Hot Trends Newsletter and Information

Labels: blogger, blogging granny, hot trends 2009, Maria Amelia Lopez, trends newsletter

MOSCOW (AFP) - - The United States and Russia on Tuesday began the first round of negotiations aimed at replacing a landmark Cold War-era nuclear disarmament treaty that expires in December, officials said.

The talks on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) are a central part of US President Barack Obama's desire to "reset" strained ties with Russia and their result could have far-reaching implications for global security.

They hark back to Cold War days where US and Soviet officials met for tense negotiations on reducing their vast atomic arsenals and lowering the chances of nuclear Armageddon.

Productive negotiations would boost Obama's vision of a world free of atomic weapons and help set the stage for a fence-mending summit in July when Obama travels to Moscow to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

For Russia, the closed-door talks are also a matter of prestige as they imply strategic parity with the United States as Moscow seeks to play a greater role on the world stage.

Speaking in Geneva, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed a "new momentum for disarmament" and gave his "best wishes" to the negotiators in Moscow.

A Russian foreign ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov, said the talks took place Tuesday and would continue Wednesday as planned. He made clear though there would be little public information about them.

"By agreement of both sides the talks will be discreet and they will only release an agreed joint statement at the end," Lyakin-Frolov told AFP.

The two-day negotiating session marks the formal start of the process though the two sides had several preliminary meetings to help break the ice.

Ahead of the talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped they would be "fruitful" but also cautioned that they would be linked to controversial US missile defence plans in Eastern Europe.

"We believe that the START treaty cannot be discussed in a vacuum," Lavrov was quoted as saying by news agencies late Monday.

"It must reflect the issue of global security, which certainly includes Russia's, and this implies that we must sort out the situation on missile defence," Lavrov added.

Moscow has reacted angrily to US plans to place elements of its planned global missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Washington has tried to keep missile defence off the negotiating table at the START talks, saying that the shield is not directed against Russia and is instead meant to protect against Iran.

But that rationale was called into question in a report published Tuesday by the New York-based EastWest Institute, which said Iran was far away from having long-range missiles and that the shield would not work anyway.

"European missile defences will not provide dependable protection against an Iranian threat if and when it emerges," the institute said in a statement, citing the report written by a joint US-Russian team of experts.

Obama has pledged to continue with missile defence but only if it is cost-effective and proven to work. The project was strongly backed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The Russian daily Vremya Novostei wrote on Tuesday that it would be "practically impossible" to reach a deal on START unless Obama reconsidered Bush's missile shield.

Even aside from the missile defence issue, negotiators face a tough task as they seek to find a successor agreement to the hugely complex treaty before it expires on December 5.

Talks on START made little progress under Bush, and despite warming ties under Obama, many stumbling blocks remain.

For instance, Moscow wants a broad treaty that limits both nuclear warheads and their carriers, such as missiles and bombers, while Washington prefers to focus only on deployed warheads that are ready for launch.

The US negotiating team in Moscow is led by Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller while the Russian team is headed by Anatoly Antonov, head of the foreign ministry department for security and disarmament.

Signed in 1991, START led to deep cuts in the US and Russian atomic arsenals and is seen as a cornerstone of strategic arms control.

Labels: hot trends 2009, start, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, trends newsletter

Perfectly preserved fossil Ida, unveiled in New York today, provides unprecedented insight into our ancestry. Photograph: Atlantic Productions Ltd

Ida, one of the most complete primate fossils ever found, a 47-million-year-old human ancestor.

Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial "missing link" between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.

The 47m-year-old primate - named Ida - has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a "Rosetta Stone" for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.

The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered. The skeleton is 95% complete and thanks to the unique location where she died, it is possible to see individual hairs covering her body and even the make-up of her final meal - a last vegetarian snack.

"This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters," said Sir David Attenborough who is narrating a BBC documentary on the find. "The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo."

"This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years," said Dr Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. "It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far. It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study." The fossil has been formally named Darwinius masillae in honour of Darwin's 200th birthday year.

It has been shipped across the Atlantic for an unveiling ceremony hosted by the mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg today. There is even talk of Ida being the first non-living thing to feature on the front cover of People magazine.

She will then be transported back to Oslo, via a brief stop at the Natural History Museum in London on Tuesday, 26 May, when Attenborough will host a press conference.

Ida was originally discovered by an amateur fossil hunter in the summer of 1983 at Messel pit, a world renowned fossil site near Darmstadt in Germany. He kept it under wraps for over 20 years before deciding to sell it via a German fossil dealer called Thomas Perner. It was Perner who approached Hurum two years ago.

"My heart started beating extremely fast," said Hurum, "I knew that the dealer had a world sensation in his hands. I could not sleep for 2 nights. I was just thinking about how to get this to an official museum so that it could be described and published for science."

Hurum would not reveal what the university museum paid for the fossil, but the original asking price was $1m. He did not see the fossil before buying it - just three photographs, representing a huge gamble.

But it appears to have paid off. "You need an icon or two in a museum to drag people in," said Hurum, "this is our Mona Lisa and it will be our Mona Lisa for the next 100 years."

Hurum chose Ida's nickname because the diminutive creature is at the equivalent stage of development as his six-year-old daughter. Hurum said Ida is very excited about her namesake. "She says, 'there are two Idas now, there's me I'm living and then there's the dead one.'"

"It's caught at a really very interesting moment [in the animal's life] when it fortunately has all its baby teeth and is in the process of forming all its permanent teeth," said Dr Holly Smith, an expert in primate development at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was part of the team. "So you have more information in it than almost any fossil you could think of."

The fossil's amazing preservation means that the scientific team has managed to glean a huge amount of information from it, although this required new X-ray techniques that had not previously been applied to any other specimens.

