Extra International uk

October 2013

Edited in London

E E FR

188 Walworth Road SE17 1JJ

Gas and Electricity bills have increase 150 per cent in the last decade

A new report has found that gas and electricity bills have risen nearly a 150% in the last decade The increases have outstripped inflation by four times over the same period, according to analysis by the TUC. The figures do not take into account the latest rises announced

by Npower, SSE and British Gas. As well as highlighting the dramatic rise in energy bills, the report, recently published, urges the government to stick to its green obligations.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘The government has been guilty of dithering over two of the biggest challenges we face today – our cost of living crisis and the need to tackle climate change by reducing carbon emissions.’

Last week Scottish and Southern Electricity announced an 8.2 per cent price rise, and British Gas followed that with the announcement that its electricity prices were to surge by 10.4 per cent and its gas prices by 8.4 per cent from 23 November.

The latter rises would mean £125 a year added to the bills of almost eight million customers.

Nick Clegg will block Conservative plans to cut energy bills through big reductions in green taxes before the 2015 general election.

The Deputy Prime Minister has agreed to a government review of the green energy measures the Tories blame for rising gas and electricity bills. But he will not allow them to cut subsidies to relieve fuel poverty, encourage householders to insulate their homes or boost renewable energy like wind power.

George Osborne is under pressure to respond to Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze gas and electricity bills for 20 months if Labour wins the election. The Chancellor may try to reduce bills for small firms but any significant pledge to reduce environmental taxes might have to wait until the Tories issue their election manifesto.

Change, Diversity & Opportunities

The regeneration of Elephant & Castle presents a truly exciting opportunity to regenerate a significant area of Zone 1 London from a failed housing estate into one of the most vibrant, effervescent quarters of London.

Walworth Road based businesses are willing to take the advantages that

the new developments could bring into the area.

The challenge is to build on the areas strengths and overcome its challenges to create a new district of central London whilst retaining its uniquely diverse South London identity.

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Demolished after all!

The news was revealed by Cllr Fiona Colley, Southwark’s cabinet member for regeneration, during her annual interview with the borough’s cross-party overview and scrutiny committee last September.

The Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre is to be demolished as part of the major regeneration of the area, Southwark Council has confirmed.

“The big thing we have agreed with the Greater London Authority and St

Modwen is that the shopping centre will be demolished,” she said.

She added: “We’ve made it clear – and the GLA has made it clear – that we are expecting a scheme to come forward that involves full demolition of the shopping centre.

The 48 year old indoor shopping mall would be replaced for a modern and more attractive shopping centre that fits with the rest of the area’s high quality designs”.

QUOTE Wealth is not enough to make a good society, says Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

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Mayor urges more BME entrepreneurs to come forward

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson hailed the contribution of Black businesses and entrepreneurs to the city’s economy and is urging more to come forward to seek out the support that exists to help them grow. The Mayor wants to ensure that current and potential business leaders are aware of the help there is, in particular to support small and medium enterprise businesses (SMEs).

During the celebrations to mark Black History Month, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: ‘Over 1.2 million Londoners are of Black descent, almost 16 per cent of our city’s population, so it is obvious that Black businesses and entrepreneurs have a vital role to play in our future prosperity, bringing innovation and dynamism, as well as links to overseas markets.

London is home to over 800,000 small firms, which represent 99.8 per cent of all private sector businesses and account for approximately £430

billion of business turnover. There is a range of support available to help them grow and the London Enterprise Panel, chaired by the Mayor, was set up to provide a pan-London framework to support businesses across the capital.

This includes allocating up to £25 million to create an SME Finance scheme to help support small businesses and create jobs. It also includes the Mayor’s Export Programme, which was set up to help London businesses wanting to export to overseas markets and to help businesses already trading internationally to make the move into fast growing emerging markets.

Several trade missions are planned, including to China, Brazil, Vienna, South Africa and Mexico. It is also looking at the issue of affordable workspace, as well as the fragmented provision of business support services.

In addition, the Mayor’s Office is working with over 4,300 BAME

businesses that have been supported through the European Regional Development Fund. £700,000 has also been allocated with a primary focus to support up to 200 BAME SMEs and micro-enterprises.

BAME businesses in London have also been able to take advantage of Compete For, a free service that enables them to bid for contract opportunities within the supply chains of major public and private sector buying organisations and major capital infrastructure projects. Over 49,000 London businesses are already registered, of which over 8,700 are BAME businesses - 17.6 per cent of the total. Of the awards made to Compete For suppliers, 13.4 per cent have gone to businesses that declared themselves to be BAME-owned or led. This compares to 5.2 per cent at the national level, but the Mayor is determined to see numbers of BAME businesses successfully bidding for contracts increase further.

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Hidden cameras to

regulate care homes

Under de new inspection regime for care homes and domiciliary care in England, hidden cameras and mystery-shopper exercises could be use from next year.

New adult social care chief inspector Andrea Sutcliffe said she wanted to explore the role such techniques could play in uncovering abuse and neglect.

But she admitted their use would have to be balanced against the need for privacy and dignity in such settings.

From next autumn, services will be given an Ofsted-style rating of outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate to mirror the system being rolled out for hospitals.

The new Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections will determine whether services are: safe caring effective well led

responsive to people’s needs This replaces the current system, which relies on 16 core standards with which services are either compliant or noncompliant.

The inspections will start in autumn 2014 with the aim that each of the 25,000 care homes, nursing homes and domiciliary care agencies will be inspected by March 2016.

The CQC can issue warning notices, fines and even close down services if they are failing.

Andrea Sutcliffe acknowledged the potential of secret filming had already been demonstrated by the way the BBC’s Panorama programme in 2011 exposed the abuse at Winterbourne View, a care home near Bristol for people with learning disabilities.

But she added: “We have to consider the privacy and dignity and how we can balance these.”

“Go home” vans banned 3

The campaign, which involved posterclad vans driving through six London boroughs between July 22 and July 28, drew 224 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), including some from groups representing migrants in the UK, legal academics and the Labour peer Lord Lipsey.

The poster featured a close-up image of someone holding a pair of handcuffs and wearing a uniform with a “Home Office” badge and a box stating: “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest.”

Green text in the style of an official stamp stated “106 arrests last week in your area”.

Small print at the bottom of the poster said the arrest figures were from the period June 30 to July 6 and covered Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Barnet, Brent, Ealing and Hounslow.

Most of the complainants said the poster, and in particular the phrase “go home”, was offensive and distressing because it was reminiscent of slogans used by racist groups to attack immigrants in the past, and irresponsible and harmful because it could incite or exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multicultural communities.

But the ASA cleared the campaign over such complaints. The message, that was “in no way racist”, needed to be short and easily understood because it was displayed on moving vehicles.

The Home Office said the data used to support the “106 arrests” figure was the most reliable and recent information on arrests made by the West, North and East London Immigration Compliance and Enforcement teams and from seven police custody suites in the six pilot

boroughs during the week beginning June 30.

The ASA said it acknowledged that the phrase “go home” was reminiscent of slogans used in the past to attack immigrants to the UK, but was generally used in that context as a standalone phrase or accompanied by racially derogatory language.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We are pleased the ASA have concluded that our pilot was neither offensive nor irresponsible. “We have always been clear that this campaign was about encouraging illegal immigrants to leave the country voluntarily and was not targeted at particular racial or ethnic groups. “In respect of the ASA’s other findings, we can confirm that the poster will not be used again in its current format.”

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Operation Bumblebee to reduce burglary

The Met is introducing a tough new approach to improving performance in investigating and tackling burglary through the creation of ‘Area Bumblebee Teams’ who will be made up of experienced and specialised officers. The teams will be able to work across borough boundaries, coordinate search activity for outstanding suspects, manage an improved forensic

strategy and work in partnership with the Met’s Territorial Support Group (TSG) and the London Crime Squad to bring offenders to justice. Operation Bumblebee will see boroughs target their resources to detecting where burglars may strike and arresting suspects in efforts to tackle the traditional spike of these offences at this time of the year. Overall, burglary

is down by 7.4% however as the clocks go back there is a seasonal trend for it to increase over the period from September to December.

