, voted on text yesterday.
Most of the were missing.
In mid-November, shortly before the constitutional declaration, had slammed the door, feeling they had failed to assert their views.
Representatives of human rights, religious minorities or civil society had done likewise.
In to obtain a quorum, 11 members, alternates, were hastily added yesterday morning.
Some of them are very to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Not the articles were for the most voted unanimously.
Commentators were also amused that one of the only diversions of the day was expressed with regard to... the hour of prayer, some Committee members feeling that the Constituent Assembly clock was wrong.
text, which was being voted on yesterday evening, has 234 articles.
The main focus of attention, article 2, remains in the final analysis identical to that of the 1971 Constitution, stipulating that "the principles of sharia are the main source of law."
Salafist parties, for which the establishment of Islamic law is a claim, were hoping to replace "the principles" by "the rules," which would have allowed stricter application.
For the Islamists, the fact this article was not amended is a guarantee of goodwill and their respect for the other elements of Egyptian society.
respond the who see only a communication coup.
Because in their opinion Islamisation of the Constitution is done through other articles.
They refer in particular to article 220, which grants Al-Azhar University an advisory role, with particular reference to verifying the conformity of the laws with sharia.
According to Egypt specialist Sophie Pommier, this is worrying because "the people upon to advise are not elected and have no democratic
This suggests the beginnings a theocracy."
The liberals' also fuelled by the fact that the next Rector of the university will probably be much less than the current one.
"For the time being, there no concrete religious implication.
With this Constitution, things remain under civil rule.
Most of the lawyers who worked on this text are not Islamic law scholars but academics, some trained in the French qualifies Alexis Blouet, who is writing a thesis on the Egyptian constitutional transition.
But acknowledges that "there be some ambiguity article 220, because the terms used borrow from the religious vocabulary.
Reference is made in particular to "fiqh" [Islamic jurisprudence, Editor's note].
And the question could be asked in future what extent civil judges are competent to pronounce on it."
Beyond its religious aspect, the text voted on is highly criticised due to the extensive powers it to the President of the Republic.
The Muslim argue that they are significantly reduced compared to what they were under the former regime.
Another issue: the powers conferred on the army.
In accordance with the of the military, the Defence budget review will be submitted to Parliament, but to National Defence Council.
Nor will trials of civilians will be banned in tribunals, as requested by associations for the defence of human rights.
Who also voice their concerns about the text, which they consider repressive.
The offence of blasphemy is maintained and insults are now prohibited, which could have serious consequences on freedom of expression, particularly for the press.
In addition, no longer does any the articles refer to the protection of women, highlights Heba Morayef, from Human Rights Watch.
In her opinion, the only positive point is the prohibition of torture in article 36.
The word was not included in the previous Constitution.
While the Egyptian President was speaking yesterday evening on television, demonstrations are planned for this afternoon.
Supporters of the Head State will march on Saturday.
In Israel, holy places await Ukrainian tourists, the omphalos and a sea of saline water
The Holy Land combines the splendour of biblical truths, modern comfort and primeval nature.
AiF [Argumenti i Fakti] newspaper highlighted the five most important reasons why it is must to visit
Let's worship the holy places
It is worth visiting the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized.
It is considered that all who enter this baptism "bath" are blessed by
Galilee is the place where Jesus performed his magic: turned water into wine at a wedding, walked on water, calmed a storm, and filled the
This is also Jesus came before his disciples and after the resurrection.
But the biggest number of holy places is in Jerusalem.
Believers walk through the Way of Grief or Via Dolorosa.
It starts by the Antonia Fortress - Praetorium - where the judgement place, and us along the streets of the Old Town to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Golgotha - the place of the crucifixion, Stone of Unction and the place of Jesus' burial.
This is also the location of the symbolic Christian omphalos, which symbolizes the salvation of mankind.
The Holy Cross Monastery in Jerusalem is erected at the site that, according to Christian legend, yielded the tree used to make the cross for Jesus' crucifixion.
Jerusalem the most holy places for the Jews as well - the Wailing Wall, which remained from a temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
According to tradition, different faiths leave notes here with their wishes, which are then fulfilled.
Travel along a vertical
Ruins of the Massada remain from a secret refuge from enemies, built by in 25 BC for his family.
They are located on cliffs in the mountains at an elevation of 450 m sea level.
They can be reached on foot only by those who are into mountain climbing.
Others are delivered to this historical mountaintop by a cableway.
In the north of the country, at an elevation of 1600-2040 m, there is a famous ski resort called Hermon, which up with tourists in winter months.
A shuttle brings people to it from the foot of the mountain.
The total length of ski pistes is 45 km.
According to an ancient legend, pagan used to live on the mountain.
unique museums
This country has about 300 museums.
You won't be able to visit all of them on one trip
But at least the five most interesting ones are worth visit.
Among them - Museum of Israel, located close to Knesset (Parliament).
It has ancient Qumran manuscripts and Dead Sea scrolls found in the caves of the Judean desert, along with about 500,000 archaeological and anthropological artefacts.
The Museum of Art in Tel-Aviv is also interesting.
Its exhibits include a wide range of impressionists and expressionists like Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Chagall, Picasso.
In Akko, you visit the bath museum Al-Basha, which consists several rooms of ancient Turkish baths with models of visitors bath attendants of the time.
In Caesarea, it is worth visiting the unique private Ralli Museum, where you can enjoy the sculptures of Dali Rodin.
There are no tour guides or gift shops.
Entry is free of charge, and contributions are strictly not allowed.
The fifth one is the Holocaust Museum or Yad Vashem in Tel-Aviv, which tells one of the most dramatic stories in history.
The most tragic section is the children's memorial, built in memory of 1.5 million children killed concentration camps and gas chambers.
You go in and find yourself in complete darkness.
Stars are glimmering,
and you listen names of Jewish children and countries where they died.
Ukraine is mentioned there too.
Wellness
There are three resort areas Israel, located on the coasts of the Mediterranean, Red, and Dead Seas.
Each have swimming pools, aqua parks, dolphinaria and oceanaria.
It is notable that one can swim in Red Sea even in winter months, the water temperature does not drop below 21 degrees and the air warms to 23 degrees.
The Dead Sea even warmer, and people swim in it round.
Incidentally, it is most unusual sea in the world, located in lowest point of the planet - 417 m sea level.
Its azure water is saline and easily keeps you afloat, even if you don't know how to swim.
The surrounding landscapes are surreal in their beauty.
People come here to undergo a course of treatment using salt water wraps and medicinal muds, and to improve their health if they have dermatitis, allergies, asthmas, eczemas, arthritis, bronchitis, or diabetes, or to balance.
Touch the mysteries of antiquity
They are preserved in the old section of - in the town of Jaffa on the Mediterranean Sea.
The famous sea route connecting Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia runs through it.
city is mentioned in ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian legends.
According to legends, this is where Noah built his ark Perseus saved the beauty with whom he lived a long and happy life.
Tourists really like to wander the narrow streets named after signs of the zodiac.
They say, if you touch the walls on the street of your sign, fortune will come to you.
In Jaffa, you can meet newlyweds who come from all over Israel and even from other countries for photo sessions.
And in Caesarea - the city of King Herod you can walk around a Roman theatre, "capture" the Crusader fortress.
the Roman period, Caesarea was the main city of Judea and the residence of Roman prefects, including Pontius Pilate.
carefully restored theatre is now used for evening concerts and opera performances.
A note for the tourist
When you go to Israel, don't worry about your bad English knowledge: approximately 30% of the country's population speaks Russian.
For trip, it is better to take dollars, not because they are easily exchanged for shekels (currently 1 dollar = 3.8 shekels).
City is mainly buses, but Jerusalem has a high-speed tram, and Haifa has only subway line in the country, six stops and connecting upper town with lower.
In essence, it is an underground cable railway.
A ticket for any type of city transportation costs 6 shekels, and you can ride for 1.5 hours with transfers.
According to the Jewish tradition, Sabbath is celebrated in Israel.
Between evening the sunset on Saturday, markets, stores, and public transportation stop working.
The work week starts on Sunday morning.
Many cafes, restaurants and hotels have only kosher food, with no pork, seafood, fish with no scales, or dishes that combine milk with meat.
There is a wide selection of dishes from lamb and beef, soups and desserts cooked using coconut milk, traditional hummus paste, various sauces, (balls made of ground chickpeas), fruits and vegetables.
The streets of Israel don't have homeless dogs.
But there are many cats, which walk around lazily.
In the evening, they can even be seen sleeping on roofs of parked cars.
These pussycats like places and do refuse treats.
Car rental, on car type, costs from 37 (Hyundai Getz) to 188 (Audi A6, Volvo S80) dollars a day.
Plus insurance of 15 dollars a day.
Bike rental costs 15 shekels a day.
Museum entrance costs 30 shekels on average.
In numbers
In 2012, three million tourists from around the world visited Israel.
Visitors and arrive mostly from the USA, Russia, France, Germany, England, and Ukraine.
Between January and October 2012 Ukrainian tourists visited the Holy Land, which is 51% more than a similar figure in 2010, before the removal of the visa regime on February 9, 2011.
Only the and mighty" make it to migrants save money for language
While deputies and human rights activists argue about the purpose of the law on mandatory language testing, the country already has artists who sell fake certificates.
Every year, 13 million migrant workers come to Moscow, St. Petersburg and other in Russia.
Mostly these are citizens of Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Their only goal is to earn money to support families back home.
A new law came into effect on December 1, which obliges every migrant worker to pass a Russian language test.
For the moment, this law applies only to those who intend to work services, housing and utility services, household services, and retail.
But with time - as promised by the Federal Migration Service - tests will become mandatory for all non-residents.
In addition to language, Russian history and basics of the legal system will be tested.
Language knowledge will have to be confirmed both to receive and to extend the work permit.
An exception is in effect for citizens of countries where Russian is a state language.
People who received education certificates and diplomas before the fall of the USSR in 1991 are also exempt under the law.
Purpose, doomed fate, and the of rights
points will be operating under the auspices of the Pushkin Institute of Russian Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, State University (MGU), St. Petersburg State University (SPbGU), and other Russian education institutions.
Migrants can take the tests in all cities; more than 160 centres have been opened.
The initiative to introduce the testing was supported by State members the Federal Migration Services.
But human rights activists, asked the question repeatedly in the press before the law came into force: what will it actually achieve?
will the obligation to know change for the Russians and for the non-residents?
First of all, according to of the migration service, this will allow to reduce the number of people suffering from labour slavery.
Many speak about protection of the of work migrants, explains the Head of representative office of the Migration Services of Russia, Viktor Sebelev.
Rights protection should begin before their departure.
Only the system of organized selection will enable us to solve 90% of the problems of foreign workers.
Migrants without profession, education, who do not know Russian, who do not a medical certificate start to have problems.
If a migrant does not understand the language, says Sebelev with certainty, he is doomed to come unconscientious people, who, pretending to help, will force upon him a "ticket" to terrible, cramped barracks where many others like him will suffer without food and documents, slaving away 12-14 hours a day.
We receive many complaints from our migrants.
"They are promised one thing at home, but when they arrive, they are lied to, their passports are taken, they are not paid what they were promised," confirms the Head of the Main Migrant Labour Administration of the Migration Service of Tajikistan Tolib Sharipov.
Not be angry, boss!
Nonetheless, many citizens of Central Asian countries, who plan to to work in Russia, admit that only their understanding of the language of the country where they are going is not good, but they can barely write in their own language.
Naturally, this is not so much their fault, but due to very few Turks, Uzbeks, and Tajiks can afford even a basic education.
Their families don't even have food to feed their children, not mention decent clothing, shoes, and supplies.
After reaching adolescence, these kids go to work at the first opportunity.
It is hard, if language knowledge is they admit.
"You feel humiliated and inferior."
But human rights activists note important point about the law on language.
Testing will be conducted only for migrants who have legal status.
If they have no status, will be no testing, nor any official work in the
In the meantime, most of the migrant workers continue to live in Russia illegally.
"Welcome, or No Unauthorized Entry"
Many of the foreigners assert that receiving official status in our country not that easy.
The reason lies in bureaucratic hurdles and the already mentioned language difficulties.
In addition, legalization costs money: from 12,000 to 16,000 rubles.
Whereas a fake registration is done quickly and costs only one and half
Officers of the Russian Police know that we mainly have fake papers, without registration, hence the extortion.
"They ask for a hundred or two for cigarettes, tea," Umed Khushkadamov, a citizen of Tajikistan, shared with journalists.
"Roll up, don't be cheap, get your artwork"
On the day of the law's entry into effect it turned out that not only migrant registration can be fake.
A few forged certificates about passing language tests have been seized by Federal Migration Services officers already.
Forged documents are printed on a standard printer.
Naturally, they were not free for their of the migrants, who had hoped to facilitate the task of passing tests in this way paid seven thousand rubles for them.
It is two and a times more than the process of official testing, which costs three thousand.
Government officials and human activists agree that the main goal the near future is to protect the system from corruption, so that the certificates could not just be
For moment, the authorities can promise migrant workers who could not pass the test the first time to give time to complete a basic language course.
In addition, those who come without Russian language will be offered work in areas that not require active communication with people.
The Ministry of the Interior does not put from the illegal market back into circulation
The share of crime involving legal weapons is low
Russian Ministry of the Interior is proposing to toughen up the for owners of civil weapons.
This is the reaction of authorities to recent incidents: CLICK shots at weddings, where there were no casualties, and the massacre staged by Moscow lawyer Vinogradov, in CLICK the death of seven people.
Policemen want to prohibit the carrying of weapons in public places and raise the legal age of weapons from 18 to 21.
The idea was supported by the head the Duma Committee on Safety and Anti-Corruption, Irina Yarovaya, who promised that the amendments to the law on weapons will be brought the State Duma in the near future.
Not everyone is happy that the Russian authorities are trying to the problem "tightening the screws."
open letter appeared online, whose authors - representatives of different social rifle organizations - demand to abandon the "senseless
The percentage of crime involving registered weapons minimal, said criminal Vasily Lesnikov to BBC Russia.
According to the Ministry of the Interior's statistics, 142 crimes using firearms registered with law enforcement agencies been committed in the six months of 2012, whereas 1,168,000 crimes have been recorded in total for this period.
of the open letter are that the of the law in the area of civil weapons will not prevent the criminal from to the "black" market.
According to them, one can find any weapon a low price right now.
Nonetheless, the Ministry of the asserts that the situation of the spread of arms is under control.
Suppliers: from plants to officers
The "black" market of weapons is replenished through several channels.
There are five channels, colonel Viktor Baranets, who has worked in the Ministry of and the Staff for 10 years.
Screenshot of the site that accepts orders
First: "army or military loot," weapons that were stolen during the fighting in the Caucasus.
"Weapons were by Russian officers and by the Caucasians," says Baranets.
Next are "black weapons," stolen criminals from representatives of defence agencies.
Baranets explains this covers weapons taken police warehouses and those stolen directly from law enforcement agencies' employees.
Illegal arms are taken to be from military warehouses.
Explosions have often been heard at military warehouses.
"There are proven theories that some the fires were intentional, in order to cover the shortage," says the former military man.
Manufacturers of weapons make their contribution, according to Baranets.
"There are so many private weapons factories now, which do not endure competition on the international market and throw weapons from under the counter to black market, including Moscow," says the expert.
Another source of the "black" market is trafficking.
An especially number of guns and machine guns from poor countries like Kyrgyzstan.
"There's production there, sometimes handmade; and a formed, which has organized a stream," explains the former military man.
Where do the weapons come from?
Experts counted the approximate share of each of the of supply of illegal weapons to "black" market.
A report about this was prepared by the Centre of Problems and Public Management Planning in 2011.
Experts analysed the reports of the Department of the Interior and Rosstat, criminology and open data from portals on weapons.
The overwhelming majority of illegal weapons, according to the researchers, comes the military and security forces.
Half of all arms on the black market are there of officials, whose work is connected with weapons," states the report.
According to researchers' data, 17% of the time the weapons are received from armed conflict areas, 14% is theft during production, 5% is "black archaeology."
A sales consultant of one of the weapons stores, who wished to remain anonymous, asserts that the weapons found by "black" diggers are not being bought any more, because they're too old.
According to him, dealers go to the military warehouse for a new batch of goods.
One piece, for example a TT gun can be bought a warrant officer.
It is issued to him, given through the fence.
"He takes it to the city and sells for 900 euros a piece with two magazines," he says.
"The truth is that police are aware of that is why the crime detection rate is low, it conducts purchases from illegal weapons merchants," consultant.
"Like in a luxury store"
buyer and seller often find each other through friends.
I looked at sites, blogs, till someone responded, offering me to to Begovaya station, where a man will be waiting for me to take me to the "corner" so we can
I found out the price of the weapon only there
military commentator Viktor Baranets
To get a weapon, I need someone with connections, says the sales consultant. - I have an acquaintance, but not it's reliable.
There are salesmen on labour markets, but one needs to "come" there conditionally "from John Doe, who asked to tell that his daughter lost a tooth."
now, even if I need a few knuckledusters, I get them through someone I
He also supplies them only to me, because he knows that won't give him away.
Beginners look for weapons in ways.
Former military man Viktor Baranets tried himself as a buyer of illegal weapons in the mid-1990's, when he was preparing to publish an article about this.
The formulas are still the same, according to him.
He was given an album of pictures with "anything and everything."
"I felt I was in a luxury store," he recalls.
According to Baranets, the buyer is not offered a pig in a poke - you try out everything.
I, the potential client, am not just buying; we go to the forest the seller and set a target there.
"I am given the opportunity to shoot, and when I am certain that the weapon is good, begin to negotiate," the expert.
Store on a sofa
Internet lead to sites and "Vkontakte" groups, where weapons "for different purposes" are on offer.
No or personal meetings are needed.
"It's enough to have a certain sum of money," says the advertisement heading on the website "Buy a pistol or rifle."
Users leave their requests and ask questions.
Can a buy?
"Without a license, of course," asks user "John" (name is changed).
"Want to buy a TT, Moscow," concisely requests "Fedorenkov."
Security Service now spread a big network of fake sites and there are tons of potential buyers of military
People come like hungry fish to bait, and then mine coal in Siberia.
military commentator and former military Viktor Baranets
I heard about this: normally the site is registered outside the area of applicability of laws of Russia.
People accept orders.
The buyer pays at an
"In response, is sent with instructions on where the weapon is hidden," says Press Secretary of the Rights to Weapons organization Dmitry Kislov.
Viktor Baranets confirms that after leaving a request on the site you can stay without a weapon and to jail.
The Federal Security Service now spreads a big network fake sites and there are tons of potential buyers of military weapons.
"People are like hungry fish after bait, and in Siberia mining coal," - he says.
Makarov for 100
When buying illegal firearms, 100 to 900 dollars is enough according to experts.
According to Dmitry Kislov from the Rights to Weapons organization, a Makarov gun can be acquired for 100-300 dollars.
The wait time is a month to a month and a
It is shipped long-term storage warehouses by the mid-level management of these warehouses.
According to official statistics of the authorities, the number of such crimes in Russia on the whole 7% as compared January-October amounting to 22,900, while the number of cases of theft and extortion of weapons, ammunition, explosive substances and devices dropped by 7.8%.
Fast-food and supermarket workers are on strike in the U.S.A.
Up to a fourth of all American teenagers have worked the register at McDonald's at time or another
In the last few there is a wave of protest actions in the U.S.A. against low salaries in supermarkets of the Walmart chain and popular fast food chain restaurants like McDonald's, King, Taco Bell, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Right now, nobody is able to predict whether this wave will turn into the ninth wave or it is destined to fizzle out early.
Actions are being supported by unions and a series of left-wing organizations.
In addition to increasing the wages by of Walmart and fast food chains, the goal of the protesters is to create unions within
This sector of the economy is not covered by any union movement yet.
cents a year?
Actions began last week after Thanksgiving, on Black Friday, massive sales drew millions of people in America, sometimes accompanied by clashes.
On this day, some employees of the Walmart corporation, which employs 2.2 people around the world, left their workplaces and picketed together with unions and left-wing activists from the that sell products to people on low-to-medium incomes.
Walmart sells everything imaginable, from hunting rifles and car batteries, to vacuum cleaners, eggs and milk.
Products in its stores are on average 8% to 27% cheaper than in major supermarkets.
So many low-paid Walmart employees shop only at their workplace.
Availability and assortment made Walmart one of the biggest American corporations.
According to critics, Walmart can afford to sell the products cheaply partly because it pays little to its employees.
These latter also complain about hard work conditions, for example lack of lift trucks and hand-held scanners.
Protesters on Black demanded a salary increase and that the cost of medical insurance provided the corporation went from 30 to 100 dollars a month.
A typical Walmart employee, receiving dollars/hour, cannot afford this.
Scientists from the Berkeley University in argue that if Walmart raises the average salary to 12 dollars/hour, it will cost the corporation 3.2 billion dollars.
is about 1.1% more than it spends on salaries right now.
If Walmart fully shifts the cost of increasing wages to the shoulders of each visit to store will cost only 46 cents
In one they only spend 12.39 more than now.
Walmart supporters happily that the protests took place in nine states and did not cause any at all to the corporation.
Black Friday continued in its stores from 8 in the Thursday till midnight the next day, and during the period Walmart sold 5000 products a second.
In total, its cash registers nearly 100 million transactions on Black Friday.
Representative of the corporation, Dan Fogelman, asserted in an interview with a left-wing site, the Huffington Post, that a of "less than five" Walmart employees left the workplace, and the protest act was just "another PR trick" of the that organized it.
"Free cash register!"
Protests continued this week in New York, where their object was not Walmart (they're not so welcome in the progressive city, that is why they don't exist here yet), but McDonald's other cheap restaurants.
says that it sells billions of portions, and despite this it doesn't even give you sick days or pay you for honest work!
Jumaane member of the City Council of New York
At the moment, the salary according to federal and NY law is 7.25 dollars an hour.
Fast food increase it with time, but very little. On average their ordinary employees in New York earn 8.90 dollars/hour.
Nobody earns less in this expensive city.
I cannot understand how one can survive in New York on this money.
Once upon a time, almost a fourth of American teenagers went through McDonald's, working part-time after living with parents.
Few saw this as a source of living or planned to stay there for long.
I continuously across interviews with McDonald's employees, who complain they have to survive this and sometimes even feed their children.
On the other hand, there is a comment the Wall Street Journal forum, whose author notes that it is irresponsible to have children if you do not know how you will feed them.
Participants of protest began at 6.30 a.m. on Thursday near the McDonald's on 40th street and Madison Avenue demanded that and cooks of the fast food chain be paid at least 15 dollars/hour, i.e. more than double their present wages.
They also demanded the creation of unions in the fast food industry.
American law the administration from preventing this or punishing activists of the union movement by nagging or firing.
On the other hand, the administration does not often ease their life.
But for objective reasons is hard to cover fast food with a union.
One of them is the unusual turnover of employees.
Disagreeing
Noisy protests began on this day in a number of other cheap restaurants in Manhattan.
The highlight of the action was the afternoon meeting near McDonald's by Times Square, where several local democratic politicians spoke out. One of them, Jumaane Williams, said: "McDonald's claims it sells billions of portions, and despite this it doesn't even give you sick days or pay you for honest work!"
Demonstrators were supported by prominent NY democrats, like Bill de Blasio, a candidate for NY city mayor, who said: "We need to voice our joint support for the fast food employees, so that they can achieve fair wages and economic wellbeing, which every New Yorker deserves!."
According to the New York Times, this was the biggest action of this in the history of the American fast food industry.
But only a few hundred people part in it, and many of them were not fast food employees, which comprise tens of thousands of people New
It is unclear right now whether this will spark a mass movement.
the moment, the mind cannot be deceived too well"
Among modern technology fans a popular topic is augmented lately seen primarily through the prism special glasses.
At first, a functional model was shown by Google in the summer, at its annual conference. Then, in November, it was announced that Microsoft filed an for patent too.
However, according to the conversation with the leader of group of interactive 3D technologies in the Cambridge laboratory of Microsoft, Shahram Izadi, glasses are a thing of the past for scientists in this company.
They are drawn by the prospect of manipulating virtual objects in air with bare hands, creating virtual open spaces.
- Please tell us, in simple terms, about the work your research group does.
- We work on the interaction of people with machines, at the same time trying to expand the boundaries of this interaction.
While people in general are stuck at working with pixels on a flat screen and sometimes pointing at them.
We want to look 5-10 years into the future and predict cardinal changes in this interaction.
For example, Xbox and Kinect sensors are step forward. Almost no Xbox is sold without Kinect today, because everyone likes control by gestures.
- What awaits us in the future?
- Despite the fact that Kinect the interaction to the physical level, much occurs on a flat screen, in 3D.
Information entry has improved (the system receives more data), but output still needs to get better.
We are trying to working on truly three-dimensional display systems based on various technologies, including projection technologies.
We to let the computer world into physical world, make it more tangible.
But for need to identify both the user and the space around him.
Then we will be able to supplement the real world with virtual objects in much more convenient form.
Above all, get rid of these stupid virtual reality helmets!
- What do you think about voice control?
a popular thing, but is it overestimated?
- It clearly cannot be called cure-for-all - there's a of privacy, because do not want to let the others know about our actions and intentions.
In reality, all types of interaction with computers are good, but each in their
For example, we had a project to control devices in public places, in which we thought about movements, not wide movements, but small, reserved ones.
were not recorded by a camera, but by hand bracelet that determined the movement of bones and muscles.
It's big right now, but in theory it can be reduced to the size a hand watch.
In general, the future lies in the mixed control, e.g. movement + voice.
What do mean?
- For example, how would you ask me to give you this bottle of water?
You will talk and show at the same time.
- Usually I just say.
- Oh, that will be very hard to detect.
- So you want to the users adapt to what the machine can or cannot do at that moment?
- Not necessarily, but it is mutual approximation.
I think in the near future, we will mainly work on developing new sensors that will enable precise determination of a person's reaction.
This could be, e.g. laser sensors. They have a decent depth resolution, which is very important.
- If we talk your work with Xbox Kinect sensors, what are your about modern cameras?
Not enough resolution, depth or something else?
- In the current generation what we can base ourselves on in working on recognition.
Of course, it would be good to have eight mega pixels with 1000 k/s speed.
It's not just the mega pixels, though, but the quality of the matrix and the depth.
From the latter point of view, all current technologies are not good enough for us - this adds work to the algorithm designers.
So it's important to remember about the resolution on the X, Y, also the Z axis.
Speed, the number of images per second, is also very important.
