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2012 countdown clock ready to go

Celebrations in Trafalgar Square in 2005

Trafalgar Square was at the centre of celebrations when London won the bid in 2005

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A giant clock counting down the days until the start of the London Olympics is to be unveiled in Trafalgar Square, hours before tickets go on sale.

From midnight, 6.6 million tickets for the Olympics become available, 500 days before the Games begin.

People have a six-week window to apply for tickets on the London 2012 website.

The 6.5m (21ft) clock will be started at 1900 GMT in the square, the scene of great celebrations in 2005 when London won the bid to host the Games.

Clad in brushed stainless steel panelling, it will stand near steps leading to the North Terrace.

It is two-sided with one side counting down to the Olympics and the other to the Paralympics.

People have until Tuesday 26 April to apply for tickets. Oversubscribed events will go to a ballot.

Buying ticketsTicket application process opens on 15 MarchSystem is not first-come-first-served. A ballot will operate for over-subscribed eventsApplications close on 26 AprilPeople can apply online or using a paper form from Lloyds TSB, the Bank of Scotland in Scotland and libraries in NITickets for 649 sport sessions go on sale across 39 Olympic disciplinesPrices for many sports start at £20Some seats at the coveted 100m final cost £725Events like the marathon and cycling road race are free along most of the route

Q&A: London 2012 tickets

James Pearce: Be wary of pitfalls

Several events will be free, such as the marathon, and 2.5 million tickets will be available for £20 and under. Others start at between £30 and £50.

Children under 17 will be able to “pay-your-age” to see some of the early heats, while the over-60s can watch for £16.

In total, there are 8.8 million tickets but some 1.2 million are reserved for various government bodies, the London mayor, sponsors and athletes.

Games organisers have faced calls from the London Assembly for a record of all tickets reserved for officials, politicians and VIPs to be published.

A further two million tickets for the Paralympic Games go on sale on 9 September.

There has been some criticism of the ticket-buying process as all online tickets can be paid for only with a Visa card.

Olympics organisers Locog say this is in recognition of Visa’s sponsorship of the Games, but critics say that is unfair.

Visa Europe has said people who do not have a Visa debit or credit card and do not wish to get one can obtain a Visa prepaid card to purchase Olympic tickets.

Sport, news and more 2012 informationBBC London 2012

Concerns have also been raised about payments made on Visa debit cards.

Locog says payment will be taken between 10 May and 10 June and people will be told by 24 June which events they have tickets for.

This could mean money going out of bank accounts before the buyer knows which tickets they are getting.

Efforts are being stepped up to curb ticket touting, with the government planning to raise the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £20,000.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Deadly attack on Afghan recruits

File picture of a suicide attack in Kunduz province in February 2011

Afghan insurgents are increasingly targeting civilians in their attacks

At least 33 people have been killed in an apparent suicide attack on an army recruitment centre in northern Afghanistan, local officials have said.

More than 40 people were also reported to have been injured in the attack in the city of Kunduz.

On Friday, the Kunduz province police chief was killed by a suicide bomber.

Over the last few years, the once peaceful province has become increasingly unstable as the Taliban have infiltrated the area.

People were waiting in the recruitment centre when the attack took place, a senior official told the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary.

Those killed included civilians as well as those who had come to enrol, as well as officers in the Afghan army, he said.

A doctor in a hospital in Kunduz has told the BBC he had received 33 dead bodies, and that some of the injured were in a very serious condition.

This attack comes four days after the provincial police chief of Kunduz, Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili, was killed by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle in the city along with four other people. That attack was claimed by the Taliban.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Defendant’s DNA ‘partial match’

The court was told Mr Davies’s DNA was found on Ffion Wyn Roberts’ bag

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A forensic expert has told a murder trial that DNA found on the scarf used to strangle Ffion Wyn Roberts partially matched that of the defendant.

The body of Ms Roberts, 22, was found in a drainage ditch in Porthmadog, Gwynedd, in April last year.

The jury at Caernarfon Crown Court was told the results of DNA tests carried out on her clothing and handbag.

