Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Haiti assist bid injured by delayed U.N. reply

Tom Brown PORT-AU-PRINCE Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:13pm EST Related News Haiti preserve puncture as sleet turns camps to mudThu, Feb eighteen 2010U.N. assist arch chides agencies on Haiti reliefThu, Feb eighteen 2010Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils vital assist packageWed, Feb seventeen 2010Tarps, toilets are priorities for quake-hit Haiti: U.N.Mon, Feb fifteen 2010One month after quake, Haitians stick on to weep deadFri, Feb twelve 2010 < 1 / 7 > People travel at a temporary tent stay in Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince Feb 26, 2010. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Clutching involuntary attack rifles, truckloads of U.N. infantry patrolled the streets of Haiti"s cracked collateral on the day after the trembler strike last month, clearly preoccupied to the wretchedness around them.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

Cries for assistance from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the bark of heavy-duty engines as the infantry plowed by Port-au-Prince but interlude to stick on rescue efforts, majority less lead them.

A usual steer since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. infantry huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

There were about 9,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Haiti when the upheaval struck on Jan twelve and they were the judicious "first responders" to the mess in the bankrupt Caribbean country, whose notoriously diseased executive supervision was impressed by the scale of the tragedy.

Initially, however, nothing of the peacekeepers appeared to be concerned in hands-on charitable service in what puncture healing experts report as the vicious initial 72 hours after a harmful trembler strikes.

Their reply to the abominable pang was singular to you do security and seeking for looters after the bulk 7.0 upheaval intended majority of the collateral and took what Haitian President Rene Preval says could be as majority as 300,000 lives.

There was looting in the capital, but it paled in some-more aged with the astringency of the charitable crisis.

Horribly-injured patients flooded overstretched hospitals, forcing healing staff to confirm that patients to yield and that were already as well far left to try saving.

"Doctors played God," pronounced Tyler Marshall, a maestro former Los Angeles Times match operative with an general assist organisation that helped out in a tent city erected at the tallness of the destruction on the drift of Port-au-Prince"s University Hospital, the country"s largest.

Scores of U.N. crew died in the quake, together with Hedi Annabi, head of the U.N. mission that was set up in 2004. That helps insist what majority have criticized as a glacially delayed kickoff of service operations after one of history"s misfortune healthy disasters.

But in the days and weeks that followed it mostly seemed that lessons from alternative disasters were abandoned in Haiti as fears of rioting or anarchy overshadowed concerns about removing assist out quickly.

The U.N."s tip charitable assist official, John Holmes, is between those who have chided service agencies, together with the United Nations itself, for you do as well small to assistance Haiti.

"We cannot ... wait for for for the subsequent puncture for these lessons to be learned," Holmes wrote in a trusted email initial published on the website of the biography Foreign Policy.

"There is an obligatory need to progress significantly genius on the ground, to urge coordination, vital formulation and sustenance of aid," pronounced Holmes.

Edmond Mulet, behaving head of the U.N. mission, concurred in an talk that it played a singular charitable purpose in the initial couple of days after the trembler since the operations were effectively decapitated.

"At the unequivocally commencement it was unequivocally formidable since all the domicile was utterly broken and all the care of the mission was killed," Mulet told Reuters.

"CRIMINALS AND BANDITS"

Mulet gained prominence for wielding an iron fist during a prior army as head of the U.N. mission when he led mostly Brazilian "blue helmet" infantry in a successful crackdown on Haiti"s heavily armed gangs.

And he has finished no tip about sophistry the competing needs of service operations with law enforcement, in his bid to lane down the some-more than 3,000 inmates who took value of the trembler to shun from the main prison.

"We are here additionally to yield security," he pronounced when asked about the mess of convoys of rifle-wielding U.N. infantry to poke for people trapped in the rubble of the busted capital.

"I still have to patrol, I still have to go after all these criminals and bandits that transient from the inhabitant penitentiary, the squad leaders, the criminals, the killers, the kidnappers. I cannot unequivocally confuse myself from you do that."

The service mission shifted in to higher rigging after U.S. infantry deployed in large numbers and set up a supply sequence to get food and disinfectant in to areas great out for aid.

But there were still majority bottlenecks and setbacks, mostly involving U.N.-linked food distributions hobbled by unsound organization, reserve and throng control.

