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Venezuela's Chavez doing well in Cuba: vice president

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is doing well as he receives medical treatment in Cuba, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday, despite a two-week absence from public view that has raised fresh doubts about his health.

Chavez, 58, said in a letter to parliament on Tuesday he was returning to Havana for "hyperbaric oxygenation," which is used to treat bone decay caused by radiation therapy. The president has undergone three cancer operations in Cuba since mid-2011.

No images were published of his departure from Caracas or of his arrival on the communist-led island, fueling speculation among many Venezuelans about whether the latest twist was normal post-radiation treatment, or a more serious downturn.

"They are carrying out therapies to strengthen his health even more. The president is good, he is very good, and he is going to get much better," Maduro told a meeting with workers that was broadcast live by Venezuelan state TV.

The usually garrulous socialist leader has made few public appearances since winning a new six-year term in an election in October. His campaign was more subdued than usual, and he said afterward that radiation therapy had left him exhausted.

Chavez has open-ended authorization from legislators to travel, but aims to be back at least for the January 10 start of his new term, if not for a couple of regional summits before then.

His latest absence has put renewed attention on Maduro, his vice president, and on Congress head Diosdado Cabello, two close and powerful allies of the president who might look to replace him if Chavez were to leave power.

Under the South American country's constitution, an election would have to be held if Chavez were to leave office within the first four years of his next six-year term.

'FULFILLING THE PEOPLE'S MANDATE'

Maduro called on all Venezuelans to "respect" Chavez as he received treatment, and said voters on the campaign trail had urged the president to focus on his health.

"In every town, they told him, 'Take care of yourself president, be disciplined with your treatment.' And that is exactly what he's doing now: fulfilling the people's mandate."

As usual, security was tight outside Havana's Cimeq hospital, where Chavez is receiving treatment as a guest of his friend and political mentor, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"We're happy to be able to help Chavez," said local community worker Guillermo Fonseca, 59, as he hefted a trash can across a nearby street.

"We don't see him as a big chief, we see him as a friend, a brother, a family member who needs us. Chavez didn't think twice about helping us, for example after Hurricane Sandy struck."

Chavez's return to the Caribbean island could be a blow to ruling Socialist Party candidates who wanted him to campaign alongside them before elections for state governors on December 16. A prolonged absence could also postpone big policy decisions, such as a widely expected devaluation of the bolivar currency.

Given investor hopes for a more market-friendly government in the continent's top oil exporter, Venezuela's widely traded bonds have risen this week.

The prices of the government's benchmark Global 27 note and state oil company PDVSA's closely watched 2022 bond are up about 3.7 percent and 4.0 percent respectively since Monday.

(Additional reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel in Havana; Editing by Brian Ellsworth and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuelas-chavez-doing-well-cuba-vice-president-223859957.html

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Palestinian Legal strategy against Israel: The Real Prize is Europe ...

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to accord Palestine the status of ?Observer State? on Thursday, with 138 countries voting in favor of the measure, 41 abstaining, and only 9 voting against. The US and Israel were decisively marginalized, as Italy and Sweden joined France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and several other European countries in voting for the new status. Continental Western Europe and Scandinavia were almost unanimous in supporting the Palestinians, in a kind of declaration of independence from the Obama administration. Even Germany, which for historical reasons is typically reluctant to buck Israel, voted to abstain rather than to oppose.

From the Israeli press, it appears that many government and press figures are absolutely stunned and in a state of angry disbelief over the magnitude of this diplomatic defeat. The Israeli Right wing is so out of touch with how its aggressive policies are seen by the outside world and so self-righteous and arrogant that it even launched a Facebook page urging a boycott of Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli merely for tweeting during the recent Gaza war, ?I pray for the safety of the citizens on both sides and for the day when we will live in peace and harmony. Amen.? Caring about human beings from the other side, or praying for peace are apparently verboten in ?Strong Israel.? (Somehow I think Ms. Rafaeli?s fan base is secure, inside and outside Israel).

