Early queen's skeleton 'found in German cathedral'

Eadgyth's bones are thought to have been moved to this tomb in 1510 Remains of one of the earliest members of the English royal family may have been unearthed in a German cathedral, a Bristol University research team says. They believe a near-complete female skeleton, aged 30 to 40, found wrapped in silk in a lead coffin in Magdeburg Cathedral is that of Queen Eadgyth. The granddaughter of Alfred the Great, she married Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, in 929. She died 17 years later, at 36. The team aims to prove her identity by tracing isotopes in her bones. Professor Mark Horton, of Bristol's department of archaeology and anthropology, said: "We know that Saxon royalty moved around quite a lot, and we hope to match the isotope results with known locations around Wessex and Mercia, where she could have spent her childhood. Bones moved "If we can prove this truly is Eadgyth, this will be one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years." Their preliminary findings are to be announced later at a conference at the university. In the Middle Ages bones were often moved around, and this makes definitive identification difficult Professor Harald Meller The discovery of the tomb was made during a wider research project into the cathedral in 2008 by a German team. It was thought the tomb was a cenotaph, but when the lid was removed, the coffin was discovered, bearing Queen Eadgyth's name and accurately recording the date - 1510 - when her remains were transferred. The queen was known to have been buried initially in the Monastery of Mauritius in Magdeburg, and if bones were to be found, they would have been moved later to the tomb. Professor Harald Meller, who led the 2008 project, said: "We still are not completely certain that this is Eadgyth although all the scientific evidence points to this interpretation. The excavation revealed remains wrapped in silk "In the Middle Ages bones were often moved around, and this makes definitive identification difficult." Queen Eadgyth's brother, King Athelstan, is considered to have been the first king of England after he unified various Saxon and Celtic kingdoms after the battle of Brunanburh in 937, Bristol University said. After marriage, Queen Eadgyth lived in Saxony and had two children with Otto. Their direct descendents ruled Germany until 1254 and formed many of the royal families of Europe that followed.

South Koreans told to go home and make babies

South Korea has one of the world's lowest birth rates

South Korean government workers are being given an unusual instruction - go home and multiply.

At 1900 on Wednesday, officials at the Ministry of Health will turn off all the lights in the building.
They want to encourage staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. They plan to repeat the experiment every month.
The country has one of the world's lowest birth rates, lower even than neighbouring Japan.

Office lights switched off for South Korea's procreation family day

Boosting the number of newborn children is a priority for the government, which is staring into the abyss of a rapidly ageing society, falling levels of manpower and spiralling health care costs.
The Ministry of Health, now sometimes jokingly referred to as the Ministry of Matchmaking, is in charge of spearheading this drive, and it clearly believes its staff should lead by example.
Generous gift vouchers are on offer for officials who have more than one child, and the department organises social gatherings in the hope of fostering love amongst its bureaucrats.
But critics say what is really needed is widescale reform to tackle the burdensome cost of childcare and education that puts many young people off starting a family.