The researchers believe it comes from the time when the primate lineage, that diversified into monkeys, apes and ultimately humans, split from a separate group that went on to become lemurs and other less well known species.

Crucially though, Ida is not on the lemur line because she lacks two key characteristics shared by lemurs – a grooming claw on her second toe and a fused set of teeth called a tooth comb. Also, a bone in her ankle called the talus is shaped like members of our branch of the primates. So the researchers believe she may be on our evolutionary line dating from just after the split with the lemurs.

According to the team's published description of the skeleton in the journal PLoS ONE, Ida was 53cm long and a juvenile around six to nine months old. The team can be sure Ida is a girl because she does not have a penis bone.

"She was at this vulnerable age where you are no longer right with your mother," said Smith, "Just as you leave weaning you are not full grown, but you are on your own."

The unprecedented preservation of Ida meant working out how she died was more like a modern day crime scene investigation than the informed guess-work that palaeontologists usually make do with. The team noticed that she had a broken wrist that had begun to partially heal. The injury did not kill her, but they speculate that it contributed to her premature demise.

"It might be that her mother dropped her once or that she fell down from a tree earlier in her life," Smith said. She survived the accident, but her climbing abilities would have been impaired. Unable to drink from water trapped by tree leaves, she would have had to venture down to the lake to drink. This would have proved to be a fateful decision.

The huge range of magnificently preserved fossils at Messel suggest that the volcanic lake was a death trap. Scientists believe that it sporadically let forth giant belches of poisonous volcanic gases that would have immediately suffocated anything in, around and even over the water. Ida would then have fallen into the water and been preserved in the sediment deep at the bottom.

James Randerson, Guardian.co.uk

• Atlantic productions' programme, Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, will be broadcast in the UK on Tuesday, 26 May at 9pm on BBC1. Colin Tudge's book, The Link, is published on 20 May by Little Brown.

Labels: Dr Jørn Hurum, hot trends 2009, ida, missing link, primate fossils, Thomas Perner, trends newsletter

Something strange happened this week in Amazon.com's apparel section.

For a day or two, a black T-shirt featuring an image of three wolves baying at a full moon claimed the top slot at the online store's clothing bestseller list,, beating out the usual, unremarkable mix of Levi's 505 regular-fit jeans, Crocs clogs and Adidas running shoes.

Labels: hot trends 2009, ironic tshirt, the mountain, three wolf moon, trends newsletter, tshirt, wolf moon, wolf shirt, wolf t-shirt

COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Tamil Tigers conceded defeat in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war on Sunday, after launching waves of suicide attacks to repel a final assault by troops determined to annihilate them.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa had declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the day before, even as combat raged in the island's northeast and the military said it was freeing the last of thousands of trapped civilians.

By midday Sunday, the military said troops had freed all the civilians being held by the LTTE inside an area that was less than a single square km. A total of 72,000 had fled since Thursday, it said.

LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's fate remained a mystery, although military sources said a body believed to be his was recovered and its identity was being confirmed.

The LTTE, founded on a culture of suicide before surrender, had shown no sign of giving up. Suicide fighters blew themselves up on the frontline on Sunday morning, and more than 70 were killed trying to flee overnight, the military said.

But by afternoon the military said fighting had slowed, and the pro-rebel web site www.TamilNet.com released a statement from the LTTE's head of international relations saying: "This battle has reached its bitter end."

"We remain with one last choice -- to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns," Selvarajah Pathmanathan's statement said.

The military had no immediate comment.

Pathmanathan, who is wanted by Interpol and was for years the LTTE's chief weapons smuggler, said 3,000 people lay dead and 25,000 more were wounded.

Getting an independent picture of events in the war zone is normally a difficult task, given both sides have repeatedly distorted accounts to suit their side of the story and outside observers are generally barred from it.

PRABHAKARAN DEAD?

Government forces on Saturday took control of the entire island's coast for the first time since war broke out in 1983, cutting off any chance of escape for a militant group whose conventional defeat has been a foregone conclusion for months.

The military has in less than three years captured 15,000 square km the Tigers had controlled as a quasi-state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.

There was still no confirmed word on the fate of Prabhakaran, who built the LTTE into one of the world's most violent insurgent groups through hundreds of suicide bombings and assassinations that earned it a terrorist designation in more than 30 countries.

Military sources told Reuters a body believed to be his was found. Prabhakaran had vowed never to be taken alive.

"They are taking the body for checks to confirm it is the real Prabhakaran," one military official told Reuters on conditions of anonymity. Four other military sources confirmed the recovery and said identity checks were under way.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara denied that.

The cataclysmic end to the war came after the government rejected calls for a new truce to protect civilians, and the Tigers refused to surrender and free 50,000-100,000 the United Nations and others said they were holding as human shields.

Each side accuses the other of killing civilians, and diplomats say there is evidence both have done so. The U.N. rights chief on Friday said she backed an inquiry into potential war crimes and humanitarian violations by both sides.

A wave of diplomatic pressure from the United States, Britain, France and the United Nations last week, including threats to delay a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, appeared to come too late to stop the final fight.

POST-WAR BOOM?

Sri Lanka's $40 billion economy is struggling with depleted foreign exchange reserves, shrinking export revenues for tea and garments, rising import costs, a declining rupee currency and a balance of payments crisis.

Rajapaksa's government is counting on victory in the war to help boost the economy and renew economic growth that for years had been among the highest in south Asia.

The Tigers have warned that their conventional defeat will usher in a new phase of guerrilla conflict targeting Sri Lanka's economically valuable targets, an indirect threat to a tourism sector the government hopes can be boosted after the war.

Nonetheless, people set off fireworks and celebrated in the streets of the capital Colombo on Sunday, a day on which the government asked people to fly the national flag in celebration.

