Stocks gain on reassurance from a top Fed official

NEW YORK (AP) ? Reassuring comments from a Federal Reserve official and better earnings from two big retailers helped push the stock market higher Tuesday.

Stock indexes wobbled between gains and losses in early trading, then took a turn higher just before noon. That's when news crossed that James Bullard, head of the Fed's St. Louis branch, told an audience in Germany that the Fed ought to stick with its bond-buying effort to bolster the economic recovery.

"Those words were a salve for investors' nerves," said Lawrence Creatura, a fund manager at Federated Investors. Other Fed officials have recently talked about scaling back the program. "There's a lot of uncertainty surrounding this issue. And uncertainty and investors aren't always a happy match."

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 52.30 points to 15,387.58, a gain of 0.3 percent.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up 2.87 points to 1,669.16, a slight increase of 0.2 percent. Both the Dow and the S&P are at record highs.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. gained 1.4 percent. Shareholders of the country's biggest bank voted to allow Jamie Dimon to keep his two titles, CEO and chairman of the board. Groups had pushed to split the two jobs, a drive that gained momentum from a multi-billion trading loss last year. The bank's stock rose 73 cents to $53.02.

Many investors were already looking ahead to Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its most recent policy meeting, and Chairman Ben Bernanke will go before Congress to discuss his outlook for the U.S. economy.

"I think a lot of people are sitting on their hands waiting to see what the Fed says tomorrow," said Michael Binger, senior portfolio manager at Gradient Investments in Minneapolis, Minn.

Money managers keep close tabs on speeches from Fed officials and minutes from Fed meetings for any sign the Fed is planning to make a move. Binger said their words take on added weight because some investors believe the Fed's support is a crucial reason the stock market has soared to an all-time high. If the Fed pulls back, they think the market's epic rally could come to an end.

But Binger doesn't share that view. He believes a rise in business spending and stronger sales to emerging markets may help drive earnings higher, which would push stocks up, too.

In other trading, the Nasdaq composite rose 5.69 points to 3,502.12, a 0.2 percent gain.

The Dow has gained for 19 straight Tuesdays. The only day with a longer streak of consecutive gains is Wednesday, with 24 back in 1968, according to Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Home Depot surged 2.5 percent. It reported an 18 percent increase in quarterly income as the housing market continues to recover. Home Depot rose $1.95 to $78.71.

Among other companies posting quarterly results, AutoZone jumped 5 percent. Better sales and shrinking costs helped the auto-parts company beat analysts' earnings forecasts. AutoZone leapt $18.79 to $427.84.

It has been another solid earnings season for big companies, with corporate profits hitting all-time highs even as revenue barely rises.

Seven of 10 companies in the S&P 500 have trumped Wall Street's earnings forecasts, according to S&P Capital IQ. First-quarter earnings are on track to rise 5 percent over the same period last year. Revenue is expected to rise just 1 percent.

In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped to 1.93 percent from 1.96 percent late Monday.

In commodities trading, crude oil sank 55 cents to settle at $96.16 a barrel.

The price of gold fell $6.50 to $1,377.60 an ounce, extending a slump that has knocked gold down 18 percent this year. Tame inflation, a stronger dollar and a surging stock market have undermined gold's appeal.

Among other companies in the news:

? Carnival Corp slumped 4 percent. The cruise-ship operator cut its earnings forecast for the year late Monday as it wrestles with the fallout from high-profile incidents, which left passengers stranded at sea. Carnival's stock lost $1.51 to $33.81.

? Best Buy dropped 4 percent after reporting a quarterly loss and sales that fell short of the forecasts of financial analysts who follow the company. Its stock lost $1.17 to $25.64.

? TiVo gained 2 percent, or 26 cents, to $12.92. The digital video recording company narrowed its quarterly loss with the help of more subscribers.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-21-US-Wall-Street/id-3421bfe340964e4785c2663f8c8efed0

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Flickr's Massive Redesign: Full-Res Photos, a Terabyte of Free Storage

Sure, Yahoo just about killed Flickr, but today it's trying to restore its former glory. Just after the company this morning announced its $1.1 billion dollar acquisition of Tumblr, it showed off a completely redesigned version of Flickr with giant photos and more storage than you probably even need.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/-Wn4_foU1tM/yahoo-completely-redesigned-flickr-508948823

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Martiza Lam: Hope for the Future

People are often surprised to learn that though I am ethnically Chinese, I was born and raised in Peru. My parents immigrated to Peru from China in the 1980s and married there. We lived in Peru until I was in the sixth grade. When I was 10-years-old, my mother, my youngest sister, and I decided to come to New York City for a short trip. My parents saw immediately that the best life possible for the three of their daughters was in New York. Even though we had our own business back in Peru, they decided to move us all to the United States the next year. For better or worse, we left Peru and never looked back. At that point, all I spoke was Spanish and Chinese, but New York became my new home.

I must confess that at the beginning, I was terrified of starting a whole new life. It meant making new friends and navigating a completely new environment. I didn't feel ready for any of it. On top of that, I was the eldest of three sisters, and the responsibility fell to me to help out at home. I started working at the age of 15 in a store, and I haven't stopped working since. But as the months passed, I started to get used to my new life. I made friends, I was in high school, and I began making plans for the future. It was a long struggle, but this new life began to feel as though it was mine.

During my sophomore year in high school, I realized that I was "undocumented." I was used to supporting myself and my family, but suddenly there seemed so many things I could not do. Just hearing my friends talk about getting their driver's licenses made me sad and angry. Soon after, it was time to apply for college. I had been on the honor roll in high school and intermediate school, and I was used to hard work. Then it hit me that I couldn't apply for financial aid because I didn't have a social security number. The only thing for me to do was to enroll in community college and keep working to pay the bills. Of course, I was already working to support my family. My parents and younger sisters needed the money I was earning, too. I had to choose between using that money for school or for my family, and after almost two years of college, I decided my family needed it more. I had to leave school, and I started working in restaurants.