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Your Comments
The cost of nursery care in Korea can be four times that of a full-time university student's tuition. Plus, many parents feel compelled by competition to have private tutoring for their kids, even in primary school. An average family spends up to 50% of their income on one child's education so it's no wonder only the well-off can have two or more kids, and the poorest can't even begin to start families. The emphasis on education here is a bit extreme.
David Karaolou, Seoul
Family is of the utmost importance in Korean society. It is difficult, however, to provide an exceptional childhood, a world-class education and a head-start in life to more than one or two children per family. All of these appear to be mandatory to a "successful" Korean life. Without lowering the cost of education, Korea's birth rate will remain stagnant, or in decline.
Anon, Seoul
I spend quite a bit of time in Seoul on business and I can confirm that the Koreans work extremely long hours. The young software engineers will work till 0300 or 0500 and then stagger in the next day at 1100 ashen faced. Obviously, this leaves no time for procreation. One Wednesday last year they were all sent home at 1800 for a half day and nine months later two babies arrived on the scene. Now, it is company policy to take a half day (ie stop at 6pm) on Wednesdays, but they tend to sneak back in to get working again.
James Mahon, Dublin Ireland / Seoul South Korea
It says something about Korean civil servants that sending people home once a month at 1900 is early. However the likelihood of this resulting in a change is slim. There are plenty of diversions between the office and home. Korea is a very social country where after work dinner/drinking parties are more the norm than exception. It is entirely probable that this effort could have quite the opposite effect than intended.
RJC, South Korea
It is normal for women who have a baby to be fired in Korea. Given this situation, women do not want to have a baby. Moreover, the government in Seoul doesn't say anything to support a family. It's quite ridiculous.
Seongjin, Gwangju
I am a 30 old Korean man studying and staying in Paris. First of all, I am sick of this kind of show from the government. Young Korean couples worry about the burden of caring and raising children. There are not enough public day nurseries and private ones are extremely expensive. But it's not just the cost of childcare, housing is also expensive and even less affordable on a pension. The most serious problem is in education. The majority of students attend private classes after school which is very costly.
Sangwook Lee, Paris, France
In South Korea I see my co-workers working all the hours God sends. They only have 10 days off a year and an additional seven to 10 days off for national holidays (in South Korea, if a national holiday lands on a weekend, it is lost). Also, there is not much job security in terms of when a woman falls pregnant. A co-worker of mine told me that if she fell pregnant her job would not be guaranteed on her return to work ie there is no real maternity leave! These things have to be changed if the South Korean government want to increase the birth rate. There are few monetary incentives and the biggest problem for women is job security.
A P, Seoul
It baffles me how governments tend to focus on the issues which are not a priority. Instead of looking so far into the future, they need to focus on the people who are actually living here and now, namely the homeless, those in poverty or struggling financially and emotionally. Should they succeed in creating a country that is at present giving its people a higher standard of living and a positive environment in which to live, then maybe couples will have a little more incentive to make additions to it's population! Governments do not need nor do they have the right to interfere in a matter that mother nature has been dealing with since life began!
Edel O'Driscoll, Osan, South Korea
This issue may also have something to do with the long working hours endemic to the cities of Korea, where the majority of the population now live. Late nights at the office means social evenings are either spent drinking with work colleagues or put off altogether because people are too tired - neither of which are ideal baby-making conditions. The intense study culture as well as mandatory military service for men means many Koreans put their potential family life on hold until much later, often well into their thirties. Until Korean workers feel it's ok to go home before their boss at least once in a week they simply won't have time for match-making!

Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien gets $45m pay-off

O'Brien (l) took over from Leno (r) as Tonight Show host in June 2009

NBC has reached a $45m (£28m) agreement with Conan O'Brien over his late-night US talk show, paving the way for his predecessor Jay Leno to return.

O'Brien, 46, will be paid in excess of $33m (£20m) to end his seven-month reign as host of The Tonight Show, with the remainder going to his staff.
The deal allows Leno, 59, to return to the show, a programme he hosted for 17 years before leaving last May.
O'Brien, who took over in June, will host his final programme on Friday.
Actor Tom Hanks is scheduled to appear, as is comedian Will Ferrell - O'Brien's first guest as Tonight Show host when he began his stint last year.
Leno will return to The Tonight Show on 1 March, NBC announced on Thursday.
Ratings slump
The deal brings to a close an ignominious battle that has seen both hosts discuss the dispute on NBC's own airwaves.
It will also allow Leno to bounce back following the failure of his 2200 prime-time show, launched in September, to pull in audiences.
O'Brien, who used to host a show in a later slot before filling Leno's shoes, will be allowed to return to TV in eight months.
"He just wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible," his manager Gavin Polone told the Wall Street Journal.
It is unclear, though, whether any of NBC's rivals will be prepared to sign him up following The Tonight Show's ratings slump during his tenure.
The dispute has provided plenty of comic material for O'Brien's late-night competitors, among them veteran broadcaster David Letterman.
The 62-year-old, who hosts The Late Show on CBS, had been expected to take over The Tonight Show from the late Johnny Carson prior to Leno's appointment.

wilight graphic novel released

The Twilight films have been big hits at the box offi Stephenie Meyer's popular vampire book series Twilight is to be released as a graphic novel, it has been announced. Twilight: The Graphic Novel will contain selected text from Meyer's original novel with illustrations by Korean artist Young Kim. "The characters and settings are very close to what I was imagining while writing the series," Meyer said. The book will be divided into two parts and the first edition is scheduled to be released on 16 March. "I've enjoyed working on this new interpretation of Twilight," Meyer said. "Young has done an incredible job transforming the words that I have written into beautiful images." Meyer's Twilight Saga have been sold in nearly 50 countries and 85 million copies have been sold worldwide. Each of the four novels in the saga has sold over a million copies in the UK and the first two films in the series have been box office hits.