Rajapaksa, who was in Jordan on an official visit, kissed the ground after he returned home early on Sunday, state TV showed.

The government said he would address parliament on Tuesday about the military victory.

The Tigers have answered earlier battlefield losses with suicide bombings in the capital, Colombo. Their widespread use of assassinations and suicide blasts has prompted the United States, European Union and India to class them as terrorists.

Prabhakaran began his fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, and it erupted into full-scale civil war in 1983.

Tamils complain of marginalisation at the hands of successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority, which came to power at independence in 1948 and took the favoured position the Tamils had enjoyed under the British colonial government.

By C. Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal C. Bryson Hull And Ranga Sirilal

Labels: hot trends 2009, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka, Tamil Tigers, trends newsletter, Vellupillai Prabhakaran

GENEVA - A single word from Barack Obama has put new life into the stale old disarmament talks in Geneva, where diplomats are hailing a "remarkable shift" by the Americans in favor of a treaty clamping down on production of the stuff of nuclear bombs.

The U.S. president's word - "verifiable" - has set the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament on a possible course toward negotiating a treaty after years of deadlock, most recently because the Bush administration argued that a pact couldn't be verified by inspections and monitoring.

In his speech April 5 in the Czech Republic, Obama detailed a packed agenda of goals in nuclear arms control, including slashing U.S. and Russian doomsday arsenals, adopting the treaty banning all nuclear tests, and negotiating a "new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons."

That call in Prague's Castle Square echoed here in the marble-clad halls of the Palais des Nations, where such a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) has been on the to-do list of the paralyzed disarmament conference since the 1990s, as one tool to stop the spread of atomic arms. Today's fear of nuclear terrorism only heightens such concerns.

"The U.S. readiness to negotiate an internationally verifiable FMCT can be considered a turning point," pronounced Foreign Minister Franco Frattini of Italy, whose Geneva diplomats coordinate the talks on a fissile-material treaty.

At the moment, only India and Pakistan - and possibly Israel and North Korea - are producing plutonium or highly enriched uranium for atomic weapons.

Four "traditional" nuclear powers recognized under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty - the United States, Russia, Britain and France - have declared moratoriums on production. The fifth, China, indicates unofficially it has stopped, too.

The world has a huge surplus of the exotic, manmade heavy metals known as fissile materials, whose chain-reacting atoms have been the core of nuclear bombs since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When mere kilograms (pounds) can make a bomb, as much as 2,500 metric tons of the stuff - up to 2,000 tons of highly enriched uranium and 500 tons of plutonium - sit in deployed or disused warheads and in more surprising places worldwide, says the International Panel on Fissile Materials, a non-governmental network of nuclear experts.

Weapons-grade uranium powers Russian icebreakers and U.S. and other missile submarines. Some 14,000 plutonium weapon cores sit in storage outside Amarillo, Texas. Hundreds of tons of bomb-grade uranium are stashed elsewhere in the U.S. and Russia awaiting "blenddown" to less lethal grades. More stuff sits in university research reactors worldwide. Japan's nuclear power establishment holds almost nine tons of plutonium separated from spent fuel.

Some material is under international oversight, but most is not, and questions are regularly raised about its security in so many far-flung places, especially when international terrorists are known to want to "go nuclear."

The expert panel estimates global fissile material stocks are enough for 160,000 bombs.
"It's a lot of stuff," said Princeton University's Frank von Hippel, panel co-chairman. "Nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation and prevention of nuclear terrorism are easy," he recalled once telling a U.N. meeting. "All we have to do is get rid of 2,000 tons of the stuff."

Concerns extend beyond terrorism. For one thing, future deals to reduce arsenals will look shakier if states have facilities and tons of material at hand to quickly rebuild bombs.

For another, a fissile-material treaty is seen as a way to bring India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, nuclear powers outside the Nonproliferation Treaty, into an arms-control regime. And other states, such as Iran, would be more deeply committed not to go nuclear if they join the treaty.

That's why Obama's word resounded so loudly in the springtime quiet of Geneva.

"I was very optimistic after the U.S. delegation said it would be flexible on verification," Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Russian secretary-general of the Conference on Disarmament, told The Associated Press.

The Bush administration, unenthusiastic about arms control in general, had objected that global inspections and monitoring systems for such a treaty would prove too costly and less than foolproof. The Americans also worried that intrusive verification might compromise military nuclear secrets.

Others, including the international expert panel, say verification techniques can be devised to allay such concerns. Much depends on the scope of a treaty - whether it would simply ban new production for weapons, or also whittle away at the overhang of fissile stockpiles.

"These are complicated questions to deal with, but as far as we are concerned they can all be part of the negotiating process," said Italian Ambassador Giovanni Manfredi.

Seeing the "remarkable shift in the U.S. position," as he called it, Manfredi gathered the Americans and other key players in closed-door talks that have now produced a proposed plan for kicking off negotiations.

"Everybody was in practical unanimity," he said. "I didn't hear any objection to having it as a verifiable treaty."

The full Geneva conference is now expected to decide on a negotiating mandate this year. Months and possibly years of arduous bargaining would follow, over issues ranging from how to ensure nuclear naval fuel isn't diverted to weapons, to the question of which countries must ratify a treaty before it enters into force.

The India-Pakistan standoff typifies the complexity of issues. With an arsenal smaller than archrival India's, Pakistan wants a treaty that reduces existing stocks worldwide, thereby shrinking the Indian edge. In New Delhi, however, "India regards the FMCT as a cessation of production of fissile material, but not covering stocks," Shyam Saran, India's special envoy on nuclear matters, told the AP.

A simple cutoff treaty "would be a problem for Pakistan," said Zamir Akram, Pakistani ambassador to the Geneva conference. But "we didn't want to be the ones to hold up the discussion." As long as stockpiles are subject to negotiation, he said, "we are ready."

