Forget the “fiscal cliff”: When it comes to the nation’s most pressing concerns, other matters trump financial calamity.
Several thousand Americans, for example, are calling on President Obama to nationalize the troubled Twinkies industry to prevent the loss of the snack cake’s “sweet creamy center.”
HONG KONG: Asian markets rose Monday as dealers cheered an improvement in the US unemployment rate and another batch of figures indicating China's economy is emerging from a long slowdown.
Investors appeared unmoved by figures confirming Japan's economy shrank in the three months to September, as traders keep their sights on Sunday's general election, which is expected to see Yoshihiko Noda's government ousted.
Tokyo rose 0.25 per cent by the break, Hong Kong added 0.58 per cent, Shanghai was 0.26 per cent higher, Sydney gained 0.26 per cent and Seoul climbed 0.13 per cent.
Washington on Friday unveiled figures showing the economy added 146,000 jobs in November, up from a revised 138,000 in October. Expectations had been for just 80,000 jobs to be added.
The Labor Department also said the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 per cent last month, its lowest since December 2008, from 7.9 per cent in October.
However, the data were tempered by a University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, which declined to 74.5 from November's five-year-high of 82.7.
Traders are also nervous about the lack of progress on Capitol Hill in talks aimed at averting the fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts due to take effect on January 1 and which would likely tip the economy into recession.
Wall Street was mixed, with the Dow up 0.62 per cent and the S&P 500 gaining 0.29 per cent but the Nasdaq lost 0.38 per cent.
In China the government said Sunday that November had seen a double-digit increase in production at factories, workshops and mines for the first time since March.
Figures on retail sales, fixed asset investment and inflation reinforced the view that the economy is finally on the mend after seven straight quarters of slowdown in growth.
"Overall it's a quite strong set of numbers, supporting our view of rebounding GDP growth," said Lu Ting, China economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Figures released on Monday showed exports rose 2.9 per cent in November, while imports were flat.
On currency markets the euro bought $1.2904 and 106.40 yen in early Asian trade, down from $1.2928 and 106.64 yen in New York Friday afternoon. The dollar bought 82.47 yen, from 82.46 yen.
The yen has come under pressure in recent weeks after polls were called for December 16. Noda and his Democratic Party of Japan are expected to be beaten by the Liberal Democratic Party, headed by former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Abe has promised to push a more aggressive monetary easing policy to kickstart the economy.
Oil prices were higher, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in January, gaining 29 cents to $86.22 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for January delivery adding 39 cents to $107.41.
Gold was at $1,705.60 at 0250 GMT compared with $1,696.90 late on Friday.
- AFP/ck
MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
UPDATED: Multiple reports, including one from Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's Secretary of Communications and Transports, confirm that the remains of the private jet carrying Jenni Rivera have been found, with no survivors. Rivera, 43, was one of seven passengers.
Rivera's father, Pedro, confirmed the news of his daughter's passing to reporters stationed outside of his home in Lakewood, Calif., where several family members are gathered, including Rivera's mother Rosa and her eldest daughter Chiquis, who has still not made any statements. Rivera's father reportedly received the news via telephone from his son, singer Lupillo Rivera, who was in Mexico at the time of the jet's disappearance. "This is the first tragedy of this kind that we suffer as a family," Rivera's father told reporters on Sunday evening. "I hope people remember her as she was - someone who was straight with the world."
Celebrity reactions on Twitter have poured in since news of the disappearance of Rivera's jet, including Paulina Rubio (who was set to co-host the Mexican edition of The Voice with Rivera) William Levy, Joan Sebastian, Ricky Martin, and others.
See also: Jenni Rivera Immortalized in new Track 'La Misma Gran Señora
Mexican officials have confirmed the disappearance of a private jet carrying regional Mexican music superstar Jenni Rivera that took off from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey at 3:15 a.m. local time on Sunday and fell off the radar 10 minutes (or 62 miles) after take-off.
The Learjet 25 jet, which dates back to 1969, is believed to have been carrying seven people – five passengers and two pilots. It was headed for Toluca International Aiport, located outside of Mexico City, where it was meant to arrive at 4:40 a.m. An official search for the jet was initiated at sunrise.
Rivera's publicist Arturo Rivera and her make-up artist Jacob Yebale are believed to have been on that flight. Their most recent tweets are of photos from Rivera's concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.
The Mexican American singer's most recent tweet is a re-tweet of what appears to be a fan's message.
Rivera was due in Toluca this evening for the taping of a Mexican TV show, La Voz. Televisa has canceled tonight's show given Rivera's disappearance.
Known as La Diva de la Banda and beloved by fans on both sides of the border, Rivera, 43, has had a groundbreaking career in regional Mexican music, selling some 15 million records. Among her many feats in a male-dominated genre, she made history in September 2011 when she sold out the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the first female regional Mexican artist to do so. Her reality show on mun2, I Love Jenni, is one of the network's highest rated shows. Rivera made her film debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the indie family drama Filly Brown, due in theaters in January 2013.
