Qantas-Emirates alliance gets conditional approval






SYDNEY: Australia's competition watchdog on Thursday gave its draft approval to a global alliance between struggling carrier Qantas and Dubai-based Emirates, but only for five years initially.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said the benefits, which will see the carriers coordinating ticket prices and flight schedules, would likely outweigh reduced competition on certain routes.

A final decision will be made by March.

"The ACCC considers that the alliance is likely to result in material, although not substantial, benefits to Australian consumers," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

"The main benefit arising from the alliance is an improved product and service offering by the two airlines to their customers.

"This includes increased customer access to each others' flights, destinations and frequent flyer programmes."

Sims added that the alliance would lessen competition on some international routes, but competition from other airlines should mitigate that impact.

However, he said Qantas and Emirates could reduce or limit capacity on routes between Australia and New Zealand under the partnership, which could result in higher airfares.

It was for this reason that the ACCC only gave an initial five-year approval, half the 10 years requested by the airlines. The decision would then be reviewed.

Under the alliance, Qantas will shift its hub for European flights to Dubai from Singapore in a bid to stem losses after this year posting its first annual loss since privatisation in 1995.

The deal goes beyond code sharing to include coordinated pricing, sales and scheduling and a benefit-sharing model, although neither airline will take equity in the other.

For Emirates customers, the alliance will open up Qantas' Australian domestic network of more than 50 destinations and nearly 5,000 flights per week.

- AFP/de



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Delhi HC dismisses PIL challenging Tendulkar's nomination to Rajya Sabha

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Wednesday approved the decision of the Centre to nominate cricketer Sachin Tendulkar to the Rajya Sabha.

Dismissing a PIL challenging Tendulkar's nomination to the Upper House, a division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw agreed with the Centre's argument that his craft is an art for which he deserves to be considered an artist.

Additional solicitor general Rajeev Mehra and standing counsel Neeraj Chaudhari had maintained on behalf of the Centre that Tendulkar's nomination is as per constitutional provision that also allows induction of experts from the field of sports.

They had said the provision under Article 80 of the Constitution is not confined to inducting experts only from the fields of science, arts, literature and social services, but also from sports, education and other disciplines.

The court had on November 21 reserved its order on the PIL filed by Ram Gopal Singh Sisodia, a former Delhi MLA, challenging Tendulkar's nomination alleging that he does not possess any of the qualifications prescribed under Article 80 of the Constitution for being nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

"A bare reading of the article makes it clear that the person to be nominated should have special knowledge or practical experience in matters like literature, science, arts and social service, but the expertise so required for nomination is not confined to the specific illustrations given in the article," he had said in his petition.

In an affidavit to the HC, the Centre had earlier said, "The special knowledge and practical experience required for the purpose is not confined to the said four categories only but would also include categories like sports, education, law, history, academics attainments, Indology, economics, journalism ... or other similar fields of human endeavour."

Appearing for Sisodia, his counsel R K Kapoor had told the bench that the Constitution allowed the government to nominate to the Rajya Sabha persons only from four disciplines — arts, science, literature and social science — and argued that the nomination of a sportsperson to the Upper House was unconstitutional.

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Grabbing Water From Future Generations



This piece is part of Water Grabbers: A Global Rush on Freshwater, a special National Geographic Freshwater News series on how grabbing land—and water—from poor people, desperate governments, and future generations threatens global food security, environmental sustainability, and local cultures.


Suresh Ponnusami sat back on his porch by the road south of the Indian textile town of Tirupur. He was not rich, but for the owner of a two-acre farm in the backwoods of a developing country he was doing rather well. He had a TV, a car, and a maid to bring him drinks and ensure his traditional white Indian robes were freshly laundered every morning.


The source of his wealth, he said, was a large water reservoir beside his house. And as we chatted, a tanker drew up on the road. The driver dropped a large pipe from his vehicle into the reservoir and began sucking up the contents.


Ponnusami explained: "I no longer grow crops, I farm water. The tankers come about ten times a day. I don't have to do anything except keep my reservoir full." To do that, he had drilled boreholes deep into the rocks beneath his fields, and inserted pumps that brought water to the surface 24 hours a day. He sold every tanker load for about four dollars. "It's a good living, and it's risk-free," he said. "While the water lasts."


