Article & Journal Resources

By CHRIS SERICO
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: December 10, 2007)

BEDFORD - A global-warming discussion among town leaders last month was held without a celebrity who was expected to attend.

Although actor Chevy Chase missed the two-hour, invitation-only meeting at the Bedford Town House, his wife, Jayni, said the Nov. 26 forum was a success. The couple founded the Center for Environmental Education charity, which raises awareness about global issues through educational initiatives.

"From my perspective, it was terrific," she said Thursday. "It was really so wonderful to see this community coming together and taking seriously the idea that we need to cut back and lower our carbon footprints."

Town Supervisor Lee Roberts called for reducing carbon emissions in town by 20 percent by the year 2020, according to Mary Beth Kass, chairwoman of the town's Energy Advisory Panel.

"It was very exciting," said Kass, whose panel intends to issue a plan for reducing greenhouse gases. "That's a very aggressive...goal, and I know we can do it."

Known for his comedic roles on "Saturday Night Live" and in "Caddyshack," "Fletch" and National Lampoon's "Vacation" series, Chevy Chase, 64, skipped the Bedford event because he was feeling "under the weather," his wife said.

On Nov. 10, the Chases were guest speakers at a Garrison expo on sustainable living. Chevy Chase said they also attended an event for the Global Green organization on Monday at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City.

"For me, it was fun to be there," he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "We are very big supporters and always have been, so we go to those things."

Almost 100 other local leaders attended the Bedford forum. The town also invited leaders of regional businesses, religious congregations, schools, towns and civic associations to inform them of the importance of being environmentally conscious on a local level.

"We had a short slide presentation about the likely impacts of climate change on the Hudson Valley, kind of to take it away from the polar bears and melting ice caps to (explain) how is this really going to affect us here," Kass said.

In addition to introducing local leaders to Kass and the rest of the Energy Advisory Panel, the meeting served as a symposium to discuss ways to "green" local homes and businesses. Such tips are in the process of being developed for the town's Web page, www.bedfordny.info, Kass said.

She added that she appreciated the Chases lending their support to the cause, one they have promoted often since buying their Bedford home on June 1, 1995.

Chevy Chase said his family drives "a lot of Priuses."

Said Kass: "You can tell that (Jayni Chase) has walked the talk for a long, long time."

The event was kept exclusive primarily due to space concerns, Kass said, but added that residents would have the opportunity to speak and learn about environmental matters at upcoming events in town.

Cells reprogrammed to make healthy tissue


By Karen Kaplan
Los Angeles Times
December 09. 2007 12:06AM


Taking the next step in a series of breakthrough stem-cell experiments, scientists have cured sickle-cell anemia in mice by rewinding their skin cells to an embryonic state and manipulating them to create healthy, genetically matched replacement tissue.

After the repaired cells were transfused into the animals, they soon began producing healthy blood cells free of the crippling deformities that deprive organs of oxygen, according to scientists from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The experiments, published online by the journal Science, confirmed the therapeutic potential of a new class of reprogrammed stem cells, which can be custom-made for patients without creating and destroying human embryos.

The strategy should work to treat hemophilia, thalassemia and severe combined immunodeficiency disease, the "bubble boy" disease, according to researchers, and might also apply to disorders linked to mutations in a single gene, such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis.

Scientists hope to use a similar approach to create cardiac cells to treat heart attack patients or nerve cells that could cure spinal cord injuries. Finding an abundant source of stem cells that could be used as a personalized biological repair kit is the goal of regenerative medicine.

The technique is a few years away from being used to treat humans, scientists said. Before it could be tried, several rounds of animal experiments would need to be done. Researchers also will need to overcome key technical hurdles, including finding a way to reprogram adult cells without using genes and viruses that could cause cancer.

But as a proof of principle, the study is certain to lure more researchers into studying the new class of induced pluripotent stem cells, called "iPS" cells.

"There's going to be this tsunami," said Paul Simmons, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. "One would have to predict that the pace of observations made using iPS cells is going to rise exponentially."

The study is the latest in a string of significant experiments published in the past five months involving a new approach of reprogramming adult cells so they are capable of growing into any type of tissue in the body. They have captivated researchers, ethicists and politicians looking for an alternative to embryonic stem cells, which can be difficult to work with and raise moral concerns.

Japanese researchers pioneered the new method, which involves turning on four genes that are dormant in adult cells but active in days-old embryos. The cells essentially "forget" that they have become skin cells and behave like embryonic stem cells. Because they are derived from a patient's own cells, there is no risk of tissue rejection.

In June, three research teams showed that the technique worked reliably in mice. In November, two groups demonstrated that it also worked with human cells. But it remained to be seen whether the cells could serve as the raw material to grow replacement parts for patients.

Misspelled DNA

The researchers started with sickle-cell anemia because it has a simple origin - at a key point on the hemoglobin beta gene, patients have a "misspelling" in the chemical letters of DNA, commonly known as A, C, T and G. Instead of having at least one A, they have a pair of Ts. As a result, the gene makes the wrong amino acid, resulting in red blood cells that are curved instead of round.

Those sickle-shaped blood cells get clogged as they travel through the body, blocking blood flow to the small vessels that feed the brain, kidney and other organs. Tissues die, since sickle cells can't deliver enough oxygen to keep them healthy.

Some patients can be treated with a bone marrow transplant, which allows the body to make normal red blood cells. But only about 5 percent of sickle-cell patients are able to find a donor, said Tim Townes, chairman of the department of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and one of the study's senior authors.

Townes figured that embryonic stem cells might help the 95 percent of patients who couldn't find donors. But the process would be complicated. First, scientists would have to clone embryos using the patient's own DNA. Then they would switch one of the errant Ts to an A. Stem cells would then have to be harvested from the modified embryo and used to make healthy bone marrow for a transplant.

Better genes

But before scientists were able to do that, the first paper on reprogrammed iPS cells appeared.

Townes teamed with Rudolf Jaenisch, a stem-cell researcher at Whitehead and MIT, to see if iPS cells would work in place of embryonic stem cells. They took cells from the tail of a 12-week-old mouse with sickle-cell anemia and used viruses to turn on four dormant genes that are active in days-old embryos. One of those genes, c-Myc, has a tendency to cause tumors, so after the cells had completed their transition back to an embryonic state, the researchers deleted it.