How ready are the Americans?

The sudden opening here is sure to set off intense discussions among the Pentagon, the Energy Department's nuclear weapons agency, the State Department and others in Washington. Citing the sensitivity of the evolving situation, U.S. diplomats in Geneva wouldn't discuss treaty prospects on the record.

One disarmament veteran who did, Italy's former Geneva envoy Carlo Trezza, advised taking a long view.

"How ambitious can you be?" he asked in Rome. "I would look for an initial cutoff of production, and later a reduction of existing stocks."

Whatever the outcome, a seemingly endless stalemate has ended. "The possibility is there," observed conference chief Ordzhonikidze. "The will is there."

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

Labels: Conference on Disarmament, Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, hot trends 2009, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, nuclear weapons, trends newsletter

HONG KONG - Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 - a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop - died Friday morning in Hong Kong, his wife said. He was 67 years old.

Van Es died in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where he had lived for more than 35 years. He suffered a brain hemorrhage last week and never regained consciousness, his wife Annie said. Hospital officials declined to comment.

Slender, tough-talking and always ready with a quip, Van Es was considered by colleagues to be fearless and resourceful. He remained a towering figure after the war in journalism circles in Asia, including his adopted home in Hong Kong.

"Obviously he will be always remembered as one of the great witnesses of one of the great dramas in the second half of the 20th century," said Ernst Herb, president of Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondent Club.

"He really captured the spirit of foreign reporting. He was quite an inspiration," Herb said.

Van Es arrived in Hong Kong as a freelancer in 1967, joined the South China Morning Post as chief photographer, and got a chance the following year to go to Vietnam as a soundman for NBC News, which he took. After a brief stint, he joined The Associated Press photo staff in Saigon from 1969-72 and then covered the last three years of the war from 1972-75 for United Press International.

His photo of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette, taken 40 years ago this month, became the best-known picture from the May 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill.

His wife said in an e-mail to friends that he was proudest of the pictures he took during the Hamburger Hill battle - not the evacuation photo.

Van Es' shot of the helicopter escape from a Saigon rooftop on April 29, 1975 became a stunning metaphor for the desperate U.S. withdrawal and its overall policy failure in Vietnam.

As North Vietnamese forces neared the city, upwards of 1,000 Vietnamese joined American military and civilians fleeing the country, mostly by helicopters from the U.S. Embassy roof.

A few blocks distant, others climbed a ladder on the roof of an apartment building that housed CIA officials and families, hoping to escape aboard a helicopter owned by Air America, the CIA-run airline.

From his vantage point on a balcony at the UPI bureau several blocks away, Van Es recorded the scene with a 300-mm lens - the longest one he had.

It was clear, Van Es said later, that not all the approximately 30 people on the roof would be able to escape, and the UH-1 Huey took off overloaded with about a dozen.

The photo earned Van Es considerable fame, but in later years he told friends he spent a great deal of time explaining that it was not a photo of the embassy roof, as was widely assumed.

The image gained even greater iconic status after the musical "Miss Saigon" featured the final Americans evacuating from the city from the Embassy roof by helicopter. Van Es was not upset about the play's use of the image but wanted to be introduced as the shooter and went backstage several times to mix with the producer, cast and crew, his wife said.

"The producer told Hugh he wishes he had never taken that picture because it was extremely difficult to build the prop and to re-enact in a musical," his wife said.

Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, Hubert Van Es learned English from hanging out as a kid with soldiers during World War II.

He said he decided to become a photographer after going to a photo exhibit at a local museum when he was 13 years old and seeing the work of legendary war photographer Robert Capa.

After graduating from college, he started working as a photographer in 1959 with the Nederlands Foto Persbureau in Amsterdam, but Asia became his home.

When the Vietnam war ended in 1975, van Es returned to Hong Kong where he freelanced for major American and European newspapers and magazines and shot still photos for many Hollywood movies on locations across Asia.

Van Es, who served as president of the Hong Kong FCC in the early 1980s, was often found holding court at the club, his firsthand accounts and opinions sought out by reporters new and old.

"His presence there is really memorable," Herb said.

He covered the Moro rebellion in the Philippines and was among the horde of journalists who flew into Kabul to cover the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. CBS cameraman Derek Williams got through immigration but everyone else was stopped and held in the transit lounge.

"As they were then being shepherded back to the plane," Williams recalled, "Hugh saw an open door to his left, and just made a break for it with only his camera bag. He ran through the terminal and jumped into a taxi to try to get to the Intercontinental Hotel."

Afghan police arrested van Es, but the plane had taken off so they took him to the hotel. Williams said he and van Es spent three days in Kabul before being expelled. Van Es' still photos, for Time magazine, were the first to capture Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan.

The Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong held a minute's silence for van Es on Friday.

He and his wife, Annie, whom he met in Hong Kong, were married for 39 years. He is survived by Annie and a sister in Holland.

By RICHARD PYLE and JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writers

Labels: fall of Saigon, hot trends 2009, Hugh Van Es, photography, trends newsletter

HEPPNER, Ore. - On a spring day in 1953, two babies were born at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in the Eastern Oregon town of Heppner - DeeAnn Angell of Fossil and Kay Rene Reed of Condon. The girls would grow up, get married, have kids of their own and become grandparents.

Then, last summer, Kay Rene's brother, Bobby Reed, got a call from an 86-year-old woman who had known his mother and had also lived next door to the Angell family in Fossil.

"She said she had something she had to get off her chest," Bobby Reed said in an interview with the East Oregonian newspaper of Pendleton, which reported the story Sunday.