Carbon nanotubes used to make batteries from fabrics

The nanotubes stay put and function even when the fabric is stretched

Ordinary cotton and polyester fabrics have been turned into batteries that retain their flexibility.

The demonstration is a boost to the nascent field of "wearable electronics" in which devices are integrated into clothing and textiles.
The approach is based on dipping fabrics in an "ink" of tiny tubes of carbon, and was first demonstrated last year on plain copier paper.
The new application to fabrics is reported in the journal Nano Letters.
"Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials... which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technologies," the authors wrote.
A number of research efforts in recent years have shown the possibility of electronics that can be built on flexible and even transparent surfaces - leading to the often-touted "roll-up display".
However, the integration of electronics into textiles has presented different challenges, in particular developing approaches that work with ordinary fabrics.
Now, Yi Cui and his team at Stanford University in the US has shown that their "ink" made of carbon nanotubes - cylinders of carbon just billionths of a metre across - can serve as a dye that can simply and cheaply turn a t-shirt into an "e-shirt".

The method was initially demonstrated using plain paper Battery made of paper charges up

The idea is the same as that outlined in their work with plain paper; the interwoven fibres of fabrics, like those of paper, are particularly suited to absorbing the nanotube ink, maintaining an electrical connection across the whole area of a garment.
Cloth is simply dipped into a batch of nanotube dye, and is then pressed, to thin and even out the coating.
The fabric maintains its properties even as it is stretched or folded. Even rinsing the samples in water and wringing them out does not change their electronic properties.
"Our approach is easy and low-cost while producing great performance," Professor Cui told BBC News.
"Fabrics and paper represent two technologies with a thousand-year-old history. We combined 'high-tech' - nanotechnology - with traditional 'low-tech' to produce new applications."
The next step is to integrate the approach with materials that store more energy, in order to create more useful batteries. By combining the approach with other electronic materials in the ink, the team believes even wearable solar cells are possible.

Hong Kong alarm as China jails Tiananmen dissident

Zhou Yongjun's girlfriend Zhang Yuwei is campaigning for his release

Human rights advocates in Hong Kong have reacted with alarm after a mainland Chinese court jailed a Chinese dissident who visited the city.

Zhou Yongjun was sentenced to nine years by a court in Sichuan province for crimes allegedly committed when he came to Hong Kong in September 2008.
Hong Kong activists say Zhou should have faced charges in the city, and should never have been deported.
They say his treatment breaches China's "one country, two systems" policy.
Hong Kong is considered part of China but has a separate legal system.
'We have jurisdiction'
The 42-year-old dissident was sentenced for crimes that Sichuan had absolutely no jurisdiction over, said Human Rights Monitor executive director Law Yuk-kai.
"We would not send people back to mainland China, especially for something which was supposed to be done in Hong Kong," he said.
"And we have jurisdiction over the criminal activities here, not mainland China."
Zhou Yongjun famously knelt with two other students on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 demanding political reform.
He later lived in exile in the United States. He arrived in Hong Kong on a false Malaysian passport, wanting to visit his elderly parents in China.
His lawyers told the media that his case stemmed from an alleged fraud carried out in the territory.
The name on the passport he was using was on a money-laundering watch list, but his girlfriend told media he was given the passport by an immigration agency and it is a case of mistaken identity.
Normal practice would have been to return the dissident to Macau, the port from where he had travelled to Hong Kong, or to Malaysia, the country whose passport he was holding.
Zhou Yongjun has said he will appeal.
The BBC's Anne-Marie Evans says that whether the charges are real or not, the case throws into question just how safe other dissidents may feel in Hong Kong.

