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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Did A Swedish Man Spontaneously Combust in Gothenburg Train Station? [Wtf]
Pandora Media beats on profit and revenue (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? Online streaming music service Pandora Media Inc reported a rise in total revenue on strong advertising sales, beating expectations.
The company said on Tuesday that, for the third quarter ending October, revenue rose 99 percent to $75 million, beating analysts' expectations of $71.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Adjusted EPS of 2 cents per share also beat analysts' forecast of a loss of penny.
Investors though sent the company's shares down 3.8 percent in after hours trading, after they closed down 5.3 percent at $11.85.
"It's an expensive stock," said Stifel, Nicolaus & Co analyst Jordan Rohan. "Any time the company offers in line guidance, it trades down."
Pandora expects revenue in the fourth quarter ending January 2012 to be in the range of $80 million to $84 million. Analysts are forecasting $82.3 million.
"They had an excellent quarter, but offered some conservative guidance," said Rohan.
Media companies that are largely dependent on advertising are being carefully watched for cues that the economy is taking a turn for the worse. During down times, advertisers slash budgets.
During a conference call with analysts, Pandora executives said they are taking a responsible approach to their fourth quarter revenue guidance.
"There's no impact at the moment, but we are paying close attention to what's going on in the marketplace," said Pandora CFO Steve Cakebread during the call.
Advertising revenue, which represents the majority of total revenue, advanced 102 percent to $66 million during the third quarter.
Pandora, first known as SavageBeast, has been around for a decade. It runs a mostly free service that recommends different songs based on listener's playlists.
While Pandora has been in the marketplace for some time, it faces competition on all flanks from traditional radio companies such as Clear Channel, which launched its own customized online streaming service, satellite radio providers such as Sirius XM Radio Inc, as well as Spotify, which allows users to integrate its streaming music through Facebook.
Pandora has about 40 million active users and its share of the U.S. Internet radio market is 66 percent, up from 53 percent during the same quarter last year.
In recent months, Pandora struck a deal to pipe music into businesses such as doctor offices and auto dealerships through a partnership with DMX. It also plans to offer targeted political ads for the 2012 campaign season.
"For a relatively young company they are doing everything perfectly," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.
One concern for the company, which went public in June, is the more users it attracts, the more it must pay record labels in licensing fees.
Content acquisition costs more than doubled to $37.6 million during the third quarter.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba; editing by Carol Bishopric and Andre Grenon)
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Bundesliga referee recovering from suicide attempt
updated 12:25 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2011
BERLIN - The referee who attempted suicide hours before a Bundesliga game this weekend is has been released from a hospital.
German soccer's governing body said Monday that Babak Rafati's condition has improved. Rafati's lawyer told the Deutscher Fussball Bund the 41-year-old referee will continue with inpatient treatment for an undetermined period of time.
Rafati was found bleeding in his hotel bathtub before he was due to take charge of a game between Cologne and Mainz. The match rescheduled for Dec. 13.
The DFB said Rafati requested "peace and quiet" and that he "now needs, above all, time and patience."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsBeckham plays it coy after title
David Beckham helped lead the LA Galaxy to his first MLS title on Sunday but refused to be drawn on his future with his contract soon to run out.
Getty ImagesSource: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45387934/ns/sports-soccer/
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Monday, November 21, 2011
New 'Arrested Development' coming to Netflix
LOS ANGELES?? The Bluths are back.
For the first time since "Arrested Development" was canceled in 2006, the dysfunctional and ethically challenged Southern California clan will return for all new episodes.
The show will be available exclusively to Netflix members beginning in 2013.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Twentieth Century Fox Television and Imagine Television will produce the show.
The move is a huge boost to Netflix, which has been trying to establish a presence in the original content world. Last summer, the subscription service beat out the likes of HBO for the rights to the David Fincher and Kevin Spacey political series "House of Cards."
The cult hit aired for three seasons, 2003-2006, on Fox and won an Emmy for best comedy. Showtime had reportedly been pursuing rights to air the show, as well.
Story: 'Arrested Development' team fired up for movieIn a releasing announcing the shows, Netflix made no mention about whether the entire cast, which includes Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, David Cross and Michael Cera, will return for another round. However, Cross, Bateman and Arnett have spoken enthusiastically about a reunion.
"Netflix's bold entrance into original programming presents an exciting new opportunity for our two companies" Peter Levinsohn, Fox Filmed Entertainment's President of New Media & Digital Distribution, said in a statement. "Bringing a classic show back to production on new episodes exclusively for Netflix customers is a game changer, and illustrates the incredible potential the new digital landscape affords great content providers like Twentieth Century Fox Television and Imagine."
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News that "Arrested Development" was getting a revival, broke after co-creator and executive producer Mitch Hurwitz announced at a New Yorker Festival reunion in October that he planned to bring back the show for an abbreviated season to lead into a long-awaited "Arrested Development" movie.
At the time, Hurwitz said that the show would catch up viewers on what the members of the deeply disturbed Bluth family have done since the series ended, and would run for nine to ten episodes.
Will you keep ? or sign up for ? Netflix to watch the show when it returns? Share your thoughts on the Facebook page for our TV blog, The Clicker!
Copyright 2011 by TheWrap.com
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45363621/ns/today-entertainment/
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Obama cites jobs payoff from Asia trip
BALI, Indonesia?? After a nine-day trip through Asia in which he showed command on the world stage, President Barack Obama headed back Sautrday to debt-deadlocked Washington, where he'll confront fresh reminders of the limits of his power at home.
Obama departed from Bali's international airport Saturday afternoon for a 21-hour flight that, factoring in time-zone changes, was to return him to the White House before dawn Sunday. He'll be arriving days ahead of a deadline for a congressional supercommittee to produce recommendations to attack the country's yawning deficit.
But even though the president spoke to the supercommittee leaders from Air Force One as he headed out of town and urged them to get a deal, the panel is no further along than when Obama left Washington: frozen stuck along partisan lines.
If no agreement is reached, steep cuts would be enacted across the federal government that both sides say they want to avoid, particularly to the defense budget. But no end game was in sight as Obama made his way back home from the other side of the globe.
Also awaiting him are presidential politics heading into the 2012 election year, something Obama largely avoided while traveling in Hawaii, Australia and Indonesia. And with his opponents on the attack over his stewardship of the listless economy, Obama will renew his largely futile efforts to get Congress to pass his jobs bill as he aims to cast Republicans as the ones to blame.
For Obama, it may amount to something of a harsh homecoming after playing proud host in his native Hawaii to a summit of Pacific Rim nations, and traveling on to two countries where he remains highly popular and received warm welcomes.
Obama set out in his Asia-Pacific tour to deepen U.S. engagement in a fast-growing region that the White House views as increasingly critical to America's security and economic prosperity. He achieved some successes, including progress on a regional free-trade deal that could pay off with U.S. jobs, and a new military agreement with Australia that will boost the U.S. defense posture in the region by deploying more marines and U.S. aircraft to Australia.
Obama also announced he was dispatching his secretary of state to Myanmar in a significant step to prod forward reforms in that country, and throughout the trip the complexities of the U.S. relationship with China were on display.
But domestic issues were on Obama's mind as he wrapped up his trip. Obama focused his Saturday morning radio and Internet address on the trade deals he presided over and the jobs they were likely to create back home, including a multi-billion-dollar Boeing sale of commercial planes to Indonesia and a deal to export General Electric engines.
He portrayed his trip around the Pacific Rim as a hunt for new markets.
"As the fastest-growing region in the world, no market is more important to our economic future than the Asia Pacific ? a region where our exports already support five million American jobs," he said.
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In a further reminder of what awaits Obama in Washington, Saturday's Republican address focused on the work of the supercommittee. Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, a member of the panel and architect of one of the central GOP proposals, said that despite the fast-approaching deadline he remained hopeful lawmakers could still accomplish some deficit reduction.
"We have what is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass legislation that will generate millions of jobs, create a simpler, fairer tax system with lower rates for everyone, and put our government on a path toward fiscal sanity," he said.
On China, throughout his trip Obama sent both public and private signals to the rising giant, cementing American power in a manner seen to counter China, and scolding Chinese leaders about the need to play by the rules economically.
On the final day of his trip, Saturday in Indonesia, Obama held a surprise meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of an East Asia summit, focusing on the economic matters that have prompted disputes between the two major world powers.
White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon told reporters that Obama stressed the importance of China adjusting the value of its currency, which the United States contends is deeply undervalued, and he said Obama and Wen also briefly discussed territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
China's state broadcaster, CCTV, reported that Wen told Obama the grim global economic picture made it practical and necessary for the U.S. and China to strengthen their economic and trade relationship.
He said more trade and investment would help ease the Sino-U.S. trade imbalance. Wen also restated Beijing's call for the U.S. to relax restrictions on high-tech exports to China, CCTV reported.
China, Wen said, had made strides in reforming its currency exchange and would continue to do so, the broadcaster said.
Later, Obama and leaders at an East Asia summit retreat raised the issue of maritime security, prompting Wen to respond. A senior U.S. administration official told reporters aboard Air Force One that Wen's remarks signaled a gradual evolution toward resolving quarrels with Asian neighbors over the major shipping route. He said U.S. officials were encouraged by Wen's response.
Donilon downplayed tensions and rejected suggestions that the nine-day mission in the Asia-Pacific was designed to thwart a rising China. The U.S. policy, Donilon said, was about rebalancing U.S. interests and focusing once more on the Asia-pacific region.
"This has nothing to do with isolating or containing anybody," he said.
? 2011 msnbc.com
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45364413/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/
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Cain, on Letterman, again denies harassment (omg!)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain says the women who have accused him of making unwanted sexual advances are all lying.
In an appearance Friday on David Letterman's "Late Show," the former pizza executive again denied any impropriety during his time running the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.
Several women have come forward with allegations against Cain. He has repeatedly denied the allegations, which have dogged his campaign.
During the interview Letterman says to Cain: "These statements are all false? All of these women are lying? They're all lying?"
"Yes," replies Cain. "They are."
During the show, Cain jokes that Letterman seems to be trying to talk him out of running for president with tough questions about the challenges facing the presidency.
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Europe fears contagion in debt market turmoil (AP)
MADRID ? Fear, that contagious emotion, spread from country to country in Europe on Thursday as panicky investors worried the euro currency union could be heading toward an ugly breakup.
Spain and even France, one of the continent's core economic engines, were forced to pay sharply higher interest rates to raise cash to fund government spending.
While the European Central Bank was suspected of intervening in bond markets to fight the rise in the borrowing rates, many analysts say it needs to act more aggressively to contain the crisis. But Germany, Europe's paymaster, once again blocked any such move on concerns it would let profligate governments off the hook.
Uncertainty is now even eroding the appeal of top AAA-rated government bonds from countries like France as investors prepare for worst-case scenarios like the deconstruction of the eurozone.
"Basically, if you look at any country that is not Germany, the contagion effect is major," said Oscar Moreno of Madrid brokerage house Renta4.
In Spain, an auction of 10-year government bonds left the country paying interest rates of nearly 7 percent. That's the highest rate since 1997 and a level that economists see as unsustainable. Greece and Ireland received rescue loans from the European Union after their bond yields jumped above the same level.
