Europe fights to save cap-and-trade as crisis hits (AP)

BRUSSELS ? Europe's main weapon in the battle against climate change is now fighting for its own survival.

In early January, investors in the continent's cap-and-trade system still had to pay some euro14 ($18.30) for the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide into the air. By last week, the price of one emission allowance had tumbled to a meager euro6.41 ? making it much cheaper to pollute and slashing the financial incentives for companies to invest in low-carbon technologies.

Analysts warn that the prospect of another recession in the debt-ridden continent, and the accompanying decline in emissions, could push prices below euro2 by the end of next month.

The troubles in the carbon market, a system being watched closely from California to China, is linked to the struggles of Europe' other ambitious project, the euro. And just as financial investors have looked to the European Central Bank to save the currency through massive intervention in the bond markets, analysts say the emissions market may need similar centralized help.

Last week, 19 companies, including oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Philips Electronics NV and supermarket chain Tesco PLC, sent a letter to the European Commission urging it to reduce the number of emission allowances in the system and figure out how to protect the market from future economic shocks. The commission and national governments jointly manage the cap-and-trade system.

"The lower price is really undermining the development of technologies that will be needed in the decades to come," said David Hone, Shell's climate change adviser.

Shell, which is mostly known for selling oil and gas, has been one of the pioneers of carbon capture and storage, projects in which CO2 emissions are stored underground so they don't get released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. But investing in new technologies like carbon capture and storage only becomes commercially viable at a carbon price of between euro25 and euro30, Hone said.

"Over the last few months, we have seen some of these projects disappear," he added.

In October, the U.K. government shut down the carbon capture project in Longannet in eastern Scotland in which Shell was one of the partners.

While the prospect of another recession is the main reason for the recent drop in carbon prices, experts say that ? just like with the euro ? serious flaws in the system are exacerbating the problems and could lead to its failure if they can't be fixed.

The economic crisis has lowered emissions and thus hit the price of carbon allowances. But the drop has been so dramatic because there were too many allowances in the system to begin with.

To get industry and skeptical governments on board, the Commission set a very high cap for emissions when it launched the carbon market in 2005.

Since then, most allowances have been given out for free to the 11,000 power stations and factories covered by the system based on their historical emissions. Companies that emit less carbon dioxide than they are allowed can sell their spare permits to firms that exceed their limit. As of next year, airlines will also be included in the system.

But the big test for Europe's carbon market ? and whether it can provide the financial incentives for cutting emissions ? will come in 2013, when governments start selling a growing number of allowances at auctions.

It is before then that the Commission has to intervene, say the companies that wrote last week's letters.

There are signs that their calls are being heard.

On Tuesday, the environment committee of the European Parliament voted to withdraw some 1.4 billion allowances, about 15 percent of the total, from the carbon market between 2013 and 2020. At the same time, the committee said, the annual cap should be cut by 2.25 percent per year, rather than the 1.74 percent currently planned.

While the committee vote is the first step in a long process of changing the system and few industry watchers expect the figures to survive negotiations among EU states trying to protect their national industries, it caused carbon prices to jump more than 18 percent.

"It opens up a much deeper discussion about what does the intervention look like and when is it going to happen," says Sanjeev Kumar, an expert on carbon trading at environmental watchdog E3G in Brussels.

"Without intervention," warned Kumar, "not only the ETS is over, but Europe's climate policy is over. It will put Europe back into the dark ages."

Apart from failing to encourage the necessary cuts in emissions and technological innovation, the collapse in the carbon price could also worsen Europe's debt crisis.

Between 2013 and 2020, when companies have to pay for more and more of their allowances, the cap-and-tade system could raise as much as euro190 billion for governments across the EU if prices recover.

"This is a pretty important revenue stream for most member states," says Rob Elsworth, of climate campaign group Sandbag in London. "And they are watching revenues just disappear."