King penguins become fast food for Antarctic fur seals

Earth News

Death in the water

Antarctic fur seals have been filmed catching and eating king penguins in the open ocean, behaviour not seen before.

Male Antarctic fur seals are known to occasionally take king penguins on land.
But this is the first time seals have been observed chasing, killing and eating king penguins at sea.
The preference for king-sized fast food has evolved among fur seals living at Possession Island in the Indian Ocean.
Details of the behaviour are published in the journal Polar Biology.
Catching a king penguin at sea is not easy.

KING PENGUINS: FIND OUT MORE While one parent guards the chick, the other makes a trip of up to 400km (250 miles) in search of food As well as fur seals, penguins have to dodge other blubbery beach-masters, such a elephant seals Watch more videos of king penguins

They can weigh up to 13kg at certain times of the year and are very fast moving in the water.
"Both species are very fast swimming and agile animals," says Dr Karine Delord of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who observed the behaviour.
Usually, the penguins are predated upon by much larger leopard seals and orcas.
Fur seals are also known to prey on king penguins on the shore, a behaviour filmed by the BBC Planet Earth Series.
"But our observations add strength to the unique similar predation in the water," says Dr Delord.
She and her colleagues Dr Yohan Charbonnier and Dr Jean-Baptiste Thiebot were studying the conservation of penguins, sooty albatrosses and giant petrels around Possession Island, one of five small islands that make up the Crozet archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean.
While located high up on top of a nearby cliff, they witnessed fur seals predating on king penguins below them in the sea on 17 occasions during five days.

Sometimes the penguins escape injured, sometimes they do not

The longest chase took five hours, when one male fur seal successively attacked at least ten king penguins.
Though all were injured, each made it to the shore.
Later the researchers witnessed a fur seal killing and eating a king penguin at sea.
"We found that predation on king penguins by Antarctic fur seals is more common and widespread than previously reported," says Dr Delord.
"It is too early to assess the impact of such behaviour because our observations need to be quantified on a longer period of time and other colonies of king penguins."
However, as seal numbers increase in the area, they could start to have a greater impact on small populations of king penguins.

FUR SEALS: FIND OUT MORE Antarctic fur seals are eared seals like sealions, and are less closely related to true seals Fur seals feast primarily on tiny krill, but they also hunt fish and squid Watch more videos of penguins running a gauntlet of hungry fur seals

"Furthermore, the impact on injured adults is probably more difficult to evaluate because some of them survive the attacks, at least a few days," she adds.
"But it is necessary to estimate the impact on their breeding and survival at a longer time."
Currently, 30,000 pairs of king penguins reside at the largest colony on Possession Island, while less than 500 seals live in the same area.
The fur seals are still recovering, after both species were nearly driven extinct by human hunters at Crozet during the 19th century.
So far, the researchers have not documented female Antarctic fur seals attacking king penguins at sea, though it is unclear why the females do not also hunt penguins.
At nearby Marion Island, where most documented attacks by Antarctic fur seals on shore-bound penguins occur, males, and particularly sub-adults males, are responsible.

Indian Premier League to be shown live on YouTube

Kieron Pollard's skills will be on display for free

Internet search giant Google has announced it will stream all Indian Premier League cricket matches live via its YouTube video-sharing website.

Under the terms of the agreement, Google will have exclusive online rights over the contents for two years.
Both Google and the Indian Premier League (IPL) will share revenues from sponsorships and advertising jointly.
Google says it is the first time that it is live streaming a cricket tournament, which starts on 12 March.
"We are thrilled to have the IPL as our global partner," said Shailesh Rao, a senior manager of Google India.
"YouTube offers an open platform for sports and entertainment companies to take their content to a global audience and a great opportunity for advertisers."
The third edition of the popular T20 tournament, featuring the world's top players in eight teams owned by rich businessmen and Bollywood stars, has attracted much media attention.
On Tuesday, auctions to secure players' services were held in Mumbai (Bombay) with West Indies all-rounder Kieron Pollard and New Zealand paceman Shane Bond both attracting the highest bids, which were in excess of $750,000.
"This unique initiative by IPL to partner Google India will give the league a global reach on a single distribution platform," IPL Chairman Lalit Modi said.