A neighbor told me she does the same thing. Water mining was the local industry. But, she said, "every day the water is reducing. We drilled two new boreholes a few weeks ago and one has already failed."


Surely this is madness, I suggested. Why not go back to real farming before the wells run dry? "If everybody did that, it would be well and good," she agreed. "But they don't. We are all trying to make as much money as we can before the water runs out."


Ponnusami and his neighbors were selling water to dyeing and bleaching factories in Tirupur. The factories once got their water from a giant reservoir on southern India's biggest river, the Kaveri (see picture). But the Kaveri was now being pumped dry by farmers and industry farther upstream. The reservoir was nearly empty most of the year. So the factories had taken to buying up underground water from local farmers.


It is a trade that is growing all over India—and all over the world.


Draining Fossil Aquifers


We are used to thinking of water as a renewable resource. However much we waste and abuse it, the rains will come again and the rivers and reservoirs will refill. Except during droughts, this is true for water at the surface. But not underground. As we pump more and more rivers dry, the world is increasingly dependent on subterranean water. That is water stored by nature in the pores of rocks, often for thousands of years, before we began to tap it with our drills and pumps.


We are emptying these giant natural reservoirs far faster than the rains can refill them. The water tables are falling, the wells have to be dug ever deeper, and the pumps must be ever bigger. We are mining water now that should be the birthright of future generations.


In India, the water is being taken for industry, for cities, and especially for agriculture. Once a country of widespread famine, India has seen an agricultural revolution in the past half century. India now produces enough food to feed all its people; the fact that many Indians still go hungry today is an economic and political puzzle, because the country exports rice.


But that may not last. Researchers estimate that a quarter of India's food is irrigated with underground water that nature is not replacing. The revolution is living on borrowed water and borrowed time. Who will feed India when the water runs out?


Nobody knows how much water is buried beneath our feet. But we do know that the reserves are being emptied. The crisis is global and growing, but remains largely out of sight and out of mind.


The latest estimate, published in the journal Water Resources Research this year, is that India alone is pumping out some 46 cubic miles (190 cubic kilometers) of water a year from below ground, while nature is refilling only 29 cubic miles (120 cubic kilometers), a shortfall of 17 cubic miles (70 cubic kilometers) per year. A cubic kilometer is 264.2 billion gallons, or about enough water to fill 400,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.


Close behind India, Pakistan is overpumping by 8.4 cubic miles (35 cubic kilometers), the United States by 7.2 cubic miles (30 cubic kilometers), and China and Iran by 4.8 cubic miles (20 cubic kilometers) each per year. Globally, the shortfall is about 60 cubic miles (250 cubic kilometers) per year, more than three times the rate half a century ago. Egypt, Uzbekistan, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Australia, Israel, and others are all pumping up their water at least 50 percent faster than the rains replenish. In some places, water that you could once bring to the surface with a bucket on a short rope is now a mile or more down.


See pictures of the Nile at work >>





Farming's Big Thirst


Overwhelmingly, the problem is agriculture. Farming takes two-thirds of all the water we grab from nature, but that figure rises to 90 percent in many of the driest and most water-stressed regions.


This cannot go on, as the United States is already discovering. For more than half a century now, farmers have been pumping out one of the world's greatest underwater reserves, the Ogallala aquifer, which stretches beneath the High Plains from Texas to South Dakota. The pumping began in order to revive the plains after the horrors of the 1930s Dust Bowl. By the 1970s there were 200,000 water wells, supplying more than a third of the U.S.'s irrigated fields.


For a while it was a huge success. In a good year, the High Plains produced three-quarters of the wheat traded on international markets, restocking Russian grain stores and feeding millions of starving Africans. But the Ogallala water is drawing down, many wells are going dry, and the output of the pumps has halved. A quarter of the aquifer is gone in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and over wide areas the water table has fallen by more than 100 feet. In some places, the sagebrush is returning because farmers are giving up on irrigated planting. (See "That Sinking Feeling About Groundwater in Texas.")


Other countries are heading in the same direction. Water tables are falling by more than a meter a year beneath the North China Plain, the breadbasket of the most populous nation on Earth. Saudi Arabia has almost pumped dry a vast water reserve beneath the desert in just 40 years.


