September 2009

Tsunami hits American Samoa

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 13:36 by admin

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa – A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of up to 8.3 struck in the South Pacific between Samoa and American Samoa around dawn Tuesday, sending terrified residents fleeing for higher ground as a tsunami swept ashore, flattening at least one village. There were no immediate reports of fatalities.
The quake hit at 6:48 a.m. Tuesday (1748 GMT) midway between the two island groups. In Apia, families reported shaking that lasted for up to three minutes. The U.S. Geological Service, which estimated the magnitude at 8.0, said the quake struck 20 miles (35 kilometers) below the ocean floor, 120 miles (190 kilometers) from American Samoa and 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Samoa, with a 5.6-magnitude aftershock 20 minutes later.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center put the quake's magnitude at 8.3 and issued a general alert for the South Pacific region, from American Samoa to New Zealand. It said there were indications a tsunami wave could be "destructive" along some coastlines. Several hours away from the epicenter, Hawaii was put under a tsunami watch, with five emergency centers opened as a precaution.
New Zealander Graeme Ansell said the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale was leveled.
"It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out," Ansell told National Radio from a hill near Samoa's capital, Apia. "There's not a building standing. We've all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need 'round here."
A five-foot tsunami wave swept into Pago Pago, capital of American Samoa, shortly after the earthquake, sending sea water surging inland about 100 yards (meters) before receding, leaving some cars and debris stuck in mud. Electricity outages were reported, and telephone lines were jammed.
The staff of the port ran to higher ground, and police soon came by, telling residents to get inland. Several students were seen ransacking a gas station/convenience store.
In Fagatogo, water reached the waterfront town's meeting field and covered portions of the main highway, which also was plagued by rock slides.
In Samoa, the powerful quake jolted people awake.
"It was pretty strong; it was long and lasted at least two minutes," one resident told local radio.
"It's the strongest I have felt, and we ran outside. You could see all the trees and houses were shaking," he said.
Sulili Dusi told New Zealand's National Radio that "everything dropped on the floor and we thought the house was going to go down as well. Thank God, it didn't." Along with neighbors, they fled to high ground.
She said the tsunami hit the south side of the island, and some "cars have been taken." She did not elaborate, but added "we just thank God no life has been taken yet."
Another resident, Dean Phillips, said the southern coast of Upolu island had been struck by the tsunami.
"The police are sending everybody up to high ground," he said.
Local media said they had reports of some landslides in the Solosolo region of the main Samoan island of Upolu and damage to plantations in the countryside outside Apia.
There were no immediate reports of injury or serious damage from local emergency services, but people reported cracks in some homes and items tossed from shelves.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu issued a tsunami warning for numerous islands in the Pacific, including the Samoas, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, French Polynesia and Palmyra Island.

The center posted a tsunami watch for Hawaii, Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, Solomon Island, Johnston Island, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Wake Island, Midway Island and Pitcairn.

In New Zealand, a tsunami alert was issued by national Civil Defense, and the nation's national emergency center was activated.

___

Associated Press writer Keni Lesi contributed to this report from Apia, Samoa.

Racing Schools

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 10:42 by admin

The 1930s saw the transformation from high-priced road cars into pure racers, with Delage, Auto Union, Mercedes-Benz, Delahaye, and Bugatti constructing streamlined vehicles with engines producing up to 450 kW (612 hp), aided by multiple-stage supercharging. From 1928-1930 and again in 1934-1936, the maximum weight permitted was 750 kg, a rule diametrically opposed to current racing regulations. Extensive use of aluminium alloys was required to achieve light weight, and in the case of the Mercedes, the paint was removed to satisfy the weight limitation, producing the famous Silver Arrows.

There are also other stock car governing bodies, such as Automobile Racing Club of America and United Speed Alliance Racing.