Human movements are relatively dynamic, and the current 30 k/s is really not enough, especially for gestures.
Steven Bathiche from our laboratory created a touch sensor with a regulated delay from to 100 ms, while modern serial sensors are closer to the latter indicator (60-100).
Not everyone understands how this affects the interaction between man and machine.
In my work, would be very useful to have a device that does not require touching and would have more images per second.
- the number of cameras need to be increased?
- In Kinect there are three cameras now, one of which is actually infrared and the second one, the recipient of the signal.
The third is a sensor of visible range.
It is not applied to determine the object's depth.
Potentially, a large number of cameras could solve the problem...
Or make it worse, by increasing the required volume of calculations.
It would be nice to create a flexible analogue Kinect, play with the flexion of camera disposition and see how this help in three-dimensional of the position.
- As far as remember, Microsoft did not present its glasses to the public, unlike Google.
Don't you think this is one of the most promising platforms from the point of view the everyday use of augmented technologies?
- Certainly it is not very convenient to walk around with a smart phone in your all the time, but I think that the coolest option would be augmented reality, where you could shift from glasses to smart phone, projection display, and everywhere else based on a cloud platform.
Glasses are a very personal device, that is their strength (private things are seen only you) and, at the time, their weakness - augmented reality based on glasses will not allow you to work on virtual objects together with other people.
- Let us imagine for a minute that manipulation of virtual holographic objects in the air is available not only to Stark from Ironman, but to a regular person.
There is one problem with this idea that the critics often point out: no tactile feedback!
Hands feel nothing!
What answers does your group prepare to this challenge?
- In my lectures I often say that augmented is the seventh consecutive attempt at the interaction between man and machine.
I think that the eighth will probably be addition of sensations.
For now, one of the interesting tricks is to use the second hand as a sort of matrix for the image.
It is great at registering pushes!
But there are technologies that are really aimed at giving these "images in the air" a sense of tangibility, for example, the interference of several targeted ultrasound rays in a specific point where the located gives a sensation, but weak right now, as if someone blew on your fingertip.
There are also wrist bracelets that affect the nerve endings in fingers, which also a promising area.
- Have you tried to deceive the mind?
To to think that it feels something that it should be feeling when it sees something?
- This is a good idea and we haven't tried this yet.
It conceals one challenge that will not be solved so quickly - how to a person, who is physically in a very limited space to believe that he walking along an open, almost limitless space; we are working on the concept of treadmills (not at all like in clubs), moving platforms, giant balloons.
So far deceiving the mind has limited success, there's work for many years to come.
That's what makes working on virtual reality so attractive to researchers - many things are in their very beginnings.
Judgement calls instead of culture - Rosbalt.ru
Rosbalt continues the project St. Petersburg Avant-garde, dedicated to residents who are ahead, in the avant-garde of culture and art.
This top list already includes outstanding figures of art scene of St. Petersburg, whose achievements reach beyond the scope of the city, often recognized in Europe, bypassing fame in Russia.
The new player in Rosbalt - the bold artist Miller.
The whole city Kirill Miller, a man dressed all in red, who can be seen by the Russian Museum, or the Summer Garden, or at fashionable and shows.
Kirill Miller's work always brings in crowds of people, no matter where they are exhibited.
Kirill Miller one of the purely St. Petersburg social and philosophical storytellers and creators of new mythology.
Kirill Miller is an outstanding man of the Petersburg avant-garde of the late 80's early 90's.
Moreover, he is a city man, who makes people smile on the street and lifts everyone's spirit.
Recently he took the street organ and became St. Petersburg's music man, because he was ready for this complex role with all his Bohemian existence, philosophy and image.
- Kirill, why do you walk around the city all in red, not yellow or turquoise, for example?
- chose the colour red as a fashion designer engaged in look and image.
In this world, red is a compromise between artist, image-maker and society.
Although in society, everything that is not grey causes aggression and agitation of bad kind.
But my provocations are aimed at starting conversation.
The whole history of my actions is an invitation to discussion.
- When did you realise that you must be an artist?
- At an exhibition in the Nevsky House of Culture, where my was displayed.
It became clear to me that this is my path.
Then, the wave of older free, unofficial artists was gone, while new, free artists like me were not understood.
I became friends with the artists of the new wave, with post-Gaza-Nevsky ("post-gazonevschina"), which led to Pushkinskaya-10, and the wave was no longer.
I'm drawn to theatre, clothing, music, all genres except literature.
- And all this been united in your Art-clinic... - It was important for me to find myself in the centre of the culture of St. Petersburg, where all the best creative forces should come together.
In 1995, I occupied the territory on Pushkinskaya-10, and while the renovation work had not started, there was a musical and creative club, Bohemian club, the house of the St. Petersburg Bohemia.
Many were born there: NOMy, Tequila Jazz, I remember when Shnur was brought there with the Van Gogh's Ear project.
Shnur and his friends lip sang songs, wearing tight leotards, and the now trendy composer Igor Vdovin was with them.
When the group to play live, it became Leningrad.
Trakhtenberg was the presenter of many programs before Hali-Gali times.
We gave them Trakhtenberg, and a great career was on its way, but the basic education and mentoring he us.
Gallery D 137, Griboyedov - all these echo the Art-clinic.
That is where our staff and regular customers left for.
I am hero of the last century, when culture meant
In 2000, there was poll in the press, for the People Our City prize.
I was nominated Artist of the Year, my climax to an end.
In the new times, it is uncomfortable to work by old rules. I'm a man of truth, honesty and culture of the last century.
In our time, it is easy to become popular, but culture and popularity are different. You can popular, but not very cultural.
- Your work is marked by a recognizable style.
- Many of my works are hits, with clearly reflected relevance and acuity.
I will have a programme "Russian museum in clowns."
Clowns are a timeless category.
I was social before, now it is painful and scary to be like that.
But everything is blurred in clowns, tragedy is removed.
I like grotesque, I have grotesque ideas.
For example, saving the world by totalitarian changing of clothes by order.
Nowadays, people are judged by appearance, not their inner qualities.
knows, maybe you cannot shake his hand, and need to spit in his face.
And the lie will go away with the help of changing clothes.
- Recently we saw you in the role of music man. - A cultural city should have such a character.
fits the role better than I?
- Maybe commercial art can also be beautiful?
- Nowadays, commercial art should be neat, considerate, sweet.
There is a disintegration of cultures.
People used to get together in flocks, Bohemians liked one thing, the simple people, something else.
Now, everybody is divided into micro societies, it's hard to be liked by everyone.
I am not a hundred dollar bill to please all.
Now you have to think who you will please.
Now, each cult hero has 100 fans.
- But several thousand come to Stas Mikhailov!
- The cast-outs to see him, the sexual-social sphere is at work there.
300 people will come for culture, not 10,000. In the end, there's less management, money, everything dies out.
I have fans; the main thing is not to betray them, not to spoil what I have earned.
In my youth, I painted such art that one collector had it hanging on the same wall with Falk and Larionov.
I started with paintings, people usually end with.
Concepts are often mixed up these days.
People say: culture, consumer culture.
There is no culture in consumerism, it's "from another opera."
I am a man of yesterday's culture. I grew up on of who lived poor and died in poverty, refused money for the sake of painting.
is the culture I'm for.
- Kirill, what is St. Petersburg missing?
Good cultural experts.
There is such a thing: an official for culture.
But not everyone can be in culture.
Under the right rulers everything was different. Kings may not understood culture very well, but understood that they needed to stick with the right experts.
There are good consultants in Moscow right now.
Here in Petersburg, there are people who could be experts, but they are pushed to the side, because more advanced experts needed, who will correctly evaluate these experts and give way to them.
Judgement calls are what thrive now.
Even Erart, but they're different because they say honestly that don't accept all modern art. There are artists, who need to find other museums for themselves.
- What does St. Petersburg mean to you?
- St. Petersburg is not a cultural capital, Moscow has much more culture, there is there.
It's hard for art to grow on our rocks.
We need cultural but we now have more writers readers. This is wrong.
In Europe, there are many people, who go art exhibits, concerts.
Here, this layer is thin.
We need to art as it was in the beginning of last century.
is supported by the St. Petersburg grant.
Give birth in space
The earth is in danger.
Global warming or encounter with a killer asteroid.
Caravans of cosmic ships with humans on board leave in search of replacement planet.
To save humanity, the question is how to propagate our race in conditions of weightlessness or on that replacement planet?
I the choice is small.
There are only two actual planets that can be explored even hypothetically.
"Venus and Mars," says Senior Researcher of the P.K. Shternberg State Astronomy Institute (GAISh) Vladimir Surdin.
But while conditions on Mars are more appropriate for life, Venus has temperatures.
Life is possible only at a high altitude or on the orbit of Venus... in space.
The question of reproduction in space began with flora.
Half a century ago, were run on plants.
Four generations of grown in orbit were no different from their earth counterparts.
Then, insects were bred in orbit, small flies.
In 1979, quail eggs were sent to space, to check how an embryo develops in weightlessness.
We get an absolutely chick.
But then the problem begins.
"The problem is related to the fact that this chick needs to find support, needs to get on its feet and start moving," explains head of the laboratory of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems (IMBP) RAN Vladimir Sychev.
Having found no support, chicks were tumbling around in disorder.
After 10 hours, the newborns experienced complete atrophy of instincts.
Chicks did not react to light and sound.
And the problem was that they simply died after four days.
"We bred chicks twice there, and then stopped, because impossible to work with them there," says Vladimir Sychev, confirming the failure of the experiment with chicks space.
last biological "mini-ark" with animals flew into orbit 16 years ago.
In spring 2013, experiments will continue.
However, same-sex beings will be on the Bion bio-satellite.
There was an experiment with rats, who were to space with foetus.
In principle, there was nothing extraordinary there.
"This was bio-satellites, but again, it was a singular experiment and such research needs to be conducted," says Vladimir Sychev.
landing, the cosmic rats had babies.
But it's hard to solve the problem of reproduction directly in space.
It's not an easy task.
Animals simply cannot follow their sexual they're of their familiar environment.
In principle, people, unlike animals, can.
Homo sapiens have abstract thinking, and are able to create a fitting emotional background.
Such experiments are not conducted for ethical reasons.
But women have been flying to space for 50 years.
The biggest risk was for Tereshkova.
The most valuable thing for humanity is the female body.
Our "Seagull" left nobody on earth could tell whether she would be OK after flying to space.
Whether she will be able to give birth after this flight.
"Nobody answered this question," says rocket and space industry veteran, Vakhtang Vachnadze.
June 1964, only a year after flying to space, the first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova gave birth to a daughter.
The child's father, Nikolaev, was also a cosmonaut.
In 1988, the second woman cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, who went into twice and even worked in open space, gave birth to son.
However, the remains.
We have few, very few cosmonauts, who were OK and had healthy children after long flights.
"What's more, it is dangerous even for orbital flights," adds pilot and cosmonaut, Hero of the USSR, Hero of Valery Poliakov.
And yet, humanity needs to seek out some new avenues in biotechnologies, protection from radiation, creation of artificial gravity.
Hydro-laboratory of CPK - mandatory phase of training for a flight.
Here, cosmonauts practice skills of working in open space in conditions.
Water imitates weightlessness.
If for adults water is a foreign medium, although comfortable, for infants it is a native element.
Small amphibians seem to confirm that life came to land from the ocean.
There is a connection with the fact that an infant spends about 9 months in amniotic fluid in the womb; is easier to get used to after that.
In principle, it is logical, because only two weeks pass from birth until the first bathing.
"This is very little time to forget something," says infant swimming instructor Marina Aksenova.
In other words, if for a newborn weightlessness is more natural, a woman needs gravity, earth's pull.
Stomach and pelvic muscles usually quickly degenerate in the ability to push out the embryo is reduced.
Well, let's assume that childbirth stimulators will work out.
Maybe she will push out the baby in a special room.
"Then - asks Valery Poliakov about this non-trivial issue.
On other hand, a baby also needs artificial gravity.
When a body does not feel the earth's pull, it does not form the skeletal and muscular system.
is not to dress a newborn in orbit into a special loading suit for training, as they do with adults.
He will simply not have what he needs to survive.
"And this experiment, that we will go for by the birth of a child in a foreign environment, will lead to us bringing a handicapped, completely unadapted human to earth," predicts Chairman of the Committee on Bioethics IMBP RAN Igor Pestov.
For the moment, birth of children in space is just a theory.
However, with time, it will become reality, when earthlings will go to a faraway planet in their ships, and it will become the home for their offspring, who were born in space.
Head: Svarc System audit has failed because of politicians.
The Czech Republic has sound bodies and a good standard legislation when it comes to public contracts, but it lags behind in their application.
This was said by Miloslav Kala, vice-president of the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) in an interview for Aktualne.cz.
"The Law will never be perfect, but its application should be - this is we are missing, in my opinion," states Kala, commenting on the current situation.
Similar conclusions are also reached by the joint audit from the Czech and German auditors.
As an example of practice, they cite Petr Necas's approach to the so-called "Svarc System."
The Prime Minister recently claimed that the ODS will not be burdening business owners with its checks - so is it forbidden or allowed?
"The Law must out one way or the other and if it prohibits something, then even the Government's head cannot prevent the work of its department, which is duty-bound to monitor and enforce," asserts Kala.
At the audit committee's session in the House of Deputies, you about a joint project between the Czech Republic and Germany, within which legislation relating to public contracts in both countries was compared.
What exactly was this about?
This is parallel auditing, which we began around two years ago.
Simply put, this is about European legislation governs the handling of public contracts, followed by state legislations and then the actual practice itself.
We brought all this and although the audit is not yet complete, some very interesting differences have become apparent - in general terms, our legislation might be even "more concise and complete," however the actual practice is in certain aspects better in Germany.
This confirms that creating more and more concise rules is not enough, and that attention must be paid to the actual application of these laws.
What does this project actually help you with, and what do you think its outcome will bring?
This kind of joint audit could contribute to curtailing efforts to specify our law, to reduce and perfect boundaries, when it does not have such a positive impact.
Economy means acquiring the required thing at a reasonable (which does not always mean the lowest) price, so that profiteering and possible criminal proceedings may be avoided.
However, just because we have reduced the order limits, does not mean something will be procured.
The system might become overloaded with the amount of paperwork, and those, who wish to look for loopholes in it, will be able to take advantage far more easily than if the limits had higher.
These are domestic problems about the implementation of legislation relating to public contracts.
How does the audit system work in Germany?
there an office like the NKU, or is it organised differently?
As far as the office is concerned, the functions like our NKU, and it is organised like ours, it also has a committee although it is appointed slightly differently, but basically both offices operate similarly.
Powers are also similar to a degree, though of course Germany is organised federally, so these courts of auditors are also at the member state levels in this respect their system slightly differs from our own.
The BRH can only audit federal money, known to us as state funds.
Public funds, which, for us, are administered by regional and municipal authorities, are audited by the federal courts of auditors there.
When it comes to their legislation, is it more straightforward than ours?
Overall, I would not like to make a comparison without any specific data, nevertheless in certain respects Germany serves as an example, but it certainly cannot be said it is better in every aspect.
Is this perhaps, they have better enforcement?
That is certainly not true, but again, I prefer not to make such comparisons.
It should be said that even in a country we perceive as exemplary, they encounter a range of problems.
If that were not the case, they would gain nothing working with our office, would they?
Coming to domestic legislation, what did the amendment to public contracts legislation mean for your office, its impact being already?
The period the amendment came into force has quite short, so it has not manifested itself in our audit work yet.
Since we carry out audits ex-post, a certain delay has be taken into account.
As yet, we have only observed it within the process of preparing future audits - we have launched our new "fiscal failure risk detection" system, with which we have processed almost 14 thousand public contracts, and these have been analysed - that is where changes will clearly be seen, because of the changed limits, the adjusted conditions governing certain types of selection processes, and so on.
So do you see the adoption of a benefit, or rather as another burden on the bureaucratic system?
I this legislation is a step in the right direction, and I hope this will be confirmed.
A problem, which may arise here, is that the law becomes "too constrained" and will not be enforceable.
Under previous rules, parties being audited were already by their audit provider (for example, in the case of regional operational programmes, the regional office) to the fact that every infringement of public contracts law means a breach of budgetary discipline.
it worth constraining law in this in that case?
I do not think this the way.
The system those who want to attack and abuse it, but not penalise those, who make a mistake on a technicality, which does not affect the final decision.
This kind of system will only increase pressure on bureaucracy.
So how can we get of this?
Let's see where this takes us.
The Prime Minister recently said the ODS not be burdening businessmen with audits of the so-called "Svarc System" - what does this mean?
Is the Svarc System or allowed?
Law must be set out one way or the other, if it prohibits something, then even the Government's head cannot prevent the work of its department, which is duty-bound to monitor and enforce.
He may "Let us change this law and it," but he cannot say we should pretend it is not there.
The law on contracts has relatively strict rules about the formalities which must be adhered to - which is right way to ensure public tenders are protected.
On other hand, it a tragedy, when a bidder with the best offer is excluded on a technicality.
The Law will never be perfect, but its application should be just - this what we are missing, in my opinion.
Roads are icy in places, but mostly passable.
In several places in the Czech Republic, the main roads are icy and snowy.
However, the majority of roads are passable, extra care needed in places.
Carlsbad region
In the Carlsbad region, roads have been usable morning, though in some places they were icy and snowy.
The temperature has dropped to between five and ten zero, though it is expected to get warm slightly during the day.
Snowing in the region stopped, and a thin layer of snow remains in the lowlands.
However, the ridges of the Krusne Mountains have around 30 centimetres of snow.
In some locations there is limited visibility due to mist, according to the local highway service.
The R6 high-speed motorway and primary roads in the region are now usable without restriction.
Caution is, course, for example, on certain bridges, where the surface can be icy and slippery.
All secondary and tertiary roads are also passable, including mountain roads.
In certain stretches of these roads there might be remaining frozen and compacted snow patches.
all, at higher levels, extra care should taken while driving.
and Hradec Kralove region
On some roads in Eastern Bohemia, there might be a risk of black ice, at higher altitudes and in the there might be a layer of compacted snow, to the Road and Motorway Directorate.
The highway service is warning the drivers against black ice, which might occur at higher altitudes of the region in particular.
Black ice may occur around Lanskroun, Usti Orlici, Policky, Svitavy, Vysoke Myto, particularly secondary and tertiary roads.
The I/43 and I/34 roads have been chemically treated around Svitavy.
Snow is affecting the roads in Krkonose and Orlicke mountains.
At higher altitudes, a compacted snow layer on the roads around Rychnov nad Kneznou and Trutnov.
In Eastern Bohemia the day will be mostly clear partly cloudy, and dry.
Temperatures will be between minus three and plus one degree Celsius mostly, with a wind.
Pilsen region
The roads in the Pilsen region have been usable this morning, with extra care needed in some places. should take the weather conditions into account.
The morning will be frosty, with ranging between three and degrees below zero.
Due to the existing snow and subsequent drop in temperature, certain roads may be icy.
Drivers should expect mist in places, though visibility will gradually improve.
This information was reported by the highway service.
The is drivable almost without but the road services recommend caution between the 80th and 131st kilometre marks.
Most primary road surfaces dry and frost-free.
Southern areas the Pilsen and Tachov regions may have icy patches.
Secondary and tertiary roads are wet, and may therefore also have icy patches.
Drivers should be cautious especially on less frequented roads in the Bohemian Forest.
region
Drivers should expect snow slush on the roads if heading for the higher parts of the Olomouc region.
It is a result of the chemical treatment carried out at Cervenohorkse sedlo and on the way to Videlsky Kriz.
Snowploughs were brought out by falling overnight, the Sumperk region, to highway maintenance, got around three centimetres of snow.
other parts of the region, roads are mainly without restrictions.
"In the region, traces of snow have remained at highest altitudes.
Drivers should expect snow slush at Cervenohorske in the direction of Jesenik," the dispatch officer for the Sumperk highway service told CTK today.
Their Jesenik counterparts also made an outing overnight; the roads all the way to the highest altitudes are now and wet following the chemical treatment, according
The Olomouc region's roads are usable without restriction, while in the area of Sternberk drivers should in wooded areas, where roads have remained wet.
Usti nad Labem region, Liberec region
Since morning, the snowploughs reported several places, which are difficult to pass in northern Bohemia.
Besides certain snow-covered places, or some icy frost patches, the mountain road from Telnice to Kninice in the Usti nad Labem region is also closed, according the police
Temperatures remain below zero and roads are likely to remain snowy icy. In the lowlands, however, particularly southeast of the Bohemian Uplands, there are no problems and roads are mostly dry.
No traffic hold-ups have so far been reported.
Icy frost patches have been reported in particular by road maintenance around Steti.
According to meteorologists the conditions for this were perfect rain and melting snow during the day, with a clear night and freezing temperatures.
Adverse conditions are expected on the main sections of the I/13 road between the Usti nad Labem and Liberec regions.
The closure of the Telnice Kninice road was caused by bent tree branches, which were down to road level by snowfall.
Simon Ornest: At the concerts we want a fusion of positive energy
What is your opinion on the end of the that come in less than a month?
It is just another startler, which we like to latch on to.
Together with The Tap Tap band, we tend to joke about it, saying that we might be the only band on earth that could draw enough positive to hold or avert the end of the world completely.
In December you are even organising a unique series of three concerts against the end of the world.
Can you give our readers some details on this?
This is a nationwide fund-raising event, which we have been planning for the past two years.
We decided to make use of the marketing potential of the end of the Mayan calendar, due on the 21st of December 11:10 a.m.
On the eve, the 20th of December, at 9pm, 3 concerts will take place in parallel in Prague, Brno, and Ostrava.
They will end at around the time when Kiribati Island in the Pacific, which is 12 hours ahead of us, reaches the end of the Mayan calendar.
Who came up with this idea?
Initially it was probably my idea, later we worked all the details out with our designer, Honza Augusta.
from the fact that we to collect enough positive energy stop the end of the world, we also want to allow ourselves and the public to spare some thoughts for the state of our planet, we, day, hand it over to our children.
On the occasion of the end of the Mayan calendar, we have also prepared a range of unique items, shoes, t-shirts, bags, and original keys against the end of world, which can be purchased at www.e-tap.cz to support our cause.
The Tap Tap band, together with other artists, also recorded the so-called anthem against the end of the world, called "The End of the World is cancelled."
It is already well received on YouTube, will it figure at the fund-raising concerts?
Of course, for the grand finale, as long as the world does not end beforehand.
It will be sung by all the artists at all the three concerts at the same time.
The anthem will also be featured in a unique live broadcast on Czech Television.
words were written and the role of Jesus in the video was played by Hanak, Xindl X also sings in
How did you end up working with them?
We collaborate also with other personalities of the Czech cultural scene, due to organising a lot of fund-raising events and concerts...
We try really get them involved in these projects.
turns that most of them are interested and enjoy working with us.
What will the proceeds from the concert against the end of the world go to?
Equipping the wheelchair-accessible educational Studeo centre, which is already in its sixth year, in collaboration with the citizens association Tap the Jedlicka Institute for the disabled.
Tutors come in regularly to spend with the Jedlicka Institute's students and run activities, which they enjoy and interest them.
The students themselves do not have the funds to afford tutors, so try provide this for them in this way.
Within the construction project at the Jedlicka Institute, a separate building is planned, which we can move into this project.
Every sees the appearance of several bands and artists.
How do you select them?
We have tried to compile a programme, which speaks for all ages, including children.
For example, in Prague, Chinaski, Support Lesbiens, Illustratosphere with Dan Barta, The Tap Tap, Marian Bango and Jiri Suchy will
Further details can be found at www.kpks.cz.
Are you planning any "bombastic events" in the future?
In May, we will be making our first appearance in the Prague Spring, so we will definitely be preparing a good line-up with some interesting guests.
Next year, we would like to play at the Czech National House in New York, and I we will be in the USA would like to build in appearances in Washington and Chicago.
Your international plans are not modest; you have already performed, for instance, in Madrid, Brussels, London, and Moscow.
The Tap is nonetheless a band composed of handicapped people.
How do you cope with these journeys in terms of logistics and organisation?
It is not as scary as seem at first.
We have five members in electric wheelchairs, which must be transported in the luggage area; we must also, of course, carry around with us a lot of luggage and instrument cases...
Nevertheless, we have so far managed it without any problems, CSA and British Airways were well prepared for us, so much so that, on occasion, I was quite surprised.
Even in which we have just returned from, it all went smoothly.
Thanks to these international trips, you will have had a chance to specific accessibility issues, public attitudes to disability and so on.
What have been your experiences so far?
After Madrid, Luxembourg, London and other places, where everything functions better than here, we have witnessed that in the East everything is still in beginnings.
Compared to Prague, Moscow is rather inaccessible; it still remains unusual there for a person in an electric wheelchair to be travelling around the city centre his or her own.
Obvious things, such as wheelchairs priority in are not commonplace there.
Fortunately, citizens associations are emerging there too that are trying draw attention to the problems faced by people with disabilities.
And on the other hand, where do we still lag behind more advanced countries?
are a lot of things, which still behind on...
It is important to mention that improvements to the current situation always depend on the efforts of the people who affected.
In London and Madrid it is completely natural for people with serious handicaps to be independently out in public, and they can use the toilets, go to the museum, or wherever...
It less common there for large groups of people with disabilities to actively part in social life, in this respect with The Tap Tap we are a ahead!
Public respect or accessibility is one thing, but it only when we can become famous athletes, artists, actors, politicians, or lawyers that things will begin to change.
So far there are exceptional cases, people who are strong-willed.
The Tap Tap band is currently very popular, but let us look back a few years, what prompted you in 1998 to form it?
I began my job as a tutor at Jedlicka Institute, where I was surrounded by a lot of young people, who were interested in doing something.
Since I am a musician myself - among others I play the saxophone - I started a music club with a colleague.
With time, as our moderator Ladya Angelovic says, it grown a little out of our control (laugh).
Your popularity has only come about in the last years, or am I mistaken?
It is true that we have been helped by creating ties to famous singers and also by our proactive work on promoting the band.
We realised that work, which goes on unseen can be like it never existed.
Thanks to funds from the European Union we can even afford top quality tutors, equipment and so on.
Was it your goal to take The Tap Tap to such heights?
From the outset, I felt there was potential to do things a little differently.
Show business is filled with where one the other.
It is logical in its own new things are in hesitantly and take a long time.
Things, which are unique, are few and far between, but I would dare to claim that Tap Tap is one of those things.
A person's first impression on seeing you is, of course, pity - it is a natural reaction...