Libya is doing the same beneath the Sahara. Muammar Qaddafi, Libya's late ruler, spent $30 billion of his country's oil revenues on giant pump fields in the desert, and a 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) network of pipes to bring underground water that is thousands of years old to coastal farms. Even though it was bombed by NATO forces last year, what Qaddafi called the Great Manmade River Project appears to still be functioning. But nature will eventually accomplish what the bombs did not. Water tables are dropping, pumping is getting harder, and the water is getting saltier.


Soon we may have a full global picture of how the world's underground water reserves are disappearing. Researchers are using NASA's GRACE satellite, which measures changes in the Earth's gravity field, to spot where the pores in rocks are being emptied of water. Jay Famiglietti, an earth science professor at the University of California, Irvine, is analyzing the findings. He says water security will soon rival energy security as the fastest-rising issue on the global geopolitical agenda.


More and more countries are so short of water for farming that they can feed their citizens only by importing crops grown using someone else's water. But the number of countries with spare water to export in this way is diminishing. The fear is that as the world's water supplies run on empty, the world's stomachs will as well.


Often, even before the water runs out, the pumps start to bring up water that is salty or toxic. In parts of India, there are epidemics of fluoride poisoning caused by drinking water containing high levels of this natural compound, which dissolves from hard rocks beneath water-bearing strata. I have seen villages full of severely disabled children, and adults suffering muscle degeneration, organ failure, and cancer caused by these poisons. Some communities call it "the devil's water."


We should not be doing this, says Brian Richter, freshwater strategist at The Nature Conservancy. "Falling groundwater levels are the bellwethers of the unsustainability of our water use," Richter said. "We're raiding our savings accounts with no payback plan."


We should not be stealing water from future generations, Richter said. We should instead use underground water sparingly and with caution.


Seeking Solutions


This can be done, starting with agriculture. Scientists are already working on new varieties of crops that need much less water to grow. And technologists are coming up with less wasteful ways to irrigate those crops. (See "Saving a River, One Farm at a Time.")


The truth is that, despite growing shortages, water is still usually so cheap that it is often wasted. The majority of the world's farmers irrigate simply by flooding their fields. But only a fraction of that water gets absorbed by the plants. Some of it percolates underground and can eventually be pumped to the surface again. But much of it is lost to evaporation.


Even spraying from pivots loses huge amounts of water to the air, where it may get carried out to sea or otherwise lost to local use. So the race is on to develop cheap drip irrigation, in which water is distributed across fields in pipes and dripped into the soil close to plant roots. That way we may be able to save our underground water reserves for future generations.


Meanwhile, communities across the world are running out of water. Where are things worst? The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) nominates the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave on the shores of the Mediterranean between Israel and Egypt. It looks as though it will become the first territory in the world to lose its only water supply.


Gaza has no rivers. It cannot afford desalinated seawater. So its 1.7 million inhabitants drink from the underground reserves. But pumping is being done at three times the recharge rate, water tables are falling fast, and what comes through the wells is increasingly contaminated by seawater seeping into the emptying rocks. A UN report this year said Gaza's water probably will be undrinkable by 2016. What then?


Gaza is an extreme case. And water is only one of its many problems. But it offers a warning for the world. It shows what can happen as the water runs out—what will happen in many other places if we continue to steal water from our children and their children.


Fred Pearce is a journalist and author on environmental science. His books include When the Rivers Run Dry and The Land Grabbers, both for Beacon Press, Boston. He writes regularly for New Scientist magazine, Yale Environment 360, and The Guardian, and has been published by Nature and The Washington Post.


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Obama Launches Gun-Violence Task Force













Five days after deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history, President Obama said his administration plans immediate action early next year on proposals to curb an "epidemic of gun violence."


At a morning news conference, Obama announced the formation of a task force to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden that will formulate a package of policy recommendations by January.


"The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing," Obama said. "The fact that we can't prevent every act of violence doesn't mean that we can't steadily reduce the violence and prevent the very worst violence."


The president said he intends to push for implementation of the proposals "without delay."


"This is not some Washington commission. This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside.


"This is a team that has a very specific task to pull together real reforms right now," he said.


While Obama did not offer specifics, he suggested the task force would examine an array of steps to curb gun violence and prevent mass shootings, including legislative measures, mental health resources and a "look more closely at a culture that all-too-often glorifies guns and violence."








