MSNBC: ALAN BOYLE:Stuck Mars rover makes first move in months

NASA sees ‘slight forward movement’ out of a Red Planet sand trap

By Alan Boyle

Science editor

msnbc.com

updated 8:57 a.m. ET Nov. 20, 2009

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

For the first time in seven months, the Mars rover moved.

NASA's Spirit rover has been stuck in a slanting sand trap nicknamed "Troy" since April. The problem started when golf cart-sized robot broke through a crust of soil and slipped into softer stuff beneath. Ever since then, the rover team has been trying to figure out how to get it out.

The crucial commands telling Spirit to spin its wheels were sent up this week — and before-and-after photos sent back down to Earth on Thursday revealed "very slight forward movement," NASA reported.

That movement didn't come easy: For months, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been working out a detailed strategy for extracting the rover from the fine, slippery sand in which it has been stuck. The job is more complicated because one of Spirit's six wheels broke years ago. That means the rover has had to drive backwards, dragging its front wheel behind.

The engineers finally decided the best course would be to have Spirit retrace its steps downslope by driving "forward" — rather like driving a car out of a winter snowdrift that it backed into. The driving commands that were uploaded to the rover called for making two spins of the wheels, each of which would be the equivalent of 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) of travel. NASA didn't expect the rover to move that far, but the space agency was hoping that the spins would make at least a small difference in Spirit's position.

The first time the maneuver was attempted, on Tuesday, the rover aborted the commands less than a second after the wheels started to spin. NASA said the commands set off an alarm in the rover's electronic brain because it looked as if the maneuver would change the machine's tilt too dramatically.

Slideshow Month in Space Catch a blast from the sun, a clash between galaxies and other outer-space highlights from October. more photos

As it turned out, Spirit had inaccurate information about how much it was tilted to begin with. The commands were revised to reflect a more accurate read of the rover's position and sent back up to Mars on Thursday.

This time, the commands worked, as shown in the before-and-after imagery.

"Spirit's left front wheel has become slightly less buried in the soft soil in which the rover had become embedded about six months ago," NASA reported in its mission update late Thursday. "The right front wheel, which has not been usable for driving since 2006, has been pushed perceptibly forward by the drive. The amount of forward motion is less than 1 percent of the distance that would have been covered on firm ground by the amount of wheel rotation commanded in the drive."

It could take months to get Spirit out of its predicament. "Extrication drives are expected to make slow, if any, progress in coming weeks, and the probability of success in escaping from Troy is uncertain," NASA said.

Mars rover trying great escape
Inside the rover factory
The lives of Spirit and Opportunity

Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of the Red Planet in January 2004. Mission planners expected them to last at least 90 days on Mars, and the robots have far exceeded those expectations. The rovers' missions have been extended several times at a fraction of the initial cost of $820 million. Along the way, Spirit and Opportunity have confirmed that liquid water once existed on what is now a cold, dry planet, in volumes that could have sustained life as we know it.

Even Spirit's forced immobility hasn't been a loss. The rover science team has been conducting detailed observations of the area around Troy even while engineers have been working on the escape plan. If Spirit fails to make its escape, it could continue to do useful science in place.

Sandro flies to Mendoza to receive multi-organ transplant

Roberto Sanchez (aka Sandro) “will receive a transplant in the next few hours in Mendoza,” confirmed on Wednesday his press agent Nora Lafón.

The artist has been held in a Buenos Aires hospital for months awaiting for a donor.

At dawn, a donor appeared for Sandro, who had been awaiting a heart / lung transplant.

The singer is suffering from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) for years and his health deteriorated continuously.

Sandro will be taken from the Argentine Institute of Diagnosis and Treatment (IADT) to Mendoza by an air ambulance and his arrival is scheduled for 11 am.

Once there, he will go to the Italian Hospital, where the medical team led by heart surgeon Claudio Burgos awaits.

Journalism :ON LINE

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Introduction

The Web in 2008 became a regular and even primary news destination for more and more Americans.

Several surveys found that the number of Americans who used the Web regularly for news jumped. And at least for some news the Internet has now overtaken most other media as a favored news delivery platform.

One poll, in December 2008, found the number of Americans who said they got “most of their national and international news” online increased 67% in the last four years.¹ The presidential election was almost certainly a key factor in the growth. More than a third of Americans said they got most of their campaign news from the Internet in 2008 — triple the percentage in previous presidential election year.²

The growth in online news consumption cut across age groups, but the growth was fueled in particular by young people. Young voters and activists now rank the Internet as a news source of importance parallel to television.³

And the shift was likely not just a matter of changing audience tastes. News organizations and the political community both were also more aggressive about delivering news and information online, and giving consumers more ways to gather, organize and share it across multiple devices. From personalized news pages sent to a person’s e-mail, delivery of content on “smart” mobile phones, news-ranking sites that list the most-recommended news stories and more sharing of content among news producers, what was available from the traditional news media digitally was richer, even if much of this was the same information simply made more readily available.

Add to that social networking sites like Facebook. And the video site YouTube also became a major delivery system for people to get news posted and recommended by friends and associates, and often from political campaigns. The Obama camp reported more than a billion minutes of campaign-produced material was downloaded from YouTube. And Youtube reported that the Obama campaign’s 1800 web videos were viewed 100 million times in total.⁴

Internet News Use

By any number of yardsticks, the traffic to news websites jumped in 2008.

According to a PEJ analysis of comScore data, the average number of unique visitors to the top 50 news sites each month grew 27% in 2008 over the year before.⁵ The number of monthly unique visitors to all 700 news and information sites measured by comScore grew 7%.

Comparing one media platform to another can be complicated, given the different ways different media are measured. Often the clearest reference is found in survey data.

According to Pew Research Center data, as of August 2008 the percentage of Americans who went online regularly for news (at least three times a week) was up 19% from two years earlier to nearly four in ten Americans (37%). No other medium was growing as quickly. Most saw audiences flat or declining.

The new numbers put the Web ahead of several other platforms for the first time. In the same August survey, 29% of Americans said they “regularly” watched network nightly news, 22% watched network morning shows and 13% Sunday morning shows.

The percentage of Americans who relied on the Internet regularly, according to this data, was now roughly similar to that who regularly watched cable television for news (39%).

More people still read a newspaper “yesterday” (34%) or listened to news radio (35%) than had viewed news online “yesterday” (29%). But the gap was narrowing.⁶

The biggest jump came in the number of people relying on the Web for national and international news in particular. In December, 40% of Americans said they got most of their national and international news online, up 67% from 2004, the last presidential election year, when the number was 24%. That put the web ahead of newspapers (35%). Only television, cable, local and network combined, ranked higher (70%).⁷

Other surveys reinforced the notion of a jump in online news consumption. In November 2008, for instance, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found 36% of Internet users said they now used the Web for news on a “typical day,” a 16% jump from two years earlier (December 2006) when the number was 31%.

