Hillary Clinton will be visiting Shwedagon Pagoda which at 2,500 years old is said to be the world's oldest pagoda.
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
YANGON, Myanmar ? U Nine Nine has spent 17 of the past 21 years behind bars as a political prisoner, and on the face of it, he would seem to have little reason to be upbeat about Myanmar's recent reforms.
"Time will tell," he told me. "But I'm cautiously optimistic. It is difficult for them to turn back now [from the recent changes]. The next few weeks will be crucial."
After 49 years of totalitarian rule, Myanmar?s military junta is beginning to loosen up.
Just last November, in what was widely condemned as a rigged election, Myanmar's ruling generals exchanged their uniforms for civilian suits. There was little hope for change.???
Yet beginning in October of this year, the government has introduced a series of dizzying changes: The new government led by a former general, Thein Sein, has eased censorship, released political prisoners, introduced a limited right to strike and protest, and started a dialogue with the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi that has convinced her not only of their good intensions, but also to run for what she had dismissed as a rubber-stamp parliament.?
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is flying in here Wednesday to judge the "Burma Spring" for herself ? she is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the country in more than 50 years.
Political party back in action The recent developments are cause for excitement at Nine Nine?s office. He runs an assistance program for political prisoners and is also in charge of the Yangon division of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi, which has just decided to contest elections again.
Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest, is now planning to stand in an election before the end of the year.
I met Nine Nine at the bustling office of the NLD, which is close to Yangon's famous Shwedagon Pagoda. He told me that by his calculations around 290 political prisoners have so far been released, but close to 500 remain in jail.
Ian Williams / NBC News
Cleanin up at the Shwedagon pagoda ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Myanmar.
There's a real buzz at the NLD office, but they are quick to remind you that they won the last freely contested election, in 1990, by a landslide, only to have the result annulled by the generals. That heralded the beginning of Nine Nine's first stint in prison.
Yet something is stirring in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma.
?Hillary repairs? Myanmar authorities have thrown the door open to international journalists to cover Clinton?s trip. It's the first time that I have been issued an official visa in 10 years, and while they didn't quite roll out the red carpet, our welcome has been warm.
My guide pointed to the hasty road repairs on the drive in from the airport. "Hillary repairs," he called them. And later, on a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda, I came across a group of giggling young women scrubbing the floor. "Hillary Clinton is coming," they said.
Along one of the city's many dilapidated streets, I came across a stall heaving with photographs of Suu Kyi and her father, the independence hero Aung San. That would have been a dangerous act of defiance and almost unheard of just a few weeks ago, but no longer. It was clearly still a novelty, though, and I watched as passersby stopped and pointed out the signs to friends.?
An elderly monk stopped me in the street and handed me an old currency note, no longer in circulation, but sporting a picture of Aung San. "For you. A real hero," he told me, before moving off into the crowd. A monk-led uprising four years ago was crushed by the generals.
Local newspapers, which have been carrying prominent stories about Suu Kyi ? again unheard of until very recently ? were carrying upbeat features Tuesday about the desire for closer relations with the U.S. (and by implication, a little loosening of their dependence on China, which goes down well in Washington these days).??
Real change? There certainly does seem to be hope here, but many remain wary. Can one of the world's most thuggish regimes really change its stripes so quickly?
Clinton will meet with President Thein Sein on Thursday and will likely push for faster democratic change. She'll meet Suu Kyi on Friday to gauge more fully how Myanmar's pro-democracy leader judges the reforms, and whether an easing of international sanctions might be merited.
Among the former political prisoners released so far is Zarganar, Myanmar's most famous comedian, who got into hot water for poking fun at the generals. He was jailed for criticizing their response to Cyclone Nargis, a 2008 disaster that left 135,000 people dead or missing.?
On his release from prison he reportedly cracked another joke at the expense of the president. This time he got away with it, and is expected to be among those briefing Clinton on Friday about the intensions of the former generals, not known for humor or compassion, but who just might have decided that change and dialogue is the only way forward for impoverished Myanmar.