Then they corrected the genetic flaw that causes sickle-cell anemia by engineering a string of DNA that had an A in place of a T but was otherwise identical to the original. It was swapped into place with the help of an electric shock.

The researchers grew the iPS cells into bone marrow stem cells by exposing them to special growth factors and culture conditions. When the cells were ready, they were transplanted into three sick mice that were genetic twins of the donor mouse.

Twelve weeks later, the mice were producing the normal version of hemoglobin beta protein and virtually all of their red blood cells were round. Their body weight and respiratory capacity improved. Their urine, previously watery due to the disease, had normal levels of electrolytes. None of the mice developed tumors, a sign that the threat from c-Myc had been eliminated.

------ End of article

By KAREN KAPLAN

Los Angeles Times

November 28th, 2007 by Phil Hughes

While I was cleaning up my office I ran into the March 1986 issue of UNIX/WORLD, a long-since deceased magazine. I had saved this particular magazine because I am the author of the article featured on the cover: The Unix System on the IBM PC.

While what I am writing here may sound like humor, it actually is real. That is, it is about what has happened in the last 20 years. That article was about the beginning of the revolution. Our "real" computer in the office was a Codata 3300 which featured an 8MHz 68000 processor, 750KB of RAM and a 27MB hard disk. What did it cost? About 16 thousand 1984 dollars.

In those 20+ years, the price of 1000 times as much hardward has dropped to one tenth the cost of the Codata and the cost of a UNIX-like operating system has dropped to almost zero while the capabilities have expanded possibly one thousand fold like the hardware. In any case, on to the article.

First, lets look at the hardware requirements. Here is what I said in the article.

"To get going with a PC-based Unix system, the minimum hardware requirements are an IBM or compatible machine with at least 256K RAM, one floppy disk drive, and a 10-Mbyte hard disk."

Note that by "IBM or compatible" we are not talking about even an IBM AT. We are talking about an 8086-based PC. If you aren't laughing yet, read this again. One thousand times that much RAM is pretty much inadequate for today's UNIX/Linux system and one thousand times that much disk would be a bare minimum. And a floppy disk? Wow, we really did load UNIX and even early Linux distributions from floppy disks.

Much like your Linux system choices of today, there were choices back in 1986. In the article I looked at three versions of real UNIX (meaning software licensed from AT&T) and two clones. Also, much like today, I didn't come up with the one single best answer. Each had advantages and disadvantages.

The details of each choice are of little significance today but it is worth looking at the basics.

* PC/IX was a port of AT&T UNIX System III done by Interactive Systems Corporation for IBM. It was a decent port by lacked BSD programs such as the C-shell and the VI editor. It cost $900.
* VENIX/86 was a full UNIX port based on Version 7. (Note that Version 7 came before System III.) It included the C-shell, VI and the ability to run "medium model" (> 64K code space) programs. For an two-user license it cost $875. An eight-user license was $1075. For an additional $1000 you could get the source code for the drivers.
* Xenix 5, Release 2 is a port of UNIX System 5, Release 2 licensed to Microsoft (surprise) but then ported to the IBM PC by The Santa Cruz Operation. It is the largest, best documented (and probably least reliable) of the REAL UNIX ports. It comes in pieces with the basic system at $495, text processing at $295 and development system meaning C compiler and associated programs at $395.

That's it for the three real UNIX ports. Now, on to the clones.

* Coherent is a look-alike system from Mark Williams Co. It is designed to act more or less like UNIX Version 7. The best part is good documentation. Cost? $500.
* CO-IDRIS is the other look-alike. It was originally developed by Whitesmiths, Ltd. for the PDP-11 but then ported to the IBM PC. It is a "do it different" clone where program names are changed and, as strange as this sounds, it can run under MS-DOS. You get the whole thing for only $695.

Finally, the article offers a couple of hardware alternatives to offer better performance. Each consists of a card that plugs into a PC slot giving you a different processor on which to run UNIX.

* Opus 532 Persona Mainframe offers a National 32016 processor and a port of UNIX System V for only $3140 with an amazing one megabyte of RAM.
* The Sirtek VersaCard/Microcard gives you a Motorola 68000 processor running Unix System V for only $2095 with 256K bytes or RAM.

Now, what does all this mean? Well, over the years many people have asked why we bought a $16,000 dog of a computer in 1984, why we taught C programming classes on UNIX systems when MS-DOS was clearly what everyone was using and such. I guess the answer is that it gave us a head start on what has become the path to world domination.

An environmental group warned Thursday that at least 60 percent of the Amazon forest would vanish or be severely damage by 2030 – an after that it would be just impossible to prevent catastrophic rise of global temperatures.

"The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, author of a new report by the WWF released at a U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it's a massive store of carbon."

Sprawling over 4.1 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles), the Amazon covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil. Largely unexplored, it contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water and about 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species - many still undiscovered.

The WWF said logging, livestock expansion and worsening drought are projected to rise in the coming years and could result in the clearing of 55 percent of the rain forest. If rainfall declines by 10 percent in the Amazon, as predicted, another 4 percent could be wiped out.

Scientists say if global temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, the risks to the environment and to people will be enormous. It is essentially the 'tipping point' for catastrophic floods and droughts, rising sea levels and heatwave deaths and diseases.

"It will be very difficult to keep the temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) if we don't conserve the Amazon," said Nepstad, who is also a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.

According to the WWF, deforestation in the Amazon could release 55.5 billion to 96.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, representing as much as two years of global carbon emissions.

Earl Saxon, a climate change expert with the World Conservation Union, said the report was consistent with "all the best science" on the issue and recognizes there are "opportunities the delegation in Bali can take to protect the Amazon basin."

However, Milton Nogueira, a Brazilian government consultant on climate change who is also part of his country's Bali delegation, said such predictions on the Amazon's future should be taken lightly given its "size and complexity."

"It is such a big, complex system that no one can predict what will happen," he said. "It is like you are looking at a blond and blue-eyed boy and saying he will be an Olympic champion."

In its report, the WWF said saving the Amazon requires a shift to sustainable logging practices, implementation of land use polices that are already on the books in the country, and provision of money to developing countries including Brazil to reduce deforestation.