Experts like Kumar and Elsworth are hopeful that states will garner the political will to save the carbon trading system, which has pioneered the market-based approach to saving the environment.

"If you take away this green-economy narrative," asked Elsworth, "what's really left of Europe?"

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111221/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_carbon_trading

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Motorola MotoActv

Marathon runners value their data, whether they call them "data" or not. They store maps, perhaps only mentally, but often also on websites like MapMyRun or with apps like RunKeeper. Calculations are used to compute pace. Training schedules factor in intensity, duration, and recovery periods. Running, and really any long-term commitment to physical activity, takes math and analysis.

What I like most about a little fitness gadget from Motorola called MotoActv ($249.99 for 8GB, direct) is its ability to output wonderful data. MotoActv is a touch-screen-based, GPS-enabled device and music player that correlates data beautifully. If you turn on music while working out, MotoActv can later plot your physical activity on a chart to show how your miles-per-minute ratio or strides per minute changed, by song, while running, jogging, walking, cycling, or using an elliptical machine. If you exercise outdoors and use the GPS feature, it syncs that same data to a map, which you can mouse over in a web application to see where you were geographically at different points in the graph.

Design and What's Included
Motorola's small black and red square gadget (1.75 by 1.75 by 0.25 inches?HWD) costs a small fortune?the 16GB version is $299.99. A same-capacity iPod nano?costs half that and includes an accelerometer and clock that can capture a lot of the same data, like distance and pace. When hooked into the Nike+ service and used in conjunction with compatible gym equipment, the iPod nano is very nearly the same product for much less. And it's slightly more compact and fashionable.

MotoActv's touch screen is much smaller than the plastic device itself, a little more than 1.5 inches wide by 1 inch tall.?The default screen on the bright display shows the date, time, steps taken (when working out), and number of calories you'll burn in a day, which is your baseline calorie use according to height, weight, age, and sex, plus burned calories according to exercise. Scrolling through the screens with left-right finger swipes brings up menus for settings, workouts, music, and notifications. Within each of those options, additional menus and choices appear. For example, the workouts page lets you see information about the most recent exercise activities you completed and start a new workout.

MotoActv comes with very comfortable and flexible headphones, a USB cord and outlet adapter, and not much else. Accessories sold separately that came with my kit to test the device included an arm band ($29.99) and clip ($19.99), which I can't imagine not having. If you're moving around, they are essential to using MotoActv. I also got a stiff plastic watch band ($29.99)?the official description being "sports wrist strap"?which seemed too uncomfortable to actually wear.

Set Up
Downloading the free app for my computers (both Mac and PC) was equally simple and quick. The final two pieces of the puzzle were establishing a Web account with the standard username and password requirements, and customizing my profile to account for my height, weight, age, and sex to get more accurate estimations of calories expended during physical activity.

MotoActv lets you select a few more options, though it's tough to tell what auto reminders and such you're agreeing to or dismissing based on the textual descriptions. Later, when actually working out with the device, these options become more clear, and of course you can change them after the fact.

Loading music onto the device took nothing more than connecting it to my computer with the USB cord. iTunes was recognized as my default music playing software, which made it easy to choose playlists when prompted. MotoActv is compatible with all music files types, such as MP3, AAC, and really anything that works in iTunes.?Computers recognize MotoActv as a mass storage device, which means you can also drag and drop files onto it.?The music player also includes access to FM radio.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/slBz2EHGcok/0,2817,2397538,00.asp

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Gary Oldman Calls 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' Role 'Colossal'

Taking on the role of John le Carré's master spy, George Smiley, involves navigating two enormous obstacles. First, the legendary Alec Guinness claimed the character for himself in the beloved BBC miniseries of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" from 1979. Second, outside the more descriptive world of the novels, Smiley is a mystery, a silent, poker-faced [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/12/16/gary-oldman-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy/

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Senate OKs $1T budget bill, payroll tax cut (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Senate passed legislation Saturday extending a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for just two months, handing President Barack Obama a partial victory while setting the stage for another fight in February.