But that pity is simply wasted, because handicapped people are not abandoned and suffering beings, need to be pitied.
They are people, who can fully live life and blossom, assuming, of course, that they have the right environment for it.
I say that a person with a succeeds in it is not just for them but for society as a whole.
Has your success also been helped by your firm hand as leader, as many people are suggesting?
If we want to achieve top class work, we must be uncompromising in many things and require a certain level of discipline.
I think this is to be expected.
Some people come to us with a romantic idea and their head clouds, and when they find out they have to go to twice a week, attend practice sessions and put up with a lot of time travelling to concerts, their enthusiasm quickly disappears.
That is how works everywhere, with every group that wants to work and wants to achieve something.
The Tap Tap band currently has twenty members.
How many of those were present at the beginning in 1998?
Only one, Ladya Angelovic.
We are an open people come and people go, this is unavoidable.
Those who have the the drive will always find our door open.
The event takes place the day before the end of the world is on Thursday 20.12.2012 from 9pm.
The venues will be Praha Incheba, Brno Fleda, and Ostrava Plynojem with performances from 12 bands and other musicians from the Czech Republic.
All three cities will joined by a televised link-up at the close for a united rendition of The Tap Tap's anthem "The End of the World is cancelled"
The concert's goal is to raise funds to equip the STUDEO multi-functional wheel-chair accessible centre at the Jedlicka Institute in Prague in the sum of 25 million Czech crowns.
Admission fee to the concert is CZK, children under 12 years of age go free, tickets on sale from Bohemiaticket.
Poland and the Cosmos.
Last week the council of ministers of the European Agency admitted Poland as the twentieth member of the agency, being the second nation from the former Eastern Block (after the Czech Republic, which became a fully fledged member of the ESA on the 12th of November 2008).
Poland began close cooperation with the ESA in 1994, and in the following years it has participated in a series of agency projects.
course, Poland's path to the space had begun much earlier.
Polish boffins devoted their time space flight even the Second World War, but were not always met with understanding.
I look back, for instance, to the lecture of A Sternfeld in Warsaw's astronomy observatory, who, on the 6th of December 1933, presented ideas on his pioneering work Entry into
The thoughts of the young engineer (born 1905) his audience cold, and years later Sternfeld remembered that Dr. Jan Gadomski had shown an interest in his work.
In 1934, his work Entry into space, Sternfeld received the Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Andre Louis Hirsch prize in France.
The above mentioned Jan Gadomski (1899 - 1966) later became a strong promoter of astronomy and astronautics.
He published hundreds of articles in Polish journals, and wrote a series of books on these scientific subjects.
Gadomski became a world-known promoter of astronautics his was, notably, recognised when a on the far side of the Moon was named after him.
In 1925, Poland had already built a handcar which was supposed to be fitted with a rocket engine.
Unfortunately, both the project's designer, and the project's details, are unknown.
It not even clear, whether the rocket was intended to start the handcar or to slow it down.
Information about this rail track is only known from press articles of the time.
In 1933 the Polish artillery started their engagement in flying bombs.
The research was undertaken by the Weapons Technology Division in collaboration with Prof. Mieczyslaw Wolfke and Prof. Gustaw Mokrzycki.
From the documents, it is clear that the research reached the stage of practical tests.
Of course, the advance of the German army interrupted the research.
In 1937, the concept of a photoelectric homing rocket designed by engineer Rohozinski appeared in the trade press, and in the following year The - air torpedo and flying rocket-bomb appeared, authored by Leliwy-Krywoblocki.
Both projects destined for military use of rocket engines.
Immediately prior to the War, all projects for military use of rocket technologies were overseen by Provisional Scientific Board (Tymczasowy Doradczo-Naukowy) that coordinated all the work.
The Board was appointed in 1937, but after two years of activity operations were ended the start of the War.
Further work devoted to astronautics appeared in the Polish Press after the War thanks to the Polish Astronautics Company (Polskie Towarzystwo Astronautyczne).
The first reference to the company figures in the November issue of the magazine Problems in 1954, in which four in-depth articles are on the subject of astronautics.
In one of these, by Prof. Subotowicz, the establishment of a company is proposed, which would dedicate itself to
At the time, there were already projects underway for artificial satellites and it was clear that cosmic research was an emerging sector.
From the beginning of 1956, the Polish Astronautics Company (PTA) sought entry to the International Astronautics Federation (est. 1951) by autumn the PTA was already full member.
In the following year, the PTA's first Kazimierz Zarankiewicz (1902 - 1959) was appointed Deputy Chairman for the International Astronautics
He served in this capacity until his death in 1959.
From 1956, the PTA played a significant role in successful development of meteorological rockets RM (Rakieta which became the first Polish rocket to enable scientific research.
The first RM-1 model was completed in 1957 and the first launch took on the 10th of October 1958.
The rocket, a ceiling of 1800 metres, measured around 80 cm in length and weighed a little under 5 kg.
Later, the improved RM-1A version was constructed and in the summer of 1959 launch tests were initiated for the two-stage RM-2 rocket in the Bledowsky Desert.
The rocket was 1.4 metres in length and weighed approximately 11.5 kg.
A further development model was designed for real scientific work - the RM-34 rocket was to reach 14.5 km and be tasked with monitoring high altitude winds.
Of course, in 1962 further research was stopped.
The successor to the RM rocket the Meteor-1 rocket, developed from 1962 to 1965.
The rocket was designed as a two-stage with a total length of 510 cm and a launch weight of 32.5 kg.
Three models were developed (designated Meteor-1A, -1B, and -1C), which differed in the room available for scientific apparatus.
In the Meteor-1A rocket, a space of 0.4 litres was available, Meteor-1B had 0.34 litres, and Meteor-1C had 0.62 litres.
The maximum altitude for all three models was 37km.
Between 1965 and 1968, the development of Meteor-2 was underway in the Aeronautics Institute, with its first launch tests in October 1970.
The Meteor-2 rocket had a launch weight of 380 kg, and was capable of lifting a useful of 10 kg a height of around
Subsequently built models were the Meteor-2H and Meteor-3.
Poland's admission to COSPAR (Committee for Space Research) in 1960 should be mentioned, as well as the appointment of a national COSPAR board two years later.
Poland also participated in the Interkosmos space for space research on artificial satellites, and in 1978, the Polish pilot Miroslaw Hermaszewski became the second intercosmonaut after Vladimir Remkov.
Abolishing the legislation on public works is not the solution.
Last week the Constitutional Court abolished the law public works.
The resolution caused public
It will certainly be interesting to look at this issue from a broader perspective.
Liberally financial systems in the EU, just as those in globalised world, are based on the principle of an unregulated economic competition.
Its effect means that individual financial entities and national economic systems are in a state of permanent conflict among themselves.
The is the principle of free trade and free, completely unregulated movement of private capital together with uncontrolled financial speculation.
Due to significant labour cost differences (salaries) there pressure on prices.
On this basis, it should be understood that when a supplier tries to compete in a commercial tender by importing cheap goods, "the rug is pulled" from under the competition's prices to capture a greater market share and, in this way, increase its own profits.
On a wider scale, this means most businesses must move production abroad, import cheaply from abroad, or close down. The result is high unemployment in countries where labour costs are high to other economies.
Since private capital is not bound by social responsibility, and therefore also not by the unemployment it causes, the social costs born by state must increase.
The whole situation is bolstered by the businessman's complete unwillingness to pay taxes, which would alleviate the economical and social harm caused the pursuit of profit.
The situation is so well known that there is no need for actual statistical data.
The ruthless private capital practices create particular economic situations, where the State these countries is forced to enter in mutual competition, aiming to artificially lower the social standard of its own citizens in order to attract foreign investment.
In other words, governments stake own because of private capital while disregarding the drop in social
This occurs chiefly in amendments to existing law.
The aim is to economically force the domestic population to prices dictated by private capital, especially in terms of salaries.
On one hand, this economic system of force, in case of long-term unemployment, on the other, restricted employee rights in the workplace.
This yields growing poverty and an increasing void between the poor and the rich.
Germany there are already a host of food hand-out centres for the poor, who are not able to feed themselves on their own wages.
The number of these people is already in the millions.
In name of improving the competitiveness of the German economy, it commonly occurs that properly employed people receive such a salary the State needs to top it up to the minimum wage.
Just such a scandal was revealed in the case of auxiliary staff in the Bundestag.
The measures for all the southern EU states will undoubtedly lead to the situation, where people are pressured by a catastrophic in living standards to emigrate as it was in the 19th century, or to eke out an existence on starvation wages on the edge society, in the hope that the country will eventually see some foreign investment.
At this point we have to ask where this may come from?
If it is to come from other EU states, then poverty is being shifted from one country another, or it will not come at all, because Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Turkish, Moroccan, Egyptian, and African labour is still at a fraction of European wages.
This applies to all Latin America.
Liberal theory and the Media claim that the State may not participate with capital in its own economy, and that a controlled economy to economic ruin.
Private capital cruelly insists on the viewpoint that the State must not intervene in the economy.
Thereupon, we should ask ourselves whether private capital has no influence, whether it actually leads politics and thereby the country, for its own selfish ends.
Here, the answer must be yes.
The proof is the existence of the almost omnipotent, and in all states, omnipresent lobby.
The result is a desperate situation manifesting itself through corruption, through mutual benefits and legislation, where almost everything criminal, but nothing is punishable.
In Germany the situation is such that state ministries, through lack of financial resources, out the drafting of to private law firms, who are basically connected with industry.
These laws are then approved in the Bundestag.
Real power does not come from the people as the Western-style constitutions claim, but from strong financial organisations that look their own interests.
It is clear that liberally-orientated democracies will now quickly a situation, as described by Appian in his work on the Roman Republic Crisis in the time of Cesar and Pompei: "The State was already long in degeneration its offices taken by force.
With bribery, illegal acquisition of benefits, and with stones or swords.
Bribery and corruption were rife and unhindered, and the people would vote for a result which had been bought" ..."people with principles did not run for office, so on one occasion the whole debacle meant the state went eight months without consuls.." .."There was actually talk about the only answer to this situation being autocracy, and an energetic be elected." Appian had Pompei in mind, but it Cesar who changed democracy for autocracy permanently.
The conclusion, just in the current society is built on unscrupulous tendencies for personal gain without to the interests of society as a whole.
Private capital in its present state is not able to understand interests of society as a whole.
The outcome is now, as it was an unprecedented decadence of elite with no attempts whatsoever on deeper reaching reforms.
The causality of the rise of the fascist and communist regimes should therefore be sought in the misguided liberalisation of the economic in the 19th and 20th
The current state of affairs, when we consider the demise of those systems in favour of liberalised democracy as an interlude, can expect its next cycle.
The particularly reality is that the current elite is completely ignoring the potential lost of hundreds of thousands lives, humanitarian and social disasters, which we are already witnessing, as well as crimes against humanity, as we are familiar with from ancient and modern history.
abolition of the on public works is not the answer, at least not in the long term.
Under the pressure of economic competition, internationally as well as within Europe, the Government of the Czech Republic will be forced to pursue ways of lowering the population's living standards.
This pattern is thus systemic.
To address this, there are targeted political and social reforms, which strengthen the state's capital participation in the economy, increase the people's influence the state and weaken the monopoly held by private capital over society in favour of the state.
Chaos Lab.
"Nothing comes from and nothing ever could," from Sting's Fragile, where one of the main verses from the refrain is "Lest we forget how fragile we are."
"If sons did not want war, there would be none," said the dying Gutle Schnapper, wife of Mayer Amschel Rothschild in 1849.
The latest wave of violence between Israel and the Gaza as always, has sparked a lot of reaction.
Some stand by arguing it has the right to self-defence, and Palestinians portrayed as terrorists, others support the claiming racism by the state, claiming that genocide being committed against Palestinian Arabs, and that Israel is a terrorist state.
I do not want to dwell, in these repeated periodic waves of killing, on is the transgressor and who is the after all, today's inhabitants of Israel, including the self-governing territories, were born into the current political situation, and not live through the start the violence.
I would like to offer the readers a peek behind the scenes, a look at whom, of all, this 95-year long tension is serving (starting from Balfour's declaration in November 1917) on this small piece land in the Middle East.
Some my thoughts are supported by available historical facts, while others are derived from my understanding of who, that is, which group of people is the main source of events in modern history.
Human history is in the first instance about the struggle for power.
In every era we can find an Alexander the Great or a Napoleon.
What is not quite so apparent is whether these were the who had chosen path independently, or whether behind throne stood someone who directed their actions towards a pre-calculated goal.
We must accept that we live in a time when the world's wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few individuals, and that this concentration of wealth and the power it exudes could not in one generation's
Among these astronomically rich families, one stands out, which be considered the puppet master (whether someone else stands above them, I am unsure, but I would not rule it out) - the Rothschilds.
Not much about them.
Understandably.
The first news agency (Reuters) they bought in 90's of the 19th century, in order prevent their name being connected with acts of high criminality, which appeared in their background and which always securing power, increasing wealth, or both.
They hold majority stakes in almost every central bank in the and against countries, where they do not hold a stake, they are either waging or preparing for war (before the assault on Afghanistan it was 7 countries, after Iraq it was 5, after the overthrow of Kaddafi 4 remained, but in meantime Russia submitted its central bank to the Russian Government).
Whoever attempted to defy this family died.
Abraham Lincoln refused to renew the status of the central bank to the Rothschild Bank of America, and during the Civil War he began to issue his own (that is state-issued) money and was assassinated in 1865 at the theatre.
JFK his own money and wanted to close the Fed (Federal Reserve), and was killed in 1963, Congressman Louis McFadden was poisoned in 1936, after he had intended to the Fed causing the Great Depression 1929.
Their thirst for global power led in the years of 1859 - 1871 to the formulation of a three-world-war plan by the freemason leader of the 33rd degree, Pike.
The first war was to remove the large monarchic state bodies in Europe, the second was to remove colonial rule, especially from Great Britain, and the third will reduce the world's population to - 1 people (this number of slaves will suffice for comfort and luxury, and will not use up so many resources), the creation of one universal faith (ecumenism is just an appetiser for this solution), and finally the seizing of absolute power.
The method, which the group of wealthy families with the Rothschilds leading the way, is the instigation of followed by the offering of a solution (order ab chao - order from chaos).
These solutions are false, and always lead to a worse situation (vide establishment of so that the crisis of 1907 would not be repeated).
Thus, having succeeded in assassinating Ferdinand, the Habsburg heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo thereby unleashing World War they destroyed tsarist with the Bolshevik revolution.
The First World War ended abruptly, militarily and with capitulation (the was no longer needed to destroy tsarist Russia) and the central European powers of Austria-Hungary were subsequently dismantled.
To facilitate the inception of the Second World War, they allowed bankers and politicians to create a latent conflict situation by saddling Germany with huge war reparations, thereby making a radicalist example of the impoverished masses, it remained only introduce a sufficiently convincing culprit and a leader with a simple solution, while also creating a Czechoslovakia with a strong German minority to play, and indeed did, the role of a fifth colony, once the war had been ignited.
At the end of the 19th Century, the Rothschilds instigated the establishment of the Zionist movement, one branch of strove to form the Jewish State, seeking out an area of historic Jerusalem, to make its capital (the Return to Zion).
The aforementioned Balfour Declaration formed the basis for the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, where the first conflicts began with the local Arab population.
Terrorist attacks occurred on both
World War II broke out, and whether Hitler broke free from the leash, which international bankers were holding him on, or whether his actions were all part of the plan, is difficult to determine, nevertheless the suffering of European Jews in the concentration camps created the foundation to the world's acceptance of the Jewish State.
Israel was officially in 1948, and just as war reparations for World II were layed on Germany, the announcement of the State of Israel the third war's hotbed.
Provided the international bankers succeed, the Jewish Nation, as with second, will be victims on the front line, now together with the Arabic - or more Muslim - population of the Middle East.
Israel is like a huge laboratory, a of discord and chaos not only within the country, but on an international level (just look at how strongly people are split into supporters and opponents of Israel).
is the wrong-doer and who is the victim in the Palestine-Israel conflict, where injustice breeds injustice in an endless cycle of violence, while began from the greed of a few and their lust for global power?
Here, we must differentiate between Israel's general population and their leaders, just as it happens here, the international introduce their own selection of candidates for people to vote for.
Israel's current prime minister, Netanyahu 'the hawk', is a typical example of a fascist politician, loyal to the international bankers, who does everything to instigate war with Iran, which due to its membership in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (China, India, Russia, Pakistan, ...) lead to a greater threat of global conflict, and through its control of the Hormuz Strait, where 20% of the world's oil must sail (the channel is only 2 miles to the destruction of world's economy.
In what light stand the words, spoken by David Rockefeller in 1994: "All we need is a crisis and the nations accept the New World
The New World Order in their eyes is one of master slave.
A world where the of human population serve the luxury of a handful of financial aristocrats.
A world, where each new-born is implanted with a chip, which makes their completely subjugated.
"He forced everyone, and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.
If anyone insight, let him calculate the number of beast,
for it is man's number. His number is six hundred and sixty six."
Argo: When things are at their worst - call Hollywood.
November 1979, a mob of Islamic student demonstrators took over the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage.
They were to be released in exchange for the overthrown Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who after the revolution to the USA, which had supported his regime for several decades.
For the American administration the situation did not offer a positive solution - it could not throw the Shah overboard, because this would seriously jeopardise the trust of allied countries.
The release of the hostages in Iran, where the revolution resulted in the establishment of the theocratic regime, could not be achieved.
This was a blow to the of the United which was later compounded by the fiasco attempting to the hostages by force.
The incarcerated diplomats were finally released after days, negotiations mediated by the Algerian government.
Their ordeal provoked a wave of solidarity and anti-Iranian feelings at home.
The debacle in Iran significantly influenced Jimmy Carter's loss with Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential elections.
The film Argo, directed by the actor Ben Affleck, recounts one episode in this story, which brought America small victory.
Just before the embassy was seized, six employees escaped.
After some peripeteia, they ended up Canadian ambassador's residence.
The collaboration with the Canadian authorities, succeeded in getting them out of Iran, helped by an cover story - they left Canadian passports as members of a film crew, who were surveying locations for a sci-fi blockbuster.
A of genres
The plan, conceived by "exfiltration" expert, Tony Mendez, required the assistance of Hollywood.
For the story to be believed, the film project was reported on in specialist magazines, press conferences were organised, and the fictitious production company had a real office.
The details of the operation were, for a long time, kept secret; the film draws on the memories of Tony Mendez.
Affleck's film is a peculiar mix of genres.
On hand, there is a realistic incisive political thriller, and at the same a "caper movie," with small victories and double-crossing - another example would be Ocean's
The mood alternates in the film - on one side, sharp documentary-style sequences in Tehran (the title sequence shows iconic photos from news the time, relating to the same events portrayed in the film - there are no big differences).
On the other hand, lighter sections from Hollywood, laced with irony and a little
Then there are scenes from the headquarters and other agencies - men in suits debating the situation around meeting in office corridors, over the phone...
Ben Affleck has managed to restart his career in extraordinary
The derided actor has become a respected director, and his acting is no longer the target of ironic comments.
Argo is his third big-screen movie, his dark crime movie Gone Baby Gone (2007) and the thriller The (2010).
It is also Affleck's first picture, which does not take place in the director's hometown Boston.
The atmospheric feel in different locations is one of the characteristics, which took his earlier films above Hollywood standards.
Affleck shows it in Argo, where Tehran is "featured" by Canada.
The best scenes of the film take place in the streets, in the reconstruction of real events - the opening sequence of the siege on the embassy is impressively lucid, at once feelings of confusion and surprise, which come flooding in, as history suddenly takes a turn.
A similar effect is achieved by Affleck and his team in the fictitious scenes (the fake staff at the Tehran bazaar).
Too much action in too many places
The director had the issue that the story being told does not offer many nail-biting scenes for the film.
What little there is, worked well, with some occasional embellishments to reality - do not all come off so elegantly (the scene, where a looming crisis is averted at Tehran airport by a phone call in America, followed by a chase on the runway seems quite far-fetched).
Argo's weakness is its divergence, which comes from the need to show too many events in too many places.
Alan Arkin and John Goodman play their roles as the Hollywood assistants with great charm; their characters deserve more and are not by far the only ones in this film.
Affleck's loses the dramatic pull a little, it is a film, which can be watched with reasonable interest, its production and retro-style are evocative of thrillers from the 70's.
It does not really captivate.
As a reminder of history's particular ways and testimony to how exaggerated the views are on the all-powerful all-controlling secret services, this will do.
Rules for blowing up balloons, for bananas and circus
The www.bankovnipoplatky.com server, which issues a poll every year on the most absurd bank charge, has now decided to announce a competition for "the most absurd regulation or proposal from the EU."
"We were prompted by the latest where the EU plans to take on a 40 percent quota of women at management level of Europe's largest companies," Patrik Nacher, the poll's organiser, told Pravo.
Among the latest nominated absurdities, for instance, is the recent decision by the European Court to unify insurance premiums for men and women.
Until now, women were favoured in life insurance because they constitute a lower risk for insurers.
unbelievable ideas from the EU be nominated by anyone until the end of the year.
The actual voting will then take place until the end February 2013," informed Nacher.
Among the controversial we might include the mandatory addition bio-ingredients to fuel, which consequently harms the environment, the ban on reliable mercury just because they contain a relatively small quantity of toxic substance, or the rules on the size of chicken cages, which significantly raised egg prices this year.
The ban on the use of the term "spreadable butter" and the withdrawal of classic light bulbs from sale previously come under criticism.
First rate bananas are to 14 centimetres
The Union's machine often makes decisions under pressure from this or that commercial or lobbying group, whose demands in Brussels are usually defended by state or of states' interests (just the Czech Republic is promoting the demands of its banks under threat of being vetoed).
The lobby's interests were, for example, that bananas of the highest quality should measure at least 14 cm in the EU, and were to display and "anomalous curvature."
The European Commission defended itself, saying that it was only harmonising existing disjointed national standards, which complicated trading.
Norms relating to fruit and vegetables have already been softened by the EU despite opposition from certain states, referring to the food waste caused by the existing directives.
One possible prize-winner in the poll may be the year's EU regulation according to which inflatable balloons must be sold a warning that children under 8 years of age may not inflate them without parental supervision.
Here, the EU pointed to an American research, which indicated that, among other toys, balloons are one of main causes of child suffocation.
A similar restriction applies to children under 14 years of age using party blowers.
Strange ideas are at home too
Fairly absurd is the rule relating to individual European officials - everyone in the EU, who holds an official post, may not use the term Macedonia due to it being a sensitive for Greece, and instead the acronym FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) should be used.
The Bankovnipoplatky.com server in collaboration with the Liberal Economist Association, Laissez Faire, also nominated, aside from the aforementioned absurdities, for example the Union's regulation on the volume of food provision stocks held in an EU member state.
The EU stipulated the maximum volumes of food provisions, which may be present within the CR on the day of our entry to the Union.
The Czech Republic thereafter exceeded, for the permitted volume of mushroom preserves, which incurred a high penalty.
The poll's organisers were also impressed by the idea of paying certain countries they do not have a coastline, or the of allocating funding for a request for funding.
These did not come from Brussels, however, but from Prague.
"We are handicapped because we do not have the sea.
We are asking the European Union a refund," the minister for agriculture, back in 2004, Jaroslav Palas (CSSD).
His argument was that there had been a good harvest of cereals, due to the so-called buy-out interventions, the state's warehouses were full and were forced to export.
The Czech Republic is further away from a port, so according Palas the EU should be paying us hundreds of millions of Euros.
The European Commission finally met the CR halfway by organising a tender for the purchase of cereals countries that do not have access to the sea.
Funding to subsidise funding requests was offered to foreigners by the Ministry for Regional Development's minister, Pavel Nemec (US-DEU), specifically this was meant for making requests for funding from Brussels.
EU: Bizarre legislation is the exception
Regulations may well become the target of criticism among member states, but the EU's efforts at regulation, more effective operation, and development of the entire Union deserve recognition, according to a number of experts.
A important issue, according to experts, is the drawing of EU funds on projects, which have hardly in common with strengthening the European integration, but which was pushed through by member states during a budget
Emotions flare among Czechs when, just as other countries in the the CR must fight in Brussels for the right to particular labelling on its traditional products, in which it does not always succeed.
The Czechs fought for six years with the Germans and Austrians to protect the labelling of their Olomoucke tvaruzky, however the tuzemsky rum, whose tradition reaches back to the 19th century here, had to be renamed tuzemak by the manufacturers.
The appellation of rum can only be given to products cane sugar, and not sugar beet.
Carlsbad wafers, Pohorelicky and Trebonsky carp, and Zatec hops have been added to the official list of registered products of the alongside the world-renowned feta cheese and gorgonzola, German marzipan from Lubeck, and Parma ham.
The EU's stamp of protection can also be proudly shown on Pardubice gingerbread and Horicky tubes.
People me to save the republic, I am an amateur, says Okamura
Senator, how does a person decide they want to run for President?
This is not me being a senator or president.
If everything in our worked without problems, then I would not be running for any post.
I cannot watch any longer the country having been robbed over the past twenty years, thieves roaming about there and people's taxes and retirement age increasing.
I had no ambition to be a politician.
When I see something I do not like, though, I try to find a solution to change things.
Since I already turned forty, and I independent non-party man, I have no other to influence things but to stand senator or president.
You have already reached the Senate, but shortly after that you taking off for the Castle.
Are you not turning your back on those who voted for you in doing this?
have been saying the entire time I would for the Castle based on the results in the Senate's elections.
Later, I added that if I were elected as senator, I would standing for president.
My goal, though, is not the post, the post is a tool to allow my vision to be
I need the greatest influence, and the strongest mandate
The trouble is not just that as a nation we swear in the pub or at the television, but that we trample anyone, who wants to try to change things.
The Media add to this, misleading the public, and mistaking freedom of speech freedom to lie.
I was allegedly bribing reporters, or I allegedly an advisor of Jiri Paroubek.
Let's talk about your vision.
You set out on your castle siege with a thesis on the material and criminal responsibilities of politics, and a retroactive financial disclosure of assets over twenty million.
need to change the law for this.
As president, though, you do not have this power, and only the Senate a whole may propose laws.
How are you going to solve this?
When I lobbied, as a citizen, for tour guide work to be a free trade, it was successfully carried through.
The problem is political squabbling when someone comes with a good idea from the left or the right, it will be deliberately rejected, causing delays for the public.
an independent non-party man, I stand far better chance of gaining support from all parliamentary sides.
