How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today | Cities | The Guardian

How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today | Cities | The Guardian: "But the most vital aspect of this efficiency is that trains run on time, all the time. This is not just a point of pride. It is a necessity, given the huge number of people that have to be moved. Transfers are timed to the split second, and the slightest delay has the butterfly effect of delaying connections. The Shinkansen is no exception, as exemplified by the “angels”: teams of pink-attired women who descend on a train as soon as it arrives at its terminal and in five minutes leave it spotless for the return trip.

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The first Shinkansen skirted the Pacific coast through the huge industrial corridor that links the capital with Osaka. This is a nearly unbroken stretch of urbanisation: it has few parallels on the planet. By the early 1950s the conventional train that ran on this route was crammed. Taking a hint from the private Odakyu Electric Railway, which launched a train that could reach speeds of 145km/hr, Japan National Railways (JNR) decided to develop an even faster train, and in April 1959 construction of the Tokaido Shinkansen commenced with an initial budget of ¥200bn (£1.1bn), though the eventual cost would be double that."



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Prada Finds No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - Bloomberg View

Prada Finds No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - Bloomberg View: "It was Prada's turn to pay up in December, when it announced that its holding company would repatriate assets it held in Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It also agreed to pay some back taxes as part of voluntary disclosure procedure. According to Prada's 2013 annual report, the company paid 66 million euros, but the Financial Times reports that Prada and Bertelli personally contributed 400 million euros. In any case, once the money landed in Italy's coffers, the husband and wife team appeared relieved. The newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted Bertelli as praising his company's "constructive relationship with the tax authorities, marked by mutual trust, which is essential to re-establish relations necessary for the country's recovery."

In January, the couple denied reports that they were under investigation by tax authorities as a result of their voluntary disclosure, hanging on to their idea of "mutual trust." The authorities, however, must have seen it differently, and Prada confirmed it was being investigated."



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Willie Nelson, Neil Young play pipeline protest concert

Willie Nelson, Neil Young play pipeline protest concert: "NELIGH — Art and Helen Tanderup gazed with amazed smiles at the thousands of cars parked on the stubble of their recently harvested cornfield on Saturday, at the stage set up in their rye field and at the ocean of people standing in front of it.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely amazing this is happening,” said Art just before the start of Harvest the Hope.

The sun shone in a sky dotted with white clouds, and nearby corn rustled in a southern breeze on the 160-acre farm near Neligh, as fans waited to hear the concert’s headliners, Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young and country music star Willie Nelson.

Between performances by opening acts — Native American hip-hop artist Frank Waln, and Lukas and Micah Nelson and Promise of the Real (featuring Willie Nelson’s sons) — politicians and activists spoke to the crowd of about 8,000 about the fight against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The Tanderups are two of about 100 landowners refusing to sign easement agreements with TransCanada Corp., the company that wants to build the controversial pipeline capable of transporting 840,000 barrels of crude oil per day, mostly from Canada’s tar sands region destined for refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast."



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EU to examine role Revenue ‘opinions’ in Apple’s tax status

EU to examine role Revenue ‘opinions’ in Apple’s tax status: "The European Commission’s inquiry into Apple’s arrangements in Ireland centres on two tax “opinions” handed down by the Revenue in 1991 and 2007, it has emerged.
Outgoing competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia will set out the basis for the investigation in the EU Official Journal on Monday, opening a 30-day window for interested parties to respond. In question is whether the tax arrangements conferred illegal state-aid to Apple. The Government has always argued the inquiry is groundless, saying it will vigorously contest all elements of the complaint.
It is understood Apple will contest that the complaint is “baseless” and “profoundly wrong” in respect of Irish-based subsidiaries Apple Operations Europe (AOE) and Apple Sales International.
It is further understood that Apple will argue that Revenue always adopted an appropriately “aggressive” stance in its engagements with the company.
Heavily criticised
Apple, which has had an Irish operation since 1980, was heavily criticised last year after a subcommittee of the US Senate heard it was paying a 2 per cent corporate tax rate in Ireland. The company’s position is that this was an unfair description of its business, that it pays an effective 20 per cent tax rate globally and has been paying the statutory tax rate on the profit made by AOE."



