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The earthquake, the worst to hit Nepal in over 80 years, also triggered a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.

The avalanche buried part of the mountain's base camp, which was full of mountaineers who had come for the start of the main climbing season. Alex Gavan, a climber who said he was at base camp, wrote on Twitter: "Running for life from my tent. Unhurt. Many many people up the mountain."

An army spokesman told Reuters that at least 18 bodies had been found on Mount Everest. Google executive Dan Fredinburg was among those killed in the avalanche,

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Pacific walrus that can't find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska.

An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed Saturday about 5 miles north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north. Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea, the body of water north of the Bering Strait.

"It's another remarkable sign of the dramatic environmental conditions changing as the result of sea ice loss," said Margaret Williams, managing director of the group's Arctic program, by phone from Washington, D.C. "The walruses are telling us what the polar bears have told us and what many indigenous people have told us in the high Arctic, and that is that the Arctic environment is changing extremely rapidly and it is time for the rest of the world to take notice and also to take action to address the root causes of climate change."

The authorities in Taiwan are scrambling to control a tainted-cooking-oil scandal that has affected hundreds of manufacturers and raised fears about health risks posed in many commonly consumed food items.

The scandal comes during the Mid-Autumn Festival and has dampened enthusiasm for giving and consuming mooncakes, a traditional seasonal snack.

Regulators are examining the extent to which the substandard oil has been exported to Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. Hong Kong’s Center for Food Safety said Maxim’s Cakes, a prominent retailer in the Chinese city, had removed from its shelves pineapple cakes made from oil from a Taiwan manufacturer implicated in the scandal.

On Sept. 1 the police raided a factory in southern Taiwan that is accused of producing hundreds of tons of oil that had been recycled from restaurant waste and slaughterhouse byproducts. Another company, Chang Guann, bought and reprocessed the tainted material into 782 tons of oil. Of that, 645 tons of oil were sold widely around Taiwan, with 236 tons recovered thus far, officials from the Taiwanese Food and Drug Administration said Saturday. Some of the unrecovered oil may have already been consumed, they acknowledged.

WHAT IF ROBOTS TOOK ALL OF OUR JOBS?

It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that—in slow motion—is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived—appliance repairman, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer—each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.

It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time. This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.

The tax Mexico would add to sugary beverages would be at the retail level, meaning it would be included in the fee when soda is purchased in a store or at a movie theater.

It would be in addition to the already-present 16 percent sales tax Mexico places on goods, and would be on any product with concentrated flavors or syrups as well as bottled beverages.

A former member of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs has come out to say she's now a woman.

Kristin Beck, formerly Chris, served 20 years as a SEAL and fought on some of the most dangerous battlefields in the world, but after she left the service she realized she wasn't living the life she wanted.

"Chris really wanted to be a girl and felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on in childhood," said Anne Speckhard, co-author of Beck's biography "Warrior Princess," which was published over the weekend. Speckhard told ABC News Beck suppressed that secret for decades, however, through the trials of SEAL training and the harrowing missions that followed, growing a burly beard as she fought on the front lines of American special operations.

Brandon Webb, a former SEAL who served on a different SEAL team than Beck, said that Beck's reputation in the SEALs was a good one and said she was, by all appearances, the "consummate guy's guy."

But the book says that Chris "had considered living as the woman he felt himself to be for a very long time, but while he was serving as a SEAL he couldn't do it."

The U.S. Federal Reserve took the unprecedented step Tuesday of promising to keep interest rates low until 2013, trying to assure investors that it will act as needed to bolster the flagging U.S. economy.

In a statement released following its regularly scheduled meeting on monetary policy, the central bank departed from its practice of using the expressions "exceptionally low" levels for an "extended period," in pledging to keep its target for the federal funds rate where it is, without spelling out exactly how long "extended" might be.

The wording was opposed by three members of the Fed's monetary policy committee — Richard W. Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota and Charles I. Plosser — because of fears it could boost inflation.

The Fed also said economic recovery has been "considerably slower" than it expected after its meeting in June and that "risks to the economic outlook have increased."

The statement held out the promise of low rates on mortgages and other consumer loans longer than many had assumed.

Jobs are back. Just not for everybody.

Like many other things in the stutter-step economic recovery, the job market is finally recovering, but progress is uneven and some people are being left out. The latest jobs report, for example, shows that the economy created 216,000 jobs in March, for a total of about 1.9 million new jobs since employment levels bottomed out at the end of 2009. That's a healthy pace of job growth that will help bring down the uncomfortably high unemployment rate, and, with luck, cement the recovery.

[See 10 industries that will hire the most in 2011.]

But digging into the numbers reveals some of the unusual ways that work and retirement may be permanently changing for millions of Americans. Most of the new jobs created since the end of 2009, for one thing, are going to workers under the age of 34, or over the age of 55. Employment levels for middle-aged workers, meanwhile, are stagnant or still falling.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- End tax breaks that reward some U.S. companies with overseas subsidiaries and encourage those businesses to create jobs in other countries, President Barack Obama is telling Congress.

Yet it's an idea that has raised concerns even among some lawmakers in the president's own party.

At issue is a bill, now stalled in the Senate, that would do away with some tax credits and deferrals for U.S. companies for operations abroad.

"There is no reason why our tax code should actively reward them for creating jobs overseas," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "Instead, we should be using our tax dollars to reward companies that create jobs and businesses within our borders."

Though Obama singled out Republican opposition, the bill also failed to get support from some Democrats, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. He has expressed concern that the change would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage.

Reactions from around the G20 indicate that, a week before the body meets, simmering tensions surrounding exchange-rate policies now threaten to boil over and complicate the body’s efforts to craft a more durable and balanced world economy.