The advantage I hold is that without the political pigeonholing dogmas I can take what is best for our country from any side, and apply it.
Do you see yourself as person from right, or the left?
From the Czech viewpoint, it seems they tend to put to the left.
For me, it just does not matter if it is a to the left or right.
The important part for me is moving forward.
It is not about whether someone is from the left or right, I just want to bring people together.
I always support any good public solutions, even if they are put forward by the KSCM or the ODS, and, in the same way, I will oppose bad ideas.
get angry when someone calls you a populist.
Are you not confirming this with what you have stated?
When you make a company business plan, you also have some ideal and vision.
You try to come close to it.
Some may call it populism, but all the proposals I speak are already working elsewhere, or they have been put forward by experts.
But without the support of the Parliament you will be left with just slogans.
You will not last long in politics with that.
Or do you believe that if you walk among the public and them, that you will succeed, say, in passing criminal and material responsibility?
I have no alternative.
I need to convince politicians, reporters, and the public, and try to get them on my side, so we can put this through.
If I were elected president, it would not be a problem to arrange a live television broadcast, where I ask the leaders of the parliamentary parties to pass law on material and criminal responsibility for politicians, civil servants, judges, and the General.
And, as the case may be, they need to explain they did want this.
When there is a strong figure to point out the issues, it just needs some pressure on the political scene.
Take for instance the direct election of the it was achieved thanks to public pressure.
I will say frankly that am an amateur, I am not a genius or an intellectual.
I am looking for allies to share my opinions and vision.
I have started out in and I am looking for a majority for my agenda.
I will try to make things progress, but it does not work out, in six years will finish and return the private sector.
It sounds a little like Okamura is trying to save the Czech Republic.
I am no saviour.
I know that I will not achieve anything, so I have asked acquaintances, whether they would run for the senate.
I went to Radim Jancura, who declined due to his workload.
So I, at least, support investigative journalist, Jana Lorencova, who uncovered fraudulent activity with light heating oil.
I put myself forward, because people are really discontented, but now I have my doubts.
Sixty percent of people did not go to vote, and those who did mostly voted for leaders of the establishment.
In the senate, there are only two independents, including me.
People have voted for a senate that will make it difficult to enforce changes.
Nonetheless, I will fight for my vision, for example, for election of mayors or regional council presidents.
Are you considering having your own party?
I have not considered it yet, because I have neither the time to verify every party member has a clean background, nor the to do it.
I have no money even for a presidential campaign, my transparent account holds just 20 thousand.
You have no money?
You are talking about financial disclosures, but what is yours like?
estimate my private assets to be around 60 million.
In Prague, I have land worth around 25 million, an apartment worth ten million, another apartment worth eight million, an artwork collection worth around ten million, an Aston Martin worth 3.5 million, a Skoda Superb worth a million, and I have a few million in my account.
I have the Aston Martin, by the way, because my dream as a boy - I liked James Bond, who drove the car, gallant women and also fought against evil and villainy.
You an Aston have assets worth million, but you have no money for campaign?
You say you want to change the Republic, you are not keen on putting your own money into it.
This does not inspire much confidence.
I do not have 15 million for a campaign.
Should I take out a loan?
I have already put 2.5 million into the campaign.
The fact that I do not have any sponsors is evidence that there is no real interest in my programme.
I have no obligation to pay for my own campaign.
The expenditure on my campaign is basically covered by the pay I will be receiving as a senator.
However, I would not be able to live it, for instance, I not pay for my son's English school, which costs 30 thousand a month.
If I were only interested in making money, I would not be standing for election.
So you will still be in business so that you can a living?
Did you not say you would be putting this on hold?
This depends on the rate of pay.
As I promised, my activities have been partially reduced.
For example, my deputy is taking over as the CEO of the travel agency in spring.
People would like me to be a Samaritan, who the Republic.
But I must also live off something.
As a businessman, what would you usually make monthly?
Two hundred to 400 thousand, which I still do.
And if I became then I would end my business activity.
The full interview can be read in Saturday's issue of Pravo.
The MVRDV architects prove that true adventures are not just in the head - drawing on the example of Spijkenisse and the recently Bücherberg (literally "book mountain") - 2 photos
"I think building is fun, looks futuristic and provides something interesting to look at," said Lisette Verhaig, a passer-by at the road-side.
And Spermon, IT technician in a major firm based commented: "It's definitely a thing of beauty, the building."
However, I do wonder why people would need another library in this day and age.
Everyone the Internet, an iPad and eBooks.
No-one goes into one of these old-style libraries voluntarily nowadays, or am I wrong?
Spijkenisse, a sleepy town outside the gates of Rotterdam, which merits a visit, is a special record-holder.
The municipality has the lowest literacy rate in the whole of the Netherlands.
In order to counteract this asinine situation, the decision was made a number of years ago to make a contribution towards general education and to recreate the seven fictitious bridges that feature on the Euro notes as pretty, reinforced concrete miniatures.
The success of the education offensive was limited.
And so the city fathers acknowledged that there was only one way to become master over the statistics: a library had to be built!
Winy Maas of the Rotterdam-based architectural firm MVRDV, of audacious bar charts and producer of humorous and often cynical buildings, took the project on with his customary composure, and turned up at the competitive hearing in 2003 with books under his arm and a on his face.
And with the judging panel still looking at him with bewilderment, shrugging shoulders, the impertinent Maas stacked his chosen props by order of size to form pyramid and rounded off his presentation - now suitably backed up with action - with the words: "Dear Municipality!"
So this is my suggestion for the Spijkenisse Mountain - for the so-called Boekenberg!
Nine years later, the 30-million-euro mountain has been lifted up.
It is part of a revitalisation project, which also includes an underground car park, a supermarket, a post office and small number of adjacent apartment buildings and terraced houses, a total of 50 dwellings.
At the beginning of November, the Bücherberg was awarded second place in "Best Library of NL 2012" competition.
In addition, the project is also nominated for the Dutch National Wood Award 2012.
Thus, the faceless small-town retort, that until now had nothing more to offer than a post-modern pedestrian area and a stunningly ugly town hall, behind whose white facades one would expect to find a dairy plant, been bolstered by a piece of contemporary architecture.
First and foremost, however, Spijkenisse now has its first public cultural building in the history of its existence.
The long journey to the book
The first impression: the Eldorado of books beneath a cheese dome.
There is in fact a lift that climbs through the centre of the mountain massif, however, the true joys of space literature are when scaling the topography on foot.
The interior space, glazed throughout, is bright and the fired clinker floors and the elegant street lamps speak the unmistakable language of a public town square.
The urban ambiance is perfect.
You already on the lookout for a park bench, a dog, and boys and girls playing
And everywhere there are books, books, books.
"Normally book shelves run along the facade, and in the centre there is a large, dark space, which is usually unpleasant and impersonal," says Winy Maas.
We turned the classical spatial configuration on its head and turned the reading area inside out.
The interior of the Bücherberg is cleverly used: in the centre there are offices, an Internet library, a chess club, an environmental centre and the technical support room.
One particularly special feature are the black book shelves, which simultaneously act as cladding, parapets and railings for the stairway.
The appearance, feel and scent are foreign.
Even die-hard architects and construction engineers shake their heads at the unknown construction materials.
"Here we wanted to with recyclable materials," Joop Trouborst, Project Manager for Municipality of Spijkenisse, on request of
And thus one day we stumbled across a suitable waste product in agriculture, on a Frisian
many years, millimetre-thick artificial fabric has used in greenhouses and in the Netherlands as a base layer.
It is inexpensive saves time.
The thin textile lasts for two seasons and then disposed of as bulk waste.
For the library, the fabric was - for the first time in these quantities - pressed four-centimetre-thick boards.
Under heat and pressure, the Landbouw plastic (KLP) changes colour to a dark, homogeneous and material, that smells like mixture of new car smell and the smell of trainers.
105 steps you have reached the summit.
At the end of the 500-meter-long journey, you are rewarded in the Literature Café, not only with a fantastic view of the city, but also with Dutch croquettes and potted trees.
These provide atmosphere, but most regulate the air humidity in the literary mountain range.
Donations for the new soul
"You would hardly believe it, but this building, in spite of the many glass panels, is a showcase project in the area of ecology," said Trouborst.
It is heated and cooled using geothermal heat.
Although Bücherberg has a glass cover, the sun only only briefly into the interior, even on sunny days.
The broad, laminated wood glue beams positioned at right-angles to the glass facade, provide and absorb the majority of the sunlight.
The indoor temperature is pleasant.
The rest is taken care by fully automatic blinds.
Stefan Spermon, initially a sceptic of the IT sector, has already ventured into the new library.
Lisette Verhaig has also visited already.
So too has TCM-teacher, Cynthia Bogarde, even refers to the as Spijkenisse's "long overdue
The reason: At the inauguration just a few weeks ago, every citizen was invited to a book his/her personal collection.
This was, for the time being, to fill the optical gaps in the not yet fully stocked library - currently there are 70,000 items.
The concept has been a success.
The shelves are to capacity.
"Nothing is worse than a half-empty library," said architect Winy Maas.
"I think that, thanks to our invitation, every resident now has a certain bond with this new building.
Everyone knows that their book is part of the building.
Even if it's just for decoration.
As such, MVRDV have in mastering the master discipline that specialist jargon refers to as the formation of identity.
Spijkenisse has written literary history.
However young uneducated it may be.
This is ultimately a starting point for identity.
Szabo: "Germans play a role"
In the vote on the incorporation of Palestine, abstained voting.
According to Stephen Szabo, in US-European relations, in so doing Berlin is walking a thin diplomatic line.
Deutsche Welle: At the beginning of the week, Germany had initially signalled that it would vote against the Palestinians' application observer status within the United Nations.
However, Berlin subsequently abstained from voting.
Why?
Stephen Szabo: Germany does not support what the Israelis have done Gaza.
Now, however, due to their special relationship with Israel, Germany must be cautious.
At the same time, however, I do not believe that it supports the American position either.
Germany wanted to demonstrate its independence - albeit without being too critical of Israel.
During the uprising in Libya in March 2011, Germany likewise abstained from voting, when it came to establishing a no-fly zone.
This was ultimately implemented by NATO.
Does Germany find it difficult to adopt a clear position when it comes to international affairs?
Yes, it does.
That is because it has just reorganised its foreign indeed moving from a policy that was, so to speak, managed by the USA, in favour of a German policy.
This situation is aggravated by the fact that the Europeans do not have a coherent and standardised policy.
The Germans thus find themselves caught between two fronts.
It is expected of them that they play a more independent role, yet this is something they are not accustomed to.
I believe that they still finding their way in this role, but they are en to a "more normal" foreign policy.
A foreign policy similar to that of France, or Great Britain.
So what does a foreign policy entail, from a German perspective?
It shows a willingness to adopt positions on international matters, which are independent of those of the USA or European partners.
I believe German foreign policy is by the economic policy, that is, by export and relations with certain regions such as Russia, China or the Near East.
Germany's economic interests are a certain extent different from those of the other major powers and therefore Germany must protect its interests.
Have these economic interests had an influence on their attitude towards the Near East conflict and their voting in the UN?
the one hand, Germany has major revenue markets in the Near East, and particularly in the Gulf States.
Therefore it must be careful not to affront the public, but the elite in the Arabic countries.
In any case, this plays a role.
However, I wouldn't want to ascribe too much weight to this. This is not an entirely one-sided relationship.
Nonetheless, it does play an important role in Germany's considerations.
Has Germany damaged its relations with the USA, by abstaining to vote on important decisions, such as vote on Palestine?
I think that in Europe, and even in the USA, a great understanding for the German position prevails.
Therefore not think that this was as dramatic a fracture as was the case in the matters Libya.
Perhaps it will even earn Germany a certain degree of respect.
After all, it signals that the country must be taken seriously as an international player and that interests must be considered.
In Europe there are diverse opinions regarding Palestinian
The USA, on the other hand, have spoken out in favour of a veto.
Are there differences of opinion between the USA and the many European nations?
Due to the American domestic policy, these differences have always existed.
I think that secretly, the government under Obama actually has a great deal of understanding for the European situation.
However, due to the political situation here, the government is naturally unable to voice position publicly.
It is my belief that the actual differences in opinion are not so vast as they always appear.
If you look at the relations between Obama and Prime Minister Netanjahu, Obama is really not quite so enthused by Netanjahu's policies.
Does Germany find it difficult to reconcile its close with Israel and the the one hand, and the position of its most important partners in the EU on the
I think that this is precisely what makes things so for the Germans.
It of course be a simpler for the Germans there were coherent and standardised European policy, which is currently not the case.
Thus they are unable to be part of a wider and must instead drive matters from their own position.
This precisely what they are doing with the Euro.
I believe that in the future will take on a leading role in urging Europe towards a standardised European position.
is, of course, no simple task for Germany, on account of its relations with Israel.
This has always been a sensitive subject.
Yet I do think that Germans are clear that they must play a more independent role.
Does Germany view itself as the role of an important player - does Germany actually want to assume a leading role?
Or does Germany still find leadership difficult?
Germany is still not used to it, the continues to be uncomfortable and, for obvious reasons, still finds it difficult to play a more prominent role.
we look at Euro crisis for example, every time that Germany assumes a more prominent role, various anti-German feelings become apparent.
This does make matters simple for Germans.
This is actually the same old problem: one does not want to be surrounded by hostile countries.
From this stance, Germany is in a much more difficult the USA.
It must be receptive to the most diverse of neighbours and opinions, and this is not easy.
The influence of the USA over European politics is continually diminishing, yet the EU is currently not feeling this vacuum, so who is filling the gap?
The Germans will simply have to play a greater role.
Even if they do not like it, even if is uncomfortable and makes them even unpopular - c'est la vie!
Stephen Szabo is associate director of the Transatlantic in Washington, an institute in which academics and political experts from Europe and North America come together to research the challenges of the transatlantic community.
Szabo is also a member of the German Marshall Fund, in which he has specialised in policy, US foreign policy and transatlantic relations.
"Brand protection" in China: When Puma and Armani suddenly become Chinese
Armani is a world-famous brand, Polo Ralph Lauren likewise.
However, what is Armani Polo?
Behind this name hides a fully officially registered brand in China, however, one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original companies.
Nonetheless, it is enjoying protection, provided the actual creators of the names do not sue.
And even then it is not whether they will have any rights.
"It becoming increasingly more difficult for foreigners to protect their brands in China," said Thomas Pattloch, lawyer within the Taylor Wessing firm, who specialises in copyright infringement in the Far East.
Every week a new case lands on my desk.
All the copycats require are a few additional letters in order that they can register their brands.
Thus Gucci simply becomes Lu-Gucci, Prada-Kny is registered in of Prada.
German companies are also 'legally' copied this manner, such as manufacturer of sporting apparel, Puma.
Pattloch opens a file containing registrations with the trademark office in Peking.
On 14 September 2010 a Chinese company copyrighted the brand name Zegna Puma there, an alias that also helps itself to the name of fashion retailer Ermenegildo Zegna.
The fact that the Chinese are world champions in copying and infringing on intellectual property is well-known.
In the major cities there are multi-level department stores that sell counterfeit goods almost exclusively.
Pattloch's however, are slightly different: on behalf of his clients he takes action against the fact that companies can be granted the right to use a name by the trademark office, officially, is already protected
The Chinese call this Mingpai," a passenger brand.
The word is based on "Bang Dakuan."
This refers to women who latch onto rich men.
The Chinese authorities are unaware of any wrongdoing.
"This harms business and we must fight against it," challenges Pattloch.
"The is watered down, its uniqueness disappears - the image damage is enormous."
The financial losses and costs of the affected branches amount into the millions, in the case of expensive flagship products.
According to information from market research company CLSA, with a volume of 15 billion euros annually, China is the third largest market for luxury items, and the fastest growing.
However, the deletion of dubious entries in the trademark registry are difficult to achieve, and cost a pretty penny.
The process can last for up to nine years, with an uncertain outcome.
Pattloch reports of instances whereby court dismisses cases, because after a long period of time, the to objection is being raised has become a "market reality."
If the complainant unlucky, he may even have to pay the plagiarist money for having infringed on his trademark in China, said Pattloch.
Sometimes the law of the jungle prevails here.
Famous cases also relate to graphic elements.
In 2009, Daimler lost a legal battle with the construction machinery manufacturer Sany, the company that recently acquired German concrete pump manufacturer Putzmeister.
Even today, Chinese company is therefore permitted use an emblem that resembles the Mercedes star.
Volvo-purchaser originally used a blue and white logo that resembled the BMW logo; the dispute was arbitrated and Geely was forced to change it.
Fashion house Lacoste lost a suit in China against copycats from Hong Kong and Singapore, who were using the famous crocodile looking in other direction.
The Chinese authorities are unaware of any wrongdoing.
The CTMO trademark office in does acknowledge that there were bottlenecks in 2010 due to limited staffing and equipment.
In the past year, however, things reportedly "returned to normal following this emergency situation regarding the work flow."
Thus the stock of appeal proceedings was reduced by 22 percent.
Almost 57,000 such cased were closed, 75 percent more than in the previous year.
Nonetheless, there are still 81,500 appeals waiting to be resolved in the office.
To remedy this is expensive
As is often the case in China, the figures are imposing.
In the past year, more than 1.4 million applications for protection were submitted to the CTMO, almost one third more than in 2010.
This is a record means that China, for the tenth time in succession, is the global leader when it comes to new trademark applications, informed the authority.
The same applies for the inventory of valid trademarks, totalling 5.5 million in number.
In 2011, 1.8 billion yuan in fees were received.
Put simply, this means that each application costs on average 1,280 yuan, or 160 euros.
To appeal against an application costs many times this amount, as can seen in the case of the German family business, Freudenberg.
For more than seven years, the group has been contesting against a Chinese plagiarist.
The Germans did in fact manage to expose the company's illegal manufacturing copied motor vehicle parts.
the copycat still secured the Chinese rights to the Freudenberg brand.
This is something we missed ourselves, as family names cannot be protected in Germany, said Hanno Wentzler, Chairman of the Board of Management at Freudenberg Chemical Specialities in Munich.
The CTMO trademark office then also dismissed the Munich-based company's appeal.
In the next two instances, Freudenberg was proven right, however the opposing party continues to contest the matter to this day.
You have to pay extremely careful attention.
The matter is now pending before the Supreme Court.
Wentzler is confident that the matter will be brought to a positive conclusion and praises professionalism of the courts.
However, he also says: "The process is extremely expensive and takes a lot of time, money and nerves."
The internal costs can barely be calculated, the company archive even had to look through century-old records order to provide proof.
Five years ago Freudenberg unsuccessfully offered the opposing party a "high six-figure sum in euros" as settlement.
"This shows how much this is worth to us," says Wentzler.
The dangers the Far East even threaten to spilling over, back into Europe.
Particularly if imitators secure unprotected brand names there.
For example, Chinese manufacturer wanted to register the Freudenberg label for shoes and leather in Germany.
This is a business sector that the group had long vacated, yet nonetheless managed to prevent the registration.
"You have pay extremely careful attention," says Wentzler.
Both he and Pattloch advise companies to be very careful when conducting business with China.
It is not sufficient to rely on trademark rights, rather foreigners should also register "everything" that is in any way worthy protection in China as well," said Wentzler.
Otherwise costs can be much more expensive than the registration fee.
In actual fact: if Freudenberg were to loose at the final hurdle of its trademark drama, they would probably have to pay the opposing party license fees for the use of own name, explained Wentzler.
Or alternatively we would be forced out the market in the sector.
World AIDS day: Stomp, sing, help
In Heidelberg, the Imbongi choir is rehearsing - and in Swaziland, AIDS orphans are delighted.
The history of a link that overcomes far more than a distance of 8,733 kilometres.
First all, the stamping: cowboy boots, basketball shoes, ladies' pumps and men's attempt to find the beat on the parquet floor, and quickly do just that.
One-two-three-four.
Only then the voices of the singers slowly swell - alto, bass, tenor and soprano surge, beguile and haunt.
And Fiete Hopf, the 29-year-old conductor, almost rises up out of his shoes as he brings the ensemble together with his smooth, yet wild gestures.
It is evening and in the music room of the Institute for Medical Psychology in Heidelberg the Choir are practising a new song.
The fifteen singers, aging from 23 to 69 years old, range human geneticists to the maintenance man.
"Om'Obani" is by no means a simple piece, with each voice having a different text, and in an extremely foreign language at that: Zulu, which is spoken by eleven million people in South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and in parts of Swaziland.
Helping others help themselves
There are around 34 million infected with HIV around the world, as according the estimations of Unaids, the United Nations' programme to battle AIDS.
Of these, 23.5 million live in South
In Swaziland, there are 245,000 AIDS
Meanwhile, more 40 percent of the population are HIV positive.
The Voices for Africa Association has found sponsors in Germany for 180 AIDS orphans in the village Esitjeni.
70 of these attend a secondary school.
For 15 or 20 euros per month, you can become a sponsor.
This guarantees the child money for school, a school uniform and warm meal each day in the Gogo Centre.
In Zulu, Imbongi means storyteller or worshipper.
In this region, no-one can speak the Bantu language fluently, but they can sing it.
For almost ten years the choir has practising in this foreign, 'soft' language, and now and then they bring back to where they originally came the South of Africa.
For an 8,733-kilometre flight away from Heidelberg, in the north west of the Swaziland Kingdom, lies the village of Esitjeni, which relies on the vocal power of the German
Forty percent are infected.
Around 2,000 people live there, still in simple mud and straw huts, and the majority of them are
More than 300 of them no longer have parents, as they succumbed to the HIV virus.
In Esitjeni you get a small foreshadow the illness from which all of Swaziland is suffering: according to Unicef, the region the highest HIV infection rates and the lowest life expectancy in the world.
Circumcision, which has been proven reduce the risk of contracting the by half, is barely practised by the population.
More than forty percent of people in the Swaziland carry the immunodeficiency virus, and dying in you mid-thirties is by means rare.
On a group trip to Africa in early 2005, the Choir visited the village, but first and foremost, the many children on the streets, lacking not only in parental care but in practically everything else as well: food, clothing, education.
a school leaving there barely any opportunities, particularly in a poor country.
Initially it was the private commitment of to send a child to school and enable him/her to have one warm meal a day for a few euros per year.
However, just one year later, the choir established the "Voices for Africa" Association, which since then has been looking after the AIDS orphans in Esitjeni at an almost professional
Facts on sexually transmitted infections.
What are the most important transmitted diseases?
Bacterial include syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea.
Common viral are HIV, human papilloma viruses, herpes genitalis and hepatitis.
Crabs scabies belong among the parasitic STIs.
Who the main affected groups?
Syphilis and gonorrhoea occur primarily in men that have intercourse with other men.
The Robert Koch Institute understands that at least four in five of all syphilis cases reported in Germany are transmitted by means of sexual contact between men.
Among heterosexual adults, chlamydia infections, trichomoniasis, candidiasis (fungal), gonorrhoea and human viruses are frequently sexually transmitted diseases.
The spread of HIV among heterosexual adults in this country is relatively low; however, 20 percent of newly contracted cases of HIV are found in this group.
Among young people, chlamydia infections are much more than in other population groups.
According to European surveys, three quarters of all infections affect young people between the ages of 15 and 25.
In this country, human papilloma viruses are also frequently found young people.
How has the of infections developed?
Not all sexually transmitted diseases are notifiable.
According to the Robert Koch Institute, the number of has more than doubled from 1,697 cases in 2001, to 3,698 cases in 2011.
The number of newly contracted cases of HIV has been on the decline since 2007.
In 2011 there around 2,700 cases.
This is around one tenth fewer than the previous year.
Which symptoms indicate a sexually transmitted
The infectious diseases can cause ulcers in the genital area, discomfort when urinating, discharge, lower abdominal and blisters or warts.
However, often they cause no pain or any other symptoms, thus remaining undetected.
How can you protect yourself?
Condoms can reduce the risk of contraction, however, they do not offer 100% protection.
This is because occasionally, the pathogens of sexually transmitted diseases can also be passed on via smear infections and close bodily contact.
Therefore, first and foremost experts that people with frequently changing sexual partners undergo regular
If diagnosed early, the majority of STIs can be and long-term consequences avoided.
Through sponsorships donations and by no means the funds that the choir raises across the whole of Germany, the money all adds up.
"In total, we have already sent around 200,000 euros to Esitjeni," said Annette Lennartz, Chairperson of the association.
In the village itself, Zodwa Dlamini, a self-assured and assertive woman, manages the money from Germany.
She makes sure that the orphans have good accommodation, for example with one of their grandmothers.
The Gogos, as the old ladies are called Zulu, are the pillars of the village.
Some of them have up to 14 orphans living with them, providing them with a roof over their heads and making sure that the children get to their school classes punctually every day, in their school uniforms.
Anyone who doesn't have anyone left, arrives at the shelter with Khanyisile, a single woman who earns the same salary from association as the two cooks who cook for more than 200 hungry children every day.
In addition, "Voices for Africa" has established a sewing school,built two chicken coops and, together with the American health organisation, PSI, organised for in the village to be tested for HIV.
This is to be taken for granted, as is clearly attitude towards illness throughout the entire country, the best way of keeping things under wraps is if people are dead.
A king with 14 wives
"AIDS is an absolute taboo subject," said Annette Lennartz, it is associated with sexuality."
This is actually strange for a country in which the king has 14 wives.
The last absolute monarch of sub-Saharan Africa, King Mswati III., is known for his excessive lifestyle.
Polygamy in place of democracy.
Among other factors, the fact that the HIV virus has spread quickly over the past number of decades can also be attributed to this officially sanctioned lifestyle.
Another factor is the large number of workers who carry the virus the country.
are free on every corner, Lennartz, "but they are hardly used.
The culture prescribes otherwise - flesh to flesh."
In order to promote the cultural exchange, the Imbongi choir travels through Southern Africa every two or three and sings of fighting spirit, confidence and black self-esteem, which many from the southern tip of the black continent still know from the times of apartheid.
A bus full of white people, who sing songs in a black language - this degree of recognition brings not only morale and joy, but some grim-faced border soldiers even shed a few tears.
The journey always leads to Esitjeni, where the singers visit their sponsor children.
Even though you can barely find the small village on a map, it is more than well-known in the valley of the Ezulweni River.
"Go to Esitjeni, that's where the light is," say the people there.
And if you make the 8,733-kilometre flight back to Heidelberg, visit the stomping singers in their rehearsal room, you'll see the light is there too.