The numbers, it is important to note, refer to the platform by which people acquired their news, not the source gathering it. Virtually all of the most popular news websites are those associated with traditional news organizations, whose legacy platforms are paying for the news gathering, or are aggregators, which collect content from traditional newsrooms and wire services rather than produce their own. But given the financial implications of the Web on the news business, the numbers are no less significant.

This growth in online news consumption was not due to more people using the Internet generally. The percent of people who go online for any reason has held fairly steady at 70% to 75% of the U.S. population since 2006.

But those who go online do it more often and for longer periods of time than in the past, and they increasingly seek news. Since 2004, for instance, the percentage of online Americans saying they went online “yesterday” increased from 58% to 72%. And the number logging on multiple times a day from home jumped from 27% to 34%.⁸ Another study found that over the last three years, the amount of time the average user spent online increased from 14 hours a week in 2006 to over 17 hours as of January 2009.⁹

Consider that that in January 2009, the Digital Future Report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School found that 79% of adult users said the Internet was now their “most important” source of information (not just for news), higher than television (68%) or newspapers (60%). Getting news online, in other words, has become more of a reflex and a larger part of people’s daily lives.¹⁰

For all this, one other factor has remained constant in Internet news trends: the people who go online for their news tend to be more educated. That has not changed over the last decade even as the number of online news users has grown.

Ten years ago a college graduate was more than three times as likely as someone with a high school education or less to regularly go online for news. That gap remains just as large today. Fully 61% of college graduates go online for news at least three days a week, compared with just 19% of those with no more than a high school education.¹¹

Beyond demographics, the accelerating move by audiences generally to the Web just deepens the paradox facing the news business.

As their audience migrates online, and the old media continue to build their offerings there to service them, the media are properly developing their market share in the new media environment. The more success legacy news operations have online, however, the more damaging it is to their current revenue base, since the Internet increasingly cannot pay for itself from any of the current economic models (see Online Economics).

Internet Audiences and the Election

Almost certainly a major reason for the surge in online news consumption in 2008 was interest in the election. While television remained the dominant delivery source, the percent of Americans who said they got most of their campaign news from the Internet tripled between October 2004 and October 2008. Fully a third (33%) reported getting most of their election news online, up from the 10% who did so four years earlier.¹²

By the last week of the election, 59% of voters said they had sought out or encountered at least some political information online.¹³

Young people were a major factor in that growth. Nearly three times as many people ages 18 to 29 cited the Internet (49%) as their main campaign news platform as mentioned newspapers (17%).¹⁴

Among those over age 50, nearly the opposite was true: 22% relied on the Internet for election news while 39% look to newspapers. Even with that, compared with 2004, use of the Internet for election news has increased across all age groups. Among the youngest cohort (age 18-29), television has lost significant ground to the Internet.¹⁵

Most Popular News Sites

Which news sites were enjoying this boost in traffic? The evidence suggests growth across a range.

To some extent, the biggest Web sites got even bigger. The top four news sites alone, for example, increased their audience by 22% in 2008, according to data from comScore, or a combined 23.6 million visitors a month. That rate of increase is more than twice as fast as in 2007 and more than five times the rate in 2006. At Yahoo News, the most-visited news site according to comScore, the number of visitors rose by 13% for the year. The number rose 24% at No. 2 MSNBC.com, 34% at No. 3 CNN.Com, and 20% at No. 4 AOL News.

(Tracking the exact order of which of these sites is first, second or third is complicated by the fact that the different measuring agencies use different methodologies, but all show substantial growth).

The traffic data also suggest that a host of niche sites that barely registered or did not exist during the previous presidential election also benefited. Huffingtonpost.com, a news aggregator, producer and blogging website, for example, catapulted into the 20 most-visited sites in September 2008, according to data from comScore, with 4.5 million users during the month, an increase of 474% compared with September 2007.¹⁶

Politico.com, which started in 2007 (see New Ventures Section) with a focus on national politics, increased fivefold to 2.4 million visitors between September 2007 and 2008. RealClearPolitics.com, which aggregates political news and polling, grew 489% during that period.¹⁷

Audience Growth: Top News Sites vs. Select Political Sites

September 2007 vs. September 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: comScore, Inc.

But even with those gains, traffic to those sites remained a fraction of what the leading news sites drew. As a group, HuffingtonPost.com, RealClearPolitics.com and Politico.com drew an average of 3.9 million more visitors per month in 2008 than in 2007. To put that into perspective, Yahoo News.com gained 4.5 million by itself. The evidence clearly suggests that while a variety of new sites grew, in general, the big got even bigger, extending their share of Internet traffic.

After the election, some of these niche sites were more successful than others at retaining those audiences. In December, the Huffington Post still drew 81% of the viewers it did in September and October, when interest in the campaign was highest. Salon.com, the left-leaning online magazine, retained 77%. Two newer sites, however, did not do as well. Politico’s website kept just about half its audience. And the Real Clear Politics website, which had grown in advance of the election, kept only 21%.¹⁸

Top News Sites (Nielsen)

Average monthly unique visitors, 2007 vs. 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Nielsen Online

Top News Sites (comScore)

Average monthly unique visitors, 2007 vs. 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: comScore, Inc.

Top News Sites (Hitwise), 2008

Website Domain Market Share Rank Yahoo News news.yahoo.com 1 CNN.com www.cnn.com 2 MSNBC.com www.msnbc.com 3 Google News news.google.com 4 Drudge Report www.drudgereport.com 5 The New York Times www.nytimes.com 6 Fox News www.foxnews.com 7 USA Today www.usatoday.com 8 BBC News news.bbc.co.uk 9 The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com 10

Source: Hitwise, Inc. NOTE: Hitwise’s methodology ranks popularity according to percentage of total traffic a website attracts

Mergers: British Airways and Iberia

LIKE two drowning men Iberia and British Airways have long eyed each other as potential means of mutual buoyancy. The rate at which the airlines have been sinking at last forced them into each other's arms on Thursday November 12th. BA made big pre-tax losses in the year to the end of March as it suffered from the credit crisis and the global economic slump. Iberia actually managed to eke out a slender profit for 2008. But as the terms of the merger were thrashed out Iberia announced a loss in the latest quarter, which includes the usually profitable summer months.
A week ago BA said that it had lost £292m ($466m) in the first half of the year, which includes the summer period. These airlines are not alone in their travails. The International Air Transport Association, an industry body, estimates that total losses for the world’s airlines this year will be some $11 billion. By agreeing to merge the two firms will belatedly join the trend for big European airlines to bulk up. This has become an attractive means to make substantial cost savings as they compete against low-cost rivals and try to cope with a precipitous fall in numbers of lucrative business passengers. The pair reckon that by the fifth year the new group will save some €400m ($595m)annually by cutting overlapping routes, and by combining maintenance, office functions and business-class lounges. The pair may also have more heft when it comes to negotiations to buy new planes from Boeing and Airbus.

But saving money by laying off workers and changing conditions of employment may prove troublesome. Iberia’s cabin crew have just finished one round of strikes and are promising more in a dispute over changes to their jobs. BA’s attempts to cut cabin crew and freeze pay could also result in strikes over Christmas. Ground staff and pilots are equally willing to use industrial action to get their way.