Safer Neighbourhoods teams will raise awareness of burglary through their street briefings and surgeries to offer advice and guidance on measures the public can take to secure their homes - these crime prevention

their own homes.

“The Met feels strongly about preventing burglary and whilst burglary is down we want to continue that drop and bring those offenders before the courts.

The Met is advising Londoners to: • Close and lock all your doors and windows, even if you are only going out for a few minutes.

• Make sure UPVC doors are properly locked with a key.

• Make sure the side and/or back gate is locked.

• Lock your shed or garage.

• Make sure that any valuables are out of sight.

• Leave some lights on if it will be dark before you get home.

• Don’t leave your car keys or ID documents near doors, windows or your letterbox.

For more crime prevention tips and advice on how to make your home secure visit our burglary prevention section on our website or contact your local Safer Neighbourhoods team. In an emergency, always dial 999.

English not the first language in 240 schools - with five primary schools having no native-speakers at all

Northern and Bakerloo lines

will not stop

in Embankment for 10 months

Seized ‘supercar’ Northern and Bakerloo line trains will not be stopping at one of central London’s busiest Tube stations due to maintenance work at the escalators.

Work to replace escalators at Embankment station will begin on January 8, and is expected to take around 10 months to complete.

The escalators were installed more than 80 years ago and last refurbished in the 1970s. Transport for London (TfL) says that as the escalators are located in single shafts, and in many cases with no adjacent staircases, it is not possible for Bakerloo and Northern line services to stop at the station while these works are carried out.

Nigel Holness, operations director at London Underground said: “We have explored various options to carry out these works and keep the station open.

However due to the layout of the station it is not possible to carry out these works while Northern and Bakerloo line services are stopping at the station.

Passengers will still be able to use Circle and District line services, and are advised to use either Waterloo or Charing Cross, which is a couple of minutes walk from the station.

steps can be as simple as installing a light timer to turn the lights on while you are out to deter potential thieves.

Second hand traders will also be approached by officers to sign up to a voluntary agreement to restrict the sale of stolen property and allow police to examine stock. These agreements will help to ensure second hand shops and stalls do not purchase stolen property and also mean customers will have an increased confidence in their purchases. The Met will also be exploring other tactics such as predictive policing, which enables officers to identify where certain crimes are more likely to be repeated.

It uses a specially designed computer algorithm to produce crime maps, which can then direct police officers to the areas where they are more likely to be successful in preventing and detecting burglary.

Commander Simon Letchford, the lead for Operation Bumblebee, said: “Burglary is a distressing crime that can have lasting emotional effects on the victims, who no longer feel safe in

sold at auction A Lamborghini Aventador seized as part of Operation Cubo was sent for auction, last Thursday, 17 October and sold for £218,000.

The car was seized by Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) Safer Transport Command (STC) officers in Romford Road, Newham on 1 October.

“The money generated from the sale of this vehicle will be invested in frontline policing” It was originally stopped as it had no front index plate. Subsequent checks showed that the man driving the vehicle was not the registered owner and his insurance policy did not cover him to drive this high-value vehicle which was ultimately seized for no insurance.

Detectives from the MPS Operation Reclaim team investigated the legitimacy of the vehicles ownership.

Several parties came forward to make claim on the vehicle however none were able to satisfy the team as to their lawful ownership and the

vehicle was therefore auctioned.

Detective Inspector Richard Smith from Operation Reclaim said: “Once again the actions of keen frontline officers and tenacious investigators have resulted in depriving someone of a high value asset. A situation easily avoided if the vehicle’s owner has it properly registered, can prove it is legitimately owned and anyone driving it is insured.”

Detective Superintendent Neil Thompson, head of Operation Reclaim said: “Seizing vehicles and removing from criminals their mode of transport denies them the use of the roads and transport hubs, thereby reclaiming London’s roads for responsible and law-abiding citizens.

We are committed to this type of post-Cubo activity and a visible presence will act to reassure the public and increase their confidence in our service. The money generated from the sale of this vehicle will be invested in frontline policing in the capital”.

Number of children without English as their mother tongue hits 1.1 million - a rise of 54,000 in the last year There are 240 schools in England where over 90 per cent of pupils do not speak English as a first language, with five primary schools having absolutely no first language English speakers at all.

The numbers – revealed in Department of Education census figures obtained

by Sky News – puts the total number of children without English as their mother tongue at 1.1 million, a rise of 54,000 in the last year.

According to the latest figures, that number marks a rise of 228,000 pupils since 2008 – with roughly double the number of pupils now starting school with English as a second language as there were in the late 1990s.

Head teachers have come forward to say that in many cases, pupils speaking English as a second language go on to outperform native speakers thanks to the stronger work ethic required to achieve results in a less-familiar tongue.

They also suggest that students from a “foreign” background help to broaden the horizons of British-born pupils and help boost a school’s cultural outlook.

But critics insist in can be incredibly disruptive for schools to take on large numbers of pupils without English as their first language, leading to discordant classrooms and lessons hampered by ineffectual teacher-pupil

communication.

The five primary schools where 100 per cent of pupils did not speak English as a first language included Sacred Heart in Tipton, Westwood Primary in Oldham, Gladstone Primary in Peterborough and Brookhouse Primary in Blackburn.

Among the most popular first languages spoken in these schools were Punjabi, Russian, Portuguese, Urdu, Czech, Polish and various African dialects.

As part of its research, Sky News visited Sacred Heart Primary School where the vast majority of pupils have parents from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Melanie Gee, the head teacher of the school - which recently won a regional award for inclusivity and education standards, told researchers: “Our school is really no different to any other. We have a curriculum and all the lessons are taught in English.” She added: “We have got bilingual staff.

Children in the very early days will probably communicate to the staff in nursery in their home language, but within a couple of weeks we find that they are communicating in English.

Ms Gee went on to say: “The majority of our bilingual staff, if we use them, are actually to communicate more with the parents rather than with the children.” John Hall.

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BRIEFS Beyond El Dorado Lib Dems: will end council tobacco investment Novelist Peter James in Canada Water Library

Peter is the author of the awardwinning Roy Grace series. Dead Man’s Time - the ninth novel in the series - is out in paperback at the end of October.

Peter was educated at Charterhouse and then at film school. He worked in North America as a screen writer and film producer, before returning to England.

Peter’s award-winning novels have been translated into 36 languages and his writing reflects his interest in medicine, science and the police world. He currently lives in London and Sussex.

Southwark libraries are fully wheelchair accessible Canada Water Library, 21 Surrey Quays Road, SE16 7AR. Transport Bus: 1, 47, 188, 199, 381, C10 - Tube/Overground: Canada Water - FREE

Southwark Liberal Democrats have said they will end the council’s investment in tobacco firms if they win the control of council next year.

The announcement follows revelations that Southwark Council’s labour administration has been investing millions of pounds in tobacco firms

Hillary Clinton given

£80 parking fine

The First Lady during her husband Bill’s tenure as President was receiving a prize for ‘significant and impressive contribution to international diplomacy’ in the capital last week, but despite her high-profile international career Mrs Clinton does not have diplomatic immunity, and around 5.15pm a traffic warden from Westminster City Council slapped a penalty charge notice on the vehicle., while she picked up diplomacy award in London. The American will have to pay £80 after a silver Mercedes van she was using to take her to Chatham House last week spent 45 minutes in a space at St James’s Square without paying.

The fine will be reduced to £40 if the former presidential candidate pays within 14 days. A spokesman for the council offered the 65-year-old some advice for the next time she is in the capital, reminding her she could pay for parking by phone. Councillor Daniel Astaire, Westminster City Council’s cabinet member for business, said: “The former US Secretary of State was parked for nearly 45 minutes without paying.

“For future reference, Mrs Clinton can now download a new parking app for her iPhone which will tell her in real time where a parking space is available in Westminster, the only place in London where this is possible.”

Consultation on Clapham bars

A public consultation is taking place in Lambeth and certain bars could be ban in Clapham from selling alcohol after midnight, due to residents’ complaints about unruly behaviour in the area.