Racing Schools

Spain: $6 million in drug money found shack

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 09:06 by admin

MADRID – Spanish police say narcotics investigators have found euro4.3 million ($6.3 million) in cash buried in a shanty town on the island of Mallorca.
The National Police say authorities trying to break up a drug ring used heavy construction equipment to rip up the concrete floor of a shack in the city of Palma and found seven boxes with the euros, plus 7.5 kilograms (17 pounds) of jewelry and gems and $8,000.
A police statement issued Tuesday said one of the boxes was buried under a dog house in a patio of the home.
The money and other valuables were unearthed during a series of raids that began Sept. 18 in a shanty town called Son Banya.
Police also seized undisclosed amounts of heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

After 60 years, China's Communists mean business

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 05:45 by admin

BEIJING (Reuters) –
Shortly after the Communist Party took power in China, capitalists in Shanghai paraded through the streets with drums and flags, asking the Party to take over their businesses.

On Thursday, the Party will celebrate the 60th year of its rule over mainland China, having mostly abandoned its Marxist ideals for "socialism with Chinese characteristics" -- a messy mix of competitive capitalism and political monopoly.

The party is now deeply entwined in the economy, giving Beijing a remarkable amount of leverage over bank lending and sectors such as telecommunications and energy, but impeding further structural and political reform.

Close ties between the Party and business paves the way for reforms like stock listings, where government and state-owned enterprise (SOE) interests are aligned, but tend to obstruct changes that reduce the power of the Party.

"Overall, China's heavy reliance on the state sector prevents the private sector from growing, hence limiting the growth of China's urban middle class," said Wang Zhengxu, senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute.

"The urban population's income depends more heavily on the state ... preventing the growth of state-challenging attitudes."

SOEs are clawing back a bigger role, turning the tide after market-oriented reforms of the 1980s and 1990s allowed the private sector to flourish and reduce Party influence.

The state sector accounts for 30-40 percent of economic output, down from about 80 percent in the late 1970s, estimates Arthur Kroeber of Dragonomics in Beijing.

But over the last year, consolidation favoring SOEs, especially in steel, and the choice to keep the yuan currency essentially unchanged against the dollar, show a reassertion of control at the expense of market forces.

"The recent advance of SOEs in both the central and local level is an enormous drag on economic reform and has implications on the world," said Victor Shih, who teaches political science at Northwestern University near Chicago.

"Faced with a soft budget constraint and a government with deep pockets, Chinese SOEs are making massive investment in multiple sectors, driving out both domestic and foreign competition across the board."

The global economic downturn gave cash-rich state firms a shot at prime overseas projects that suddenly lacked funding.

Meanwhile, although China's export-oriented private firms were hit hard, the country's 4 trillion yuan ($585.9 billion) stimulus package was largely funnelled through state-owned banks to sectors such as infrastructure where SOEs are strong.

The collapse of big Wall Street names helped discredit Chinese advocates of a more open economy, and gave voice to those praising the Chinese model where the state plays the lead role.

FIGHTING BACK WITH STEEL

The Party's intimate ties with business ensured enthusiastic support for economic reforms after Deng Xiaoping's dramatic tour of southern China in 1992, when the wily pragmatist outwitted conservatives who had dominated policy since a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters on Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Following those early reforms, agriculture in China is now dominated by private firms. They also make the bulk of the light manufactured goods and textiles that drive China's exports.

"The role of slippage in the state share of aggregate output has been fairly steady," Kroeber said.

But state planning bodies, and the Party, retain a strong grip on infrastructure, telecommunications and banking -- allowing lending to those the Party favours.

"Local governments use local SOEs to borrow money from banks to support investment growth," Shih said.

Signs of the attempt to give a lift to SOEs have been more evident in the steel sector, where nimble and ruthlessly competitive private and hybrid firms have grown to account for 45 percent of output, according to Macquarie Research.

Rizhao Steel, one of China's most active private steel firms, was forcibly taken over this month by Shandong Iron and Steel, itself a product of a recent merger of two SOEs.

The demise of Rizhao was part of a drive to bring the private mills to heel, a goal dear to the former planning officials who run the China Iron and Steel Association.

In two other cases this summer, union-backed workers at small, failing SOEs fought off takeovers by private steel conglomerates.