Across the border, France had to pay 1.85 percent to sell two-year bonds, up from 1.31 percent at the last auction in October.
The dismal figures were the symptom of a broad retreat by investors this week from European stock and bond markets as they worry eurozone leaders are no closer to finding a lasting solution. Shares of European companies fell in all of the continent's exchanges, including so-called safe nations like Germany and the Netherlands.
In the U.S., stock indexes were down as the spiking bond yields in Spain overshadowed the latest signs of growth in the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 159 points to 11,746 as of 1 p.m. Eastern time.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel added to the market carnage by shrugging aside hopes for a quick-fix solution to the crisis. She insisted that spreading debt liability with a massive European Central Bank bond-buying drive could ruin competitiveness and won't resolve Europe's problems.
The ECB already buys government bonds in relatively small quantities ? euro4.5 billion ($6 billion) last week ? to keep their yields down. A bond's yield is an indication of the rate the government would pay to raise money on markets.
Analysts said ECB bond purchases helped bring Italy's 10-year yield back below the 7 percent level on Thursday. But the program is far too small to make a lasting impact in bond markets.
The ECB's leaders say the bond purchases must remain limited and temporary to avoid giving governments the sense that they can delay much-needed reforms to make their economies more competitive.
Another move experts say could provide a decisive solution to the crisis is the introduction of "eurobonds" issued jointly by financially strong countries and weaker ones.
But Merkel rejected that as well, for fear of exposing German taxpayers to huge costs. She insisted Thursday that Europe needs to consider growth-promoting measures that don't immediately cost money, such as labor-market reforms that could take months to enact.
The fear, however, is that during that time the financial jitters will spread and worsen, pulling the currency union apart.
"Chances are remote that investors will wake up one morning to find that a master-plan has been put in place to preserve the euro arrangements and to restore stability to the zone," Stephen Lewis of London's Monument Securities said in a note to clients. "It is more realistic to expect one or more of the present member-states, whether voluntarily or otherwise, to quit the euro zone."
Europe's slow and indecisive actions to fight the debt crisis have allowed uncertainty to fester in financial markets. That has darkened the economic outlook at a time when governments badly need growth to lower their debts. Spain's unemployment rate, for example, is a staggering 21.5 percent and the eurozone economy stalled in the third quarter and is likely to fall into another recession.
The toxic combination of low growth and high debt is pushing investors to reassess the risk inherent in owning European government bonds, even of traditionally strong countries like France and the Netherlands. As economic forecasts worsen, investors lower their expectations of countries' ability to repay their debts.
The weakest countries, such as Greece, got hit first and hardest. But it didn't take long for an economy like Italy's ? traditionally stable, but with high debt and weak growth ? to lose traders' trust. As some investors price in worst-case scenarios like the breakup of the euro currency union, some are even moving out of AAA-rated sovereign bonds like those of France.
Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado accused investors of unfairly punishing Spain because its overall debt load of about 70 percent is manageable and sustainable "beyond any doubt."
But in trying to defend Spain, she also acknowledged that 12 of the 17 countries that use the euro are seeing their borrowing costs rise.
"We are seeing systematic attacks on our sovereign debt," Salgado told Cadena Ser radio in an interview. "Today it is Spain, yesterday it was Italy, the day before that it could have been Belgium, and tomorrow it could be any other country."
The financial chaos has rattled governments ? new governments of technical experts were installed in Athens and Rome this month, while a center-right government is expected to take over in Madrid on Sunday ? and caused social unrest.
As Italy's new Premier Mario Monti unveiled new economic reforms on Thursday, riot police clashed with anti-austerity protesters in Milan.
"The end of the euro would cause the disintegration of the united market," the former European Union competition commissioner told the Senate ahead of a confidence vote on his one-day-old government.
While high borrowing rates of 7 percent do not spell imminent collapse for a country, they are clearly unsustainable over several months.
Spain and other European countries like Italy "cannot survive for too long with these interest rates," warned Juan Pedro Zamora of X-trade brokers in Madrid.
While Spanish opposition leader Mariano Rajoy and his conservative Popular Party are expected to win in a landslide in Sunday's elections, analysts said any austerity measures they push through probably won't be enough on their own to ease increasing investor aversion to the continent.
"What we need is for the European Union to finally push for an economic and monetary union in which countries would be automatically penalized if they exceed the public deficit and in which the economic policies of each country would be based on those of the European Central Bank," Zamora told Spanish National Radio.
Investors are skeptical politicians can agree to that close of a financial union anytime soon, translating into more financial havoc ahead for much of Europe.
____
Daniel Woolls and Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report.
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Conservation body agrees to protect silky sharks (AP)
ANKARA, Turkey ? Delegates at an international conservation meeting agreed Saturday on a measure mandating that silky sharks accidentally caught in fishing gear be released back into the sea alive, marine advocacy groups said.
The 48-member International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), however ? ending a weeklong meeting in Istanbul ? failed to reach consensus on other threatened shark species, the groups said.
Conservationists also said more could have been done to save swordfish from decline in the Mediterranean while the World Wildlife Fund said steps adopted to preserve bluefin tuna remained insufficient.
While establishing protections for the silky sharks, ICCAT ? which manages tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean as well as species, like sharks, that have traditionally been accidental catches for tuna fishermen ? made an exception for coastal developing countries, where the predators can continue to be caught for local consumption of their meat and not for the trade of their fins.
The sharks, named after the silk-like smooth texture of their skins, are among shark species most vulnerable to decline, threatened by the international trade in shark fins due to an increasing demand mainly in Asia for shark fin soup.
Marine advocacy groups, including Oceana and The Pew Environment Group, welcomed the measure saying it would help overturn the silky sharks' decline, though they also said they had hoped for more.
