Vatican City: Pope Benedict XVI called on Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics, dignity and the search for the common good in the third encyclical of his pontificate.
In ‘Charity in Truth,’ Benedict denounced the profit-at-allcost mentality of the globalized economy and
lamented that greed had brought about the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end,” he wrote. “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”
The document, in the works for two years and repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis, was released one day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown. The release was designed to give world leaders a strong moral imperative to correct errors of the past, “which wreaked such havoc on the real economy,” and make a more socially just and responsible world financial order.
“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly—not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered,” he wrote.
While acknowledging that the globalized economy has “lifted billions of people out of misery,” Benedict accused the unbridled growth of recent years of causing unprecedented problems as well, citing mass migration flows, environmental degradation and a complete loss of trust in the world market.
He also urged wealthier countries to increase development aid to poor countries to help eliminate world hunger, saying peace and security depended on it. AP

Urumqi ( China): The government imposed a curfew on Tuesday in Urumqi regional capital of western China after mobs of Han Chinese with meat cleavers and clubs roamed the streets looking for Muslim Uighurs who had earlier beaten up people in the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades.
Rioting in the Xinjiang region broke out on Sunday and killed at least 156 people. Tuesday’s new violence came despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people in the often tense region.
Members of the Uighur ethnic group attacked people near Urumqi’s railway station, and women in headscarves protested the arrests of husbands and sons in another part of the city. For much of the afternoon, a mob of 1,000 mostly young Han Chinese holding cleavers and clubs and chanting “Defend the country” tore through streets trying to get to a Uighur neighbourhood until they were repulsed by police firing tear gas.
Panic and anger bubbled up amid the suspicion in Urumqi. In some neighbourhoods, Han Chinese—China’s majority ethnic group armed themselves with pieces of lumber and shovels to defend themselves. People bought bottled water out of fear, as one resident said, that “the Uighurs might poison the water.”
The central government has slowed mobile phone and internet services, blocked Twitter whose servers are overseas and censored Chinese social networking and news sites and accused Uighurs living in exile of inciting Sunday’s riot. State media coverage, however, carried graphic video and pictures of the unrest—showing mainly Han Chinese victims and stoking the anger.
The violence is a further embarrassment for a Chinese leadership preparing for the 60th anniversary of communist rule in October and calling for the creation of a “harmonious society” to celebrate.
Ethnic Uighurs have watched growing numbers of Han Chinese move into the region, one of China’s fastest-growing, where oil and gas industries make up most of the $61 billion economy. Trade, wheat farming and sheep herding has given way to plantation farms of cotton and sugar beets and natural resource extraction.
Wang Lequan, Xinjiang’s Communist Party secretary, imposed traffic restrictions and ordering people off the streets from 9 pm on Tuesday to 8 am on Wednesday “to avoid further chaos.”
The foreign ministry distributed to journalists videos showing gruesome scenes of people being beheaded and set on fire. The government said the riots were caused by a large group of people motivated by the World Uighur Congress, which operates from Germany and US. Several human rights groups have sprung into action accusing China of excesses while the WUC is now basking in special media attention in the western world.

San Jose (California): Microsoft Corp has taken the rare step of warning about a serious computer security vulnerability it hasn’t fixed yet.
The vulnerability disclosed on Monday affects Internet Explorer users whose computers run the Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating software.
It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims’ machines. The victims don’t need to do anything to get infected except visit a website that’s been hacked.
Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability. People are drawn to these sites by clicking a link in spam email.
The so-called “zero day” vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft affects a part of its software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with IE, which opens a hole for hackers. Microsoft urged users to disable the problematic part of the software. AP

Washington: US researchers have proposed a new strategy to tackle the global climate dilemma: target the biggest polluters in a country, who also tend to be the wealthiest individuals.
Under the framework, a universal cap — rather than different caps for different countries — would be placed on carbon emissions and countries would then be tasked with getting individuals living beyond that cap to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Most of the world’s emissions come disproportionately from the wealthy citizens of the world, irrespective of their nationality,” said lead author Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at the Princeton Environmental Institute.
“We estimate that in 2008, half of the world’s emissions came from just 700 million people,” he added, noting that many emissions owe to lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes.
The plan, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proposes to use national income distribution data for each individual country in order to estimate how carbon emissions are shared out among individuals.
After estimating global carbon emissions, the researchers proposed a rule to derive a universal cap on global individual emissions and determine corresponding limits. The study did not say how the countries would implement the plan. Half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from less than a billion of the world’s inhabitants, the researchers noted in explaining the logic behind their approach. AFP