Afghanistan's Karzai moots Taliban peace scheme

Afghan President Hamid Karzai: ""We must have peace at any cost"

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told the BBC he plans to introduce a scheme to attract Taliban fighters back to normal life by offering money and jobs.

He would offer to pay and resettle Taliban fighters to come over to his side, with the scheme funded by the international community.
He said the UK and US would show at a conference next week in London that they had decided to back his new plan.
Japan is one of the countries which, he said, is prepared to put up the money.
The Taliban currently pay their volunteers, who are often just farmers, significantly more than the Afghan government can afford to give its forces.
President Karzai said the Afghan people had to have peace at any price.
War was not the only way forward and there had to be proper peace activity and reconciliation.
Previously, he said, Britain, the US and other Western countries had not been happy about the idea. Now they had changed their minds.
He stressed that Taliban supporters who were members of al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks would not be accepted. But anyone who accepted the Afghan constitution and did not have an ideological opposition to it could return.
Lame duck perception
Doing deals with his enemies is a bold approach, but as President Karzai enters his second term of office he knows he must get an agreement.

My presidency is weak in regard to the means of power, which means money, which means equipment, which means manpower, which means capacity Hamid Karzai Taliban's grim message from Kabul Q&A: Foreign forces in Afghanistan

Many of his own people, as well as the Western powers, regard him as a lame-duck president.
In the past, his ability to run Afghanistan has been limited by the powers of the warlords, and by the high level of corruption.
With considerable frankness, he accepted that there was some truth in this.
"Yes," he said, "my presidency is weak in regard to the means of power, which means money, which means equipment, which means manpower, which means capacity."
The clear implication was that if he got these things, he could start to run the country as he wanted.
If there was agreement at next week's conference in London, Afghanistan would be in a position to run its own affairs.
In five years, he said, Afghanistan could be controlling its own security and leading the fight in the country against corruption and the drugs industry.
But he is still smarting from the heavy criticism he got from the Americans and British about the way last August's presidential election was run. He insists it was a concerted effort by the West to undermine him.
"Unfortunately our election was very seriously mistreated by our Western allies," he said.
Now, though, he had to depend on them to help him. Could he trust them?
"We trust them because we are in a relationship together," he replied.
President Karzai angrily rejected a suggestion earlier this week by a UN agency that nearly a quarter of Afghanistan's GDP was swallowed up by corruption.
Nevertheless, he said, "if you expect us to be a First World country, you are making a mistake".

GM confirms Opel factory closure in Antwerp

GM had previously said it would cut 9,000 jobs in Europe General Motors (GM) has confirmed it will close a Belgian plant at its European arm Opel, cutting 2,300 jobs. The CSC metalworkers' union said the carmaker had told staff it would shut down its factory in Antwerp. "It is the tough reality of the current business environment," Opel president Nick Reilly said. GM also said 8,300 jobs would be cut across Europe - less than it had previously estimated - with 4,000 to be lost in Germany alone. In November, GM had said that it would cut about 9,000 jobs in Europe, after cancelling its planned sale of Opel to Canadian car parts maker Magna. Reduce capacity The company said it needs to cut Opel's capacity by 20%. "We have to take a plant out and unfortunately it is Antwerp," Mr Reilly said. In its November announcement, GM had said that as well as the Belgian job cuts, some 5,425 jobs in Germany and 900 from its Zaragoza plant in Spain would also go. In the UK, GM has cut 354 jobs at its Vauxhall plant in Luton, but has stated that there would be no cuts at its Ellesmere Port plant, which makes the Vauxhall Astra. GM has also failed to sell its Swedish car brand Saab and is starting to wind down the operation, though some buyers have still expressed interest in it.

Nigeria - Mass funerals in Jos riots

The easing of the curfew will allow people to go out to find food and water

Mass funerals have been taking place in the central Nigerian city of Jos, where fighting between Muslims and Christians has left hundreds dead.