"Cutting the nets to free sharks when they are caught, will give a large number of them a real chance to survive," Susan Lieberman, director of international Policy at the Pew Environment Group, told The Associated Press by telephone. "The measure is an important step."
The group estimates that up to 1.5 million silky sharks are traded annually for their fins, and that up to 40 percent can survive if they are returned to the sea alive.
"It is a very good step forward in protecting one the most vulnerable species," said Elizabeth Griffin Wilson, senior manager of marine wildlife at Oceana.
The advocacy groups however, expressed disappointment that no measure had been taken to protect porbeagle sharks, or to establish catch limits for blue and shortfin mako sharks.
"It's another year that they could not reach a decision for the porbeagle shark," Lieberman said of the species which continue to be fished in Canadian waters.
Other measures adopted by ICCAT in Istanbul include a requirement for members to submit data on the species they catch or risk losing their right to catch those species in the following year. Oceana has said failure to report on catches were preventing conservationists from adequately assessing the impact of fisheries on threatened species.
On swordfish, ICCAT agreed on a set measures, including setting a minimum size for catch, but Oceana said "more should be done."
The conservation body also agreed on a system to electronically track data on bluefin tuna to better control fraudulent practices and help keep fishing closer to the legal quotas. A Pew report has found that in 2010, the amount of Mediterranean bluefin tuna traded surpassed the ICCAT quota by 141 percent.
The WWF said, however, the measure did not include data on fish transfers to tuna fattening farms in the Mediterranean arguing that this allowed for the "laundering of illegal, unregulated and unreported catches." The group called for a more "reliable" data assessment or for the total ban of tuna farming in the Mediterranean.
In a move to fight illegal fishing, ICCAT members also decided that vessels measuring 12 meters or more ? instead of the previous 20 meters or more ? would be inspected on arrival to port, Pew said.
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Saturday, November 19, 2011
Research cracks puzzle of enzyme critical to food supply
ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2011) ? If we could make plant food from nitrogen the way nature does, we'd have a much greener method for manufacturing fertilizer -- a process that requires such high temperatures and pressures that it consumes about 1.5 percent of the world's energy.
Now, scientists working at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken an important step towards understanding how nature performs this trick, by identifying a key atom that researchers had sought for more than a decade.
The atom lies at the heart of an enzyme called nitrogenase, which plays a critical role in converting nitrogen in the air into a form that living things can use. Scientists have long sought to determine the structure of this enzyme; among other things, they hope to eventually reverse-engineer it and mimic nature's gentle version of the reaction.
"The fascination with this enzyme is the fact that it enables this reaction to take place at room temperature and atmospheric pressure," said chemist Serena DeBeer of Cornell University and the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, who led the team that performed crucial experiments at SLAC. So hot was the race to identify the mystery atom that it ended in a photo finish: in the Nov. 18 issue of Science, two independent teams, using different approaches, identify the atom as carbon.
It had eluded scientists because of its sequestered location inside a cluster of metal atoms. The key in the team's research was a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy, or XES, which co-author Uwe Bergmann of SLAC had developed over the past decade.
The researchers needed a trick to find the one important carbon inside the metal cluster. They used an intense beam of X-rays from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to knock the innermost electrons out of iron atoms in the cluster. Normally other electrons from iron would fill this hole; but there was a tiny chance, much less than one in a thousand, that the hole would be filled by an electron belonging to a neighboring atom, and thus emit X-rays characteristic of the neighbor's identity. It was this subtle feature in the X-ray emission spectrum that revealed that a carbon atom, rather than a nitrogen or oxygen, was bound to the iron atoms in the cluster.
"This was a simple but important question and we were able to give a straightforward answer," Bergmann said. "I think this will have a big impact not only on the understanding of nitrogenase but on the use of X-ray emission spectroscopy."
Why is this particular atom so important? The cluster of metal atoms is where nitrogen molecules from the air, N2, are broken down and converted to ammonia and other compounds by microbes in the soil. Then plants take it up and spread it through the food chain. This is how we get roughly half of the nitrogen in our bodies; the rest comes from artificial fertilizers made via the Haber-Bosch reaction, the resource-intensive method widely used to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia.
Researchers knew a decade ago that the central atom in the metal cluster must be nitrogen, oxygen or carbon. Each would affect the reaction differently. But how to identify this atom among the 20,545 total carbon atoms, 11,026 oxygen atoms and 5,431 nitrogen atoms in the enzyme?
"Because it's sequestered in the middle of a bunch of metal atoms and you've got no way to get your hands on it, it's a really hard problem," said chemist Brian Hoffman of Northwestern University, who has investigated nitrogenase for 30 years but was not involved in these studies. "What the team has done would appear to be a classic case where new technology leads to new science."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
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Journal Reference:
- Kyle M. Lancaster, Michael Roemelt, Patrick Ettenhuber, Yilin Hu, Markus W. Ribbe, Frank Neese, Uwe Bergmann, Serena Debeer. X-ray Emission Spectroscopy Evidences a Central Carbon in the Nitrogenase Iron-Molybdenum Cofactor. Science, 2011; 334 (6058): 974-977 DOI: 10.1126/science.1206445
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111117144001.htm
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Obama opens door to new U.S. ties with Myanmar (Reuters)
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama said on Friday he saw "flickers of progress" in Myanmar and dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to visit the isolated country next month to explore new ties.
Obama, in Indonesia for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, said he had spoken for the first time with Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi who told him she supported more U.S. engagement with the country also known as Burma.
He said the release of political prisoners, relaxing of media restrictions and signs of legislative change in the past few weeks were "the most important steps toward reform in Burma that we've seen in years."