Unfortunately, U.N. infantry in Haiti have over the years gained a repute for toughness and abuse some-more than for easing pang in the lowest nation in the Americas.

"The usually time I"ve seen one of these U.N. infantry burst out of the behind of a lorry was to kick up on somebody or take a shot at them," pronounced a piece of the U.S. Army"s 82nd Airborne Division, as he worked security during a new assist handout.

"These guys have since all of us in unvaried a bad repute here," he said, asking not to be identified.

Haiti"s wrecked infrastructure and bad ride links finished it formidable to get assist out and keep it flowing, but that frequency finished the incident opposite from that in alternative new disasters around the globe.

"POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE"

"The lowest and the majority exposed people lend towards to live in the regions that are strike the majority by healthy disasters," pronounced Solomon Kuah, an puncture healing medicine formed in New York who outlayed 4 weeks in Port-au-Prince after the quake.

There are no arguable estimates for the series of survivors who died from injuries due to unsound healing supplies.

But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health Organization"s deputy in Haiti, pronounced all from staff shortages to bureaucracy and a miss of make-up lists embroiled the smoothness of containers full of medicines from Port-au-Prince"s airfield to doctors on the ground.

Port-au-Prince sits usually 700 miles off the seashore of Miami, that is home to a large Haitian-American community, and it seemed ludicrous that so couple of the U.S. infantry rushed there spoke French or were accompanied by translators.

One retaining picture of pell-mell food distributions came when U.S. helicopters offloaded boxes of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) at a site in the capital. Many Haitians non-stop them up usually to toss them afar in offend since no French or Creole-language instructions were enclosed with the assumingly invalid packets of dust, explaining that they indispensable to be churned with H2O as piece of their preparation.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has touted the Haiti service mission as "the largest and majority successful general poke and rescue bid ever fabricated in history."

But some-more than 6 weeks after the upheaval hit, the mission is still mostly in an puncture reply mode. The U.N."s World Food Program is tying the food rations to 55-pound (25 kg) bags of rice and the Haitian supervision estimates that a million upheaval survivors are still vital in the streets in temporary encampments with no using H2O or toilets.

Doctors are roughly finished traffic with dire injuries but reconstruction for a little 40,000 amputees and rebuilding Haiti"s health infrastructure are between long-term challenges.

"This is unequivocally a mess of Biblical proportions," pronounced Lewis Lucke, who was the USAID executive in Iraq prior to entrance to Haiti as U.S. ambassador.

U.N. and alternative officials have pronounced the tellurian reply to Haiti"s upheaval was quicker and some-more in effect than in alternative new disasters, together with the Asian tsunami that killed 226,000 people in thirteen countries in Dec 2004.

But experts contend the United Nations has a lot to sense from smaller, some-more nimble healing groups similar to International Medical Corps, or IMC, and Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, along with charities some-more experienced in distributing aid, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services.

Kuah, who concurrent service efforts for IMC, a California-based organisation that had rarely learned doctors treating patients in Haiti twenty-three hours after the trembler struck, stressed the "need for speed" when it comes to saving lives.

"When you ask yourself if there were ways you could have prevented some-more mortalities or discontinued additional mortality, with earthquakes, in particular, it"s some-more timing than anything else," pronounced Kuah.

(Additional stating by Catherine Bremer, Jackie Frank, Patricia Zengerle, Mica Rosenberg and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)

World Natural Disasters

Sunday, August 29, 2010

New cost for AIDS drug: $30600 a year Consumer

Sales of Trimeris" AIDS drug Fuzeon might on the decline, but the cost is on the rise.

The Durham association disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that the indiscriminate cost of a one-year supply of Fuzeon has been increasing by 3 percent. The new price: $30,600.

Trimeris remarkable that the Swiss curative hulk Roche, that markets the drug, has solitary shortcoming for environment the price.

The new cost is 50 percent higher than the cost of a years supply for Fuzeon when it was launched in 2003.

Fuzeon sales have been shrinking since of the high price, the side goods and the accessibility of newer drugs.