The deal will see BA’s shareholders take 55% of the new company to Iberia’s 45%. It will also propel the pair back to the big leagues of European aviation. Their combined revenues will put them closer to Air France-KLM, the product of a similar deal in 2004 and Germany’s Lufthansa, which has expanded its operations with a series of smaller takeovers of Swiss and Austrian airlines since 2005. And like Air France-KLM, while the pair will combine their businesses they will maintain separate corporate operations. This will allow both to maintain their roles as the national flag-carriers while keeping valuable bilateral international landing rights that go along with that status.

Willie Walsh, the BA boss, will take control of the combined airlines while Iberia’s chief executive, Antonio Vázquez, will become chairman. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of next year, but Iberia can still pull out if BA’s pension scheme, currently with liabilities of some £2.7 billion, becomes “materially detrimental” to the merger. Iberia may fear that the British holding company, which will have full responsibility for the pensions, may not deal with the pension problem successfully.

One reason for keeping apace with European rivals is that size will become an important factor if consolidation among airlines goes global. The two airlines are already seeking antitrust immunity in America and in Europe for a tie-up with American Airlines, which would see all three co-ordinating over costs and revenues on transatlantic routes. After an “open skies” agreement between Europe and America in 2008 Air France-KLM has been granted similar immunity for its tie-up with Delta-Northwest, as has Lufthansa with its American partners. But BA may be required to give up landing slots at Heathrow, a price it has been unwilling to pay in the past.

Despite “open skies” a protectionist stance in America over the country's troubled airlines has left in place a law that prevents foreign airlines form owning more than 25% of an American counterpart. The European Union is pressing for this restriction to be lifted, though there is little sign that it might happen soon. But were the Americans to have a change of heart, and if international consolidation took flight, a combined BA and Iberia may just be strong enough to stay afloat.

source: The Economist

BILL KOVACH ,the social responsibility in the media and journalism.

Latin American journalists are invited to a congress organized by the Argentine group Foro de Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA) on social responsibility in the media and journalism. The meeting will be held on November 20 and 21 at Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires. The opening address will be presented by American journalist Bill Kovach, the former New York Times bureau chief in Washi

WHEN BILL KOVACH LEFT Washington in 1986, he was by anybody's definition a true media insider: head of The New York Times Washington bureau and on the short list of people who might one day achieve the Holy Grail of journalism and become the paper's executive editor. When the Times passed him over, the news that Kovach was leaving town to run The Atlanta Journal-Constitution created a sensation in the hermetically sealed orbit inside the Beltway. The day of the announcement, Kovach pulled a bottle of Scotch from his desk for a bittersweet late-afternoon celebration with his staff. They were disconsolate; he was jaunty. "I'm going to fly it into the mountain," he told them, "or I'm going to make it work."

History will record that the plane did indeed fly into the mountain: after a stormy two-year tenure in Atlanta, when the paper won two Pulitzers but Kovach ran afoul of his profit-minded corporate bosses, he left Atlanta to become curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. This summer he's returning to Washington to write books and op-ed pieces--moving back into the same house in Chevy Chase where he and his wife, Lynne, and their four children lived when he was the Time? bureau chief. But while the address hasn't changed, everything else has. Reporters don't keep bottles of Scotch in their desks these days unless they want a referral to the Employee Assistance Program, and Kovach is no longer a newsroom bigfoot. He's a press critic--a role that, depending on prevailing opinion, makes him either a priggish elitist or a self-exiled member of an unruly and irresponsible tribe. His complaints are forceful and particular: The rise of the 24-hour news cycle is tempting journalists to abdicate their obligation to sort out gossip from facts, he says, and turning them into mere conduits for a slurry of fact, innuendo, rumor, and opinion. Reporters are forgetting why they got in the business--presumably, it was to expose vice and give voice to the powerless--in their quests for blockbuster stories and the chance to make big bucks as TV pundits. Media mergers threaten to obliterate the line between editorial and advertising. Things have gotten so bad that even The New York Times used anonymous sources in roughly a third of its coverage of the Monica Lewinsky story, and The Washington Post used them twice as often as that. In other words, we're not just going to hell--you can actually see hell from here.

Hawk-nosed and white-haired at 67, Kovach speaks with a Southern accent that betrays East Tennessee hill country, but the accent is somewhat misleading: In fact, he's the son of Albanian immigrants who settled in Morristown, Tenn. in the 1920s after his father, John, won the lease to the town's Busy Bee Cafe in a poker game. Albanian culture is, according to ethnic stereotype, argumentative and prone to nurse grudges; in Kovach's case, reality fully conforms to the image. Lynne Kovach recalls that in the early years of their marriage, Bill's fights with his brother Joe would sometimes get so violent she was afraid they would kill each other. After his father died when he was 13, Kovach grew up on the streets "as what you'd call a juvenile delinquent, except for a few teachers in school who kept me in line," he says. He joined the Navy in 1951 straight out of high school and learned to swim and dive during his military service, returning to Johnson City, Tenn. after four years to go to college on the G.I. Bill. His intention was to become a marine biologist, but a summer job at The Johnson City Press Chronicle between college and graduate school changed that forever. After only three weeks, he had discovered, he said, "what I was born to do."

Bill Kovach has been a journalist and writer for 50 years. In that time he was chief of the New York Times Washington Bureau, served as editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and curator of the Nieman Fellowships at Harvard University and the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a group that now totals more than 9,000 journalists worldwide. Kovach is co-author with Tom Rosenstiel of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (Crown 2001), which was awarded Harvard University’s Goldsmith Book Prize (2002), the Sigma Delta Chi award for research in journalism and the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism. Kovach and Rosenstiel also co-authored Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media (Century Press in 1999), which earned an SDX Award for research in journalism in 2000. Kovach was the 2003 recipient of The Richard M. Clurman Award for Mentoring and has also been honored with the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, which was accompanied by an honorary PhD from Colby College. In Fall 2004, Kovach was named to The John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. Among his other board affiliations, Kovach serves on the advisory boards of the Center for Public Integrity, the Native American Journalists Foundation, The Right Question Project and the Encyclopedia of the Appalachians. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and many other newspapers and magazines in the United States and abroad.