A BBC reporter in the region says the easing of a 24-hour curfew has allowed religious leaders to organise burials.
A Red Cross official in Jos told the BBC he had seen scores of bodies on the streets, but the army was in control.
He said some of the 17,000 displaced people were returning home, but others had decided to flee the city itself.
At least 65 Christians and 200 Muslims are believed to have died.

In pictures: Nigeria riot aftermath

"A lot of people have died but it is very difficult to determine the number because this thing happened in various locations," Abdul Umar, the Red Cross's disaster manager co-ordinator, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
"There are dead bodies that are still hidden," he said, adding that many people had gunshot and machete wounds.
The 24-hour curfew has been eased to allow city residents to leave their homes between 1000 and 1700 local time.
"People are going about their businesses while some people are packing their belongings and fleeing town, which is natural after a situation such as this," he said.
The BBC's Shehu Saulawa in neighbouring Bauchi State says there are reports of isolated attacks on the outskirts of the city, which Mr Umar confirmed.
Balarabe Dawud, head of the Central Mosque in Jos, appealed for killings not to avenged.
"Whatever action one takes, can't bring these people back," he said pointing to a burial pit, reports the AFP news agency.
Youth detained
Nigeria's Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe told the BBC those behind the violence would be prosecuted.

JOS, PLATEAU STATE Deadly riots in 2001 and 2008 City divided into Christian and Muslim areas Divisions accentuated by system of classifying people as indigenes and settlers Hausa-speaking Muslims living in Jos for decades are still classified as settlers Settlers find it difficult to stand for election Divisions also exist along party lines: Christians mostly back the ruling PDP; Muslims generally supporting the opposition ANPP

Mr Umar said the police had detained more than 250 youths in connection with the clashes.
"We got access to them through the police and we have treated most of them that are injured and we provided water and food," he said.
It is unclear what the trigger was for the latest bout of violence, but there have been reports it started after football match.
Other reports suggested it began after an argument over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the 2008 clashes.
Jos has been blighted by religious violence over the past decade with deadly riots in 2001 and 2008.
The city is in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt - between the mainly Muslim north and the south where the majority is Christian or follow traditional religions.
Correspondents say such clashes in Nigeria are often blamed on sectarianism.
However, poverty and access to resources such as land often lie at the root of the violence.

Britain increasing Pakistan anti-terror spending: Brown

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown leaves 10 Downing Street, in central London, as he prepares to attend the weekly Minister's Question time in the House of Commons. -AFP Photo

LONDON: Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted Thursday that Britain's spending on counter-terrorism measures in Pakistan was increasing despite the fall in the value of the pound.
“Counter-terrorism expenditure in Pakistan and generally is increasing this year and will increase next year,” Brown said.
He added: “It is important to recognise our counter-terrorism effort is also linking up the efforts of our police forces here and our border control system, which is keeping the country as safe as possible.”
Brown was speaking the day after Foreign Office minister Glenys Kinnock said programmes to tackle terror attacks and radicalisation in Pakistan had been cut because of the weak value of the British currency.
But on Thursday, Kinnock moved to clarify her remarks, saying the overall Foreign Office budget had been hit by the falling value of the pound, but counter-terrorism spending was increasing.
The Foreign Office's budget for counter-terrorism in Pakistan will rise from 8.2 million pounds (9.4 million euros, 13.3 million dollars) in 2009-2010 to 9.5 million pounds in 2010-11, she told the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.
British officials say a number of terror plots aimed at Britain have been planned in and launched from Pakistan.
Kinnock said Pakistan was “by far” the largest recipient of counter-terrorism spending, receiving more than a quarter of the budget.
A “small number” of counter-terrorism projects had been cut or scaled back, but the projects affected had not been “delivering as effectively as our other projects”, she said. -AFP

Pakistan _ National Assembly passes bill on sexual harassment

The National Assembly has passed the bill on sexual harassment at the workplace. –APP (file photo)

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Thursday passed the bill providing protection to women against sexual harassment at the workplace.
All the MNAs present in the house supported the bill, but JUI’s Maulvi Ismatullah opposed the bill, terming it un-islamic and staged a walkout from the National Assembly against the bill.
Religious parties in the Senate have already rejected the bill, calling it un-Islamic and unconstitutional.
The bill provides for a three-year imprisonment and Rs 500,000 fine to anyone proven guilty of harassing a woman and also calls for formulating a three-member inquiry committee in the private and public sector. –DawnNews