How the World voted:

Green: In favor; Red: Against; Yellow: Abstain; Blue: Absent; Grey: Non-Members

The UNGA vote will not have a big immediate effect on the lives of Palestinians toiling under Israeli occupation. But over time, if the Palestinian leadership deploys it wisely, the new status could have an incremental effect, especially affecting Israel?s relationship to Europe. Europe itself now has the opportunity to play the kind of honest broker between the two sides that the US pretended to but almost never did (Jimmy Carter a partial exception).

Many European countries have elevated the Palestine mission in their capitals to the status of full embassy. Palestine?s new status as UN observer state could well become a basis for it being given further embassies in Europe. Being an embassy rather than a mission strengthens the legal status of Palestine, including in national courts and EU tribunals.

Israel?s economy is deeply dependent on its relationship to Europe, the largest single source of imports into Israel and the second-largest market for exports (after the United States). European investment in Israel is also significant, as are various agreements giving Israel access to European technological advances and promoting scientific and technological exchange.

The European Union imports 15 times more goods from Israeli setter enterprises in the Occupied West Bank than from the Palestinians themselves. Europe is therefore a major, hidden support for Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.

Much speculation has focused on whether Palestine will attempt to take Israel to the International Criminal Court, getting specific Israeli officials or officers indicted for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Such cases may well be brought, and if successful might more or less imprison the individual inside Israel, since traveling abroad would risk arrest by Interpol.

But actually, gaining the standing to provoke resolutions and statements from various United Nations bodies and committees is also important. Such documents can then be cited in the European Parliament and in national parliaments in Europe. Over time, a latticework of human rights law on the treatment of the Palestinians can be erected that might well cause Europeans to boycott settler-made goods or even Israel proper (after all, the settlers are being sent into Palestine by the Likud government). One Israeli strategy over the years has been to attempt to prevent the creation of such a body of resolutions, findings, and judgments (the US veto on the Security Council and the lack of Palestinian standing as a state to bring matters before the UNGA both aided in this Israeli quest for impunity).

A big problem with international law, such as the Geneva Convention on the treatment of Occupied populations (1949), the Apartheid convention, etc., is that they typically do not have attached to them any court in which a practical judgment of guilt can be rendered. The European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court are steps toward achieving such arenas of adjudication for claims of rights violation. But the European Court of Human Rights, e.g., has no mechanism for enforcing its rulings.

It seems to me that any court rulings against Israel will have their major effect through providing a basis for civil society organizations (unions, businesses, associations, NGOs) and parliaments to punish Israeli war crimes, Apartheid crimes, and crimes against humanity through boycotts. Over time, such steps could begin having a major impact on settler enterprises and even on the Israeli economy itself (which is fragile and highly dependent on foreign trade with Europe, since its goods are often shunned in the Middle East).

An example is the recent demand of the youth wing of the Swedish Social Democratic Party that Sweden boycott all settler-made goods. (Sweden, a little unexpectedly, voted for the UNGA resolution yesterday). If such demands proliferate, and the next generation of Europeans feels so strongly on this issue, the settlers could end up bankrupted.

How this could work is clear on a small scale is apparent in the 2010 European Court of Justice ruling that goods from the Occupied West Bank do not fall under the European Union?s preferential trade provisions for Israeli goods. What is important here is that German authorities declined to allow the British firm Brita to import mineral water tariff-free into Germany because they believe it originated with a settler company in the West Bank. The German decision was upheld by the ECJ.

Expect to see more such decisions by governments in Europe, and by its courts. The Palestinian victory at the UN will likely begin creating a whole set of new opportunities for the Palestinians to make their case in the most important Israeli market.

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Source: http://www.juancole.com/2012/11/palestinian-legal-strategy-against-israel-the-real-prize-is-europe.html

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Deadly, destructive 2012 hurricane season ends

FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 9, 2012 aerial file photo, people stand near damaged homes along the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey after the region was pounded by Superstorm Sandy. The 2012 hurricane season has come to an end and it's another one for the record books. There were 19 named storms in what meteorologists consider an above-average year tied as being the third most active season since 1851. Sandy wreaked havoc across the Northeast, leaving millions without power and killing at least 125 people. It caused an estimated $62 billion in damage and other losses, making it the second-costliest storm in U.S. history after Hurricane Katrina.(AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

MIAMI (AP) ? The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season that spawned the destruction of Sandy and Isaac has come to an end as one for the record books.

There were 19 named storms in what meteorologists consider an above-average year that tied as being the third most-active season since 1851. The season runs from June 1st to November 30th, although tropical storms can and do sometimes develop outside those dates.

Even without a so-called major storm reaching the U.S., there was plenty of damage. A storm is classed as major once it becomes a Category 3 hurricane, with top sustained winds of 111 miles per hour (178 kph) and more.

Seven years have now gone by without a major hurricane making U.S. landfall, the longest stretch on record.

Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, said a persistent jet stream pattern has steered storms away from the U.S. in recent years.

It wasn't enough to keep away Sandy, which morphed from hurricane to superstorm as it slammed into the New Jersey coast in October and wreaked havoc across the Northeast. It left millions without power and killed at least 125 people in the U.S. and 71 in the Caribbean.

The storm is estimated to have caused about $62 billion in damage and other losses in the U.S., most of it in New York and New Jersey. It is the second-costliest storm in U.S. history after 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Isaac struck southern Louisiana in August on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's seventh anniversary, swamping the Gulf Coast after trudging through the Gulf of Mexico and delaying the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Sandy combined with an early winter storm and blast of artic air from the north to create a deadly brew meteorologists coined "Frankenstorm" and struck two days before Halloween.

A somewhat similar phenomenon occurred with the so-called Perfect Storm off the coast of New England in 1991, but that storm did not strike a major metropolitan region like Sandy.

"This was certainly one for the record books," Feltgen said.

A typical hurricane season has 12 named storms, six of which become hurricanes and three major storms. This year 10 storms became hurricanes and just one a Category 3 or higher, though it remained in the Atlantic Ocean.

Four storms in all made landfall, including Tropical Storm Beryl, which struck Jacksonville, Fla., with 75 miles per hour winds, the strongest tropical storm to strike the U.S. before hurricane season officially starts.

Whether next year's hurricane season will bring another calamitous strike is still too early to predict.

"You can't use this year as a gauge for next year," Feltgen said. "You have to go into each season thinking, 'This is the year I'm going to be hit and I have to be ready for it."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-11-30-Hurricane%20Season/id-21bc9d5d96904fb8a701d887bccac1e0

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Office in Uganda shows how easily rebels can move

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) ? Where do you go if you want to talk to a negotiator from Congo's newest rebel group? You can try their office headquarters in Uganda's capital city.

The rebel group M23, which has been tearing through eastern Congo in recent days, has an office in Kampala, where negotiations for the rebels to pull out of the eastern Congo city of Goma took place over the last week. Rene Abandi, M23's head of external relations, is based in Kampala. He said M23 is happy with Uganda's role as a mediator and that Kampala is their venue of choice.

So influential is Uganda thought to be with M23 that after the rebels' capture of Goma, India's embassy in Uganda sought assurances from Uganda that Indians within the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo would not be hurt.

"The Indians called us for help," a Ugandan diplomat who has been involved in the Congo talks said. He insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "They wanted protection for (Indian) troops."

M23 bosses are comfortable in Uganda, coming and going as they wish, unafraid of arrest. Last week, M23 political leader Jean-Marie Runiga was airlifted to Uganda for his first meeting with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, and then on Monday night the military chief of the rebels, Gen. Sultani Makenga, who is now the subject of a travel ban under U.N. sanctions, arrived in Uganda for the meeting in which he agreed to withdraw from Goma.

Ugandan army spokesman Col. Felix Kulayigye said Makenga was welcome in Uganda. Kulayigye said: "How can dialogue be on if there's a travel ban on one of the parties?"

By M23's own account, Kabila and Runiga clashed repeatedly in the meeting at Uganda's state house, exchanging accusations until Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called both camps to order.

Okello Oryem, Uganda's deputy minister of foreign affairs, said the rebels wanted "assurance" from Museveni that their demands would be taken seriously after they left Goma.

Long before the rebels occupied Goma, M23 representatives had been meeting in Uganda with the country's defense minister, Crispus Kiyonga, who says Congo's government was aware of these meetings and that Congolese officials attended some. The rebels' presence in Uganda has fed the impression that M23 finds support in Uganda. A report from a group of U.N. experts says the rebels freely operate in Uganda.