In China, where there are no independent unions, union involvement implies the proposed sales displeased Party bosses. ($1=6.827 Yuan)

(Editing by Benjamin Kang Lim and Dean Yates)

New Niffenegger novel set in Victorian Valhalla

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 05:24 by admin

LONDON – West of Karl Marx and just up the path from Charles Dickens' widow and daughter stands author Audrey Niffenegger, deep in the heart of London's Highgate Cemetery, the setting for her new novel, "Her Fearful Symmetry."
Niffenegger — who was propelled to literary stardom by her best-selling novel "Time Traveler's Wife" — is telling a group of tourists about one of the most colorful characters to end up in the Victorian burial ground, the menagerist George Wombwell, who died in 1850 and now lies in a tomb underneath a giant stone lion.
Niffenegger spent years researching the fabled London cemetery for her book — the final resting place for such luminaries as novelist George Eliot, actor Ralph Richardson, physicist Michael Faraday and poet Christina Rossetti, as well as Marx and a handful of Dickenses.
Now she's so familiar with it that she can guide tourists around with professional ease.
The labyrinth of Egyptian sepulchers, Victorian mausoleums, gravestones and Gothic tombs, perched on a hill above the smoke and filth of London, seems the perfect setting for a ghost story about a woman who dies of cancer and returns to haunt her lover and twin nieces.
But Niffenegger, who has developed a cult following for her lushly romantic tales of love, loss and obsession, originally had a less storied place in mind — a huge graveyard outside her hometown Chicago called Graceland.
"At the time I remember thinking: Graceland's fantastic, but if you're going to have a cemetery what's the great cemetery? And that would be Highgate," she said, recalling the days when the idea for the novel first came to her in 2002.
"I was always interested in the Victorian and Edwardian period, and Highgate is such a beautifully concentrated and unusual Victorian place."
The mythical pull of Highgate — where the spirits of the Victorian age seem to whisper around every corner — lies at the heart of "Her Fearful Symmetry." The book begins with the death of Elspeth Noblin at the age of 44, and the subsequent arrival of her American identical nieces to her apartment.
Noblin writes on her deathbed: "A bad thing about dying is that I've started to feel as though I'm being erased. Another bad thing is that I won't get to find out what happens next."
But Elspeth — who also has an identical twin sister — does get to find out: Her spirit remains in the apartment, which borders the cemetery, hiding in the drawer of a desk, and gradually learns how to haunt.
"The novel is about grief, about couples coming together, coming undone, or who seem to be together but will later come undone ... and there are other couples who are reforming, so it's kind of an exercise in symmetry, doubling, twinning, opposites and dark sides," said the 46-year-old Niffenegger, unmistakable in her flowing red hair, ghostly pallor and brainy glasses.
She said many of the cameos in the novel are sewn from the years she spent researching the cemetery, which opened in 1839, and even volunteering there as a tour guide.
Two of those characters are based on the former chair of the charity that looks after the grounds, Jean Pateman, 88, and her husband, John.
On her tours — as in her book — Niffenegger, takes visitors into the gothic wilderness beyond: tombs, graves, catacombs, and mausoleums, many topped by statues of angels.
To the south of this day's tourist group, at the end of a path that weaves fairytale-like through rain-battered graves, unkempt shrubbery, wild flowers and trees, is the tomb of the pre-Raphaelite Rossetti — whose melancholy verses about love and regret — hold particular resonance for Niffenegger.
"What's great about (Highgate) is it really is like a narrative. It sort of unfolds and you can't see very far ahead so you stop them periodically and let them look around and talk about whatever it is that you are standing in front of."
Niffenegger isn't alone among today's premier novelists to have been inspired by Highgate. Tracy Chevalier — author of "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" — set her 'Falling Angels" in the cemetery and calls it "the perfect setting" for a novel.

"Maybe writers are drawn to it because it provides a complete atmosphere — gothic, overgrown, steeped in death — that you don't have to make up. You can just go there and describe what you see," she said in an email interview.

"You can walk around and be quite alone and hidden. I think novelists like secret places, because we are secretive ourselves."

In "Her Fearful Symmetry," Niffenegger once again returns to her favorite themes of love, loss, and identity.

"They seem to run all through my art, not just these last two books but the artwork that I've worked on for the past 27 years, so it seems to be somehow intrinsic to what I think about. I'm not saying that I could never write about anything else, but they seem to get in there without any great effort on my behalf."

Niffenegger, also a successful artist and author of two acclaimed graphic novels, won't comment on media reports that she signed a US$4.5 million publishing deal for the new book.

She is now working on her third novel. Set in Chicago, it's about a 9-year-old girl with hypertrychosis — excessive body hair — and has the working title "The Chinchilla Girl in Exile."