Pakistan _ Boulton Market loss estimate curtailed to Rs3.8bn

Some ‘clever’ shopkeepers, in an effort to get the maximum from the govt, had exaggerated losses in the forms besides, projecting the total loss of over Rs30bn after violence, said sources. - File photo

KARACHI: The process of revision of losses suffered by the traders in Dec 28 violence coupled with duplication of claims have resulted in curtailing the losses figures to Rs3.7-3.8 billion from the earlier estimates of Rs8 to Rs10 billion.

Till Jan 15, 2010, over Rs8 billion worth of claims had been submitted by the affectees of the Boulton Market at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI). That amount has been calculated on the basis of 2,145 survey (claim) forms received by the KCCI.

By Jan 20, which was the last date of filing claims, the KCCI had received 2,760 forms, of which 165 were duplicate.

Spokesman of the Karachi Affected Markets Relief Committee, A. Q. Khalil told Dawn the assessment of losses in rupee terms as per claims was still going on and it would take one or two days more to get the final figure.

“I think the amount of Rs3.7-3.8 billion as per claims received so far may further go down as the process of detecting of duplication in the forms is still going on,” he said, adding that he had anticipated stock losses of Rs10 billion but traders after given a solemn oath revised their loss amount.

“Around 40-45 per cent of the traders have revised the amount of losses compared to huge losses shown in the forms,” the committee’s spokesman said.

Sources said that some ‘clever’ shopkeepers, in an effort to get the maximum from the government, had exaggerated losses in the forms besides, projecting the total loss of over 30 billion after violence. After knowing that the amount arriving from the government would not exceed more than Rs4.5 billion, they decided to show real losses by revising the amount by more than 50 per cent from the previous figures.

Giving provisional figures, A.Q. Khalil said that 244 forms had been received under category of Rs100,000 or less, 720 forms under Rs500,000 or less, 564 forms of Rs1 million or less, 333 forms under category of Rs1.5 million or less and 641 forms of less than Rs5 million loss and 93 forms of more than Rs5 million. These are not final figures as counting of forms and assessment of losses is still going on,” he added.

The committee will meet on Jan 22, to get a final figure of stocks and merchandise losses and the process of giving cheques to the affectees would get underway from the last week of this month.

He said that the Karachi Affected Market Relief Fund has so far received Rs1.5 billion (Rs1 billion from the federal government and Rs500 million from the Sindh government).

Sources said that a city government representative in a meeting on Jan 8 had assured the KCCI for giving the claim forms, which it had received from the traders, to the chamber but so far no forms had been received.

Chairman Banking/Insurance committee of the KCCI, Ateeq-ur-Rahman urged the banks to extend soft loans free from collateral and interest to the Dec 28 victims at their earliest and without any further delay. He said he held meetings with the finance minister, State Bank’s higher ups and chairman Pakistan Banking Association.

Ancient Tablets Decoded; Shed Light on Assyrian Empire

Ancient clay tablets (such as this one) inscribed with cuneiform script, a type of ancient writing once common in the Middle East, have been found in southeastern Turkey, archaeologists announced in October 2009.

Photograph courtesy University of Akron

Brian Handwerk

National Geographic News

Published December 9, 2009

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey.

(Related: "Ancient Assyrian Treasures Found Intact in Baghdad.")

Palace scribes jotted down seemingly mundane state affairs on the tablets during the Late Iron Age—which lasted from roughly the end of the ninth century B.C. until the mid-seventh century B.C.

But these everyday details, now in the early stages of decoding, may open up some of the inner workings of the Assyrian government—and the people who toiled in the empire, experts say.

"You're really getting at the nitty gritty of the management of the empire through these kind of records," said Melinda Zeder, director of the archaeobiology program at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the research.

"And that does what history really should do—creates a connection between our lives and the lives of people [many] years ago," added Zeder, a member of the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Fortified City

A team led by University of Akron archaeologist Timothy Matney has been excavating the massive mud brick palace, once inhabited by the governor of the empire's Tushhan Province, for more than a decade.