M23 is a group of hundreds of soldiers, mostly of Rwandan Tutsi origin, who deserted the Congolese army in April after accusing the Congolese government of failing to honor the terms of a 2009 peace deal that incorporated them into the national army. In eastern Congo, while they are popular with some villagers who see them as more reliable than the far-away government in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, they are also regarded as a foreign army, backed primarily by Rwanda and, to a lesser extent, by Uganda.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/office-uganda-shows-easily-rebels-move-163741476.html

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Small and efficient: Water nanodroplets cool biomolecules ultrafast

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2012) ? Researchers of the Max-Born-Institute at Berlin, Germany, have observed how biomolecules transfer energy into extremely small water droplets in their environment. A water shell consisting of only 3 water molecules around a phospholipid molecule is sufficient for energy transfer within 1 ps.

Biochemical processes occur mainly in an aqueous environment. Particular groups of a biomolecule are embedded in a shell of water molecules, a process called hydration. The water shell stabilizes the biomolecular structure and enables an exchange of energy between the biomolecule and its environment. Examples are the double helix of DNA, the carrier of basic genetic information, in an aqueous medium and the membranes of living cells which consist of phospholipids. The molecular mechanisms, the speed and the efficiency of energy exchange between the biomolecule and the water shell are understood only in part and, thus, a topic of current basic research.

Scientists of the Max-Born-Institute have shown that extremely small water droplets embedding a phospholipid molecule enable efficient energy transfer on a time scale of 1 ps (1 ps = 10^-12 s = 1 millionth of a millionth of a second). Ren? Costard, Christian Greve, Ismael Heisler, and Thomas Elsaesser report in the current issue of Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (vol.3, page 3646, 2012) that 3 water molecules around the phosphate group of the phospholipid are sufficient for transferring the energy of vibrations from the phospholipid into this minimal water shell. The transferred energy heats the water shell by 10 to 20 centigrades.

The thermal energy is stored in tilting motions of water molecules, so called librations, and leads to a weakening of the interaction between the water molecules, the so called hydrogen bonds. The overall molecular structure of the water shell remains practically unchanged. This extremely efficient mechanism of energy disposal allows for the transfer of even larger amounts of energy, protecting the biomolecule against damage by overheating.

The researchers studied a phospholipid model system consisting of the DOPC molecules shown in Fig. 1. The molecules are arranged in so-called reverse micelles which contain the water molecules hydrating the phosphate groups. In this geometry, the hydration level, i.e., water content, can be changed in a wide range. For studying energy transfer, either phosphate vibrations of the phospholipid or OH stretching vibrations of water are excited by an infrared pulse of a 0.1 ps duration. The vibrations decay within a fraction of a picosecond and the energy released in this decay is transferred into the water shell. The transfer and redistribution of energy is mapped via transient two-dimensional infrared spectra of the OH stretching vibration of water. The weakening of hydrogen bonds in the heated water shell leads to a shift of the OH stretching spectra to higher frequencies. Measuring the change of the two-dimensional spectra as a function of time provides direct insight into the energy transfer dynamics.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB), via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Rene Costard, Christian Greve, Ismael A. Heisler, Thomas Elsaesser. Ultrafast Energy Redistribution in Local Hydration Shells of Phospholipids: A Two-Dimensional Infrared Study. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2012; : 3646 DOI: 10.1021/jz3018978

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/2yM_t1kV8Cw/121130095116.htm

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The Travel and Expense News Source ? Business Travel ...

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Source: http://www.berteloot.com/2012/11/29/business-travel-journalism-awards-2012-featuresexec-media-bulletin/

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Corporate Governance & Risk Management | ParenteBeard

After Super Storm Sandy, we were reminded of the importance to look within our organizations and to thoroughly review our business continuity / disaster recovery preparedness plan. By better preparing your organization, you will be enabled to keep ?business as normal? during any outage or event. If you have any questions about this E-alert or disaster recovery, contact Jeff Krull, partner in ParenteBeard?s Corporate Governance & Risk Management group, at 215.557.2223 or Jeff.Krull@ParenteBeard.com.

Read the full e-alert here.

Source: http://www.parentebeard.com/3935/corporate-governance-risk-management/

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