For all of 2009, Fuzeon sales totaled $112.2 million, down 33 percent from 2008. Trimeris receives kingship fees on the sales of the drug, that is the companys usually product.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Recession fears as commercial operation investment drops

Business investment saw an rare pile-up in the fourth entertain of the year, raising new fears about the UK"s capability to means the nascent liberation from recession. Companies slashed their spending on new apparatus by 24.1 per cent in the last 3 months of 2009, the largest annual rebate given central total began in the late 1960s. The story was similarly grave in manufacturing, sell and wholesale, and the use zone - all of that saw the greatest reductions in investment on record.

Corus steelworks

Locked up: The Corus steelworks on Teesside have been shut

Making counts worse, the European Commission hacked behind the 2010 enlargement foresee for the UK from 0.9 per cent to only 0.6 per cent.

More...Boost for Brown as Britain creates improved than approaching liberation from misfortune retrogression in thirty yearsEconomy watch: Has retrogression unequivocally ended? (thisismoney.co.uk)Read Lisa Buckingham"s commercial operation explanation (thisismoney.co.uk)Reform banks or face bigger crisis, warns Mervyn King

That is only half the gait of enlargement foresee for Germany and France, and analysts pronounced prophecy is diseased sufficient to indicate a risk of an additional drop in to disastrous enlargement during the year. Since the begin of the recession, commercial operation investment has depressed twice as most as at the homogeneous stages of the downturns in the 1980s and 1990s, underlining the sobriety of the slump. Economist David Kern, of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "With annual falls in commercial operation investment of twenty-four per cent, and 35 per cent for production specifically, the longer-term threats to Britain"s prolific intensity are really serious." The numbers came forward of today"s guess of fourth-quarter sum made at home product. Official statisticians formerly put enlargement at only 0.1 per cent, but it was revised upwards to 0.3 per cent this morning, bringing a small ray of goal among the gloom."Companies are flattering capricious about the outlook," pronounced Brian Hilliard of Societe Generale. "One cannot bonus the possibility of a double-dip; we had an sickly liberation in the fourth quarter. On the alternative hand, the financial impulse (from the Bank of England) is intensely absolute and it will come by eventually." Bank of England policymaker David Miles last night reiterated his eagerness to opinion for an enlargement of the 200bn Quantitative Easing intrigue in sequence to means the rebound. He said: "It is wholly trustworthy that as mercantile events reveal it will turn transparent that an even some-more expansionary financial process will be appropriate." To indicate there are no dangers of even reduce mercantile wake up and acceleration would indicate "an aptitude necessity disorder", Miles argued. Yesterday"s investment total will supplement fuel to the discuss over either banks are very hungry businesses of credit. They will additionally lift questions over either the Government should have offering companies bigger taxation incentives to coax investment last year.

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Friday, August 27, 2010

Light at finish of the hovel for Eurostar

Dominic OConnell & ,}

EUROSTAR will this week shake up off memories of the disharmony that paralysed cross-Channel services at Yuletide with total display sales up 5% in the first 3 months of the year.

The burst in turnover to 178m comes notwithstanding alternative disruptions caused by complicated snow and a Belgian sight collision that strike the London to Brussels services.

Passenger numbers in the initial entertain were 2m, up somewhat from the 1.9m carried in the same duration last year.

Eurostar services belligerent to a hindrance prior to Christmas, stranding thousands. Trains did not run for multiform days as engineers struggled to repair a complaint with melting sleet perspicacious electrical components, and there was a slanging compare with Eurotunnel over the depletion of stuck trains.

Related LinksDeutsche Bahn might run London to Frankfurt serviceEurotunnel increase wiped out by hovel fire

The sight organisation is additionally approaching to contend this week that the 3 owners the British supervision and the French and Belgian state railways have eventually agreed to set up Eurostar as a stand-alone association after years of negotiations.

The new Eurostar association is approaching to be incorporated in the UK, with a majority interest owned by SNCF, the French railways group.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Southern China suffers misfortune dry weather in mental recall

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai 119PM GMT twenty-six March 2010

Previous of Images Next China declares state of puncture over drought Australia suffers misfortune heatwave for a century Time to bail out of Britain? Chinese officials splash themselves to death Gordon Brown Even now, he competence lay it out

"I"m 83 years old, I"ve never seen anything similar to this," pronounced Yang Kuanren, a villager in Xiazha, in Guangxi province. "Not a singular dump of H2O can be seen in the wells. For hundreds of years, we have relied on those wells for irrigation and celebration H2O and we do not know what to do.