In low-wage industry jobs, it often feels like your boss has all the power over you as a worker. This is even more extreme when you're undocumented. I kept my head up by giving back to the community and becoming involved in the immigration reform youth movement. Even though I have a full-time job, I volunteer for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and I joined the undocumented youth group RAISE (Revolutionizing Asian American Immigrant Stories on the East Coast). Through RAISE, I had the chance to be part of the first Asian American contingent to attend the national United We Dream gathering in Kansas City last year. Hearing people in the same situation as me share their stories was incredible and made me want to do more.

While I haven't been able to finish college, I don't regret my choices in supporting my sisters with their dreams. One of my younger sisters is now pursuing her associate degree. My youngest sister is earning straight As in high school, and she hopes to be in the medical profession. I was so proud the day I signed the checks for both of their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications, and even more happy the days they were both granted DACA status.

My DACA status is still pending, as are my dreams of furthering my education. I've had to make some difficult choices. But I share my story in hopes that in the future, myself and others in my position will not feel trapped by our circumstances, and the future will offer us many more possibilities to choose from.

This blog post is part of a series by Raise Our Story, a project for sharing the uniquely beautiful stories of undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. The series has been collected by RAISE, the first pan-Asian group of undocumented young adults on the East Coast, to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. On May 20, RAISE will be presenting #UndocuAsians, a new film and theater performance by undocumented Asian American youth.

?

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martiza-lam/hope-for-the-future_b_3299970.html

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A Tour Through the US Army's Largest Simulated Battlefield

How does the Army train soldiers for guerrilla combat in cities and villages they've never visited? By building replicas of those villages, training a force of fake "insurgents," and hiring actors to populate the scenes. Welcome to Fort Irwin, a 1,000-square mile Army Base where many soldiers train before deploying overseas.

As part of their ongoing a pop-up interview caravan Venue, our brand-new Editor in Chief Geoff Manaugh and his partner, Nicola Twilley, paid a visit to Fort Irwin earlier this year. There, they encountered all manner of surprises, from a bizarre Disney-esque recreation of an Afghan village called Ertebat Shar where actors sell street food and insurgents lurk, to a carefully choreographed truck bomb scene replete with fake blood.

Who plays the part of Ertebat Shar's "insurgent army?" That's Blackhorse Regiment, a team of 120 soldiers whose job is to provide opposition to trainees. "According to Ferrell," Manaugh writes, "their current role as Afghan rebels is widely envied: they receive specialized training (for example, in building IEDs) and are held to 'reduced grooming standards,' while their mission is simply to 'stay alive and wreak havoc.' If they die during a NTC simulation, they have to shave and go back on detail on the base, Ferrell added, so the incentive to evade their American opponents is strong."

The full read is well worth it, but a particular note of interest is how Fort Irwin, in order to reflect the nature of contemporary warfare, differs dramatically from traditional training battlegrounds. Manaugh explains:

The point of these architectural reproductions is no longer, as in the World War II test villages of Dugway, to find better or more efficient methods of architectural destruction; instead, these ersatz buildings and villages are used to equip troops to better navigate the complexity of urban structures?both physical, and, perhaps most importantly, socio-cultural.

As the battle has changed, so has the battlefield. [BLDGBLOG]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-tour-through-the-us-armys-largest-simulated-battlefi-508297667

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The five ways Google is ?assaulting? Apple

Google Vs Apple

Google CEO Larry Page spoke about peace in the industry during the Google I/O 2013 keynote, but that doesn?t mean Google has plans to slow its various attacks on rivals? turf. Forbes contributor?Peter Cohan laid out the five areas where Google is launching its ?assault? on chief competitor?Apple, and he discussed exactly how Google is hurting the world?s most valuable company in each area. Among Cohan?s five fronts are smartphones, where Google?s Android platform has overtaken the iPhone as the most popular handset operating system in the world; tablets, where strength in numbers will soon help Google top Apple?s market share once again; and innovation, the ?most important front where Google is trouncing Apple.? Because the company is assaulting Apple on these five fronts and seemingly winning, Cohan says it looks like ?Google is winning the war for the future.? Of course, whether or not this win will help Google top Apple?s record profits remains to be seen.

[More from BGR: Good news for Google Fiber: Broadcast TV audiences are cratering faster than ever]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/five-ways-google-assaulting-apple-183503843.html

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest in Jerusalem, vow to defy draft

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem on Thursday against plans to enlist men from their community into the military, a proposal supported by the secular majority pushing for a more equal share of the burden on Israeli society.

A sea of black coats - the traditional attire of ultra-Orthodox men - engulfed Jerusalem streets near the city's military draft bureau where the crowd heard rabbis warn that army service would irreparably harm their way of life.

"The government wants to uproot (our traditions) and secularize us, they call it a melting pot, but people cannot be melted. You cannot change our (way of life)," Rabbi David Zycherman told the crowd in an anguished plea.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government has committed to increase drafting ultra-Orthodox men, most of whom receive exemptions on religious grounds, in order to share the national burden and reduce pressure on the middle classes.

The party of Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Netanyahu's main coalition partner, received wide support at the polls in January on a pledge to resist demands by religious parties and to spread the load of army service and taxation more evenly.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said at least 20,000 protesters took part and about a dozen arrests were made when violence erupted and men hurled bottles and stones at officers, some on horseback, who used stun grenades to quell the unrest.

A water cannon was also deployed as protesters set alight garbage bins, a regular occurrence at ultra-Orthdox demonstrations. At least six officers required medical treatment and two were taken to hospital, Rosenfeld added.

An Israel Radio commentator said the participants came from the most hardline elements of the ultra-Orthodox community who shun any compromise with the authorities on army service and even refuse to recognize the Jewish state for religious reasons.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up some 10 percent of Israel's population of 8 million. Most do not work, they receive military service exemptions and rely heavily on state subsidies for their religious studies and to support their families.

About 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men engage in full-time Jewish religious studies, keeping them out of the labor market.

On Tuesday, the cabinet approved a budget draft that will slash spending and hike taxes this year and next to rein in a growing budget deficit. Lapid has warned that failure to implement public spending cuts could cause an economic collapse.

Israel's budget deficit was 4.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) last year - more than double its initial target -due to overspending by the previous government and lower-than-expected tax revenues as the economy slowed.

