REUTERS The state-run fuel retailers raised petrol prices by about 2.7 percent from Friday, a move that will help them cut revenue losses but adds pressure to stubbornly high inflation in Asia’s third-largest economy.
Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the biggest fuel retailer in the country, raised gasoline prices by 1.82 rupees a litre, its head of finance P.K. Goyal said.
R.K. Singh, chairman of Bharat Petroleum Corp, said his firm will raise gasoline prices by the same amount, while a source at Hindustan Petroleum Corp said they will also follow suit.
This will be the fourth increase in gasoline prices this year. The three state firms, who tend to move their prices in tandem, last raised gasoline prices by about 5 percent in September.
After the price increase, a litre of gasoline will cost 68.66 rupees ($1.4) in Delhi, while prices in other places vary depending on local taxes.
India’s headline inflation in September stood at 9.72 percent and has topped 9 percent for nearly a year, prompting the central bank to lift its policy lending rate last month for the 13th time since March 2010.
India granted autonomy to state-run firms last year to fix retail prices for gasoline, but the government continues to control prices of diesel, cooking gas and kerosene. The government last allowed a diesel price increase in June.
HPCL’s finance director said on Tuesday the company was considering a further increase in gasoline prices as it struggles to cut down on retailing losses and that they would need to increase the prices by 1.82 rupees a litre to cover losses.
(Additional reporting by Prashant Mehra in MUMBAI; Writing by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2011) ? Scientists at Warwick Medical School have uncovered the molecular process of how cells are by-passing the body’s inbuilt ‘health checkpoint’ with cells that carry unequal numbers of chromosomes that have a higher risk of developing cancer.
Studying simple yeast cells, scientists now understand the mechanism by which cells ensure their daughter cells receive the correct number of chromosomes.
Most cells in our bodies contain 23 pairs of chromosomes that encode our individual genetic identities. In healthy, dividing human cells, each of these chromosomes is duplicated and one copy passed to each of the two daughter cells. However, if this process is disturbed, daughter cells receive an unequal number of chromosomes, a state that is known to drive normal cells to become cancerous. In fact, aggressive human tumours are frequently composed of cells with an abnormal complement of chromosomes.
Professor Jonathan Millar explained: “This cell division process is monitored by the body’s surveillance system known as the ‘spindle checkpoint’, and that is only switched off once everything within the cell is set up correctly. Amazingly, all of the elements of this process are conserved from yeast to human cells.
“Therefore it is extremely likely that what we have found in yeast also happens in human cells. So by preventing this process happening with drugs, you could restrict the cell’s ability to develop into full blown cancer,” explained Professor Millar.
Currently, one of the most frequently used classes of anti-cancer drugs are taxanes, which target the mitotic apparatus in part by preventing proper silencing of the spindle checkpoint. However, this class of drug affects healthy and cancerous cells alike and can have debilitating side effects including permanent neurological damage and hair loss.
Professor Millar said: “Now that we have pinpointed the central elements of cell division, we are in a great position to design drugs that can be more selective and targeted about which cells they treat. But this is just the start — much more research has to be done before we can convert this into a commercial treatment for patients, but we are greatly encouraged that our research here at Warwick is leading the way in the search for more effective cancer treatments with fewer side effects.”
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John?C. Meadows, Lindsey?A. Shepperd, Vincent Vanoosthuyse, Theresa?C. Lancaster, Alicja?M. Sochaj, Graham?J. Buttrick, Kevin?G. Hardwick, Jonathan?B.A. Millar. Spindle Checkpoint Silencing Requires Association of PP1 to Both Spc7 and Kinesin-8 Motors. Developmental Cell, 2011; 20 (6): 739 DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2011.05.008
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Public release date: 3-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Sneiderman prs@jhu.edu 443-287-9960 Johns Hopkins University
Efforts to reduce the flow of fertilizers, animal waste and other pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay appear to be giving a boost to the bay’s health, a new study that analyzed 60 years of water quality data has concluded. The study, published in the November 2011 issue of Estuaries and Coasts, was conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
The team found that the size of mid- to late-summer oxygen-starved “dead zones,” where plants and water animals cannot live, leveled off in deep channels of the bay during the 1980s and has been declining ever since. The timing is key because in the 1980s, a concerted effort to cut nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was initiated through the multistate-federal Chesapeake Bay Program. The goal was to restore the water quality and health of the bay.
“I was really excited by these results because they point to improvement in the health of the Chesapeake Bay,” said lead author Rebecca R. Murphy, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins. “We now have evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference. I think that’s really significant.”
Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, agreed. “This study shows that our regional efforts to limit nutrient pollution may be producing results,” he said. “Continuing nutrient reduction remains critically important for achieving bay restoration goals.”
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the bay is about 200 miles long, has about roughly 4,480 square miles of surface area and supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and other animals.
But the bay’s health deteriorated during much of the 20th century, contributing to a drop in the Chesapeake’s fish and shellfish populations. Environmental experts blamed this largely on a surge of nutrients entering the bay from sources such as farm fertilizer, animal waste, water treatment discharge and atmospheric deposition. Heavy spring rains typically flush these chemicals, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, into the Susquehanna River and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake. There, the nutrients promote the prolific growth of algae.
When the algae die, their remains sink to the bottom of the bay, where they are consumed by bacteria. As they dine on algae, the bacteria utilize dissolved oxygen in the water. This leads to a condition called hypoxia, or depletion of oxygen. As this process continues through the spring and summer, the lack of oxygen turns vast stretches of the Chesapeake into dead zones. Hypoxia sometimes results in fish kills.
To find out whether these dead zones are expanding or diminishing, the Johns Hopkins and Maryland researchers retrieved and analyzed bay water quality records from the past 60 years. They determined that the size of the dead zone in mid-to-late summer has decreased steadily since the late 1980s and that the duration — how long the dead zone persists each summer — is closely linked each year to the amount of nutrients entering the bay.
That timeline coincides with the launch of state and federal efforts to reduce the flow of algae-feeding pollutants into the bay. For example, farmers were encouraged to plant natural barriers and take other steps to keep fertilizer out of waterways that feed the Chesapeake. Also, water treatment plants began to pull more pollutants from their discharge, and air pollution control measures curbed the movement of nitrogen from the atmosphere into the bay.
“By looking at existing data, we have been able to link decreasing hypoxia to a reduction in the nutrient load in the bay,” said study co-author Michael Kemp, an ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory. “The overall extent and duration of mid-to-late summer hypoxia are decreasing.”
Another part of the study looked at a trend that has troubled some bay watchers. In recent years, Chesapeake researchers have seen an early summer spike in dead zones. They feared that keeping more nutrients out of the bay was not improving its health. But the new study found that the early summer jump in dead zones was influenced by climate forces, not by the runoff of pollutants.
In a phenomenon called stratification, fresh water from the rivers entering the bay forms a layer on top of the more dense salt water, which comes from the ocean. The two layers don’t easily mix, so when air near the surface adds oxygen to the top layer, it doesn’t reach the deeper salt water. Without oxygen at these lower depths, marine animals cannot live, and a dead zone is formed.
“Rebecca discovered that the increase in these early summer dead zones is because of changes in climate forces like wind, sea levels and the salinity of the water. It was not because the efforts to keep pollutants out of the bay were ineffective,” said William P. Ball, a professor of environmental engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins. Ball, a co-author of the new study, is Murphy’s doctoral advisor.
“We believe,” Ball added, “that without those efforts to rein in the pollutants, the dead zone conditions in June and early July would have been even worse.”
###
The study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA. The research was undertaken as part of a larger five-year Chesapeake Bay Environmental Observatory project, funded through the Chesapeake Research Consortium, which involves seven institutions. Ball serves as lead principal investigator for this project.
Color digital photos of Rebecca Murphy and the Chesapeake Bay are available.
Related links:
JHU Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu/~dogee/
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: http://www.umces.edu/
Don Boesch’s Web page: http://www.umces.edu/people/president
Rebecca Murphy’s Web page: http://globalwater.jhu.edu/index.php/bio/rebecca_r._murphy/
William Ball’s Web page: http://folio.jhu.edu/faculty/William%20P._Ball
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 3-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Sneiderman prs@jhu.edu 443-287-9960 Johns Hopkins University
Efforts to reduce the flow of fertilizers, animal waste and other pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay appear to be giving a boost to the bay’s health, a new study that analyzed 60 years of water quality data has concluded. The study, published in the November 2011 issue of Estuaries and Coasts, was conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
The team found that the size of mid- to late-summer oxygen-starved “dead zones,” where plants and water animals cannot live, leveled off in deep channels of the bay during the 1980s and has been declining ever since. The timing is key because in the 1980s, a concerted effort to cut nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was initiated through the multistate-federal Chesapeake Bay Program. The goal was to restore the water quality and health of the bay.
“I was really excited by these results because they point to improvement in the health of the Chesapeake Bay,” said lead author Rebecca R. Murphy, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins. “We now have evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference. I think that’s really significant.”
Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, agreed. “This study shows that our regional efforts to limit nutrient pollution may be producing results,” he said. “Continuing nutrient reduction remains critically important for achieving bay restoration goals.”
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the bay is about 200 miles long, has about roughly 4,480 square miles of surface area and supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and other animals.
But the bay’s health deteriorated during much of the 20th century, contributing to a drop in the Chesapeake’s fish and shellfish populations. Environmental experts blamed this largely on a surge of nutrients entering the bay from sources such as farm fertilizer, animal waste, water treatment discharge and atmospheric deposition. Heavy spring rains typically flush these chemicals, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, into the Susquehanna River and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake. There, the nutrients promote the prolific growth of algae.
When the algae die, their remains sink to the bottom of the bay, where they are consumed by bacteria. As they dine on algae, the bacteria utilize dissolved oxygen in the water. This leads to a condition called hypoxia, or depletion of oxygen. As this process continues through the spring and summer, the lack of oxygen turns vast stretches of the Chesapeake into dead zones. Hypoxia sometimes results in fish kills.
To find out whether these dead zones are expanding or diminishing, the Johns Hopkins and Maryland researchers retrieved and analyzed bay water quality records from the past 60 years. They determined that the size of the dead zone in mid-to-late summer has decreased steadily since the late 1980s and that the duration — how long the dead zone persists each summer — is closely linked each year to the amount of nutrients entering the bay.
That timeline coincides with the launch of state and federal efforts to reduce the flow of algae-feeding pollutants into the bay. For example, farmers were encouraged to plant natural barriers and take other steps to keep fertilizer out of waterways that feed the Chesapeake. Also, water treatment plants began to pull more pollutants from their discharge, and air pollution control measures curbed the movement of nitrogen from the atmosphere into the bay.
“By looking at existing data, we have been able to link decreasing hypoxia to a reduction in the nutrient load in the bay,” said study co-author Michael Kemp, an ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory. “The overall extent and duration of mid-to-late summer hypoxia are decreasing.”
Another part of the study looked at a trend that has troubled some bay watchers. In recent years, Chesapeake researchers have seen an early summer spike in dead zones. They feared that keeping more nutrients out of the bay was not improving its health. But the new study found that the early summer jump in dead zones was influenced by climate forces, not by the runoff of pollutants.
In a phenomenon called stratification, fresh water from the rivers entering the bay forms a layer on top of the more dense salt water, which comes from the ocean. The two layers don’t easily mix, so when air near the surface adds oxygen to the top layer, it doesn’t reach the deeper salt water. Without oxygen at these lower depths, marine animals cannot live, and a dead zone is formed.
“Rebecca discovered that the increase in these early summer dead zones is because of changes in climate forces like wind, sea levels and the salinity of the water. It was not because the efforts to keep pollutants out of the bay were ineffective,” said William P. Ball, a professor of environmental engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins. Ball, a co-author of the new study, is Murphy’s doctoral advisor.