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Watchdog slams U.S. Bank for consumer rip-off

Watchdog slams U.S. Bank for consumer rip-off: "U.S. Bank will pay $57 million in consumer relief and penalties for unfairly charging more than 420,000 customers for identity protection and credit-monitoring services they never received, a federal regulator said Thursday.

The Minneapolis-based bank sold the "Privacy Guard" and "Identity Secure" services as add-on products for credit cards and other bank products from at least 2003 through January 2012, according to a consent order issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The programs, administered by the bank's third-party vendor, Affinion, required written authorization from customers before the services could begin"



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India's Mars satellite successfully enters orbit, bringing country into space elite | Science | The Guardian

India's Mars satellite successfully enters orbit, bringing country into space elite | Science | The Guardian: "India has become the first nation to send a satellite into orbit around Mars on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so.

Mission control in the southern Indian city of Bangalore received confirmation of the success at 7.41am Wednesday, local time. The satellite Mangalyaan had entered the orbit of the red planet 12 minutes earlier, but the message needed to traverse the 400m miles (650m km) to Earth.

India now joins an elite club of nations who have successfully carried out interplanetary space missions, and has scored a significant point in its rivalry with China.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, who won power in May in a landslide victory, was in Bangalore with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) watching the operation.

“We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and innovation,” Modi said, as scientists celebrated.

“We have navigated our craft through a route known to very few,” Modi said, congratulating the ISRO team and “all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion”."



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Apple CEO Cook: And One More Thing … Climate Change Is a Really Big Deal - Bloomberg

Apple CEO Cook: And One More Thing … Climate Change Is a Really Big Deal - Bloomberg: "Cook spoke unambiguously about climate change risks and how Apple approaches them. "The long-term consequences of not addressing climate are huge," he said. "I don't think anyone can overstate that."

It's not an Earth-shattering statement. The basics of climate change have been understood for a long time, don't seem to be budging much and yet remain challenged by many non-specialists. What's significant then, in such a sclerotic public debate, is who acknowledges those basics, as much as what is said. That's why it was news when former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson called for a carbon tax, when the first family of oil pulled out of oil sands or, in this case, the head of the world's largest company by market cap endorses a brand new climate and business initiative by showing up and saying absolutely anything at all.

Cook went on to say other things that aren't new to anyone paying attention, but important for everyone not paying attention to hear. He challenged the still-common fallacy that good business and environmentalism are mutually exclusive. "Too many people believe you can do this or that," he said. "If you innovate and you set the bar high you will find a way to do both."

It's a leap of faith that other big companies are taking, too. Unilever, Ikea, and others are setting aggressive goals without certainty how they'll be met. Like Cook, their leaders believe their employees "will find a way" if encouraged and empowered to do so. But we're used to Unilever and Ikea saying those things."



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Four things that haven’t changed since the crash

Four things that haven’t changed since the crash: "We learn from our mistakes – or do we? As Ireland finally emerges from a disastrous recession, a question floats back to the surface: would we do it all again? Have the consequences of bad governance and poor collective choices been so painful that we won’t ever go back there? Even cows learn to avoid electric fences – has Irish society as much sense as a cow?
If you were to judge by immediate appearances the answer would be an emphatic no. The leaflets from estate agents are coming in the door again. The queues to put down deposits on half- finished houses are forming again. The almost entirely unchallenged assumption that rising property prices are an index of a healthy economy is rampant again. Loose talk about tax cuts is in the air again. Even though the national debt is now five times higher than it was at the start of so-called austerity, there is a widespread feeling that everything is returning to a pre-crash “normality”.
Significant improvements
Some things have changed. Financial regulation is much tougher and more active. A whistle-blowing culture may be taking root – it matters greatly that attempts to silence and discredit gardaí who spoke up about apparent abuses failed. For the moment at least, senior politicians and administrators will think twice before shooting the messengers of malpractice. "



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India's spacecraft nears Mars orbit - CNN.com

India's spacecraft nears Mars orbit - CNN.com: "ust days after NASA's Mars orbiter reached the Red Planet, India's first mission could follow suit and make history Wednesday.
India's Mars Orbiter Mission has been groundbreaking for the country, with a price tag of $74 million, a fraction of the $671 million NASA spent on its MAVEN spacecraft.
If Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan, successfully enters Mars' orbit, India would become the first Asian nation to do so.
Interactive: Exploring Mars from Viking to MAVEN
To date, only the U.S., Europe and the Soviets have successfully sent spacecraft to Mars. But India is also aiming for another record.
India launches mission to Mars Open Mic: India's Mars mission
It's aiming to be the first country in the world to succeed in its first attempt to enter the Mars orbit, said S. Satish, a space expert based in Bangalore, India."