The issue of drafting ultra-Orthodox men into the military is part of a broader struggle between the secular majority and ultra-Orthodox minority over lifestyle in the Jewish state.

Most Israeli men and women are called up for military service for up to three years when they turn 18. However, exceptions are made for most Arab citizens of Israel, as well as ultra-Orthodox men and women.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ultra-orthodox-jews-protest-jerusalem-vow-defy-draft-212140959.html

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Google Introduces Portable Native Client, Makes It Easier For Developers To Add C And C++ Code To Their Web Apps

Native Client - a technology that allows developers to run native compiled C and C++ code as part of their web apps - has long been a part of Google Chrome. Even though other browser vendors haven't adopted it yet, Google is clearly putting quite a few resources behind this technology and at I/O this year, it announced Portable Native Client (or PNaCl, which Google says we should pronounce as "pinnacle"). PNaCl is now available in developer preview in Chrome 29 and will slowly find its way into the stable version over the coming months.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/td-bM-Mzta4/

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It?s Scandal Season!

U.S. President Barack Obama, May 16, 2013

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Washington?s need for periodic scandal is almost biological. For legislators, it?s an opportunity to strut on the national stage. For the party out of power, it is politics by other means. For the press, it?s an escape from the boredom and frustration of a second term. Scandal means a break in the routine, a thrilling emergency. At some level, the whole political class loves it.

Which is not to say that scandal is never real. Watergate was real. The Whitewater affair was not real but managed to be quite damaging to the Clinton administration anyway. Iran-Contra was real, but not damaging enough to turn Republicans out of office in 1988. Plamegate, which began with the question of who leaked the name of a clandestine CIA agent to a reporter, wasn?t real or damaging, though it did result in Dick Cheney and George W. Bush not speaking anymore.

What a scandal needs to count as real is an underlying crime. What it needs to be damaging is a strong story line. The Benghazi business falls short on both counts. This investigation posits that the top administration officials conspired to hide the truth about the September attack on an American consulate that resulted in the death of four diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. Republican accusations about Benghazi derailed the nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

The charge against Rice was essentially that she delivered distorted political spin by calling the attacks spontaneous riots rather than a planned act of terrorism?the theory being that before the 2012 election, the Obama administration didn?t want to tarnish its success against al-Qaida. It emerged yesterday that Rice?s much-parsed Sunday television talking points were prepared not by the State Department but by the more politically independent CIA. But in an inquisitorial frenzy, dead ends are synonymous with new avenues. Republican investigators can now return to Gregory Hicks, the diplomat serving in Tripoli, Libya, who claims he was punished for speaking frankly to Republican investigators.

This claim, too, is extremely weak. In less tendentious perspective, Benghazi was a tragedy, a chain of errors that left a diplomatic outpost vulnerable. Even clearer is the political motivation behind that investigation, which is to embarrass Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination. When Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina fulminates that Benghazi is ?every bit as damaging as Watergate,? the most accurate translation is, ?I am facing a Republican primary challenge.? Last week, Graham survived that challenge and may now begin to calm down.

The fresher IRS scandal, in which agents are alleged to have targeted the Tea Party and other conservative organizations for examinations looks similarly unreal but has much more potential to be damaging. This is because it has a readily comprehensible narrative: that the Obama administration used the tax enforcement agency to harm its political enemies. This surely did not happen, but it is something, unlike Benghazi, that people can understand. Richard Nixon used tax audits as a tool of political persecution during Watergate. It?s the kind of abuse that Obama?s paranoiac enemies believe him to be capable of.

What actually seems to have happened is this: In 2010, a spate of conservative groups was applying for tax-exempt status. This designation is available to organizations whose main activity is not political, so most of the groups were running a kind of scam by asking for it. Low-level employees in a Cincinnati field office thought they could create a shortcut by watching out for red-flag political terms like ?patriots? and ?9/12? on the applications. The IRS inspector general has persuasively concluded that this was an instance of bureaucratic overzealousness meeting a vague standard, not politically motivated, and not criminal.

But this kind of scandal can succeed even where it fails the reality test, thanks to bipartisan cowardice. No politician wants to defend the IRS. So President Obama has done his best to appear furious about what happened, the Justice Department has announced a criminal investigation, and the Treasury has forced the IRS acting commissioner, who may or may not have done anything wrong, to resign. Feeding the wolves in this way is a bad idea; they know where their next meal is to be had. As the fever takes hold, any additional controversy?such as the Justice Department?s subpoena of Associated Press phone records in pursuit of a leak?is accorded scandal status. The administration is officially ?beset? and ?besieged.?

The final requirement of a successful scandal is that it be less boring than what people would be talking about otherwise. Here, Benghazi and the IRS are up against implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Round 17 of the budget battles, and a stalemate over immigration reform. Washington is desperate for diversion. But it?s going to have to try harder?these scandals aren?t any fun.

A slightly different version of this piece appears in the Financial Times.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=c3f141c954048172d45008b1fee2634f

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Human disease leptospirosis identified in new species, the banded mongoose, in Africa

Human disease leptospirosis identified in new species, the banded mongoose, in Africa

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose.

Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it.

Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death.

"The problem in Botswana and much of Africa is that leptospirosis may remain unidentified in animal populations but contribute to human disease, possibly misdiagnosed as other diseases such as malaria," said disease ecologist Kathleen Alexander of Virginia Tech.

With a grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program, Alexander and colleagues found that the banded mongoose in Botswana is infected with Leptospira interrogans, the pathogen that causes leptospirosis.

Coupled Natural and Human Systems is part of NSF's Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability investment and is supported by NSF's Directorates for Biological Sciences; Geosciences; and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

"The transmission of infectious diseases from wildlife to humans represents a serious and growing public health risk due to increasing contact between humans and animals," said Alan Tessier, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "This study identified an important new avenue for the spread of leptospirosis."

The results are published today in a paper in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health. The paper was co-authored by Alexander, Sarah Jobbins and Claire Sanderson of Virginia Tech.

