Vargas Llosa to oppose Fujimori for Peru president

LIMA: Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa said on Monday he would work to stop the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori from winning next year’s presidential race.

Vargas Llosa said it would be a catastrophe for Peru if Keiko Fujimori, a popular conservative lawmaker, wins the April 10 vote, and said he would rally against her campaign.

“If the daughter of the dictator who was condemned to prison for being a criminal and a thief has the chance of becoming president of Peru, I am going to be one of the Peruvians that will go out and try to stop it with all legal means possible,” he told reporters.

Keiko Fujimori, 34, is one of three front-runners in the race, along with former President Alejandro Toledo and former Lima Mayor Luis Castaneda.

The elder Fujimori was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison for

Robert Edwards wins Nobel Prize for Medicine

British physiologist Robert Edwards, whose work led to the first test-tube baby, won the 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology, the prize-awarding institute said on Monday.
Edwards, 85, won the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.5 million), Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said.
His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10 percent of all couples worldwide, the institute said in a statement.
Robert Geoffrey Edwards was born in September 1925. After finishing Manchester Central High School, he served at the University College of North Wales (UCNW) in Bangor, but soon realized that he was interested not so much in plants but rather in animal reproduction and transferred to the Department of Zoology and received his B.Sc. in 1951 from UCNW; in 1962 the same institution offered him the degree of DSc.
Edwards co-founded one of the first IVF clinics in the world at Bourn Hall, Cambridge in 1980. That same year, one test tube baby was born in the United States. In 1990, the number rose to 4,000 in the US, and in 1998, it reached 28,500. In 2001 he was awarded the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award by the Lasker Foundation for the development of in vitro fertilization.
Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences would be announced on October 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11 respectively.

Castro Hails Nobel to Barack Obama

HAVANA: Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro called US President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize a “positive measure”.

In an article, Castro said the Nobel committee decision was designed to criticise “the politics of genocide” pursued by Obama’s predecessors.

“I don’t always agree with decisions by this institution,” Castro wrote. “But this time, I recognise that it was a positive step.”

He added that many around the world thought the prize had been premature. “But we want to see in this decision more than just an award to a US president,” Castro continued. “We see in it criticism of the politics of genocide pursued by a number of past US presidents.”

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Castro Hails Nobel to Barack Obama was first posted on October 11, 2009 at 6:40 pm.

Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize

Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama, who has pledged to place diplomacy ahead of confrontation and reached out to a skeptical world with offers of mutual understanding, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace today for what the Nobel committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century,” Obama said in a White House Rose Garden appearance. “This award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity.”

Professing humility and surprise in the awarding of the prize, the president said, “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as a recognition of American leadership. . . .

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize,” Obama said, suggesting that the prize has not always “been awarded just to honor specific achievements,” but also to lend some momentum to the cause of peace.

Obama is only the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Prize for Peace — President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906, President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

The president was nominated for the prize after just weeks in office, with the award after less than nine months into the president’s term a sign that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is recognizing aspirations for peace over achievements.

The committee hailed the president’s creation of “a new climate in international politics.”

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Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize was first posted on October 9, 2009 at 10:20 pm.

German Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature

STOCKHOLM: German Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature, Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, honored for work that “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.”

The 56-year-old author, who emigrated to Germany from then-communist Romania in 1987, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled “Niederungen,” which was promptly censored by the Romanian government. In 1984 an uncensored version was published in Germany and her work depicting life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania was devoured by readers.

That work was followed by “Oppresive Tango” in Romania.

Because of her vocal criticism of Romania’s government, and its feared secret police, she and her husband left the country.

The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.

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German Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature was first posted on October 9, 2009 at 8:41 am.

Nobel Prize 2009 Literature

Nobel Prize 2009 Literature, Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, honored for work that “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,” the Swedish Academy said.

The 56-year-old author, who emigrated to Germany from then-communist Romania in 1987, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled “Niederungen,” or “Lowlands” in English, which was promptly censored by her government.

In 1984 an uncensored version was smuggled to Germany where it was published and her work depicting life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania was devoured by readers there. That work was followed by “Oppressive Tango” in Romania.

“The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively,” the Academy said. “Because Mueller had publicly criticized the dictatorship in Romania, she was prohibited from publishing in her own country.”

In 1987 she emigrated to Germany with her husband two years before dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was toppled from power amid the widening communist collapse across eastern Europe.

Mueller’s parents were members of the German-speaking minority in Romania and father served in the Waffen SS during World War II.

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Nobel Prize 2009 Literature was first posted on October 8, 2009 at 6:15 pm.

New Bar Code Google Logo

Bar Code Google, Once in a while Google changes the logo on their homepage, this often happens to celebrate a holiday, a birthday of an important figure from history, or in this latest case an invention that has made an impact on our lives. Today is the 57th Anniversary of the Barcode, the first patent on the bar code was back on 7 October 1952.

When we go into our local store to purchase anything from groceries to consumer electronics, the assistant at the till will scan the bar code at the checkouts. These have not only made our life easier, but also sales assistants as well, as they no longer have to price each individual item.

Barcodes were first used to label railroad cars; they did not become a commercial success until they were used in supermarket checkouts, which made the system more automated. Other systems have tried to take the place of the Barcode, but the simplicity of the Bar Code and its low cost makes it still the preferred choice.

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New Bar Code Google Logo was first posted on October 7, 2009 at 4:19 pm.