She is also planning a show at her Chicago gallery a year from now — "and somehow while I'm running around I have to make some drawings," she says.

"Her Fearful Symmetry" publisher Random House declined to disclose the novel's print run.

While "The Time Traveler's Wife" has its soundtrack set firmly in the 1980s British and U.S. punk and rock scene, "Her Fearful Symmetry" has traveled a bit further back in time for its opening quote, from the Beatles song "She Said She Said."

"I originally wanted to use a lyric from "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder, but ended up using just the one Beatles' lyric from the album "Revolver," she explains.

Later, sitting in a local rustic pub a short walk from the cemetery, Niffenegger bursts into the song:

"She said, I know what it's like to be dead ... I know what it is to be sad. And she's just making me feel like I've never been born," she sings.

"It would be terrible spoiler for me to tell you why that's an apt quote," she adds with a twinkle in her eye.

Want To Lose Weight? Avoid Skinny Overeaters (Time.com)

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 05:00 by admin

If you're looking to lose weight, here's a simple tip: don't dine with the skinny dude who stuffs his face. According to a study that will appear in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, both the size and consumption habits of our eating companions can influence our food intake. And contrary to existing research that says you should steer clear of eating with heavier people who order large portions, it's the beanpoles with the big appetites you really need to avoid. "They're big trouble," says Gavan Fitzsimons, a marketing professor at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, and one of the study's co-authors.
To test the effect of social influence on eating habits, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, 95 undergraduate women were individually invited into a lab to ostensibly participate in a study about movie viewership. Before the film began, each woman was asked to help herself to a snack, either M&Ms or granola. Another "participant," who was actually an actor hired by the research team, grabbed her food first, in full view of the subjects at the snack line. In her natural state, the phony participant weighed 105 pounds, and wore a size 0. But in about half the cases she wore a prosthetic designed by an Academy-Award winning costume studio. The fat suit increased her weight to 180 pounds, and puffed her clothes to a size 16. (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)
Both the fat and skinny versions of the actor scooped five tablespoons of food (approximately 71 grams of granola, or 108 grams of M&Ms) onto a plate. That's a heap. The subjects followed suit, taking more food than they normally would have had they eaten alone. However, the subjects took significantly higher portions when the actor was thin. During the movie - a five-minute clip from the Will Smith film I, Robot - they also ate significantly more if the actor was skinny. "It's our intuition sometimes that you don't want to eat with big people, because you're afraid you'll eat more," says Fitzsimmons. "In fact, the opposite is true."
What happens when a thin person takes a small portion? Again, we tend to mimic those around us. For the second test, in one scenario the actor took two pieces of small candy from a set of snack bowls. In the other scenario, she took 30 pieces. Under the "lots of food" condition, the results mimicked the first test: subjects grabbed, and ate, significantly more candy when the actor was thin. In the "little food" condition, the subjects took the lead of the actor and restrained their candy consumption. However, in this scenario it's the obese lunch date that poses a threat: the subjects ate more if the actor was wearing a fat suit. (Watch TIME's video "How to Lose Weight Like a Real Loser.")
Each of these tests illustrates the psychological trait known as "anchoring." Humans tend to latch onto one specific piece of information when making decisions, in this case the habits of the actor. The social environment is extremely influential. If this fellow study subject is going to take an above-average number of M&Ms, so will I. Call it the "I'll have what she's having" effect. (See pictures of what makes you eat more food.)
However, we will adjust the influence of the social environment based on how we perceive the people surrounding us. So, if an obese person is helping himself to a large portion, I'll hold back a bit because, well, I see the ultimate results of his eating habits, and I don't want the stigma associated with being overweight. But if the thin person eats a lot, why shouldn't I follow suit? If he can gorge herself and still keep trim, why can't I?
At the same time, if a thin dining companion orders a small portion, I too will hold back because I want to mirror the habits of a body type to which many people aspire. However, if an overweight persons orders light, I'll make an adjustment. Obviously, small portions aren't working for him. If tiny meals don't help you stay trim, what's the point? Get me the cheeseburger deluxe.
Read "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin."
Read "The Working Person's Diet: Too Busy to Eat Right"
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Want To Lose Weight? Avoid Skinny Overeaters

Fort Worth Fence

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 04:06 by admin

Ownership of the fence varies. In some parts of the country all boundaries are shared; in other parts of the country you may own the boundary on the left-hand or right-hand side, however, only the title deeds can be depended on to tell you which side is yours. (A 'T' symbol indicates who is the owner). It used to be normal for the cladding to be on the non-owners side (enabling access to the posts for the owner when repairs need doing), but increasingly this cannot be depended on.