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Wall Street ‘flooded’ by climate activists

Wall Street ‘flooded’ by climate activists: "Just a day after the huge People’s Climate March in Manhattan, which drew at least 300,000 participants, more radical activists “flooded” Wall Street yesterday to call on banks to stop funding oil, coal and other fossil fuels.
Some 2,000 protesters, mostly dressed in blue, assembled in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, where they were addressed by militant author Naomi Klein and others before marching to the New York Stock Exchange.
There they staged a noisy “mass sit-in” that recalled the long-running Occupy Wall Street protest at the height of the financial crisis, but with a more topical 90-metre-long banner that read “Capitalism = Climate Chaos. Flood Wall Street.”
They pledged to “shut down the institutions that are profiting from the climate crisis” and confront what they see as its root cause, “an economic system based on exploiting frontline communities, workers, and natural resources”.
Spokesman Michael Premo blamed the fossil-fuel industry for “runaway climate change and extreme weather events, such as the extreme flooding that we saw here in New York City with Hurricane Sandy”, a disaster that cost the city billions of dollars.
According to Occupy Denver veteran Eric Verlo, who had travelled from Colorado to be at the protest, it was “about trying to take the people, the activists that have come to town, and try to put them in the way of ‘business-as-usual’ for Wall Street”."



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Kerry compares climate change to fight against Ebola and Isis as thousands march around world | Environment | The Guardian

Kerry compares climate change to fight against Ebola and Isis as thousands march around world | Environment | The Guardian: "More than 300,000 marchers flooded the streets of New York on Sunday in the largest climate change march in history, vaulting the environmental threat to the top of the global agenda.

On a day of 2,700 simultaneous climate events from Melbourne to Manhattan, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, reinforced the calls from the streets for action by calling on world leaders to take the threat of climate change as seriously as Isis or Ebola.

Organisers had called the day of protests in order to put pressure on world leaders gathering in New York for a UN summit on climate change on Tuesday. It will be the leaders’ first such meeting in five years.

Kerry, in remarks to foreign ministers of the 20 biggest economies, said climate change should be at the top of the agenda despite competition from more immediate challenges.

“While we are confronting [Isis], and we are confronting terrorism and we are confronting Ebola, this also has an immediacy that people have come to understand,” he said. “There is a long list of important issues before all of us, but the grave threat that climate change poses warrants a prominent position on that list.”"



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Change in Wind Speed Affects Foraging Behavior of Insects

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/9128/20140920/change-wind-speed-affects-foraging-insects.htm

Change in Wind Speed Affects Foraging Behavior of Insects

By Staff Reporter

An asian lady beetle rests on a plant in a soybean field in this time-exposure image. New research suggests that diminishing wind speeds caused by climate change affect the ability of such insects to capture prey.

Change in wind speeds or "global stilling" can affect hunting behavior of insects, a new study has found.

University of Wisconsin Madison researchers say that rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns might have gotten the lion share of publicity; however, changes in wind speed can also damage biodiversity.

Wind speed in Midwest is expected to decrease by as much as 15 percent this century.

"There are all sorts of other things that are changing in the environment that affect animals and plants and their interactions," said Brandon Barton, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher, according to a news release. "My students and I were standing out in a cornfield one day as big gusts of wind came by, and the corn stalks were bending almost double. From the perspective of an animal living in the corn, we thought, 'That's got to have a big effect.'"

Earth's poles are warming up rapidly, which has reduced the temperature difference that allows winds to form. Also, Buildings and other man-made structures slow down wind speed, researchers said.

The researchers found that some creatures such as the Asian lady beetle is affected by changes in the wind speed.

In the study, the team grew soybeans in alfalfa fields. They installed barricades in some plots and let some plots open to natural wind.

The researchers found that lady beetles preferred the sheltered plots whereas their prey - the soybean aphid - liked to stay in the wind-swept fields.

"The aphids appear on the plants whether it's windy or not, and we showed that in lab experiments," Barton said in a news release. "But when you add the predators, with the wind block, the beetles eat something like twice as many aphids."

In the controlled lab experiments, the researchers stimulated wind speeds by shaking and bending the plants. They found that lady beetles were most likely to prefer a still plant over a plant that's constantly moving.

"How do you do your duty as a predator if you're entire world is moving around?" said Barton. "If the plant is moving, it takes four times as long for the predator to start eating, and it eats less than half as many aphids in an hour."

Barton's work is funded by National Science Foundation and the latest study is published in the journal Ecology. 

User’s Guide to the People’s Climate March This Weekend - Bloomberg

User’s Guide to the People’s Climate March This Weekend - Bloomberg: "The people are coming.

Tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of protesters are descending on Manhattan by bus, train and plane to rally against climate change this Sunday in an event dubbed “The People’s Climate March.”

It won’t be enough people to make a lazy Sunday in Manhattan feel like a weekday, when about 1.6 million workers commute in to the city, but “The People’s Climate March” is being billed as the biggest climate-policy protest in history. The weather is right for it: sunny and an unseasonably warm 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Related events are planned in 150 countries. Here’s what you need to know:"



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Health Care Is Still for the Rich or Lucky - Bloomberg View

Health Care Is Still for the Rich or Lucky - Bloomberg View: "Obamacare can't fix all of that. Just two-thirds of adults who were eligible for Medicaid in 2009-2010 signed up, according to a 2012 study from the Urban Institute, and even with the law's individual mandate there will still be some people who don’t enroll. The same goes for the state insurance exchanges, whose subsidies will draw in some -- but not all -- of the uninsured in higher income brackets.

But the chart above is still one of the best possible arguments for the necessity of Obamacare, by demonstrating that the government programs preceding the law are too narrow to cover the poor. It shows that even with the existence of Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and other assistance, health coverage in the U.S. remains a luxury good -- one that the rich can afford but others struggle, in proportion to their income, to obtain."



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India’s Poor Quality Drugs End Up in Africa, Study Finds - Bloomberg

India’s Poor Quality Drugs End Up in Africa, Study Finds - Bloomberg: "Generic drugs that some Indian companies send to African countries are lower quality than the same medicines the companies sell at home and outside Africa, according to tests of 1,470 samples, researchers said.

Two widely used antibiotics and two TB treatments, purportedly made in India, are more likely not to have enough of their key active ingredient when sold in Africa, compared with the same pills sold in countries such as Russia and China, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The findings suggest Indian drugmakers may be sending low-quality drugs to poorer countries, the authors wrote.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspections have found quality issues at Indian drug manufacturing facilities, such as faking and manipulating tests meant to ensure the active ingredient works as it should. The FDA has banned at least 36 manufacturing plants in India, including facilities operated by Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (RBXY) and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (SUNP), from sending product to the U.S. The paper doesn’t say which drug companies made the tested samples."



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Second Opinion: Are policymakers able to control the obesity epidemic?

Second Opinion: Are policymakers able to control the obesity epidemic?: "When the first National Nutrition Survey was carried out, Ireland had almost no overweight or obese children. In fact, many were too thin. Between 1946 and 1948 doctors measured the heights and weights of 14,835 primary-school children looking for signs of defective nutrition, including rickets and underweight. The study found that height and weight varied depending on social class.
Children whose fathers were unskilled or unemployed were, on average, two inches shorter and up to five pounds lighter than middle-class children. Between 15 and 21 per cent of boys and girls, mostly from poor families, were underweight, and fewer than 1 per cent of children were overweight. Today the reverse is true.
Last month, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) published a new paper on obesity, The Race We Don’t Want to Win: Tackling Ireland’s Obesity Epidemic, which notes that one in four children is now overweight or obese. The RCPI wants school vending machines to stock only healthy options. I couldn’t agree more. When interviewed on RTÉ Radio, Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’Sullivan said she did not intend to issue a directive to schools on the content of vending machines: “Banning things can be difficult and it doesn’t necessarily stop practices.” In fact, bans work. Has she forgotten the ban on smoking in public places, one of the most successful public health measures ever implemented?"



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How corn plants defend against pathogen attack - The Hindu

How corn plants defend against pathogen attack - The Hindu: "Researchers from the North Carolina State University have identified crucial genes and cellular processes that appear to control the so-called hyper-sensitive defence response (HR) in corn.

The findings could help researchers build better defence responses in corn and other plants.