Messenger: discovers on Mercury
Messenger probe has found evidence of ice on planet Mercury.
It is thought that the ice cover may be 20 metres thick.
The US space agency, NASA, has proven the existence of ice on the planet Mercury.
Although the planet lies closest to the sun, it does have frozen water - as shown in three studies published Thursday in specialist magazine "Science."
The Messenger probe has found evidence that there is an ice cover in the region of planet that lies permanently in shadow.
This is thought to be at east 30 centimetres and perhaps up to 20 metres thick.
The water presumably came from comets perhaps also asteroids that impacted with Mercury.
However, no-one is linking the discovery of ice with the of life on the planet, said Scientist for the Messenger probe, Sean
The temperature on Mercury can reach up to 426 degrees Celsius.
said, the findings could help explain how water and other building blocks of life reached other regions of the solar system.
Unknown to the majority of the Earth's inhabitants, there are probes, telescopes and small robots such as the Phoenix, deployed to research the depths of the universe.
From time to time, they transmit images to Earth: small peepholes into the infinite expanse.
This image comes from a camera developed by German researchers at the Planck Institute.
The eight of our solar system, plus the dwarf planet Ceres.
Like Pluto, which orbits around the sun behind Neptune, is not planet according to the new definition of the term issued by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.
This image section from infrared recording by the Spitzer telescope shows a "family portrait" of countless generations of stars: the oldest stars are seen as blue dots, while more difficult to identify are the pink-coloured "new-borns" in the star delivery room.
This region rather unromantically named W5 by scientists - was discovered by the Spitzer telescope in the Cassiopeia constellation, at a distance of 6,500 light years away.
This shimmering glow of a dying was captured by NASA's Spitzer telescope.
The donut-shaped ring consists of material, ejected by the star in the process of dying.
In the huge Trifid Nebula, 5,400 light years away from the Earth, new stars are created from gas and dust.
NASA's Spitzer telescope shot this photo of the galactic delivery room.
The Pleiades star cluster, also referred to as "The Seven Sisters," be seen with the bare eye at night.
With the telescope, the colours really come into their own.
In this infrared photo, the Helix Nebula looks back at the observer like red
It is located light years away in the constellation.
Its similarity with the continent resulted in Nebula acquiring the title 'North America'.
A combination normal and photography produced the spectacular colouring.
baby star could only be captured in its full beauty using the Spitzer telescope's infrared detectors.
Saturn and its rings: How these occurred is the puzzle the field of
Perhaps they are the remnants of a moon Saturn, which disappeared without a trace 4.5 billion years ago.
One the largest and sharpest pictures the Hubble telescope: the Whirlpool Galaxy
Depending on the colouring, photographs of spiral galaxies can become genuine works of art.
The photograph published by the Southern shows the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius constellation, several thousand light years away.
The name Trifid stems from the Latin word trifidus (divided into three parts), as dark stripes of dust divide the core of the birthplace of stars into three parts.
In the Ophiuchus constellation, astronomers have photographed the signs of a cosmic collision: 400 million light years from the earth, the cores of two merging galaxies move rapidly towards one another, destined to
This star birth was captured by the Hubble telescope in the M83 spiral galaxy.
Anyone doesn't like technical abbreviations may prefer to call it by its nickname, the Southern Catherine Wheel.
The photo taken by the Hubble space telescope shows section of the Iris Nebula in the Cepheus constellation.
The nebula, 1,400 light years away, consists particles of dust that are ten to one hundred times smaller than standard house dust.
This image was put together from the X-ray images captured various telescopes.
It shows a of black holes, 430 million light years away from the
This group of galaxies, named Arp 273, was pictured for NASA by the Hubble space telescope.
Scientists call the larger spiral galaxy UGC 1810.
This star nebula is home to the brightest group of young stars in our Milky Way.
This 'star cradle' continually produces new youngsters.
Likewise, this star cloud, connected to the Rosette Nebula, continually produces new stars - 5000 light years away from the Earth.
In this bright shining galaxy with one small black hole, there exists no dust - only gas.
Researchers presume that it only came into being shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe was comprised primarily of hydrogen.
Our view of the universe: the most important telescopes
The telescope is thought to have been invented in 1608 by Hans Lipperhey - even before Galileo Galilei used the device to observe the stars one year later.
Since then, the mirrors in optical telescopes have become increasingly large and the that they provide increasingly profound.
For a period of 30 years, namely from 1947 until 1975, the Hale telescope in the Palomar Observatory near San Diego was the telescope in the world.
The shown had a diameter of five metres.
Arizona, USA,is home to the Large Binocular Telescope.
It enables views of space via two mirrors, each with a of 8.4 metres.
The inner workings the Gran Telescopio Canarias on the Canarian island of La Palma are huge - the mirror alone has a diameter metres.
The mirror of the Southern African Large Telescope in South Africa is segmented - to reduce costs.
In spite of this it achieves a diameter of around eleven metres.
The disadvantage of this inexpensive construction method: the telescope is securely at its angle of inclination and its is therefore limited.
Hobby Eberly telescope in Texas also has a fixed angle of inclination.
What sets it apart: the light-gathering
This - in spite of its comparatively low mirror diameter - even matches that of the world's largest reflector telescopes.
With the help of a radio telescope in Arecibo (Puerto Rico) researchers can listen for extraterrestrial signals in space.
The radio has a diameter of 305 metres.
In the "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (SETI) every computer owner can be of assistance, by making his/her processing available.
View of the European Southern (ESO) in the Chilean Andes.
This is home the Very Large Telescope, which lives up to its name.
With its total of four mirrors, the telescope can also focus on the medial infrared spectrum.
Likewise to be located at the ESO Observatory in Chile, the European Extremely Large Telescope is also being planned.
Its main mirror is to span a full 42 metres and will be made from almost mirror elements.
However, images are not to be expected until 2018 at the earliest.
Until 2007, the two Keck telescopes at the Hawaiian volcano, Mauna were the largest in the world.
They each have two mirrors, each with a diameter of ten meters.
The Keck are part of the Mauna Kea Observatory, which alongside the Keck telescopes, can look to the with the help of the Subaru telescope and the IRTTF.
Another huge new telescope is also to be built on the Mauna Kea, with a mirror diameter of thirty metres.
Here you can marvel at an artist's impression.
However, the most important insights into space are provided the Hubble space telescope.
Since 24 April 1990 it has been supplying images of distant worlds.
Since 2009 the Kepler space telescope has been searching extra-solar planets, especially for any that may be inhabitable.
On 2 February 2011 it was announced by NASA that 1,235 planetary candidates had been identified since the mission began.
The image documents the final launch preparations on the Kepler space telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will into space board an Ariane5 rocket by 2018 at the earliest.
The primary mirror of the infrared space has a diameter of 6.5 metres.
One of the telescope's tasks is to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that after the Big Bang.
Scientists assuming that ice also exists at Mercury's south pole.
However, there is no reliable data in support of this as the Messenger orbits around the planets much closer to the pole.
For decades, radar measurements have indicated that there is ice on Mercury.
Thanks to the Messenger probe that was launched in 2004, the first to orbit Mercury, scientists can now be certain.
Drink butter on a daily basis - and live to 168 years of age
Southern Azerbaijan, many people biblical ages.
There is even a museum of longevity.
A hunt for evidence in the country in which 97 years old is still comparatively young.
In Southern Azerbaijan, many reach ages that can almost be considered biblical.
There is even a museum of longevity.
A hunt for evidence in the country in which 97 years old is still comparatively young.
The journey through the Talysh Mountains can be described as wild and romantic.
The minibus rumbles over the winding streets, past densely wooded hills, raging rivers and simple farmhouses.
Everywhere is green and lush - you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the Black Forest.
However, this is the deep Azerbaijan, and the border with Iran is just a few kilometres away.
This is the home of the Caucasian people group, the Talysh, of whom not much is known except that they speak perfect Persian and Azeri and live long lives.
The final stop is Lerik.
The small is bursting with overpowering architecture from Soviet times, which doesn't fit with the picturesque mountain landscape at all.
Tourists from Europe rarely come here; the journey from Azerbaijan's capital city, Baku, is too arduous.
It takes eight hours to travel the 323 kilometres, as too much of the route is just a single track.
The fabulous wealth, for which the country has its oil in the Caspian Sea to thank, has not yet arrives in the province.
Yet Pilata Fatulayeva (48) is convinced that Lerik has what takes to be a tourist attraction.
"Baku became famous in May due to the Eurovision Song Contest, and next year we are having a festival celebrate the oldest people in the world," said Fatulayeva.
She is the Director of the Museum of Longevity, most likely the only of its kind in the world.
Here the lives of dozen Talysh from the who lived to older than 100 are Fatulayeva out a black & white photo.
This here my grandfather, he was 120 years old.
At the age of 136 he fathered another child.
However, the unrivalled star of the museum is shepherd Shirali Muslimov who is said to have lived to 168 years old.
However no birth certificate exists to confirm this.
And given that the longest confirmed lifespan was 122 years of age, claim seems extremely doubtful.
"He was born in 1805, here in the region, and died in 1973," Fatulayeva.
The man married three times and had 23 children, and is said to have fathered another daughter at the age of 136.
So did Shirali Muslimov miscalculate his age by a couple of decades?
But Rembrandt Scholz, researcher on ageing at the Max Planck Institute in Rostock, has also heard of people living to impressive ages in Central Asia.
"A strikingly high number of extremely elderly people can also be found some areas of China, in Japan or the Hunza in Pakistan," said Scholz, "while there is also an extremely large number of very old men in Sardinia."
Due to documentation, however, there is no scientific proof of age, particularly as there are birth registers.
Melted butter by the glass, every day
However, the fact remains that the people of the region surrounding reach a biblical age with striking regularity.
There are currently 20 individuals older than 100 years of age.
So why do so many very old people live here in the south?
The Azeri travel guide Farid Mugimzadeh explains as being due to the special Talysh genetics.
In contrast, Museum Director Fatulayeva believes that it is due to diet.
However the notion that the calorie-rich diet of the Talysh, who love meat, bread and especially dairy products, and of whom many drink a glass of melted butter on a basis, could be considered healthy from a nutrition science perspective does not really seem plausible either.
Or is it the traditional way of life that keeps the people young? In Cengemiran, a not far from the town of Lerik, lives Rubaba Mirzayeva.
At 97 years old she still comparatively young for the area.
Mirzayeva, who claims to have 143 lives in a simple wooden house, which is typical of the Caucasus region.
She sits on the floor with a butter churn, which she rolls backwards and forwards tirelessly.
Eight people live here under this roof, including one of Mirzayeva's sons and a daughter, both of whom have been grandparents for some time.
There are also two small children running around.
In the tea is prepared for the guests, which served in typical, bulging Armadu glasses.
Mirzayeva's white teeth stand in perfect rank and file, beneath headscarf she conceals long, dark blond plaits, which her son proudly reveals for us.
I have always washed my hair with milk, and it never fallen out or lost its colour.
"I have never used shampoo either," said Mirzayeva.
Monthly pension is enough to live on
She has only ever eaten what she could get from her own farm - tomatoes, potatoes, peas.
My whole life I have never once bought groceries in the supermarket.
Then she tells of her husband who was in the army.
Things were at their worst during the time after the Second World War.
However, everything became better when the "beloved father" Heydar Aliyev took the rudder.
The propaganda seems strange coming from the mouth of an old lady.
Yet the cult that revolved around the father figure for the nation, who governed his country like a dictator practically knows no limits in Azerbaijan.
He held power until 2003 and his Ilham later took over helm.
At least there is no deprivation among Azerbaijan's elderly.
Mirzayeva receives 230 Manat (around the same sum in euros) per month as her pension, which in a local context is an amount which one can comfortably.
And perhaps Mirzayeva's long greying son is right: "The elderly enjoy a deep respect in our culture."
They live among their extended family, are loved, cared for and are happy.
If this is not a reason to live for as long as possible, then what is?
The notion of "human rights" is omitted from the constitution.
The revolution has returned to Cairo.
Competing demonstrations in Cairo reveal the deep division within the country.
The future constitution based on Sharia law is fiercely disputed.
The Egyptian President is not back his emotion.
We must make the transition.
"And making sure it succeeds is my responsibility, before the people and before God," he said on state
His speech was aimed at the entire population,however in particular at the Coptic Christians, the liberals, enlightened and secularists.
all of them, until now hopelessly estranged in a bewildered opposition, are fearful.
They are fearful of a God State on the Nile at the mercy of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Mursi, speaking almost apologetically, he has temporarily restricted the authority of the constitutional court and increased his own authority, "in order to rescue the revolution."
However, Egyptians - and the world - are not entirely sure what the 61-year-old engineer who holds a Doctorate from the American of Southern California, really wants save.
Should the judiciary be deprived of power?
In actual fact, the 234 articles, which have pushed through by the Islamic-dominated 110-person Constituent Assembly, are in some aspects cause for concern.
As was also the case under previous constitutions, under the draft judicature justified on the "principles of Islamic law."
are
This was and remains subject to interpretation and there is concern that the Islamists will make use of the woolly and the resulting room for legal manoeuvre in favour of a interpretation of Sharia
This is at least suggested by one newly added article: in all issues affecting Sharia law, the Al Ashar University be consulted, the country's important Islamic institution, which great influence throughout the whole of Sunni Islam.
can, but does not necessarily have to mean that the clergy oversee legislation, which would result in the de facto incapacitation of the judiciary.
Much in the constitutional draft is open to interpretation
Also problematic: civil military jurisdiction will continue to be upheld.
During Mubarak's rule, these courts served to suppress opposition.
Following the fall of the dictator, up to 11,000 civilians were under military imprisonment.
According to the draft, the state should also protect "the true character of the Egyptian family, and promote its morals and values."
From a legal perspective, this is formulated in such an unclear manner that state institutions even use this article to control the content of cinematic art and literature.
In plain language, this is nothing other censorship.
Incidentally, no article explicitly establishes the equality of men and women.
Another does prohibit insult or slander of the prophet Mohamed his emissaries.
However, what constitutes an insult and how this should be sanctioned remains unclear.
Equally dubious is the formulation stating that "insulting people" forbidden.
Is a caricature of the president sufficient, or a joke at the expense of a jurist?
Open to interpretation, like so much in the draft submitted by Mursi to be signed and that, in his own words, will be submitted to Egyptians for referendum "very soon."
"The revolution is back"
For weeks the opposition has been gathering to combat the strength of the Islamists.
Tens of thousands gathered on Friday evening at the Tahrir Square in in unfamiliar unity, and pledged to bring down charter before it has even come into effect.
"The is back and we are going to victorious," said Sabbahi, place candidate the presidential elections.
Noble Peace Prize winner and former Head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, Mohamed El-Baradei explained that the constitutional belongs "on the rubbish of history."
Via service Twitter, he accused Mursi's followers of wanting to lead "a coup against democracy."
"If he calls for the referendum, we will go to his palace and overthrow him," said member of the opposition Jasser Said.
"We have not yet grown tired, the blood of our brothers has not yet been atoned for," stated the Egyptian media, quoting opposition politician Chaled Ali.
And several judges have signalled that they do not want to oversee the referendum, which would render it invalid.
"The Koran is our constitution"
The well-organised Muslim Brotherhood gathered for counter-demonstration, although acting cautiously they did not choose the Tahrir Square but rather a mass prayer on the other side of the Nile, outside the Cairo University.
Many veiled women and followers of the Salafis took part, shouting out: "The people demand the application of God's law."
They demanded of Mursi: "Cleanse the country!" and protested: "The Koran is our
A struggle for control over symbolic Tahrir Square, everything began, would have most likely provoked events verging on civil war.
Quite clearly, this was something that Mursi's followers did not want to risk.
The Muslim Brothers stated that both those against and those in favour of the constitutional draft had expressed themselves loud and clear.
Now is the time population decide at the ballot box, in which direction the country should move forward.
It is a certainty that there is a majority in favour of the Islamists'
"The term 'human rights' does not even appear once"
Hafez Abu Saeda is about this forced constitutive process, which actually should have lasted until February and should have involved all social interest groups.
The 48-year-old human rights lawyer and Chairman of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) defended the Muslim Brotherhood, when imprisoned or in court under Mubarak.
Not because he shared their world view, but because for him, human rights are indivisible.
For this he was battered, and imprisoned.
"And now the term rights does not even appear once in the new constitution," he bemoaned in a discussion with am Sonntag."
The lawyer has resigned himself to Mursi extending his power to all three branches of state government.
These measures are blatant breaches of the ground rules of democracy will guide Egypt into a new dictatorship.
"Instead of the civil society, the President effectively it," complained Saeda.
Yet without civil society organisations, a democracy cannot function.
Saeda feels by the international community, is observing the battle over the ideological direction on the Nile with a mixture of curiosity and excitement.
This could come back to haunt them.
demonstrator at the Tahrir warned: "You are letting loose a monster that you can no longer control."
Norway's Is this the world's smelliest fish?
Norway's five people enjoy one of the highest standards of living, not just in Europe, but in the world.
Could the secret of the country's success be connected to the local appetite for some exceedingly smelly fish?
Take a selection over-ripe cheeses.
Place them in the midst of a of wet kit.
Leave for a week.
you have the nose-numbing smell of rakfisk, one of the great Norwegian delicacies.
I am in the small town of Fagernes, about three from Oslo.
There is snow, scenery - and that odour, ever present, hangs in the air.
Rakfisk is trout sprinkled with salt and fermented in water for - depending on how smelly you like your fish - up to a year.
As the dark sets and the turns cold, Norwegians flock to a festival here in Fagernes devoted to this most, well, captivating of
"You eat it raw, and then swallow a glass of aquavit," says Havard firefighter but the so-called "Rakfisk General," in charge of running the festival.
All around us people are eating little cubes of the fish and knocking back quantities of drink.
"Some people like the aquavit more than the rakfisk," says
The drink can kill
try a few pieces.
If you can avoid passing it under your nose, it is not bad - not unlike a of sushi that has been on rather a long bus journey.
Rakfisk is a product of very different, poverty-stricken times in Norway when, pre-refrigeration, fish was soaked in airtight barrels of water and salt in autumn.
Then in the depths of winter, well and truly fermented, it is taken out and - no doubt with the senses knocked out by alcohol - eaten.
Only a generation ago, thousands Norwegians were forced to leave their country in search work, emigrating mainly to the US.
Now the population is expanding fast - more than 13% are immigrants, attracted by plentiful jobs, high wages and a comprehensive care system.
People from Sweden, the old rival and not so long ago far richer than Norway, stream in to work.
Rakfisk is seen as signifying something important, a vital if rather smelly part of Norway's past.
It is among the more expensive dishes you can buy.
But then everything expensive - a small glass of beer or sandwich knock you £9 ($14)
Norway does not often make it on to the global news agenda and most seem to like it that way.
People here are still loath to mention name Anders Breivik, the right-wing, racist extremist who gunned down and killed 77 men, women and children last year.
Instead, the shootings are referred to as "the July 22nd incident."
Norwegians find it very difficult to believe that in peace-loving country one of their own was capable of such brutality and murder.
The growth since the early 1970s of one of the world's biggest oil and gas industries lies behind much of Norway's present-day wealth.
"But oil is not the only reason we are doing so well," says our handing round trays of rakfisk and, with her long blond hair and startlingly blue eyes, the image of Nordic well-being.
We are a - how you say - prudent people.
Her English, like that of most people here, is flawless.
are not very showy, we do like ostentation.
Norway has handled its oil wealth carefully - all but a small percentage of money from the industry is invested in a special fund for the benefit of future generations.
When everyone else was throwing around money they did not have, in the leading up to the global financial crash, Norway kept its purse strings tightly bound.
"As long as we can ski in winter and go hiking in summer we are happy," says Anna.
"And eat rakfisk," she adds with a carefree laugh.
I stand in the snow and queue for something to eat - I have had rakfisk.
Now an elk burger is certainly something and rather succulent to the taste.
But in the evening, it is more of that smelly fish.
The hotel I am staying is one of a number of venues hosting a rakfisk dinner where guests vote on the - or perhaps the most nasally challenging - fish.
There is a live TV up to a compere in a bow tie surrounded by plates of rakfisk.
It is like Eurovision song contest.
"What score do you have for the best fish up there in the mountains Thor-Juergen?"
"Here are our points, Havard."
There is clapping, laughter.
A man falls off his chair, perhaps overcome with aquavit.
Or maybe it is the fumes from all that fish.
Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto faces tough start
As Mexico's incoming President Enrique Pena Nieto prepares to take office, the BBC's Will Grant looks at the challenges facing him and the mixed expectations of his population.
Traffic in Mexico City is particularly bad at present.
A congested city at the best of times, ring of steel has been erected since Monday cutting off several key routes into the capital and causing chaos on the roads.
The aim, however, wasn't to stop commuters getting to work but prevent protesters from reaching parliament.
On Saturday, Mexico's new president Enrique Pena Nieto will receive the presidential sash and take over the running of the nation.
He faces complicated task.
Mexico has been performing well economically under the outgoing administration of Felipe Calderon, but the country the grip of a drug war, which has already claimed an estimated 60,000 lives in six years.
"My government has a great commitment to the Mexican people to reduce the violence," Mr Pena Nieto told US President Barack Obama the Oval Office earlier this week.
I will proposing a new security which will allow us to achieve that aim.
Before rubbing shoulders with the US president, Mr Pena Nieto's previous political experience was as governor of his home state, the State of Mexico.
A populous, sprawling state surrounding the capital, about the new leader are divided in his old stomping ground.
A straightforward man
In the bucolic town of Valle del Bravo, for example, he is remembered fondly.
Residents credit him with boosting tourism in the resort and
To reach the town you can drive along one of Mr Pena Nieto's new motorways, vast improvement on the cracked and bumpy roads it replaced.
Plaques bearing his name also hang outside a modern sports and an impressive interactive museum about climate change.
"We are looking to him to bring about real and lasting change," says friend and political ally Gabriel Olvera Hernandez, a state congressman for Mr Pena Nieto's party, the
Particularly in terms of security and the economy, we're hoping for an interesting and true change which our country so badly needs.
After an unbroken 81 years in power, the PRI was ousted in 2000 by Vicente Fox.
Congressman Olvera that after 12 years outside the presidential palace of Los Pinos, there is much expectation within the party about Enrique Pena
And he rejects the opposition's characterisation of the new president as lacking substance.
He's a very straightforward man, very committed with an excellent vision of the country.
He's an statesman and, above all, someone who knows how to
But on the other side of the state, that is not the impression many people have of their former governor.
In Nezahualcoyotl, also known as Ciudad Neza, the contrast with the cobbled streets of Valle del Bravo couldn't be sharper.
Tucked away under motorway flyovers, it is in many ways a suburb of Mexico City itself.
And the problems in the municipality are also gritty and urban.
Earlier this year, the military was called in to help tackle the drug gangs operating in the neighbourhoods, and violence against women is particularly acute.
On a patch wasteland by a vast site, the bodies of dozens of murdered have been dumped over the past two years alone.
More than 1,000 women were killed in Mexico State while Mr Pena Nieto was governor, a rate much higher than in the notoriously violent city of Ciudad - a place synonymous with the murder of innocent women.
Mr Pena Nieto's critics say, at best, he failed to adequately address the problem of femicide while he was in office.
At worst, they accuse his administration of turning a blind
In a concrete home typical of the rundown neighbourhood, Irinea Buendia struggles to fight back the tears she shows me photos of her late daughter, Mariana Luna.
According to the official version of events, Mariana committed suicide in 2010.
However her family believes she was murdered by her partner.
"When I arrived at house it seemed her body had washed," Senora Buendia recalls.
There were signs she'd been beaten, and rigor mortis had already set in.
As her mother recounts the story, a picture of Mariana looks down from the walls, next to a cross bearing a single word: Justice.
However, that is exactly what the family say they have been denied.
state authorities have treated me like I'm an old gossip, a trouble-maker, whiner.
What they want is that one simply accepts what they say and shuts up.
"But that can't right when there were so many irregularities and omissions," she says.
As President Pena Nieto receives the sash on Saturday, it with a heavy responsibility.
Tens of thousands of families have been affected by violent crime in Mexico over the past six years and the president has promised to make a priority during his time in office.
"I hope he's the same kind of president as he was a governor," says PRI Congressman Olvera in Valle del Bravo.
That, however, is exactly what victims' families in Ciudad Neza fear.
Bradley Manning didn't complain about mistreatment, prosecutors contend
Prosecutors try to counter Bradley Manning's claims of abuse in confinement
The hearing focuses on Manning's time the military brig at Quantico, Virginia
Defense wants case dismissed on grounds that Manning's confinement was harsh
The Army is of stealing thousands of classified documents
Prosecutors tried to establish Friday that Army private Bradley Manning -- charged in the largest leak of classified material U.S. history -- missed multiple opportunities complain about the mistreatment he's alleging in military custody.
While cross-examining Manning at a pre-trial hearing at Ft. Meade, Maryland, prosecutor Ashden Fein asserted that records of weekly visits Manning had with unit officers during nine months of detention at Quantico, Virginia, show no complaints about treatment.
The cross-examination -- during a hearing on a defense motion to have Manning's case dismissed on grounds that his confinement has been harsh and has amounted enough punishment -- came day after Manning testified that he had considered suicide while in custody.
The Army analyst, arrested in June 2010, is accused of stealing thousands of classified documents while serving in Iraq.
The material was then published online by WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has never that Manning was the source of its information.
In Friday's hearing, Fein reviewed with Manning the forms that officers out after meeting with Manning during his detention at Quantico's brig, where he was held under a heightened confinement status from July 2010 to April 2011.
Officers would ask Manning questions write down his responses.
When Fein asked about the forms Friday, Manning acknowledged that he rated treatment his guards as "excellent" and treatment by the facility overall as "very professional."
The show no complaints of mistreatment, even though the officers Manning directly treatment, Fein contended.
Manning responded that he would verbally express concern about issues and that the visiting officers would talk through the concerns and indicate that they would be addressed, they didn't record the issues.
"They would write down 'no issues' (after discussing the concerns), and it didn't necessarily mean I didn't bring something Manning said.
The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, also asked Manning why didn't complain about treatment during a January 2011 meeting with a board examining the suicidal thoughts he expressed in a form months earlier.
Manning replied that his intention during meeting was to get his "prevention of injury" status downgraded.
The military said they put him on this restrictive status -- a step below suicide watch -- for his protection and the safety of others.
"I staff to know I was fine, and (I to) get off the POI status ... to enjoy an increased quality of life from my viewpoint," Manning said.