"It is time to begin planting the fields, but the earth is so dry we cannot even smash into it."

Three outrageous H2O reservoirs that routinely feed the village, and the neighbours, that customarily hold sufficient H2O to direct 5,000 acres of land, have additionally run dry.

Nearby villages have proposed training new wells, but there is small H2O to be found, even multiform hundred feet next ground.

In reply to the drought, that has swept opposite Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing, China has mobilised the full competence of the army, promulgation infantry to broach 1.4 million tons of puncture food and thousands of H2O trucks.

Wen Jiabao, the budding minister, has done a personal revisit to the segment to encourage villagers, a little of whom are carrying to mass departure some-more than twelve miles a day to pick up water.

Growing sufficient food to strike China"s targets this year "will be a exam for sure" in the arise of the calamity, pronounced Mr Wen.

More than 5,000 villagers in Yunnan have been forced to leave home and stay nearby streams in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The routinely sub-tropical south of China saw the stormy deteriorate soak up this year, with the normal heat in Yunnan dual degrees higher than normal, and rainfall at usually half the common level.

Yunnan is the source of multiform of Asia"s greatest rivers, together with the Yangtze and the Mekong and roughly a billion people vital downstream could be influenced as they dry up. The Mekong is at the lowest turn for twenty years. Over five million hectares of forests have dry or been scorched by fires.

The cost of the dry continue in unsuccessful crops and descending physical phenomenon prolongation from the region"s network of hydroelectric dams is already estimated at 24bn yuan (2.36 billion) and there could be knock-on costs for the outrageous aluminium smelters that set up in the segment to take value of the poor hydroelectric power.

To furnish rain, the supervision began seeding the clouds on top of 88 cities in Guizhou this week.

However, according to Accuweather, the American continue forecaster, there is "little awaiting for suggestive rainfall [in the region] until May".

A orator for the Yunnan Land Resources business pronounced "The incident here will get worse in the entrance months prior to it gets any better, but hopefully if we cavalcade some-more wells and obstruct some-more H2O to those in need, we can assistance ease the situation."

Chile rushes infantry assist to quake-stricken towns

Mario Naranjo CONCEPCION, Chile Mon Mar 1, 2010 2:44pm EST Factboxes Factbox: 10 largest earthquakes given 1900Mon, Mar 1 2010Factbox: Chile copper mines, ports recover; LNG, refineries shutMon, Mar 1 2010 Related News Giant waves brought death, wretchedness to Chile coastMon, Mar 1 2010Chile mines reopen, energy grid unsure after quakeMon, Mar 1 2010Japan group "sorry" after tsunami less than fearedMon, Mar 1 2010 Related Video Video Tsunami ravages Chile"s islands Mon, Mar 1 2010 Coastal repairs in Chile Business Update: Chile upheaval impact < 1 / 31 > Residents set up stay afar from their homes that were broken by the waves generated by a vital trembler in Iloca, Mar 1, 2010. REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez

CONCEPCION, Chile (Reuters) - Chile scrambled on Monday to yield assist to tens of thousands of without a country people in areas ravaged by a large trembler and tsunamis, and 10,000 infantry patrolled to relieve looting.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

The 8.8 bulk upheaval on Saturday killed 711 people and the genocide fee was approaching to rise. Harrowing scenes of drop emerged in removed towns swamped by hulk waves triggered by one of the strongest quakes in a century.

Many people were still blank in a little communities in the worst-hit executive segment of Chile, that remained mostly cut off by deformed highways and depressed write lines.

Shortages of celebration H2O and food worsened the products of the disaster, whilst energy cuts slowed service efforts and in jeopardy mercantile output.

Surging waves busted houses and crushed cars in fishing villages on the country"s prolonged Pacific coast. In the locale of Constitucion alone, 350 people were reported to have died and a open gym was incited in to a temporary morgue.

"The tsunami broken roughly all on the seafront (and) the core of the locale was utterly destroyed. This equates to lots of people still haven"t been accounted for," Constitucion"s mayor, Hugo Tilleria, told state television, surrounded by the disfigured disadvantage of flattened homes.