NTU-led research probes potential link between cancer and a common chemical in consumer productsPublic release date: 29-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lester Kok lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg 65-679-06804 Nanyang Technological University
A study led by a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers has found that a chemical commonly used in consumer products can potentially cause cancer.
The chemical, Zinc Oxide, is used to absorb harmful ultra violet light. But when it is turned into nano-sized particles, they are able to enter human cells and may damage the cells' DNA. This in turn activates a protein called p53, whose duty is to prevent damaged cells from multiplying and becoming cancerous. However, cells that lack p53 or do not produce enough functional p53 may instead develop into cancerous cells when they come into contact with Zinc Oxide nanoparticles.
The study is led by Assistant Professor Joachim Loo, 34, and Assistant Professor Ng Kee Woei, 37, from NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering. They worked with Assistant Professor David Leong, 38, from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, a joint senior author of this research paper.
The findings suggest that companies may need to reassess the health impact of nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles used in everyday products. More studies are also needed on the use and concentration levels of nanomaterials in consumer products, how often a consumer uses them and in what quantities.
"Currently there is a lack of information about the risks of the nanomaterials used in consumer products and what they can pose to the human body. This study points to the need for further research in this area and we hope to work with the relevant authorities on this," said Asst Prof Loo.
The groundbreaking research findings were published in this month's edition of Biomaterials, one of the world's top journals in the field of biomaterials research. The breakthrough also validated efforts by Asst Prof Loo and Asst Prof Ng to pioneer a research group in the emerging field of nanotoxicology, which is still very much in its infancy throughout the world.
Nanotoxicology studies materials to see if they are toxic or harmful when they are turned into nano-sized particles. This is because nanomaterials usually have very different properties when compared to when the materials are of a larger size.
Asst Prof Ng said the team will carry out further research as the DNA damage brought about by nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles is currently a result of an unknown mechanism. But what is clear is that besides causing DNA damage, nanoparticles can also cause other harmful effects when used in high doses.
"From our studies, we found that nanoparticles can also increase stress levels in cells, cause inflammation or simply kill cells," said Asst Prof Ng who added that apart from finding out the cellular mechanism, more focused research is also expected to ascertain the physiological effects and damage that nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles can cause.
Asst Prof Loo pointed out that besides enhancing the understanding of the potential risks of using nanomaterials, advancements in nanotoxicology research will also help scientists put nanomaterials to good use in biomedical applications.
For example, although killing cells in our bodies is typically undesirable, this becomes a positive outcome if it can be effectively directed towards cancer cells in the body. At the same time, the team is also studying how nanomaterials can be "re-designed" to pose a lesser risk to humans, yet still possess the desired beneficial properties.
This research discovery is one of the latest in a series of biomedical breakthroughs by NTU in healthcare. Future healthcare is one of NTU's Five Peaks of Excellence with which the university aims to make its mark globally under the NTU 2015 five-year strategic plan. The other four peaks are sustainable earth, new media, the best of the East and West, and innovation.
Moving forward, the team hopes to work with existing and new collaborative partners, within and outside of Singapore, to orchestrate a more concerted effort towards the advancement of the fledgling field of nanotoxicology here, with the aim of helping regulatory bodies in Singapore formulate guidelines to protect consumer interests.
The research team would also like to work with the European Union to uncover the risks involving nanomaterials and how these materials should be regulated before they are made commercially available. Asst Prof Joachim Loo, who received his Bachelor and Doctorate degrees from NTU, was the only Singaporean representative in a recent nanotechnology workshop held in Europe. At the workshop, it was agreed that research collaborations in nanotoxicology between EU and South-east Asia should be increased.
###
Media contact:
Lester Kok
Assistant Manager
Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
Tel: 6790 6804
Email: lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg
About Nanyang Technological University
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. In 2013, NTU will enrol the first batch of students at its new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which is set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to four world-class autonomous institutes the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.
Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore's science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.
For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NTU-led research probes potential link between cancer and a common chemical in consumer productsPublic release date: 29-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lester Kok lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg 65-679-06804 Nanyang Technological University
A study led by a group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers has found that a chemical commonly used in consumer products can potentially cause cancer.