See Also: 'Filly Brown Gives Jenni Rivera a Chance to Grow and Gina Rodriguez a Chance to Shine
The Long Beach, Calif.-born singer's personal life has often called for as much attention as her career. A mother of five, Rivera had filed for divorce from baseball player Esteban Loaiza in October after two years of marriage, citing "irreconcilable differences." Soon after, rumors of an affair between Loaiza and Rivera's own daughter Chiquis surfaced, which Chiquis addressed on Twitter in October by saying, "I would NEVER do that, Ever! That's a horrible accusation."
WASHINGTON: With room for maneuver slipping away, top US Republican John Boehner is in a bind over how to avoid going over the fiscal cliff: embrace higher taxes and earn conservatives' ire, or scupper a deal and incur Americans' wrath.
Another option, one that few non-partisans see as very viable, is for President Barack Obama to cave in and agree to Republican demands not to raise taxes, even for the wealthiest Americans.
A likelier resolution is a compromise with the White House that avoids the early January shock of automatic spending cuts coupled with tax hikes on nearly all Americans, while laying out enough deficit reduction that eases concern about the country's financial well-being.
In the game of political chicken to see whether Democrats or Republicans blink first, perhaps the trickiest role of all rests with Speaker of the House Boehner, who along with Obama is the principal in the negotiations.
Boehner's guidance of the Republican position in coming days and weeks could signal much about party direction in the wake of an election that saw flagbearer Mitt Romney -- who advocated slashing tax rates across the board -- defeated by Obama.
"To say Boehner is between a rock and a hard place is minimizing the problem he faces," Boston University professor and longtime political consultant Tobe Berkovitz told AFP.
"Boehner is trying to keep public opinion about Republicans from totally cratering, and at the same time keep the Tea Party hardcore conservatives from totally abandoning the party."
Conservative Republican Trent Franks agrees that "our speaker is in an enormously difficult position."
"And I think he's doing the best he can," the congressman told National Public Radio. "That doesn't mean that what he finally arrives at will be something that I can support or it won't. You know, I don't know."
Few people other than Boehner and Obama know the true state of negotiations in what appears as a well-choreographed campaign to thrash out a last-minute deal.
Discussions appear to have stalled, though, and Boehner has accused Obama of having "wasted another week" by not pushing talks forward.
This weekend Boehner "will be waiting for the White House to respond to our serious offer about averting the fiscal cliff," his spokesman Michael Steel told AFP.
Obama has proposed US$1.6 trillion in new taxes over the next decade from higher rates on the wealthiest two percent of Americans.
Republicans countered with a plan for US$800 billion in tax revenue raised by closing loopholes and ending some deductions. Both plans were rejected.
A Democratic official said Saturday that "nothing has changed since yesterday."
Polls show most Americans want to see taxes rise on the wealthy.
With Obama winning re-election on November 6, and his Democrats gaining seats in both the House and Senate, Republicans concede privately -- and some publicly -- that the Democrats have the upper hand.
"President Obama pretty well holds all the cards in this negotiation," Republican Senator Ron Johnson told Fox News.
"If he wants to have tax increases or tax rates go up, I don't see how Republicans can stop him."
Public trust is not in Boehner's favour. A Washington Post/Pew poll this week showed 53 percent of Americans would blame Republicans should the economy dive off the cliff; 27 percent would blame Democrats.
In his weekly address Saturday, Obama said he was willing to find ways to reduce health costs and make more entitlement spending cuts, but as for asking "the wealthiest Americans to pay higher tax rates -- that's one principle I won't compromise on."
Potential future Republican leaders like Senator Marco Rubio are unlikely to want to bend to White House's will.
Rubio, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, gave the Republican response to Obama's address -- and said "tax increases will not solve our US$16 trillion debt."
Boehner has said that, too, but his position is tenuous. On Friday he left open the possibility for compromise on a tax rate rise.
In past negotiations, such as last December's battle over extending the payroll tax holiday, some Republicans felt Boehner gave away too much.
Hashtags on Twitter -- #boehnermustgo, #fireboehner -- have recently left little doubt that some Republicans are fed up with his handling of the talks.
With conservatives demanding unity on taxes, Boehner faces the prospect of revolt from his right flank should he agree to a deal that would raise high-end rates.
Berkovitz said Republicans face two options if they want to avoid the cliff: negotiate and compromise, or hold their noses and "give Obama what he wants. If it goes south, take the election victory in two years and maybe four years."
- AFP/ir
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.
With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.
This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.
"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.
Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.
READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage
A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.
The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.
In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Check Out Same-Sex Marriage Status in the U.S. State By State
It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.
While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."
Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."
Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.
"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."
Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.
Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?
"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"
Republicans in Michigan are acting swiftly to adopt broad limits on the ability to organize workers, as the war over organized labor moves into the state that gave rise to modern industrial unions.
Unbowed by their party’s thumping at the polls nationally in last month, Republicans who control Michigan’s legislature approved measures in the lame-duck session this week that would make Michigan a “right to work” state, effectively banning unions there from requiring workers to pay labor dues.
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