It also brought a peaceful end to a year-long battle over spending by passing a $1 trillion-plus catchall budget bill that wraps together the day-to-day budgets for 10 Cabinet departments and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House passed the measure Friday, and the White House has signaled that Obama will sign it.

The renewal of the 2-percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax for 160 million workers and unemployment benefits averaging about $300 a week for the additional millions of people who have been out of work for six months or more is a modest step forward for Obama's year-end jobs agenda.

As a condition for GOP support of the payroll tax measure, Obama has to accept a provision that forces him to decide within 60 days whether to approve or reject a proposed a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that promises thousands of jobs.

Obama didn't reference the pipeline issue in a brief appearance at the White House after the vote. He welcomed the Senate's passage of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension and said it would be "inexcusable" for Congress not to extend them for the rest of 2012 when lawmakers return from their holiday break.

The budget bill, passed 67-32, heads to the White House for Obama's signature; the payroll tax measure won a 89-10 tally that send it back to the House ? where many Republicans only reluctantly support it ? for a vote early next week.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would not predict whether the House would accept the Senate payroll tax measure, saying GOP leaders would have to discuss it with the rank and file. But Democrats assume Senate Republicans would not have allowed the short-term measure to advance without a signal from Boehner that the House would go along.

Democratic and GOP leaders opted for the short-term extension of the payroll tax and jobless benefits measure after failing to agree on big enough spending cuts to pay for a full-year renewal. The measure also provides a 60-day reprieve from a scheduled 27 percent cut in the fees paid to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

The $33 billion cost of the measure would be covered by raising fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The fees, drawn from a Treasury Department housing finance market reform plan, would effectively raise the interest rate on home loans guaranteed by the mortgage giants and the Federal Housing Administration by one-tenth of a percentage point.

The idea is to open up the market to private companies currently priced out by the implicit subsidies of Fannie and Freddie.

The White House says the fee would increase the monthly cost of a typical $220,000 mortgage by almost $15 a month. Over 30 years, the fees would increase the total cost of such a mortgage by more than $5,000.

In contrast, a worker making a $100,000 salary would reap a tax cut of about $330 through the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. A worker with a typical $50,000 salary would get just a $165 tax cut.

Officials said that in private talks, the two sides had hoped to reach agreement on the full one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits that Obama had made the centerpiece of the jobs program he submitted to Congress last fall.

Those efforts failed when the two sides could not agree on enough offsetting cuts to blunt the measure's impact on the debt.

The failure tees up the issue again for early next year, but it won't get any easier to agree on spending cuts.

Neither House Speaker Boehner nor his aides participated in the negotiations, although McConnell said he was optimistic about the measure's chances for final approval. The payroll tax cut is unpopular in GOP ranks and another vote in two months could present a headache for GOP leaders.

On the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, the legislation requires the president to grant a permit unless he makes a determination that it is "not in the national interest." One senior administration official said the president would almost certainly refuse to grant a permit. The official was not authorized to speak publicly.

The White House on Friday backed away from Obama's earlier threat to veto any bill that linked the payroll tax cut extension with a Republican demand for a speedy decision on the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline. Obama said on Dec. 7 that "any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut I will reject. So everybody should be on notice."

The president recently announced he was postponing a decision on the much-studied pipeline until after the 2012 election. Environmentalists oppose the project, but several unions support it. The legislation puts the president in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between customary political allies.

The State Department, in an analysis released this summer, said the pipeline project would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction, while developer TransCanada put the total at 20,000 in direct employment.

The pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The spending bill locks in spending cuts that conservative Republicans won from the White House and Democrats earlier in the year.

Republicans also won their fight to block new federal regulations for light bulb energy efficiency, coal dust in mines and clean water permits for construction of timber roads.