“We believe,” Ball added, “that without those efforts to rein in the pollutants, the dead zone conditions in June and early July would have been even worse.”
###
The study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA. The research was undertaken as part of a larger five-year Chesapeake Bay Environmental Observatory project, funded through the Chesapeake Research Consortium, which involves seven institutions. Ball serves as lead principal investigator for this project.
Color digital photos of Rebecca Murphy and the Chesapeake Bay are available.
Related links:
JHU Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu/~dogee/
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: http://www.umces.edu/
Don Boesch’s Web page: http://www.umces.edu/people/president
Rebecca Murphy’s Web page: http://globalwater.jhu.edu/index.php/bio/rebecca_r._murphy/
William Ball’s Web page: http://folio.jhu.edu/faculty/William%20P._Ball
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
ROME (Reuters) ? Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi repeated promises of economic reform on Tuesday as Italian bonds came under renewed attack in the euro zone crisis and the center-left opposition asked the president to name a new government.
With markets reeling from an unexpected decision by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to hold a referendum over austerity measures demanded by the European Union, Italian bonds were hit by a new wave of selling.
Yields on Italy’s 10 year BTP bonds rose to 6.3 percent, an unsustainable level just short of the point they reached in August when the European Central Bank stepped in to prop up the market by buying Italian debt.
The risk premium over benchmark German Bunds rose to more than 450 basis points, the widest spread since the creation of the euro more than a decade ago, while the bluechip FTSE MIB share index was down 6 percent with bank shares sold heavily.
As the turmoil on markets intensified, pressure grew for a solution to stop the emergency facing the euro zone’s third largest economy getting out of control, potentially overwhelming the entire bloc.
“If 10 year yields get to 7 percent, it becomes increasingly difficult for a country to sustain its debt,” said Pavan Wadhwa, global head of interest rate strategy at JP Morgan in London.
“Italy is now 50 to 75 basis points away from those levels and our view is that the ECB will be forced to pick up the pace of its bond purchases to avoid Italy being shut out of funding markets,” he said.
Berlusconi said he would outline reforms promised to Italy’s EU partners at Thursday’s meeting of leaders from the Group of 20 economic powers in Cannes, and promised the program would be implemented with the “determination, rigor and speed which the situation demands.”
However, Italy’s main center-left opposition party repeated calls for the 75 year-old premier to resign, saying it had asked President Giorgio Napolitano to appoint a new government immediately.
“We are pointing to the necessity — which has now become urgent, a matter of minutes — for a political change to face the storm,” Enrico Letta, one of the Democratic Party’s senior leadership team, said in a statement.
“Italy is unprepared to deal with the crisis,” he said.
CRISIS
As Athens faces the growing risk of a default which would destabilize the euro zone, Italy, the bloc’s third largest economy, is now at the center of the crisis and EU leaders are desperate for it avoid following Greece.
Too big to bail out if its borrowing costs get out of control, its mix of sluggish growth and a mountainous public debt equivalent to 120 percent of gross domestic product poses a threat to the survival of the single currency.
Last week, the Treasury was forced to pay a record yield of 6.06 percent at an auction of its 10 year bonds, a price which would add billions to already heavy interest payments over the coming years if it did not fall.
The ECB intervened again on Tuesday to buy Italian bonds but yields have continued to rise closer to 7 percent, a level which many analysts fear could trigger a so-called “buyers’ strike” where it becomes difficult to sell new bonds.
According to a report by ratings agency Fitch in July, an interest rate of 7 percent would lift interest payments on Italian government debt to 110 billion euros, or 6.1 percent of GDP by 2015, compared with 75 billion or 4.8 percent in 2011.
Berlusconi, mired in scandal and struggling to contain divisions in his center-right coalition, has promised new reforms including easier rules on redundancies, including for civil servants and an increase in the pension age.