Manning testified Thursday about his arrest in Iraq and his transfer to Kuwait, where held for nearly two months before being transferred to the brig at Marine Base Quantico in Virginia in July 2010.
He said he contemplated suicide in Kuwait and once passed out there due to the heat.
He said not being allowed to know what was happening to him or in outside world was distressing.
"My world just shrink to Camp Arafjon, to that cage," Manning said Thursday.
I thought I was going to die in that cage.
at Quantico, Manning said, he spend most days in a small cell -- least hours and often more than 23 hours -- with no company.
Manning said he was allowed a mattress, blanket, flip-flops, some clothes and his glasses.
He said he to keep moving, because sleeping during the day or even lying down was against the rules.
Manning said he always with light from outside his cell in eyes.
If guards not see his face when he rolled over night, he said they would wake him to roll back over.
Manning's lawyer filed a formal objection to Manning's treatment in January 2011.
was to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in April 2011.
Also Friday, the judge asked Manning about an allegation that he made in Thursday's testimony -- that after being forced to sleep naked one night in his Quantico cell, was forced to stand naked in front of guards and other during a morning head count.
Manning had testified that he was never given a chance to cover himself with his blanket during the head count.
Under questioning the judge Friday, Manning said that he inferred from his guard's order that he should drop a blanket that could covered him, but he acknowledged that no one had ordered him to drop it.
Manning testified Thursday that he was forced to sleep naked the night because of his attempt to show an officer that he wasn't a danger to himself.
Manning said that he told the officer that he could have used the waistband of his underwear or his flip-flops to hurt but hadn't done so.
That night, Manning testified, his underwear, flip-flops glasses were removed from his cell.
His lawyers hope the judge will at least take his experiences during into account and sharply reduce his sentence should he be convicted at his court-martial, which is expected to begin early year.
The defense has said it plans to have Manning plead guilty to lesser offenses and other charges as being extreme.
The hearing is scheduled to resume weekend, with prosecutors expected to argue that the detention conditions were warranted.
The Pentagon has maintained that Manning was held in accordance with rules governing maximum-custody detainees at Quantico.
Counts against Manning include aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be on the Internet, transmitting national defense information and theft of public property or records.
If he's convicted on all counts, he could face a life
My Mexican-American identity crisis
He says many were forced to leave Mexico because of the lack of opportunities there
Mexicans tend to fault those who left; they remind Mexicans of hard times, he says
Navarrette says Mexican-Americans are caught between two worlds
On a recent trip to Mexico City, I had barely made my way down the concourse arrived at the immigration processing area when I got stumped.
pointed the way to two for "Mexicanos" ("Mexicans"), another for "Extranjeros" ("Foreigners.")
I stood there for a few seconds, unsure of where to go.
Growing up in Central California, I had been called "Mexican" life.
It's ethnic shorthand in the same that my friends in Boston refer to themselves as "Irish" or my friends in New York describe themselves as "Italian."
Later, I settled on "Mexican-American."
But, this was Mexico.
And, in the homeland of my grandfather, there was no need for shorthand or hyphens.
I was simply an American.
I speak Spanish, enough to handle either end of an interview in language.
But I have the vocabulary of a native, and I can't shake American accent.
So I took my U.S. passport got in the line for Extranjeros.
I thought about that moment this week when Mexican president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto visited the White House to meet with President Obama.
On the agenda, as usual, when the leaders of these two countries meet: immigration, drugs and trade.
Pena Nieto was also eager to talk about the growth of the Mexican economy, is one reason that Mexicans are now just as likely to stay in Mexico as to the United States.
He wants to partner with the United States and Canada, and create a European trading bloc in North America.
And Pena Nieto vowed to Mexico's war against the drug cartels, even he no specifics.
For Mexico, the relationship with the United States is and filled hard feelings.
Most Americans probably never give a thought to the fact that, 1848, the United States invaded Mexico and forced leaders to sign over half their territory at the point of rifle.
But for Mexicans, who think in terms of centuries, not minutes, the are everywhere.
So minute that a U.S. official says anything the least bit critical of Mexico, you start hearing -- in the Mexican press, and among the elites -- complaints about how the Americans are encroaching upon their neighbor's sovereignty.
And the children of Montezuma go on the warpath.
And for Mexico, the really challenging relationship is with more than 35 million Mexican-Americans living in the United States.
You want to talk about hard feelings?
There is plenty.
Mexico has winners and losers, people for whom the country provides opportunities and others for whom it doesn't.
The only reason you have so many of Mexican ancestry living in cities like Los Angeles, Las Phoenix, Denver or is because, at some in our family tree, a person, maybe a parent or grandparent, who was shut out from opportunity in Mexico had to go north.
And more often than not, that person fit a profile dark skin, little education, from a poor village, etc.
We're their offspring, and we're loyal to them.
Not Mexico.
And even though we now be living the American Dream, gone to good schools and taken good jobs, we can never lose sight of the fact that it's the American Dream we're living, and not the Mexican one.
Our identity might sometimes be but our loyalty is clear.
It's to the United States.
Besides, we're aware that many of the elite Mexicans in the ruling class don't like us.
The feeling is mutual.
They see us as a reminder of a humiliating defeat and look on us as inferior that isn't sufficiently Mexican.
Our Spanish will never be good enough, our ties to Mexico never strong enough.
Our existence is, as they see it, all about failure.
If our families hadn't failed in Mexico, they wouldn't have left.
And we wouldn't now find ourselves trapped behind the silk curtain, living well in the United States but lost souls nonetheless.
My wife, who was born in Guadalajara and came to the United States legally as a child, reminds me that there is friction between Mexicans and Mexican-Americans because Mexicans have a firmer grasp of they are and Mexican-Americans resent that.
While she's a U.S. citizen, she sees herself as a part of two
Meanwhile, many Mexican-Americans I know don't feel like they're a part of either.
We love listening to the Mexican band, Los Tigres del Norte, but also to Bruce Springsteen.
You get the best of both worlds, but you're rooted in
In Mexico, we're seen as
And in the United States, we're considered Mexican.
Now, to complicate the relationship even further, as learned during my some Mexican leaders and parts of the intelligentsia want to reconnect with the Diaspora.
They want to put Mexican-Americans to work as makeshift "ambassadors" for Mexico, representing its interest in the United States.
We would tell our fellow Americans what a great country this is to visit and pressure political leaders to strengthen ties with Mexico.
Yeah.
That's not going to
Too many hard feelings.
And, income inequality and rampant corruption and drug violence, many of us are not so that it is a great country.
I'm afraid you're on your own, amigos.
That's fair.
If at least some Mexicans aren't yet ready to forgive the United States for how it treated Mexico a century a half ago, then they have to accept the fact that some Mexican-Americans hold a grudge for how their family members were treated much more recently than that.
Hmmm.
Maybe we're more "Mexican" than I thought.
Old battles, new Middle East
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could yet be an unlikely foundation for peace
Can there ever be a lasting peace between and Jews in Middle East?
Another round of bloodshed suggests that any such hope is vain.
Amid the usual futile arguments over who started it, scores of buildings have been reduced to rubble; more than 140 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and six Israelis have been killed; and, for the first time, missiles from Gaza have landed near Tel Aviv, Israel's metropolis, and the holy city of Jerusalem.
But though the Israelis and Palestinians seem stuck in their ancient conflict, all around them Middle East is changing.
The Arab spring pieces up in the air, and, like it or not, the Palestinians Israelis are caught up the regional turmoil.
Maybe this will make their struggle bloodier than
However, there are reasons for thinking it could just break lethal stalemate.
A war that is neither lost or won
At first sight, looks very hard to justify
Even if the ceasefire agreed on November 21st holds, this week's fighting has strengthened the hawks on both sides.
The leaders of Hamas, the Islamist that has ruled Gaza since 2007, will claim have forced the Israelis to back off, even though Gaza has taken a drubbing.
killing some of its leaders bottling up Gaza's 1.7m people in one of the most wretched and crowded corners of the planet, Israel has failed to Hamas.
Indeed Hamas is gaining on the West the other bit of Palestine currently run by its bitter in Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian faction.
Moreover, Hamas's leaders may well that is on their side.
As Islamists across the Arab world have gained clout, so Hamas has made powerful and rich friends.
Turkey, a resurgent regional power that was once closest Muslim ally, has taken up Hamas's cause; so has Qatar, one of the richest and most dynamic of the Gulf states.
Jubilant Hamas people say an Islamist crescent is curving around Israel, from Lebanon in the north, where the Hizbullah party-cum-militia holds sway, through Syria, where rebels of an increasingly Islamist bent may topple Bashar Assad, and on down through Jordan, where Hamas's allies are menacing the king.
Above all, on Israel's flank, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood under President Muhammad Morsi in by far the most and pivotal of Arab countries, has changed the region's balance.
Hosni Mubarak, the secular despot who ran Egypt for 30 years until his downfall in 2011, had little time for Hamas.
By contrast, the Brotherhood is a cousin of Hamas, and its leaders more subject to popular opinion.
In future diplomacy Hamas may emerge as an actor that cannot be shut out even by Israel America.
Meanwhile, Israel's hardliners will draw the opposite conclusions.
military terms, Hamas has been put back in its box.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system has its worth and many of Hamas's have been destroyed.
Israelis will sleep more soundly - for while.
In diplomatic terms, America is as as ever; many European countries also blamed Hamas for starting the latest round of violence.
Above all, Israel has prospered, especially Binyamin Netanyahu, a prime minister who has largely ignored the peace process.
Although rockets from Gaza have killed around 30 Israelis since 2004, Israel has been fairly free of suicide-bombers, thanks in part to the barrier that bites into the West Bank, main chunk a would-be Palestinian state, and protects the Jewish settlements that continue to expand despite their illegality in international law.
Mr Netanyahu, whose Likud party has with an even more hawkish lot under Avigdor Lieberman in the run-up to an election on January 22nd, is sitting pretty.
Why coddle those Palestinians by giving them a state of own?
If they really ran the West Bank, would they not fire rockets, just as their compatriots have done in Gaza?
Better to keep them behind that wall and smite them if they raise their heads.
Maybe the hardliners will win out; yet the Arab may change calculations.
Even if the Islamists taking power in Egypt and have little love for their priority will be difficulties at home.
Israel's defence budget is bigger than that of its four Arab neighbours combined.
Starting a war with the superpower will hardly help the new Arab governments mend their economies.
That the pragmatic Mr Morsi worked with Barack Obama to obtain a ceasefire augurs well - and might just mark the start of something.
too should look to the longer term.
With the rest of Arab world becoming more democratic, depriving Palestinians of their right to self-determination is creating a powder keg that is bound one day to explode in the territories occupied by Israel - much as a bus exploded Tel Aviv this week.
Repression is already undermining democracy the Jewish state, and exacerbates this as the Arab population
Bloody missions against Gaza every few years to knock back Hamas will exact a growing diplomatic toll.
Both sides prodding outsiders
The answer remains the one trumpeted by sensible people on both sides, most of the outside world and this newspaper: two states, with Israel ceding territory for security.
The hope a small one in the short term - is that the ceasefire will give a little more leverage to outsiders pushing that
Egypt, which must now set about stopping the flow of arms into Gaza, along Turkey and Qatar, is better placed than ever to persuade Hamas to accept the idea of a Jewish state based on the 1967 boundaries with land swaps a shared Jerusalem.
Arab outsiders should also press Hamas and to come together.
That do more to create a Palestinian state the imminent bid for virtual statehood at the
Mr Obama also has a in getting Israel to the table.
During his first term, he neglected to his own plan for peace.
Back in the White House, he is looking just as reluctant to be drawn in.
is woefully short-sighted.
America has a interest in a stable Middle East.
That means a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
plain packaging laws come into force in Australia
Smoking warnings and diseased body parts emblazoned on dull green boxes that are the same for all tobacco brands
Australia's world-first laws on cigarette and tobacco plain packaging have come into force, replacing brand logos and colours with generic drab olive coverings, gruesome pictures of diseased body parts and depictions of children and babies made by their parents' smoking.
Apart from the varying health warnings and images the only difference between the packs, mandatory from are the brand names, and these are all printed in identical small font.
It is the world's most strict regime for the packaging of tobacco.
Australia's federal government says the aim is to young people from smoking by stripping the of glamour.
It is relying on studies showing if people have not started smoking by age 26 there is a 99% chance they will never take it up.
"Even from a very early age you can see that kids understand the message that the tobacco company is trying to sell through their branding," said the federal health minister, Tanya Plibersek, citing studies that showed, for example, children linking a crown in a logo with the idea of being a princess.
While Australia has one of the world's lowest smoking rates and the changes will have little impact on multinationals' profits, other countries are considering similar steps.
The tobacco industry lobbied hard against the laws.
Tobacco firms said they would boost black market trade, leading to cheaper, more accessible cigarettes.
"There will be serious unintended consequences from the legislation," said Scott McIntyre of British American Tobacco Australia.
Counterfeiters from China and Indonesia will bring lots more these products down to sell on the streets of Australia.
Others say the laws have boosted their business.
Sandra Ha of Zico Import Pty Ltd, a small family business, said demand for cigarette cases, silicon covers mask the unpalatable packages, had shot up from almost nothing two months ago since British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco lost a challenge to the laws in Australia's high court.
Ha said Zico had sold up to 6,000 to wholesale outlets and was awaiting new stock.
This is good business for us.
The potential hitch, experts is the popularity of social media with the very demographic is targeting.
After a series of Australian laws banning advertising and sponsorship and requiring most sellers to cigarettes from view, tobacco marketing has moved online.
Australia has banned web advertising by local companies and sites cannot restrict overseas sites.
"If you are a marketer and you've only got this small window left to promote your products, online is the compelling place for to be in," said Becky Freeman, a public health researcher at Sydney University.
Freeman an increase in "average Joe" reviews of brands on social media sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
We have to ask, is just a private citizen who really loves Marlboro cigarettes and they've gone to the trouble of making video, or is there a marketing company involved?
British American Tobacco Australia said the industry was focused on dealing with the new rules rather than marketing.
industry has gone as far as paying for Ukraine, Honduras and the Dominican to the new rules - the countries are at the World Trade Organisation that trade is being unfairly restricted, despite none of the countries having significant trade with Australia.
A WTO ruling is likely in mid-2013.
Plibersek said the government held discussions with other countries considering similar laws on packaging.
Canada was the first country to make photograph warnings mandatory in 2001.
They now extend to more than 40 countries including Brazil, Turkey and Ukraine.
Tougher laws are being considered in Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and India.
Many smokers in Australia remain defiant.
The don't affect me.
I just ignore them.
"You just grab a smoke and put it away," Victor El Hage as he purchased a pack with a photograph of a mouth tumour.
Honestly, there's only one reason I'd stop, and that's my little girl.
James Yu, who runs the King of the Pack tobacconist in central Sydney, said the uniform packaging made it harder to stack his shelves
"It used to take me an hour to unload a delivery, now it takes me four hours," Yu said.
"The government should have just banned them altogether then we'd go fine, we're done, we'll shut up shop," said, his hands up in the air.
In Constantly Plugged-In World, It's All Bad to Be Bored
spent five unexpected hours in an airport this Thanksgiving holiday when our plane had mechanical difficulties and we had to wait for another plane to arrive.
So I had plenty of time to think about the subject of boredom.
won't lie to you.
Half a day in an airport waiting for a flight is pretty tedious, even with the distractions of books, magazines and iPhones (not to mention duty-free shopping).
But increasingly, some academics and child development experts are coming out in praise of boredom.
It's right for us and our children - to be bored on occasion, say.
It forces the to go on interesting tangents, fostering creativity.
And because most of us are almost consistently plugged into one screen or another these days, we don't experience the benefits of boredom.
So should we embrace boredom?
Yes.
And no.
But I'll get back to that.
First of all, like many people, I assumed that boredom was relatively recent phenomenon, with the advent of more leisure time.
Not so, says Peter Toohey, a professor of Greek and history at the University of Calgary in Canada and the author of "Boredom: A Lively History" (Yale University Press, 2011).
"Boredom actually has a very long history," he said.
There's Latin graffiti about boredom on the walls Pompeii dating from the first century.
Then there's of how we define boredom.
The trouble is that it has been defined, and discussed, in many different ways, said John D. Eastwood, an associate professor of psychology at York University in Canada.
After looking over the research literature and putting the idea in front a focus group of about 100 people, Professor Eastwood and colleagues defined boredom as experience of "wanting to, but being unable to in satisfying activity."
What separates boredom from apathy, said, is that the person is not engaged but wants to be.
With apathy, he said, there is no urge to do something.
The core experience of boredom, he said, is "disruption of the attention process, associated with a low mood and a sense that time is passing slowly."
Boredom can sound an awful lot like depression.
But Professor said that while they can be related, people who tend to see the problem as the environment or the world, while people who are depressed see the problem as themselves.
Sometimes we think we're bored when we just have concentrating.
In their study, "The Unengaged Mind: Defining Boredom in Terms of Attention," which appeared in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science in September, Professor Eastwood and his colleagues pointed to an experiment in which participants listened to a tape of a person reading a magazine article.
Some groups heard a loud and unrelated television program in the next room, heard at a low level so it was barely noticeable, while the third group didn't hear the soundtrack at all.
The ones who heard the low-level TV reported more boredom than the other two groups - they had concentrating but were not sure and attributed that difficulty boredom.
When you're trying to focus on a difficult or engaging task, disruption of attention can lead to boredom, said Mark J. Fenske, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Guelph in Ontario and one of the authors of the study.
On the other hand, when you're doing something dull, "such as looking for bad widgets a factory line, distracting music can help you not be bored."
In fact, he we now know that squirming and doodling, often seen as a sign of boredom, can actually help combat it by keeping people more physically alert.
"Research shows that kids who are allowed to fidget learn more and retain more information than those who are forced to sit still," Professor Fenske said.
We all experience boredom at some points - my flight delay, a droning speaker, a particularly tedious movie.
But some individuals are more likely to be bored than others.
To help measure this, researchers developed a "Boredom Proneness Scale" in the 1980s.
The scale includes questions like, "Many things I have to do repetitive and monotonous," and "I have so many interests, I don't have time to do everything."
Using such scales, researchers have discovered that boys tend to be bored more often than said Stephen Vodanovich, a professor of psychology at the University of West Florida, especially when it comes needing more, and variety of, external stimulation.
But in general, teenagers are a pretty jaded lot.
In 1991, Reed Larson, a professor of human and community development at the of Illinois, conducted an experiment in which he contacted almost 400 teenagers and their seven to eight a day by beeper.
He found that 32 percent of said they were bored in school and doing homework, while 23 percent said they were bored when they weren't in school.
On the other hand, 3 percent of parents said they were bored.
Larson he did not whether boredom percentages now, 21 years be higher or lower.
But he said he did know that "adolescence is a peak period for largely because children and teenagers are not given a lot of over what want to do.
So back to my original question: Is boredom good for
Sometimes no, in its extreme it can lead to take absurd physical risks, gamble or in substance abuse as a way to it, research shows.
On the other hand, many philosophers and writers discuss the connection between boredom and creativity, said Professor who has been studying the issue for more than two decades.
"Boredom is the brain's way to tell you you should be doing something else," said Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at N.Y.U.
But the brain doesn't always know the most appropriate thing to
If you're bored and use that energy to play guitar and cook, it will make you happy.
But if you watch TV, it may make you happy in the short term, but not in the long term.
So if child is and you give him an iPad, not be bored anymore, but he hasn't learned how to entertain himself, or self regulate, Professor Fenske said.
And "that self-regulation transfers from one situation to other," he said.
Your doesn't just learn entertain himself, but gets more self-control in other areas.
I don't think we really want to celebrate boredom.
Nor should we be too of it.
Rather, our goal should be to feel comfortable away from the constant of activity and technology.
Professor Eastwood agreed.
"We frame it as we need to be bored more, but boredom is an agonizing, restless desire to be connected with something meaningful," he said.
What people are really searching for, he is a way to unplug and enjoy down time.
"In an environment where we are constantly overstimulated," he said, "it's hard to find ways to engage when the noise down."
In Colorado, No Playbook for New Marijuana
Anthony Orozco, 19, community college student and soccer player in southeastern Colorado, is facing criminal charges for something that will soon be legal across state: the possession of a few nuggets of marijuana and a pipe he used to smoke it.
Mr. Orozco said that one day in September he and a few friends were driving in Lamar, on the plains near the Kansas border, when they were pulled over.
After the police officer found marijuana in the car, Mr. Orozco was issued a summons for possession and paraphernalia - petty offenses that each carry a $100 fine - and given a court date.
"We get treated like criminals," Mr. Orozco said.
But is he one?
In the uncertain weeks after Colorado's vote to legalize small amounts marijuana for recreational use, the answer in hundreds of minor drug cases depends less on the law than on location.
Hundreds of misdemeanor marijuana cases are already being dropped here and in Washington State, which approved a similar measure.
Police departments have stopped charging adults 21 years and older for small-scale possession that will be legally sanctioned once the laws take effect in the coming weeks.
But prosecutors in more conservative precincts in Colorado have vowed to press ahead with existing marijuana cases and are still citing people for possession.
At the same time, several towns from the Denver suburbs to the Western mountains are voting to block new, state-licensed retail marijuana shops from opening in their communities.
"This is evolving so quickly don't know what's going to happen next," said Daniel J. Oates, the police chief in Aurora, just east of Denver.
Regulators in Washington State are also scratching their heads.
And they are looking for guidance on how to set up a system of licenses for production, manufacturing, distribution and sales - all by a deadline of Dec. 1, 2013.
They say that Colorado, better or worse, is ahead of most states in regulating marijuana, first for medical use and now recreationally.
"Colorado has a more regulated market, so they will be a good guide," said Brian E. Smith, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
no place or system, Mr. Smith conceded, can do more than suggest what might work.
"There's no real precedent for us to follow," he said.
Washington's law, called I-502, takes effect on Dec. 6, also leaves year of limbo during which the state licensing system not exist, but legalized possession will.
And there are thorny mechanical questions that must be resolved during that time, like how to balance the state's mandate of "adequate access" to licensed marijuana with its prohibitions on cannabis businesses within 1,000 feet of a school, park, playground or child care center.
"Nowhere will it be more difficult to site a licensed cannabis business than in urban areas, particularly in the Seattle metropolitan area," said Ben a spokesman for Center for Legal Cannabis, a recently formed research group.
On Nov. 21, Chief Oates in Aurora sent his officers an e-mail announcing that the city attorney would no longer be prosecuting small marijuana violations for anyone 21 years or older, and that the would stop charging people for those crimes "effective immediately."
Chief Oates said that the police enforce city codes regulating medical growers, and that they would pursue drug traffickers and dealers.
In northern Colorado's Weld County, the district attorney, Ken Buck, represents stricter view.
After the vote, said his office would continue pursuing marijuana possession cases, mostly as a to press users into getting treatment.
Right now, 119 people face charges of two ounces or less of marijuana, though many are facing other charges.
"Our office has an obligation to prosecute offenses that were at the time they occurred," Mr. Buck said in a statement.
The response has been complicated even in places like rural Mesa County, where voters marijuana
police in Grand Junction, the county's largest city, are no longer citing adults for possession of small amounts.
county's district attorney, Pete Hautzinger, supported that decision, but also decided not to dismiss all of the pending possession cases.
"I do not think I'm wasting my time to enforce the law until it changes," he said.
Although 55 percent of Colorado voters supported the measure, bringing marijuana into the folds of government and legal system was never going to be simple.
And the contradictory reactions across state lay bare a ambivalence among local officials about the state's big green experiment.
"It's a cultural with district attorneys, said Sean McAllister, a Denver lawyer represents marijuana defendants and is a spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
"They spent so much of their lives prosecuting people that they still don't really accept that this is legal," he said.
As the first states to small amounts of marijuana like alcohol, Colorado and Washington are poised to become national test drug legalization.
As advocates and state officials plan for a new frontier of legalized sales, they are also anxiously awaiting direction from the federal government, which still plans to treat the sale and cultivation of marijuana as federal crimes.
Advocates for legalized marijuana are hoping the Justice Department yields.
Despite some high-profile arrests of medical marijuana sellers, the federal government has mostly allowed medical marijuana businesses to operate Colorado, Washington and 16 other states.
While drug agents will probably not beat down doors to seize a small bag of the drug, are likely balk at allowing state-regulated recreational marijuana shops allowed under the new laws, said Kevin A. Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration.
Several cities in Colorado are not waiting for federal authorities act.
Even before Election Day, some local governments approved moratoriums on any new marijuana shops, even though it will be about year before any can open.
Last week, the western city of Montrose took up a six-month ban, and is likely to pass it next week.
"We don't want put in a position where we license and then have a big federal issue," said Bob Nicholson, a City Council
Our community voted against this amendment.
We're looking at what the community voted for versus what the state voted for.
There's an awful lot of questions.
Petronella Wyatt: I was bullied out of Oxford for being a Tory
It not just today's university students who are attacked for their views
I can't remember a time when I didn't dream of a place at Oxford University.
Both my father and my elder brother had been at what I imagined was the world's greatest seat of learning, a modern-day wine-blushed Greek symposium encouraging the pillars of civilisation, free thinking and tolerance.
Yet, within two weeks of taking up my place at Worcester College in the late to read history, I'd packed my bags, precipitating the first scandal of my life.
My father broke down and cried.
Friends were baffled.
The Evening Standard diary claimed I'd quit because I objected to fellow having sex in the room to mine.
The writer A N Wilson announced waggishly that I'd departed because I was forced to drink out of chipped mugs.
The was less droll.
I ran away.
Yes, ran, because I had been subject to bullying and intimidation.
Not on account of my rather outré name, or the fact that I came from a private school.
I was persecuted for one reason only, and in this cradle of supposed enlightenment it was both bigoted and barbaric: father, the late Woodrow Wyatt, was a high-profile adviser to Margaret Thatcher and I was Conservative supporter.
Why bring up now, you might ask.
Well, recent reports suggest that a new generation of Right-of-centre students are suffering a similar persecution.
Such is the and increasing hatred of Tory students at Oxford that last week a group of them demanded the same equal-rights protection as gays, disabled people and ethnic minorities.
Conservative members of Christi College's junior common room (JCR) claim they are "often actively isolated, personally attacked and made to feel unwelcome" because of their political views.
They want to create a post on the college's equal opportunities committee to ensure that their opinions can be aired freely.
Their situation wasn't helped a BBC Two documentary, Wonderland: Young, Bright and on the Right, about student politics, which portrayed as oddballs and neo-Nazis.