Bobby met the woman at the nursing home where she lives. The woman said Marjorie Angell insisted back in 1953 that she had been given the wrong baby after the nurses returned from bathing them. Her concerns, however, were brushed off.

Then the old lady showed Bobby an old photo.

"It looked like Kay Rene in about 7th or 8th grade," Bobby said.

But it was DeeAnn Angell's sister.

"Kay Rene is not a Reed," the woman insisted. "DeeAnn is a Reed."

Bobby, obviously stunned, didn't know what to do with the information. He didn't want to hurt anyone; he didn't want anything to change.

He finally decided to tell his two oldest sisters, and one of them told Kay Rene.

With both sets of parents dead, the Reed and Angell siblings compared notes and family stories, learning that rumors of a mix-up had been around for years. In early February, DeeAnn got a call from her sister, Juanita. "Do you remember those rumors of being switched at birth?" Juanita asked, and went on to provide the update.

"Does this mean I'm not invited to the family reunion?" DeeAnn joked.

Kay Rene, meanwhile, needed to learn the truth. Kay Rene, Bobby and their sister Dorothy met DeeAnn at a Kennewick, Wash., clinic last month. The doctor said Kay Rene's and DeeAnn's DNA would be compared with that of Bobby and Dorothy to determine the probability of a relation.

A week later, Kay Rene got the results at work. She went to her car to open the envelope in privacy. Her likely probability of being related to her brother and sister? Zero.

"I cried," she said. "I wanted to be a Reed - my life wasn't my life."

DeeAnn's report said she had 99.9 percent of being related to Bobby and Dorothy.

DeeAnn, who now lives in Richland, Wash., told the newspaper that the report only confirmed what she knew after meeting Kay Rene.

"After seeing Kay Rene, I went home and told my husband, I don't know why she's doing the DNA testing," she said. "I was shocked - she looked just like my sister's twin."

Pioneer Memorial Hospital offered to pay for counseling, but both women declined.

The two have become friends and celebrated their latest birthday together earlier this month. Recently, Kay Rene Qualls introduced DeeAnn Shafer to her work colleagues, calling her "my swister."

"I'm trying to move forward at look at the positive," DeeAnn said. "I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my life."

She paused. "You can't look back. It just drives you crazy."

Information from: East Oregonian

Labels: DeeAnn Angell, hot trends 2009, Kay Rene Reed, trends newsletter

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- The last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is getting a hand from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

The "Titanic" stars, along with director James Cameron, have contributed to a $30,000 fund for Millvina Dean, 98, Access Hollywood has confirmed.

The stars came forward after an appeal by photographer Don Mullan in the Sunday edition of the paper. Mullan had asked the stars and director of 1997 blockbuster to help Millvina, who has struggled with her nursing home bills.

Millvina was the ill-fated ship's youngest passenger - only nine weeks old upon being carried unto the Titanic from Southampton, England - and is now its last remaining survivor.

The photographer had been selling a limited edition shot, entitled "Still Surviving," of Millvina's hands signing an autograph in order to raise funds for her, and decided to reach out to the "Titanic" stars to pitch in. The photo is part of a new exhibition of his called "A Thousand Reasons for Living."

"I figured that if the edition sold out, it would secure Millvina for a full year. My plan, however, was to double the impact and thereby secure her for two years. I decided, therefore, at the opening of the exhibition, to publicly challenge James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, 20th Century Fox and Celine to match me dollar for dollar,'' Don told the Independent.

He is still waiting on a response from Celine, who won an Oscar for the film's theme song, "My Heart Will Go On," and the film's studio, 20th Century Fox.

Aces Hollywood

Labels: celine, hot trends 2009, kate winslet, leonardo dicaprio, Titanic

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - From its bamboo floors to its rooftop deck, Clayton Homes' new industrial-chic "i-house" is about as far removed from a mobile home as an iPod from a record player.

Architects at the country's largest manufactured home company embraced the basic rectangular form of what began as housing on wheels and gave it a postmodern turn with a distinctive v-shaped roofline, energy efficiency and luxury appointments.

Stylistically, the "i-house" might be more at home in the pages of a cutting-edge architectural magazine like Dwell - an inspirational source - than among the Cape Cods and ranchers in the suburbs.

The layout of the long main "core" house and a separate box-shaped guestroom-office "flex room" resemble the letter "i" and its dot. Yet Clayton CEO and President Kevin Clayton said "i-house" stands for more than its footprint.

With a nod to the iPod and iPhone, Clayton said, "We love what it represents. We are fans of Apple and all that they have done. But the 'I' stands for innovation, inspiration, intelligence and integration."

Clayton's "i-house" was conceived as a moderately priced "plug and play" dwelling for environmentally conscious homebuyers. It went on sale nationwide Saturday with its presentation at the annual shareholders' meeting of investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire-Hathaway Inc. in Omaha, Neb.

"This innovative 'green' home, featuring solar panels and numerous other energy-saving products, is truly a home of the future," Buffett wrote his shareholders. "Estimated costs for electricity and heating total only about $1 per day when the home is sited in an area like Omaha."

Maryville, Tenn.-based Clayton Homes, acquired by Berkshire-Hathaway in a $1.7 billion buyout in 2003, delivered 27,499 mobile or manufactured homes last year, a third of the industry total. Kevin Clayton thinks the "i-house" very quickly could represent more than 10 percent of its business.

"I think in 12 to 18 months it is possible," he told The Associated Press. "That is a lofty goal, but it is very possible. Retailers are saying they want the home on their lots tomorrow. I know the demand is there. How fast we capture it is really just determined by how affordable we can make it."

Clayton Homes plans to price the "i-house" at $100 to $130 a square foot, depending on amenities and add-ons, such as additional bedrooms. A stick-built house with similar features could range from $200 to $300 a square foot to start, said Chris Nicely, Clayton marketing vice president.