Iestyn Davies, 54, also from Porthmadog, denies murder. The case continues.

Susan Ann Cherry, who is based at the Home Office forensic science lab, said Mr Davies’s DNA was found on the bottom of Ms Roberts’ bag.

She said it was a one-in-a-billion chance it came from someone else.

Tests on the scarf and the victim’s torn vest top gave partial matches, the court heard.

The matches were minor, she said, but “what I would expect if Iestyn Davies had handled them”.

The jury was told by a Home Office pathologist last week that Ms Roberts, a care worker, had 27 different injuries.

The pathologist said it seemed she had been punched, her head had been hit so hard she may have lost consciousness, and she had been strangled with her own scarf.

He said it also seemed Ms Roberts was dragged to the drainage ditch but was still alive when she entered the water where she drowned.

The case is continuing.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Anonymous publishes bank e-mails

Anonymous has attacked companies that withdrew their services from Wikileaks

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Online activist group Anonymous has released a cache of e-mails which it claims show impropriety at Bank of America.

The leak, which includes correspondence between staff at BoA subsidiary Balboa Insurance, details plans to delete sensitive documents.

It does not explain why the files were to be removed or how this supports Anonymous’ accusation of criminality.

Bank of America has denied wrongdoing and called the claims “extravagant”.

The company has been subject of rumours that its secrets would be leaked online for months.

But it was expected that Wikileaks would publish the secret documents, not a site associated with Anonymous.

In late 2010, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said he planned to release documents in early 2011, which could bring down a well known bank.

Previously, he had claimed to be in possession of a hard drive containing internal documents from a senior Bank of America official.

The Wikileaks release has yet to appear, and it is unclear if those files are the same ones obtained by Anonymous.

One of the documents appears to show an employee of Bilboa Insurance asking a colleague to deleted certain loan identifying numbers from their computer system.

No information is given about the reason for the deletion, or whether it was ultimately carried out.

An Anonymous member, posting updates on Twitter under the name OperationLeakS said the e-mails form the first part of a series of planned leaks that will prove Bank of America engaged in improper mortgage foreclosure practices.

What is Anonymous?

‘Anonymous’ describes itself as an ‘internet gathering’. The term is used to describe a collective of people who come together online, commonly to stage a protest.

The groups vary in size and make-up depending on the cause. Members often identify themselves in web videos by wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the book and film V for Vendetta.

Its protests often take the form of disrupting websites and services.

The name Anonymous comes from a series of websites frequented by members, such as the anarchic image board 4Chan.

These sites allow users to post without having to register or provide a name. As a result, their comments are tagged “Anonymous”.

In the past, members have staged high-profile protests against the Church of Scientology and plans by the Australian government to filter the internet content.

Many Anonymous protests tackle issues of free speech and preserving the openness of the net.

But BoA said the clerical and administration documents do not relate to foreclosures.

“We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue,” a BoA spokesman said.

The e-mails were initially posted online online at http://bankofamericasuck.com.

That website has only been available intermittently, having been overwhelmed by requests.

Subsequently, sites mirroring the content have sprung up and the documents have also been released through peer-to-peer networks.

However, some of the torrents, such as the one hosted on the Pirate Bay, have been removed.

Anonymous members have engaged in a campaign of action against websites and companies that assisted the United States government in its attempt to isolate Wikileaks.

It has previously posted internal e-mails from computer security company HBGary and launched denial of service attacks against PayPal and Visa.

The leaked HBGary e-mails proved highly damaging to the firm, containing details of its secret work with several high-profile clients.

Bank of America stopped handling payments for Wikileaks, after it published leaked US embassy cables.

Firms are increasingly concerned about the prospect of disgruntled staff taking caches of sensitive e-mails with them when they leave, said Rami Habal, of security firm Proofpoint.

“You can’t do anything about people copying the content,” he said.