"We want to seize what could be a historic opportunity for progress and make it clear that if Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America," Obama said, also citing ongoing U.S. concerns about Myanmar's stance with North Korea and human rights issues.
"If Burma fails to move down the path of reform, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But if it seizes this moment, then reconciliation can prevail," he said.
Myanmar is now ruled by a civilian government after an election last year that was meant to hand over power after nearly five decades of military rule.
Many Western governments have expressed doubts that the new civilian authority is committed to democratic change and has embarked on a different path from its military predecessors.
Clinton's visit will be the first by a U.S. secretary of state for more than 50 years. She will travel to Yangon and the capital Naypyitaw and "explore whether the United States can empower a positive transition in Burma and begin a new chapter between our countries," Obama said.
HUMAN RIGHTS
With sanctions preventing Western investment in Myanmar, China has long been its biggest ally on the international stage, also investing in Myanmar's infrastructure, hydropower dams and twin oil and gas pipelines to help feed southern China's growing energy needs.
But the relationship has often been strained, with a long history of resentment of China among the Burmese population and fierce public opposition to a Chinese-built dam at Myitsone that prompted Myanmar President Thein Sein to shelve the project last month, a move that stunned Beijing.
When he took office in 2009, Obama made reaching out to American adversaries a signature part of his foreign policy approach. That included an effort early to engage with Iran.
But the administration took a cautious approach on Myanmar because of U.S. concerns about human rights. Obama requested a policy review on Myanmar, which eventually set the stage for the effort to reach out now.
A U.S. official said Obama had spoken to Suu Kyi from Air Force One on his way to Indonesia Thursday evening.
They reviewed progress made in Myanmar since her release from house arrest last November. Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, had been detained 15 of the previous 21 years.
Obama is not scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Sein but is expected to see him during the East Asia Summit he is attending in Bali, as the first U.S. president to do so.
Myanmar is seeking to diversify its economy by courting other regional powers and India, which analysts say is aimed at boosting its economy and reducing its long, at times uneasy dependence on Beijing.
Southeast Asian nations endorsed Myanmar on Thursday for the chairmanship of its regional grouping in 2014, gambling that the isolated country can stick to reforms begun this year that could lead it out of half a century of isolation. (Additional reporting by Jason Szep and Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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Separating signal and noise in climate warming
Friday, November 18, 2011
In order to separate human-caused global warming from the "noise" of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.
To address criticism of the reliability of thermometer records of surface warming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists analyzed satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere (the region of the atmosphere from the surface to roughly five miles above) and saw a clear signal of human-induced warming of the planet.
Satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature are made with microwave radiometers, and are completely independent of surface thermometer measurements. The satellite data indicate that the lower troposphere has warmed by roughly 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of satellite temperature records in 1979. This increase is entirely consistent with the warming of Earth's surface estimated from thermometer records.
Recently, a number of global warming critics have focused attention on the behavior of Earth's temperature since 1998. They have argued that there has been little or no warming over the last 10 to 12 years, and that computer models of the climate system are not capable of simulating such short "hiatus periods" when models are run with human-caused changes in greenhouse gases.
"Looking at a single, noisy 10-year period is cherry picking, and does not provide reliable information about the presence or absence of human effects on climate said Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist and lead author on an article in the Nov. 17 online edition of the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres).
Many scientific studies have identified a human "fingerprint" in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature changes. These detection and attribution studies look at long, multi-decade observational temperature records. Shorter periods generally have small signal to noise ratios, making it difficult to identify an anthropogenic signal with high statistical confidence, Santer said.
"In fingerprinting, we analyze longer, multi-decadal temperature records, and we beat down the large year-to-year temperature variability caused by purely natural phenomena (like El Ni?os and La Ni?as). This makes it easier to identify a slowly-emerging signal arising from gradual, human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases," Santer said.
The LLNL-led research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year "hiatus periods" with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
"One individual short-term trend doesn't tell you much about long-term climate change," Santer said. "A single decade of observational temperature data is inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving human-caused warming signal. In both the satellite observations and in computer models, short, 10-year tropospheric temperature trends are strongly influenced by the large noise of year-to-year climate variability."
###
DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: http://www.llnl.gov
Thanks to DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115331/Separating_signal_and_noise_in_climate_warming
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Iowa State stuns No. 2 Oklahoma State 37-31 in 2OT (AP)
AMES, Iowa ? Backup running back Jeff Woody scored on a 4-yard run in the second overtime and Iowa State stunned second-ranked Oklahoma State 37-31 on Friday night, derailing the Cowboys' national title hopes.
The Cyclones (6-4, 3-4 Big 12) overcame a 17-point deficit to beat the Cowboys (10-1, 7-1 Big 12), who were just a win away from a showdown with rival Oklahoma for a likely spot in the BCS title game. Their loss opened a path for Oregon or Alabama to face LSU in a rematch for the title.
Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden's first pass in the second overtime was intercepted by Ter'Ran Benton. Woody ran for 6 and 15 yards, then bullied his way into the end zone to give the Cyclones their first victory over a top-five opponent in school history.
Weeden threw for 476 yards, but he had three interceptions as the Cowboys turned it over five times.
Playing a day after Oklahoma State women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and three others were killed in a plane crash, the Cowboys were 27-point favorites against the upstart Cyclones, who lost their first four Big 12 games. But the Cowboys let Iowa State hang around just long enough to beat them ? and throw the national title picture into chaos.
Iowa State freshman quarterback Jared Barnett found James White for a 25-yard touchdown on the first play of extra time, but Weeden answered with a 6-yard TD pass to Josh Cooper.
Johnson's interception set up a thrilling finish for the Cyclones and coach Paul Rhoads, the defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh when it upset No. 2 West Virginia 13-9 in 2007.