The key cost difference is from the savings Clayton achieves by building homes in volume in green standardized factories with very little waste. Clayton has four plants in Oregon, Tennessee, California and New Mexico geared up for "i-house" production.

A 1,000-square-foot prototype unveiled at a Clayton show in Knoxville a few months ago was priced at around $140,000. It came furnished, with a master bedroom, full bath, open kitchen and living room with Ikea cabinetry, two ground-level deck areas and a separate "flex room" with a second full bath and a second-story deck covered by a sail-like canopy.

"It does not look like your typical manufactured home," said Thayer Long with the Manufactured Housing Institute, a Washington-based group representing 370 manufactured and modular home-building companies.

And shattering those mobile home stereotypes is a good thing, he said. "I think the 'i-house' is just more proof that the industry is capable of delivering homes that are highly customizable at an affordable price."

The "i-house's" metal v-shaped roof - inspired by a gas-station awning - combines design with function. The roof provides a rain water catchment system for recycling, supports flush-mounted solar panels and vaults interior ceilings at each end to 10 1/2 feet for an added feeling of openness.

The Energy Star-rated design features heavy insulation, six-inch thick exterior walls, cement board and corrugated metal siding, energy efficient appliances, a tankless water heater, dual-flush toilets and lots of "low-e" glazed windows.

The company said the prototype at roughly 52,000 pounds may be the heaviest home it's ever built.

The final product will come in different exterior colors and will allow buyers to design online, adding another bedroom to the core house, a second bedroom to the flex room or rearranging the footprint to resemble an "L" instead of an "I."

"We thought of this a little like a kit of parts, where you have all these parts that can go together in different ways," said Andy Hutsell, one of the architects.

Susan Connolly, a 60-year-old accountant who works from her conventional Knoxville home, hopes to be one of the first buyers. She's seen the prototype and has been talking to the company.

"I have been interested in green construction and the environment in my own personal life," she said. "It is nice to have a group of people that have thought of everything. Where you don't have to shop around and go to different places ... to find the products you want."

"I think it is smart. It is fresh. It is kind of hip for a new generation of green-thinking homebuyers," said Stacey Epperson, president and CEO of Frontier Housing, a Morehead, Ky.-based regional nonprofit group that supplies site-built homes and manufactured housing, including Clayton products, to low- and moderate-income homebuyers.

"You know a lot of people don't see themselves living in manufactured (housing), but a lot of those people would see themselves living in an 'i-house.' I could live in an 'i-house,'" she said.

"Are we repositioning to go after a new market?" Nicely said. "I would think we are maintaining our value to our existing market and expanding the market to include other buyers that previously wouldn't have considered our housing product."

The company sees the "i-house" as a primary residence - three developers already have inquired about building mini-developments with them - that also could appeal to vacation home buyers.

Brian McKinley, president of Atlantis Homes of Smyrna, Del., a manufactured-home dealer that sells Clayton and other brands, said the "i-house" resembles high-end custom homes he sees along the Delaware-Maryland shore.

It represents a "new direction and an innovative application for what our industry can do," he said.

"I think there is a market," McKinley said. "The challenge is to find that market and then will they visit this home at one of our traditional factory-built home centers. I think they (Clayton) want to find that out, too."

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer

Labels: Clayton Homes, hot trends 2009, industrial-chic i-house, Knoxville

SEATTLE - Can tomatoes be taught to make antiviral drugs for people who eat them? Would zapping your skin with a laser make your vaccination work better? Could malaria-carrying mosquitoes be given a teensy head cold that would prevent them from sniffing out a human snack bar?

These are among 81 projects awarded $100,000 grants Monday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in a bid to support innovative, unconventional global health research.

The five-year health research grants are designed to encourage scientists to pursue bold ideas that could lead to breakthroughs, focusing on ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.

The foundation said grant recipient Eric Lam at Rutgers University in New Jersey is exploring tomatoes as a antiviral drug delivery system.

Researchers at the University of Exeter in Devon, England, will seek to build an inexpensive instrument to diagnose malaria by using magnets to detect the waste products of the malaria parasite in human blood.

Mei Wu at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School will be getting a grant to see if shooting a laser at a person's skin before administering a vaccine can enhance immune response.

And Thomas Baker at Pennsylvania State University wants to see if malaria-carrying mosquitoes can be infected with a fungus that would act like a cold, suppressing the sense of smell that they use to find people as sources of blood.

The foundation also announced plans Monday to spend $73 million over the next five years to help small farmers in impoverished countries. That program was outlined by foundation CEO Jeff Raikes at a water conference held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Raikes, a former Microsoft Corp. executive, said spending on agriculture in sub-Saharan African countries, where the foundation focuses much of its poverty-fighting efforts, accounts for less than 5 percent of their total government budgets. And from 1985 to 2005, spending as a percentage of government budgets decreased in donor countries, he said, including the U.S.

The agriculture grants include $40 million over five years to develop drought-tolerant corn, $13 million over four for more efficient irrigation, and $10 million over four years to help women develop education and training programs related to agriculture.

The largest philanthropic foundation in the world, the Gates Foundation gave out $2.8 billion last year. It has said payouts this year would grow by about 10 percent, less than previously planned, because of the troubled economy.

The foundation was started in 1994 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife and has the international goals of overcoming hunger, poverty and disease. In this country, its focus is on education, which receives about a quarter of its grant dollars.

By DONNA BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press Writer

Labels: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, global health research, hot trends 2009

Officials in Hamamatsu, an industrial town in central Japan, describe the plan to encourage Latin American guest workers, who are descendants of Japanese emigrants, to return home.

Rita Yamaoka, a mother of three who immigrated from Brazil, recently lost her factory job here. Now, Japan has made her an offer she might not be able to refuse.