THE 12 QUESTIONS ABOUT JOURNALISM

BY BILL KOVACH

1. Has language been freed of journalism’s unelected gatekeepers only to fall prey to those who proclaim and propagandize, who offer self-serving advertisements or self-referential assertions rather than the kind of independently verified information that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment?
2. Will political advertisements, YouTube videos, and television comedians such as Jon Stewart supplant the printed word as the preferred form of communication about public affairs?
3. When news devolves into a fragmented private dialogue among family and friends in cyberspace, can journalists think of new ways to help people make sense of overabundant, undifferentiated information?
4. Do journalists recognize that distribution is now determined by the portability of technology and by the end user, and that reported material and analysis must now be organized to serve many differing audiences?
5. Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand said that in a democratic society we “have staked everything on the rational dialogue of an informed electorate,” and philosopher Hannah Arendt added that “freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed.” How, then, can journalists use interactive technology to help citizens participate in verification and discussion? Can new tools engage the knowledge and experience of citizens as reporters, analysts, advisers? Can journalists using synthesizing technologies help citizens solve community problems?
6. Will our public education system take on the responsibility of educating students to think critically about their role in self government and about the type of information that role requires?
7. Can journalists use images, sounds, data mining, narratives, and interactivity in ways that connect their most serious work to the public? Can journalists see this as an opportunity to help people unlearn some of what they are being taught by the popular culture?
8. How can public affairs be reported in a way that enables citizens to track its impact on policy or test alternative outcomes? How can journalists present engaging, verified information that diminishes messages of fear and self-indulgence?
9. Will Internet aggregators such as Google develop algorithms that filter out propaganda designed to mold rather than to inform public-policy decisions?
10. What would persuade bloggers and other citizen practitioners to develop a commitment to independent thinking, verification, and ethical standards?
11. Can newspapers find an economic model to replace the loss of advertising to finance the work of editors and reporters who substantiate what is reported?
12. Will the public realize that the news they now acquire for free will rapidly diminish in quality and value if a new way is not found to fund its production by careful practitioners?

www.journalism.org

www.fopea.org

Presidentes de Latinoamérica..." Lula da Silva"- canal 7 y Encuentros

Fox+Sports+en+Espanol+-+NBA+-+Un+desperdicio

By Leandro Ginobili Fox+Sports+en+Espanol+-+NBA+-+Un+desperdicio

Obama visits China In China, Obama presses for rights

By Anne E. Kornblut and Andrew Higgins

Washington Post Staff Writers
SHANGHAI -- Meeting with a carefully screened group of students at the marquee event of his Asia trip, President Obama on Monday sought to advance what he called America's "core principles" during his first public appearance in China. But the event itself -- billed as an opportunity for Obama to reach beyond Chinese officialdom -- illustrated the Chinese government's tight grip.

The "freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation, we believe are universal rights," Obama said at a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai, China's most modern and outward-looking metropolis. Liberty, the president told nearly 500 students bused to a science museum decked with U.S. and Chinese flags, should be "available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities, whether they are in the United States, China or any other nation."

Virtually every aspect of the event was staged, and it was unclear how many Chinese citizens saw the hour-long exchange, which was not broadcast on national television. One of the most provocative statements Obama made -- about the importance of opening up the Internet -- was posted on Chinese news sites at first, but then was deleted.

Obama's audience, selected and coached beforehand by university officials, came from eight different Shanghai universities. A small, random sampling suggested the vast majority were members of the Communist Party. Many of the eight questions put to the president by students echoed Chinese government talking points.

Nonetheless, administration officials were satisfied with the outcome. "We understood the limitations," said senior White House adviser David M. Axelrod, who is traveling with the president. Regardless of how the questions were generated, Axelrod said, Obama's "answers were his own, and he got a chance to make them to a larger audience on local TV and over the Internet. That made it a very worthwhile event."

Obama later flew to Beijing for a small dinner with Chinese President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, whom he will meet again Tuesday morning.

Interviewed after the town-hall event in Shanghai, students generally gave Obama good, if not rave, reviews. And though highly choreographed, the session still left more room for spontaneity than do the meetings China's own leaders hold with ordinary people.

Wang Zhuchen, a student in international relations at Fudan University, said he was surprised -- and also impressed -- to hear the U.S. president talk of his family and children. A Chinese leader, he said, would never discuss anything personal in public.

Wang, a Party member, quickly added that this did not reflect badly on Chinese leaders but merely their "different traditions and culture." Wang said students could ask what they wanted but had been instructed "not to hurt the feelings of our guests."

The one question that pushed normal Chinese boundaries came via the Internet and was read aloud by U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman. "In a country with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers, do you know of the firewall?" the question began, referring to the Chinese government's practice of blocking sites it dislikes, a system of Internet censorship known as the Great Firewall. The question also asked, "Should we be able to use Twitter freely?"

"I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship," Obama replied. "I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet -- or unrestricted Internet access -- is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged."

Administration officials said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing received more than 1,000 questions for Obama via the Internet. The online questions were chosen at random, with the help of White House Correspondents' Association President Edwin Chen, who selected several numbers that corresponded with questions that were then read aloud.

Before the meeting, Liu Yupang, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student from Shanghai's Jiaotong University, said he and fellow students had been given an afternoon of "training" before they could participate in the question-and-answer session. He said they could ask Obama whatever they pleased -- so long as they took a "friendly attitude." Liu, too, is a party member.

Obama himself struck a mostly conciliatory tone. Continuing a theme of his Asia trip, he said the United States is not threatened by China's rapid growth. "Surely we have known setbacks and challenges over the last 30 years," Obama said. But, he added, "the notion that we must be adversaries is not predestined."

The meeting was held at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, a hyper-modern complex located in Pudong, a new development zone far from the city center. Police sealed off the museum and blocked off nearby streets. A sign outside the museum announced the premises closed from Nov. 14 to 16 for "maintenance needs."

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also met students during their own trips to China but did so on university campuses.

U.S. and Chinese officials haggled for weeks over the format of the Shanghai event, with the United States asking that the meeting be as freewheeling as possible, and the Chinese demanding the opposite. Live video of the event was streamed on the official White House Web site in the hopes of reaching members of the Chinese public who were unable to see it any other way.

The meeting was broadcast live by a local Shanghai television station, but the station's Web site, Shanghai TV Station Online, which usually live streams its television programming, went offline about 20 minutes before the town hall began. It then shifted to a children's program -- preventing computer users across the country from watching the event. National Chinese television stations did not broadcast the meeting. It was supposed to be carried on the Internet via the government-run Xinhua news service, but this didn't happen. Instead, Xinhua posted a written transcript of the remarks -- including, to the surprise of some Chinese, Obama's response to the question about access to the Internet.

Taiwan, an issue that has shadowed and frequently poisoned Sino-U.S. relations, resurfaced as a point of friction when a female student asked Obama whether the United States will continue selling weapons to an island that Beijing considers a renegade province. Obama, in his answer, skirted the matter of arms and instead repeated Washington's longstanding commitment to the so-called "one China policy."

The question reflected one of the Chinese government's most insistent concerns, but the he student who read it said she had received the query via the internet from a Taiwanese businessman. Taiwanese journalists who were present thought this unlikely.

Taiwan has so far been largely absent from the Obama administration's top foreign policy concerns but it could become a serious headache in future because of an arms issue. Taiwan has asked the U.S. to sell it a new generation of F-16 warplanes, a sale that, if approved, would enrage Beijing.

Xu Lyiang, a student at Tongji University, said he had wanted to go to the meeting with Obama but had been told that the quota of students had been fulfilled. But he heard from a teacher who was helping select attendees that they were required to attend a "lecture and a meeting" ahead of time.