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He urged Congress to confirm a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which has been without an official leader for six years. Obama also expressed his longstanding desire to see the national background check system strengthened and a ban on the sale of some assault-style weapons reinstated.


"I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this," Obama said.


Obama made similar pronouncements following at least four other mass shootings that marked his first term. But few policy changes were made.


"This is not the first incident of horrific gun violence of your four years. Where have you been?," asked ABC News' Jake Tapper.


"I've been president of the United States, dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars. I don't think I've been on vacation," Obama responded.


In the coming weeks, Biden will lead a working group that includes top officials from the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Education and Health and Human Services to draft an action plan.


Obama met privately Monday with Biden and three members of his Cabinet — Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — to discuss steps forward in the aftermath of Newtown.


The vice president's new role is rooted in his experience as a U.S. Senator with writing and shepherding into law the 1994 Crime Bill and chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees criminal justice issues.


The 1994 Crime Bill included the ban on certain types of semi-automatic rifles (better known as the "assault weapons ban") and new classes of people banned from owning or possessing firearms, in addition to expanding the federal death penalty and the Violence Against Women Act.



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Eric Cantor plays loyal lieutenant to Boehner



And standing side by side with Boehner as he outlined what many in his party regard as GOP apostasy — but what Boehner argued was the only way to spare most Americans from a tax hike — was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has worked hard in recent months to play the loyal lieutenant to Boehner.

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Samsung is top 2012 phone brand






WASHINGTON: Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the top mobile phone brand for 2012 and has opened up a decisive lead over Apple in the smartphone market, a research firm said Tuesday.

This will mark the first time in 14 years that Finnish-based Nokia will not sit atop the global mobile phone business on an annual basis, according to IHS iSuppli.

Samsung is expected to account for 29 per cent of worldwide cellphone shipments, up from 24 per cent in 2011, according to the IHS, which said Nokia's share dropped to 24 per cent from 30 per cent.

This will mark the first time the South Korean electronics giant will occupy the top on a yearly basis, IHS said.

Samsung has also extended its lead over Apple as the top maker of smartphones worldwide, the survey said. Samsung will have 28 per cent of the market, up from 20 per cent in 2011, while Apple's share will rise in 2012 to to 20 per cent from 19 per cent.

"The competitive reality of the cellphone market in 2012 was 'live by the smartphone; die by the smartphone,'" said Wayne Lam, senior analyst at IHS.

"Smartphones represent the fastest-growing segment of the cellphone market and will account for nearly half of all wireless handset shipments for all of 2012. Samsung's successes and Nokia's struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies' divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector."

IHS said global smartphone shipments are set to rise by 35.5 per cent this year, while overall cellphone shipments will increase by just one per cent. This will propel 2012 smartphone penetration to 47 per cent, up from 35 per cent in 2011.

IHS noted that Samsung produces dozens of smartphone models every year that address all segments of the market, from the high-end to the low-end. Nokia is transitioning its smartphone line to the Windows operating system, resulting in declining shipments for the company.

Sales of Nokia's older Symbian-based phones have plunged, while its new Microsoft Windows-based handsets have been modest so far.

IHS said Samsung, which was in a tight battle in 2011 with Apple, has moved ahead decisively ahead of the California giant with a wide range of Android smartphone offerings, while Apple limited its smartphones to the premium iPhone line.

The report said BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will see its market share fall to five per cent in 2012, from 11 per cent in 2011.

IHS said it expects smartphones gains to accelerate in 2013, and to account for 56 per cent of the mobile phone market.

- AFP/fa



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Economists cast doubt on cash transfer, say violence limits freedom of choice for women

NEW DELHI: Increasing violence against women limits their freedom of choice. That casts doubt on the efficacy of policy decisions like cash transfer through which the UPA government aims to give women freedom of choice and empower the poor.

Calling cash transfer the "big elephant in the room", IIM-Bangalore professor Gita Sen said, "Given the rising violence against women and denial of rights to them, what would be the actual participation of the women and the community (in cash transfer)?"

She was speaking at a programme where UN Women, Planning Commission and the women and child development ministry highlighted the need to prioritize women in national schemes. Sen wondered who would work out the details of the scheme that aims to reach places which are untouched by technology.