Jack Hopkins cabinet member for safer and stronger neighbourhoods said the move will target specific venues in Clapham.

He said: “I think there are other boroughs that have looked at it, but they’ve perhaps bitten off a bit more than they can chew and looked at whole town centres. “We’re very much resident-led on this.”

Last Thursday the Bristish Museum opened the exhibition titled “Beyond El Dorado” After years of planning this project, Bogota’s famous Museo del Oro (Museum of Gold) arranged to borrow over 200 pieces to display alongside the British Museum’s own 100 pieces from that era for a five month long exhibition.

Extra Uk had the opportunity to talk with the curator of the exhibit Elisenda Vila Llonch who told us that the initial idea was exactly to explore as the title of the exhibition says, go Beyond the myth of El Dorado.

The myth was constructed by Westerners and Europeans when they reached the shores of what is now Colombia and were dazzled and fascinated by the amounts of gold that they saw, we went behind to explore the richness and diversity of a pre-Hispanic Colombian people, said Vila Llonch.

Why is gold important?

The curator explained that gold didn’t have any monetary or economic value to those who produced it. On the contrary, “for these people, the value was symbolic.” These artefacts, many of which actually were made up of a mixture of gold, silver and copper, represented a whole existence and way of living for these preHispanic Colombians.

“Gold is strongly associated with the sun for its brilliance, shine, colour and representation of male power. Copper and silver are metals that decay, go through cycles, and are much associated with the moon because of the colour. They are also associated with the night and the female side.

So in a way every time one of these pieces was created, the result was a microcosm combining the sun the moon the day the night the male and the female forces of the universe,” Vila Llonch explained.

She added that the spirituality aspect should not overshadow the incredible skill that it took to make these pieces. ”They were all very much made by expert hands that knew how to master all the levels of complexity with these pieces.”

Who owned these pieces?

The leaders of Muisca, Quimbaya, Calima, Tairona, Tolima and Zenú chiefdoms were granted powers with these extra precious materials and these extra powers gave them connection with the supernatural.

What were they used for?

In addition to generally giving these leaders special powers, these objects were believed to be used for three primary things: making offerings, displaying identity and power, and transformation.

Although there is an incredible collection, why aren’t there any pieces in this exhibition with the precious stones such as emeralds, that were as well very much used by the indigenous people in Colombia?

That is true; we want to focus mainly in the use of gold and how meaningful to the pre-Hispanic Colombians it was, the pieces that we brought are fantastic objects to display identity and power, showing diversity in styles and iconography. LU “Beyond El Dorado” will be on display in the British Museum in London, England from October 17 until March 24, 2014.

through its pension fund at the same time as telling residents they should give up smoking. Now Southwark’s Liberal Democrats council group says it is looking at how it could instead used the council’s pension fund to invest in residential property and put the rental income back into staff pension pots.

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RISKS ON THE NET

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Recently we have heard about the case of five-year-old April Jones, abducted and murdered by convicted pedophile Mark Bridger, who searched online for images of child rape before the killing, and 12-year-old Tia Sharp murdered last August by Stuart Hazell, who also used internet child sex abuse images.

The number of children affected by abuse on internet is shocking; NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) revealed that 20% of 11 to 16-year-olds has suffered at the hands of net trolls.

The term troll increases in popularity as

much as the use of internet. In general, to “troll” means to allure, to fish, to entice or to bait. Internet trolls are people who fish for other people’s confidence and, once found, exploit it. There are four types of online trolls: Playtime Trolls such trolls are relatively easy to spot because their attack or provocation is fairly blatant, and the persona is fairly two-dimensional.

According to their threat there are Tactical Trolls, Strategic Trolls and Domination Trolls.

You have probably heard various opinions about how to deal with people who write insulting or provocative remarks

on various Internet forums. The most common is “Don’t Feed the Trolls”. Chen Chih-yi publisher of the foundation’s Consumer Reports Magazine talks about the previous problem: the addiction.

“Just weeks ago the news broke that an 18-year-old son addicted to online games threatened his father with a knife because the Internet was not functioning properly”.

Sadly this is not an isolated case. Young people acting violently because of their addiction to the Internet are hogging the headlines.

Experts in forensic psychology like Dr Vincent Egan (University of Leicester)

point out the difficulty of stopping pornographic images or contact with children. That is why it is important emphasizing in the role of the parents.

Firstly take advantage of customized control settings, customized control settings allow you to determine the appropriate time limits for minor. Use the parental control software options and family tools available on the system. Keep the computer in a public area. And finally spend some time with the child when she is on the Internet, this can be a good time to talk with the child about Internet dangers, and how the child should never give out personal information.

The British government has sent the abuse on internet to the National Security Agencies. David Cameron offered an interview to BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in which he affirmed that if the main searchers do not pave the way for stopping it the law should change and make the internet a safe source of knowledge. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has become the first to introduce popup warnings for people in the UK who seek out online images of child abuse.

Children have been learning about internet safety in school, as it is taught as part of the

National Curriculum, and Safer Internet is widely promoted in February each year. In addition, the Day Government has pressed for progress through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS).

The accelerated rhythm of the evolution provides us of many difficulties but we cannot forget the leading role of minor who unfortunately are the most exposed to the risks on internet.

If you want to collaborate with the cause visit: www.nspcc.org.uk, www. saferinternet.org.uk or www.netaddiction. com. Paloma Dios N. UKCCIS is a group of more than 200 organizations across the government, industry, law enforcement, academia and charity sectors, who work in partnership to help keep children safe online. UKCCIS achievements include the creation of: a family friendly internet and a code of practice drawn up by service providers following a consultation about parental internet controls; advice for industry providers on effective internet safety messages they should use; advice for industry providers on social networking, moderation, search and chat; and summaries of a large body of internet safety research.

Facebook removed a

Mobile company upgrade, delete

message of

daughter who died

restriction for users under 18

A Minnesota couple who spend spent $1,700 over five years keeping their daughter’s cell phone working so they could hear her speak after she died... only for the voice mail messages to be wiped when server was upgraded.

Dead from injuries suffered in a Mother’s day car crash five years ago, listening to Alexis Moore’s voicemails kept her memory alive for mother Lisa, she even sometimes left voicemails telling her she loved her.

‘I just relived this all over again because this part of me was just ripped out again. It’s gone. Just like I’ll never ever see her again, I’ll never ever hear her voice on the telephone again,’ said Ms Moore, who discovered the deletion when she called the number after dreaming her daughter was alive in a hospital.

Technology has given families like the Moores a way to hear their loved ones’ voices long after they’ve passed, providing them some solace during the grieving process.

But like they and so many others have suddenly learned, the voices aren’t saved forever. Many people have discovered the voices unwittingly erased as part of a routine service upgrade to voice mail services.

Often, the shock comes suddenly: One day they dial in, and the voice is inexplicably gone.

A Sprint upgrade cost Angela Rivera a treasured voice mail greeting from her husband, Maj. Eduardo Caraveo, one of 13 people killed during the Fort Hood shootings in Texas in 2009.

She said she had paid to keep the phone so she could continue to hear her husband’s voice and so her son, John Paul, who was 2 at the time of the shooting, could someday know his father’s voice.

Don’t blame us: Sprint says it began notifying customers of the impending upgrade as far back as October last year.

Facebook is loosening privacy restrictions to allow under-18s to post globally.

Facebook said teenagers would now be able to manually alter the setting and share information with the public. Until now, posts by those who registered their age as less than 18 could be viewed only by their friends, and by friends of their friends.

“Teens are among the savviest people using of social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard,” Facebook said in an announcement of the changes.

“While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services,” the company said.

Critics warn teenagers may be exposed to greater risks by making personal material publicly available.

Facebook is under increasing competition for younger users from a new crop of mobile and social services,

five years ago.

One Chase Manhattan sold to Chinese investors PMorgan Chase has sold the One Chase Manhattan Plaza skyscraper to Fosun International for $725 million, the latest in a series of New York real estate purchases by Chinese investors.