Already there is talk that the package, which follows a series of austerity plans over the past three months, will have to be toughened up with cuts to tax breaks and welfare spending possible to ensure budget targets are met.
There has been widespread skepticism about the scope and timing of the measures but Berlusconi has resisted calls from groups as diverse as the opposition, unions, business leaders and the Catholic church to resign.
He has survived repeated confidence votes in parliament but there is growing speculation that the government will fall in the coming months, leading to elections in spring, the period when elections in Italy are traditionally held.
The opposition is unwilling to wait that long and wants Napolitano to appoint an interim government of national unity, lead by a respected outside figure such as former European commissioner Mario Monti.
Italy’s economy, one of the world’s slowest growing over the past decade, faces a growing risk of recession next year, its problems underlined by unemployment data on Monday which showed a third of its young people out of work.
(Additional reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Karolina Tagaris)
PCMag Editors have not yet tested the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011). We do, however, have an upcoming review of the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Late 2011) ($1,799.00 direct, not yet reviewed).
Design & Features
The Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011) updates the laptop with a newer 2.4GHz iteration of the Intel Core i5 processor and OS X Lion. The inclusion of OS X Lion adds several software enhancements to this already improved package. Despite the hardware and software upgrades, the MacBook Pro 13-inch is still available for $1,199.00 through Apple Stores, Apple.com, or other retailers.
The MacBook Pro line-up utilizes Apple’s signature unibody construction, providing a single-piece aluminum chassis that is both lightweight and strong. The 13-inch widescreen offers 1280 by 800 resolution, providing all the resolution needed for 720p video playback. The LED backlit display offers brighter colors, sharper details and deeper blacks thanks in part to the glass layer covering the display surface. The Apple MacBook Pro line-up also features one of the best chiclet-style keyboards in the industry, with black tile keys and an LED backlight. The accompanying glass-topped clickpad has consistently been one of the best on any laptop, and Lion’s improved gesture control only enhances this fact.
The MacBook Pro 13-inch also comes with OS X Lion, Apple’s current operating system, which offers improved gesture controls, automatic file-saving and resume, and iCloud backup, syncing, and remote access. Included with Lion are several applications, all highly rated programs in their own right. Upon starting the machine, you’ll have Apple’s Time Machine backup and recovery program, Safariweb-browser, iChat and FaceTime (which takes advantage of the MacBook’s built-in 1280-by-720 webcam), iTunes, and iLife, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand.
Last, but certainly not least, the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011) has been outfitted with several new internal components, namely faster 2.4GHz and 2.8GHz dual-core processors (two as yet unnamed members of the Intel Core i5 and Core i7 lines). Other components held over from the previous iteration include a spacious 500GB 5,400rpm spinning hard drive, 4GB of RAM, and a 63.5Wh internal battery providing an estimated battery-life of 7-hours.
More laptop reviews: ??? Asus K53E-RBR4 ??? HP Pavilion dm4-2180us (Office Depot) ??? HP Pavilion dv6-6173cl ??? HP Pavilion dv6-6123cl ??? HP Pavilion dv6-6163cl ?? more
NEW YORK ? Yoko Ono says John Lennon’s iconic “Imagine” wasn’t initially embraced by the public.
She says the song, released in 1971, “was not really accepted … it wasn’t `Wow!’”
Ono, who is listed as a co-producer on the track, says she remembers when Lennon created it, calling that time “really beautiful.”
Lennon’s 78-year-old widow made the comments at the launch of Hard Rock and WhyHunger’s “Imagine There’s No Hunger” campaign in New York City’s Times Square on Tuesday. The global campaign aims to raise money and awareness for childhood hunger and poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Imagine” at No. 3 on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
LOS ANGELES ? Anytime veteran Oscar producer Gilbert “Gil” Cates booked another superstar for the big show, he banged a giant golden gong outside his office.
Gong! Jamie Foxx. Gong! Jennifer Aniston. Gong! Sandra Bullock.
The gong ? like the Yiddish words and occasional expletives he used to pepper his speech ? hinted at the whimsy and charm Cates brought along with his leadership.