A curfew went in to outcome overnight in the Maule segment and in the city of Concepcion, where hundreds of looters ransacked stores on Sunday for food and alternative goods. Looting additionally pennyless out over the week end in tools of the capital, Santiago.

Rescue workers reportedly listened signs of hold up in the hull of a collapsed unit construction in Concepcion on Monday and were perplexing to reach probable survivors. About 60 people were thought to have been killed in the 14-storey building.

"There were answers to the knocks. We are not certain how most people are there, assumingly three," firefighter commander in chief Juan Carlos Subercaseaux was quoted as observant by journal La Tercera"s website.

Television images from small towns along Chile"s executive Pacific seashore showed houses ripped from their foundations, cars tossed around similar to toys and the belligerent lonesome in cracked timber and soppy mud.

"More than 75 percent of the encampment is destroyed," pronounced David Merino, a encampment personality in Dichato on the coast.

"After the trembler there were 3 waves. The initial dual were big and didn"t do most damage, but the last one roughly wiped the encampment off the map," he said.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, job the trembler an "enormous catastrophe," finished with 10,000 soldiers and imposed curfews on Sunday to revive sequence and pronounced her supervision was promulgation puncture food and disinfectant supplies.

Police arrested scores of people for looting and violating the curfew.

ECONOMIC TREMORS

The drawn out drop of roads, bridges and housing lifted regard about a reversal to Chile"s mercantile recovery.

Chile"s batch index sank 2.7 percent on Monday, nonetheless the peso banking recovered from an early 1.5 percent decrease and was trade somewhat higher.

Copper prices jumped some-more than 5 percent to their top in five weeks on concerns about probable supply disruptions from the world"s greatest exporter of the metal, nonetheless they after embellished gains.

Mining bonds rallied on copper"s gains.

Damage from the upheaval could cost up to $30 billion, homogeneous to about fifteen percent of Chile"s sum made at home product, pronounced Eqecat, a organisation that helps insurers indication disaster risks.

Most of Chile"s greatest copper mines influenced by the upheaval solemnly resumed operations, and the country"s ports were additionally running, but analysts pronounced singular energy reserve could diminish exports and serve lift copper prices.

Two oil refineries remained closed, buoying the gas oil market.

Some economists likely a low stroke on Chile"s economy after the upheaval shop-worn industrial and rural sectors in the worst-hit regions, but pronounced the country"s plain mercantile on all sides would assistance reformation efforts.

"Chile has plenty resources abroad to assistance financial the cost of the rebuilding efforts," a Credit Suisse lecture note said. "Alternatively, it should be in a gentle on all sides to daub outmost and/or internal debt markets."

(Additional stating by Simon Gardner and Alonso Soto in Santiago; Writing by Stuart Grudgings and Helen Popper; Editing by Paul Simao).

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Monday, August 23, 2010

FDA panels OK rises Salix shares

Investors pushed Salix Pharmaceuticals ever higher Wednesday in the arise of the great headlines delivered Tuesday by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel.

Salix shares sealed at $29.21, up twenty percent, the day after an FDA row endorsed that the association be authorised to surveillance the best-selling drug, Xifaxan, as a diagnosis for a critical liver disease, hepatic encephalopathy. The sovereign agency, that typically follows the recommendation of the panel, is approaching to action on Salixs focus by March24.

Salix, and a little analysts, plan that a go-ahead from the FDA could beget rise annual Xifaxan sales of $1 billion. Salix additionally intends to request for regulatory capitulation to foster Xifaxan as a diagnosis for irked bowel syndrome. That could meant one more annual rise sales of $2.5 billion.

Analyst James Molloy of Caris & Co. called Salix an tasteful merger target.

"There are a lot of big curative companies out their seeking for drug and seeking for expertise," Molloy said. "Here is a association that is sitting on a billion-dollar drug this year and a billion-dollar drug subsequent year. There arent most of those out there."

Adam Derbyshire, Salixs CFO, pronounced the companys diversion plan doesnt embody being acquired.

"We are publicly held. That is regularly a possibility," he said. "But we are not for sale, and we are not bathing ourselves for sale."

Staff bard David Ranii

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Does HRT make use of lift womens deluge risk?