The banded mongoose, although wild, lives in close proximity to humans, sharing scarce water resources and scavenging in human waste.

The disease-causing pathogen it carries can pass to humans through soil or water contaminated with infected urine.

Mongoose and other species are consumed as bushmeat, which may also contribute to leptospirosis exposure and infection in humans.

"I was convinced that we were going to find Leptospira interrogans in some species in the ecosystem," said Alexander.

"The pathogen had not been reported previously in Botswana, with the exception of one cow more than a quarter of a century ago.

"We looked at public health records dating back to 1974 and there were no records of any human cases of leptospirosis. Doctors said they were not expecting to see the disease in patients. They were not aware that the pathogen occurred in the country."

Alexander conducted a long-term study of human, wildlife and environmental health in the Chobe District of Northern Botswana, an area that includes the Chobe National Park, forest reserves and surrounding villages.

"This pathogen can infect many animals, both wild and domestic, including dogs," said Jobbins. "Banded mongoose is likely not the only species infected."

The researchers worked to understand how people, animals and the environment are connected, including the potential for diseases to move between humans and wildlife.

"Diseases such as leptospirosis that have been around for a very long time are often overlooked amid the hunt for the next newly emerging disease," Alexander said.

Leptospirosis was first described in 1886, said Jobbins, "but we still know little about its occurrence in Africa."

With the new identification of leptospirosis in Botswana, Alexander is concerned about the public health threat it may pose to the immunocompromised population there. Some 25 percent of 15- to 49-year-olds are HIV positive.

"In much of Africa, people die without a cause being determined," she said.

"Leptospirosis is likely affecting human populations in this region. But without knowledge that the organism is present in the environment, overburdened public health officials are unlikely to identify clinical cases in humans, particularly if the supporting diagnostics are not easily accessible."

The researchers looked for Leptospira interrogans in archived kidneys collected from banded mongoose that had been found dead from a variety of causes. Of the sampled mongoose, 43 percent tested positive for the pathogen.

"Given this high prevalence in the mongoose, we believe that Botswana possesses an as-yet-unidentified burden of human leptospirosis," said Jobbins.

"There is an urgent need to look for this disease in people who have clinical signs consistent with infection."

Because banded mongoose have an extended range across sub-Saharan Africa, the results have important implications for public health beyond Botswana.

"Investigating exposure in other wildlife, and assessing what species act as carriers, is essential for improving our understanding of human, wildlife, and domestic animal risk of leptospirosis in this ecosystem," the scientists write in their paper.

The paper also cites predictions that the region will become more arid, concentrating humans and animals around limited water supplies and increasing the potential for disease transmission.

"Infectious diseases, particularly those that can be transmitted from animals, often occur where people are more vulnerable to environmental change and have less access to public health services," said Alexander.

"That's particularly true in Africa. While we're concerned about emerging diseases that might threaten public health--the next new pandemic--we need to be careful that we don't drop the ball and stop pursuing important diseases like leptospirosis."

Alexander is working to identify immediate research and management actions--in particular, alerting frontline medical practitioners and public health officials to the potential for leptospirosis in humans.

###

National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov

Thanks to National Science Foundation for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128271/Human_disease_leptospirosis_identified_in_new_species__the_banded_mongoose__in_Africa

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Catching graphene butterflies: Dramatically changing electronic properties of world's thinnest material

May 15, 2013 ? Writing in Nature, a large international team led Dr Roman Gorbachev from The University of Manchester shows that, when graphene placed on top of insulating boron nitride, or 'white graphene', the electronic properties of graphene change dramatically revealing a pattern resembling a butterfly.

The pattern is referred to as the elusive Hofstadter butterfly that has been known in theory for many decades but never before observed in experiments.

Combining graphene with other materials in multiple-layered structures could lead to novel applications not yet explored by science or industry.

Graphene is the world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, and promises a vast range of diverse applications; from smartphones and ultrafast broadband to drug delivery and computer chips. It was first demonstrated at The University of Manchester in 2004.

Initial trials of consumer products involving graphene-based touch screens and batteries for mobile phones and composite materials for sports goods are being carried out by major multinational companies.

One of the most remarkable properties of graphene is its high conductivity -- thousands of times higher than copper. This is due to a very special pattern created by electrons that carry electricity in graphene. The carriers are called Dirac fermions and mimic massless relativistic particles called neutrinos, studies of which usually require huge facilities such as at CERN. The possibility to address similar physics in a desk-top experiment is one of the most renowned features of graphene.

Now the Manchester scientists have found a way to create multiple clones of Dirac fermions. Graphene is placed on top of boron nitride so that graphene's electrons can 'feel' individual boron and nitrogen atoms. Moving along this atomic 'washboard', electrons rearrange themselves once again producing multiple copies of the original Dirac fermions.

The researchers can create even more clones by applying a magnetic field. The clones produce an intricate pattern; the Hofstadter butterfly. It was first predicted by mathematician Douglas Hofstadter in 1976 and, despite many dedicated experimental efforts, no more than a blurred glimpse was reported before.

In addition to the described fundamental interest, the Manchester study proves that it is possible to modify properties of atomically-thin materials by placing them on top of each other. This can be useful, for example, for graphene applications such as ultra-fast photodetectors and transistors, providing a way to tweak its incredible properties.

Professor Andre Geim, Nobel Laureate and co-author of the paper, said: "Of course, it is nice to catch the beautiful 'butterfly' which elusiveness tormented physicists for generations.

"More importantly, this work shows that we are now able to build up a principally new kind of materials by stacking individual atomic planes in a desired sequence."

Dr Gorbachev added: "We prepared a set of different atomically-thin materials similar to graphene then stacked them on top of each other, one atomic plane at a time. Such artificial crystals would have been science fiction a few years ago. Now they are reality in our lab. One day you might find these structures in your gadgets."

Professor Geim added: "This is an important step beyond 'simple graphene'. We now build foundations for a new research area that seems richer and even more important than graphene itself."

The Manchester paper is collaboration that involved researchers from the University of Lancaster in the UK, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid in Spain and National High-Field Laboratory in Grenoble, France.