“It is similar to a human having an auto-immune response that never stops,” said Peter Balint-Kurti, a professor from the department of plant pathology and crop science at the North Carolina State University.

When corn plants come under attack from a pathogen, they sometimes respond by killing their own cells near the site of the attack, committing “cell suicide” to thwart further damage from the attacker.

It has so far been difficult to understand how the plant regulates this defence mechanism because the response is so quick and localised."



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Naomi Klein: the hypocrisy behind the big business climate change battle | Environment | The Guardian

Naomi Klein: the hypocrisy behind the big business climate change battle | Environment | The Guardian: "A great many of us engage in this kind of denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or maybe we do really look, but then we forget. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything.

And we are right. If we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, major cities will drown, ancient cultures will be swallowed by the seas; our children will spend much of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. Yet we continue all the same.

What is wrong with us? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things needed to cut emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have struggled to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck, because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and benefit the vast majority – are threatening to an elite minority with a stranglehold over our economy, political process and media."



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Scotching the spirit of independence- Frank McNally's brilliant piece

Scotching the spirit of independence: "There was a time, after all, when it was still acceptable to use the term “Scotch” of Northern Britons, as well as of their whisky and terriers. But such has the word’s stigmatisation over the centuries, by the English mainly, this is no longer the case.
Thanks to the likes of “Scotch bum” (the bustle of a skirt), “Scotch fiddle” (the itch), and even “Scotch mist” (a euphemism for rain), the old adjective gradually came to be considered offensive, at least when applied to humans.
A subtle rebranding process was necessary. Now, when referring to the people – and to most of their achievements outside the distilling sphere – Scottish, or better still Scots, is the preferred descriptive.
Of course the natives of Scotland were not alone in being adjectivally disparaged by their neighbours. The Dutch, for example, still account for a remarkable number of insults in English (“Dutch bargain”, “Dutch treat”, “Double Dutch”, etc) mostly dating from a series of 17th-century wars. Indeed, all of England’s neighbours have had their identities borrowed for some derogatory purpose or other (from “French leave”, to “Welshing” on debts, to that multipurpose slur, “a bit Irish”). But so far as I know, only the Scots have taken it so personally as to shun the adjective."



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China and India Leaders - tops in emissions, lowest in soluions

China and Indian Leaders Said to Skip UN Climate Summit - Bloomberg: "China is the world’s top greenhouse-gas emitter, and India is third, after the U.S., according to World Bank data. Together China and India account for nearly a third of total emissions, and their carbon footprint is growing while it remains flat in the U.S. and Europe.

“I was completely shocked and very disappointed to read today that Chinese President Xi and Indian Prime Minister Modi may not make it to Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit,” said Tony deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean, in a statement. “For the small island states of the world, the science says we might be forced to pay the biggest price of all -- the loss of our countries. We expect solidarity from our developing country compatriots, not excuses.”"



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Chinese and Indians- Playing stupid games with the world's climate

China and Indian Leaders Said to Skip UN Climate Summit - Bloomberg: "The top leaders of China and India aren’t planning to attend this month’s United Nations summit on climate change, signaling tepid support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gases among two of the largest emitters.

President Xi Jinping of China and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon they won’t be at the day-long meeting of world leaders on Sept. 23, according to two UN diplomats, requesting not to be identified discussing the leaders’ plans. Their absence undercuts the summit, although it may not be fatal for negotiations set to wrap up by the end of 2015."



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Starbucks Stars as Korea’s Women Battle Demographic Drag - Bloomberg

Starbucks Stars as Korea’s Women Battle Demographic Drag - Bloomberg: "When former kindergarten teacher Kim Sun Sung tried to re-join South Korea’s workforce after five years raising her children, she found it tough. Then 41, Kim was either told she was too old or had been out of work too long.

“It wasn’t easy to find a decent job,” said Kim, now 48 and working as a consultant at a Seoul private-study school. “I didn’t want to end my life like that, with my expertise being wasted.”

Park Geun Hye, the nation’s first female president, is listening. Her administration has named and shamed companies including Hyundai Motor Co. for not having enough part-time jobs for women, while praising Starbucks Corp. (SBUX), Samsung Electronics Co. and Lotte Group. She’s pledged to boost the participation rate of women in the workforce to 61.9 percent by 2017 from 53.5 percent in 2012, warning of a “long tunnel” of depression unless every economic lever is mobilized."



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