Leading economists and UN Women examined eight national flagship schemes for their impact on women. "From our comprehensive review of these schemes, it is clear that much more needs to be done to put the right approaches in place on issues such as economic participation of women," said Anne F Stenhammer, regional programme director of UN Women South Asia.

The economists found that women were adversely affected by schemes for infrastructure and manufacturing. Analyzing the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), they found the programme has, in many instances, led to displacement of traditional livelihoods of poor women. "We recommend a thorough review of the policy for its impact on the livelihoods of urban poor at the inception stage itself," Yamini Mishra of UN Women said.

WCD minister Krishna Tirath launched a set of eight policy briefs — 'Policies are not Gender Neutral'. "With the inputs from these economists, we will now work with the concerned line ministries to convince them to take action that the gender gaps identified in key policies and sectors are implemented," Tirath said.

Talking about cash transfer, Sen of IIM-Bangalore said it was a demand side intervention. "It's as if the government is throwing up its hands and expressing its inability to improve the supply side intervention or improve the access to quality of services," she added.

Demand side financing directs attention away from supply side financing, she said. Drawing upon past experience of similar schemes, Sen said, "Since institutional delivery is not safe, give them the money and the job is done... What is the voice of the community, of the women in this? Have they told you what kind of improvement they need?"

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Pictures: "Beautiful" Geminid Meteor Showers Grace Skies









































































































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Can Cops Read Shooter's Sabotaged Computer?













Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza may have tried to sabotage his own computer before going on a murderous rampage that claimed the lives of 20 children, but experienced investigators said today that law enforcement forensic experts could still recover critical evidence from the damaged drives.


Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance revealed Monday that a computer crimes unit was working in conjunction with a forensics laboratory to "dissect" any evidence relevant to the case, but he declined to comment further on what type of evidence was involved and in what condition it was in. Later that day, law enforcement officials told ABC News that police recovered a badly damaged computer from Lanza's home that appeared to have been attacked by a hammer or screwdriver.


Sources said if they can still read the computer's hard drive, they hope to find critical clues that may help explain Lanza's motives in the killing.


Former FBI forensic experts told ABC News that in cases similar to this one, damage to the computer does not necessarily mean the computer files cannot be accessed.


"If he took a hammer to the outside, smashed the screen, dented the box, it's more than likely the hard drive is still intact," said Al Johnson, a retired FBI special agent who now works privately examining digital evidence and computer data. "And even if the hard drive itself is damaged, there are still steps that can be taken to recover everything."








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Brett Harrison, a former FBI computer forensics expert who now works with a D.C. consulting firm, said that authorities have a great deal of technology at their disposal to retrieve that data. How much is recovered, he said, will depend entirely on how much damage was done to the well-insulated "platters" -- discs lodged deep inside the machine -- where Lanza's every digital footstep was recorded.


It is likely, he said, that Lanza's computer has been moved to a "clean room" where, if the discs are intact, they could be removed and then carefully re-inserted in a fresh hard drive. If the calibrations are done correctly, investigators would still be able to unlock the clues on the discs.


If the discs aren't in perfect condition, Harrison said, "There is equipment they can use to read the data off a record even if a portion of it is damaged."


Johnson said it is tedious work done in a clean environment because the tolerances of the discs is so precise – even a particle of dust could destroy crucial evidence.


"We're talking about a tolerance of less than a human hair," said Johnson, who now does computer forensics for a South Carolina-based investigative firm.


Police have not said exactly what they expect to find on the computer's hard drive, but the former FBI experts said typically there could be record of visits to violent web sites, or to online stores that sell ammunition, or to email that might reveal if Lanza shared any hints of his plans with others.


"I'm not big on speculation," Harrison said, "but you're talking about potentially finding all the normal things that people do with their computer – Facebook pages, internet activity, email, you name it."


For now, the FBI is keeping mum on what kind of computer forensic help it could be offering in the case.


"At this time, in deference to the ongoing investigation being conducted by the CSP, the FBI is not releasing information regarding operational or forensic assistance provided in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting," an FBI spokesperson said.


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Manchin, Warner change stances on gun rights in wake of Newtown shootings



White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday that President Obama supports reinstating an assault weapons ban and is likely to advocate other measures soon.

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