The chemical, Zinc Oxide, is used to absorb harmful ultra violet light. But when it is turned into nano-sized particles, they are able to enter human cells and may damage the cells' DNA. This in turn activates a protein called p53, whose duty is to prevent damaged cells from multiplying and becoming cancerous. However, cells that lack p53 or do not produce enough functional p53 may instead develop into cancerous cells when they come into contact with Zinc Oxide nanoparticles.
The study is led by Assistant Professor Joachim Loo, 34, and Assistant Professor Ng Kee Woei, 37, from NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering. They worked with Assistant Professor David Leong, 38, from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, a joint senior author of this research paper.
The findings suggest that companies may need to reassess the health impact of nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles used in everyday products. More studies are also needed on the use and concentration levels of nanomaterials in consumer products, how often a consumer uses them and in what quantities.
"Currently there is a lack of information about the risks of the nanomaterials used in consumer products and what they can pose to the human body. This study points to the need for further research in this area and we hope to work with the relevant authorities on this," said Asst Prof Loo.
The groundbreaking research findings were published in this month's edition of Biomaterials, one of the world's top journals in the field of biomaterials research. The breakthrough also validated efforts by Asst Prof Loo and Asst Prof Ng to pioneer a research group in the emerging field of nanotoxicology, which is still very much in its infancy throughout the world.
Nanotoxicology studies materials to see if they are toxic or harmful when they are turned into nano-sized particles. This is because nanomaterials usually have very different properties when compared to when the materials are of a larger size.
Asst Prof Ng said the team will carry out further research as the DNA damage brought about by nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles is currently a result of an unknown mechanism. But what is clear is that besides causing DNA damage, nanoparticles can also cause other harmful effects when used in high doses.
"From our studies, we found that nanoparticles can also increase stress levels in cells, cause inflammation or simply kill cells," said Asst Prof Ng who added that apart from finding out the cellular mechanism, more focused research is also expected to ascertain the physiological effects and damage that nano-sized Zinc Oxide particles can cause.
Asst Prof Loo pointed out that besides enhancing the understanding of the potential risks of using nanomaterials, advancements in nanotoxicology research will also help scientists put nanomaterials to good use in biomedical applications.
For example, although killing cells in our bodies is typically undesirable, this becomes a positive outcome if it can be effectively directed towards cancer cells in the body. At the same time, the team is also studying how nanomaterials can be "re-designed" to pose a lesser risk to humans, yet still possess the desired beneficial properties.
This research discovery is one of the latest in a series of biomedical breakthroughs by NTU in healthcare. Future healthcare is one of NTU's Five Peaks of Excellence with which the university aims to make its mark globally under the NTU 2015 five-year strategic plan. The other four peaks are sustainable earth, new media, the best of the East and West, and innovation.
Moving forward, the team hopes to work with existing and new collaborative partners, within and outside of Singapore, to orchestrate a more concerted effort towards the advancement of the fledgling field of nanotoxicology here, with the aim of helping regulatory bodies in Singapore formulate guidelines to protect consumer interests.
The research team would also like to work with the European Union to uncover the risks involving nanomaterials and how these materials should be regulated before they are made commercially available. Asst Prof Joachim Loo, who received his Bachelor and Doctorate degrees from NTU, was the only Singaporean representative in a recent nanotechnology workshop held in Europe. At the workshop, it was agreed that research collaborations in nanotoxicology between EU and South-east Asia should be increased.
###
Media contact:
Lester Kok
Assistant Manager
Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
Tel: 6790 6804
Email: lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg
About Nanyang Technological University
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. In 2013, NTU will enrol the first batch of students at its new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which is set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to four world-class autonomous institutes the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.
Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore's science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.
For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
With all the talk of iPhone vs. Android these days, it's easy to forget how the majority of the world's mobile users still make calls and access data: via feature phones. A recently released report?from mobile strategy firm VisionMobile takes a look at today's mobile marketplace finding that, despite the sharp rise in smartphone shipments over 2010 and 2011, global smartphone penetration (by OS) is at just 27%.