But firms can put measures in place, such as revoking encryption keys, which means stolen e-mails become unreadable, he added.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Southern Cross shares plunge 60%

Southern Cross Healthcare GroupLast Updated at 14 Mar 2011, 12:13 ET *Chart shows local time

Southern Cross Healthcare Group intraday chart

price change %5.97 p–

-9.78

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-62.10

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Shares in Southern Cross Healthcare, the UK’s biggest care homes operator, have plunged 60% on news that financial problems are mounting.

The firm has appointed KPMG to look at restructuring options after cuts in local authority spending worsened its trading outlook.

Southern provides care to more than 31,000 people, with the bulk of funding coming from the NHS and councils.

The company said that budget cuts meant its rent burden was “unsustainable”.

Southern said it was in discussions with landlords about a restructuring, and also warned it was in danger of defaulting on its debts.

“The company’s lenders are aware of an impending banking covenant breach but remain fully supportive of the actions which the company is taking to address its problems,” said Southern in a statement.

The company also confirmed that it was no longer in discussions with potential buyers.

“The board considers that none of these proposals are likely to result in a meaningful offer being made in the foreseeable future and has decided not to pursue them further,” it said.

Shares in Southern, which reached 606 pence in 2007, were trading at 6.3p at midday.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Governor stabbed in Yemen unrest

Anti-government protesters in Sanaa, 14 March

The protesters remain camped out near Sanaa University in the capital

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The governor of Yemen’s Marib province has been attacked and wounded during an anti-government protest outside the local government headquarters.

Ahmed Naji al-Zaidi was stabbed in the neck by armed men who attacked his convoy, BBC Arabic reports. He is being treated in the capital Sanaa.

Weeks of protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule have left about 30 people dead.

Six people were killed in clashes with riot police in Sanaa on Saturday.

During the weekend clashes, reports said hundreds of police moved in, using tear gas, water cannons and live bullets in Tahrir Square – where protesters have been camping out for weeks.

The unrest is affecting several parts of the country away from the capital.

In the port city of Aden, protesters set fire to a police station on Monday. Clashes were also reported in the southern provinces of Hadramawt, Taiz and Hudaydah, and in Jawf in the north-east, the AP news agency reports.

Middle East unrest: Yemen

President Ali Abdullah Saleh in power since 1978Population 24.3m; land area 536,869 sq kmThe population has a median age of 17.9, and a literacy rate of 61%Youth unemployment is 15%Gross national income per head is $1,060 (World Bank 2009)Protests: Country-by-country

Last week, the US urged opposition groups to take up President Saleh’s call for talks.

But the protesters – fed up with corruption, poverty and a lack of political freedom – have rejected Mr Saleh’s offers to form a national unity government and demanded that he step down.

On Thursday, the Yemeni leader announced plans to change the constitution to move to a parliamentary system. In a live televised address, he said a referendum would be held this year on measures including a new election law. He has also promised not to seek re-election after his current term ends in 2013.

The beleaguered president on Sunday sacked the government minister in charge of leading talks with opposition forces, Hamoud al-Hattar, and replaced him with another cabinet minister.

Yemen is one of a number of countries in the North African and Middle East region that have seen increasing unrest since the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia were ousted in popular revolts earlier this year.

The president also faces a separatist movement in the south, a branch of al-Qaeda, and a periodic conflict with Shia tribes in the north.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Miliband to Clegg: Lie low on AV

Ed Miliband said the Yes to AV campaign stood a better chance of winning without Nick Clegg

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Labour leader Ed Miliband has said he will not share a platform with Nick Clegg, even though they are on the same side in the debate over voting reform.

He said the best way for the deputy prime minister to help the Yes to AV campaign was to “lie low for a bit”.

Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband both back changing Westminster elections from the first-past-the-post to the “alternative vote” (AV) method.

A nationwide referendum on the plan takes place on 5 May.

A move to AV, which asks voters to rank candidates in order of preference, is opposed by Prime Minister David Cameron and most Conservatives.

At a Labour press conference, Mr Miliband said: “My position on this is clear. I want us to win the referendum on the alternative vote…

THE REFERENDUM CHOICE

At the moment MPs are elected by the first-past-the-post system, where the candidate getting the most votes in a constituency is elected.