It will appear in Nature back to back with another paper reporting similar butterflies in two layers of graphene, which comes from a group of Dr Philip Kim, Columbia University.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/6YX-JYVGefc/130515131547.htm

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A look at how Russia, US still spy on each other

The Cold War is long over, but espionage is forever. Russian spies still operate in the U.S. and American ones in Russia. On Tuesday, Russia's security services said they had caught a U.S. diplomat who they claim is a CIA official trying to recruit a Russian agent.

Here are some other cases of apparent spying between the old rivals:

THE ANNA CHAPMAN RING

These Russian spies lived in suburban U.S. homes and worked at jobs like real estate brokers or travel agents, quietly inserting themselves into American life and trying to penetrate U.S. policy circles. Court papers said Chapman and nine others assumed the identities of people who had died, swapped bags in passing at train stations and communicated with invisible ink and coded radio transmissions. After their 2010 arrests, all 10 pleaded guilty to spying charges. An 11th man was arrested in Cyprus but jumped bail.

Dubbed a femme fatale, the red-headed Chapman, 28 at the time, became the most notorious member of the ring, partially because of glamorous photos she posted on social networking sites of her international travels. She has stayed in the limelight since her deportation to Russia, hosting a reality TV show, modeling lingerie and becoming the face of a Moscow bank.

SERGEI TRETYAKOV

Tretyakov once called the United Nations a nest of spies. And he would know. For five years in the 1990s, Tretyakov worked at Russia's diplomatic mission at the U.N. ? recruiting and running spies. He also found Canada to be fertile ground for finding people willing to rat on the U.S.

Tretyakov claimed his agents helped Russia siphon nearly $500 million from the U.N. oil-for-food sanctions program for Iraq. Then in 2000, he defected to the U.S. It's thought that Tretyakov handed significant information over to Washington, although he never specifically confirmed that he became a double agent. He died in Florida in 2010 at age 53 of a heart attack.

STANISLAV BORISOVICH GUSEV

Gusev, a Russian diplomat, planted a bug inside the State Department in Washington, D.C., and then hung around on a bench outside the building or in his car to listen, according to U.S. authorities. Agents became suspicious when they spotted him feeding a parking meter outside State Department headquarters without ever going inside. He was arrested in 1999 and expelled from the U.S.

ALDRICH AMES

As a CIA officer in Turkey, Ames worked to turn Russians against their government. But in 1985, he switched sides himself, offering his services to the Soviets. He continued working for the Russians after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. He communicated with his handlers by leaving chalk marks on a Washington, D.C., mailbox. He eventually passed along to Moscow dozens of names of Russians who were spying for the U.S. The Soviet Union executed 10 of them. The FBI arrested Ames in 1994 and he pleaded guilty to spying that same year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/look-russia-us-still-spy-130329753.html

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The Android Hangouts Video Chat App Doesn't Work on AT&T Cellular

If you try and use Google's new Hangouts app for Android on AT&T's cellular network, don't expect to video chat?because you can't.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/kSkoCQkaOFs/the-android-hangouts-video-chat-app-doesnt-work-on-at-507282032

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US ambassador summoned by Russian foreign ministry

MOSCOW (AP) ? The U.S. Ambassador to Russia was summoned by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday over Moscow's claim it caught a U.S. diplomat disguised in a blond wig trying to recruit a counterintelligence officer for the CIA.

Michael McFaul entered the ministry's building in central Moscow in the morning and left half an hour later without saying a word to journalists waiting outside the compound.

Russian security officials reported on Tuesday that they briefly detained Ryan Fogle, a third secretary at the U.S. Embassy, who was carrying special technical equipment, disguises, written instructions and a large sum of money. Fogle was later handed over to U.S. Embassy officials.

McFaul has had a tough run in Moscow since he took office in January 2012. He provoked the ire of Russian officials when one of his first acts was to invite a group of opposition activists and rights advocates to the embassy. Later, McFaul alleged that Russia had offered money to the leader of Kyrgyzstan for removing a U.S. base from its soil.

Fogle's detention appeared to be the first case of an American diplomat publicly accused of spying in about a decade.

The State Department would only confirm that Fogle worked as an embassy employee, but wouldn't give any details about his employment record or responsibilities in Russia. The CIA declined comment.

The Russian foreign ministry promptly declared Fogle persona non grata and ordered him to leave Russia immediately. He has diplomatic immunity, which protects him from arrest.

Despite the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States still maintain active espionage operations against each other. Last year, several Russians were convicted in separate cases of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-ambassador-summoned-russian-foreign-ministry-070813457.html

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'Out of Time' Fossil Reveals Ancient Ocean Diversity

A fossil that once lined a mule track in Iraq has revealed the surprising survival of a group of ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that swam the seas more than 66 million years ago.

Researchers had previously believed that ichthyosaurs declined throughout the Jurassic Period, which lasted from 199 million to 145 million years ago, with the only survivors rapidly evolving to keep ahead of repeated extinction events. The new fossil, however, dates from the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 145 million to 66 million years ago. It looks remarkably like its Jurassic brethren, revealing a surprising evolutionary statis.

The fossil "represents an animal that seems 'out of time' for its age," study researcher Valentin Fischer of the University of Li?ge in Belgium said in a statement. [Ichthyosaur Images: Photos of a Sea Monster]

Ichthyosaur evolution

Ichythyosaurs were dolphin-shaped swimming reptiles that gave birth to live young. They lived in the oceans at the same time dinosaurs were tromping around on land. Previously, researchers thought only one group of ichthyosaurs, called ophthalmosaurids, made it out of the Jurassic into the Cretaceous. The newly named fossil, dubbed Malawania anachronus, is a Cretaceous survivor that does not belong to the ophthalmosaurids, however. That means a "ghost lineage" of ichthyosaurs survived alongside the ophthalmosaurids, changing very little over millions of years.

The fossil in question was first found in the 1950s by British petroleum geologists, who noticed the slab being used as a stepping stone on a mule track in Iraq. The geologists rescued the fossil and took it to the United Kingdom, where it stayed unstudied until the 1970s. Because researchers didn't know where in the rock record the fossil had come from, they struggled to determine its age. (Layers of earth build up over time, meaning, in a general sense, the oldest layers will be on the bottom and the more recent layers more toward the surface.)

