Test Launch of Bulava Missile Fails

The Defense Ministry said Thursday that the latest test of its advanced submarine-launched ballistic missile Bulava has failed, with the missile self-destructing.

The failure was the seventh in 11 test launches for the Bulava and could have consequences for top missile designers and missile force commanders.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the missile was fired Wednesday from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi, but its first stage malfunctioned and the weapon self-destructed.

No other information was released.

“Another failure would certainly provoke serious soul searching in Russia,” Pavel Podvig, a well-known analyst of Russia’s missile forces, wrote in his blog Wednesday. “It is probably too late to shut the program down, but the fact that the industry is not able to get the missile to fly … is quite worrying.”

China market value overtakes Japan's

China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest stock market by value for the first time in 18 months, after government stimulus spending and record bank lending boosted share prices this year.

The Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.4 percent Wednesday, sending the value of China's domestic stock market to $3.21 trillion, compared with Japan's $3.20 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Shanghai index has gained 75 percent this year, the best-performing major market, against a 7 percent advance in the Nikkei 225 stock average. The U.S. has the biggest equities market, worth $10.8 trillion.

"China is just entering its stride and is still very much in a growth phase, while Japan is already a developed economy," said Daphne Roth, Singapore-based head of Asian equity research at ABN Amro Private Banking, which oversees about $14 billion.

China last surpassed Japan in stock-market capitalization from Jan. 4 to Jan. 24, 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Shanghai Composite tripled in the two years leading to its record on Oct. 16, 2007, before tumbling 72 percent to its trough the following November.

A government-led 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package and record bank lending has shielded the Chinese economy against a plunge in exports. Foreign-exchange reserves topped $2 trillion for the first time, while money supply rose a record 28.5 percent in June, the central bank said July 15.

The economy expanded 7.9 percent in the second quarter, the statistics bureau said Thursday in Beijing, more than the 7.8 percent median estimate of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

New loans rose fivefold in June from a year earlier to 1.53 trillion yuan, increasing concern that attempts to revive the world's third-largest economy will lead to bad debts and asset bubbles. Rapid credit growth poses risks for lenders and the financial system, Wang Huaqing, the disciplinary secretary of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said on July 7.

BNP Paribas Securities (Asia) Ltd. last month cut its rating on China to "neutral" from "overweight," citing valuations. Stocks on the benchmark index are trading at 33.2 times earnings, almost triple the 12.9 multiple on Nov. 4, when the measure dropped to its lowest since the financial crisis. Earnings per share declined 7 percent last year and will probably remain "flat" this year, the brokerage said.

"We share concerns that the corporate earnings recovery is not going to be very strong," Erwin Sanft, head of China and Hong Kong equities research at BNP Paribas said in a Thursday interview with Bloomberg Television. Some Chinese shares have soared by "1,000 percent from the bottom, so they're pricing in a very strong rebound in earnings," he said.

In Japan, nagging deflation and an aging population have sapped strength from what was once the world's largest market by capitalization. During the 1990s, Japan spent ¥135 trillion on 10 economic stimulus plans and lowered interest rates to zero, none of which succeeded in promoting sustainable growth.

Japan's economy shrank at a 14.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the most since data began in 1955. The country's gross domestic output will shrink 3.4 percent in the year ending next March, the central bank predicted.

"Japan has two main problems; the enormous public debt handicaps the government's ability to spend additional money to boost the economy and we are too reliant on exports," said Takashi Kamiya, chief economist at T&D Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. "There's no way to expect the emergence of a domestic growth driver that can propel us out of this funk."

55k Brits catch swine flu in one week

AROUND 55,000 people in Britain were infected with swine flu last week alone - bringing our total number of cases to around 85,000.

Health officials said 652 people were now in hospital with the bug - a figure that has DOUBLED in a week.

Fifty three were in intensive care. The shock new figures came as it was revealed 29 Brits have died of the disease - an increase of 12 in just the past four days.

Today, it emerged a baby has been left fighting for life after its swine flu stricken mum gave birth prematurely.

The 39-year-old mum-of-six died in hospital on Monday moments after having her "very early" baby. The child has been in intensive care ever since.

The woman, thought to have been a paraplegic after a car crash several years ago, died at Whipps Cross Hospital, in North East London.

Relatives of the victim, who lived in London but is originally thought to be from Bangladesh, are said to be caring for her five other kids.

A hospital spokesman said: "Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust can confirm that a 39-year-old woman passed away on July 13, 2009 and that she was infected with Pandemic H1N1.