On 5 May all registered UK voters will be able to vote Yes or No on whether to change the way MPs are elected to the Alternative Vote system.

Under the Alternative Vote system, voters rank candidates in their constituency in order of preference.

Anyone getting more than 50% of first-preference votes is elected.

If no-one gets 50% of votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their backers’ second choices allocated to those remaining.

This process continues until one candidate has at least 50% of all votes in that round.

Referendum views: Yes campaign Referendum views: No campaign

“I will share a platform with anybody who will help us to win.”

He added: “What do the people who are running the No to AV campaign want? They want Nick Clegg [to appear]… the best thing Nick Clegg can do on this, frankly, if he wants us to win, is lie low for a bit.”

Mr Miliband also said: “I’m not going to share a platform with Nick Clegg.”

The AV referendum was a key part of the coalition deal between the Conservatives, who want to keep the current system, and Mr Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, who want to change it.

Voters will decide whether to keep first-past-the-post, where voters put a cross next to their chosen candidate, or switch to AV, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

No to AV launched a new part of its campaign on Friday, aimed at supporters of proportional representation.

“No to AV, Yes to PR”, is backed by former SDP leader Lord Owen. It aims to attract people “disaffected by the decision of the long-standing supporters of proportional representation – like the Liberal Democrats… to back the Yes to AV campaign”.

Lord Owen said he was supporting a “no” vote in the referendum because AV “can produce wildly disproportionate results, and the second preferences of the least favoured candidate carry the least weight”.

The AV vote is the first UK-wide referendum since 1975.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Takeaway jobs ban for immigrants

People in a busy Oxford Street in central London

The government says it wants to reduce the need for businesses to take on migrant workers

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Migrants from outside the European Economic Area will no longer be allowed to work in the UK as chefs in takeaway restaurants, the government has said.

The ruling comes after the Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) was asked to review the country’s skill shortages.

A similar ban will apply to workers such as hairdressers, beauty salon managers and estate agents from April.

The number of skilled migrants not from the European Economic Area is being capped annually at 21,700.

The Home Office has already announced that only graduate-level non-European Economic Area (EEA) workers will be allowed to apply to come to the UK.

Now it has reduced the list of jobs where there is a skills shortage in the UK to eight occupations, including senior care workers, sheep shearers and pipe welders, following advice from the the UK Border Agency’s Mac.

Chefs will need to have graduate-level qualifications, with a minimum of five years’ experience in an equivalent role, and need to earn at least of £28,260 per year after their accommodation and food.

Those from outside the EEA wanting to work in fast food outlets and takeaways will not be allowed in to the UK at all.

Immigration Minister Damian Green: “These changes will allow firms to bring in people with necessary skills without migrants becoming the first resort to fill a wide range of available jobs.

“This government is also determined to get people back to work and provide business with the skills they need from the British workforce – reducing the need for migrants at the same time as we reduce their number.”

The government wants to cut net migration from about 200,000 a year to tens of thousands by 2015.

The EEA comprises countries in the European Union and European Free Trade Association.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

No 10 rules out NHS plan U-turn

Lib Dem activists say the NHS plans are being imposed by the Conservatives

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Downing Street has ruled out “significant changes” to government NHS reforms following their rejection by Liberal Democrat members.

Delegates at the party’s spring conference voted at the weekend not to support a “damaging and unjustified” shake-up of health services in England.

Plans include axing primary care trusts and strategic health authorities.

No 10 said it would not make large changes to the proposals, but added they could be amended by Parliament.

Under the coalition government’s Health Bill GPs would be given more responsibility for spending their budgets, with hospitals freed from central control and an independent board overseeing services.

The cost of the programme is predicted to be £1.4bn, with ministers saying this will more than be made up for in longer-term savings created by the removal of tiers of management.

Lib Dem activists are angry about what they see as Conservative plans that were not included in the coalition agreement.

At the party’s conference in Sheffield, delegates voted to end “top-down” reorganisation of the NHS and impose limits to opening up services to more private competition.