ZERO TOLERANCE: Under the framework, wealthy citizens will have to reduce carbon footprint

London: Scientists have identified a species of spider that builds models of itself that it uses as decoys to distract predators, which may be the first example of an animal building a life-size replica of its own body.
Many animals try to divert the attentions of predators by becoming masters of disguise. Some try to avoid being seen altogether by using camouflage to blend in against a background, such as the peppered moth evolving motley wings that blend into tree bark, or stick insects that look like sticks.
But animals do not tend to build life-like replica models of themselves to act as decoys. According to a report by BBC News, that is what a species of orb spider called Cyclosa mulmeinensis does, biologists Ling Tseng and IMin Tso of Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, have found.
This spider and its relatives in the same genus decorate their webs with material such as detritus, plant parts, prey remains or egg sacs.
Because such detritus is often of a similar colour to the spider, researchers suspected it might help camouflage the arachnid. Cyclosa mulmeinensis, which lives on Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan, decorates its web with both the remains of dead insect prey and egg sacs.
Intriguingly, the spiders make prey pellets and egg sacs that were the same size as its own body. The researchers also found that these decorations appeared to wasps to be the same colour as the spider’s body.
In short, the spider made decorations that were of the same appearance as itself. “When both spiders and web decorations are present on the same web, they look like a identical oval objects,” said Tso. ANI

BODY DOUBLE: Cyclosa mulmeinensis makes decoys out of remains of dead insects and egg sacs

London: Taking a step closer towards a “thinking cap” that can enhance the mind’s ability to learn, scientists have found that stimulating the brain with magnets could boost a person’s learning ability.
It was found that when a magnetic pulse was applied to the premotor cortex — the area of the brain just behind the forehead — the brain’’s ability to learn a task and remember it was greatly enhanced.
The researchers, led by Dr Lara Boyd at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, have claimed that the technique could be used to enhance intellectual capacity, and help those with learning difficulties.
For the study, the researchers tested the ability of 30 volunteers to track a target on a computer screen with a red dot using a joystick. During the task, the target would move randomly, then enter a programmed pattern, and finally return to moving randomly.
The participants were not aware of the repeated section, believing that movements were random throughout. Some of the volunteers had their brain stimulated by magnets, while others did not.
It was found that participants, who had received the stimulation, were significantly better than the other groups at tracking the target during the repeated section of the test. They showed no significant difference in improvement during the random sections.
Boyd said that the study demonstrated that magnetic stimulation could boost learning skills and eventually lead to a “thinking cap”.
“With this tool we hope to be able to promote learning in patient populations who otherwise have great difficulty in acquiring new motor skills,” the Telegraph quoted her as saying.
She added: “In fact we are actively investigating this possibility right now in my lab.”
The findings of the study have been published in the journal BMC Neuroscience.
Meanwhile there is new hope for phobia sufferers after scientists identify the part of the brain from which fear originates. Using brain imaging the University of Washington researchers have pinpointed the basolateral nucleus in the region of the brain called the of amygdala in the centre of the brain. ANI

STIMULATING GREY MATTER: When a magnetic pulse is applied to the premotor cortex, the brain’s ability to learn and remember is greatly enhanced