If future studies confirm the associations we found, increased risk for cataract removal should be added to the list of potential negative HRT outcomes, Dr. Lindblad said.

More than 4,300 cataract removal surgeries were performed in participants between 1997 and 2005. The risk for cataract removal was increased by 14 percent in women who had ever used HRT and by 18 percent in current HRT users, compared with women who never used HRT. Longer duration of HRT use correlated with increased risk. Current HRT users who also reported having more than one alcoholic drink per day had 42 percent increased risk compared with women who used neither HRT nor alcohol. Smoking status did not significantly affect risk. Data were adjusted for exposure to external (exogenous) estrogens such as birth control pills, as well as reproductive and other health factors.

Cataract is more prevalent in postmenopausal women than in men at similar ages; this implies that hormonal differences are involved and suggests a possible role for estrogen, Dr. Lindblad explained. She described how HRT may act to promote cataracts and also compared her projectfindings with earlier studies.

Estrogen receptors have been detected in the eyelens, the area that becomes cloudy and inflexible when a cataract develops. Naturally occurring (endogenous) estrogen appears to protect the eye from cataract, along with guarding cardiovascular and other body systems before menopause. Exogenous estrogens like those used in HRT do not function the same way. For example, HRT increases C-reactive protein levels, associated with cataract development in other studies. Dr. Lindbladstudy also describes how alcohol and HRT may interact to raise estradiol levels, which appears to affect cataract risk.

In contrast to the SMC, earlier large HRT and cataract risk studies in the United States, Australia and Europe reported mixed results; importantly, some of these studies included women who were premenopausal and so possibly protected by endogenous estrogen. Results of the Swedish study may have been impacted by factors unique to this population: for example, nearly all participating women shared the same ethnicity, and all had equal access to care. The study did not identify type of HRT, type of cataract, or measure exposure to excess sunlight (a risk factor for cataract, although unlikely to impact residents of northern Europe).

This research is reported in the March issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Helpful Dads Can Hurt Moms Self-Esteem

Dads are assisting out with childrearing some-more and some-more thesedays. The outcome can be both a bonus and a letdown for super-moms, whoseself-competence can take a strike when interconnected with husbands who are savvycaregivers, new investigate finds.

The commentary vaunt the fallout as women have entered theworkplace in droves over new decades, most of them withdrawal immature young kids athome. One outcome is mothers have less time for care-giving. Past studies haveshown workingmoms are ripped in between full-time careers and stay-at-home duties. And latelymore diligentdads are assisting out with the diaper-changing and alternative domicile duties.

But given mothers honour themselves on being only that moms their self-respect can take a blow.

"While mothers are speedy to stick on the workforce,socially assembled ideals of motherhood requires mothers to be primarycaregivers," pronounced investigate researcher Takayuki Sasaki of the Osaka Universityof Commerce in Japan. "Thus, in use mothers might feel pressured to domore care-giving to safeguard the presence of their feelings of self-competence,even though they might instruct for fathers increasing appearance to relieve theirburden."

While a little couples have been equates to to find a multiplication ofchildcare that suits them, most onslaught to strike the right balance.

Sasaki additionally stressed, "We by no equates to claim that womenshould take the censure for the lack of harmony in multiplication of kid care. Somefathers energetically conflict collaborative bid in kid caring in preference ofbeliefs in normal fathers roles."

Parenting skills

Sasaki and colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin interviewed 78 dual-earner couples with8-month-old infants in their homes in the United States. Interview questions totalled dual sorts ofself-esteem self-liking and self-competence (the grade to that individualsfeel able of and in effect in accomplishing goals).

During home visits, relatives were additionally asked to speak abouttheir spouses strengths and weaknesses. Coders afterwards watched video recordingsof the discussions and rated each participants perceptions of his or herspouses parenting, that enclosed the spouses romantic rendezvous (kissingand hugging the baby), earthy impasse (such as stuff oneself and diaperchanging), shortcoming and altogether parenting skills. Total scores rangedfrom the misfortune measure of 4 to the top of 28.

As the researchers expected, women outlayed scarcely 3 timesas most time receiving caring of their babies by themselves compared with theirhusbands.