In response, the Lib Dem leader, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, promised that “reform” would not mean “privatisation”.

He claimed the changes the already made to the Health Bill went “with the grain” of activists’ concerns, as they would increase accountability and transparency.

There had been suggestions in some on Monday’s newspapers that the government plans faced a “radical overhaul”.

But asked about those reports, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “There are not about to be significant changes to the policy.”

He added that MPs and peers would have the chance to debate and, if necessary, amend the Health Bill.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Numbers addiction

A timer showing the 500 days to go until the 2012 Olympics is being unveiled in London, but why are these countdowns so beguiling, asks John Morton, writer of comedy Twenty Twelve.

Remember Ken Livingstone’s “live” running unemployment total on the old GLC building in London? Or there’s the US National Debt Clock in Times Square. Or the live stock market prices and world financial indices snaking their way around the walls of the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf.

There seems to be something hypnotic about watching history unfolding digitally in real time before our eyes.

Find out more…

Twenty Twelve, starring Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes, is on BBC Four on Monday 14 March, 2200 GMT

Catch up via iPlayer after broadcast

But it’s the clocks that count downwards towards a fixed point that really seem to have us in their thrall. How else could Countdown’s 30-second analogue clock face with its plinky plonky musical accompaniment have dominated afternoon television for nearly 30 years as the procession of presenters, contestants, and fragrant letter-wranglers have come and gone beneath it.

And then there was the Millennium. Remember the mounting fear, presented to us as a kind of world-wide ticking bomb, that when the digits on our computer clocks finally flicked over to 2,000 all our planes would suddenly fall out of the sky?

And remember all those public Millennium clocks counting us down second by second through the final years, months, and days to the zero hour? The French had theirs ticking away outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The Queen unveiled London’s at Greenwich with a thousand days to go.

London 2012 – Begin your journey here

Sport, news and more 2012 informationBBC London 2012

In Dublin they had the brilliant idea of installing theirs underwater so that the time on its green-illuminated face would shine up through the waters of the Liffey. Needless to say it let in water, failed to tell the time correctly, and quickly earned its nickname of “The Time in the Slime”.

Where are they all now?

There’s something both fascinating and unsettling going on here, and perhaps it’s not so much to do with the clocks as with time itself, or the way we perceive it. Maybe there’s something about the certainty, the unavoidabiltiy of that journey down towards zero that taps into something buried deep within the collective psyche.

Parachutists call it ground rush. Apparently while you’re falling through the sky and before you open your parachute the perception is that you’re dropping towards the ground at a perfectly manageable speed. Yes it’s exhilarating, but there’s plenty of time to look around you and take in the wonder of it all.

But that’s an illusion caused by the lack of visual cues. It’s only when you drop below a certain height and suddenly become aware that the ground is rushing up to meet you that you realise how fast you’ve been falling all along.

Twenty Twelve is a comic take on preparations

More sobering still, maybe there’s an analogy here for the way we experience time over the course of a human life.

For most of our lives we drift along on the assumption that there’s always going to be time left ahead of us to develop, modify, and realise our many and varied dreams in that portion of it, still unused, called the future.

And we’re happy enough with this arrangement right up to the point where we become aware that we’ve run out of future. What happened? Of course the ground has been rushing up towards us all along, we just didn’t realise how fast we’d been falling.

Maybe it goes some way to explaining the lure of the countdown clock. A thousand days to go – still a long way away. Five hundred days – still pretty much still talking about the future. A hundred days – anybody know how many months that is? Fifty days – wait a minute, hang on, that’s less eight weeks.

Suddenly we’re not going to make this. What happened to all the time?

So perhaps as Olympics fans watch the 500 days to go clock, they should have a quick glance at their to-do list.

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All Comments (9)

9. Martin

It’s a very profound moment when you recognise the lifestyle change that is going from being an excited kid who counts up to when you start counting down.

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8. Chris

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.