The 60-story Lower Manhattan office building is a New York landmark, and one of the anchors of the city’s financial district. It’s not yet clear whether the building will continue as a commercial space, or be converted to an apartment building. A spokeswoman for Fosun said that property will only grow in value, citing its prime location and the renovation of the nearby Fulton Street transportation hub.

The purchase is the second major property acquisition by a Chinese

company in recent days as buyers with money to burn look for value outside China.

Shanghai-based Greenland Group last week became 70% owners in a joint venture that will develop Atlantic Yards, a 22-acre residential and commercial real estate project in downtown Brooklyn.

The overall project, located at a commuter rail hub, includes the Barclays Center, a basketball and hockey arena that opened last year.

It is home to the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and will be home to the NHL’s New York Islanders starting in 2015.

Earlier this year, a Chinese property developer took a 40% stake in the General Motors Building in Manhattan.

such as SnapChat and WhatsApp. The executive director of the non-profit Center for Digital Democracy, Jeffrey Chester, said Facebook was sacrificing the safety and privacy of teenage users to further its business. Other social media services also allow teens to share information with the broader public.

But Chester said the amount of personal information users had on Facebook was much more extensive than on other social services, where users can create accounts with pseudonyms.

Facebook’s manager of privacy and public policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco, said the changes would allow teenagers to share information that might benefit from dissemination to a broader audience, such as information about fundraising efforts, or a teen rock band trying to promote an upcoming performance.

The restrictions on teen use of Facebook’s private messaging feature will not change, with users under 18 able to receive messages only from their friends and from friends of their friends.

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Uruguay signs Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the UK

Spain’s economic reforms starting

to pay off

Spain’s efforts to reform its economy are bearing fruit, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said at a media conference held in conjunction with the Ibero-American Summit in Panama.

He took advantage of the opportunity to repeat the message he has been disseminating in appearances at various international forums: Spain is emerging from recession.

Spain, “with the king at the head,” remains committed to its IberoAmerican vocation and views that mission as one of the axes of the “project of national recovery,” Rajoy said.

Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe was equally upbeat Thursday in his comments at the opening of the Ibero-American Business Encounter in Panama, another event timed to coincide with the summit.

“The Spanish economy is finding its way,” the prince said, adding that recent progress rests on “solid foundations.”

This year’s Ibero-American Summit is the first one not attended by Spain’s King Juan Carlos, who recently underwent hip surgery.

In Colombia farmers have ‘no reason’ to talk of new strikes Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said that his government was completing promises made in negotiations with the nation’s farmers and that there was “no reason” for them to talk about restarting the strikes that shut down large sections of the country and resulted in violent clashes over the summer.

The President’s announcement came as Colombian farmers announced their intention to leave the negotiating table with the government and consider the option to strike after reported frustrations surrounding the lack of concrete moves to address the rural economic crisis.

President Santos, pointing to the 12 point demands delineated by the

farmers in negotiations, said “all the points are being completed.”

Farm leader Cesar Pachon told media that “the cup had overflowed” when the government failed to complete a potato purchase promised to farmers in negotiations.

In response, Santos said: “We have not bought [the potatoes] yet, but we are preparing to buy them through the necessary judicial procedures. This isn’t everyday going in and buying potatoes, one has to establish mechanisms.” .

Santos has previously called the talks of the farmers striking again “irresponsible” and “unjustifiable,” pointing to the high economic costs caused by the protests over the summer.

United Kingdom and Uruguay have signed in London a Tax Information Exchange Agreement, TIEA. The Agreement will come into effect as soon as each government has completed the necessary procedures to give effect to it under its domestic laws.

The Agreement will enable the UK and Uruguay to exchange information to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, and to international tax standards to ensure that the right amount of tax is paid in each country in the future. This document is part of a policy adopted

by G8 countries this year, under the UK presidency.

Uruguay has signed 26 agreements, 14 DTC (Direct Tax Code) and 12 TIEA (Tax Information Exchange

Agreements) providing for the exchange of information. The TIEA was signed by Mr. David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, and Julio Moreira Morán, Uruguayan Ambassador to London. In related news the British embassy in Montevideo has supported with English courses staff belonging to Uruguay Immigration Officers that work in different parts of the country. This includes personnel at Montevideo’s Port and Airport plus Colonia, Salto, Paysandú, Maldonado and Fray Bentos. The project builds on the success of a previous joint project: in 2012 the British Embassy supported the creation of a bilingual manual with useful phrases in English and Spanish for police officers and offered English courses for those working in Montevideo and Colonia.

Russia making inroads as defence and technology supplier to Brazil

Brazil is pushing ahead with a planned one billion dollars purchase of antiaircraft missile batteries from Russia in a deal that will cement a strategic defence partnership between the two BRICS nations, the Brazilian Defence

Ministry said.

Brazilian officials said they expect to sign a contract by the middle of 2014 for short- to medium-range surfaceto-air Pantsir S1 missile batteries and Igla-S shoulder-held missiles. In

December, Brazil bought 12 Mi-35 attack helicopters - a type dubbed the ‘flying tank’ - in its first purchase from Russia of military hardware.

Brazil has traditionally obtained its weapons from the United States and

Europe.

Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, on a visit to Peru and Brazil to promote sales of Russian weaponry, also proposed in Brasilia the joint development of a fifth-generation fighter jet, defence officials said.

Brazil’s Air Force has been looking for a decade to buy 36 fourthgeneration jets to replace its aging fighter fleet, but Russia’s Sukhoi Su-35 is not currently in the running for the contract worth more than 4bn dollars.

Amorim said defence cooperation

between the two members of the BRICS group of leading emerging nations, which also includes China, India and South Africa, could “counterbalance” other options that Brazil wants to keep open - a reference to traditional arms suppliers such as the United States.

The former Soviet Union was a main supplier of military hardware to Peru and Cuba, and most recently Russia has signed several billion dollars contract with Venezuela and also supplies Bolivia, among other countries from the region.

11

12

Trafficked or abducted?

Greek police who raided the camp of a Roma Gypsy community in search of drugs and weapons have discovered a four-year-old girl they fear may have been trafficked or abducted by the family she was found with.

Police had entered the camp in search of drugs and weapons as part of a crackdown on illegal activity in the area.

Their suspicions were initially raised after finding the girl, who was going by the name of ‘Maria’, when they realised she looked nothing like the couple she was living with, officials said last Friday.

DNA tests have since proved she was not their biological child, leading authorities to question if the girl has been trafficked or abducted into the settlement.

A hunt for the child’s real family is now underway. Greek authorities have requested assistance from Interpol

and international groups for lost and abused children.

The charity now caring for the child said she is “confused” and “shocked” by the abrupt changes in her environment. She was being used to beg on the streets of Larissa, because she was “blonde and cute” the director of the charity believes.

The young girl had been registered in Athens, from where the couple had obtained a birth certificate.

Giannopoulos’ charity said none of the children declared missing in Greece matched the girl’s profile, and that she is undergoing medical examinations though she seems in overall good health.

“We are shocked by how easy it is for people to register children as their own,” Giannopoulos said. “There is much more to investigate. There are other registered children that were not found in the settlement, and I believe police will unravel a thread that doesn’t just have to do with the girl.”

The couple, a 39-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, were arrested and charged with abducting a minor. The suspects are alleged to have offered conflicting initial accounts about how they came to have the child — that the girl was found in a blanket, that she was handed to them by strangers or that she had a foreign father.

Greece’s Roma community has for centuries been underprivileged and exposed to poverty and discrimination.

According to the London-based Minority Rights Group, some 80 per cent of the country’s 300,000 Roma are illiterate. Some resort to criminal activity, engendering resentment from the larger Greek community.

Leonarda can return on her own

Socialist president Francois Hollande said that a 15-year-old girl is allowed to come back but on her own.

Leonarda Dibrani was detained in front of her classmates by police as she got off a bus from a school trip.

Schools are considered places of sanctuary, and many thought that principle had been breached.

The deportation of Leonarda and her family, whose requests for asylum were rejected, has lit a firestorm in France, where such expulsions aren’t rare but are always sensitive as the birthplace of the “rights of man” grapples with a flux of immigrants.

It’s an especially delicate issue for Hollande and the Socialists, who have tried to present a softer image of France’s immigration policies and distance themselves from former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s tough stance.

The uproar began earlier this week when it became public that 15-yearold Leonarda was detained The story has since become more complicated, with the father admitting that he lied in his asylum application when he said the entire family fled Kosovo, where they were persecuted for being Roma, or gypsies. Leonarda, and most of her

siblings, were born in Italy, though they do not have Italian citizenship.

Hollande went on national television to walk the line between maintaining a tough stance on illegal immigrants and showing compassion for the girl caught up in the storm. He said Leonarda, considering the circumstances of her detention, could come back to France to go to school, if she wishes. But only she can come back. In Mitrovica, Kosovo, where the family is now living, Leonarda told reporters she would not come back without her family. Her father threatened to return to France, even if it was illegal.

Hollande also said local authorities would be told that, from now on, no such detentions can happen while children are in the care of their schools, whether inside the building, at the exit, on a bus or in after-school activities.

Although polls show that the majority of French people don’t think the family should be allowed to return to France, the case has threatened to destabilise the Hollande government.

Thousands of teenagers rallied in central Paris on Friday after shutting down their high schools the day before to protest against expulsions like Leonarda’s.

13

Congress agreement saves US from shutdown for three months

President Barack Obama signed a bill that ends the 16-day partial government shutdown and raises the debt ceiling, the White House said last week.

The debt cushion now extends through February 7, with current spending levels being authorized through January 15.

The deal was then passed by 285-144 in the House of Representatives, whose Republican leadership begrudgingly agreed to support the measure. It came hours before the deadline to raise the 16.7tn dollars limit.

The bill brings the US back from the brink of a budgetary abyss by extending the treasury’s borrowing authority until 7 February. It also funds the government to 15 January, reopening closed federal agencies and bringing hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees back to work.

The deal, however, offers only a temporary solution and does not resolve the budgetary issues that split

Republicans and Democrats.

The US Treasury has been using what it called “extraordinary measures” to pay its bills since the nation reached its current debt limit in May. It said those methods exhausted by 17 October, leaving the US unable to meet all of its debt and other fiscal obligations. Ratings firm Standard & Poor’s said that the partial US government shutdown, the first in 17 years, had already shaved 24bn from the American economy and would cut growth significantly in the fourth quarter.

Spurred on by hard-line conservatives, congressional Republicans forced the shutdown on 1 October by demanding that President Obama de-fund or delay his signature healthcare overhaul.

Senator John McCain, who was the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, told the upper chamber it had been ”one of the more shameful chapters I have seen in the years I have spent here in the Senate”.

Monti left party after budget raised

Former Prime Minister Mario Monti left the party he founded this year as political tensions over Italy’s 2014 budget raised a new threat to the stability of Enrico Letta’s government.

Monti said he was quitting because a group of senators from his centrist Civic Choice party, which is part of the ruling coalition, rejected his criticism of the budget thus undermining his leadership of the party.

The budget, unveiled last Tuesday, has been attacked by employers,

unions and most of Italy’s media, as well as by senior politicians in Letta’s left-right ruling coalition who have virtually disowned the package.

This heightens the risk that the package will be completely overhauled during its passage through parliament and that a new political crisis may not be far away, just weeks after Letta survived an attempt by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to topple him.

The critics of the budget included

Monti, who said it was lacking in tax cuts and reforms to boost the economy, and that his party’s backing should not be taken for granted.

Monti was widely credited with saving Italy, one of the world’s biggest government debtors, from financial meltdown when he took over from a discredited Berlusconi at the height of the euro zone debt crisis in November 2011. But his party fared badly at elections in February this year.

The budget, which must be approved by parliament by the end of the year, is likely to become the focal point and a pretext for a myriad of protests against the unpopular government, which uncomfortably combines Letta’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and its traditional rival.

That incident opened deep divisions within his party, and it was no coincidence that some of the loudest criticism of the budget came from “hawks” who remain most loyal to Berlusconi and still want to bring down Letta.

Berlusconi faces a crucial vote on the floor of the Senate next month on whether to expel him from parliament after his tax-fraud conviction, and many commentators believe he will use the budget to justify a new bid to bring down the government.

30 MILLION PEOPLE LIVING AS Peace talks about SLAVES AROUND THE WORLD Syria not confirmed yet

The Global Slavery Index, a report published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, lists India as the country with by far the most slaves, with an estimated nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million) and Pakistan (2.1 million).

The top 10 countries on its list of shame accounted for more than three quarters of the 29.8 million people living in slavery, with Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh completing the list.

In terms of countries with the highest of proportion of slaves,Mauritania in West Africa topped the table,

with about 4% of its 3.4 million people enslaved, followed by Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.

The index, whose authors claim it contains the most authoritative data on slavery conditions worldwide, is the product of Australian mining magnate and philanthropist Andrew Forrest’s commitment to stamp out global slavery.

Forrest, ranked by Forbes as Australia’s fifth richest man, with an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion, adopted the cause after his daughter volunteered in an orphanage in Nepal in 2008, coming into contact with child sex trafficking victims.

The index, which draws on 10 years of research into slavery conditions around the world and was produced by a team of 4 authors supported by 22 other experts and advisers, is the inaugural edition of what will be an annual report into slavery. It ranks 162 countries according to the number of people living in slavery, the risk of enslavement and the robustness of government responses to the problem.

Global Slavery Index uses a broader definition of slavery, which included human trafficking, forced labour, as well as practices such as forced marriage, debt bondage and the exploitation of children.

A senior Syrian official said that a long-delayed international conference aimed at ending his country’s civil war was scheduled for November 23-24, but coorganizers Russia and the United States said no date had been set.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi also cast doubt on the statement, saying the timing of the conference intended to bring Syria’s government and opposition together had not yet been agreed.

Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil gave what he said were the dates for the meeting during a news conference in Moscow. He later told Reuters: “This is what (U.N. Secretary General) Ban Kimoon is saying, not me.” “It is not a matter for Syrian officials but the responsibility of U.N. Secretary

General to announce and set dates agreed with all sides,” he said.

The deal reached last month for Syria to scrap its chemical weapons rekindled efforts to convene the conference, dubbed “Geneva 2”, which Russia and the United States have been trying to organize since May. Jamil has made several visits to Russia during the conflict, which has killed more than 115,000 people since it began in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

He said the conference was needed because “everyone is at a dead end - a military and political dead end.

“Geneva is a way out for everyone: the Americans, Russia, the Syrian regime and the opposition. Whoever realizes this first will benefit.”

14

Kim Kardashian won´t have a

Ramsay Uses a

star in Hollywood Walk of Fame

Hidden Camera to

Spy on Teenage

Daughter

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is so overprotective of his eldest daughter that he’s resorted to bugging her room with a hidden camera, the Hell’s Kitchen star revealed on the U.K.’s Jonathan Ross Show.

Gordon, 46, and his wife Tana, 38, have four children from their 16-year marriage: Megan, 15, twins Jack and Holly, 13, and Matilda, 11. The TV star’s daughter attended the talk show taping with her boyfriend. “They’ve been spending a lot of time in her room recently,” Gordon said. “But revising.

Revising. They seem to be spending a lot of time revising and yet the results aren’t...”

The restaurateur then admitted to spying on his firstborn. “I’ve been a bit naughty over the last couple of weeks because I got Jack a little Go-Pro, one of those little secret cameras,” he shared. “So I said to him, ‘Look mate, here’s 20 quid, go and target your big sister’s room and put that camera right at the top left-hand side of the wardrobe.’ So, Megan, I’d like to talk to you about your revising.”

Transformer director attacked in Hong Kong American director and producer Michael Bay was injured in an attack in Hong Kong during filming for his latest Transformers movie, last Thursday.

Two brothers surnamed Mak, aged 27 and 28, approached Bay on the set during filming for the American science fiction film and the younger brother demanded payment of HK$100,000 ($12,900), a police spokeswoman told Reuters. It was not immediately clear why the money was requested.