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--> AAA??Nov. 27, 2011?2:52 AM ET Egypt's ElBaradei ready to head government AP
An injured protester is aided by others during clashes with Egyptian security forces, not pictured, near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
An injured protester is aided by others during clashes with Egyptian security forces, not pictured, near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
CORRECTS DAY OF WEEK TO SATURDAY - A young Egyptian man holds a national flag while standing on a rooftop between Tahrir Square and the Interior Ministry in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Egyptian soldiers stand behind a barbed wire fence while guarding the Cabinet building near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
The sculpture of a lion on the Qasr el-Nil bridge wears an eye patch symbolizing protesters wounded in clashes with security forces, near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister.(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Protesters eat below a giant banner reading in Arabic, "we won't leave the martyrs' rights," in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. Egyptian medical officials say that one demonstrator has been killed outside the country's Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country's newly-appointed prime minister. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
CAIRO (AP) ? Leading Egyptian democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei says he is prepared to head a "national salvation" government to steer the country out of its political crisis.
ElBaradei's office released the statement late Saturday, in advance of plans by Egypt's protest movement to stage a massive protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square to press demands for the country's military rulers to step down.
The Sunday rally, dubbed "Legitimacy of the Revolution," comes following nine days of continued protest in Tahrir.
The planned rally comes one day before the start of voting in the first parliamentary elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. The elections will be held over a three-month period.
Tainted drug money runs like whispered rumors all over Mexico's economy ? in gleaming high-rises in beach resorts such as Cancun, in bustling casinos in Monterrey, in skyscrapers and restaurants in Mexico City that sit empty for months. It seeps into the construction sector, the night-life industry, even political campaigns.
Piles of greenbacks, enough to fill dump trucks, are transformed into gold watches, showrooms full of Hummers, aviation schools, yachts, thoroughbred horses and warehouses full of imported fabric.
Officials here say the tide of laundered money could reach as high as $50 billion, a staggering sum equal to about 3% of Mexico's legitimate economy, or more than all its oil exports or spending on prime social programs.
Mexican leaders often trumpet their deadly crackdown against drug traffickers as an all-out battle involving tens of thousands of troops and police, high-profile arrests and record-setting narcotics seizures. The 5-year-old offensive, however, has done little to attack a chief source of the cartels' might: their money.
Even President Felipe Calderon, who sent the army into the streets to chase traffickers after taking office in 2006, an offensive that has seen 43,000 people die since, concedes that Mexico has fallen short in attacking the financial strength of organized crime.
"Without question, we have been at fault," Calderon said during a meeting last month with drug-war victims. "The truth is that the existing structures for detecting money-laundering were simply overwhelmed by reality."
Experts say the unchecked flow of dirty money feeds a widening range of criminal activity as cartels branch into other enterprises, such as producing and trading in pirated merchandise.
"All this generates more crime," said Ramon Garcia Gibson, a former compliance officer at Citibank and an expert in money-laundering. "At the end of the day, this isn't good for anyone."
Officials on both sides of the border have begun taking tentative steps to stem the flow of dirty money. For Instance, last year Calderon proposed anti-laundering legislation, after earlier announcing restrictions on cash transactions in Mexico that used U.S. dollars.
The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the government's military-led crime crusade by striking at the heart of the cartels' financial empire, analysts say. But the effort will have to overcome a longtime lack of political will and poor coordination among Mexican law enforcement agencies that have only aggravated the complexity of the task at hand now.
"If you don't take away their property, winning this war is impossible," said Sen. Ricardo Garcia Cervantes of the Senate security committee and Calderon's conservative National Action Party. "You are not going to win this war with bullets."
++
The good news for Mexican and Colombian traffickers is that drug sales in the United States generate enormous income, nearly all of it in readily spendable cash. The bad news is that this creates a towering logistical challenge: getting the proceeds back home to pay bills, buy supplies ? from guns to chemicals to trucks ? and build up the cartels' empires without detection.
Laundering allows traffickers to disguise the illicit earnings as legitimate through any number of transactions, such as cash transfers, big-ticket purchases, currency exchanges and deposits.