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7. Jeremy Preece

I have to say that the older I get the more aware I am of my mortality. Then the moredepressing I find it to see part of my life being counted down.I also think that counting down to a specific moment will end up as counting down to an anti-climax. Whatever you count down to, you will reach that point, and then, well, so what? I say – live to the full in the moment, you will never get it back!

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6. Shiny

@2 Pendlemac: My mum told me about the millenium bug the other day. Suffice to say I “lol’d”.Time was invented so we wouldn’t, well, lose track of it. It helps us keep time and makes sure we’re not too late too early, but then again we have inner clocks that do that for us (most of the time)I’m not counting down to the Olympics. I’m counting down to my birthday this year. Much more rewarding

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5. Joe

Re Pendlemac.Who says the ‘Real Millenium’ was 01/Jan/01? Exactly two thousand years since what? Bearing mind calendar changes, and the uncertainty of the date and year of the event, can we say that 01/01/01 is any more the 2000th anniversary than 01/01/00? The first digit changeover had far more relevance to everyday life so that’s what was celebrated.

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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Abbas condemns settler killings

Funeral of Fogel familt on 13 March 2011

Thousands of Israelis attended the funerals in Jerusalem on Sunday

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has strongly condemned the murder of a family of five Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Mr Abbas said the killings, which happened on Friday, were “immoral and inhuman”.

Israel suspects the murders were carried out by Palestinian militants.

Tensions are running high on the West Bank with some settlers having already carried out revenge attacks on Palestinian cars and houses.

The killing of five members of the Fogel family, including three children, has shocked both Israelis and many Palestinians.

Officials said the assailants cut through a fence around the settlement of Itamar and entered the Fogels’ home, stabbing to death parents Udi and Ruthie, Yoav, 11, four-year-old Elad and baby Hadas, aged three months.

The bodies were found by a 12-year-old daughter when she returned home from a youth group meeting. Two other children sleeping in another room in the house were not hurt.

Thousands of Israelis attended the funerals in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The Israeli Army has strengthened its presence on the West Bank and has arrested tens of Palestinians in an attempt to find the killer or killers.

On Sunday some settlers set fire to Palestinian cars and attacked Palestinian homes in revenge. There are fears there could be more violence.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Mr Abbas said no human being should be capable of such an act. He described the murders as “despicable, inhuman and immoral”.

Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting hatred against Jewish settlers, something Mr Abbas denies.

There are almost five hundred thousand settlers living on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law although Israel disputes this.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Wearable scanner maps rat brains

The device allows rats to be studied in detail as they move

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A miniaturised scanner that can peer into the brains of freely-roaming rats has been demonstrated by researchers.

Their wearable “Ratcap” does positron emission tomography – an established technique that tracks the movement and change of an injected molecule.

Typically these scans must be done on anaesthetised rats in a fixed scanner.

The device, Nature Methods, will allow researchers to study them in detail as they move, acquiring both chemical and behavioural information.

Positron emission tomography, or Pet, measures the brief flashes of high-energy light that result from the radioactive decay of a “tracer” molecule.

That requires a great many crystals and detectors, arranged in a ring, to catch the rays and determine the location from which they came.

As a whole-brain imaging technique that examines how chemical signals move between neurons, it is a powerful technique to study the fundamentals of brain activity.

“The rat is a very important model in medical research,” said Paul Vaska, head of Pet physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory, US.

“Pet is used with rats quite a bit these days. However, the rat has to be anaesthetised to do the scan and the anaesthesia disrupts the normal brain function, so when you’re looking at brain studies this is a big problem.”

Now, Dr Vaska and his colleagues have fit nearly 400 of these crystals and associated electronics into the Ratcap – short for Rat Conscious Animal Pet.

Weighing in at 250 grams, it is still too heavy to be worn simply, so the team arranged a system of springs and pivots that allowed a rat to move around unhindered while wearing it.

To demonstrate the device’s capabilities, they measured the uptake of dopamine, a “neurotransmitter” whose associations with excitability and reward are already well-established, based on studies of anaesthetised rats.