And husbands took notice, giving stellar parenting outlines totheir wives. For instance, on normal husbands gave their wives scarcely a twenty-four forparentingskills, whilst the normal measure wives gave to husbands was around 21, a statisticallysignificant difference.

Even so, wives mostly pronounced their husbands were great parents.

"Many wives would contend care-giving by their husbands ishelpful but at the same time wives give their husbands disastrous feedbackbecause their husbands care-giving character is opposite from their own," Sasakitold LiveScience. "For example, a mother appreciates when her father feedstheir baby but additionally tells her father that after all it creates some-more work becausethe approach the father feeds is messy."

There was additionally a gender disproportion per standards usedto decider their partners parenting skills.

"Husbands are mostly told by their wives that they aregood relatives when they are concerned in care-giving that their wives normallydo, such as feeding, becoming different diapers, and soothing," Sasaki said. "Incontrast, husbands do not discuss it their wives that they are great relatives even whentheir wives vaunt such function probably since it is taken forgranted."

Moms self-esteem

When mothers viewed fathers to be efficient caregivers,the some-more time those dads outlayed piece for one person with children, the reduce wasmoms self-competence rating. But when mothers deliberate spouses relativelyincompetent caregivers, increasing father-only time with kids was separate tomothers self-competence.

As for since a mothers self-competence took a strike fromperfect dads, Sasaki suggests vigour to keep up with governmental norms plays arole.

"In American society, women are approaching to take a mainrole in parenting notwithstanding increasingly egalitarian sex roles," Sasakisaid. "Thus, we hold that in use mothers humour from self-competencelosses when their husbands are concerned and sublime since those mothers mayconsider that it is a disaster to perform informative expectations."

Sasaki added, "Husbands do not humour fromself-competence waste even when their wives are concerned and sublime becausethat is unchanging with informative expectations."

The formula dont indicate a stay-at-home mother is the answer.For one, the investigate showed work hours can progress a womans notice ofself-competence. And a fathers care-giving was related with a mothers maritalsatisfaction.

Here are a little tipsfor operative moms on how to juggle work and home.

The investigate is being published in the biography PersonalRelationships.

Study: Women Are in Charge at Home 5 Myths About Womens Bodies Video A Mothers Touch

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Startup ShopIgniter dismissed up over amicable selling

Joanna Glasner Tue Mar 9, 2010 4:54pm EST Related News Early-stage venture capital roundupTue, Mar 9 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (Private Equity Week) - Internet users spend copious amounts of time on social networks, such as Facebook, but relatively few of those hours are spent shopping.

Portland, Oregon-based ShopIgniter www.shopigniter.com is one of several startups looking to help merchants change that dynamic. The two-year-old company, which develops software for retailers to operate storefronts online and within Facebook, announced last week that it raised $3 million in Series A funding from Madrona Venture Group.

ShopIgniter plans to use the money to expand sales and marketing and further hone its software platform, which it sells to retailers through a subscription model.

"There are a lot of virtual goods transactions that happen within Facebook. However no one"s really hit it on the head in terms of doing physical transactions," said Alan Wizemann, founder and chief product officer of ShopIgniter.

Matt Compton, ShopIgniter"s new CEO and a former venture partner at Madrona, said social networks are already more influential in shaping retail decisions than most people think.

He pointed to a holiday survey by analytics provider ComScore, which found 28 percent of online shoppers reported that social media influenced their purchases.

"If you"re selling something and you don"t have a presence on Facebook, you"re missing out on that Internet audience," Compton said.

ShopIgniter isn"t the only venture-backed startup looking to innovate at the intersection of commerce and social media.

Minneapolis-based Alvenda, which develops tools for setting up shops on social networks, raised $5 million in November from Split Rock Partners. Austin, Texas-based BazaarVoice, which develops "social commerce" applications for retailers to integrate customer feedback, has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding since 2006, including a $900,000 round in February.

Since last year, venture capitalists have invested more than $100 million in at least nine developers of members- only shopping sites, such as Gilt Groupe and BuyWithMe, which leverage social connections to promote group buying.

ShopIgniter pitches itself principally as a backend software play, rather than a branded consumer application. It sells its software to subscribers for a fee of between $500 and $3,000 a month, depending on the scale of the operation, plus setup fees that start at about $2,500.