Much of that money still makes its way back into Mexico the old-fashioned way: in duffels stuffed into the trunks of cars. But Mexican drug traffickers are among the world's most savvy entrepreneurs, and launderers have proved nimble in evading authorities' efforts to catch them, adopting a host of new techniques to move the ill-gotten wealth.
For example, Mexican traffickers are taking advantage of blind spots in monitoring the nearly $400 billion of legal commerce between the two countries. The so-called trade-based laundering allows crime groups to disguise millions of dollars in tainted funds as ordinary merchandise ? say, onions or precious metals, as they are trucked across the border.
In one case, the merchandise of choice was tons of polypropylene pellets used for making plastic. Exports of the product from the United States to Mexico appeared legitimate, but law enforcement officials say that by declaring a slightly inflated value, traders were able to hide an average of more than $1 million a month, until suspicious banks shut down the operation.
The inventive ploys even include gift cards, such as the kind you get your nephew for graduation. A drug-trafficking foot soldier simply loads up a prepaid card with dollars and walks across the border without having to declare sums over the usual $10,000 reporting requirement, thus carrying a car trunk's worth of cargo in his wallet.
Tainted cash is almost everywhere. In western Mexico, a minor-league soccer club known as the Raccoons was part of a sprawling cross-border empire ? including car dealerships, an avocado export firm, hotels and restaurants ? that U.S. officials said was used by suspect Wenceslao Alvarez to launder money for the Gulf cartel. Alvarez was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2008 in a rare blow against laundering and remains in prison while fighting the charges.
NASA's rover Curiosity lifted off Saturday for its?354-million-mile cruise to Mars. After its nearly nine-month trip, the six-wheeled robot will descend to begin studying the environment for a better understanding of the red planet's history.
For NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, it's "Mars or Bust!"
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An Atlas V rocket carrying the one-ton rover to the red planet lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 10:02 a.m. Eastern Standard Time Saturday morning in a flawless launch.
Some 45 minutes later, a video camera aboard the rocket's upper stage captured farewell footage of the lander and its cruise stage as the package separated and headed for Mars.
A short time later, the payload phoned home to report that all its systems are functioning well.
IN PICTURES:?Exploring Mars
"Ecstatic is the word," said Doug McCuistion, who heads NASA's Mars exploration program, when asked for his reaction during a post-launch press briefing. "We have started a new era of exploration of Mars with this mission."
Up to now, NASA's program has focused on "following the water" with missions designed to reconstruct from the planet's minerals the history of a liquid essential to life as researchers currently understand it.
But water alone isn't enough, researchers say. Other environmental conditions come into play, conditions that govern the ability of organic building blocks for life to remain stable on the surface or underground, for instance.
The record of environmental conditions early in the planet's history, when it was thought to have been at its wettest, is believed to be written in the layers of rock the Mars Science Laboratory's team has identified in Gale Crater, a 100-mile-wide impact feature with a mountain that soars three miles high from the center of the crater's floor.
After an eight-and-a-half-month cruise, a nail-biting final descent aims to place the six-wheeled robotic chemist squarely in the crater.
If all goes well, Curiosity will initially spend 98 weeks traversing some 12 miles or more ? driving, drilling, then analyzing the drill tailings to help build a picture of the environments that existed at the location as the planet made the transition from a wet planet, to a periodically wet planet, to the desiccated orb humans are visiting today.
"This mission is an important next step in addressing the issue of life in the universe," says John Grotzinger, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and the project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory.
If you weren't around on Wednesday and missed the live version of Phil on the Engadget Podcast, fear not you can catch it now. Phil sat down with Engadget's Myriam Joire, Brad Molen and Joseph Volpe to talk about the mobile world, and all of the madness that we have been seeing. As you work through that turkey-coma, take a few to give this a listen!
This week on the Engadget Mobile Podcast: domination. All kinds, really: world, universe, marketplace. Come find peace inner peace in megalomania with your regular hosts and their bud Phil Nickinson from androidcentral.com. What else were you gonna do, go shopping?
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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) ? Chevron (CVX.N) plans to continue its expansion in Brazil, a top executive said on Friday, as the U.S. oil giant tries to contain the political fallout of an oil spill off the South American nation's coast.