"We can still stop the destruction of the Amazon, but we need the support of the rich countries," said Karen Suassuna, a climate change analyst with WWF-Brazil. "Our success in protecting the Amazon depends on how fast rich countries reduce their climate-damaging emissions to slow down global warming."

December 2nd, 2007 by Jon maddog Hall

In the spring of 1983 I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. At that time Digital was mostly providing support for different flavors of Unix on their PDP-11 and VAX lines of computers for the telephone company and universities that were using them. However, a decision had been made to make and release a binary-only version of the Unix operating system so commercial customers could get it without having to pay the very high source-code license fee that AT&T required of them.

By the time I joined Digital, they had a small group of engineers already hard at work on a product initially called V7m-11 (Version Seven, modified for the PDP-11) and which ultimately became known as Ultrix-11. The lead engineer on this project was a man named Fred Canter.

For those of you not familiar with the PDP-11, it basically had a 16-bit address space (64K bytes of memory), which could be expanded to be 64K bytes of instruction and 64K bytes of data, along with both system and user space. The real memory of the machine could be several megabytes in size, but the virtual memory size was limited to these 64K segments. In order to fit something like an operating system into such a small space, a concept known as "overlays" were used, the ability to "overlay" blocks of instructions into memory when they were needed. Then when no longer needed, these blocks of memory were reallocated to another function in another overlay. To say that creating an operation system on this machine took concentration and planning is a massive understatement. It took an engineer like Fred.

When you came to work in the morning, Fred was there. When you went home at night, Fred was there. If you came in on Saturday, Fred was there. But Fred was not a work-a-holic, it was just that Fred was driven to have a really good operating system.

People also respected Fred's opinion. Fred was kind of quiet, and did not speak much, but when he did speak even the most respected of the other engineers quieted to hear what he had to say. People often sought him out to ask his opinion on technical matters.

There were several versions of V7m-11/Ultrix-11 that came out. The first Unix system I ever had at Digital was an old PDP 11/34 that we built from spare parts and placed V7m-11 on it. The system worked great for the three or four people we had in our group, and we used it in our day-to-day work. We named the system "shaman", a name that I maintain today on the main system I use.

Fred had a unique (at least to me) way of programming. He used key words that he had invented ("farkle", "shazbot", "Meepzorb", "Zundap", "Oregeno" and "Vvvrrrrrrtt" as examples) that he sprinkled throughout his code. If I remember right, "farkle" stood for a piece of code that he had inserted just to get something working, but did not represent "production quality" code. Nothing went out the door unless Fred could "get the farkles out".

Eventually Digital decided to retire Ultrix-11, and in retiring the product Fred decided to fix and check off every single customer customer Software Quality Report ("bug report" to y'all) associated with the product. In retiring the product we did get one last comment back from a famous university that had specialized in Unix systems...."Not a bad piece of code"....the only such comment that Digital ever got from them.

Fred went on to work on Ultrix-32 (nee Digital Unix, nee Tru-64) for several more years, but decided to take "early retirement" in 2002 and return to his native state of Ohio after a 38 year engineering career.

A few years after that a friend of mine in Brazil was looking to name a new CMS system, and I suggested the name "Fred", to honor Fred Canter. My friend took this to heart, and today there are several sites "powered by FRED". I will let him tell the story:

"I told you we had this CMS project I could not find a good name for it. Then you came up with FRED! As I was THE BOSS ;) at the time, I was able to name our CMS FRED! It didn't have to stand for anything, no acronym, no nothing, and a lot of things at the same time. Specially a tribute to Fred Canter, someone I had never met and yet admired thanks to you.

Of course in 2003 we didn't get the handful of CMSs we have today. Still, Fred is one of the main Solis' FOSS products, and it powers several websites such as the following:

www.solis.coop.br - Of course!

www.univates.br - Of course, also!

www.dobro.net - My brother and wife's agency

www.cta.com.br

There are dozens more I cannot remember from the top of my mind right now.

By the way, here is the URL: http://fred.solis.coop.br

Thanks a lot for your message! And thank Fred on our behalf!"

A few days ago I got the sad news that Fred Canter was dying of brain and lung cancer, with weeks to live. Friends of his rushed across the continent to be by his side in the hospital, and then to help him in his home. People are trying to put together pictures and remembrances of this person so he can know that they are thinking of him.

I can not be with Fred, as I have commitments in South America that I know (as an engineer), Fred would want me to keep. So I write this blog in honor of him.

Ironically, on this trip I ran into a young man named Frederico ("Fred" for short) who has a lot of the same characteristics as Fred Canter. Frederico is studying computer science, and I hope that some day he will create and demand the same high quality that Fred Canter created and demanded as an engineer. I will tell the student about Fred Canter, and the things I learned from Fred.

Fred, for all those people that never had to experience a "Farkle" left in their operating systems, I thank you.

Warmest love,

maddog

December 9th, 2007 by Phil Hughes in

In my last article I introduced the idea of the Geek Ranch. The facility will be more than just a place for geeks to write code. We are going to need a web site to promote the facility to the various audiences. All the pieces of that web site are not yet determined but we do have an initial features list.

Here it is:

* A basic "about the facility" part with sub-parts for each facet
of the facility. That means Geek Cottages will be in a different page
or section than Eco-Tourism, the conference center or the restaurant.
* Weather is a selling point. We want to offer current and
historical weather information.
* Let's toss in a web cam or two. While a sunny day with coffee
maturing in December isn't news here, it will certainly help someone
in Minnesota decide why they would rather be here.
* A section about the farm. The farm project will be
special and we want to help people understand what we are doing.
Note that the people that need to understand are not just potential
customers—locals need to get the picture as well.
* A reservation system. This might start out as a form that gets
emailed to us but needs to evolve into an on-line system to place
reservations and handle credit card processing.
* Some sort of photo gallery. This is still being thought about
but, for example, it would be nice to have photos of each type of
plant growing on the property and a description. I mean, some of you
probably can't tell your nancite from your jocote.
* Last but not least, the site need to be at least bi-lingual.

While we could conceivably write this all from scratch, we are smarter
than that. We have learned that there are lots of systems available to
produce web sites. Concentrating on the look and the content is where
we need to focus. That said, here are three possible approaches--each
with pluses and minuses. There are, of course, many more.