Dating the fossil

Modern technology made dating the mysterious fossil possible. Jeff Liston of National Museums Scotland was able to sample the stone slab and found pollen, spores and other microfossils that helped pinpoint the place and time of fossilization. The result, reported Tuesday (May 14) in the journal Biology Letters: The fossil out of time came from the Early Cretaceous.

The resulting ichthyosaur family tree suggests these marine reptiles stayed diverse into the Cretaceous, only to go mysteriously extinct 95 million years ago.

"This 'living fossil' of its time demonstrates the existence of a lineage that we had never even imagined," Fischer said in a statement. "Maybe the existence of such Jurassic-style ichthyosaurs in the Cretaceous has been missed, because they always lived in the Middle East, a region that has previously yielded only a single, very fragmentary ichthyosaur fossil."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter?and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/time-fossil-reveals-ancient-ocean-diversity-194734803.html

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Nigeria president declares state of emergency

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) ? Admitting Islamic extremists now control some of his nation's villages and towns, Nigeria's president declared a state of emergency Tuesday across the country's troubled northeast, promising to send more troops to fight what he said is now an open rebellion.

President Goodluck Jonathan, speaking live on state radio and television networks, also warned that any building suspected to house Islamic extremists would be taken over in what he described as the "war" now facing Africa's most populous nation. However, it's unclear what the emergency powers will do to halt the violence, as a similar past effort failed to stop the bloodshed.

"It would appear that there is a systematic effort by insurgents and terrorists to destabilize the Nigerian state and test our collective resolve," Jonathan said.

Jonathan said the order will be in force in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. He said the states would receive more troops, though he will not remove state politicians from their posts. Under Nigerian law, the president has the power to remove politicians from their posts and install a caretaker government in emergency circumstances.

The president's speech offered the starkest vision of the ongoing violence, often downplayed by security forces and government officials due to political considerations. Jonathan described the attacks as a "rebellion," at one point describing how fighters had destroyed government buildings and "had taken women and children as hostages."

"Already, some northern parts of Borno state have been taken over by groups whose allegiance are to different flags than Nigeria's," Jonathan said.

The president later added: "These actions amount to a declaration of war and a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and threaten (its) territorial integrity. As a responsible government, we will not tolerate this."

Since 2010, more than 1,600 people have been killed in attacks by Islamic insurgents, according to an Associated Press count. Recently, Nigeria's military has said Islamic fighters now use anti-aircraft guns mounted on trucks to fight the nation's soldiers, likely outgunning the country's already overstretched security forces.

Meanwhile, violence pitting different ethnic groups against each other continues, with clashes that kill dozens at a time. In addition, dozens of police officers and agents of the country's domestic spy agency were recently slaughtered by a militia.

One of the main Islamic extremist groups fighting Nigeria's weak central government is Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.

The group has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and strict Islamic law adopted across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. It has produced several splinter groups, and analysts say its members have contact with two other al-Qaida-linked groups in Africa.

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people.

The group's leader died in police custody, in an apparent killing. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings. Recently, however, they've begun to use military-grade weapons, some of which they apparently seized from Nigerian military stockpiles.

It remains unclear how much effect Jonathan's announcement will have. In late December 2011, Jonathan declared a similar state of emergency over parts of four states, including Borno and Yobe. The extremist attacks continued despite that.

Nigeria's military and police also have been repeatedly accused by human rights activists and others of torturing and summarily killing suspects, as well as burning down civilian homes and killing civilians in retaliation for militant attacks.

The latest incident, in a fishing village in Borno state along the shores of Lake Chad, saw at least 187 people killed and there are allegations that soldiers are responsible. While the military has denied repeatedly that it attacks and kills civilians, the country's armed forces have a history of committing such assaults.

Separately on Tuesday, an official in the central Nigerian state of Kaduna said gunmen armed with assault rifles and suspected to be Hausa-Fulani cattle herders killed 11 people in a village there. And in Benue state, a government spokesman said an attack blamed on Hausa-Fulani cattle herders there killed at least 12 people.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-president-declares-state-emergency-182549903.html

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Trying to be happier works when listening to upbeat music

May 14, 2013 ? The song, "Get Happy," famously performed by Judy Garland, has encouraged people to improve their mood for decades. Recent research at the University of Missouri discovered that an individual can indeed successfully try to be happier, especially when cheery music aids the process. This research points to ways that people can actively improve their moods and corroborates earlier MU research.

"Our work provides support for what many people already do -- listen to music to improve their moods," said lead author Yuna Ferguson, who performed the study while she was an MU doctoral student in psychological science. "Although pursuing personal happiness may be thought of as a self-centered venture, research suggests that happiness relates to a higher probability of socially beneficial behavior, better physical health, higher income and greater relationship satisfaction."

In two studies by Ferguson, participants successfully improved their moods in the short term and boosted their overall happiness over a two week period. During the first study, participants improved their mood after being instructed to attempt to do so, but only if they listened to the upbeat music of Copland, as opposed to the more somber Stravinsky. Other participants, who simply listened to the music without attempting to change their mood, also didn't report a change in happiness. In the second study, participants reported higher levels of happiness after two weeks of lab sessions in which they listened to positive music while trying to feel happier, compared to control participants who only listened to music.

However, Ferguson noted that for people to put her research into practice, they must be wary of too much introspection into their mood or constantly asking, "Am I happy yet?"

"Rather than focusing on how much happiness they've gained and engaging in that kind of mental calculation, people could focus more on enjoying their experience of the journey towards happiness and not get hung up on the destination," said Ferguson.

Ferguson's work corroborated earlier findings by Ferguson's doctoral advisor and co-author of the current study, Kennon Sheldon, professor of psychological science in MU's College of Arts and Science.