The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.

"I feel immense stress. I’ve been crying very often," Mrs. Yamaoka, 38, said after a meeting where local officials detailed the offer in this industrial town in central Japan.

"I tell my husband that we should take the money and go back," she said, her eyes teary. "We can't afford to stay here much longer."

Japan's offer, extended to hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants, is part of a new drive to encourage them to leave this recession-racked country. So far, at least 100 workers and their families have agreed to leave, Japanese officials said.

But critics denounce the program as shortsighted, inhumane and a threat to what little progress Japan has made in opening its economy to foreign workers.

"It's a disgrace. It's cold-hearted," said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, an independent research organization.

"And Japan is kicking itself in the foot," he added. "We might be in a recession now, but it's clear it doesn't have a future without workers from overseas."

The program is limited to the country's Latin American guest workers, whose Japanese parents and grandparents emigrated to Brazil and neighboring countries a century ago to work on coffee plantations.

In 1990, Japan - facing a growing industrial labor shortage - started issuing thousands of special work visas to descendants of these emigrants. An estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians now live in Japan.

The guest workers quickly became the largest group of foreign blue-collar workers in an otherwise immigration-averse country, filling the so-called three-K jobs (kitsui, kitanai, kiken - hard, dirty and dangerous).

But the nation's manufacturing sector has slumped as demand for Japanese goods evaporated, pushing unemployment to a three-year high of 4.4 percent. Japan's exports plunged 45.6 percent in March from a year earlier, and industrial production is at its lowest level in 25 years.

New data from the Japanese trade ministry suggested manufacturing output could rise in March and April, as manufacturers start to ease production cuts. But the numbers could have more to do with inventories falling so low that they need to be replenished than with any increase in demand.

While Japan waits for that to happen, it has been keen to help foreign workers leave, which could ease pressure on domestic labor markets and the unemployment rolls.

"There won't be good employment opportunities for a while, so that's why we're suggesting that the Nikkei Brazilians go home," said Jiro Kawasaki, a former health minister and senior lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

"Nikkei" visas are special visas granted because of Japanese ancestry or association.

Mr. Kawasaki led the ruling party task force that devised the repatriation plan, part of a wider emergency strategy to combat rising unemployment.

Under the emergency program, introduced this month, the country's Brazilian and other Latin American guest workers are offered $3,000 toward air fare, plus $2,000 for each dependent - attractive lump sums for many immigrants here. Workers who leave have been told they can pocket any amount left over.

But those who travel home on Japan's dime will not be allowed to reapply for a work visa. Stripped of that status, most would find it all but impossible to return. They could come back on three-month tourist visas. Or, if they became doctors or bankers or held certain other positions, and had a company sponsor, they could apply for professional visas.

Spain, with a unemployment rate of 15.5 percent, has adopted a similar program, but immigrants are allowed to reclaim their residency and work visas after three years.

Japan is under pressure to allow returns. Officials have said they will consider such a modification, but have not committed to it.

"Naturally, we don't want those same people back in Japan after a couple of months," Mr. Kawasaki said. "Japanese taxpayers would ask, 'What kind of ridiculous policy is this?'"

The plan came as a shock to many, especially after the government introduced a number of measures in recent months to help jobless foreigners, including free Japanese-language courses, vocational training and job counseling. Guest workers are eligible for limited cash unemployment benefits, provided they have paid monthly premiums.

"It’s baffling," said Angelo Ishi, an associate professor in sociology at Musashi University in Tokyo. "The Japanese government has previously made it clear that they welcome Japanese-Brazilians, but this is an insult to the community."

It could also hurt Japan in the long run. The aging country faces an impending labor shortage. The population has been falling since 2005, and its working-age population could fall by a third by 2050. Though manufacturers have been laying off workers, sectors like farming and care for the elderly still face shortages.

But Mr. Kawasaki said the economic slump was a good opportunity to overhaul Japan's immigration policy as a whole.

"We should stop letting unskilled laborers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese," he said. "I do not think that Japan should ever become a multiethnic society."

He said the United States had been "a failure on the immigration front," and cited extreme income inequalities between rich Americans and poor immigrants.

At the packed town hall meeting in Hamamatsu, immigrants voiced disbelief that they would be barred from returning. Angry members of the audience converged on officials. Others walked out of the meeting room.

"Are you saying even our children will not be able to come back?" one man shouted.

"That is correct, they will not be able to come back," a local labor official, Masahiro Watai, answered calmly.

Claudio Nishimori, 30, said he was considering returning to Brazil because his shifts at a electronics parts factory were recently reduced. But he felt anxious about going back to a country he had left so long ago.

"I've lived in Japan for 13 years. I'm not sure what job I can find when I return to Brazil," he said. But his wife has been unemployed since being laid off last year and he can no longer afford to support his family.

Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband, Sergio, who settled here three years ago at the height of the export boom, are undecided. But they have both lost jobs at auto factories. Others have made up their minds to leave. About 1,000 of Hamamatsu’s Brazilian inhabitants left the city before the aid was even announced. The city’s Brazilian elementary school closed last month.

"They put up with us as long as they needed the labor," said Wellington Shibuya, who came six years ago and lost his job at a stove factory in October. "But now that the economy is bad, they throw us a bit of cash and say goodbye."

He recently applied for the government repatriation aid and is set to leave in June.

"We worked hard; we tried to fit in. Yet they're so quick to kick us out," he said. "I'm happy to leave a country like this."

by Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times

Labels: foreign workers, hot trends 2009, japan, kiken, kitanai, kitsui

For the third time in his career, Manny Pacquiao was involved in a fight which had a historical and linear world title belt on the line from Ring Magazine.