Obama, in opening remarks, described the United States as a nation that had endured painful chapters in its history because of its core ideals, including a belief that government should reflect the will of the people. He said the United States did not seek to impose "any system of government on any other nation," but said "America will always speak out for its core principles around the world."

"We made progress because of our belief in those core principles that have served as our compass in the darkest of storms," Obama said.

IAEA: Future Of Fusion Energy

IAEA: Future Of Fusion Energy

IAEA Promotes International Cooperation in Nuclear Fusion Research

- By Chrisrtopher Smith -

The International Fusion Research Council (IFRC) advises the IAEA Director General on matters relating to nuclear fusion. It last met in Vienna, Austria, on 14 October 2009.

Fusion, a form of nuclear energy created by the merging of light atoms, could provide the world with a safe, environmentally responsible and abundant source of energy. However, one of the greatest challenges faced by the scientific community today is demonstrating the scientific and technological feasibility of harnessing the power nuclear fusion generates.

To better tackle this challenge, the international fusion community is joining forces and stepping up collaboration, particularly around the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world´s first demonstration reactor for fusion power currently under construction in the South of France.

ITER and the IAEA are implementing a cooperative agreement, signed last October, where both organizations exchange information regarding the study and potential application of fusion energy, participate in each other´s meetings and organize joint scientific conferences. The agreement also includes cooperation on training, publications, plasma physics and modelling, and fusion safety and security. In addition, the IAEA has a fusion programme which focuses on increasing international cooperation and support for science and technology for fusion power.

"The Member States of the IAEA are showing interest in the new results emerging through the framework of International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) meetings," noted Yury Sokolov, IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy at the last International Fusion Research Council Meeting in Vienna.

One of the most visible physics-related activities of ITER, the ITPA provides essential support to ITER activities in addressing key R&D needs.

"Through its involvement in IAEA activities ITER has a good opportunity to address the interest of other member countries," added ITER Director General Kaname Ikeda. "There is nothing to be gained by being exclusive; scientific knowledge should be shared with the scientific community worldwide."

Fusion and Fission

Another important avenue for increased collaboration is cooperation between fusion and fission experts, particularly those working on nuclear power and fuel cycle development. Collaboration in cross-cutting issues, like research on radiation damage under high dose irradiation, benefits both communities.

To help support such collaboration, the IAEA promotes close cooperation among its programmes and has begun to organize meetings on common areas of interest, like the development of new structural materials for advanced fission and fusion reactor systems.

The International Fusion Research Council (IFRC) was created in 1972 to advise the Director General of the IAEA on matters relating to the Agency´s controlled nuclear fusion programme and to promote international cooperation in this field. It meets annually and consists of 10 to 15 members, who serve in their individual capacities. The IFRC last met in Vienna, Austria, on 14 October 2009.

ITER is the world´s first demonstration reactor for fusion power. It is being built in Cadarache in the South of France as a joint venture between China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.

Intel and AMD Settle Pending Cases

Intel and AMD Settle Pending Cases

On November 12, 2009 Intel and AMD brought an end to all outstanding legal issues between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes. The settlement involves several parts. AMD will drop its antitrust claims against Intel and withdraw the complaints it has made with regulators around the world. In return, Intel dropped its claims that AMD breached the 2001 patent cross-license with Intel when it spun out its manufacturing operations and created GlobalFoundries with the government of Abu Dhabi. Intel negotiated a separate deal with GlobalFoundries that allows them to manufacture product for AMD and still protects Intel's intellectual property.

The AMD antitrust case has been massive and it promised to become even more so as the date for trial came closer. The parties have exchanged more than 200 million pages of documents, conducted 2,200 hours of depositions and sent thousands of pages of expert reports to the court. Throughout this process, Intel did not waver in its conviction that Intel has operated within the bounds of the law. The company maintains it has competed fairly and legally.

While Intel and AMD have resolved our disagreements and AMD will withdraw pending complaints it has before regulators worldwide, there are other matters that Intel will continue to actively work to resolve.

Intel's Position

Since the 1990s Intel's principal competitor has been on a concerted campaign to get regulators and courts around the world to prevent Intel from competing aggressively in the market. The aggressive marketing campaign by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has included numerous complaints to regulators in multiple jurisdictions which all stem from the same set of allegations and source. It has included a private lawsuit in the U.S. and two in Japan. By all accounts the U.S. lawsuit could become one of largest antitrust cases in the history of U.S. Courts.

AMD's objectives are clear; it is seeking price protection and wants to become more successful by deterring Intel from aggressive competition. Stripped of hyperbole AMD's complaints around the world accuse Intel of competing too aggressively by offering customers attractive prices and marketing, and technical support to win their business.

The microprocessor market is fiercely competitive. That competition has resulted in tremendous benefits to consumers worldwide by providing continuous improvement in technology innovation, performance and capability at consistently lower prices. Intel believes in competition and has never shied away from it. As you will see from information contained on this site Intel believes it operates well within the law.

BOB WOODWARD The War Within

The War Within takes readers deep inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. Based on extensive interviews with participants, contemporaneous notes and secret documents, the book traces the internal debates, tensions and critical turning points in the Iraq War during an extraordinary two-year period.
From: CBS:
In his latest inside-the-White-House book, legendary reporter Bob Woodward reveals strategies governing the war in Iraq coming directly from President Bush and his inner circle. Scott Pelley reports.

Bauhaus Art : Arts and Crafts

By Andrew Milkowsky

Very cool media presentation from the New Yorker magazine, it deals with the new art exhibition at the MOMA with retrospective of works of Bauhaus (first originated in pre war Germany and it deals with how artists then felt and responded to the emerging impact of technology on every day life and attitudes..., in a way,... they predicted lot that followed in our century, Today Bauhaus influance art can be seen all around is in every day objects, building, furniture etc, but in my opionin Bauhaus goes much further than this. it really reflects elaborate and non trivial symbiosis between life art and technology...

Arts and Crafts

November 16, 2009

This week in the magazine, Peter Schjeldahl writes about “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity,” a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. In this audio slide show, Schjeldahl discusses the variety of works that emerged from the German art and design school as well as his ambivalence about the Bauhaus style.