"The trust can confirm that she had underlying health conditions."

Other victims are thought to include a tot under six months old. He died in North London's Royal Free Hospital.

The death of a seven-year-old boy on Tuesday was caused by "a range of complications which were not related to swine flu", health officials revealed today.

Announcing the new figures, Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said that by September one person in eight will be sick with the bug and a third of the population could be infected during the course of the pandemic over the next two years.

He predicted that might mean 65,000 deaths - equivalent to the population of a town the size of Guildford, Surrey. Normal flu takes an average 10,000 lives a year.

Most victims will be people with respiratory diseases or immune system deficiencies, along with patients recovering from operations.

The highest number of cases have occurred in the 16 to 64 age group, followed by the under fives. Health authorities are closely monitoring the bug for any changes, although Sir Liam stressed it has NOT been mutating to become more deadly.

Most people who get it will have only minor symptoms and are urged to remain at home to stop the disease spreading even more.

Sir Liam also announced the launch of the National Pandemic Flu Service which should be up and running next week.

It will enable patients to get a swine flu diagnosis over the phone or on the internet. They will then be given a unique ID code that will allow a healthy pal to collect a dose of antiviral drug Tamiflu.

The treatment should cut the severity of their symptoms.

Sir Liam said: "The new flu service will ease the pressure on hospitals and GP services, allowing them to look after the most seriously ill. We will say it's not advisable to take the drugs if you don't need them."

The Royal College of GPs yesterday attacked the Government's handling of the crisis. It said doctors have complained of confusion over prescribing Tamiflu and a lack of knowledge over how long people should stay at home.

A report due out today also warned that the UK's GDP - the amount of wealth the country creates - could fall by five per cent in the wake of the swine flu outbreak.

The study, by Oxford Economics, said there was a significant risk the economy would tip into deflation.

And according to official guidance, some schools could remain closed in September if swine flu escalates over the summer.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said while it is expected schools and nurseries would open as usual at the start of the academic year, they "cannot be certain what the situation will be" in the autumn.

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PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday set aside $1.825billion for emergency use to fight swine flu. The money will pay for vaccines and an inoculation programme.

Toyota enters into tieup talks with Mazda to supply core hybrid car parts

NAGOYA (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. has begun tieup talks with Mazda Motor Corp. as it considers providing the smaller rival with core parts of a gasoline-electric hybrid car with an eye to making its pioneering green technology a global standard, sources said Thursday.

Toyota is expected to supply batteries and motors for a hybrid car Mazda plans to release between 2010 and 2015.

The deal between Toyota and Mazda is likely to open the door to similar tieups between automakers amid a growing market for energy-saving cars, particularly in Japan due partially to recent government tax breaks and subsidies for hybrids and other eco-friendly vehicles.

Talks between the two automakers for a tieup began after Mazda asked for the hybrid parts from the world's largest automaker, the sources said.

Mazda, which had planned to enter the hybrid market after 2015, will be able to roll out the model earlier if it can ink the deal with Toyota. By selling to the Hiroshima-based smaller rival, Toyota will also be able to push down costs for the key hybrid components through mass production.

Toyota has previously provided its hybrid technology and parts to Nissan Motor Co. and U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co.

On the back of booming demand for fuel-efficient cars, particularly for hybrids like Toyota's best-selling new Prius, Toyota has been approached by automakers other than Mazda for similar deals to supply hybrid parts, a senior Toyota official said.

"We would like to widen our scope and respond (to the requests) as much as possible," the official said.

Mazda, which has a business and capital alliance with Ford, has been working with the U.S. carmaker on hybrid technology.

Girl 'gang raped' at school prom

A TEENAGE girl was subjected to an horrific "gang rape" by six youths on a playing field after her school prom.

The alleged assault happened on a village recreation ground behind Swavesey Village College, in Swavesy, Cambs, just hours after she left the school's end of year party.

It is said she was seriously sexually assaulted multiple times over several hours between 1am and 4am last Sunday morning.

Three 17-year-olds and three 18-year-olds were arrested and questioned by Cambridgeshire Police following the incident.

The father of a teenage student at the college, which has 1175 pupils aged 11 to 16, said pupils have been quizzed about a "gang rape".

The dad, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "My son said people at the school had been questioned about a 'gang rape'. I was really shocked.

"It is not what you expect your teenage son to come back from school and report."

A spokesman for Swavesey College said: "The school is aware of a police investigation that we are supporting fully.

"It would be inappropriate to comment further while that investigation is ongoing."