Cates died Monday at 77 after collapsing on the UCLA campus. The cause of death was not immediately known.
He produced more Academy Awards telecasts than anyone else ? a record 14 times. He last produced the Oscar telecast in 2008, when the show was almost sidelined by the Writers Guild strike.
Cates was comfortable at the helm, calling the Oscar gig “an absolutely great job.” He’d assemble his staff of loyal workers, many of whom had been with him for years, and go about the task he had done professionally for more than five decades: Putting on a show.
“You prepare, you get out there and something happens,” he said in an interview before his 13th Oscarcast.
Cates, is credited with revitalizing the ceremony by bringing in comedians such as Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock and Jon Stewart as hosts and establishing a template for the show that has been followed for years.
Martin tweeted his condolences Tuesday. “So sorry to hear Gil Cates has died,” the comedian wrote. “He helmed two Oscar shows I hosted. He was delightful, wise, canny and unperturbed. A great fellow.”
Academy President Tom Sherak said Cates was a colleague, friend and a “consummate professional.”
Cates “gave the academy and the world some of the most memorable moments in Oscar history,” Sherak said in a statement. “His passing is a tremendous loss to the entertainment industry, and our thoughts go out to his family.”
Though he was the boss ? a producer and director, founder of the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA, two-time president of the Directors Guild of America and member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ? Cates was an affable man with an easy smile. He never seemed rushed or stressed, despite the mountain of high-profile tasks on his plate at any given time.
In 2008, he prepared two Oscar shows (in case the writers’ strike kept famous folks away), ran the Geffen Playhouse in West Los Angeles (which he founded in 1994), and led the directors guild’s contract negotiations. Yet he still had plenty of time to have a relaxed lunchtime chat with a reporter and proudly show off the theater he helped create.
Cates produced and directed plays at the Geffen Playhouse, where he was regarded as “our founder, our leader and our heart.”
“Gil has always referred to the staff of the Geffen Playhouse as his second family,” board chairman Frank Mancuso said Tuesday. “And it is as a family that we mourn this tremendous loss. Gil built this theater and he will forever be at the center of it.”
Cates, the uncle of actress Phoebe Cates, loved the world of entertainment, even with its prima donna celebrities and penchant for excess. He brought a sense of fun to the Academy Awards, once sending an Oscar up in the Space Shuttle Columbia. When Steven Spielberg honored George Lucas during the show, a satellite camera showed the golden trophy floating in space’s zero gravity.
“That’s the excitement of doing the show,” Cates said. “It’s big enough that you can do those things.”
He was generous with his time and talent. He served as dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television from 1990 to 1998 and remained on the faculty as a professor.
Dean Teri Schwartz called Cates as a “beloved mentor, colleague and friend.”
“Today we mourn our great loss but also celebrate Gil’s extraordinary vision and countless contributions, not only to (the school) as founding dean and distinguished professor but to the entertainment and performing arts industries and the education of our students.” she said Tuesday.
When he was tested, he often voiced his thoughts in Yiddish, which removed any sting.
Once when prodded by a journalist for answers he was reluctant to provide, he playfully threw up his hands and pretended to end the interview, saying, “”Genuk! Enough already! It’s time for my nap”
When this reporter admitted she didn’t understand the Yiddish reference, he teased her for not being Jewish enough, then allowed the interview to continue for another 30 minutes.
Cates amassed dozens of credits in film, television and on and off Broadway. His film credits include 1970′s “I Never Sang for My Father,” which was nominated for three Academy Awards, and 1980′s “Oh God! Book II” with George Burns.
He belonged to the Directors Guild for more than 50 years, and president Taylor Hackford said Tuesday that Cates embodied the organization.
“Through his decades of service, he guided the Guild gently and charismatically and with great wisdom, and perhaps more importantly, he established what it meant to be a leader of this organization and the entertainment community,” Hackford said in a statement. “He was a fierce friend, an even fiercer negotiator and somebody you always hoped was on your side but respected even if he wasn’t.”