You can tell the graphic-novels section in a bookstore from afar, by the young bodies sprawled around it like casualties of a localized disaster. There were about a dozen of them at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square one recent afternoon, in a broad aisle between graphic novels and poetry. Not one was reading poetry, but the proximity of the old ragged-right-margined medium piqued me. Graphic novels—pumped-up comics—are to many in their teens and twenties what poetry once was, before bare words lost their cachet. The nineteen-sixties decided that poet types would thenceforth wield guitars; the eighties imposed percussive rhythm and rhyme; the two-thousands favor drawing pens. Like life-changing poetry of yore, graphic novels are a young person’s art, demanding and rewarding mental flexibility and nervous stamina. Consuming them—toggling for hours between the incommensurable functions of reading and looking—is taxing. The difficulty of graphic novels limits their potential audience, in contrast to the blissfully easeful, still all-conquering movies, but that is not a debility; rather, it gives them the opalescent sheen of avant-gardism. Avant-gardes are always cults of difficulty—Cubism, “The Waste Land”—by which a rising generation exploits its biological advantages, of animal health and superabundant brain cells, to confound the galling wisdom and demoralize the obnoxious sovereignty of age.
Start with Chris Ware, the thirty-seven-year-old Chicagoan Picasso / Braque and young Eliot of graphic novels, whose “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” (2000, Pantheon) is, besides being viciously depressing, the first formal masterpiece of a medium that he has proved to be unexpectedly complex and fertile. Set aside, for now, the graphic novelists you probably most like, if you like only a few: Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Daniel Clowes. Their peculiar literary qualities are distracting. The same goes for Robert Crumb, for whom there is the added problem of a historical significance: he is the father of art comics. Keep lightly in mind the ever-teeming regions of genre: superhero, action, horror, goth-girl. Give a respectful but wide berth to Japanese manga, which occupy most of the shelf space allotted to graphic novels in bookstores, their bindings as uniform as lined-up vials of generic, obviously addictive pharmaceuticals.
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INTEL Innovation and Sponsors of Tomorrow

Depredacion de Recursos: Industria Pesquera,CENPAT,

Por Alicia Jardel Profesora y Colaboradora de Investig'Action Bélgica


Le vamos a contar algo muy llamativo que está sucediendo en Argentina desde hace varios años.
En el final de este comentario introductorio daremos a conocer una c ifra que se desprende de esta historia que a más de uno va a dejar helado.
Se trata de un tema poco difundido en los medios masivos. En realidad, es más probable que aparezca en el National Geographic que en nuestra TV abierta. Sin embargo, insistimos, al final, llegaremos a un número que nos dejará atónitos.
Por estos días, la prensa argentina e internacional se ocupa extensamente de lo que está ocurriendo en Punta Tombo, Chubut, donde miles y miles de pingüinos llegan hasta esas playas cercanas a la Península de Valdez. Los llamados pájaros bobos son la atracción para visitantes argentinos y extranjeros.
De todas formas, desde hace ya varias temporadas a estas pequeñas criaturas de 50 cm de alto les surgió una "competencia" que está alterando el mapa de las aves patagónicas.
Los albatros y las gaviotas se han multiplicado de tal forma en esa geografía nacional que algunos biólogos del CENPAT (Centro de Estudios del Medio Ambiente Patagónico) están estu d iando de dónde proviene semejante cantidad de ejemplares alados.
A lo largo de todo el gigantesco golfo San Jorge y en localidades pesqueras aledañas de Chubut y Santa Cruz, los habitantes del lugar ven el cielo oscurecerse cuando las bandadas terminan literalmente tapando al astro rey.
¿De dónde salieron?
¿Por qué son tantos?, se preguntan. Usted, con razón, también se puede preguntar: ¿y esto que tiene que ver con nuestra realidad? Ya l legamos, esté atento a la cifra que le vamos a revelar.. Estos gigantes del aire despegan hacia el mar en busca de comida.. Los científicos dicen que cada día encuentran más comida, por eso se reproducen tanto, por eso son cien veces más que en los cercanos años noventa; cien veces más.
Resulta que tanto los albatros como las gaviotas encuentran cientos de toneladas de peces muertos muy cerca de la costa. ¿Es la contaminación?.
¿Es un fenómeno natural? No, es simplemente Argentina.
El Secretario de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca de la Nación tuvo una desastrosa idea: retirar los inspectores que iban a bordo de los pesqueros y los fresqueros que buscan langostinos, cambiándolos por meros "observadores", con un casi nulo poder de policía.
Este hecho coincidió casualmente (o no tanto) con otras dos situaciones desgraciadas:
1. La Comunidad Económica Europea expulsó de sus mares a los buques congeladores que eran altamente depredadores. Ante la imposibilidad de trabajar en el viejo continente, las grandes empresas españolas emigraron hacia Argentina, donde la depredación es una palabra desconocida, casi sin uso.
2. Las autoridades provinciales de Santa Cruz y Chubut en los noventa completaron el círculo permitiendo a las naves factorías foráneas a tirar (sí, a tirar por la borda) aquel pescado que no les conviniera.
Desde entonces, los buques que buscan langostinos sólo se interesan por esta especie, que cuesta en el mercado internacional 18 dólares el kilo. Leyó bien, casi 60 pesos el kilo.
Por ello, arrojan al mar la merluza, el cazón, el abadejo, las rayas y hasta el salmón que caen en sus redes.
Como la merluza es un predador del langostino, ejemplares de muchísimo kilaje quedan atrapados, son llevados a la cubierta y luego arrojados al mar.
Como estos peces viven a 80 o 90 metros bajo la superficie, una vez subidos al barco mueren por una norma l diferencia de presión.
Aunque sean devueltos al océano, ya están muertos. ¿Quién se los come? Acertó: los albatros y las gaviotas....

¿Sabe cuántas toneladas de merluza tira al mar cada uno de estos barcos de 40 o 50 metros de eslora? 10 toneladas diarias; 10.000 kilos. Siga sumando con nosotros.
10.000 kilos por día, sólo de merluza (no estamos contando centolla, ni abadejo, ni cazón, ni salmón, ni nada de eso) hay que multiplicarlos por la cantidad de barcos que salen a buscar
langostinos.
¿Sabe cuántos son, cada día, sólo en esa zona? Nunca menos de cien. Multiplique, cien barcos, que tiran diez mil kilos de merluza, son un millón de kilos de pescado arrojados al mar cada vez que sale el sol.
¿Sabe cuántos argentinos podrían comer estos manjares gratis cada día?
Un millón de compatriotas, que dejarían de tener hambre, porque un kilo de excelente pescado es un regalo de los dioses.
¿Sabe cuál es el país que tiene la mejor educación y la tecnología más avanzada del mundo? Japón. ¿Y sabe cuál es la base de la comida nipona? No es el arroz como nos hacen creer, es el pescado.
¿Hace falta detallar las virtudes que les traería a nuestros chicos alimentar sus cerebros con fósforo de nuestr os mejores ejemplares marinos?.
Estos números que causan vergüenza fueron denunciados una y otra vez por los marineros no nucleados en el SOMU, el sindicato que dirige el impresentable "Caballo" Suárez, ese irresponsable titular del gremio marino que se emborrachó en el medio de una gira de Cristina Kirchner por Europa, generando un escándalo que motivó que lo sacaran de la delegación.
La oposición a Suárez les ha implorado a los empresarios, a los gobernadores patagónicos y a las autoridades na cionales, que terminen con est a depredación del recurso y que alimenten a la gente pobre, que también existe en el sur de nuestro país.
¿Saben cuál fue la respuesta de los dueños de las pesqueras españolas?
Tratan de no contratar personal de a bordo argentino, optando por peruanos y bolivianos que no se quejan de la depredación; porque, total, la plataforma continental no la sienten como propia.
Saben qué contestan los políticos argentinos? Les bajan los impuestos a las ganancias para que ganen más y no sigan protestando.
Hace pocas semanas, los marineros opositores se rebelaron y quemaron varias plantas de procesamiento en Puerto Deseado.
Uno de los pedidos, además del salarial, era que dejaran de tirar pescados muertos al mar. Los científicos extranjeros que analizan la multiplicación de gaviotas
y albatros señalan con resignación: "La causa de semejante mutación en la población de aves no es otra que la enorme riqueza de los argentinos, casi tan grande como su propia estupidez."