Karrigell is a Python-based web framework. It is
minimalist which means it does less than you might want but, on the
other hand, it is very easy to understand. The
href="http://karrigell.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">
Sourceforge page will tell you the story.

I used Karrigell to write a radio station controller. I did that
project over three years ago. It was easy to implement and while what
I built was only a prototype, it did what I needed. As the radio
station is designed to be a Linux box with nothing but flash memory, a
wireless link and a transmitter all running off a battery and solar
panel), minimalist was important. Karrigell is compact, includes its
own web server and requires little in the way of a high-performance
system to get the job done.

The downside is that Karrigell is not a Content Management System
(CMS). While it offers a lot of tools to put together your site, you
will find yourself writing Python to get your job done. It is
a step up from writing in PHP from scratch but you will still have a
lot of work to do if you need to present a lot of dynamic content.

If, however, your site is mostly static with a few "intelligent"
pages, Karrigell might be the perfect fit. Static content can be served
directly so you only need use its magic when the page has funny stuff
to do.

Drupal has been "the answer" for sites that require a CMS for
us for years. While it is big it is efficient and modular. There is a
module to do most of the things you want and it is easy enough to
either embed PHP into a block or article or write a new module if you
have something special to do. You can find more on the Drupal site.

There are also many Drupal themes that you can use or modify a bit to
make the site look like what you want. With the advent of CSS and the
ability in most systems (including Karrigell) to include pieces to
make up a page, a pre-packaged theme is a bit less important. If,
however, you want to get on with writing content and firm up your
presentation later, Drupal is a very good place to start.

The one reservation I have is the multi-language aspects of Drupal.
The ability to have the site information--that is, all the stuff
Drupal supplies such as menus--appear in a user's choice of languages
seems to work great. Handling multi-language content, however, seems
to be less than perfect. Specifically, the internationalization module
is a bit cumbersome to use and has an array of outstanding bugs. I am
hoping that these issues get cleared up in Drupal 6.

Joomla is probably the closest competition to Drupal as far as
a CMS. Joomla grew out of Mambo. A great feature for dealing with multiple languages is a module called
JoomFish. The name clearly came from combining Joomla and Babelfish.
While it is a multi-language module it is not an automatic translator.
For a site where you want it to be correct in multiple languages, this
is actually a plus.

Joomfish intercepts content reads by the CMS front end. If the user
prefers a language different from the site default, Joomfish checks to
see if a translation is available in that language. If so, the
translated version is delivered. It has a nice management interface
that shows you what you have translated, what you haven't and what was
translated but is out of date.

If you want to see how this works in "real life", take a look at
href="http://www.nicaplaza.com"> NicaPlaza.com. It is implemented
using Joomla and Joomfish.

The Joomla site tells you a lot more
including information on a possible licensing issue. Joomla is licensed under the GPL
and there is a debate going on regarding the interpretation of
"linking" Joomla with non-GPLed code. The current stance is that
starting with version 1.5 (the next major release) this will no longer
be allowed. As many Joomla third party addon modules are commercially licensed, this
could send Joomla to the bottom of list of choices. Only time will
tell.

What will we pick? We don't know yet. The true geek in me wants to
pick yet another answer, Django a
huge and amazing toolkit that among many other things means I can
write just Python and never have to touch SQL again.

For me, Django would be the most fun but it is far from the quickest
way to get the site we need up and running. Being a bit more pragmatic
than some, I will continue to play with Karrigell, Drupal and Joomla
until I am convinced which one will get the results we need with the
least effort

By MELANIE ASMAR
Monitor staff
December 10. 2007 12:05AM

Ask Mike Huckabee about his tax plan and he'll talk about pimps and prostitutes.

The Republican presidential candidate often says that one of the selling points of his plan to replace the federal income tax with a 23 percent sales tax is that it would force those who deal in cash to pay taxes.

"You end the underground economy," Huckabee said at a recent luncheon for the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce. "Illegals, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, drug dealers - everybody pays taxes."

In reality, his plan isn't that simple. Known as the Fair Tax among its backers, it's supported by many economists as more efficient than the current system. But even the economists, and the tax's staunchest supporters, admit that the Fair Tax is a political nonstarter. The chances that Congress would overhaul the entire tax code are slim to none, they say.

"This will not be enacted by Congress unless the American people rise up and demand it," said Ken Hoagland, the spokesman for FairTax.org. "Congress is not willing to give up its power."

The Fair Tax is arguably Huckabee's most radical proposal. On most issues, he holds standard Republican positions: He's for overturning Roe v. Wade, protecting Second Amendment rights and building fences on the U.S. border.

But his opponents have criticized his record on taxes. While governor of Arkansas, Huckabee raised taxes on gas and cigarettes to pay for schools and roads. His rivals have pounced on his mixed record - he cut some taxes, too - and analysts say the Fair Tax may be Huckabee's attempt to win back support.

Taxes are "one of those issues that helps with conservatives," said Wayne Lesperance, an associate professor of political science at New England College. "Huckabee doesn't have to do that with social issues . . . but where he has proven to be vulnerable is on fiscal matters. (The Fair Tax) could be seen as an effort to confirm or create his credentials as a fiscal conservative.

"It does set him apart."

Bob Clegg, a state senator and Huckabee backer, said if Huckabee were trying to court fiscal conservatives, he would stick by the current system. That's what most of his opponents have done, claiming the solution to the country's fiscal problems is to cut some taxes and abolish others.

"If (Huckabee) wanted to garner the favor of that (fiscal conservative) wing of Republican Party, he'd drop the Fair Tax and say the current system is not that good but it's the one we have," Clegg said.

Instead, Huckabee talks passionately about eliminating the income tax altogether.

"I'd like you to join me at the best 'Going Out Of Business' sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service," Huckabee says on his website. "When the Fair Tax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness."

The Fair Tax would levy a one-time 23 percent tax on all new goods and services. It's what economists call a consumption tax, a tax on what people buy instead of what they earn. Developed more than a decade ago by a group bent on coming up with the next great tax structure, the Fair Tax would wipe out income taxes of any kind.

It would also eliminate all tax deductions and exemptions. Proponents say that aspect is offset by a built-in "prebate," which would reimburse everyone, from Bill Gates to a $10-an-hour sales clerk, for the amount of tax they would pay on purchases up to the poverty level. Essentially, proponents say, necessities would be tax-free for the poorest Americans. And, they say, the richest Americans - the ones who buy $1 million yachts - would be hit hardest.