As a discussion ensued in a busy area of Hong Kong island, the elder Mak

walked up and assaulted the director, the spokeswoman said. The elder brother then attacked three police officers who tried to intervene, she added.

The younger brother was arrested on suspicion of blackmail and assault, while the elder Mak was also arrested on suspicion of assault, she said. Bay sustained injuries to the right side of his face, although he declined to seek treatment, the spokeswoman said, adding she did not believe his injuries were serious. Filming continued after the dispute.

The elite organization said the reality star won’t be getting the recognition anytime soon, despite claims from her rapper boyfriend, Kanye West, that she has earned the right to have one.

“We don’t have a category for reality stars on the Walk of Fame,” spokeswoman Ana Martinez told the New York Daily News .

And why not? Well, what they do isn’t really deserving, she said.

“They’re not giving a performance, it’s just them going through their daily lives and rituals on TV,” she said. “We honor people who’ve acted

in or directed or produced an awardwinning show or film. And it’s the same with music, people who maybe have gold records.”

West declared that Kardashian should get a star during a recent appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” But Martinez said though it was nice that West was advocating for Kardashian, it simply isn’t going to happen. I understand that Kanye loves his girlfriend, but that’s not the way to go about getting a star – on national TV without checking into whether or not she qualifies, which she does not,” Martinez said.

15

COME IN AND DISCOVER FABULOUS THAI DISHES

Stop waiting for success...

Go get it!

At the heart of the busy Walworth Road, you will find this great restaurant and as we pop in, the friendly owner Mr Amir said: welcome, After the formal introductions we engage in this conversation about Mama Thai.

- We aim to provide freshly cooked tasty thai food at reasonable prices.-But Thai food requires specific ingredients, how do you get it?

That is true, all the ingredients are personally procured directly from London wholesale market.

This ensures quality, freshness and keen prices.

Who cooks?

The head chef from the award winning Thai Pavillion, picadilly line in London leads a team fo

cooks to create dishes to reflect a balance between the herbs and spices-the hallmark of good thai food.

What your customers find in Mama Thai?

We try our best to look after our customer well whether they are sitting in or taking out. Our menu has a wide variety of main and fast food dishes to cater all occasions.

Customers are welcome to BYO bring their own alcoholic drinks.

Also we have a delivery service limited to walking distance from the restaurant.

And we looking forward to be at your service, he added.

Its worth a visit! 235 Walworth Road, London SE17 1RL Tel 020 7277 2734 www.mamathairestaurant.co.uk

How does a person become a successful entrepreneur?

A lot of people think, “If I can find the right business, THEN I will be successful.” But that is such a LIE! You can start simply with a desire to do something different, to be different

from the examples around you.

There is a philosophy out there telling you to follow your passion, and you will “find” success. But the truth is, you don’t have to love what you do.

But you do have to start where you are.

Don’t Delay Success Waiting On Your Dream. If you are waiting for success to come to you, you’re gonna be waiting forever. Stop waiting, and go get the skills you need to succeed!

Do something that makes a profit. Or find someone else’s profitable idea and do that. You don’t have to love it or be passionate about it. But if you start where you are, with what you have, and you work diligently and are faithful with what you currently have, you will succeed.

If you are like so many others who have fallen into the trap of “looking for your passion” in order to find success — STOP! It doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is, how educated you are, where you live, what your passion is or what you want to do. Stop searching for your passion and work diligently with the opportunity in front of you, and you will succeed. Success isn’t hard. It’s not complicated or confusing. It’s as simple as following a ¨system. ´ LU

16

India seeks to regulate its booming ‘rent-a-womb’ industry

India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002. It is among just a handful of countries - including Georgia, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine - and a few U.S. states where women can be paid to carry another’s genetic child through a process of invitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.

The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of surrogates have made India a preferred destination for

fertility tourism, attracting nationals from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, to name a few.

There are no official figures on how large the fertility industry is in India.

A U.N.-backed study in July 2012 estimated the surrogacy business at more than $400 million a year, with over 3,000 fertility clinics across India.

But a debate over whether the unregulated industry exploits poor women prompted authorities to draft

a law that could make it tougher for foreigners seeking babies made in India.

“There is a need to regulate the sector,” said Dr. Sudhir Ajja of Surrogacy India, a Mumbai-based fertility bank that has produced 295 surrogate babies - 90 percent for overseas clients and 40 percent for same-sex couples - since it opened in 2007.

The Akanksha clinic in Anand is the best-known at home and abroad, giving the small town in Gujarat state

the reputation as India’s “surrogacy capital”.

“The surrogates in Anand have become empowered through giving this beautiful gift to others,” says Akanksha’s owner, IVF specialist Nayana Patel, who shot to fame in 2004 after she helped a patient have a baby by using the woman’s mother - the child’s grandmother - as a surrogate.

Patel, who appeared on U.S. celebrity Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2007, has produced more than 500 surrogate babies - two-thirds of them for foreigners and people of Indian origin living in over 30 countries.

Charging couples an average of $25,000 to $30,000, a fraction of the cost in the United States, Patel pays her surrogates around 400,000 rupees ($6,500).

India’s surrogacy industry is vilified by women’s rights groups who say fertility clinics are nothing more than “baby factories” for the rich. In the absence of regulation, they say many poor and uneducated women are lured by agents, hired by clinics, into signing contracts they do not fully understand.

In May last year, surrogate mother Premila Vaghela, 30, died days after delivering a child for an American couple at a clinic in Gujarat. It was recorded as an “accidental death” by police.

A recent government-funded study of

100 surrogate mothers in Delhi and Mumbai found there was “no fixed rule” related to compensation and no insurance for post-delivery healthcare.

It cited cases where surrogates were implanted with embryos multiple times to raise the chances of success.

“In most of these cases, the surrogate mothers are being exploited,” said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research that conducted the study.

Moves to introduce a law - the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill (ART) - to protect surrogates, the children and the commissioning parents is long overdue, Kumari said.

Revised visa requirements introduced in July have already resulted in foreign same-sex couples and individuals being prohibited from surrogacy in India. The ART bill, expected to come before parliament next year, will tighten things further.

Under the current draft, all fertility clinics must be registered and monitored by a regulatory authority.

Surrogates must be between 21 and 35 years old, they will be provided with insurance and notarized contracts must be signed between the women and the commissioning parents.

“Legislation should be there so that this wonderful procedure can be supervised and it is being done by the right people for the right people,” said Akanksha’s Patel. Reuters

17

Americans first buyers for Irish Castles

Humewood, an Irish estate on 427 acres, roughly a 90-minute drive from Dublin, includes 15 bedrooms, a ballroom, a banqueting hall and a billiards room, among other amenities.

And an American, John Malone, now owns it. Last November, the 72-yearold billionaire chairman of the cable and telecom giant Liberty Global got it for a song.

He paid around 8 million euros, or roughly $10 million, for the 32,668-square-foot granite Victorian Gothic bastion, built in the 1860s.

That’s about a third of what it sold for in 2006, near the height of the boom in the Irish economy. But it’s not necessarily about the money. “I didn’t buy Humewood as a financial investment,” Mr. Malone said. “It’s an act of love rather than financial acumen.”

Mr. Malone, who has tracked his heritage back to an ancestor who arrived in Pennsylvania from Ireland in the 1830s, is among an increasing number of Americans with deep pockets returning to their Irish roots to buy castles and manor houses at distressed prices — with cash.

Many of the properties are changing hands for about a third of 2007 levels, thanks to the country’s exodus of property developers, many of which failed when the market collapsed.

But the attraction of the Emerald Isle’s much lower prices and a slowly strengthening economy has changed that. Overseas buyers accounted for nine of the top 10 sales of Irish country mansions last year — several of them Americans, according to the Dublinbased estate agency, Sherry FitzGerald

Group. In 2013, this trend has continued “with Americans leading the way, although there is emerging interest from Asia and in particular China and Japan,” said David Ashmore, director at Sherry FitzGerald.