"The Hedonic Adaptation Prevention model, developed in my earlier research, says that we can stay in the upper half of our 'set range' of potential happiness as long as we keep having positive experiences, and avoid wanting too much more than we have," said Sheldon. "Yuna's research suggests that we can intentionally seek to make mental changes leading to new positive experiences of life. The fact that we're aware we're doing this, has no detrimental effect."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/kW2jidl8gp4/130514185336.htm

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Flipboard adds more curation, social network options with iOS update

When Flipboard launched version 2.0 on iOS and Android not long ago, its self-created magazines seemed to strike a chord with users. The latest version of the app for iOS, 2.02, is capitalizing on that popularity with new features that let you check out your readership and see complete profile pages of fellow curators. You'll also be able to see their work and share your own more easily, thanks to a new Friends category and updated share menu, which adds the option to send stories and magazines by SMS. So, if you're looking to boost that fledgeling curated magazine empire, hit the source to grab it.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software

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Via: TNW

Source: Flipboard (iTunes)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/13/flipboard-ios-social-update/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Music Biz Week in Review 5/10/13 - KnowTheMusicBiz.com

May 13th, 2013 | Add a Comment

The landscape of the music industry has changed vastly over the past ten years. We are no longer in the times where being successful musician is tied to record deals and album sales. Today people turn to the Internet for their music needs. Although the Internet has diminished the album sales and profits the music industry was accustomed to, it is also creating new opportunities for up and coming musicians to gain exposure for free.

Top 10 Websites to Promote Music Online:

1. www.youtube.com : Youtube is a video sharing website on which users can upload, view and share videos. The website displays a wide variety of user generated video content and has had a profound impact on the music industry since its founding in 2005.
2. www.Facebook.com : ?Musicians can literally advertise themselves on Facebook by making their own band page and having fans join their page as ?Facebook fans.?? Having a Facebook page can put a musician in direct contact with over 200 Million Facebook users who browse the site.
3. www.Twitter.com : Twitter is an online social networking service / personal blog service. The website enables users to send and read text based messages of up to 140 characters known as ?tweets?. Created in 2006 Twitter is one of the most popular web services in the world, operating with over 500 million registered users as of 2012.
4. www.SoundCloud.com : SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform that allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings by users. The website provides access to 20+ million users and is growing by 1.5+ users per month.
5. www.SoundClick.com : SoundClick is a music based social community which offers bands, artists, and music labels a platform for self promotion. Songs can be streamed, downloaded in MP3 format, sold through the store, or licensed to others. SoundClick boasts over 4.5 million songs, 530,000 bands and artists and over 4.5 million registered members.
6. www.DatPiff.com : DatPiff is an online mixtape distribution platform. Datpiff has 19.7 downloads generated solely by ?major label? mixtapes providing a major platform for its ?upcoming artists? user generated content section of the website.
7. iTunes: Although iTunes is not the ideal place for up and coming musicians to start spreading their music ? it is one of the only media outlet that will pay you for your content. ?iTunes pays musicians for the songs they sell, as opposed to just spreading them across the Web. Musicians should always keep in mind that iTunes does take $.35 for every $.99 per song a musician sells.?
8. www.MySpace.com : ?MySpace is one of the biggest social networking sites for people who live for music, providing a remarkable opportunity for musicians to gain online exposure.? MySpace Music provides artists a way to interact with fans while promoting their music virally.
9. www.Last.fm : ?Last.fm is one of the world?s largest and most respected social music platforms for upcoming artists to get their brand seen by a giant online community of music lovers. Last.fm operates under a system of ?scrobbling,? where the name of the song a member listens to is sent to Last.fm and added to their music profile for others to see. Millions of songs are scrobbled every day, helping fans figure out which songs they listen to the most while helping artists spread their music at the same time.?
10. www.Mp3.com : Mp3.com is a web site that provides information about digital music, artists, songs, services, community and technologies. At its peak Mp3.com delivered over 4 million MP3 audio files per day to over 800,000 resisted users.

?

Each of these websites are great media outlets to grow a musicians fan base. Although most of these websites offer very similar services, it is best to be on as many of these as possible in order for unsigned acts to garner any type of ?buzz?.

Like 1770 Records on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to keep up with our latest news and blogs.

?

?

Written by 1770 Records

1770 Records is the College of Charleston?s student run record label, formed by the Getting Music to the Marketplace class in the Arts Management department. The department is committed to educating students in the music business and supporting independent music.

Filed under: Week In Review ? Tags: Week in Review

Source: http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/the-music-biz-week-in-review-51013/

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A Simple Video Streaming Solution for Web Developers ? Internet

In this clip, you'll learn how to upload and instantiate a Silverlight app on Silverlight Streaming. Whether you're new to Microsoft's popular web application framework or a seasoned web developer merely looking to improve your chops, you're sure to find benefit in this free MS Silverlight programming lesson. For more information, including a complete demonstration and detailed, step-by-step instructions, take a look.

Source: http://internet.wonderhowto.com/how-to/simple-video-streaming-solution-for-web-developers-0146849/

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IRS targeted groups that criticized the government, IG report says (Washington Post)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/305304720?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Cameron on U.S. trip to learn Boston lessons, discuss Syria

By Andrew Osborn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron will visit Boston on Monday to learn more about the bombings there after a meeting with President Barack Obama aimed at helping broker a Syrian peace deal and spurring talks on an EU-U.S. trade pact.

Making his first trip to the United States since Obama won a second term, Cameron will receive a detailed briefing from the FBI on the Boston bombings to see if Britain can learn lessons from how the United States responded. He is also expected to express his condolences to the victims of the attack.

Global diplomacy will feature prominently during his trip and the British leader is hoping the U.S. president will help him prepare the ground for next month's G8 summit in Northern Ireland and that the two - along with Russia - can help find a political settlement for Syria.

Cameron's three day visit will begin at the White House in Washington and finish in New York where he is expected to take part in U.N. talks on agreeing new global development goals.

His visit underlines the continued importance of the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, even as cuts to Britain's defense budget and talk of Britain leaving the European Union are causing anxiety among senior U.S. policymakers who fear their close ally is growing weaker.

Cameron phoned Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss Syria before the trip. A spokesman from Cameron's office said he had talked about "how the UK, Russia and America could work together to successfully achieve the plan of a peace conference by the end of the month".