No Strings Attached to PaK Aid: John Kerry

WASHINGTON: John Kerry, the top American Senator and architect of the newly-negotiated version of the Kerry-Lugar Pakistan aid bill which triples the non-military aid to Islamabad to USD 7.5 billion in the next five years, has said that “no conditions” were imposed on Islamabad in lieu of the non-military aid.

Terming as “unfortunate” the characterization of the bicameral legislation in some quarters in ways that are just not accurate, Kerry asserted that there is no conditionality whatsoever in the bill with respect to civilian and economic assistance that is provided.

Soon after the bill was passed by the House of Representatives by a voice vote last week, Senator Kerry had said this bill reaffirms the depth of America’s long-term commitment to the people and Government of Pakistan.

The bill, initially introduced in the Senate by Joe Biden, then in the capacity as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its ranking member, Senator Dick Lugar, has seen several changes and is now called Kerry-Lugar bill as it has been re-introduced by Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Lugar.

The bicameral legislation now awaits President Barack Obama’s signature.

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No Strings Attached to PaK Aid: John Kerry was first posted on October 7, 2009 at 5:24 pm.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle, Amazon announced late Tuesday that it was introducing a new version of its Kindle e-book reader that can wirelessly download books in the United States and more than 100 countries.

The new device, which is expected to ship on October 19, is physically similar to the previous Kindle with a six-inch display. However, the new e-reader will be capable of downloading books and periodicals via wireless networks belonging to AT&T and its international partners.

“We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books,” Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. “Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

The online retailer also announced that it would cut the price of its U.S. Kindle by $40 to $259, bringing it more in line with Sony’s Reader Pocket Edition, which sells for $199. The price cut is the second for Amazon’s e-reader in four months: in July, the price of the Kindle 2 dropped from $359 to $299. Amazon also sells a larger version called the Kindle DX for $489.

The Seattle-based e-tailer said international customers will have access to about 220,000 book titles at its Kindle Store compared with the 350,000 titles available to U.S. customers. Publishers involved with the store include Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Harlequin, Penguin, Bloomsbury, and Hachette.

With the announcements, Amazon is attempting to position itself for a boom in e-reader sales that Forrester Research expects in the U.S. over the next few years. In a report to be released Wednesday, Forrester Research raised its 2009 forecast for e-reader sales in the United States to 3 million units from its previous prediction of 2 million sales. Forrester Research also expects Amazon’s Kindle to command about 60 percent of the e-reader market in 2009, compared with 35 percent for Sony’s Reader.

“This holiday season, eReaders will be one category that’s a breakout success,” Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in the report. “Lower prices, more content, better distribution, and lots of media hype are contributing to faster-than-expected adoption of eReader devices in 2009.”

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Amazon Kindle was first posted on October 7, 2009 at 6:11 pm.

Nobel Prize Chemistry 2009 Americans, Israeli win

Two Americans, Israeli win Nobel Prize Chemistry 2009, STOCKHOLM: Two Americans and an Israeli scientist won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for atom-by-atom mapping of the protein-making factories within cells.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath’s work on ribosomes has been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life and has helped researchers develop antibiotics.

Yonath, 70, is the fourth woman to win the Nobel chemistry prize and the first since 1964, when Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Britain received the award.

“I’m really, really happy,” Yonath said. “I thought it was wonderful when the discovery came. It was a series of discoveries … We still don’t know every, everything, but we progressed a lot.”

This year’s three laureates, who will share the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award, generated three-dimensional models that show how different antibiotics bind to ribosomes.

“These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering,” the academy said in its announcement.

They used a method called X-ray crystallography to pinpoint the positions of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

“This knowledge can be put to a practical and immediate use; many of today’s antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes,” the citation said. “Without functional ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive. This is why ribosomes are such an important target for new antibiotics.”

Their work builds on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and, more directly, on the work done by James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine for mapping DNA’s double helix, the citation said.

In 2006, Roger D. Kornberg won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for X-ray structures that showed how information is copied to messenger RNA molecules, which carry information from DNA to the ribosomes.

“Now, one of the last pieces of the puzzles has been added — understanding how proteins are made,” said Professor Gunnar von Heijne of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. “This discovery is important not only for science as such, but also gives us tools to develop new antibiotics.”

Indian-born Ramakrishnan, 57, is the senior scientist and group leader at the Structural Studies Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Ramakrishnan said that he wasn’t convinced when he got the morning phone call from the academy.

“Well, you know, I thought it was an elaborate joke. I have friends who play practical jokes,” Ramakrishnan told a US news agency by telephone from his lab in Cambridge. “I complimented him on his Swedish accent.”

Steitz, a 69-year-old born in Milwaukee, is a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University and attached to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, both in New Haven, Connecticut.

Yonath is a professor of structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and the ninth Israeli to win a Nobel prize. She told Israel Radio she didn’t think her gender played a role in the decision.

“It’s true that a woman hasn’t won since 1964. But I don’t know what that means — does it mean that I’m the best woman since then? I don’t think that gender played a role here,” she said.

She had to end the interview abruptly because Israeli President Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace prize laureate, was on the other line.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later.

Each prize comes with a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) purse, a diploma, a gold medal and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. The Peace Prize is handed out in Oslo.

The literature and peace prize winners will be announced later this week and the economics announcement is set for Monday.

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Nobel Prize Chemistry 2009 Americans, Israeli win was first posted on October 7, 2009 at 7:14 pm.