Por Alicia Jardel Profesora y Colaboradora de Investig'Action Bélgica


Este es otro de los interminables negociados que hacen los políticos a
expensas de la riqueza de nuestro suelo, la apatía de nuestro pueblo,
(y lo que es muchísimo peor) el futuro de nuestros hijos.

AMERICAN HEALTHCARE REFORM

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House

By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.

After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.

“This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.

Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to attract the final votes to secure passage, a wrenching compromise for the numerous abortion-rights advocates in their ranks.

Many of them hope to make changes to the amendment during negotiations with the Senate, which will now become the main battleground in the health care fight as Democrats there ready their own bill for what is likely to be extensive floor debate.

Democrats say the House measure — paid for through new fees and taxes, along with cuts in Medicare — would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while creating a government health insurance program. It would end insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill.

Republicans condemned the vote and said they would oppose the measure as it proceeds on its legislative route. “This government takeover has got a long way to go before it gets to the president’s desk, and I’ll continue to fight it tooth and nail at every turn,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas. “Health care is too important to get it wrong.”

On the House floor, Democrats exchanged high-fives and cheered wildly — and Republicans sat quietly — when the tally display showed the 218th and decisive vote, after the leadership spent countless hours in recent days wringing commitments out of House members.

“We did what we promised the American people we would do,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, who also warned, “Much work remains.”

The successful vote came on a day when Mr. Obama traveled to Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal for lawmakers to “answer the call of history” and support the bill.

Only one Republican, Representative Anh Cao of Louisiana, voted for the bill, and 39 Democrats opposed it. The House also defeated the Republicans’ more modest plan, whose authors said it was a more common-sense and fiscally responsible approach.

The Democrats who balked at the measure represent mainly conservative swing districts, signaling that those who could be vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections viewed voting for the measure as politically risky.

“Today’s may be a tough vote, but it was in 1935 when we passed Social Security,” Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and the dean of the House, said as the debate drew to a close late Saturday.

Some Democrats said they voted for the legislation so they could seek improvements in it. “This bill will get better in the Senate,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who has been outspoken in his criticism of some provisions of the bill but decided to support it. “If we kill it here, it won’t have a chance to get better.”

After the vote, Mr. Obama issued a statement praising the House and calling on the Senate to follow suit. “I am absolutely confident it will,” he said, “and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said he would bring a bill to the floor as soon as possible.

The vote came on the third anniversary of the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House, and the passage moves the bill well beyond the health care overhaul attempted by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Lawmakers credited Mr. Obama with converting a final few holdouts during his appearance at a closed-door meeting with Democrats just hours before the vote. Democratic officials said that Mr. Obama’s conversation Saturday with Representative Michael H. Michaud, Democrat of Maine, was crucial in winning one final vote.

Many Democrats also credited Speaker Nancy Pelosi for pulling off a victory that proved tougher than many had predicted. “She really threaded the needle on this one,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

A critical turning point was the decision by Ms. Pelosi late Friday night to allow anti-abortion Democrats to try to tighten restrictions on coverage for the procedure under any insurance plan that receives federal money. That concession eased a threat by some Democrats to abandon the bill, but also left Democrats who support abortion rights facing a choice between backing a provision they bitterly opposed or scuttling the bill. The new abortion controls were added to the measure on a vote of 240 to 194.

Mr. Obama made his rare weekend appearance on Capitol Hill as part of an all-out effort to rally Democrats to support the biggest health care legislation since the creation of Medicare for the elderly four decades ago.

During the private meeting with Democrats in the Cannon Caucus Room, the president acknowledged the political difficulty of supporting major legislation in the face of unanimous Republican opposition and tough criticism from conservatives.

But, those present said, he urged them on, saying, “When I sign this in the Rose Garden, each and every one of you will be able to look back and say, ‘This was my finest moment in politics.’ ”

Republicans said the measure was too costly and would end up burdening the nation for decades to come. Some Democrats expressed the same view in explaining their opposition.

“This bill is a wrecking ball to the entire economy,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia. “We need targeted specific reforms to help people who have fallen through the health care cracks.”

But Democrats said that Republicans were intent on protecting the status quo in health care and that the new Democratic approach would vastly improve the ability of Americans to gain affordable health insurance.

“Now is the chance to fix our health care system and improve the lives of millions of Americans,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said as she opened the daylong proceedings.

The wall of Republican opposition gave Democrats little room to maneuver, and they worked to corral as many party members as they could. But the preliminary approval to clear the way for the debate came on a 242-to-192 vote, suggesting that Democrats had a victory within reach.

The House vote was a significant step in the long-sought Democratic goal of enacting broad changes in the way health care is delivered in the nation. But the Senate has yet to bring its own emerging measure to the floor for debate, and the two chambers will still need to negotiate and approve a final bill in the weeks ahead.

The struggle House Democrats had in lining up the minimum number of votes for the measure was a clear indication of how difficult it would be to get final legislation to the president’s desk.

The House legislation, running almost 2,000 pages, would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties — an approach Republicans compared to government oppression.

Most employers would have to provide coverage or pay a tax penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll. The bill would significantly expand Medicaid and would offer subsidies to help moderate-income people buy insurance from private companies or from a government insurance plan. It would also set up a national insurance exchange where people could shop for coverage.

Republicans forced a House vote on their much more modest plan that would expand coverage to just three million of the uninsured. But its authors said it would bring down the costs of private insurance premiums, which they argued was the chief concern of most Americans.

“More taxes, more spending and more government is not the plan for reform the people support,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and one of the conservatives who relentlessly criticized the Democrats’ plan.

But Democrats said their proposal was long overdue, would relieve the mounting anxiety of Americans struggling to get and retain health insurance, and would ultimately improve the economy by bringing spiraling health care costs under control.

“Our plan is not perfect, but it is a good start toward providing affordable health care to all Americans,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon.

Merge Merck Sharp & Dohme with Shering Plough

Cristina Kroll--- Periodista experta en temas de industria farmacéutica

Hoy es el día “uno” de la fusión Merck-Schering Plough a nivel global. Ambos laboratorios comienzan a operar juntos, por lo que Schering Plough cambiará su nombre a Merck.

Según reportan desde la compañía “este anuncio cuenta con la autorización de autoridades regulatorias en China y México”. Mientras tanto, la unión de entidades locales de Merck y Schering-Plough quedaría pendiente en otras jurisdicciones, dependiendo de la finalización de varias obligaciones regulatorias a nivel local.

En Argentina, ya se presentó la documentación correspondiente ante la Secretaría de Defensa de la Competencia. Por lo cual, mientras tanto, cada compañía sigue operando en forma separada.