Barnett finished with 376 yards passing and three TDs for Iowa State.
Oklahoma State stretched its lead to 24-7 less than 3 minutes into the second half and looked set to break it open as it usually does. Tracy Moore caught Weeden's pass in traffic and stumbled 30 yards for the touchdown.
That could have been it for Iowa State ? but the Cyclones were far from finished.
Iowa State answered with a 32-yard TD run from White and recovered an onside kick with ease. Barnett fumbled it back to Oklahoma State, but the Cowboys fumbled it right back and Zach Guyer's 24-yard field goal made it 24-17 with 4:04 left in the third quarter.
Oklahoma State came in averaging 51.7 points a game, but it couldn't string together the drives that made Weeden a serious Heisman Trophy contender.
Iowa State tied the game at 24-all with 5:30 left in regulation as Barnett found a sliding Albert Gary in the end zone for a 7-yard TD catch. Oklahoma State's Alex Elkins intercepted Barnett's pass with 3:17 left, but Sharp pushed a 37-yard field goal right with 1:17 to go to force overtime.
It was just the third missed field goal in 20 tries for Sharp.
Iowa State knew it would need a lot of breaks to pull off the upset.
The Cyclones caught a few early, recovering Randle's fumble and intercepting Weeden's pass in the first quarter. But they didn't turn either into points, and the Cowboys' defense made them pay for it.
Linebacker Shaun Lewis jumped Barnett's pass and took it back 70 yards for a touchdown, giving Oklahoma State a 7-0 lead late in the first quarter.
Iowa State pulled to 10-7 on Barnett's 16-yard TD pass to Darius Reynolds. But Blackmon stopped short and went high for Weeden's pass over a pair of defenders on a 27-yard touchdown reception, giving Oklahoma State a 17-7 lead with 5:26 left before halftime.
Iowa State held a moment of silence before the game to honor Budke, assistant Miranda Serna and two others who were killed Thursday when their single-engine plane crashed during a recruiting trip in Arkansas.
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Friday, November 18, 2011
The cool clouds of Carina -- APEX gives us a new view of star formation in the Carina Nebula
The cool clouds of Carina -- APEX gives us a new view of star formation in the Carina Nebula
Wednesday, November 16, 2011Using the LABOCA camera on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope on the plateau of Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes, a team of astronomers led by Thomas Preibisch (Universitats-Sternwarte Munchen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Germany), in close cooperation with Karl Menten and Frederic Schuller (Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), imaged the region in submillimetre light. At this wavelength, most of the light seen is the weak heat glow from cosmic dust grains. The image therefore reveals the clouds of dust and molecular gas ? mostly hydrogen ? from which stars may form. At -250?C, the dust grains are very cold, and the faint glow emanating from them can only be seen at submillimetre wavelengths, significantly longer than those of visible light. Submillimetre light is, therefore, key to studying how stars form and how they interact with their parent clouds.
The APEX LABOCA observations are shown here in orange tones, combined with a visible light image from the Curtis Schmidt telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. The result is a dramatic, wide-field picture that provides a spectacular view of Carina's star formation sites. The nebula contains stars with a total mass equivalent to over 25 000 Suns, while the mass of the gas and dust clouds is that of about 140 000 Suns.
However, only a fraction of the gas in the Carina Nebula is in sufficiently dense clouds to collapse and form new stars in the immediate future (in astronomical terms, meaning within the next million years). In the longer term, the dramatic effects of the massive stars already in the region on their surrounding clouds may accelerate the star formation rate.
High-mass stars live for only a few million years at most (a very short lifespan compared to the ten billion years of the Sun), but they profoundly influence their environments throughout their lives. As youngsters, these stars emit strong winds and radiation that shape the clouds around them, perhaps compressing them enough to form new stars. At the ends of their lives, they are highly unstable, being prone to outbursts of stellar material until their deaths in violent supernova explosions.
A prime example of these violent stars is Eta Carinae, the bright yellowish star just to the upper left of the centre of the image. It has over 100 times the mass of our Sun, and is among the most luminous stars known. Within the next million years or so, Eta Carinae will explode as a supernova, followed by yet more supernovae from other massive stars in the region.
These violent explosions rip through the molecular gas clouds in their immediate surroundings, but after the shockwaves have travelled more than about ten light-years they are weaker, and may instead compress clouds that are a little further away, triggering the formation of new generations of stars. The supernovae may also produce short-lived radioactive atoms that are picked up by the collapsing clouds. There is strong evidence that similar radioactive atoms were incorporated into the cloud that collapsed to form our Sun and planets, so the Carina Nebula may provide additional insights into the creation of our own Solar System.
The Carina Nebula is some 7500 light-years distant in the constellation of the same name (Carina, or The Keel). It is among the brightest nebulae in the sky because of its large population of high-mass stars. At about 150 light-years across, it is several times larger than the well-known Orion Nebula. Even though it is several times further away than the Orion Nebula, its apparent size on the sky is therefore about the same, making it also one of the largest nebulae in the sky.
The 12-metre-diameter APEX telescope is a pathfinder for ALMA (http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/alma.html), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a revolutionary new telescope that ESO, together with its international partners, is building and operating, also on the Chajnantor plateau. APEX is itself based on a single prototype antenna constructed for the ALMA project, while ALMA will be an array of 54 antennas with 12-metre diameters, and an additional 12 antennas with 7-metre diameters. While ALMA will have far higher angular resolution than APEX, its field of view will be much smaller. The two telescopes are complementary: for example, APEX will find many targets across wide areas of sky, which ALMA will be able to study in great detail.
APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO. The operation of APEX is entrusted to ESO.
ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
###
ESO: http://www.eso.org
Thanks to ESO for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
This press release has been viewed 39 time(s).
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Study Finds Frequent Gaming Changes Your Brain
> How does frequent gaming affect people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.?
I can answer that for someone ~ 40. (I've been gaming since the early 80's)
I used to be a extreme hard-core gamer -- typically putting in 80 hrs every 2 weeks playing L4D, TF2, BF:BC2, Diablo 2. Yes, 80 hours. (When you're single, you can play 2-3 hrs every night, and 8-10 hrs on Sat & Sun =) Before that I played UO and WoW for 4 years each.
I decided to do a radical experiment this summer -- no gaming for 1 month.
The results really surprised me.
I found that with extreme gaming my mind was effectively overclocked by ~ 10x. I was _always_ having thoughts -- my mind was constantly racing, jumping from thought to though. I was _extremely_ bored waiting for people to finish up their sentence. When they were only 10% started talkig I was already processing what they were going to say, my response, and already thinking about 2 other interesting things. My sense of time whenever on the computer was completely accelerated. A few hours would seem like minutes.
With no gaming I found my mind was effectively under-clocked by ~ 1/2, but that I was more efficient! I could actually go 5 - 10 mins without any thoughts whatsoever. It was almost as good as when I used to meditate. When I was on the computer my sense of time was extremely more accurate and was able to manage my time very efficiently. I found I was actually interested in what people were saying, and wouldn't mind if they took a while to formulate their thoughts. I found myself calm, and able to stay focused, no matter what the subject was. For a while now, I've had one wish in life: "To never be bored" -- this certainly came dam close! One could get lost in every moment and really savor life.
With the sharp contrast I can definitely attest that extreme gaming & Internet can be a very bad mental addiction. It is ironic that physical drugs (caffeine, alcohol, etc,) are harder to get on, but harder to get off. Mental addictions are extremely easy to get started on, but thankfully easier to get weaned off of.
Going forward -- I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I really _love_ gaming and spending time with all my online gaming friends. I also see the "harmful" effects, so there is only one solution: These days I'm trying to be more balanced. Only a few hours a week of FPSers -- and spend more time with real-life friends, and doing other activities, such as getting out more, going to the gym, etc.
I would highly recommend everyone do a personal experiment. This is the _only_ way to truly _know_ how gaming effects you. If you find you are not effected, then great! If you found you are, then that is good as well because now that you armed with information you have choice on what to do differently. Either way you learnt something.
Cheers
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Video: Police clear out Occupy Wall Street site
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45302744#45302744
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica (SPACE.com)
Some of the most frigid areas on Earth are providing scientists with tantalizing hints of water only a few miles under the icy crust of Jupiter's moon, Europa.
Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade. Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce.
But new studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features, which imply water nearer to the moon's surface than previously thought.
Hundreds of odd formations, known as "chaos terrains," are spread across Europa's icy surface. These irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate.? [Photos: Europa, Mysterious Icy Moon of Jupiter]
"It looks like crushed ice," Paul Schenk, of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, described one such feature to SPACE.com.
Schenk was part of a team of scientists, led by Britney Schmidt of the University of Texas at Austin, comparing Antarctic ice shelves and subglacial volcanoes to these striking features, which were imaged by NASA's Galileo satellite.
Their research was published in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Nature.
From the Earth to (Jupiter's) moon
In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form.
In Antarctica, saltwater fills cracks and weakens the freshwater ice. The resulting collapse leaves large freshwater ice chunks surrounded by briny ice.
Though there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth's, a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon, experts say.
"We were able to formulate a model for chaos formation that stacks up to observational tests," Schmidt said via email.
Rising plumes of heat
"Think of Europa as one giant ice shelf floating on a global ocean, with a really rocky core," Schenk said.
Europa's surface is cold, around minus 170 degree Celsius (minus 100 K). The bottom of the ice is slightly warmer.
"You and I might not notice the difference, but geologically it's very different," Schenk said.
Born primarily from the tidal interactions between Jupiter and the moon, the slightly warmer temperatures are the seeds that create the odd structures. Bubbles of heat rise up through the ice toward the surface, but don't make it all the way to the frigid top.
Instead, this heat melts some of the ice into enormous lakes beneath the crust.
"On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
Lakes beneath the ice
One such lake lies underneath Thera Macula, one of Europa's chaos terrains. Schmidt's team estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
The ice above these lakes weakens, leaving the top layer unstable. As the crust buckles and sinks, it cracks, forming large, glacierlike blocks of ice. Salt from the surface mixes into the water and flows around the small icebergs, where it refreezes, forming peculiar domes across the surface of the moon.
Eventually, the subsurface lakes cool off and refreeze, but not for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Features are constantly changing. The research team even theorized that Thera Macula could have changed noticeably in the decade since NASA's Galileo captured images of the moon.
Schmidt compares this to collapsing ice shelves on Earth.
And these features are not the only potential source of water on the moon. Given the hundreds of features crisscrossing the surface of Europa, several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today, only a few miles beneath the icy crust, scientists say.
"The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined," Schmidt said. "The lakes may even be habitats themselves."
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter?@Spacedotcom?and on?Facebook.
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Photos: Olympus Picks Amazing Microscope pictures
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115228/_Photos___Olympus_Picks_Amazing_Microscope_pictures
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Rumor: iOS 5.0.2 around the corner to re-address battery issues, iOS 5.1 coming soon with Siri enhancements
Coming as a surprise to no one — we hope — Macerkopf.de says Apple is working hard on iOS 5.0.2 and iOS 5.1 beyond that. iOS 5.0.2 should address battery life issues that remained following the iOS 5.0.1 release and it’s initial batch...