For example, Charles Noell, founder of the Baltimore-based private equity firm JMI Equity, bought Ardbraccan, an 18th-century mansion set on 120 acres of land with formal gardens outside the town of Navan in County Meath. Mr. Noell paid nearly 4.9 million euros, or $6.3 million, according to Savills, the firm that handled the sale. It was originally listed in 2008 at triple that.

James E. Thompson, an American who is a permanent resident of Hong Kong and founder of the Crown Worldwide Group, went to Ireland last year to explore his roots and was smitten.

He bought Woodhouse, a country home with about 400 acres outside Stradbally in County Waterford, reportedly for under 6.5 million euros.

Savills Ireland was also the agent.

Of course, many wealthy American buyers have discreetly managed to remain anonymous in a number of cash purchases during the last 12 months, said Ronan McMahon, a global real estate expert who reports on real estate trends for International Living, a magazine and web site specializing in living abroad.

For example, Ravenswood, the former home of the 1970s pop singersongwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan, a 6,500-square-foot Georgian mansion outside Bunclody, County Wexford, was sold last year through Colliers International for 1.3 million euros, down from an asking price in 2009 of 2.5 million euros. A Texas-based lawyer reportedly bought it.

Kennedy assassination´s 50th anniversary

Many of the theories stem from the idea that a fourth shot was fired, in addition to the three by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. This was backed by the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations, and led to swirling questions about who fired that shot.

It was based on a recording from a police radio, which was supposedly near the crime scene.

As the Kennedy assassination’s 50th anniversary approaches, an esteemed academic has called into doubt

the basis for a range of conspiracy theories surrounding it.

President John F. Kennedy was shot dead on 22 November 1963, as he and his wife rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

Larry Sabato, Professor of Politics and director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics, has cast doubt on that theory. He told The Times the evidence used by that committee was “completely flawed”. He said modern technology has revealed the fourth

sound was not gunfire, but the rattling of the microphone. He also questioned whether the radio which provided the recording was even in the motorcade.

Dr Sobato, who has also taught at Oxford and Cambridge, said: “It is impossible to record gunshots from that distance on equipment this primitive. His new book, The Kennedy Half-Century, also claims that 75 per cent of Americans still reject the idea that Oswald acted alone.

Effective information, fast and accurate www.directorio1.com

18

Without Plants, Earth Would Cook Under Billions of Tons of Additional Carbon

The planet’s land-based carbon “sink” -- or carbon-storage capacity -- has kept 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere since the mid-20th century, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From the 1860s to the 1950s, land use by humans was a substantial source of the carbon entering the atmosphere because of deforestation and logging.

After the 1950s, however, humans began to use land differently, such as by restoring forests and adopting agriculture that, while larger scale, is higher yield. At the same time, industries and automobiles continued to steadily emit carbon dioxide that contributed to a botanical boom.

Although a greenhouse gas and pollutant, carbon dioxide also is a plant nutrient.

Had Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems remained a carbon source they would have instead generated 65 billion to 82 billion tons of carbon in addition to the carbon that it would not have absorbed, the researchers found. That means a total of 251 billion to 274 billion additional tons of carbon would currently be in the atmosphere. That much carbon

would have pushed the atmosphere’s current carbon dioxide concentration to 485 parts-per-million (ppm), the researchers report -- well past the scientifically accepted threshold of 450 (ppm) at which Earth’s climate could drastically and irreversibly change. The current concentration is 400 ppm.

Those “carbon savings” amount to a current average global temperature that is cooler by one-third of a degree Celsius (or a half-degree Fahrenheit), which would have been a sizeable jump, the researchers report. The planet has warmed by only 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the early 1900s, and the point at which scientists calculate the global temperature would be dangerously high is a mere 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) more than pre-industrial levels.

The study is the most comprehensive look at the historical role of terrestrial ecosystems in controlling atmospheric carbon, explained first author Elena Shevliakova, a senior climate modeler in Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Previous

research has focused on how plants might offset carbon in the future, but overlooked the importance of increased vegetation uptake in the past, she said.

“People always say we know carbon sinks are important for the climate,” Shevliakova said. “We actually for the first time have a number and we can say what that sink means for us now in terms of carbon savings.”

Scott Saleska, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who studies interactions between vegetation and climate, said that the researchers provide a potentially compelling argument for continued forest restoration and preservation by specifying the “climate impact” of vegetation Work like this could help forestpreservation programs more accurately consider the climate impacts of policy measures related to forest preservation.”

If carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue rising, more vegetation would be needed to maintain the size of the carbon sink Shevliakova and her colleagues reported.

Effective information, fast and accurate www.directorio1.com

19

London serving and cooking of the world’s first lab-grown beef burger

A corner of west London saw culinary and scientific history made on August 5th as scientists cooked and served up the world’s first labgrown beef burger.

The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, the first example of what its creator says could provide an answer to global food shortages and help combat climate change, was fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers.

The burger is the result of years of research by Dutch scientist Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, who is working to show how meat grown in petri dishes might one day be a true alternative to meat from livestock.

The meat in the burger has been

made by knitting together around 20,000 strands of protein that has been cultured from cattle stem cells in Post’s lab. The tissue is grown by placing the cells in a ring, like a donut, around a hub of nutrient gel, Post explained.

To prepare the burger, scientists combined the cultured beef with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron have been added to bring out its natural colours.

“Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven’t altered them in any way,” Post said in a statement. ”For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing”.

Length of pregnancy can vary by up to five weeks, scientists discover

The length of a pregnancy naturally varies between different women by as much as five weeks, scientists have discovered for the first time.

Although it has always been known that human pregnancies usually last between 37 and 42 weeks, the variation has previously been attributed to imperfect methods of estimating due dates.

A woman’s due date is calculated as 280 days after the onset of her last menstruation and is only ever considered a best guess. Only four per cent of women deliver on their due date and only 70 per cent within 10 days of

it.

However researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) were able to pinpoint the moment women became pregnant by taking daily urine samples - enabling them to isolate the role that natural variation plays in pregnancy length.

In a group of 125 women, they found the average time from ovulation to birth was 268 days - 38 weeks and two days - and that the length of pregnancies varied by as much as 37 days, according to the research, published today in the journal Human Reproduction.

“We were a bit surprised by this finding,” said Dr Anne Marie Jukic, a postdoctoral at the Epidemiology Branch at the NIEHS. The length of a pregnancy could be affected by a number of factors. Older women tended to deliver later, while women who had themselves been heavier at birth also had longer pregnancies.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said the research reaffirmed professionals’ experience “that every woman is different” and urged practitioners to be cautious intervening too early in pregnancy, but said that due dates were still useful.

20

Andy Murray awarded OBE Scottish player Andy Murray, reigning Wimbledon champion, was awarded with an Order of the British Empire by Prince William, who presided for the first time over these awards standing in for his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. The tennis player was included in the list of distinguished individuals to be given an O.B.E. for his dedication to the sport after winning Wimbledon and the US Open, as well as the men’s final of the London 2012 Olympic Games. His victory over Serb Novak Djokovic in the centre court of the All England Club made him the first British player to have won the trophy in 77 years.

Barca TO BAR There’s something TICKET-LESS KIDS strange with Bale”

The Barça president Sandro Rosell has claimed that it was a real wrench to make the decision to bar children under seven from coming to matches at the Camp Nou without a ticket.

This policy will come into force from this coming ‘Clásico’ against Real Madrid on 26th October, amid reports that “up to 40,000 children without a ticket” were set to attend the match, owing to the early kick-off time of 6 p.m.

“No one is more against the decision I’ve made from a popular standpoint, but it was one that had to be made, it is my responsibility”, Rosell told ‘Catalunya Ràdio’. “I’d rather wake up

to headlines reading ‘Rosell won’t let kids in’ than ones saying ‘Rosell was responsible for a kid’s death’”, the Barça supremo argued.