The palace is located in Ziyaret Tepe, one of three fortified cities that the Assyrians built in the northern reach of their empire on the banks of the Tigris River.

These urban administrative centers allowed Assyrians to exploit timber, stone, and metal resources from the mountains of eastern Turkey, materials that were relatively scarce in the empire's heartland near present-day Al Mawsil (Mosul),Iraq, Matney said.

Mystery Women

So far, the team has deciphered lists of names of 144 women on the tablets who were likely employed by the palace as agricultural workers or laborers at its granary.

Yet while the tablets were written in the Late Assyrian language, the women's names are not Assyrian, Matney said.

That means the women may have been from local indigenous populations, or part of a mass relocation of people conquered by the Assyrians in another part of the empire, Matney said.

"The Assyrians deported large numbers of people—hundreds of thousands—from one part of the empire to another in order to break up local power structures and to move agricultural workers where they needed them," he said.

"It's an intriguing possibility that these women may have been one group that was involved in these deportations."

The National Museum of Natural History's Zeder said the Assyrians were one of the very earliest empires to leave behind extensive written records.

The files can help explain how, as a political entity, the empire controlled and administrated their large territories, she said.

"It will be very interesting to see what the role of women in this economy was, and also [perhaps] what the hierarchy was—were there Assyrian overlords, or was it all locally managed?"

Race Against the Clock

But those questions may never be fully answered.

When Matney and colleagues return to Ziyaret Tepe in 2010 to look for more tablets, they'll be racing against the clock: A planned hydroelectric dam project will swamp the region as early as 2013.

Nevertheless, Matney said, he Turkish government is supporting digs at places such as Ziyaret Tepe to discover as much as possible while such sites remain above water.

How To Create A Cool Halftone Effect With Text & Images In Photoshop

Halftone effects can bring a nice tactile effect to a web graphics, giving the impression of printed work. I’m going to show you how to create this effect in Photoshop using the Bitmap Image Mode.

1. Create a new Photoshop document with a white background, width 600 x 200 pixels. Select the Type tool (T) and add some text to the document. I’ve used a font called Blackoak Std but any big, fat, bold typefaces work really well when creating this effect.

2. We need to blur so that it looks like more of a blob than readable text. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to about 10 pixels or until your text looks something like this:

I’d like the effect to be a little darker so, duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl + J (win) or Cmd + J (mac). It should look a bit like this.

3. We’re going to change from RGB mode to Bitmap mode, but we can’t go there in one step. We need to change firstly to Grayscale mode. To do this choose Image > Mode > Grayscale. You’ll see the following message.

Click Flatten. You’ll probably get another message about Discarding Color Information, click Discard.

4. Now choose Image > Mode > Bitmap. On the Bitmap dialog box leave the output at 72 for web graphics and choose Halftone Screen from the Use dropdown box.

Click OK.

5. On the next dialog box that opens you set up how your halftone dots will look. There’s a bit of trial and error here, so you might like to play around with the numbers. The higher the frequency, the more dots will appear. I kept the number fairly low here at 15. You can also choose the angle of the halftone screen and the shape of the dots.

When you click OK, the former blurry blob turns into a halftone blob, like this.

6. So that’s the effect created. Although it looks reasonably cool on its own I still want to include some readable text with it. To add more text we’ll get back to RGB mode. First choose Image > Mode > Grayscale, then choose Image > Mode > RGB.

7. Now we’re back in RGB mode, select the Type tool again and with the same settings as before type in the same text in black. Reduce the opacity of the text to about 50-60% and voila!

Working With Images

The process is EXACTLY the same if you want to create this effect with an image. Here’s a world map I created using the same steps as outlined above.

The only step I took here that was different was in the final stage. When I put the duplicate map of the world on top of my blurred halftone image, I set the blending mode to Multiply so that the original red color of the map can be seen in some of the dots.

So that’s how to create halftone images. I love the dirty, retro look that this effect can bring to a design. What do you think? Is is it an effect you’ve used or would be interested in using?

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