Huckabee touts the Fair Tax as a way to "transform our economy," a system that would "benefit everybody, from the top to the bottom of the economic spectrum." He says it would stop punishing productivity and start rewarding thrift. It would eliminate the headaches caused by the IRS, he says.

And, he says, it would move trillions of dollars stashed offshore back into the American economy.

"What would happen if that $10 trillion that's been moved offshore - legally, but moved offshore - was reinvested in the United States economy as working capital?" Huckabee said at the recent luncheon. "We'd see Daimler Chrysler headquartering here instead of in Europe. Halliburton might move back from Dubai where they moved to avoid our tax laws. It makes . . . sense."

But the Fair Tax has plenty of critics. Some economists say it wouldn't raise enough money. They call it regressive and say businesses and individuals would find loopholes.

William Ahern, spokesman for The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, D.C., said even Huckabee's claim about pimps and prostitutes isn't true.

"Say (a drug dealer) spends $100,000 on a tricked-out Hummer," Ahern said. "Instead of just paying the local car tax or sales tax, he would be paying, according to the Fair Tax, the full 23 percent (tax).

"But he won't be collecting the Fair Tax on his sale of drugs," Ahern added. "You and me, the two secret heroin addicts who are pouring our wages into the coffers of this drug dealer instead of making mortgage payments . . . we avoid paying the Fair Tax by buying heroin instead of taxable goods."

That's not to say Ahern is totally anti-Fair Tax. He, like many economists, thinks consumption taxes are a simpler way to raise money. When you tax income, questions arise about what's income and what's not, Ahern said. When you tax spending, "spending is spending," he said.

Still, Ahern said, it's unlikely the country will see any sort of consumption tax anytime soon. Political analysts agree. "As much as Americans complain about the income tax, it is something that's familiar," said Dante Scala, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. "So sometimes, when faced with an unfamiliar new tax, voters tend to be somewhat risk-averse about it."

Clegg, the unofficial Fair Tax expert for Huckabee's New Hampshire campaign, said Huckabee thinks the tax will be politically viable if Americans want it to be. He said it may take two years to get the plan through Congress, and he said the final plan might not look exactly like Huckabee's proposal.

But, Clegg said, the American people are fed up and looking for a change.

Huckabee uses a local story to emphasize that point on the stump. In his usual folksy way, he tells the story of a man who works at a machine shop in Manchester. The man's daughter goes to graduate school at Cornell, Huckabee says, and the man took a second shift at the shop to pay the $54,000 tuition.

"Because he's working two shifts at the machine shop, he went into a new tax bracket," Huckabee said at the luncheon. "So much of what he's earning in the second shift is not going to help his daughter in Cornell. It's financing the government and their tax greed. So here's a guy who's working twice as hard but not getting twice as much money because the tax code is penalizing his productivity.

"If he really wanted the government's help, you know what he could do?" Huckabee said. "He could quit both jobs and then his daughter would qualify for some assistance. Now, is that nutty or what?"

That line got some applause at the luncheon, from an audience that included a couple dozen businessmen. But it's unclear whether his Fair Tax message will resonate with most voters.

Lesperance and Scala are skeptical. In New Hampshire, they said, people don't like new taxes.

"There are parts that could be appealing, (like) doing away with the IRS," Scala said. But "unless Huckabee does a very good job explaining it, it could become the subject of an attack from another opponent: 'Here's Mike Huckabee, who's got an exotic new tax that could cost you, when you buy a new car, X number of dollars.' That could turn off voters. especially in a state like New Hampshire."

------ End of article

By MELANIE ASMAR

Monitor staff

By Eric Tucker
Associated Press Writer / December 7, 2007

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—A lesbian couple who married in Massachusetts cannot get divorced in their home state of Rhode Island, the state's highest court ruled Friday in a setback to gay rights advocates who sought greater recognition for same-sex relationships.
more stories like this

The Rhode Island Supreme Court, in a 3-2 decision, said the family court lacks the authority to grant a divorce because state lawmakers have not defined marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman.

"The role of the judicial branch is not to make policy, but simply to determine the legislative intent as expressed in the statutes enacted by the General Assembly," the court wrote in the state's first case dealing with same-sex divorce.

Cassandra Ormiston and Margaret Chambers wed in Massachusetts in 2004 after that state became the first to legalize same-sex marriages. The couple filed for divorce last year in Rhode Island, where they both live, citing irreconcilable differences.

"My civil rights, my human rights have been denied," Ormiston said in a telephone interview. "It's no small matter."

Though the women could divorce in Massachusetts if one moved there for a year, Ormiston said that was an unfair burden and something she would not do. She said she was "embarrassed" for the court.

"I see this as a matter of justice not denied -- but rather justice delayed," she said. "This is an issue that will in time be resolved correctly. Today's not that day, but this issue will not go away."

Nancy Palmisciano, Ormiston's lawyer, said couples married in other states and other countries are routinely granted divorces in Rhode Island, and that the same freedom should apply in this case.

"I'm disappointed for anyone who's involved in one of these marriages who's a resident of the state of Rhode Island," she said. "I think these people are being confined to a legal limbo."

Louis Pulner, a lawyer for Chambers, said he was surprised by the decision.

"I feel that it's unfortunate that two people who are legally married cannot get closure here in the state of Rhode Island," Pulner said.

Palmisciano and Pulner had argued that the court should consider only whether Rhode Island could recognize a valid marriage from another state, and stressed that the court's decision would have no bearing on whether same-sex couples could wed in Rhode Island.

Massachusetts, the only state where gay marriage is legal, restricts the unions to residents of states where the marriage would be recognized, and a Massachusetts judge decided last year that Rhode Island is one of those states.

No law specifically bans same-sex marriages in Rhode Island, but the state has taken no action to recognize them.

The justices said Rhode Island laws contain numerous references to marriage as between a woman and a man. The court also said the General Assembly did not have gay marriage in mind when it created Rhode Island's family court, which handles divorces, in 1961.

The couple's divorce petition drew a broad range of supporters, including Attorney General Patrick Lynch, who earlier this year released a nonbinding advisory opinion saying Rhode Island should recognize same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts.

In earlier court filings, Gov. Don Carcieri, an opponent of same-sex marriage, had also argued in favor of granting the divorce. He said under Rhode Island law, the family court didn't have to address whether the marriage was valid at all, avoiding a larger debate about same-sex unions.

But he hailed Friday's court decision, saying in a written statement that, "It has always been clear to me that Rhode Island law was designed to permit marriage -- and therefore divorce -- only between a man and a woman."

Karen Loewy, a staff attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, said she viewed the court's decision as a narrow ruling, but feared that same-sex marriage opponents would use it to argue against broader legal recognition for same-sex couples in Rhode Island.

"You're essentially asking these women to move to access justice" Loewy said. "The door of the courthouse has been barred for them."

Jenn Steinfeld, director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, said she felt "incredibly upset" but would continue to push the General Assembly to legalize same-sex marriages.

But opponents of same-sex marriage praised Rhode Island's top court for rejecting even a limited recognition of same-sex marriage.

"The meaning of marriage in Rhode Island is the union of a man and a woman," said Monte Stewart, president of the Utah-based Marriage Law Foundation, which filed a brief in the case. "You have to have a marriage before you can have a divorce."

By Mark Mazzetti
Published: December 7, 2007

WASHINGTON: Angry Democratic lawmakers called for investigations Friday into the Central Intelligence Agency's destruction in 2005 of at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody.

Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts accused the CIA of "a cover-up," while Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said it was possible that people at the agency had engaged in obstruction of justice. Both called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate.

"We haven't seen anything like this since the 18½ -minute gap on the tapes of Richard Nixon," Kennedy said in a speech on the Senate floor, as reaction to the disclosure about the videotapes seemed to intensify minute by minute.

Durbin, the Democratic whip, said he had written Mukasey to ask for an inquiry into "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."

The speeches by Kennedy and Durbin followed an angry statement by Representative Jane Harman of California, head of the Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and terrorism risk assessment. Harman, who was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in early 2003, said she cautioned CIA officials then not to destroy any videotapes pertaining to interrogation practices.

"To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed," Harman said. "Surely I was not."

Late Thursday, Senator John Rockefeller 4th, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he committee "must review the full history and chronology of the tapes, how they were used, and the reasons for destroying them." At least one Republican lawmaker has also expressed dismay over the destruction of the tapes.

The CIA's destruction of the tapes came in the midst of congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

President George W. Bush "has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before Friday," the chief White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Friday.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects - including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody - to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

"But that excuse won't wash," Senator Kennedy said Friday. "Does the director believe the CIA's buildings are not secure? Would it be beyond the agency's technical expertise to preserve the tapes while hiding the identity of its employees? Does the director believe that the CIA's employees cannot be trusted not to leak materials that might harm the agency?

"Or does he know that the interrogation techniques are so abhorrent that they could not remain unknown much longer?"

Harman, now head of the Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and terrorism risk assessment, said, "This matter must be promptly and fully investigated." She noted that in early 2003 she received "a highly classified briefing" on CIA interrogation practices from the agency's general counsel, and that she had expressed "serious concerns" in a letter to the lawyer afterward.

"I call for my letter of February 2003, which was never responded to and has been in the CIA's files ever since, to be declassified," Harman said.

In a statement to employees on Thursday, General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made "within the CIA" and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.

The destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which was appointed by Bush and Congress, and which had made formal requests to the CIA for transcripts and other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

The disclosures about the tapes are re-igniting the debate over laws that allow the CIA to use interrogation practices more severe than those allowed to other agencies. A congressional conference committee voted late Wednesday to outlaw those interrogation practices, but the measure has yet to pass the full House and Senate and is likely to face a veto from Bush.

The New York Times informed the intelligence agency on Wednesday evening that it was preparing to publish an article about the destruction of the tapes. In his statement to employees on Thursday, Hayden said that the agency had acted "in line with the law" and that he was informing CIA employees because "the press has learned" about the matter.

Four-week short chain fructo-oligosaccharides ingestion leads to an increase in fecal bifidobacteria and cholesterol excretion in healthy elderly volunteers

Nutrition Journal 2007, 6:42doi:10.1186/1475-2891-6-42
Published: 5 December 2007
Abstract (provisional)

Background
Short-chain fructo-oligosaccharides (scFOS) are increasingly used in human diet for their prebiotic properties. We aimed at investigating the effects of scFOS ingestion on the colonic microflora and oro-fecal transit time in elderly healthy humans.

Methods
Stools composition, oro-fecal transit time, and clinical tolerance were evaluated in 12 healthy volunteers, aged 69+/-2 yrs, in three consecutive periods: basal period (2 weeks), scFOS (Actilight) ingestion period (8 g/d for 4 weeks) and follow-up period (4 weeks). Two-way ANOVA, with time and treatment as factors, was used to compare the main outcome measures between the three periods.

Results
Fecal bifidobacteria counts were significantly increased during the scFOS period (9.17 +/- 0.17 log cfu/g vs 8.52 +/- 0.26 log cfu/g during the basal period) and returned to their initial values at the end of follow-up (8.37 +/- 0.21 log cfu/g; P<0.05). Fecal cholesterol concentration increased during the scFOS period (8.18 +/- 2.37 mg/g dry matter vs 2.81 +/- 0.94 mg/g dry matter during the basal period) and returned to the baseline value at the end of follow-up (2.87 +/- 0.44 mg/g dry matter; P<0.05). Fecal pH tended to decrease during scFOS ingestion and follow-up periods compared to the basal period (P=0.06). Fecal bile acids, stool weight, water percentage, and oro-fecal transit time did not change throughout the study. Excess flatus and bloating were significantly more frequent during scFOS ingestion when compared to the basal period (P<0.05), but the intensity of these symptoms was very mild.

Conclusions
Four-week 8 g/d scFOS ingestion is well tolerated and leads to a significant increase in fecal bifidobacteria in healthy elderly subjects. Whether the change in cholesterol metabolism found in our study could exert a beneficial action warrants further studies.

Special Correspondent

Government to form a body to take up construction of buildings for all its schools, colleges

Minister unveils Rs. 5,320-crore plan to improve the 651 residential schools

Student strength in each school to be increased to 1,120 from the present 441

HYDERABAD: The Government has decided to form a separate body, Andhra Pradesh Educational Infrastructure Development Corporation, to take up construction of buildings for all its schools and colleges in the State that lack accommodation.

The administrative structure for the new outfit, which will be run on the lines of the AP Health Medical Housing & Infrastructure Development Corporation, will be decided by the Cabinet at its next meeting.

Announcing this at a press conference here on Saturday after Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy reviewed these matters, School Education Minister C. Damodar Rajanarsimha said the corporation would cover all the 651 residential schools run for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes, and institutions coming under the purview of the School and Higher education departments and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

The Minister also unveiled a Rs. 5,320-crore plan to improve the 651 residential schools by bringing them under one umbrella to ensure better coordination and uniformity in standards. A society would be formed for this purpose.

Under the plan, the student strength in each school would be increased to 1,120 from the present 441.
CBSE syllabus

The schools, each on an extent of 15 acres and equipped with all facilities, would have classes VI to XII from the next academic year, all covered by CBSE syllabus and English medium.

The aim was to serve the rural student better and improve his employment opportunities. However, English medium would be introduced only for the first batch of Class VI.
Funds

The funds for the project would not be a problem as the burden would be spread over five years. To start with, Rs. 400 crore available in this year’s budget would be used. A sum of Rs. 600 crore would be provided in the next year’s budget and Rs. 1,000 crore each during the four years thereafter.

If necessary, external agencies like World Bank, Asian Development Bank DFID would be approached.

Mr. Rajanarsimha said it was also decided to enhance the daily diet charges for the residential schools to from Rs. 13 to Rs. 17.33 a student.

December 09, 2007 21:39 IST

Twenty wickets fell in the first day of Bengal-Orissa Ranji Trophy 'Elite-B' match at the Kanchanjungha Stadium pitch that appeared to be the grave yard for batsmen.

Put to bat, Bengal managed to reach only 107 in 35 overs with Orissa bowler Basant Mohanty taking six wickets for 28 runs. In their earlier match here, Bengal had amassed 513 runs in their first innings against Punjab only six days ago.

In reply, Orissa batsmen also found the pitch scary and were all out for 99 in 38.4 overs. Nearly matching Basant Mohanty, home team bowler Sourav Sarkar took five for 31.

For Bengal, Laxmi Ratan Sukla's 36 with five hits to the fence and an over boundary was the highest. Opener Arindam Das who had hit a ton on this ground against Punjab last week returned without scoring.

Tail enders Ranadeep Bose and Ashok Dinda too failed to open accounts in the innings that lasted only 175 minutes.

Basant ripped apart the hosts' middle order while Debasis Mohanty and Pritanjit Das took two wickets each.

Conceding eight run lead to Bengal, Orissa's innings failed to reach the three figure mark by one run lasting 178 minutes.

For Orissa, P Jayachandra scored the highest 22 runs with four boundaries. His 51-minute of stay in the middle ended as Wriddhiman Saha caught him off a Sourav Sarkar delivery.

Sarkar took five wickets conceding 31 runs in 11.4 overs. Ranadeb, who was selected in the probables squad for India team's forthcoming tour of Australia, took two wickets for 19 runs.

At stumps, Bengal openers Anustap Majumder and Anirban Das were on crease with no score on the board.

Scorecard:

Bengal (1st innings):
A Majumder c N Behera b P Das 15
A Das lbw b P Das 0
S Ghosh b D Mohanty 13
M Tiwary c H Das b B Mohanty 17
W Saha lbw b B Mohanty 9
LR Shukla c P Jaychandra b B Mohanty 36
K Mondal c B Pati b B Mohanty 0
S Sarkar b B Mohanty 5
R Bose b D Mohanty 0
A Dinda b B Mohanty 0
SS Paul not out 1
Extras: (l-b 1, nb-10) 11
Total: (all out in 35 overs) 107

Fall of wickets: 1-2, 2-27, 3-52, 4-59, 5-63, 6-78, 7-100, 8-101, 9-102

Bowling: D Mohanty 11-3-24-2, P Das 11-2-52-2, P Jaychandra 4.3-2-2-0, B Mohanty 8.3-2-28-6

Orissa (1st innings):
B Pati c A Majumder b R Bose 7
SS Das c A Majumder b SS Paul 5
N Behera c W Saha b R Bose 7
RR Parida b A Dinda 15
P Jaychandra c W Saha b S Sarkar 22
R Das c M Tiwary b S Sarkar 5
H Das c K Mondal b S Sarkar 8
D Mohanty c A Majumder b S Sarkar 8
S Sehgal b SS Paul 0
B Mohanty not out 14
P Das c Kamal Hassan [Images] Mondal b S Sarkar 4
Extras: (lb-2, nb-2) 4
Total: (all out in 38.4 overs) 99

Fall of wickets: 1-15, 2-15, 3-27, 4-53, 5-59, 6-72, 7-73, 8-76, 9-93

Bowling: R Bose 9-3-19-2, SS Paul 12-3-36-2, S Sarkar 11.4-2-31-5, A Dinda 6-2-11-1

Bengal (2nd innings):
A Majumdar not out 0
A Das not out 0
Extras: 0
Total: (for no wickets in 1.2 overs) 0

Bowling: D Mohanty 1-1-0-0, P Das 0.2-0-0-0

© Copyright 2007 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

By Lucy Kellaway

Published: December 9 2007 17:57 | Last updated: December 9 2007 17:57

Last week, for the first time in many years, I had a big, shouty, stand-up row with a colleague at work. It started off quite small, as these things often do. But then he accused me of being sloppy. I accused him of trying to cover something up. The two of us stood in the middle of a large, open-plan office and let rip. His complexion was deepest crimson and so was mine.

From my point of view he was intransigent, patronising and utterly insufferable. From his point of view – and I’m guessing here – I was superior, sarcastic and utterly toxic. So we fought for a bit and later, trembling with rage, I returned to my desk.

The conventional view is that rage at work is bad, as well as being mad and dangerous. A Gallup poll in the US showed that one in five office workers has been so furious with a colleague in the past six months that they would have liked to hit the other person.

But the true picture is more complicated than that. There is good rage and bad rage. Someone who gets angry all the time is impossible to work with. But for the rest of us, occasional bursts of anger, especially if performed with panache, have much to be said for them.