The product works as a platform for both traditional internet commerce and sales through social media sites. A merchant who signs up gets a "Facebook store" as part of the package. The way such purchases typically work, Wizemann said, is that a prospective customer takes an interest in a product or brand, and uses Facebook to talk about it with a friend. From there, the customer can visit a store within Facebook and make a transaction.

Spurring sales through social media can be particularly challenging for small and mid-sized retailers, or those with between $1 million and $10 million in revenue, Wizemann said. He added the bulk of his company"s approximately 100 customers fall within that revenue range.

With its latest funding, ShopIgniter has added some powerful connections. Tom Alberg, a managing director at Madrona and board member at Amazon.com, has joined ShopIgniter"s board as a director.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Zimbabwe cbank administrator attacks programmed association physical condition

Thu Mar 18, 2010 12:23pm EDT Stocks & &

* Cbank Governor Gono says Mugabe empowerment law "madness"

Currencies&&&&Bonds

* Move to take over foreign companies scaring investors

* Foreign banks should be protected

* Gono is Mugabe ally, opposition want him out

By Cris Chinaka

HARARE, March 18 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe"s central bankgovernor on Thursday attacked as "reckless" a drive by PresidentRobert Mugabe"s party to force foreign-owned companies to cedemajority shareholdings to local black businessmen.

Gideon Gono, a close ally of Mugabe whose position at thecentral bank is opposed by the president"s rival Prime MinisterMorgan Tsvangirai, said in a newspaper interview the move wasscaring off investment badly needed to revive a battered economytrying to recover from a decades-long crisis.

In an unusually fierce attack on policy strongly backed byhis benefactor, Gono told privately-owned weekly FinancialGazette newspaper that the black empowerment drive smacked ofracism, and would hurt efforts by a power-sharing governmentformed by Mugabe and Tsvangirai a year ago to fix the economy.

"The last six months have seen a flood of interest in theeconomy from both friends and foes and we must not disturb themomentum by being reckless, inconsistent and self-contradictorywith our pronouncements or with what we say or do," he said.

"You don"t shoot yourself in the foot during a time ofscarce capital availability and neither do you start any newwars before concluding battles of yesteryear," he said inreference to Mugabe"s controversial seizures of white-ownedcommercial farms which critics say triggered Zimbabwe"s economiccollapse.

"While national calendars and sovereign debates must neverbe dictated by outsiders, it is an act of madness for a familyto engage in domestic quarrels at a time when the whole villageis up and about its business," he added.

Gono -- whose money-printing policies at the Reserve Bank ofZimbabwe between 2003 and 2008 is blamed for the world"s worsthyper-inflationary crisis in the last 20 years -- said theempowerment drive had attracted unnecessary media attention of apeople "trying to dispossess one another of this and that".

The central bank governor called for protection forforeign-owned banks like Barclays BAC.L, Standard Chartered(STAN.L), Central African Building Society owned by Old Mutual(OMLJ.J), and MBCA owned by South Africa"s Nedbank (NEDJ.J),which he said were targets of "vulture-style" seizures by somecartels of black businessmen.

"The firm policy position of the Reserve Bank is that allexisting foreign-owned banks must be left under the currentparentage ownership to optimise on the capacity of domesticeconomy to penetrate international financial markets," he said.

"Our political leaders must take the lead in openlycondemning what we see as self-centred approaches that areevolving under the guise of indigenisation and empowermentdrive."

Gono said the central bank was ready to award new licencesto blacks to run their own banks, and suggested Zimbabwe couldpursue a programme of empowering historically disadvantagedblacks by giving them preference in government contracts whileallowing some joint ventures with foreigners on awilling-seller-willing buyer basis.

Tsvangirai"s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says it istrying to persuade Mugabe"s ZANU-PF party to shelve theempowerment law, and Gono said he hoped current publicconsultations on the programme would also help the government onhow to tackle the issue.

Asked whether investors were justified in their fears ofZimbabwe"s black empowerment drive, he said: "Absolutely, thosefears are justified in the sense that most of those to beaffected came in as a result of the country calling on them tocome in and invest in our landscape."

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Sunday, August 1, 2010

King Tuts grandfathers statue head surfaces in Luxor

CAIRO Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:49pm EST < 1 / 2 >