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/YhM-VBBRfaU/story01.htm
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Insight: U.S. readies defenses against Europe spillover (Reuters)
HONOLULU/WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The United States is ramping up attempts to safeguard its financial system from a worsening of Europe's debt crisis, joining nations in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere in trying to build firewalls.
U.S. policymakers, alarmed by the political upheaval in Italy and Greece, are digging deep into the books of American banks to find out how exposed they might be to euro zone creditors and the plunging value of sovereign debt.
Officials were stung by the implosion of Wall Street firm MF Global, which gambled and lost on European debt, and they are working on contingency plans for a worst-case scenario should another financial firm crumble.
A senior U.S. Treasury official said regulators are contacting big U.S. financial institutions to make sure they are scaling back exposure to Europe and are ready for a potential worsening of the crisis.
The Financial Stability Oversight Council, an inter-agency group set up after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, was trying to identify specific firms that could be hit by financial turbulence and then sort out ways that each one can fortify its balance sheet, the Treasury official said.
While the Treasury has been at pains to say that direct U.S. bank exposure to European countries now receiving bailout aid -- Greece, Ireland and Portugal -- is moderate, once the debt of Italy and Spain, plus credit default swaps, and U.S. bank indirect exposure through European banks are added, the potential sum could exceed $4 trillion.
"As such, the potential for contagion to the U.S. financial system is not small," the Institute of International Finance, the lobby group for major international banks, said last week.
Hedging and netting would limit the true size of any losses, so the $4 trillion figure would be the outer edge of U.S. total exposure.
U.S. banks had about $180.9 billion of debt from Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain on their books at the end of June, based on Bank for International Settlements data. Italy accounted for the largest chunk, more than $250 billion. Guarantees and credit derivatives added another $586.6 billion, bringing the total to $767.5 billion, the IIF said.
There is a secondary level of exposure that is potentially more worrying -- through international banks lending to each other. Here the greatest risk stems from Italy and France. International bank claims on Italy total $939 billion, and French banks account for well over one-third of that, BIS data show. French banks also rely heavily on short-term loans from other international banks for their daily operations. If Italian debt slumps even further, causing deeper losses for French banks, international banks could stop lending to France. The losses would ripple through the whole global financial system.
The United States learned the hard way how these indirect financial linkages work when imploding credit default swaps forced it into a $180 billion bailout of insurance giant American International Group in 2008 to prevent further contagion in the banking sector.
The danger is that a steep drop in sovereign bond prices prompts similar margin calls at banks that could snowball into a seizing up of credit, the lifeblood of an economy.
European banks hold some $3.5 trillion of euro-zone sovereign bonds and U.S. banks have significant direct exposure to their European peers, the IIF said in a report.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was frank last week about the risks: "It is not something that we would be insulated from ... I don't think we would be able to escape the consequences of a blow-up in Europe."
JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, holds about $44 billion in debt of troubled euro-zone nations -- Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy -- and Citigroup, the third largest, has $24.3 billion, said Dick Bove, a banking analyst at Rochdale Securities in September.
MF Global's fall gave a taste of how contagion can rip through the financial system. Brokerage Jeffries Group Inc's shares plunged on concerns about exposure to Europe. The shares stabilized after the firm clarified its position.
CHECKING THE BOOKS
Fed Vice-Chair Janet Yellen said a new round of stress tests of U.S. banks will start in "a couple of weeks" to check their resilience should the value of their assets plunge.
"In light of such international linkages, further intensification of financial disruptions in Europe could lead to a deterioration of financial conditions in the United States," she told a Chicago audience on Friday.
"We are monitoring European developments very closely, and we will continue to do all that we can to mitigate the consequence of any adverse developments abroad on the U.S. financial system," she added.
Stress tests could lead to some banks raising more capital. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority told MF Global to boost its net capital in August following concerns about its exposure to European debt.
A Fed survey last week showed that about half the top U.S. banks had loans to European banks or were extending credit to them. If European banks ran into trouble and were unable to repay their loans, U.S. banks could face sizable losses.
The chief economist for ratings agency Moody's Investors Service, Steven Hess, said last week that so far there were no signs that banks were unwilling to lend to one another.
"If ... the crisis becomes much worse and includes Italy for example -- and this is all if, not a forecast from the part of Moody's -- if that were to happen, you could see the financial system in the United States ... suddenly suffer problems," Hess told the Reuters Washington Summit.
Should that happen, the United States can turn to tools it honed during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, said Nellie Liang, director of the Fed's Office of Financial Stability Policy and Research.
"We were creative that time, and we could be creative this time," Liang said. "But I think, just step back, the first line of defense is doing proper risk management and supervision."
U.S. money market funds, for example, already have pulled back significantly from European debt exposure under the watchful eye of regulators, she said. Their holdings of European paper totaled $384 billion in September, down 30 percent from June when alarms were first rung, the IIF said.
Regulatory reforms have given the Fed much more authority to watch over and investigate financial firms considered so large that they could disrupt the whole financial system.
IMPATIENCE
U.S. impatience over Europe's inability to quash the spreading risk is palpable. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried again on Thursday to press for more decisive action.
"It is crucial that Europe move quickly to put in place a strong plan to restore financial stability," Geithner said in Hawaii, echoing the views of other finance ministers attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
"It is not being dealt with forcefully," Philippines Finance Minister Cesar Purisima said at the summit.
APEC finance ministers agreed to shore up their economies to protect against any damage and underpin growth.
These steps might include imposing capital controls to prevent a rapid outflow of cash that would destabilize an economy, lowering interest rates or fiscal stimulus.
For the Philippines, Purisima told Reuters he is prepared: "We have a lot of fiscal space if we need it ... Whatever is necessary, we will be doing, our interest rates are low." --
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