Ever the showman, Cates had a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, where flowers were placed Tuesday. Cates is survived by his wife, Dr. Judith Reichman, four children, two stepchildren and six grandchildren.
At his office at the Geffen Playhouse, his computer monitor was framed by Post-It notes inscribed with inspirational quotes.
“My favorite,” Cates once said, “is from Pablo Picasso, who said, `I am just an entertainer who understood his time.’”
SINGAPORE ? Oil prices fell to near $91 a barrel Wednesday in Asia amid investor concern Greek voters may reject a plan to contain the country’s debt crisis that was brokered by European leaders last week.
Benchmark crude for December delivery was down 70 cents at $91.49 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1 to settle at $92.19 in New York on Tuesday.
Brent crude was down 51 cents at $109.03 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.
Greek prime minister George Papandreou said earlier this week that he would call a referendum vote on the agreement to cut Greece’s debt level, provide the country’s fresh rescue loans and require bondholders to accept 50 percent losses.
Greek labor unions have protested fiscal austerity measures, and if voters reject the debt plan, it could spark a chaotic debt default and a financial crisis.
Papandreou also faces a vote of confidence in parliament Friday.
“The euro zone sovereign debt issue that provided a large burst of risk appetite last week has flipped to a major bearish factor this week as the Greek debt situation is suddenly again looking precarious,” energy consultant Ritterbusch and Associates said in a report.
Trading volumes of oil futures have been undermined this week by the bankruptcy of MF Global, a U.S. securities firm run by former Goldman Sachs chief Jon Corzine.
“When there is a lack of activity, attrition is normal,” energy trader and consultant Blue Ocean Brokerage said in a report. “We could continue to erase gains with little volume willing to support until the market is ready to trade again.”
In other Nymex trading, heating oil fell 2.2 cents to $3.02 per gallon and gasoline futures slid 0.8 cent at $2.62 per gallon. Natural gas dropped 0.9 cent at $3.77 per 1,000 cubic feet.
WASHINGTON ? Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are far worse today than when she left office, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday, and she partly blames the Obama administration’s tough line against Israeli settlement-building for spoiling chances for new talks.
“When you look at where we are now, we’re a long, long way back from where we were,” Rice said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Rice said she had hoped that the Obama administration could revive stalled peace talks quickly when it took office in 2009, but she said she was disappointed by the new administration’s handling of the delicate issue of new Israeli housing construction in the West Bank.
“I do think focusing on settlements in that particular way was a mistake,” Rice said. “The parties then were able to have a reason not to sit down.”
The gulf has only widened, Rice said, “and they’re running out of time.” She did not sound optimistic for a settlement soon, or even for new talks.
“When they’re not talking, they’re sliding backward,” Rice said.
A detailed account of negotiations she helped broker in 2008 is a highlight of Rice’s new memoir of her time in Washington. Published Tuesday, “No Higher Honor” concedes some missteps by the Bush administration on several fronts but strongly defends former President George W. Bush’s efforts toward Mideast peace, and Rice’s own.
“It’s one of the best deals I think you’re going to see,” Rice said of the deal on the table during the waning months of the Bush administration. The deal died when the Palestinians rejected it weeks before Bush left office, she wrote, but she suggested her successors might have been able to use the momentum from those negotiations to keep talks alive.
Rice said she left a record of the intensive negotiations she led in 2008 for the new Obama administration in hopes that a new team of negotiators could pick up where the Israelis and Palestinians had left off.
The U.S. long has opposed new settlements but largely looked the other way at some homebuilding, such as expansion of selected neighborhoods. Rice herself had called settlement building unhelpful and was infuriated when Israel appeared to undercut her by announcing new building licenses hard on the heels of some of her diplomatic visits.
But new Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, took a much harder line in the spring of 2009, demanding a full freeze on any building.
Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements,” including the expansion of existing developments, Clinton said in May of that year.