The White House turned back GOP attempts to block limits on greenhouse gases, mountaintop removal mining and hazardous emissions from utility plants, industrial boilers and cement kilns.

___

Associated Press writers David Espo, Alan Fram, Donna Cassata and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111217/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_rdp

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Judge dismisses $1B lawsuit against Microsoft (AP)

SALT LAKE CITY ? A federal judge on Friday dismissed a Utah company's $1 billion federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

Novell claims Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial has been ongoing in Salt Lake City for two months. Jurors got the case Wednesday morning, but by Friday told the judge they were "hopelessly deadlocked."

They had expressed confusion to the judge about the complicated case throughout deliberations, even bringing one question to the court that could not be answered. The judge told jurors to simply disregard the question.

Earlier Friday, the judge denied a request from one juror to be removed from the case.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own Office programs took hold.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell's lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago. The trial began in October in federal court in Salt Lake City.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_antitrust_lawsuit_microsoft

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ICC dismisses charges against Rwandan suspect (AP)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands ? International Criminal Court judges dismissed charges Friday against a Rwandan rebel accused of involvement in the murder, rape and torture of Congolese villagers by a Hutu militia in 2009.

The judges ordered the release of Callixte Mbarushimana, saying there is not enough evidence to support the charges against him.

Prosecutors said they would send the case to appeals judges and quickly filed a request to halt Mbarushimana's release pending the outcome of the appeal. If judges reject the request, the court has to find a country willing to accept Mbarushimana before he can be released and it is not clear how long that could take.

Prosecutors had accused Mbarushimana of being a senior member of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym the FDLR. The group is accused of unleashing savage attacks on civilians in the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo as a "bargaining tool" to win power.

If he is freed, Mbarushimana would be the first suspect released from ICC custody since the court's inception in 2002.

In February 2010, judges refused to confirm charges against a Darfur rebel accused of attacking African Union peacekeepers, but unlike Mbarushimana the rebel, Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, was never taken into custody.

In an unusual case at the court, prosecutors accused Mbarushimana of contributing to crimes from a Paris apartment "by orchestrating an international campaign of propaganda and extortion" to force Rwanda to accept the return of the rebels who had fled the country after its 1994 genocide.

In a majority decision, a three judge panel said evidence presented at a preliminary hearing in September was not strong enough to merit sending the case to trial.

The evidence was "not sufficient to establish substantial grounds to believe that the Suspect encouraged the troops' morale through his press releases and radio messages, and, therefore, he could have not provided ... a significant contribution to the commission of crimes," two judges wrote in their decision. The presiding judge at the September hearing, disagreed, saying Mbarushimana should have been sent to trial.

Nick Kaufman, the lawyer who represented Mbarushimana at the preliminary hearing, praised the decision.

"We welcome this brave decision which is a moment of truth and vindication for Callixte Mbarushimana," Kaufman told The Associated Press in an email.

Mbarushimana was arrested in Paris in October, 2010, and transferred to the court in The Hague.

He faced 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity but always maintained his innocence.

The FDLR was established by former guerrillas accused of genocide in Rwanda's 1994 ethnic slaughter. After moving to Congo, the FDLR launched attacks on Rwanda aimed at ousting the government in Kigali.

Knowing they could not win a conventional military campaign, the rebels retreated to the dense forests of eastern Congo and from there went on a yearlong killing spree that left hundreds dead and forced thousands from their homes.

FDLR fighters "killed, raped and tortured civilians in this region. They carried out pillaging and burned down entire villages," deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told judges in September. Women were raped, often repeatedly and by several attackers in turn, she added.

After the Rwanda genocide, Mbarushimana went to work as a software programmer for the United Nations in Angola and then Kosovo.

He was arrested in Kosovo at the request of Rwanda but released in 2001 because Rwanda failed to properly prepare his indictment. He was later indicted by the Rwanda war crimes tribunal, set up by the U.N. in Tanzania. But his case was dropped.