Sin embargo, hoy ya se reunieron los comités ejecutivos de ambas empresas para participar de una teleconferencia a nivel global.

Y aunque es fundamental el visto bueno de la autoridad regulatoria, ya se conoce que en Argentina el nuevo número uno de Merck sería el brasilero Marcio Martins, mientras que lentamente el argentino Federico Wintour, a cargo de la actual Merck Sharp & Dohme iría preparando las valijas.

En Argentina, MSD no tiene planta y sí la tiene Schering Plough en zona norte. Schering Plough, conducida por el portorriqueño Eduardo Cortés, tiene su propia planta de producción en Lomas del Mirador y un staff de aproximadamente 550 personas. Cortés se haría cargo de la nueva Merck en América Central.

Mientras tanto, hay un hilo que quedó sin atar. En Argentina, Schering Plough no concluyó la integración del adquirido Organon -que fuera comprado en marzo de 2007-. Esto se debe a que hay una traba competitiva con su unidad de animal care.

Elections results in New York , New Jersey,,Virginia

Bloomberg Wins Third Term as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won a third term as New York City's 108th mayor on Tuesday.

Mr. Bloomberg -- who persuaded the City Council to amend a law
that would have restricted him to two terms and then spent some $90 million of his personal fortune on his campaign -- decisively defeated Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., his Democratic rival. It was the fifth straight defeat for the Democrats, who, despite a massive registration advantage, have not captured the mayoralty since 1989. Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na








Christie Wins New Jersey Governor's Race, Unseating Corzine Christopher J. Christie, a Republican former United States attorney who said he would vanquish corruption from the halls of New Jersey government, won a closely contested race for governor on Tuesday over the incumbent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na










Republican Wins Race for Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell, a Republican and a former state attorney general, won a decisive victory in Virginia's governor's race Tuesday, a stark reversal of fortune for Democrats who have held control in Richmond for the past eight years.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

Election in New York, New Jersey , Virginia First electoral test to Obama

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Three contests taking place Tuesday are filling the void. Voters in New Jersey and Virginia will elect governors, while voters in upstate New York are filling a vacant House seat in a race with national implications. There will probably be only one suspenseful race, the contest between Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and his Republican challenger, Christopher J. Christie. Last-minute polls suggest the race is too close Some Democrats said they were concerned that an early surge of support for a third-party candidate, Christopher J. Daggett, which appeared to come at the expense of Mr. Christie, is now fading as anti-Corzine voters settle on Mr. Christie.
A Republican victory in New Jersey. Most polls suggest that Democrats will lose the upstate New York House race and the Virginia governor’s seat, so this is the race that could decide whether Republicans get a sweep. New Jersey is a predominantly Democratic state, and one where Mr. Obama invested his own political capital on behalf of Mr. Corzine. A loss there, particularly if it is part of a sweep, is going to produce a wave of “Obama is in trouble” commentary that, justified or not, will hinder the president at the very moment he needs all the clout he can muster to get bills on health care and global warming through Congress.

Win in both New Jersey and in the 23rd Congressional district in New York; it would be reason for celebration in the White House. That said, even winning just New Jersey might be considered a victory of sorts for the Democrats, considering that most of the party now considers the Virginia race a lost cause.
Worst outcome for Republicans: Losing the New York congressional race, which has showcased deep divisions between moderates and conservatives over how the party should rebuild to return to power.

There’s a reason the White House made such an effort to get the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who dropped out on Saturday, to endorse Bill Owens, the Democrat. Ms. Scozzafava ended her campaign in the face of a withering attack from conservatives who were upset that she supported gay rights and abortion rights, and who rallied around a conservative candidate, Douglas L. Hoffman. Conservative leaders like Sarah Palin, one of many who endorsed Mr. Hoffman, argued that the way back to power in America is to embrace the Republican Party’s conservative roots; a loss by Mr. Hoffman in a historically Republican district would cast doubt on that assertion and potentially prolong a divisive debate within the party over moving to the middle versus moving to the right.

¶Biggest potential surprise of the night: In theory, at least, it would be to see R. Creigh Deeds, the Democrat, defeat Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican, in Virginia. The state currently has a Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, who could not seek re-election because of term limits.

A little more feasible in the long-shot department would be a victory by Mr. Owens over Mr. Hoffman. Still, that seems unlikely since this district has voted Republican for more than a 100 years and Mr. Owens is no longer benefiting from his opponents’ splitting the Republican vote. For all that, the White House political director, Patrick Gaspard, has told associates he thinks Democrats can win in a district that tends to elect moderates, and he has put a lot of effort into trying to score a victory. So it is worth keeping an eye on results there.

¶Questionable spin watch: If Mr. Hoffman wins in New York, look for conservatives to argue that that the vote is a vindication of the appeal of the populist brand of conservatism pressed by leaders like Ms. Palin. But the way the race has played out in Virginia suggests otherwise. If Mr. McDonnell wins, it will be after having run a race in which he aggressively distanced himself from his history of advocating socially conservative positions. That could suggest Republicans seeking to get back in power in swing states should strike a moderate tone.

In the final hours of the campaign, Mr. McDonnell told ABC News he was unaware of automated telephone calls that were being made to Virginia households on his behalf by Ms. Palin. In October, he made a point of saying that he did not expect Ms. Palin to campaign for him, even though he said he had thought earlier that she might. “She seems to be too busy with books and other things like that,” he said. “We have 20 events scheduled down the line, and she’s not one of them.”

¶Lessons for 2010? It is probably not wise to draw broad lessons from Tuesday’s results about what might happen in next year’s midterm Congressional elections and high-profile governor’s races. That said, it is worth watching whether Mr. Obama succeeds in turning out his supporters — especially people who voted for the first time last year — in New Jersey and to a lesser extent in Virginia.

That will be an early sign of his ability to transfer his own appeal to other candidates and of whether he has succeeded in building a sustainable new coalition of Democratic voters. That is something that will not be lost on Democratic members of Congress, especially those in moderate and Republican-leaning districts whom he will be pressing to cast tough votes on issues like health care and climate change.

Similarly, in Virginia, keep an eye on whether independent voters who supported Mr. Obama so strongly in 2008 turn out for Mr. Deeds, vote for Mr. McDonnell or just stay home.
source New York Times

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the potential impact of the governors' races on Democrats and the 2010 elections.

"I don't believe that local elections in New Jersey and Virginia portend a lot about legislative success or political success in the future," he said.

While local factors influenced all three races, the weak state of the U.S. economy was an overarching issue that played a role in each state.

In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell was leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by double digits in opinion polls as Virginians trooped to the polls -- an opportunity for Republicans a year after Obama became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since 1964.

Two appearances on Deeds' behalf by Obama appeared to have little impact, as Democrats suffered from a lack of enthusiasm without Obama on the ticket. Republicans were energized by the chance to take back the governor's seat, held by Democrats the past eight years. Voting ends at 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT) and the winner could be known a few hours later.