It featured graduate Joe Cooke, former president the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), travelling in a Rolls-Royce, sporting a suit and silver-topped cane.
At other students say they are being treated as "scapegoats" for the introduction of tuition fees."
Luke Black, 20, vice-president of Nottingham University Conservative Association, told a Sunday newspaper that "there is a growing Left-wing bias at universities.
People assume we are like the Bullingdon Club without meeting us."
Samuel Roberts, 21, a student at Christi, who proposed the motion for greater protection, says such a climate is "uncomfortable," while Stephanie Cherill, 19, president elect OUCA, says there has been a deterioration in the attitude of JCR members towards people who are Right of centre.
"This poses a threat to the atmosphere of intellectual discussion, as well as to the welfare of members," she says.
I was in a minority of one during my few weeks at Oxford.
I had gone up in September a cripplingly shy 18-year-old.
Hatred of the Conservative Party was at its most febrile.
The year before, the university had voted to refuse Margaret Thatcher - a former student - an honorary degree, because of in higher education funding.
The atmosphere would have made a Stalinist shudder with apprehension.
During the first few days of freshers" week, when new students socialise with each other and the dons, I had a taste of the wormwood that was to come.
I was to find that the dons not only connived in the of Tory undergraduates but took part with relish.
The politics of the miners" strike, privatisation and the government's opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa were brought into the wood-panelled rooms of the tutorial.
My first one involved translating 18th-century French into English, and I was unprepared for what followed.
"Miss Wyatt," said the don, Harry Pitt (now deceased), "please translate the first paragraph."
I stumbled over it.
A small with a face like cake batter, Pitt was big on bile.
"Do Thatcherites refuse to learn French or are they just stupid?" he demanded.
The other undergraduates giggled.
Tears pricked the back of my eyes.
"I suggest you take some basic lessons in your spare time - that is, you're too busy socialising," Pitt snarled.
I walked to my rooms a disconsolate figure.
At dinner in college that evening I sat by myself; then I felt a light tap on my shoulder.
It was a second-year English student named James who introduced himself as a member of the OUCA.
"I know who you are," he said kindly.
I'm afraid it's like that.
Anyone suspected of being a Tory is picked on.
It's bad enough for me, but they know your father is close to Margaret Thatcher, so it will be worse for you.
Most Tory freshers pretend they're Labour.
Later, at a local I cravenly attempted to dissimulate.
I insisted I didn't agree with everything Mrs Thatcher said.
This ploy proved unsuccessful.
A first year student, who, ironically, had been to Eton, said: "You're the daughter a fascist pig."
You're contaminated.
Other students took up the refrain.
I was perverted, dirty.
"How do Tories have sex?" one asked.
They beat each other, don't they?
I felt the homosexuals have felt before the liberal legislation of the Sixties.
Would I ever be to lead a normal life at Oxford?
Would I be forced to meet like-minded people only after dark?
Would I have to turn to Labour and suppress my inclinations?
The three years me stretched out as a purgatory of ostracism and isolation.
The only openly Tory don was Norman Stone, Professor of Modern History, who was based at my college.
He was hated for not only a Conservative but a foreign policy to Thatcher and one of her speech writers.
He was hardly ever there.
He loathed the place as provincial and petty, and for its adherence to the Marxist-determinist view of history.
In 1997 he took up a professorship at the University of Bilkent, in Ankara, Turkey.
"You won't be happy here," he told me.
I began commuting from Oxford to my parents" house in London, finding refuge with my more open-minded metropolitan friends and family.
I told my father I hated Oxford and why.
He was incredulous.
During his time there in the Forties, all political views had been accepted.
"But it's the best place in the world," he said pathetically.
They wouldn't do not among dreaming spires.
Even my Communist friends always had impeccable manners.
His rheumy eyes began to cloud.
Give it a chance.
I'm sure it's all just a tease.
It would break my heart if you left.
Exhausted by my frequent trips to London, my emotional resistance was deteriorating.
A male friend of mine, also a Tory supporter, had succumbed to pressure and renounced his creed.
During a tutorial the following week, when another history don had suggested, in complete seriousness, that I was an "enemy of the people," decided do the
Inwardly blushing with I admitted to being "brainwashed by my parents" and called them "old fools."
The respite was short.
It was my father who the nail into the coffin of my Oxford career.
At the time, he wrote two columns in the Murdoch press each week.
My door was locked.
I cowered inside, after five minutes, my pursuers up.
When they left, I a suitcase and caught the first train to London.
I never went back.
You may call me a snivelling wimp.
But no 18-year-old should be subject to such intimidation and vitriol in an educational institution.
Even tragic is that it was Oxford, which not only produced 14 Tory prime ministers, but, to this day, hides behind an ill-deserved reputation for equality and freedom thought.
"Valentino prefers elegance to notoriety"
On the occasion of the "Valentino: Master of Couture," an exhibition that opened week in London, ABC speaks with Naty Abascal, Fiona and other of the Italian designer's famous clients.
Somerset House, former home of Queen Elizabeth I of England, is the only place in the British capital worthy of hosting Valentino Garavani exhibition.
inauguration of "Valentino: Master of Couture," the designer acknowledged a retrospective apotheosis that brings together over 130 couture gowns created by his fashion house over past 50 years.
"I love this palace" he says, in his unmistakable Italian accent.
This exhibition is the culmination a story whose only protagonist is "signore" Garavani, although it could not have been written without his distinguished
Valentino has always been fascinated by the rarefied and distant world of the nobility.
In the first room of the exhibition, open until March 3, there are a number of private letters and photos by the cream of aristocracy, from Princess Salimah Aga Khan, Lord Snowdon, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece Margaret of England.
Valentino exhibits these personal memories as if they were trophies of his social ascent from humble couturier in Voghera, northern Italy, to idol of the jet-set.
There is nothing wrong with loving royalty.
"At least they don't drop cigarette ends your magnificent carpet, like some beautiful pop music celebrities do," says Baroness Fiona Thyssen-Bornemisza.
In the '60s and '70s, we both lived in the Alps were good friends.
Valentino a spectacular host whose entertains with generosity and elegance.
"We all loved being invited to his chalet in Gstaad" says "Heini" Thyssen's ex-wife, a close friend of forgotten beauties as Marella Agnelli and Eugenie Niarchos.
Valentino has always preferred elegance to notoriety.
And he is a star.
Valeria Mazza, wearing a Valentino.
The Argentine model Valeria Mazza also recalls the couturier's charisma.
Many ago, after fashion show in Piazza di Spagna in Rome, we went for dinner at his flat.
There were twenty of us, including Sharon Stone and John Kennedy Jr.
You could see and feel his "spirit" in every detail of the flat and its decor, the food and the music.
"All the guests were made to feel important and loved" recalls the top model, who started working with him during Haute Couture Week Paris, in 1995.
"His designs are works of art and so never go out of fashion" she concludes.
Nobility parade
Garavani's life is not a story of obsession, but well reciprocated love.
He loves well-educated people who come from backgrounds, and they love him.
of the Somerset House galleries has been transformed into a glamorous, sixty-foot long catwalk which offers a role reversal: take the place of the models and have to parade down the catwalk while looking at a "audience" wearing Valentino masterpieces, for example, the dress Jackie Kennedy chose for her wedding with Aristotle Onassis, the costume Monica Vitti wore in "La Notte" and the wool and coat that belonged to Empress Farah Diba.
In this crowd of mannequins, names stand out such as Sibilla of Luxembourg, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, Mette-Marit of Norway, Rosario of Bulgaria and Sofia of Habsburg.
Naty Abascal and the designer, in 2006
Many of these clients say your first Valentino is like your love, "impossible to forget."
I remember it perfectly.
It was a pair of trousers, a shirt, a "gilet" waistcoat and jacket from the 1971-1972 autumn-winter collection.
"It was a gift gave me" says Naty Abascal, one of the designer's muses.
"I prefer him to other designers because of his femininity, his great love of women, and he enhances our beauty" added the former Duchess of Feria.
I love the colours he uses, they really stand out and "lend themselves" to your face.
Their are perfect.
The princess and fashion Patricia Giovampaola d'Arenberg also remembers the first time she wore a Valentino.
As a teenager living in Italy, I dreamed of reaching the age when I'd have the chance to wear one of his evening gowns...
My time finally came in the late '90s.
I bought my first Valentino dress to wear at a in the castle belonging to my cousin, Prince de
It was a red dress, with a frilly skirt, draped "corsage" and a neckline.
"It was a dream come true" says Princess D'Arenberg, the widow of Rodrigo d'Arenberg.
"Valentino is indifferent to fashion, obsession is timeless" says this Italian aristocrat who lives between Paris, New York and Buenos Aires.
Princess D'Arenberg looks her gowns with utmost care ... because a dress not just a dress, it's also the many memories go with it."
The "king" of fashion
The "grand finale" of the Somerset House exhibition is Marie-Chantal Miller's wedding dress from her marriage to Paul of Greece in 1995.
It took four months' work and 25 "girls" (as the designer calls his seamstresses) to create the pearl-encrusted, ivory-coloured silk gown with twelve different types of lace and a train four a half metres long.
According to journalist Suzy Menkes, the leading authority of the specialist press, that dress represents a fashion milestone the late 20th century, return of high society clients."
Dazzled for with "savoir-être" of the elite, Valentino now its finest exponent.
Cavaliere di Gran Croce (the highest-ranking distinction in Italy), Cavaliere del Lavoro, Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts des Lettres, and awarded the Legion of Honour, Garavani accumulates many honours as any of his clients' husbands.
"I've always struck by his refined and calm manner, and his neat and perfect appearance" acknowledges D'Arenberg.
The last time I saw him was a month ago a gala dinner at the Orsay Museum.
He was on the table of Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, a great friend of mine.
"He was immaculate, time still for him."
If a princess says that...
The hardest job in the world: human of Kawah Ijen
four euros, the Indonesian volcano risk life and limb carrying 70 kilos of sulphur along steep stone paths.
There are people whom work is hell, and others who - literally - work in hell.
This is the of Anto Wijaya, one of the 400 miners who make their living taking sulphur from the Kawah Ijen volcano, east of the island of
To do so, he has to descend every day to the bottom of the crater, where the sulphurous gas from the bowels of the earth solidifies on contact with air.
After breaking off large sulphur rocks, which in total can weigh up to 70 kilos, he carries them in two bamboo baskets on his shoulders along the steep stone paths.
It is only 250 to top of the volcano, which rises to 2,386 metres above sea level, but the exhausted porters take over 40 minutes to get there, at snail's pace, keeping their balance and measuring their steps carefully avoid slipping and falling over the precipice.
They know that one slip could cost them their lives, as happened to a French tourist who plunged to her death a few years ago on the hazardous Kawah Ijen cliffs.
The Kawah Ijen miners are paid 5 euro cents for each kilo of sulphur removed.
Once at the top, they make their way past the tourists who photograph them like circus monkeys then, heavy baskets, they walk three kilometres to the scales installed by a mining company a little further down, 1,850 metres above sea level.
This is PT Ngrimbi Candi, a company which, since 1960, has been exploiting the volcano, and quite literally its workers, whom it pays 662 rupees (5 euro cents) per kilo of sulphur.
It then sells the for 10,000 rupees (83 cents) to the petrochemical industry, as the mineral is widely used in everyday life and used in the manufacture of matches, fireworks, cosmetics, dynamite and even for whitening sugar.
"We generally carry 70 kilos, so we get about 46,000 (3.8 euros) a trip" explains Anto, who usually make three trips a day.
Each one takes three hours and end up exhausted, but it means he gets 138,000 rupees (11.5 euros) at the end of the day.
Although it a for such an inhuman effort, it is three times what he would earn in the field.
"Miners' wages are very high here, whereas coffee harvesting is paid 15,000 (1.2 euros) a day and the average monthly wage is two million rupees (167 euros) " explains the who previously worked as a mason in the island resort of Bali.
There, his wage was 75,000 rupees (6.2 euros) a day and the work was not as hard, but Anto has returned with his family to Banyuwangi, a village near the volcano, for a compelling reason which, in Indonesia, is as overriding as the sulphur: "I married a girl from Bali, where they are Hindu, and I've brought her to Java convert to Islam."
Anto has asthma, has difficulty breathing, coughs constantly and his eyes are irritated the toxic gases.
At 27 years old, Anto has been risking his life for three in the Kawah Ijen volcano, and the sulphur has to take its toll on even though covers his face special mask and
He has asthma, he has difficulty breathing, coughs constantly and his eyes are irritated the toxic gases from the
This is the price you have to pay to realise dreams.
"I'll go on working two more years because I to open a shop or study Spanish or French" he vows in more than acceptable English.
Punished for life, this pleasant, young man could be a tour guide, waiter or hotel receptionist, but instead he does the work of a mule.
Sharing a filthy wooden hut with other porters, he gets up every day at two in the morning because the sulphur doesn't stop flowing at when its characteristic yellow colour turns blue and it glows in the dark.
Defying the shadows, Anto descends the crater and lights the path with a small torch attached to the helmet he bought with his money.
Some 400 porters carry sulphur on their shoulders from the crater.
Despite their huge profits, the mining company has not mechanised the sulphur extraction process to save costs, nor has it provided any equipment for the porters, who work for themselves and by the kilo.
In fact, they do not even see any of the 30,000 rupee (2.5 euro) per camera surcharge that, top of the rupee (1.2 euro) entrance the guards of this natural reserve charge to tourists who come to photograph the volcano and their human mules.
"This work is for animals, people" Madrusin, a burly 42-year porter who has been working at Kawah Ijen for three decades, since leaving school.
He can lift up to 110 kilos, ensuring that he will go on working "all he can" because he needs the money to educate his three children, aged between 18 and 10 years old.
I won't retire, I'll die here because volcano has been my whole life.
Although the sulphur burns your throat and stings your eyes when wind suddenly changes and traps the miners in the thick columns of smoke coming out of the they are so hardy that no-one complains of serious apart, of course, from their common respiratory osteoarthritis, knee pain and sores the which have been misshapen by the weight of the
Balancing the on his back, Unainik can only carry 50 kilos now he is 53 old.
Every day, he and his fellow workers break off 15 tonnes of sulphur the volcano, which three lorries move to the warehouse in Tamansari, 18 kilometres away along a goat path that passes through scrubland.
"I won't retire, I'll die here because the volcano has my whole life" says Unainik, opening a mouth of gaps where teeth use to be.
The oldest of his children, 30 years old, also works carrying sulphur.
Time but poverty perpetuates from generation to generation in one of the hardest jobs in the world: the one done by human mules in the Kawah Ijen volcano.
Singapore seeks babies to save its economy
Singaporeans blame their stress and the cost of property and education for not having children.
"Singapore's population needs to grow."
I'm a patriotic husband, you're my patriotic wife, let's do civic duty and create life!
It may seem unlikely that these verses are part of an advert for mint sweets, but spite of this - perhaps because of it - the video went viral on YouTube in Singapore earlier this year.
The are part of a rap and make use of local references such as "Let's put a bao (bun) in the oven" make fun of the birth rate in Singapore.
The advertising company that made the video, BBH, is hopeful that the advertisement will manage to focus attention to the problem in a fun way.
Its creative director, Douglas Hamilton, says he wanted to use the power music to make people perform their "national duty."
It's purely Internet thing, so we had to make it fun and amusing.
It's the biggest problem facing this country.
We are the world's worst at reproducing our own progeny, so we felt it was issue we had to address.
We knew the Government had tried many like launching perfumes with pheromones or organising speed dating evenings.
of these ideas may have been creative, but they didn't necessarily work.
So we thought: why not be as creative possible to solve the problem, by composing a rap?
1.2 children
But the Singapore Government is not taking it so lightly.
It spends USD 1,300 per year on policies to encourage to have more children.
A government package for marriages and parents grants up to USD 15,000 per child, maternity leave and distributes tax benefits.
But this has had little effect.
Singapore is a rich, high technology city State in Southeast Asia, also known for the conservatism of its leaders and its strict social controls.
The birth rate in Singapore, according to its national division, currently stands at 1.2 children per woman.
The last it was over 2, as replacement rate, was in 1976.
So why are Singaporeans not having children?
Tan Wei Ming, Director of Marriage and Family Policy of the National Population Division, said that it is a result of "better education" and "a wider range of career opportunities."
"This given people a wider range of options in terms of life goals priorities, beyond getting married and starting a family" he explains.
These changes in social norms have contributed to increasing numbers of people who are single, and delaying marriage and births, which has resulted in a decrease the birth rate in Singapore.
Meanwhile, an EU immigration policy aimed at dramatically increasing immigration cope with the population decline has created resentment among the local population.
In Singapore, there are where xenophobia against many new immigrants is widespread and thinly disguised, especially the Chinese who are criticised for keeping wages low and not integrating.
Increased immigration is also seen as one of the reasons why, last year, the Singapore ruling party experienced its worst election result since independence.
Since the election there has been an attempt to correct the problem, with highest taxes and levies for foreign workers.
Unexpected consequences
While a fall the birth rate has known effects on a nation's economic growth, tax revenues, healthcare costs and immigration policies, in Singapore's case there are also some unexpected consequences.
The Government is trying not to build so many small houses.
For example, it has to influence the real estate sector.
Its urban authority has started to control the number of small apartments, known as "shoe boxes," which can be built in certain areas of the city.
These apartments have surface of 46 square metres and have very successful in terms of sales.
However, there concern that they may promote a single-living and discourage developers who want to build large family houses.
But, Lim Yew Soon, managing director of the real estate company EL Developers, says his "shoe boxes" sell much faster than larger units.
They are more popular, in the sense that the units sell days, even weeks, faster than larger units.
This they are much better for our cash flow.
However, he admits that the new regulations give clearer guidance to developers, who previously had obstacles put in their way if they provided for too many small units in a project.
Too stressed
Singapore is a city
these new rules may be a step towards increasing the national birth when talking to Singaporeans working in the central financial district, it they will much impact.
"People are very stressed, houses are expensive and so is education, a lot of people are off having a family" says a young executive.
Other people can have children.
me, it is important to have own money and time" says another young man of around 20 years old.
Men and women alike mention their careers, stress and the cost of property and as the reasons preventing them from having children.
So, much as the Government is trying to encourage its citizens to have children, when it comes to babies, the Singaporeans have the last
What is private offline is private online
Privacy.
According to the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary, it means the quality of private life or "the level of privacy which a person is entitled to protect from any
What is privacy for an under 16?
How do you apply this definition to their daily life and social networks?
Do they understand the dangers they are exposed to by airing information over the Internet which they probably would not share offline?
ElPeriódico interviewed five aged between ten 15 years old who are frequent Internet
In four cases, they the term with "something very much mine" on a personal level, and "in the user name password" when to social networks.
"I wouldn't upload my secrets in a post" says Jorge, aged ten, when to explain the meaning of privacy on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, with which he has had accounts for two years.
"They are very secret secrets, I'll tell my mother, but not everybody" he says.
On FB I upload nice pictures or games.
And I have fun people I know.
"I wouldn't share a photo that isn't mine, that belongs to somebody who's doing something stupid" he says.
The child that it is bad to post obscene pictures of naked people, crimes, or write humiliating or aggressive comments.
Jorge says he knows the 35 friends he has on FB and his nine on Twitter.
Most are relatives.
His mother is included, and she has the password to one of the accounts.
I opened Twitter to express myself post interesting tweets.
"I don't know if they answer me, I only upload them" he adds.
networking is fun, I can talk quickly to relatives far away or my friends" says.
He does not hesitate to reply that he would never accept a request from an unknown person.
Nor would he take any notice of someone who recommends a stranger to him.
The case of Joseph, aged 14, is different.
This teenager has accounts with Hotmail, My Space and Ask, and in the last case he admits not knowing of the people added his friends
"It doesn't bother me, because we have something in common, like music" he says.
The boy says that no-one has suggested anything to him or asked him for his home address or phone number.
"If they pressured or asked me for I'd just delete them from account" he states.
Joseph became a follower on Ask, after reading a recommendation on Twitter.
This teenager is not alien to experiences of what is now known as cyberbullying.
An acquaintance of a friend of mine being pestered on a social network.
They were threatening him demanding money from him.
"I never found out who it was" he says.
The victim, according to José, did not close account.
"He just made it private."
He then explains a series of steps to the account safely.
Unlike Jorge, this would upload photos of acquaintances in uncomfortable or embarrassing
I do it if I didn't like somebody, or they made me want do it.
"However, I know that's cyberbullying" he
Key questions
Marielos Porras, an teacher with a degree in Education Learning, believes that to guide children and teenagers, they should understand that the purpose of social media is to inform.
"The Internet emerged as means of searching for information, but with the appearance of these websites, the rules of the game changed" he says.
Porras says the scholar Marc Prensky, a Master's degree in Education from Yale University and author of the work Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, coined these terms to explain the phenomenon.
Digital natives are those children and young people born with technology.
"We are the digital immigrants who have to teach them, when we are still in fact learning" he
He says that the is complex, "because we are asking them to have a clear policy on what is appropriate or not to disclose, publish or divulge, an age at which maturity is not conducive to this."
"They also have to be selective when what matters most is to be popular and have thousands of friends, without thinking of the consequences" he adds.
According to the specialist, the most effective way to teach children and teenagers what privacy is, is through questions that make them
"Telling them not to do it is no good" he
Porras then some options: There are things you tell a stranger, so why do it online?
Or, would you like a friend to publish a photo of you like the one posted of a friend?
you know what others publish about you?
When tagging party photos, did you ask the other people's permission to tag them?
And one more question: does everyone need to know what you're doing all the time?
Another point is to make them see that they must behave as they offline.
The rules are the same.
"Outside the Internet, people act with respect, morality and other principles, so they should act the same way social networks" he says.
Monitoring
Stuart Guard, a university professor, primary school teacher and educational consultant, says it is essential for parents to read social policies thoroughly.
By understanding all the clauses, they have solid grounds talk to their children about the implications of opening online account.
"For example, the age at which you are allowed to share or publish" he says.
According to Guardia, it is important to remind children the "don't talk to strangers" lesson.
Unasur Summit closes without making public the Lima Declaration
The Sixth Presidential Summit of the South American Union of Nations (Unasur) concluded today in Peru without making public the Lima Declaration, previously announced and theoretically signed by the seven attendee leaders.
repeatedly tried to gain access to the document signed the UNASUR Meeting of Heads of State and but Presidential and Chancellery sources initially said they deliver it after the summit closed, but later they claimed that it will be published at some point on the Peruvian Government website.
When asked text, they pointed out that the content had disclosed by Peruvian President, Ollanta Humala, during a brief statement to the press.
Journalists' access to information from the Summit was restricted all times.
During the summit, in the press room, only video was aired, with no sound, showing the presidential meeting with the message "closed session, audio restricted."
The little information that reporters was given by the press spokesmen of some of the UNASUR governments attending the meeting, but the Peruvian Government.
The only released during the summit was the list of attending which angered hundreds of journalists from various national and international media, who more details.
The Peruvian President then sent an email to the media with the "final statement" of the summit, but this was Humala's statement, and not the official document that closed the summit.
Last October, Peru hosted the Summit of South American-Arab Countries (ASPA), and this time, repeated requests from the press, the previously announced Declaration again not made public.
The ASPA official website confirms that the document was last Tuesday.
At international events, the Peruvian authorities were pains to ensure that there were broadcasting systems assured for all the journalists, but limited the obtaining of a maximum.
The summit also concluded with joint commitment of Chile and Peru to accept a by the Hague Court to adjudicate a border dispute between the two countries.
The Presidents Peru, Ollanta Humala, and Chile, Sebastián Piñera, met during regional event and confirmed that they respect the of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which on Monday, at The Hague, will start to hear the arguments of both parties, in the lawsuit Lima filed against Santiago.
"We will obey and execute the order that currently defines the differences we are bringing before this international court" said Humala, together with Chilean counterpart.
"Chile has been, is and will remain a country that respects international law and peaceful resolution of disputes, treaties and international courts" added Piñera, greeting Humala with a handshake, alongside the flags of the two countries.
Confirmation of both presidents that they submit to the ICJ came after Colombia this week denounced the Bogotá Pact, whereby it accepted to submit to the judgement of this international court, following a decision on its maritime boundary with Nicaragua which regarded as seriously flawed.
The summit was held with the absence of the Presidents of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff; Hugo Chavez; Bolivia, Evo Morales; and Argentina, Cristina Kirchner.
Paraguay, which was suspended by in 2011 after the dismissal of former President Fernando Lugo, was not involved in the meeting.
Host President Ollanta Humala was responsible for opening the session in the closing the summit, just after noon in Lima.
The President read the final document which reported that 16 agreements were adopted and the action plans laid down for 31 projects between the South American countries, for a total of 17 billion dollars of investments.
Among the resolutions adopted, it was that UNASUR take "important steps toward the goal of a South citizenship, for which residence agreements are being extended."
He reported that actions are being implemented to improve "cooperation in the fight against insecurity and transnational organised crime, actions to make medication more accessible, low-cost Internet access in all areas of South America, and to deal jointly and with risks of natural disasters."
With Europe in crisis, "economic consolidation (in Latin America) should not have a triumphalist attitude but should to expand its productive matrix and glimpse a better future for its people" Humala added.
"We decided to focus on a group of 31 flagship projects that will improve connection areas of South America, especially in rural and border areas... uniting countries and creating new economic networks" said the Peruvian President in a message read out.
Among these projects, he mentioned that five are in Peru and are located in the transverse of its territory, between the coast and Brazil, and two focus on increased connection with Ecuador, although he no further details.
Also, the final document mentioned the political situation in Paraguay.
"We hope the electoral process in that country serves to reincorporate it in the Union of South American Nations," from which it is currently excluded.
The need for Latin America to remain a prosperous, peaceful and integrated nation, with good neighbourly relations, was another issue highlighted by the summit.
In this sense, the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, said before the start of the regional event that he expected to meet with his counterpart from Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, on Saturday in to respectfully discuss the maritime dispute after the failure of the ICJ, questioned by Bogota.
"The day after (Saturday) I might have a meeting with President Daniel Ortega" Santos
"We will review all these paths, [which] are not exclusive, and the treaty with Nicaragua will a conversation with Nicaragua" he emphasised.
"With President Ortega, I hope I can say that we handle this in the most civilised and respectful manner possible" said Santos.
Santos Ortega are due to meet on Saturday in Mexico, where they expect to attend the of the country's new President, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Also, as part the summit, the bloc's foreign defence ministers met in advance to approve the 2013 Action Plan, which seeks to strengthen dialogue and consensus on defence in the region.
Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Guyana, Surinam and Paraguay make up UNASUR, although the latter currently suspended.
Peru has the pro tempore presidency of the regional bloc.
"South America should learn from Europe to integrate citizenship" says Rafael Correa
The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said today that the creation of a common citizenship is a goal that "South America, in this case, must learn from Europe."
Correa, who took part in the Eleventh Presidential of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) held in Lima, told Peru's state television that Europeans "killed one another in the Second World War" and other conflicts, "but now practically one country."
To this end, he defended the project to establish South American citizenship encouraged by countries of UNASUR.
"We have to achieve free movement of citizens and workers for any South American as is already the situation with members of the Andean Community. However, there are still reactionary sectors that want us to return to the past" he said.
The Ecuadorian President was also in favour of the restructuring of the Organisation of American States (OAS) under the premise of reducing the influence of the Anglo-Saxon states and taking into account those who have signed the Pact of San José human rights.
Those who speak with authority commit to anything, whereas we South Americans sign everything.
"It is incomprehensible that Inter-American Commission Human Rights is in Washington under US funding" he said referring to Ecuador giving political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Correa said he does not that decision because with it he has not betrayed his principles, but has respected his "deep democratic and human rights values."
He added that, at the time, "he had reasonable suspicion Assange would be extradited another country and that his case would be respected."
Additionally, he criticised the Swedish courts for demanding he be subject to questioning for sexual offence in his country, when "Swedish legislation itself dictates that he can be questioned via videoconference, which could done from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London."
Correa said that there is a risk of deterioration of Assange's physical and mental health.
"I have not spoken to him since he was at our embassy, but the ambassador informed me that he had a minor lung problem, nothing serious" said the Ecuadorian President.
What there is, is the danger that his physical and mental health deteriorate due to being locked in a small space without any outdoor exercise.
"That would complicate the health of any person" he added.
Correa said that the solution to the asylum granted to Assange in June by the Ecuadorian in London, through the issue of a pass that permits travel to Ecuador, in the hands of Great Sweden and the European legal authorities, and stressed that there have been talks with London to seek a solution to the imprisonment of the WikiLeaks founder.
We do not negotiate with human rights, we do not use that word in this case, but there have been ongoing discussions.
"The solution to this problem in hands of Great Britain, Sweden and the European authorities, because Assange's lawyer, Baltazar Garzon, is handling a series of cases in different European courts" he said.
And he felt that "if Britain says no to the safe-conduct it's over."
And Sweden, as its legislation perfectly well allows it do, and as it has done in other cases, questions Mr Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, him via Skype tomorrow, this is over.
Correa took the opportunity to reassert himself as a defender of freedom of the press and stated that what he does not tolerate is "the mediocrity, dishonesty and lies that undermine the of expression."
"The greatest enemies of the press freedom are not evil and wicked politicians, but bad journalists depending on profit, blackmail and extortion" he said.
In that regard, he welcomed the fact it was no longer these journalists, "or the bankers or bourgeois and hegemonic countries that dominate Ecuador" and said that, if re-elected, he will "step up the revolution to continue on the same path and in the right direction."
Correa also supported the decision to maintain the veto on in UNASUR, at least until their next elections, arguing that the body "must firm and tolerate opportunism and a coup masked with legality" because this will in fact "destroy the legitimacy of Paraguayan democracy."
The Ecuadorian President also considered the "perfectly pertinent" desire of his Colombian counterpart, Manuel Santos, to now negotiate with Nicaragua the maritime boundary between the two countries, after the ruling the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in favour Nicaraguan maritime sovereignty.
For now that ruling is not being followed.
It is a problem a South country and a Central American one.
Conflict is inevitable, but overcome by the desire to walk together.
They need to be processed in comprehensive manner to overcome them and move forward.
Additionally, he in a sound conclusion to the boundary dispute opposing Peru and Chile in the same court and that "it is right for Latin America to refer to international if both countries agree to losing, however hard it may be."
With reference to the possibility of his standing as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections in Ecuador a third consecutive term, he said he sees that possibility "with much optimism and joy, although at times is pretty hard."
Correa said that if he loses the elections in February 2013, he will retire from public life.
Personally, I've never been interested in power, but in situations as as those in Ecuador, socio-economic poverty can only be corrected by political power.
"My political movement believed that it was me who that probable victory, so we have to accept that responsibility" he said.
If I won, it would be my last period in office and then I would leave public life.
If I lose, likewise.
"It's a decision" he confirmed.
Correa also referred to Venezuelan Hugo Chavez's new health treatment in Cuba.
just with Venezuelan Vice President Nicolás Maduro and he tells me Chavez went for treatment that was already planned, routine treatment, and it was expected he would win the and return to Cuba.
"This does not mean a health relapse for President Chavez" he said.
In Lima today, the Ecuadorian Head of State attended the Sixth Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which concluded with calls for greater regional integration to sustain progress, equality and security.
Deaths caused by AIDS are nowadays due late detection
Fabrizio was 21 years old when they confirmed his test result: HIV positive.
"It was like a bomb dropped he says, recalling the time of the announcement, which the doctor was trying to make "softer," apparently unsuccessfully.
The boy hid it from his family.
He decided to illness alone and began to learn about it; thanks to his efforts he has just celebrated his 43rd birthday.
He is undoubtedly one the oldest patients in HIV Unit of the Guadalajara Civil Hospital (CHG), where he arrived in 1994 after several battles with health.
Fabrizio has lived with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for 22 years, hard to imagine in the early '90s, when there were many questions, few treatment options and a deal of stigma.
Then, even the of an IMSS [Mexican Social Security clinic refused to discharge him "because he had a
At that time, having Aids was synonymous with death.
Now it is possible to survive the syndrome and do so with quality of
However, many people are still unaware of their illness, and seek help when the virus has caused havoc, "exhausted" their immune systems and they are suffering from opportunistic infections.
31 years of the onset of AIDS around the world, at least since the first reported cases, "the great achievement at this time is that the life expectancy patients starting treatment in good time and the life expectancy of the general population is exactly equal" stated the head of the CHG HIV Unit, Jaime Andrade Villanueva, saying that this information was endorsed in April this year in a prestigious scientific journal.
Infectious disease specialist and expert in HIV/AIDS, Andrade Villanueva said that 2008 scientists had concluded that AIDS was not a death sentence, but that life expectancy and of life depend on of damage to the immune system that patients present they are diagnosed, with a higher life expectancy for non-drug users: up to 30 years for with CD4 count and 50 years for those reporting a 500 count.
In simple terms, this means that anyone HIV positive 25 years old, under these terms and "as long as they keep under control, can live with no problems to 75" said the interviewee.
To gauge progress, it should be remembered that the average life expectancy of Mexicans today is 76 years.
Although mortality has dropped significantly in recent years and, in the case of Mexico, the number of people of has fallen from 6,678 in 2007 to 4,862 in 2011 (UNAIDS annual report), it true since the advent AIDS, 60 per cent of patients in the national database have died.
In Jalisco alone, only people died in 2011, and there have been 187 deaths up to May of this year; however, we are assured that there has been universal access to antiretroviral drugs since 2005.
Why are do still deaths occur?
- I think the problem is to do access to treatment.
That's how I view and that's how it's been at our hospital.
For at least the last 12 we've had no shortage of medicine, problem is that patients arrive in an advanced state of illness because they are unaware of their HIV status, that to say, the stages of the disease.
He gave a compelling statistic: "Nine out of ten patients arrive when they already have an opportunistic infection, so what needs to be done to have a greater impact on overall mortality is to make earlier diagnoses and, therefore, offer mass detection tests for who needs them. "
Specialists and officials of the State Council of AIDS Prevention Jalisco (COESIDA) agree on this proposal, as do the patients themselves, such as Fabrizio, who came to be tested at a private laboratory, motivated because a friend had done so despite his young age, he was around in the AIDS era and had even suffered Kaposi sarcoma, a cancerous tumour that is one of the common complications.
Everything changes when you know you have AIDS.
Some people think they're going to die and don't want to know anything.
"If I'm going to die, I'd rather have a blow-out three times a week" they say, but not in my case.
The change was the better; I eat well, I I my drugs.
To date, his parents are only aware he had cancer.
I live as normal a life as anyone else.
"I work, I part in a lot of I travel, I an active but responsible sex life, I take care of myself and the other person" Fabrizio, who agreed to share his intimate secrets with MILENIO JALISCO, to motivate those people with his story who today, in the context of World AIDS Day, are afraid.
They should get tested if they are at risk. because the sooner they know if they are HIV positive, the better, and if they have already been diagnosed, they must learn to live like any other person, while being responsible.
This is his message, which summarises the theme of the fight against AIDS in 2012.
Condoms behind the counter.
The gaps between health programmes and ordinary citizens are huge, said Ricardo Salazar, a journalist from Guadalajara who has taken up the HIV cause.
And the greatest cure is prevention.
In places dedicated to this task "the distribution of condoms has actually increased; previously, they used to give us one or two, now they give a hundred, and that's fine, but it out there are still people out there have no access condoms" he said.
Among the most vulnerable to new infections are teenagers.
"Why do you want them?" is a common question, asked with sarcasm and according to the values of social workers, counsellors, pharmacy workers and healthcare staff who do not want to expose to sex, said the speaker.
It was decided to change such inefficient allocation, and that condoms should not only be placed behind but packets of one should found in public toilet dispensers in places frequented by young people.
This is not promoting promiscuity.
It is about paying for their beers motel fees, as Governor Emilio Gonzalez said, when asked if there would be distribution of condoms during his administration.
"And it's not about sexuality, but it is best to provide condoms to those already practising sexual activity" he said.
Jalisco key points
There are 13,435 cumulative cases (12,158 AIDS and 1,317 HIV).
The state is 4th in the nation in new and cumulative cases of AIDS and 13th in HIV.
92% of new infections are through sex, 6% via the bloodstream and 2% perinatal.
An estimated 50,000 people may be living with HIV, as for each registered case there around 4-5 people who not know they are positive.
Ratified by a United States court of appeal, a judgement which ignores the of the Vitro Group's debt achieved via a bankruptcy in Mexico, the scenario is an ominous precedent for any national company with offices in the neighbouring country that has solvency problems.
It seems, then, that the proceedings in support of survival of firms permit Mexican law are not valid in land of stars and stripes, contrary to international conventions.
In practical terms, the endorsement of the judgement delivered on 15 June by Judge Harlin Hale the Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas, leaves Mexican firms defenceless against possible seizure of their outside of Mexico.
However, the decision opens the door for the leading glass manufacturer in Mexico to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, claiming three inconsistencies.
From start, while the trial judge notes that creditors should be governed by United States the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, states that the main action is the insolvency action handled in Mexico.
The first would involve ignoring international procedural cooperation in cases of insolvency of companies with transnational
Indeed, the UN Model Law for International Trade Law Uniformity was created for this purpose, with American Law Institute positioned as arbitrator.
Secondly, the judgement establishes that without the intercompany vote, with the debts the Vitro subsidiaries had with their parent company recognised in the critical mass of the the majority needed to approve the restructuring might not be achieved.
However, law recognises the possibility.
In fact, the Vitro case was the first one in which the scheme was accepted.
There are half a dozen examples, including Agremex and Commercial Mexicana, whose intercompany debts were endorsed by the Federal Bankruptcy Institute.
What is also certain is that, not including the votes of subsidiaries, the Vitro creditors who fought against it in the courts, namely "vulture" such as Aurelios Capital, Aurelios Convergence, Elliot International and Limited, did not achieve a
The was percent versus 37.
This data is omitted by the Court of Appeal.
From another perspective, the latter blames Vitro for the difficult situation it has faced since 2008, while trying to avoid the severe economic crisis faced by United States, turning its on the country.
For now, the Gonzalez Sada family firm has lodged a motion for reconsideration before the Court of Appeal for the vote to reach the plenary of the court, that is, the five judges, given that only three voted previously.
Should this fail, an appeal for review by a higher court, in this case the US Court, will be filed.
The real problem is that the court bypassed a document sent by the Government of Mexico in the capacity of amicus curiae ("friend of the Court"), which details the procedure followed by Vitro under the framework of the Commercial Insolvency Law, noting that the discharged itself with adherence to the agreements signed by the two countries to link it with Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Act of the United States.
Moreover, it should be noted that the country yielded to the principles the United Nations Commission on International Trade, is the rules set for cross-border insolvency cases, ensuring fairness for debtors and creditors.
Double whammy: Vitro hit and country hit.
Balance Sheet
With complaints put on the table by the unions of Mexicana Airlines against the former owner of the company, Gastón Azcárraga Andrade, who is accused of mismanagement, dormant for several months, the Airline Pilots Union Association already found the bottleneck.
The proceedings headed by Carlos Diaz Chavez Morineau has just filed a criminal complaint against the National Securities Commission, which is accused of obstructing
The claim is that the supervisory authority has consistently refused to provide to the Attorney General's Office on a transaction carried out by the employer remove 198 million pesos from trust F/589 of Banco IXE, on behalf of de Aviación.
The resources were apparently channelled towards the purchase of shares in the Administradora Profesional de Hoteles.
As you know, Azcarraga Andrade is the main shareholder of the Posadas hotel chain.
Opposing Dragon Mart
A group of local and foreign environmentalists, academics, businessmen and members of the public gathered at the weekend at a forum at the University of the Caribbean to approve the creation of a broad front to oppose the opening of the Chinese Dragon Mart in Cancun.
As you know, we are talking about a huge sales and distribution centre in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, selling Chinese products, with a residential area at the bottom for employees of 150 companies.
Previously, Canacintra had managed to unite the governors of the southeast of Mexico to oppose the building that destroyed part of protected area and represents the mother of all threats to industry.
The of ACTA
Government ignored an order of Senate to explain under what terms and conditions the Mexican Ambassador in Japan signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement, known by its acronym ACTA, according to the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, and the matter has been archived.
As you know, the action was taken even though the Senate had ruled out the possibility, deeming it an infringement of freedom of expression on social networks.
term
In effort to repay long-term debt without affecting short-term debt, the housing developer Homex is placing securities exchange certificates on the market for 500 million pesos.
The issue is the first of four identical issues which are offering to repay interest every 28 days.
Birth of Competival
A consortium under the name Competival has just been established, the companies NYCE, e-Quality and Kernet, leaders information technology, objective of which will be to market the services of software clusters in Central and South America.
Investments in this area exceed USD 1.5 billion.
Hector "Hetin" Reyes: has been my life"
Basketball globetrotter Hector "Hetin" Reyes was involved in the sport for over 60 years and, thanks to it, travelled the world.
Few people in Puerto Rico have a mental recollection of local basketball history as broad as that of Héctor "Hetin" Reyes.
Reyes was immersed in the sport for over 60 years before confined to a wheelchair in 2008 following a stroke; he was a minor league player, National Superior Basketball player, BSN representative and manager with the Bayamón Vaqueros or President of the Basketball Federation.
wore lots of hats in basketball throughout my life, including several at the same time, like when I was president of the BSN, general manager and federative president the Team during the '90s," recalled Reyes during Primera Hora's visit to his home in Bayamón, where he lives with Isabel, his loyal wife for over 50 years.
"Basketball has been my life."
Reyes is not exaggerating when makes that statement.
The walls of his house are almost totally decorated with pictures and memorabilia denoting his long career, which goes to prove it.
Bayamón at heart
Of them all, the ones he with the most emotion are the ones that remind him of his time spent with the Vaqueros, from the mid-50s as a player until 1982, when completed 15 years serving as co-agent or agent the franchise.
"Those were my best years, the ones I enjoyed the most because I had the opportunity to be part of the Vaqueros' eight championships, since 1967, either as agent, co-agent or manager.
There were many good years, the five consecutive championships from 1971 to 1975.
And then I said goodbye with one in 1981, Jerome debut year in the BSN.
"Cuco" Ortiz took over - he was a great manager" said Reyes.
I remember that Bartow, who had directed here and was at the University of Alabama (Birmingham), said to 'I've got a very strong player you, 6'7" tall.
Do you want him?'
And that the beginning of Mincy, one of the best players Puerto Rico ever had.
Bartow then recommended the sharpshooter Gausse Raymond, who established residency here and was one of our best shooters.
remember him saying that if Mincy had given Bayamon one championship, Gausse would help get another.
The Vaqueros' championship with Gausse was enjoyed, but from a distance, because in 1988 he was already becoming a federative bigshot.
that time, he preferred to enjoy his own and Mincy's accomplishments in the national team.
I remember we beat the United States for the first time during the 1989 Pre-Olympics in Mexico.
Then came the 1990 World Cup, where came fourth and it should have been bronze, but for the Canadian referee who made us repeat the final for the second time, said Reyes.
Is the 1990 World National Team the best you've ever seen?
It's one of the best, as good the one that beat the Dream Team in the 2004 Olympics.
However, my favourite was the one in the 1991 Pan American Games in Cuba, when we won gold and gave the US team a beating, which was quite similar to the time we won bronze at World Cup.
That team not only again included Gausse, Ramon Rivas, Fico López and 'Piculín' (Ortiz), but also the young (Javier) 'Toñito' Colón and James Carter, the Leon brothers Edgar) and Mario 'Quijote' Morales, who was kept out of the 90 team by a knee injury.
A team that maybe was not best terms of members, but which gave us a gold medal and was a great joy to work with, was the 1995 Pre-Olympic team in Neuquen, Argentina.
With role players such as 'Canito' Nieves, Pablo Alicea and the young Rolando Hourruitiner replacing the players suspended after shambles of the Mar del Plata Games, we won gold against all the odds.
Who was the best Puerto Rican player?
Without any doubt, Piculín Ortiz.
His numbers at international tournament level are awesome.
Nobody in Puerto Rico dominated at that like Piculín did.
Not to mention his career in the various he played in.
Who was the best Puerto Rican manager?
That's a one.
We had very good team, including Julio Toro, Flor Melendez, Carlos Morales, Raymond Dalmau, Armandito Torres.
Of the youngsters, I really like the work of Leo Arill.
What do you consider your greatest achievement in the federation?
Having been part of National Team's most glorious era between 1988 and 1995 and in the early 90s the BSN had up 17 teams in a season.
What was there left for you to
There were things I'd have liked to implement, such as regionalising the minor leagues.
For example, the boys of Ponce only play in their area and only get to face teams from other parts of the island in the national playoffs.
Right now the riding and playing too much, unnecessarily.
At least I see the of and a course for leaders, table officials and referees.
That pleases me.
What are you doing now?
most I do is listen to music, watch music videos from my era on YouTube, enjoy my grandchildren and occasionally go to basketball games.
And of course, enjoy the company of my wife, Elizabeth, who has always been with me.
Larry Hagman dies
Larry Hagman, born on 21 September 1931 Fort Worth (Texas), became world famous for role as John Ross Ewing, better known as "JR," in the television series "Dallas," in which he played a ruthless, malicious and manipulative businessman.
Larry whose role as oil tycoon JR Ewing in the television series "Dallas" became a symbol of greed in the 1980s, has died.
He was 81.
Hagman, who returned this year as JR in a new season of "Dallas," died on Friday afternoon of cancer complications, according to a family statement provided to the Associated Press by the Warner Bros., producer of "Dallas."
"Larry was back in his hometown of Dallas, once again representing the iconic role he most liked" the family said.
Larry's family and closest friends were with him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
Linda Gray, who played wife in the original series and the sequel, was with Hagman when he died in a hospital in Dallas, said her publicist, Jeffrey Lane.
He brought joy to all who knew him.
He was creative, generous, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him
"He was an original guy and lived to the full" Gray in a statement.
Hagman diagnosed with cirrhosis the liver in 1992 admitted that he had drunk a over the years.
In 1995 a malignant tumour as in his liver and he underwent a transplant.
Years before "Dallas," Hagman became famous on television as a decent guy the light "I Dream of Jeannie," aired on NBC from 1965 to 1970.
He played Captain Tony Nelson, an astronaut whose life is changed when he meets an attractive genie, played Barbara Eden, and takes her home to live him.
He also starred in two sitcoms that were not aired for long, "The Good (NBC, 1971-72) and "Here We Go Again" (ABC, 1973).
His work included roles received by critics in "The Group," "Harry and Tonto" and "Primary Colors."
But it was his masterful interpretation of delightfully detestable JR that led to Hagman reaching his peak of stardom.
The drama series on CBS about the Ewing clan and other characters in their orbit aired from April 1978 to May 1991.
The tagline "Who shot JR?," designed to generate hype around an episode full of emotions in which Hagman's character is nearly killed, international speculation and millions of risky dollars wagered in gaming establishments.
It also helped give the series a at the time.
When the answer was revealed in an episode in November 1980, an average of 41 million viewers tuned in and made "Dallas" the second most watched entertainment programme in history, after the final episode of "MASH" in 1983, which had 50 million viewers.
It was JR's sister-in-law Kristin (played by Mary Crosby) who shot him.
JR got her pregnant then threatened to say she was a prostitute unless she left town, but there were others who also had reasons to attack him.
Hagman portrayed Ewing as a corrupt insatiable man with a charismatic smile: a dishonest entrepreneur and cheating husband who tried to have his alcoholic wife, Sue Ellen (Linda Gray), sectioned.
"I know what I want on JR's tombstone" Hagman said in 1988.
It should read: "Here lies the honest citizen JR Ewing."
This is the only deal he lost.
Victoria Principal, co-star of the original series, recalled Hagman on Friday as someone "huge, on and off screen."
He is unforgettable and irreplaceable, for millions of fans around the and in the hearts of each one of us who was fortunate enough to know and love him.
Ten episodes of the edition of "Dallas" were broadcast a few months ago with great success for TNT.
He had already finished recording five for the second series and a sixth was in process, the reported.
Immediately after, there was no statement from Warner or TNT about how the would handle the loss of Hagman.
Hagman, born in Fort Worth, Texas, was the son of and singer Mary Martin, who starred in classics such as "South Pacific" and "Peter Pan."
was still a teenager when she had him in 1931 during her marriage to lawyer Ben Hagman.
He tried his luck in the New York theatre scene the early '50s, and later served in the Air Force from 1952 to 1956, in England.
While he met the young Swedish designer Maj Axelsson and married her.
The couple had two sons, Preston and Heidi, and lived for a long time in the Californian city Malibu, home to many celebrities.
In 2001, he called his memoirs "Hello Darlin': Tall Absolutely True) Tales About My Life."
"I didn't put anything in it that I hurt anyone or affect them in any he told Associated Press at the time.
After his liver transplant, he became an organ donation promoter and worked as a volunteer at a hospital, fearful patients.
"I advise them, encourage them, meet with them when they come for their surgery, and afterwards" he said in 1996.
I try to some comfort, such as "Don't be afraid, it will be a little uncomfortable for a short time, but then you'll be fine."
He was also an anti-smoking activist and took part in several campaigns.
Start of a course that explores the "End of the World"
Each week, students explore apocalyptic themes such as nuclear war, zombies, viruses and germs, and global warming.
This term, when Professor of religion, Stuart Charmé, decided to give a course on end of the world, he knew he had a compelling hook: The end of the "long of the Mayan calendar, 21 which had convinced many people that the end of the world was coming.
But Charmé had no idea what awaited him over the next couple of months: The cataclysmic hurricane Sandy, a fiscal precipice some called "debt Armageddon" and a growing conflict involving Israel, where end-of-the-world Christians theorists think the Apocalypse will begin.
"I didn't realise this was going to be the most apocalyptic term ever" said Charmé week to students at Rutgers-Camden University (New Jersey).
If you look at what has been happening in the world today as if we were at 30 days and this has been a really good period.
And remember that bad is good for those with an apocalyptic mentality.
And he is the only professor offers courses on the "end of the world" this term, theoretically last in history.
At Temple, Associate Professor Barry Vacker is giving the course "Media, Culture and the end of the world."
Each week, students explore apocalyptic themes such as nuclear war, zombies, viruses and germs, and global warming.
"We looked at why these ideas proliferate over time" he said, and how they offer hypothetical scenarios that guide human behaviour.
If nuclear material into the hands of for example, a war could break out.
This month students analysed movies with an apocalyptic theme and explored how they compare with real-life examples.
"I've tried to inform students about what is possible, probable, credible and impossible" said Vacker.
At the main Pennsylvania State University campus, Latin American History Professor Matthew Restall, and his Amara Solari, an Associate Art and Anthropology Professor, have teamed up to give a called simply "The end the world."
"We don't add '2012' so we always have the option of running course again, if the world doesn't come to an end" said Restall.
Despite the "impending doom," students to study, undertake projects and take final exams.
At Penn State, the final exam will on the eve of the Apocalypse, which students no choice but to work the very night the world is supposed to end" Restall.
The proved quite popular.
"It was fully booked within two hours" said Restall, on his course for students with high averages, which was filled with 35 students.
We received emails for weeks and weeks before the start of the term, from people asking if there were any places.
Students, meanwhile, say the course is one of the most interesting around.
"I find it fascinating to see what people do to themselves" said Bridgid Robinson, a 23-year-old post-graduate Religion and Sociology student from Haddonfield, New Jersey, at Rutgers-Camden.
And the secular or religious mentality is just a matter consolation or lack of it.
Will Wekesa, a 25-year-old post-graduate Psychology and Nursing student, said he had seen the apocalyptic movies.
"I'd never heard of a class that could teach it" he said.
I enjoy it.
But none the students interviewed - much less any said they believed in the end date of December 21st.
"Our first project was about the Mayan prophecy and to a certain extent we discredited it" said Julie Zeglen, a 21-year-old final year student at Temple, from West Chester.
The Mayans never predicted the end of the world: it is just a key point in the calendar, said Restall.
But he said that Western culture suffers from apocalyptic anxiety, which goes back several centuries, in which people react to changes them predicting the of the world.
The Internet has caused a boom these speculations.
"In other places, people don't think about it" he said.
It's mostly in the English-speaking world.
Joseph Dougherty, a Professor of religion at La Salle University, who is giving courses in the this year, responded quickly to the question of whether he knew about any courses the "end of the world" there.
"The Philippines are not taking part in the end of the he suggesting an exception a higher authority.
We have an indulgence from the Pope.
Restall noted that over the years there has been talk of many days of the last judgement, and said that if nothing happens on December 21st, "people will immediately start thinking of the next date" or philosophising that December 21st is beginning of a seven-year period after which the world will end.
Students and teachers are taking the date lightly.
Some said they plan to go to "end of the world" parties.
"Maybe I'll call some friends so we can have a laugh together" Samira Ford, 20-year-old student.