However, the team found that dopamine levels were lower than expected in initial tests, based on prior studies, and surprisingly that dopamine is found in the cerebellum, a region of the rats’ brains that does not even have receptors for the molecule.

That the Ratcap is already yielding insights and contrasts with established studies is an indication of the neurology secrets it may tap into.

“This can give us not only better information about the brain, because the anaesthesia is no longer there which can potentially corrupt the data we’re getting, but also allows us to measure the behaviour of the animal at the same time that we’re getting the brain data,” Dr Vaska said.

“There’s a lot of excitement about being able to correlate these two data sets and learn potentially much more about the brain.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Japanese economy ‘will rebound’

Houses are swept by water following a tsunami and earthquake in Natori City

Insurance cost estimates range between $14.6bn and $34.6bn with the total rebuild bill far higher

Friday’s earthquake and tsunami have left parts of Japan’s economy “frozen”, but analysts forecast that it will bounce back later this year.

Some of the country’s leading producers, including the world’s biggest carmaker, Toyota, have closed all of their plants in the country.

Analysts at Nomura expect that loss of production to dent the economy during this quarter and the next.

But they suggested growth would return in the third quarter.

“This disaster has in effect temporarily frozen the world’s third largest economy,” said Richard Soultanian of NUS Consulting, which specialises in the energy supply industry.

The Japanese economy, the third largest in the world, shrank at the end of last year and had been expected to return to growth in the second quarter of 2011.

“We now expect the Japanese economy to take longer than we expected to exit its current soft patch owing to the earthquake and tsunami,” said Nomura analysts Takahide Kiuchi and Okazaki Kohei.

Stephanomics: The economic aftershocks

“There are those who see a silver lining in the horrific events of the past few days”

Read Stephanie’s blog in full

Sharon O’Halloran, a professor of political economy at Columbia University, said: “The question is: does this finally push them out of the deflationary spiral and allow them to get their economy back on track, or does it push them deeper down?”

The country’s global car giants are expected to be the amongst the worst affected.

Nomura suggested that annual operating profits at Toyota, Honda and Nissan would be dented by between 3% and 8% this year.

The electronics industry was also expected to be badly hit, with a report by Goldman Sachs saying there would be “extreme damage” across the electronics industry supply chain in the near term.

Sony suspended production at eight plants in the affected region and said it was not sure when production would restart.

Winners and losersThe construction industry could gain as reconstruction gets underwayManufacturers suffer due to parts and power shortagesAsia could rethink nuclear Europe and US spooked Japan shares drop 6% after quake BOJ injects $183bn

Toshiba, whose products include semiconductors and nuclear reactors, also said it did not know when it would be able to re-open its chip factory in northern Japan.

But further down the line, economists said the disaster could boost economic growth.

The rebuilding effort will mean a huge boom in construction spending.

Shares in many Japanese building companies have already gained sharply in anticipation of the work that will be heading their way, partly funded by insurance companies.

“Life goes on, markets continue to trade, investors put a price on the damage done”

Read Robert’s blog in full

Analysts are looking back to the Kobe earthquake of 1995 for clues as to how the Japanese economy will react to the latest earthquake and tsunami.

Reconstruction following the Kobe quake cost $100bn (£62bn), of which $3bn was paid for by insurance.

The areas hit by the 1995 disaster were more industrialised, accounting for 12% of GDP according to Merrill Lynch Bank of America estimates.

By contrast, the region hit by the latest destruction accounts for just over 7%. But the area’s nuclear facilities are an extra headache and estimates of insurance payouts for this disaster range between $14.6bn and $34.6bn.

Insurers and analysts stressed that it was still too early to accurately assess the damage caused by the quake, the most powerful to hit Japan.

“We can’t say what the impact will be. The situation on the ground is changing,” said Rolf Tanner, a spokesman for Swiss Re.

“It will take some time before we can come forward with an estimate of the losses on the ground.”

Toshihiko Matsuno, senior strategist at SMBC Friend Securities, said: “When we look back at the Kobe earthquake, it took about a week to get an overall picture of the magnitude of the damage.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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