Seldom has the premiere of a film in Paris generated such excitement. Starring alongside Johnny Depp as an American gangster’s moll, Marion Cotillard was hailed last week as the first French actress in years to break into the Hollywood big time.
In the United States, however, the hoopla surrounding Public Enemies, a film about John Dillinger, the Depressionera bank robber, has been soured by resentment at Cotillard for once questioning if terrorists had really attacked New York’s World trade Centre on September 11, 2001.
Cotillard has tried hard to conquer American hearts since her gaffe and reviews of the film, directed by Michael Mann, have generally relished her role as Billie Frechette, who also drives a getaway car. Depp, who plays Dillinger, certainly appreciated her performance: “Marion is a great actress and lots of fun,” he said.
A dissenting view was taken by the Time magazine, however, which called her performance in the film “tepid”. Another critic said the relationship between Depp and Cotillard, who won an Oscar for her role as Edith Piaf, the tormented singer, in La Vie en Rose, had as much tension as “a slack banjo string”.
In response to Cotillard’s publicity for the film the New York Post said that she was “singing a different tune” from when she had suggested, long before winning her Oscar, that the 9/11 attacks in New York were the work of the government. Cotillard says her remarks were taken out of context. A French interviewer recently noted that she had never expressed regret for her comments and she replied: “I am simply someone who asks herself a lot of questions. And in the world in which we live, I find that quite healthy.”
For the French, however, there is no doubt that Cotillard had triumphed in America. “Hollywood is at your feet,” one radio interviewer proclaimed during an interview on Friday.
Some French actors tend to look down their noses at Hollywood but Cotillard, perhaps to make up for her 9/11 gaffe, seems to be engaged in an all-out campaign to woo the US. It appears to have paid off. She will soon appear in Inception, a science fiction thriller, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. SUNDAY TIMES

London: The wife of the new head of Britain’s spy agency posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on internet networking site Facebook, prompting astonishment among security experts and calls for an enquiry.
Sir John Sawers was appointed last month to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service in November. The agency, popularly called M16, has emerged from the shadows in recent years but its employees are still bound by strict secrecy rules.
In what the Mail on Sunday called an “extraordinary lapse”, the new spy chief’s wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and details of where they live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are. The details could be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world, but were swiftly removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper’s enquiries.
Foreign secretary David Miliband made light of the incident. He denied there had been any security breach and gave the incoming spy chief his full support. “It’s not a state secret that he wears speedo swimming trunks. For goodness’ sake, let’s grow up!” Miliband told the BBC.
Security experts, however, were aghast. “It is a most distressing and unfortunate security lapse that will take a great deal of money to put right,” said Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies.
The incident was the latest in a string of security blunders, lapses and leaks by government officials that have embarrassed the government of embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The timing, less than two weeks after Brown launched Britain’s first national cyber security strategy, was particularly inopportune. REUTERS

John Sawers’s wife posted photos of her husband and family on Facebook, prompting an outcry

Denver: Casket makers catering to natural burials have offered biodegradable coffins made of such materials as recycled newspapers or cardboard. Ecoffins USA, based in Montrose, Colorado, is selling caskets made of banana sheaves.
They take six months to two years to biodegrade. Marketing director Joanna Passarelli says the company sold $40,000 worth of banana-sheaf or bamboo coffins to funeral homes last year. At least 14 funeral homes around the US offer them.
“We either get an, ‘Oh, my,’ or, ‘That’s very interesting’,” Passarelli said. “Some people think it’s a great idea. We’ve had funeral directors look at them and say, ‘I guess you can go to hell in a handbasket now’.” In natural burials, bodies aren’t embalmed and eventually decompose into the earth.
Sax-Tiedemann Funeral Home and Crematorium in Franklin, Illinois, has sold one banana Ecoffin since it started offering Ecoffins in the last few months.
Stephen Dawson, owner and president of Sax-Tiedemann, said it’s not that far removed from the woven baskets funeral homes used in the 1950s and ’60s to pick up bodies from hospitals. Passarelli contends the bamboo and banana coffins, made in Asia, are better for the environment than the cremation process. AP

DUST TO DUST: Coffins on display at NecroExpo in Poland. A US casket maker is offering biodegradable banana coffins

Washington: Always end up making one faux pas or another, even after trying your best not to make any social gaffe? Well, researchers have now found why it happens.
Harvard University scientists have claimed that the very act of trying to avoid saying or doing something can sometimes cause it to happen.
“When these things do happen we sort of smile and look the other way. The curious thing is it’s the desire not to do those things that seems to increase the likelihood of doing them,” said Daniel Wegner, a psychologist at the university
Wegner has collected evidence that suggests many of the embarrassing moments are the result of miscommunications between conscious and unconscious mental processes.
He advised: “You can avoid being in performance situations when you’re under mental load or stress. In addition, you could practice, practice, practice.” ANI