The "open range" tradition of requiring landowners to fence out unwanted livestock was dominant in most of the rural west until very late in the 20th century, and even today, a few isolated regions of the west still have open range statutes on the books. Today, across the nation, each state is free to develop its own laws regarding fences, but in most cases for both rural and urban property owners, the laws are designed to require adjacent landowners to share the responsibility for maintaining a common boundary fenceline, and the fence is generally constructed on the surveyed property line as precisely as possible.

Fort Worth Fence

The Obama Show (The Weekly Standard)

Posted Tue, 09/29/2009 - 02:09 by admin

Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 015, Issue 03 - 10/5/2009 –
Unemployment is close to 10 percent. The government is embedded in the auto, banking, housing, and insurance sectors. The president's domestic agenda hangs in the balance. Things aren't rosy on the global front, either. Public opinion has turned against the war in Afghanistan just as a major decision on troop levels must be made. The Iranians are busily working to obtain nuclear weapons. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains as intractable as ever. It's a dangerous world at an uncertain time, and last week the president responded by going on the Late Show with David Letterman.
It's all too apparent: Faced with the choice, President Obama prefers the comforts of celebrity to the duties of leadership. In addition to Letterman, there was his appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last March and his running commentary in the ESPN broadcast booth during baseball's All-Star game last July. You might imagine a lame-duck president making such media appearances, but not one barely nine months into his term. Obama clearly sees himself as a sort of salesman-in-chief, and considers endless speechifying and interview-giving as the best way to further his agenda. The adoring crowds, raucous applause, and obsequious press coverage that accompany his appearances are cherries on top.So, in order to pressure Congress to act on health care and "call out" all the lying racist nihilist cynics who stand in his way, Obama delivered his major address to a joint session of Congress on September 9. He followed that up with giant Si Se Puede rallies in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Maryland and a dizzying turn on five Sunday morning news shows. Amazingly, Obama has also found time in September to deliver a speech to the nation's schoolchildren; give major addresses on the financial crisis and climate change; and contribute remarks at Walter Cronkite's funeral. The month isn't even over yet, and the salesman-in-chief already resembles the late pitchman Billy Mays. The public doesn't really seem to mind the president's omnipresence: Obama, as we are routinely informed, enjoys decent job approval ratings and higher personal ones. And, yes, he has every right to use the bully pulpit; presidents of both parties have done so to both useful and annoying ends. Nonetheless, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the White House's permanent campaign. Chief among them is that presidential appearances are a lot like the money supply: The greater the quantity, the less each individual piece is worth. The public is slowly but surely tuning Obama out--look at the declining ratings for his four nationally televised press conferences. And a president who's always yukking it up is a president susceptible to gaffes. Obama may have survived his latest PR blitz unscathed, but don't forget his tasteless Special Olympics joke on Leno and his petty swipe at Nancy Reagan last December.What's truly unusual is that the president persists in this media strategy even though it shows no signs of succeeding. Obama's job approval may be decent, but it has fallen quickly and dramatically and now hovers slightly above 50 percent in the Gallup poll. More people continue to disapprove than approve of the president's approach to health care, with significant numbers of seniors and independents turning against him. Last week's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that the Republicans have narrowed the Democrats' advantage in the congressional generic ballot to three points, the best number for the GOP since 2004. And Republicans are favored in November's elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Obama isn't in this situation because the public doesn't see enough of him. He's in it because his policies have so far failed to produce economic recovery. He's in it because his big spending gives deficit hawks heartburn. The president and his courtiers could try to deal with such concerns, but instead they devote themselves to the nostalgic task of re-creating the conditions surrounding his storybook presidential campaign. That might satisfy Obama's vanity. But it leaves the rest of us ready to change the channel.--Matthew Continetti