With Israelis suspicious of Obama even before he assumed office, the settlement position further unnerved them. The Palestinians, initially encouraged, became disillusioned when the U.S. was unable to persuade Israel to freeze settlement construction.
Rice’s account confirms then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s claim that he had laid out a comprehensive proposal for peace during secret meetings with Rice and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Rice said Abbas ultimately rejected the proposal, for which she said she does not blame him. The Palestinians deny that Abbas did so.
In the book, Rice recounts a private dinner with Olmert in May 2008 when she said he presented the plan.
It contained ways to address the most difficult issues preventing Israel and the Palestinians from agreeing on terms for a separate Palestinian state, she wrote. Olmert proposed a system for shared jurisdiction of Jerusalem and return of a limited number of Palestinians who left their homes in what is now Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, Rice wrote.
Olmert also would end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and hand over about 94 percent of the territory to the Palestinians for the bulk of their state, she wrote.
“Concentrate, concentrate,” Rice describes herself as thinking as Olmert spoke. “This is unbelievable.”
Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) reported its results for the third quarter. Charter Communications offers residential and commercial customers traditional cable video programming (basic and digital video), high-speed Internet services, and telephone services, as well as advanced broadband services.
Charter Communications Earnings Cheat Sheet for the Third Quarter
Results: Loss narrowed to $85 million (loss of 79 cents per diluted share) from $95 million (loss of 84 cents per share) in the same quarter a year earlier.
Revenue: Rose 2.3% to $1.81 billion from the year earlier quarter.
Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: CHTR was about in line with expectations as the mean analyst estimate was breaking even. Analysts were expecting revenue of $1.8 billion.
Quoting Management: ?Charter delivered solid results in the third quarter, and I believe we have the right building blocks in place for long-term success. We are seeing the early benefits of delivering on our strategic priorities as evidenced by growth in Internet, acceleration in our commercial business and an improved customer relationship trend,? said Mike Lovett, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Key Stats:
The company has now missed analyst estimates for the last four quarters. It fell short by 90 cents in the second quarter, by 81 cents in the first quarter, and by $1.03 in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year.
Revenue has risen the past four quarters. Revenue increased 1.1% to $1.79 billion in the second quarter. The figure rose 2% in the first quarter from the year earlier and climbed 4.3% in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year from the year-ago quarter.
Margins rose in the second quarter after falling the quarter before. Gross margin rose 0.8 percentage point to 56.2% from the quarter earlier quarter. In the first quarter, the figure rose 0.5 percentage point to 56.2% from the year earlier quarter.
Looking Forward: For the next quarter, analysts are growing pessimistic about the company?s expected results. The average estimate for the fourth quarter is 28 cents per share, dropping from 50 cents a month ago. For the fiscal year, the average estimate has moved from a loss of 15 cents a share to a loss of $1.75 over the last ninety days.
Competitors to Watch: Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Liberty Global Inc. (NASDAQ:LBTYA), Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Mediacom Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:MCCC), Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE:TWC), Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE:CVC), Shaw Communications Inc. (NYSE:SJR), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO), DirecTV (NASDAQ:DTV) and DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH).
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WASHINGTON ? House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that it’s going to be very difficult for a deficit “supercommittee” to achieve success but that he’s continuing to push the bipartisan panel to meet its goal. “It’s my commitment to try to get to an outcome,” Boehner told reporters. He made his comments the day after [...]
Two days after Occupy Wall Street lost its tent compound at Zuccotti Park, protesters held a national ‘day of action.’ A mostly peaceful day followed a failed morning effort to delay NYSE trading. Thousands of Occupy protesters took to the streets of cities across the United States Thursday, and hundreds were arrested after scuffles with [...]
LAREDO, Texas ? The first Mexican carrier to deliver goods in the U.S. interior under a long-delayed free-trade provision is scheduled to enter the country at Laredo, Texas, shortly after midday Friday. The truck owned by Nuevo Leon, Mexico-based Transportes Olympic will make a delivery to the Dallas suburb of Garland. That’s despite continuing opposition [...]
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Public release date: 3-Nov-2011
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