Cameron was also keen to discuss with Obama how Britain and America could work together to establish a stronger and more credible opposition inside Syria, the spokesman added.

EU-U.S. TRADE DEAL

But it is the prospect of an EU-U.S. trade deal and the lucrative dividends that such an agreement could bring both countries that Cameron was keen to stress before the trip even as one of his own government ministers said he thought Britain should leave the EU.

In particular, he is hoping Obama will help him clinch an agreement to start talks on such a trade deal in the margins of the G8 summit, an achievement he believes would give the global economy a shot in the arm at a time when his own country and many others are seeing only a fragile economic recovery.

"Britain and America can once again lead the way in meeting the greatest challenge of our time: securing the growth and stability on which the prosperity of the whole world depends," Cameron wrote in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

He said an EU-U.S. trade deal would boost the British economy by 10 billion pounds a year and the U.S. economy by 63 billion pounds annually.

"When times are tough, some want to put the barriers up, to look inwards, and to protect themselves from the world. But Britain and America stand for a better way," he wrote in the same article.

Cameron is hoping Obama will also help him turn high-flown rhetoric on cracking down on global tax evasion into a meaningful international agreement at the G8 summit.

"We must fight the scourge of tax evasion by promoting a new global standard for automatic information exchange between tax authorities," Cameron said.

Using some of his strongest language on the subject yet, he added: "We must lift the veil of secrecy that too often lets corrupt corporations and officials in some countries run rings around the law."

A global standard for resource-extracting companies that obliged them to report all payments to governments across the world would be also be an important step forward, he said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cameron-u-trip-learn-boston-lessons-discuss-syria-230252898.html

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G7 says Japan playing by currency rules

AYLESBURY, England (AP) ? Finance leaders from the Group of Seven leading industrial economies say Japan's stimulus policies are directed at boosting its economy out of a two-decade period of stagnation, not an attempt to drive down its currency to make Japan's exports more competitive.

At the conclusion of a two-day meeting of leading financial representatives from the G-7 countries ? the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the U.K. ? host British Treasury chief George Osborne said there was a formal acknowledgement that each member needed to secure their own countries' growth by balancing austerity measures with growth-enhancing policies. The officials also agreed on the importance of finding measures to deal with failing banks and working collectively to stop companies and individuals from dodging their tax bills.

The global recovery from recession over the past few years has been patchy. While the U.S. economy, the world's largest, appears to be gaining traction, many European countries are in recession as they try to get a grip on their public finances through deep spending cuts and tax increases.

"The will is still there to reduce the deficits but there is certainly a change of tone," said Pierre Moscovici, France's finance minister at the conclusion of the two-day summit at a country house around 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of London.

Japan, the world's number 3 economy has been in focus in recent months. The new government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised aggressive steps to restart the country's postwar boom, which effectively ground to a halt in the early 1990s. As part of that effort, the Bank of Japan plans to double the amount of cash circulating in the Japanese economy and held as bank reserves.

One of the offshoots of the policies has been a dramatic fall in the value of the yen. On Thursday, the dollar rose above 100 yen for the first time in over four years. The yen has weakened by more than 20 percent against the dollar since October, when it was trading at around 78 yen.

As well as potentially boosting economic growth by making its exports more competitive, the flipside of a lower yen is that it can also stoke inflation by increasing the price of imports. For a country that's seen prices fall for much of the past 15 years, that's important.

The rapid slide in the value of the yen has sparked fears of a "currency war" ? where countries use their exchange rates as an economic weapon. If other countries respond to the falling yen by debasing their currencies, Japan will be back at square one and the world economy could suffer. Sharp fluctuations in the value of currencies can hurt business confidence and investment.

So far, the argument presented by Japanese officials that it has been targeting monetary stimulus and not its exchange rate has been accepted by Japan's G-7 partners.

Osborne, who hosted the two days of informal discussions, said the G-7 countries agreed to make sure that "policies are oriented towards domestic objectives."

In a rare development, the G-7 didn't actually issue a communique at the conclusion of its deliberations. However, Osborne said the previous communique "was a successful statement and one that has been held to" ? a clear reference to Japan.

In February, when markets were particularly roiled by developments in Japan, the G-7 said their respective fiscal and monetary policies were oriented toward meeting domestic requirements and that exchange rates were not a target of policy.

A senior U.S. Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a good discussion about what's going on in Japan and that Japanese officials went into some detail about how the new policy was helping to boost domestic demand.

The official reaffirmed the importance that Japan continues to meet previous commitments, a point made a day earlier by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew who said he was monitoring developments.

Analysts said it's difficult for the G-7 to make any concerns over Japan public because other countries, such as the U.S. and Britain, have been accused of debasing their respective currencies over the past few years through their monetary stimulus programs.

"It's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black," said Simon Derrick, senior currency strategist at BNY Mellon.

All participants at the meeting said boosting economic growth was a priority now that financial markets appear to have calmed down, especially with regard to the debt crisis that has gripped the 17-country Eurozone.

Bad banking practices around many parts of the world were behind the financial explosion in 2008, which sent the world economy skidding to its deepest recession since World War II. Britain's Osborne said it was important to swiftly complete work to make sure that no bank is too big to fail.

"We must put regimes in place ... to deal with failing banks and to protect taxpayers and to do so in a globally consistent manner," he said.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the bank was working out what it can do to make sure banks lend more. Though banks have managed to reduce their debt and bolster their capital reserves and have benefited from liquidity offers from the ECB, lending remains stuck at relatively low levels ? particularly to smaller and medium sized enterprises.

"There wasn't any call to do more really," Draghi said, a day after Britain's Osborne indicated there would be discussions on the role of the world's central banks in shoring up global growth.

Osborne also said it was important to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, and said some of the U.K.'s offshore dependencies are working to make sure they follow the spirit of new international standards.

"Today, we all agree on the importance of collective action to tackle tax avoidance and evasion," he said. "We are absolutely determined to make progress this year .... It is vital that both developed and developing countries collect the tax that is due to them."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/g7-says-japan-playing-currency-rules-154238945.html

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