A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire Police confirmed the arrests.

She said: "Officers are investigating a serious sexual assault which took place at Swavesey recreation ground on Sunday, June 28.

"Six men have been arrested and bailed in connection with the incident."

The three youths and three men have since been released on police bail and are due to return to Parkside police station, in Cambridge, on September 1.

Brighter people live longer, says Glasgow scientist David Batty

Greater intelligence may in part partially explain why people from a high socio-economic background live longer than those of lower social status, researchers have suggested.

A study of former soldiers in the United States has indicated that differences in IQ may explain almost a quarter of the differences in mortality between people of higher and lower social classes.

It has long been accepted that social status affects mortality, with a particular influence on death from cardiovascular events such as strokes and heart attacks. Many of these differences have been ascribed to stress, to income, and to behavioural factors such as smoking and diet — but these cannot explain the whole gap in longevity between the highest socio-economic groups and the lowest ones.

The new study, from a team led by David Batty, of the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow, compared outcomes from a group of 4,289 former American soldiers drawn from diverse social backgrounds.
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It found that variations in IQ explain about 23 per cent of the survival differences between different social groups. Details of the study are published in European Heart Journal.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, of University College, London, who leads the Whitehall II study of civil servants, which has uncovered many of the effects of social class on mortality, and his colleague Mika Kivimaki, offered three possible explanations for the effect in a commentary for the journal.

“Intelligence might lead to greater knowledge about how to pursue healthy behaviours,” he wrote. Intelligence may “cause” socio-economic position; that is, more intelligence leads to more education, and greater income and occupational prestige. “Intelligence may be a marker for something else, and it is that something else, early life exposures, for example, that leads to mortality,” Dr Batty said.

“We already know that socio-economically disadvantaged people have worse health and tend to die earlier from conditions such as heart disease, cancer and accidents. Environmental exposures and health-related behaviours, such as smoking, diet and physical activity, can explain some of this difference, but not all of it. This raises the possibility that as-yet-unmeasured psychological factors need to be considered. One of these is intelligence or cognitive function, commonly referred to as IQ. This measures a person’s ability to reason and problem-solve. IQ is strongly related to socio-economic status.

“IQ wasn’t a magic bullet in this study, but this psychological variable had additional explanatory power on top of the classic variables such as smoking, high blood pressure, high blood glucose and obesity. It has partially explained the differences in death from heart disease and all causes.”

Hurricane-calming technology? Bill Gates has a plan

Good news, folks. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has turned his attention to controlling the weather.

Five U.S. Patent and Trade Office patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. If issued, the patents offer 18 years of legal rights to the idea for Gates and co-inventors, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Hurricanes, most famously demonstrated by the deadly intensification of Hurricane Katrina before its landfall in 2005, draw strength from warm waters on the ocean's surface. The patents describe a system for strategically placing turbine-equipped barges in the path of storms to chill sea surfaces with cold water pumped from the depths.


First requested by Gates and colleagues last year, the patents describe methods "not limited to atmospheric management, weather management, hurricane suppression, hurricane prevention, hurricane intensity modulation, hurricane deflection" to manage storms.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Microsoft | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Pennsylvania State University | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Kerry Emanuel

Given the scope of the applications, "I suspect these will have a lengthy stay in the examiner's office. They are talking about some interesting issues here," says patent expert Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog.com.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Caldeira declined to comment on the patents.

"The bottom line here is that if enough pumps are deployed, it is reasonable to expect some diminution of hurricane power," says hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is not part of the patent effort. Cutting sea surface temperature by 4.5 degrees under the eye of a hurricane would actually kill a storm, he adds. "This would have to be done on a massive scale, but is still probably within the realm of feasibility."

Says climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in State College: "Needless to say, there is a whole lot of skepticism about this among tropical meteorologists. But it's not so ridiculous that I would actually dismiss it out of hand. There is certainly an important role of upper ocean mixing on tropical cyclone behavior."

Ocean water quickly grows colder with depth, reaching temperatures of 28 to 37 degrees (salty ocean water doesn't freeze at 32 degrees) about 500 feet down. The patents envision sail-maneuvered barges, with conduits 500 feet long, pumping warm water down to the depths and bringing cold water up. The average depth of the Gulf of Mexico is 5,300 feet.

"By cooling a region in the path of a hurricane (over 60 square miles), models suggest we could knock a half-a-category in wind speed out," says Philip Kithil of Atmocean in Santa Fe, an ocean-pumping firm mentioned in Gates' applications. "All the models indicate the path of the storm would be unaffected."