Gregory Alex, a senior U.N. official who has worked in Rwanda and Congo and has long wanted to see Mbarushimana face trial, told the AP he was disappointed by the decision.

"He should be arrested and tried for his crimes. There should be loud criticism of this," he said.

Alex said the order to release Mbarushimana comes at a time when authorities have been making headway in efforts to dismantle the FDLR.

"We've been making good progress," he said, adding that 169 FDLR fighters surrendered in November.

____

Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_eu/eu_international_court_congo

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Brain's failure to appreciate others may permit human atrocities

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) ? A father in Louisiana bludgeoned and beheaded his disabled 7-year-old son last August because he no longer wanted to care for the boy. For most people, such a heinous act is unconscionable.

But it may be that a person can become callous enough to commit human atrocities because of a failure in the part of the brain that's critical for social interaction. A new study by researchers at Duke University and Princeton University suggests this function may disengage when people encounter others they consider disgusting, thus "dehumanizing" their victims by failing to acknowledge they have thoughts and feelings.

This shortcoming also may help explain how propaganda depicting Tutsi in Rwanda as cockroaches and Hitler's classification of Jews in Nazi Germany as vermin contributed to torture and genocide, the study said.

"When we encounter a person, we usually infer something about their minds. Sometimes, we fail to do this, opening up the possibility that we do not perceive the person as fully human," said lead author Lasana Harris, an assistant professor in Duke University's Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Harris co-authored the study with Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Social neuroscience has shown through MRI studies that people normally activate a network in the brain related to social cognition -- thoughts, feelings, empathy, for example -- when viewing pictures of others or thinking about their thoughts. But when participants in this study were asked to consider images of people they considered drug addicts, homeless people, and others they deemed low on the social ladder, parts of this network failed to engage.

What's especially striking, the researchers said, is that people will easily ascribe social cognition -- a belief in an internal life such as emotions -- to animals and cars, but will avoid making eye contact with the homeless panhandler in the subway.

"We need to think about other people's experience," Fiske said. "It's what makes them fully human to us."

The duo's previous research suggested that a lack of social cognition can be linked to not acknowledging the mind of other people when imagining a day in their life, and rating them differently on traits that we think differentiate humans from everything else.

This latest study expands on that earlier work to show that these traits correlate with activation in brain regions beyond the social cognition network. These areas include those brain areas involved in disgust, attention and cognitive control.

The result is what the researchers call "dehumanized perception," or failing to consider someone else's mind. Such a lack of empathy toward others can also help explain why some members of society are sometimes dehumanized, they said.

For this latest study, 119 undergraduates from Princeton completed judgment and decision-making surveys as they viewed images of people. The researchers sought to examine the students' responses to common emotions triggered by images such as:

-- a female college student and male American firefighter (pride); -- a business woman and rich man (envy); -- an elderly man and disabled woman (pity); -- a female homeless person and male drug addict (disgust).

After imagining a day in the life of the people in the images, participants next rated the same person on various dimensions. They rated characteristics including the warmth, competence, similarity, familiarity, responsibility of the person for his/her situation, control of the person over their situation, intelligence, complex emotionality, self-awareness, ups-and-downs in life, and typical humanity.

Participants then went into the MRI scanner and simply looked at pictures of people.

The study found that the neural network involved in social interaction failed to respond to images of drug addicts, the homeless, immigrants and poor people, replicating earlier results.

"These results suggest multiple roots to dehumanization," Harris said. "This suggests that dehumanization is a complex phenomenon, and future research is necessary to more accurately specify this complexity."

The sample's mean age was 20, with 62 female participants. The ethnic composition of the Princeton students who participated in the study was 68 white, 19 Asian, 12 of mixed descent, and 6 black, with the remainder not reporting.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Susan T. Fiske, Lasana T. Harris. Dehumanized Perception. Zeitschrift f?r Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, 2011; 219 (3): 175 DOI: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000065

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214162103.htm

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