Auctions for oil concessions in Brazil are now suspended as the country draws up new policies for the sector that is on the verge of rapid expansion after the discovery of massive offshore reserves deep under a layer of salt rock.
Chevron was ordered to halt its drilling in Brazil this week pending investigations by the Federal Police and other authorities after thousands of barrels of oil leaked from its Frade field off Rio de Janeiro's coast.
The company has acknowledged it wrongly estimated pressure and rock strength in the reservoir it was targeting. Chevron is the majority stakeholder in the Frade concession with Brazil's state-run Petrobras (PETR4.SA) and a Japanese consortium.
Chevron's chief for Latin America and Africa, Ali Moshiri, described as premature the government's ban on its drilling activities, which it had already halted voluntarily shortly after the oil leak was discovered.
"We plan to continue participating in new auctions for oil exploration blocks in Brazil, if there is creation of value and benefits," Moshiri said in a press conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil's national energy regulator, ANP, said on Friday the oil stain on the sea surface was shrinking. The company estimated that around 2,400 barrels of crude had leaked from fissures in the seabed after rock parted during drilling work.
(Reporting by Leila Coimbra; Writing by Peter Murphy; Editing by Alonso Soto and Sofina Mirza-Reid)
SEOUL (Reuters) ? South Korea's communications regulator said on Saturday that personal information of more than 13 million subscribers of a popular online game of Nexon Korea Corp, a leading game developer in the country, had been leaked in a hacking attack.
The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said in a statement Nexon reported to the commission late Friday afternoon that the company on Thursday discovered the leakage of personal data of its online game Maple Story's 13.2 million subscribers.
The information was leaked weeks before the unlisted company's planned initial public offering of its Japanese affiliate on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on December 14. Nexon aims to raise more than 95 billion yen ($1.2 billion) through the IPO, which would be the largest on the Tokyo bourse this year.
KCC said it, jointly with police and computer security experts, is investigating the hacking case. The leaked data included user IDs, names, resident registration numbers and passwords, it added.
A Nexon official said the leaked data neither covered no information on financial transactions and bank account numbers. And it did not affect overseas subscribers of the online game.
The company has asked game subscribers to change passwords to prevent additional damage, although the leaked resident registration numbers and passwords were encrypted. The entire subscription membership of Maple Story is about 18 million, the company official said.
Nexon, which has gained a global reputation through Maple Story and online game Kart Rider, is one of the two leading online game developers in South Korea, along with NCsoft Corp.
The incident is the largest such security breach case since late July when information of up to 35 million users of an Internet portal and blogging site operated by SK Comms was attacked by hackers from China, exposing the vulnerabilities of networks in the world's most wired country.
Accusations against China over hacking incidents have mounted this year, with allegations it intruded into the networks of Lockheed Martin and other U.S. military contractors and tried to gain access to the Google email accounts of U.S. officials and Chinese human rights advocates.
South Korea has drawn up a cyber security master plan after a wave of hacking attacks against global agencies, companies and its own financial firms.
In April, government-funded Nonghyup, a large commercial bank, suffered a massive network failure that affected millions of users. Seoul prosecutors at the time said North Korean hackers were responsible for the attack.
In May, hackers breached the personal information of 1.8 million customers of Hyundai Capital, which is owned by Hyundai Motor and GE Capital International.
GENEVA (AP) ? The world's biggest financier in the fight against three killer diseases says it has run out of money to pay for new grant programs for the next two years ? a situation likely to hit poor AIDS patients around the world.
An official with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said Thursday that its has been forced to cease giving new grants until 2014 because of global economic woes brought on by debt crises in the U.S. and Europe.
An independent panel recommended in September that the fund must adopt tougher financial safeguards after it weathered a storm of criticism and doubts among some of its biggest donors.
The fund created the panel ? chaired by former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and ex Botswana President Festus Mogae ? in March to address concern among donors after Associated Press articles in January about the loss of tens of millions of dollars in grant money because of mismanagement and alleged fraud.