The first was in November 2003 when he beat Marco Antonio Barrera for the Ring Magazine featherweight world title. Last March 2008, when he beat Juan Manuel Maquez for the WBC superfeatherweight world title, he was also considered the world 130 lb. champion by the publication considered as Boxings bible because Pacquiao and Marquez were ranked by the Ring as the top two in the division.

Pacquiao took the Ring magazine junior welterweight title from Britain's Ricky The Hitman Hatton with an electrifying two round blitzkrieg that shocked most boxing pundits who were expecting a more competitive bout.

Hatton walked into a right hook in the first round, got up and fell down again after a lightning barrage but was saved by the bell. In the second, like all recent Pacman opponents, Hatton could not see Pacquiao's left coming for his jaw.

This places Pacquiao in a lofty place in boxing history. The likes of Henry Armstrong and Bob Fitzimmons won undisputed titles in three different weights during the time when there was still only one world sanctioning body.

Incredibly, Pacquiao has fought in four weight categories in a span of fifteen months and won world titles in three of them.

Aside from the Ring magazine belts, he has also won four world titles from the major sanctioning bodies - the WBC flyweight, IBF superbantamweight, WBC superfeatherweight and WBC lightweight in his fourteen year professional career. He is also the first Asian boxer to be ranked number one best fighter pound per pound in the world.

Ring magazine as a publication started in 1922 and started their own championship policy in 2002.

The junior welterweight division lineage started in 1925 with James Herring as its first champion. Roberto Cruz was the first Filipino to win the world junior welterweight championship when he knocked out Battling Torres of Mexico in a single round in a bout held in Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles in 1963 when the original WBA was the lone boxing sanctioning body.

The title was split when the WBC was created and Pedro Adigue of the Philippines became the first WBC jr. welterweight titlist in 1968 when he beat Adolf Pruitt of the U.S. by 15 round decision in a bout held at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.

The WBA continued to recognize Nicolino Locche as its champion then he lost to Peppermint Frazier in 1972. The titles remained split since as the IBF emerged during the mid-1980s. The WBO started in 1988 while the IBO, whose belt Hatton also held, started during the late eighties and evolved as an organization during the early 1990's.

Other Filipinos who won titles at 140 pounds include Morris East (WBA 1992).

Kotsya Tszyu finally unified the titles again when he beat Miguel Angel Gonzales for the WBC belt in 1999, Sharmba Mitchell for the WBA title in 2000 and Zab Judah for the IBF belt in 2001.

When Tzsyu lost to Ricky Hatton by 11th round TKO in 2005, the linear title was passed on to the British fighter. Titles are won and lost inside the ring after all thus Pacquiao can lay claim to the lineage. Pacquiao has now distinguished himself in six weight divisions. Not bad for a guy who started at light flyweight.

By Rene Bonsubre, Jr., PhilBoxing.com

Labels: hatton, hot trends 2009, manny pacquiao, pacman

MUMBAI (AFP) - India's Tata Motors on Monday launched the world's cheapest car, the Nano, hoping to revolutionise travel for millions and buck a slump in auto sales caused by the global economic crisis.

Company boss Ratan Tata said the no-frills vehicle, slated to cost just 100,000 rupees (2,000 dollars) for the basic model, will get India's middle-class urban population off motorcycles and into safer, affordable cars.

"I think we are at the gates of offering a new form of transport to the people of India and later, I hope, other markets elsewhere in the world," he said, describing the launch as a "milestone."

"The present economic situation makes it somewhat... more attractive to the buying public," he told reporters in Mumbai ahead of a glitzy official unveiling ceremony at 7:30 pm (1400 GMT).

Potential owners of the car -- which is just over three metres (10 feet) long and has a top speed of 105 kilometres (65 miles) per hour -- can apply between April 9 and 25, Tata managing director Ravi Kant said.

A ballot will then select 100,000 people to be the first to get the keys to the vehicle and deliveries will start in early July 2009, he added.

Even affluent Indians are eyeing up the Nano, which has a two-cylinder engine and four-speed manual transmission but no air conditioning, electric windows or power steering, although deluxe versions will be available.

"This is a value-for-money car," said Hasmukh Kakadia, 39, a Mumbai investment analyst.

Shares in Tata Motors on India's 30-share Sensex index jumped eight percent in early trade but finally closed 2.8 percent up on profit-taking.

Car dealers say they have been flooded with queries about the Nano, whose debut was delayed after violent protests over the acquisition of farmland to build the plant, forcing Tata Motors to shift from West Bengal state.

But the new plant in Gujarat in western India will not be ready until late this year or early 2010, Tata said, meaning production must come from existing factories, reducing output and increasing waiting times for deliveries.

Kant said 250,000 to 500,000 cars could be produced from the Gujarat plant from next year but admitted some customers may have to wait more than 12 months in the meantime to take possession of their Nano.

Tata, though, said pushing ahead with Monday's launch of the 20-billion-rupee project was the right decision.

The Nano's arrival comes at a tough time for India's top vehicle maker, hit by the economic slowdown at home and abroad as it tries to absorb the British luxury marques Jaguar and Land Rover that it bought last year for 2.3 billion dollars.

Tata is hoping the Nano will also be a hit overseas in the long term.

Earlier this month, the firm unveiled a European Nano sporting airbags and leather trim that will hit the market by 2011 but be costlier than in India due to the extra features.

A US version is also on the drawing board but requires redesigning to meet American safety standards.

Environmentalists, however, fear the Nano will accelerate congestion on India's already crowded, pot-holed roads and add to choking pollution.

"Every car that goes on the road is going to use road space. We're only adding to congestion," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's climate panel, which won the 2007 Nobel Prize.

Tata countered by saying that the Nano would be the least polluting car in India.

by Salil Panchal

Labels: hot trends 2009, nano, tata motors