Brazilian officials, for instance, were quoted Thursday saying they plan to use the G20 to lament the Fed’s move, which they warned will help the U.S. at the expense of its neighbours and prompt “retaliatory” steps by countries it trades with.

“What this week is creating is a much larger sense of uncertainty,” said Collin Crownover, global head of currency management at State Street Global Advisors in Boston. “Yes, we’ve removed some uncertainty now with what the Fed has done, but now these responses to the Fed – when those will be delivered, if they’ll be delivered – in my opinion will create a lot more volatility in the currency markets over the next few quarters.’’

BEIJING (AP) -- Beijing warned Washington on Thursday that economic ties might be damaged after American lawmakers escalated the conflict over China's currency controls, inching the two economic giants closer to a trade war.

The Commerce Ministry said a measure approved Wednesday by Congress to allow Washington to penalize governments that manipulate exchange rates violated free-trade rules. It gave no indication whether Beijing might retaliate, though it has imposed antidumping duties in recent months on imports of U.S. chicken, steel and nylon.

After years of friction, the bill is the first vote by American lawmakers for measures to respond to complaints Beijing keeps its yuan -- also known as the renminbi -- undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair price advantage and costing U.S. jobs. Passage by a 348-79 margin in the House of Representatives came ahead of November elections in which the economy and 9.6 percent unemployment are key voter concerns.

引用來源:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-warns-US-currency-bill-apf-305730353.html?x=0

June 02, 2010|By Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Sacramento — California would be the first state to ban plastic and most paper bags from grocery, convenience and other stores under a proposal that appears headed for a major legislative victory this week.

Shoppers who don't bring their own totes to a store would have to purchase paper bags made of at least 40 percent recycled material for a minimum of 5 cents or buy reusable bags under the proposal, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2012. A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he supports the bill, which will be voted on in the Assembly this week and could go to a Senate vote this year.

The measure would go further than plastic bag bans in at least five California cities, including San Francisco.

San Francisco's ordinance applies only to chain supermarkets and pharmacies, but the state measure would bar the items from all food and convenience stores, and it would also restrict retailers from handing out free paper bags.

David Rising, Associated Press Writer, On Wednesday May 5, 2010, 4:55 am EDT

BERLIN (AP) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel asked German lawmakers Wednesday to speedily approve euro22.4 billion ($29.3 billion) over three years in aid for Greece, saying that the "future of Europe" is at stake.

Merkel's Cabinet agreed Monday upon the German contribution to a three-year euro110 billion bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Germany, as Europe's largest economy, will provide euro8.4 billion in 2010 and up to euro14 billion more over 2011 and 2012 according to the plan.

Obama's Budget - $28.4 Billion For Energy

US President Barack Obama's 2011 Budget will allow USD $28.4 billion for the Department of Energy to support scientific innovation, develop clean and secure energy technologies, maintain national security, and reduce environmental risk.
 
The U.S. has fallen behind in clean-tech in recent years, particularly in manufacturing, with China emerging as the clean energy super power. In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama said "I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders - and I know you don't either".

Pardon the cliche, but it's one of the holiest of Holy Grails of technology: Wireless power. And while early lab experiments have been able to "beam" electricity a few feet to power a light bulb, the day when our laptops and cell phones can charge without having to plug them in to a wall socket still seems decades in the future.

Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power. Enough, at least, to keep a cell phone from running out of juice.

While "traditional" (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia's system isn't finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems -- all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone's battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there's no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It's the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale.

Mind you, harvesting ambient electromagnetic energy is never going to offer enough electricity to power your whole house or office, but it just might be enough to keep a cell phone alive and kicking. Currently Nokia is able to harvest all of 5 milliwatts from the air; the goal is to increase that to 20 milliwatts in the short term and 50 milliwatts down the line. That wouldn't be enough to keep the phone alive during an active call, but would be enough to slowly recharge the cell phone battery while it's in standby mode, theoretically offering infinite power -- provided you're not stuck deep underground where radio waves can't penetrate.

Nokia says it hopes to commercialize the technology in three to five years

TOKYO - In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video

Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). posted video of the new 2.5 inch display on its Web page Friday. In the video, a hand squeezes the 0.3 millimeter (0.01-inch)-thick display, which shows color images of a bicyclist stuntman, a picturesque lake and other images.

Sony will present the research and video at an academic symposium in Long Beach, California, for the Society for Information Display this week, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said in a release.

The display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said.

The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market — liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.

BEIJING (AFP) - Energy-hungry China has started drilling what it says will be Asia's deepest oil and gas well, state media said Sunday

State-owned Sinopec plans for the Chuanke No. 1 Well in southwest Sichuan province to reach a depth of 8,875 metres (30,000 feet) -- more than the height of        Mount Everest, Xinhua news agency reported.

It will take the company, Asia's largest oil refiner, 676 days and 300 million yuan (39 million dollars) to complete the project, according to Xinhua.

But if the past is any guide, the work could eventually be in vain.

In July 2006, China completed drilling of the 8,408-meter Tashen No. 1 Well, in the Tahe oil field in northwest China's Tarim Basin -- but discovered no gas.

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice headed to Beijing on Friday as attention focused on whether a group of Chinese diplomats returning from Pyongyang had managed to persuade North Korea to cool nuclear tensions.

Rice's crisis trip to east Asia has been overshadowed by speculation that communist North Korea might be about to detonate a second nuclear device following its first-ever test on October 9.

引用來源
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061020/ts_nm/korea_north_dc_151;_ylt=AtRiLyGKtf5SDbChcrGMSF2CscEA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl