China’s Hu heads to Russia urgently seeking fuel Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:03 AM ET By Emma Graham-Harrison BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Hu Jintao goes to Moscow on Monday, confidently offering trade deals with an economy roaring back home, but urgently seeking oil, gas and assurance as the two countries eye each other’s resurgent power. Hu’s three-day state visit to Russia will be his third as president, showing how seriously Beijing is courting its neighbor and President Vladimir Putin. Above all, Russia has the energy supplies China needs to fuel its growth. ‘At present, Chinese-Russian relations are developing vigorously and have reached unprecedented levels,’ Hu told Russian journalists ahead of his visit. He is expected to unveil business deals worth over $4 billion, Chinese officials said. China is the world’s number two oil consumer, and Russia the second-largest exporter. But their potential partnership has been hobbled by both nations’ desire to keep a grip on the strategic energy sector and maximize their oil majors’ profits. Previous plans for key crude and gas pipelines have languished after initial agreements were trumpeted by both sides, underscoring the brittleness of the two countries’ friendship. ‘Chinese-Russian […]
As an estimated 40,000-50,000 Iraqis flee their countries each month, governments in the region are reluctant to acknowledge that they are dealing with a full-blown refugee crisis. Kristele Younes writes in Foreign Policy in Focus that the United Nations estimates 2.3 million Iraqis have left since 2003. As a result, there is a ‘strong need’ for host nations to sponsor programs (funded by the UN and donor governments) that will address the needs of this refugee population. ‘Iraqis who are unable to flee the country are now in a queue, waiting their turn to die,’ is how one Iraqi journalist summarizes conditions in Iraq today. While the US debates whether a civil war is raging in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis face the possibility of death every day all over the country. All Iraqis, whether Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, or other groups such as the Palestinian, are threatened by armed actors. People are targeted because of religious affiliation, economic status, and profession – many, such as doctors, teachers, and even hairdressers, are viewed as being ‘anti-Islamic.’ On a recent mission to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, Refugees International documented dozens of stories of […]
Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs including the hallucinogen LSD and the dance drug ecstasy, according to a new scale for assessing the dangers posed by recreational substances. Drug specialists say the current system for ranking drugs – class A for the most dangerous to class C for the least dangerous, as set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act – is irrational, arbitrary and ‘lacking in transparency’. Scientific evidence shows that heroin and cocaine are correctly ranked as class A drugs as they do cause the most harm. But LSD and ecstasy come close to bottom of the league in terms of harm caused, yet they are also labelled as class A. Alcohol is legal and widely used but comes fifth in the ‘harm’ table, ahead of amphetamines and cannabis, which are ranked as class B and class C respectively. Tobacco is also ranked as more harmful than cannabis. The league table of 20 drugs drawn up by drugs specialists is intended to provide a scientifically based model for policy makers of the harm they cause. It shows that the dangers they pose bear little relationship to the official classification, on […]
France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades. The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists. ‘It is a world first,’ said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of ‘non-identified aerospatial phenomena.’ Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption. ‘Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper’ are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet. But many others involving multiple sightings — in at least one case involving thousands of people across France — and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously. A phalanx of beefy security guards formed a barrier in front of the […]
Tai chi chih, the Westernized version of the 2,000-year-old Chinese martial art characterized by slow movement and meditation, significantly boosts the immune systems of older adults against the virus that leads to the painful, blistery rash known as shingles, according to a new UCLA study. The 25-week study, which involved a group of 112 adults ranging in age from 59 to 86, showed that practicing tai chi chih alone boosted immunity to a level comparable to having received the standard vaccine against the shingles-causing varicella zoster virus. When tai chi chih was combined with the vaccine, immunity reached a level normally seen in middle age. The report appears in the April issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, currently online. The results, said lead author Michael Irwin, the Norman Cousins Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, confirm a positive, virus-specific immune response to a behavioral intervention. The findings demonstrate that tai chi chih can produce a clinically relevant boost in shingles immunity and add to the benefit of the shingles vaccine in older adults. ‘These are exciting findings, because the positive results of this study also have […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
