Category: News

The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming?

“It’s definitely a setback. We were already well behind,” said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton’s administration. “The program was weak and now it’s really weak.”

But Citigroup executives hope the talks with U.S. federal officials will result in a stake closer to 25 percent, the Journal reported.

The lender is discussing with U.S. officials a scenario in which a substantial portion of the $45 billion in preferred shares held by the U.S. government, amounting to a 7.8 percent stake in Citigroup, would convert into common stock, the newspaper said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted heads of state and finance ministers from Europe’s largest economies to try to establish a common European position on economic reforms before an April 2 summit of the Group of 20 nations.

“All financial markets, products and participants including hedge funds and other private pools of capital which may pose a systematic risk must be subjected to appropriate oversight or regulation,” Merkel said in a statement released on behalf of the summit members, following the talks.

Civilian casualties have been a huge source of friction between the U.S. and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has stepped up demands that U.S. and NATO operations kill no civilians and that Afghan soldiers take part in missions to help prevent unwanted deaths.

A U.S. military statement said the decision to dispatch a general to the western province of Herat to investigate shows how seriously the U.S. takes civilian casualties. The U.S. rarely releases the findings of civilian casualty investigations, and the disclosure this time could show the effect of Karzai’s criticisms.

The Dow broke through a bottom reached in November, pulled down by a steep drop in key financial shares. It was the lowest close for the Dow since Oct. 9, 2002, when the last bear market bottomed out.

The blue chips’ latest slide dashed hopes that the doldrums of November would mark the ending point of a long slump in the market, which is now nearly halfway below the peak levels reached in October 2007.

Prime Minister Aso Taro will “shortly” announce a plan to compile the fresh economic package, Yoshihide Suga, a senior official of Aso’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), told reporters.

Some LDP members already suggested that the package should be worth 20 trillion yen to 30 trillion yen (217 billion yen to 326 billion yen), Suga said, adding: “I think we need such a size.”

Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate, Wendy Hill, dean of the faculty and a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday.

In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.

Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist’s great-great-granddaughter. “She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off,” Padel said in her north London home. “But they talked it through, and she said, “Don’t change any of your ideas for fear of hurting me.'”

The 1859 publication of “On the Origin of Species” changed scientific thought forever – and generated opposition that continues to this day. It is this elegant explanation of how species evolve through natural selection that makes Darwin’s 200th birthday on Feb. 12 such a major event.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan – designed to bring the economy out of the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression – was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. The House had already passed its $819 billion version of the measure.

Lawmakers were likely to begin reconciling those differences later this week, with Obama still pressing to have the stimulus measure on his desk for signing by mid-month.