Germany, the European Commission and Denmark withheld hundreds of millions of euros in funding pending reviews of the fund's internal controls. Germany ? the fund's fourth-largest donor? has since restored its funding.
The Geneva-based fund was set up in 2002 as a new way to coordinate world efforts against the diseases and to speed up emergency funds from wealthy nations and donors to the places hardest hit. Outside of its donor nations and celebrity backers, the biggest private donor is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that has pledged $1.15 billion and provided it with $650 million so far.
Since its creation, the fund, which is strictly a financing tool, has disbursed some $15 billion for programs ? $2.8 billion this year alone, including to pay for treatment for around half the developing world's AIDS sufferers.
With donations now harder to come by, the fund says it can only afford to keep existing AIDS programs going, but not expand its services or add new patients.
"We're not cutting back ? we're not expanding," the fund's board chairman, Simon Bland, told The Associated Press from Accra, Ghana, where the board has been meeting this week.
The fund had to make some "tough decisions to protect some of the gains that have already been delivered," he added.
Among those decisions were that $800 million to $900 million in grants planned for China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia will now be used for other purposes, fund officials said.
"It is deeply worrisome that inadvertently the millions of people fighting with deadly diseases are in danger of paying the price for the global financial crisis," the fund's executive director, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, said in a statement.
But the fund has $4 billion on hand to meet all of its current commitments and the "presumption" is that people in China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia won't suffer because their governments will commit their own resources to take over the next phase of the fund's programs, said Dr. Christoph Benn, the fund's external relations manager.
He said the fund's financing picture for the next two years, however, could affect about 9 to 10 million new patients who are in need of HIV treatment in developing nations.
The board has also decided to create a new general manager position after the panel found unhealthy friction between Kazatchkine and the fund's internal watchdog, Inspector General John Parsons's office, whose teams of auditors and investigators have been documenting losses.
The fund released 12 reports on its website earlier this month that turned up an additional $20 million of mismanagement, alleged fraud and misspending. Earlier probes had detected about $53 million in losses, according to fund documents.
Some of the reports have led to criminal cases, and some countries ? mirroring the fund's own efforts ? say they have begun putting new financial safeguards in place.
LONDON (Reuters) ? The world's largest backer of the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria said on Wednesday it was cutting new grants for countries battling the diseases and bringing in a new manager to ensure better administration.
The move by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria takes management responsibility away from Michel Kazatchkine, currently executive director, and means the fund will make no new grants or funding until 2014.
Until then, any low and middle-income countries who have Global Fund grants that expire can apply for emergency maintenance funding to tide them over, a spokesman said.
"Substantial budget challenges in some donor countries, compounded by low interest rates, have significantly affected the resources available for new grant funding," the Global Fund said in a statement after its board met in Accra, Ghana.
"As a result, the Global Fund will only be able to finance essential services for on-going programs that come to their conclusion before 2014."
The public-private Global Fund, based in Geneva, accounts for around a quarter of international financing to fight HIV and AIDS, as well as the majority of funds to fight TB and malaria. Founded in 2002, it raises money from donors every three years.
To date, it has committed $22.4 billion in 150 countries to support large-scale prevention, treatment and care programs against the three diseases. But in recent years it has struggled to persuade international donors to pledge enough money for its work, and has faced accusations of lax regulation of money.
The Fund commissioned a review of its procedures in March after reporting "grave misuse of funds" in four recipient nations, a move that prompted some donors such as Germany and Sweden to freeze their donations.
Among other recommendations, the review committee said the Global Fund should adopt a risk management approach to financing program which would take proper account of which countries could be most trusted with its money.
In Wednesday's statement, the Fund said a new general manager would now be appointed "to work alongside the executive director" and help "take the organization through its transformation phase over the next twelve months."
A spokesman said a decision on this post would be taken "fairly quickly" and the person appointed would be a "tried and tested manager with a background in this sort of work."
"It's an all-absorbing job, and frankly for the executive director to do this alongside his other roles would be very challenging," spokesman Andrew Hurst told Reuters.