Amid growing unrest on social media, with fans complaining that taking children under seven to games had become a family tradition, Rosell was quick to stress that this decision has not been taken lightly. “The security experts warned us that instead of 10,000 kids, some 40,000 could turn up for a Barça-Real Madrid game. That would give us an attendance of 140,000 people.

It’s not a question of respecting the law, but [we’re worried that] anything could happen in the third tier of the stadium”.

Women’s cycling has grown

The sport’s governing body launched the campaign in March and said in its six-month update that it had already recorded a significant rise in women riding bikes.

It has increased its female membership by 19 per cent since the launch and 106,000 women have taken part in British Cycling programmes so far in 2013, including 23,000 as part of Breeze, an initiative that organises female-only rides throughout Britain.

The number of women participating in British Cycling sportives has also grown by seven per cent, while

Cyclesport races have seen a 24 per cent year-on-year rise. Meanwhile, British Cycling has introduced 10,000 new under-16 girls to the sport through its Go-Ride programme.

British Cycling chief executive Ian Drake said: “In the six months since we launched our strategy, we have made some great progress and our plan to get one million more women cycling over the next seven years is firmly on track. The development of women’s cycling has been apparent this year at both grassroots and racing levels.

Women have accounted for one-third of people taking part in Sky Ride events in 2013, while the Women’s National Series has doubled the number of events on its calendar from five to ten. British Cycling has also trained ten per cent more female coaches since March 2013 than it did in the same period in 2012 and, significantly, has introduced a Women’s Tour of Britain for 2014.

Progress has also been made in making roads safer - a key barrier to riding identified by over a third of would-be female cyclists.

John Toshack, the man who handed Gareth Bale his debut with the Wales national team, showed his surprise about the player’s current situation.

Toshack told the night-time programme on La COPE radio that: “There’s something wrong. If we analyse what is happening, there’s something strange. It’s normal for him to be training for so long. But Madrid has the right medical team to put it right. In the Real Madrid training sessions there are more assistants than players. They must decide and if

Gareth has to be another two months out then that must happen. He’s a mentally strong lad, but he’s been unlucky with injuries. When I coached him there were no back problems. It was the ankle”.

Speaking from Baku, the manager of Azerbaijan side Xäzär Länkäran went on to show his faith in Bale and believes he will succeed at Real Madrid “because he’s an extraordinary player”. He also said he would play his compatriot in the centre forward position along with Cri

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Deaf athletes could compete at Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, claims IPC President

Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), has claimed discussions to introduce events for deaf athletes into the Paralympics are ongoing and could be successful by the time of the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

But the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD) claimed that they had been led to believe that no such process was currently underway.

Sir Philip highlighted a meeting he had with the new President of the ICSD, Russian Valery Rukhledev, during the International Olympic Committee’s annual Session in Buenos Aires last month to illustrate that talks were underway.

“There will be a minimum of seven years of discussions, so it is not something likely for 2016 but it could be in future

years,” said Sir Philip.

But Mark Cooper, chief executive of the ICSD, claimed that they had not been informed of any roadmap that would see them make their debut in the Paralympics at Tokyo 2020.

“In broad terms we asked before London 2012 about adding events for deaf athletes and were told then that there was not enough time to do so.

“We asked what the procedure currently was and were told that no procedure was currently in place and that we should await further clarification from the IPC.” Although originally forming part of what was then know as the International Coordination Committee of World Sports Organisations for the Disabled (ICC) deaf events broke away in 1996 following the formation of the IPC in 1989.

Cooper remained adamant that if deaf events were returned to the Paralympics then it would still not spell the end for the Deaflympics - which were first held in Paris in 1924 so 36 years before the inaugural Paralympics at Rome in 1960.

But he conceded “it has since become clear that the Paralympic Games has garnered a lot of attention and a higher profile”.

The Deaflympics in Sofia this year enjoyed far less media attention than the Paralympic events at the Anniversary Games athletics in London, for example.

Cooper particularly pointed out the case of Britain where UK Deaf Sport lost its £42,000 ($68,000/€45,000) annual grant from UK Sport in 2008 as the support was focused on London 2012.

British athletes travelled to the Deaflympics in Taiwan in 2009 without any National Lottery funding at all, and although they now receive annual support from Sport England this is for talent development and was not put towards sending competitors to Sofia this summer.

Cooper claimed there would have to be talks with the IPC regarding issues such as classifications because there is only one broad category for deaf athletes “not multiple ones for degrees of impairment like with visually impaired athletes.”

Talks on the issue are already ongoing with other International Federations.

Inside the games.

Kenya to host rescheduled hockey Africa Cup of Nations Kenya has finally been given permission to host the hockey African Cup of Nations in November after security issues caused the tournament to be postponed.

The tournament was originally due to take place in Nairobi at the end of last month but was postponed at the last minute after shopping mall massacre, a terror attack hit the Kenyan capital at Westgate Mall which killed at least 67 people and injured another 175.

The Africa Hockey Federation (AfHF) and International Hockey Federation (FIH) have since given the Kenyan Hockey Union (KHU) the nod and allowed them to host the event at a later date.

In a letter to the KHU, secretary general of the AfHF, Nii QuayeKumah confirmed that the tournament was to go ahead after the security situation in Kenya improved.

The tournament will now run from November 18-24, but Africa’s governing body revealed that four teams have withdrawn from the competition due to security concerns and lack of funds.

Namibia, Nigeria, Seychelles had already withdrawn from the tournament following the original hosts Egypt’s pull-out two months ago due to a lack of training time after the political uprising in that country.

South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya are now the only teams who have confirmed their participation in the competition.

Both men and women’s competitions will follow the onepool league format.

The top two teams will clash for the ultimate prize and the right to represent Africa at the 2014 FIH World Cup in The Hague, Netherlands.

This will be the second time Kenya have staged the tournament, having hosted it back in 1995. Nairobi also hosted the Olympic qualifiers for Beijing 2008 in 2007.

Lloyd Norris-Jones is expected to be among South Africa’s leading stars at they chase a record seventh consecutive victory in the African Cup of Nations, a record which stretches back to 1993, the last occasion Nairobi staged the event.

Inside de the games

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Apple wins patent for

Shanghai store glass cylinder

NASA finds use for 3D printers: NASA has commissioned a custom 3D printer capable of working in microgravity that will be sent to the International Space Station to build parts for the facility and the scientific experiments it contains.

The printer has been designed by Made in Space, an American startup, and is being tested on parabolic flights to make sure the printer can lay precise rows of material without the effects of gravity. Testing is still

going on, but Made in Space CEO Aaron Kemmer confirmed the device has been certified to be sent into orbit next year.

“The 3D printing experiment with NASA is a step towards the future.

The ability to 3D print parts and tools on-demand greatly increases the reliability and safety of space missions while also dropping the cost by orders of magnitude,” said Kemmer in a statement.

“The first printers will start by building test coupons, and will then build a broad range of parts, such as tools and science equipment.”

Printing in zero gravity isn’t the only problem the designers have had to deal with. Actually getting into orbit, with the vibration and acceleration needed for a launch, has also presented challenges to the designers. But NASA seems happy with the results so far.

Apple has scored a patent for the large round glass structure that leads customers down to its retail store in Shanghai.

Awarded by the US Patent and Trademark office, the patent known as “Glass building panel and building made therefrom,” describes the unique design of the cylinder. The structure is made of huge glass panels united by metal joints. But to achieve the cylindrical design, the glass panels had to be manipulated to curve precisely into the right shape.

The structure itself also had to be strong enough to support itself and the stream of customers going back and forth. As such, the cylinder was outfitted with glass beams extending from the inner cylinder to the outer edges. Glass fins connect each area

where adjacent panels meet.

A building panel and a building formed therefrom, where the building includes a plurality of building panels arranged to form a cylindrical shape, where each panel comprises a single, or monolithic, glass piece, where each glass piece is substantially rectangular and includes two opposing long sides extending in a height direction and two opposing short sides extending substantially in a width direction, and where each glass piece forms an identical circular arc when viewed from either of the two opposing short sides.

Apple also notes that the exact dimensions, shapes, and sizes described in the patent could be modified to create other types of buildings based on a similar design.

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