My rage attack had two advantages. First, it was a gift to everyone else. Humdrum office life was briefly interrupted with a little drama. Eyes popped, and suddenly there was something to whisper about at the coffee machine. It was also good for me as it got my blood coursing agreeably through my veins.

Companies have got themselves into a muddle over anger. On one hand they tell us to feel passionate about our work. On the other they expect us to be professional at all times – which means keeping our negative emotions under lock and key. Passionate and professional strike me as odd bedfellows.

Actually, I’ve never really gone along with the idea of passion at work. I’ve looked the word up in the dictionary and it means: a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Jesus at the crucifixion. Neither of these quite captures the mood of the average white-collar worker.

However, if what passion means is minding about work, I’m all for it. The trouble is that minding means sometimes feeling furious when things don’t go according to plan.

Indeed, for me work is one long rage opportunity – starting with the fact that the machine that dispenses hot water for tea is on the blink. Clearly some management of rage is in order, and here is what the experts usually suggest.

Their first tip is to breathe. I’ve never been able to see what the big deal about breathing is. It keeps me alive, but that’s as far as it goes.

Their second is “positive self-talk” – to squash your negative feelings and give the other person the benefit of the doubt. This is dodgy advice. Why should I give my patronising colleague the benefit of the doubt when he was so clearly in the wrong? The very thought make me much crosser than I was before.

The third tip is forgiveness. Again, no dice: I don’t forgive the water machine and I don’t forgive my colleague.

The reason this advice is so hopeless is that it is trying to eliminate anger. Instead, what we all need advice on is how to do anger better. My outburst last week could have been improved on. The first problem is that I don’t get angry at work often enough, so last week’s row was too shocking to my system. Once every 10 years is too little. Once every 10 minutes is too much. The ideal might be about once every couple of months.

The next problem was that I didn’t end it properly. Afterwards I sought the advice of a pugnacious colleague. He said I should send an e-mail saying: “Don’t ever speak to me like that again, and I demand an apology at once.”

I rejected this because such e-mails are not my style. My style is more to nurse a lifelong grudge (and possibly write a column about it). Which approach is better? Clearly the pugnacious one is. My problem was that I was an anger wimp and didn’t follow through.

Apologies all round are a good way of ending it. A fairly senior woman I know often has bad-tempered outbursts but always says a large and generous sorry afterwards. She reckons (and she may be right) that the effect of a furious shout followed by an apology often leaves her victim marginally better disposed to her than before the rage attack.

There are other principles for good anger. It is almost never good to shout at a subordinate. Mine was a row of equals. Second, however angry you are don’t let it spill out of control. Throwing the computer keyboard is not advisable as it makes you look an idiot and then your computer doesn’t work, making you crosser still.

If you are small and male, anger is to be avoided. A man under 5’ 7” who loses it at work just looks comic. This isn’t fair, but that’s the way it goes.

The people who worry me most at work are not the people who get angry but the ones who never do. A calm man I knew in my teens once told me: never lose your temper, it makes you look weak. He had a catastrophic nervous breakdown in his mid-20s, poor man, and is now in sheltered accommodation in Arizona.

lucy.kellaway@ft.com

New Delhi (PTI): Celebrations were at their peak as jubilant Congress workers left no stone unturned to mark the 62nd birthday of their leader and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Sunday. With huge hoardings adorning the whole road in front of her 10 Janpath house, the life-size images of Sonia Gandhi were to be seen everywhere tagged with lengthy birthday wishes with expressions like "mother" used for the UPA Chairperson.

The beats of drums and chorus of slogans had begun early in the morning outside Gandhi's residence as supporters and party workers gathered carrying huge bouquets of flowers. Occasionally shouting the names of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi between their "salutations" to the "supreme leader", the separate groups of supporters could also be seen competing with each other for slogan-shouting, even as they desperately waited for their turn to meet the UPA Chairperson.

"I have come from a remote village in Andhra to greet madam. She is the country's greatest leader and we all wish her a very long life", said a party worker. However, when he was asked about Gandhi's age, he expressed ignorance.

Later, the assembly further grew when hundreds of party workers from Karnataka, brought in by almost a dozen buses, joined the supporters already present outside 10, Janpath.

Wearing T-shirts with "Sonia-imprint", the supporters sang and clapped with professional artists performing traditional dances during the procession. Massive tableaux also attracted the attention of the people.

Their efforts did bore fruit as Sonia eventually came out around mid-noon and waved at cheering supporters. She also acknowledged the mediamen and flashed a "V" (victory), exuding confidence ahead of upcoming state assembly polls.

The Sensex scaled 20,000 yet again this week, after a month, and the Nifty touched a new intra-day high past 6,000. Profit booking did not allow the indices to remain at such high levels. There have been different opinions on Indian markets emerging from various fund houses. Citibank in a report pointed out that India was the second most expensive market in Asia. Bloomberg reported that HSBC's investment director, Sanjiv Duggal, would ask his investors to cash out and UBS raised its target for the Sensex from 19,000 to 22,600 by the end of 2008. Standard & Poor's was neutral on India, said Lorraine Tan, head Asia-Pacific equity, who believes that the market is at a comfortable point with corporate earnings growth to support a further upside in 2008.

The coming week has on its line-up the most important event world markets have been looking forward to: the meeting of the US Federal Reserve on December 11. While a rate cut has already been discounted by the markets, one hopes the domestic political scene does not upset the rate cut party. The weekend saw a renewed threat from the Left over the continuation of meetings with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Communist Party of India (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat warned that the government should withdraw from talks by December or be prepared for polls. On the macro-economic front, Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s mention of rising capital flows posing a risk should be kept in mind.

Information technology majors made a comeback last week. Infosys gained 7 per cent, Wipro 9 per cent and TCS over 5 per cent as investors who thought the worst was over the industry decided to take contrarian bets. Energy stocks continued to be active and realty stocks gained over copious news flows. Fund-raising plans pushed Reliance Energy up by 11 per cent and Tata Power gained 12 per cent. Mid-caps continued to outpace large-caps last week and some suspect a bit of front running even as funds continue with new fund offers and collect decent sums. Investors and fund managers alike continue to hunt for value unlocking from land holdings. Automobile ancillary stocks like MICO and MRF saw some volatile movement last week.