At its last fund-raising conference in 2010, the Global Fund failed to secure the $13 billion minimum it said it needed to sustain the global fight against the three killer diseases.
The $11.5 billion in pledges it did win was also way below the $20 billion it had asked for to be able to scale up its efforts in the hardest-hit countries.
The international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said it was concerned about the Global Fund's unprecedented decision to cut new grants, especially at a time when latest data on HIV and AIDS are suggesting that getting AIDS drugs to more people earlier could turn the epidemic around.
"There's a shocking incongruence between both the new HIV science and political promises on one hand, and the funding reality that is now hitting the ground on the other," said MSF's Tido von Schoen-Angerer. "Donors are really pulling the rug out from under people living with HIV/AIDS at precisely the time when we need to move full steam ahead."
In its latest report Monday, the director of the United Nations AIDS program said the past 12 months had been a "game-changing year" in the fight against the pandemic and voiced optimism that life-saving AIDS treatment is starting to bring down the rate of new infections. [ID:nL5E7ML10P]
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
TEHRAN, Iran ? An influential Iran parliamentarian has said that the country has arrested 12 agents of the American Central Intelligence Agency, the country's official IRNA news agency reported.
Parviz Sorouri, who sits on the powerful committee of foreign policy and national security, that the alleged agents had been operating in coordination with Israel's Mossad and other regional agencies, and targeted the country's military and its nuclear program.
"The U.S. and Zionist regime's espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from inside and outside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services," Sorouri was quoted as having said on Wednesday.
"Fortunately, with swift reaction by the Iranian intelligence department, the actions failed to bear fruit," Sorouri said.
The lawmaker did not specify the nationality of the alleged agents, nor when or where they they had been arrested.
Iran periodically announces the capture or execution of alleged U.S. or Israeli spies, and often no further information is released.
This current announcement follows the unravelling by Lebanon's Hezbollah of a CIA spy ring in that country. Hezbollah reportedly works closely with Iran.
Hezbollah's longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organization. Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials conceded that Nasrallah wasn't lying and that Hezbollah had subsequently methodically picked off CIA informants.
The United States and its allies suspect Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon program, a charge Iran denies.
The best Thanksgiving triple-header in NFL history will unfold in two days, with dessert being perhaps the best of the three courses.
West vs. East, NFC vs. AFC.? For the first time ever, brother vs. brother.
But Jim Harbaugh, coach of the 49ers, says he isn?t feeling ?warm and fuzzy? about playing John Harbaugh?s Ravens.? Instead, Jim apparently is feeling a little nauseous.
?There?s no question that we drew the short end of the straw on this one,? Harbaugh said, via Matt Kawahara of the Sacramento Bee.
?We?re going against a team that is in our opinion the best team that we?ve played this season, maybe the best team that we play all season, the best defense without question,? Harbaugh said.? ?A lot of things to overcome this week.?
It?s not yet excuse-making (indeed, the Niners may not need to make any excuses come Friday).? More importantly, Jim Harbaugh has a point.? Though the NFL has done a good job of ensuring that teams playing on the road with four days between games are playing at home in the first game (thereby eliminating a second travel obligation), there?s still a disadvantage, if the home team for the Thursday game also had a home game on the prior Sunday.? Because Baltimore hosted Cincinnati this past weekend, John Harbaugh will be able to get the Ravens ready without traveling at all.
The better approach would have been to send the Ravens to Seattle not in Week 10, but in Week 11.? Then, both the 49ers and the Ravens would have had to factor a cross-country flight into the 96 hours or so that they have to get ready for what could be one of the most meaningful games of the regular season.
An even better approach this year, given the manner in which the lockout screwed up the bye week scheduling, would have been to give all six teams set to play on Thanksgiving a bye in Week 11.
In an interview with Forbes, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie poopoos Apple’s Siri intelligent virtual assistant, saying it’s nothing Microsoft’s TellMe hasn’t been doing since the introduction of Windows Phone 7 over a year ago.
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Public release date: 29-Nov-2011
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With all the talk of iPhone vs. Android these days, it's easy to forget how the majority of the world's mobile users still make calls and access data: via feature phones. A recently released 