In the average year, six hurricanes develop in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico in a season that officially extends from June 1 to Nov. 30. Over the past century, the annual cost of hurricanes to the USA has averaged about $10 billion, according to a 2008 Natural Hazards Review study. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,800 people and caused at least $81 billion in damage.

"From a scientific and political standpoint, (the Gates plan) looks fanciful," Quinn says. "But the physics is real and like a lot of things, the question is whether the damage you prevent is worth the money you would spend to develop something so massive."

Sex video blackmail against richest woman

GERMAN police have arrested three men suspected of attempting to blackmail Susanne Klatten, the country's wealthiest woman, by claiming they had a secret video of her affair with a Swiss gigolo.

Munich state prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said the trio had been arrested last week by police in the northern town of Duisburg on suspicion of trying to extort 800,000 euros and a BMW luxury SUV from Klatten, heiress to the BMW empire.

"They sent a letter to her threatening to give the sex video they claimed to have to Italian media if she did not give them 800,000 euros and a BMW," Mr Steinkraus-Koch said, adding that Klatten immediately forwarded the letter to police.

"We assume the story about the video was contrived. At least we have found no evidence of any such video after searching their apartments and computers. There is nothing to suggest they ever were in possession of such a sex video."

The three men aged 33 to 46 - including one German and one Serb - were contacted by a police officer posing as an acquaintance of Klatten, he said. They set up a contact phone number for the blackmailers and that led to their arrest.

Klatten, a member of the Quandt family - the leading shareholders in carmaker BMW - went public last year with the story of how her Swiss lover secretly shot intimate footage and later demanded tens of million of euros not to reveal it.

Helg Sgarbi, a former Swiss investment banker, was sentenced to six years in jail by a Munich court after he admitted he had seduced Klatten and three other wealthy women. He persuaded them to pay him nearly 10 million euros under various false pretexts.

Sgarbi, a Swiss army lieutenant, won over Klatten, a 46-year-old married mother of three, at a health centre.

She later handed him a cardboard box containing 7 million euros in 500 euro notes, believing he had paralysed a child in a traffic accident in America and was in need of the money.

Klatten ended the relationship after Sgarbi, 44, demanded more money. He responded by threatening to send photos and tapes of their hotel-room rendezvous to colleagues, family and media unless she gave him 49 million euros. She then went to police.

Klatten's wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine at almost $10 billion, making her the 68th richest person in the world.

The Quandt dynasty had close ties to the Nazi party and built its fortune supplying German army and railway worker uniforms. The first wife of Klatten's grandfather went on to marry Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

In March, a truck driver from Bochum tried to blackmail Klatten with a similar claim. He was seeking 75,000 euros and is now on trial in Munich for attempted blackmail.

NZer killed in Jakarta bomb blast named

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Bombs at two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital have killed nine people including a New Zealander.

An unexploded bomb has been also found at the Mariott Hotel.

Local media reported that two people were killed in another explosion in a car north of Jakarta later on Friday. Officials confirmed a blast but said it did not appear to be related.

Indonesia's security minister confirmed a New Zealander was among the dead in the blasts at the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels, and said a further 50 people were wounded.

Officials say there is an Australian, a New Zealander and a South Korean still among the injured.

Reuters has named the New Zealand man who was killed as Timothy David Mackay, president director of PT Holcim Indonesia.

Mr MacKay was the president director of PT Holcim Indonesia since 2004, the company's marketing director Patrick Walser said.

He was a master mariner and held an MBA from Massey University. He was previously in Holcim in Sri Lanka.

The Indonesian Embassy in Wellington has strongly condemned today's attack in a statement issued to media.

It noted Mr MacKay's killing "with deep regret and sorrow"

"Our prayers are to the victims and their families, and for the well-being of those suffering," it said.

"On behalf of the Government of Indonesia, the Embassy strongly condemns these terrorist attacks, which are cruel and inhumane."

Prime Minister John Key described today's events as "tragic".

When asked if the New Zealand government would offer help to Indonesia, Mr Key replied: "It's early days yet, but we will do what we can."

"Everything I have seen suggests that this is a deliberate attack designed to kill and wound innocent people," Mr Key said.

"While we are still receiving information from the Embassy about what happened, I would like to convey my deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the New Zealander killed.

"I extend my deepest sympathy also to the people of Indonesia and all others who have been caught up in this terrible event."

The embassy was contacting the 281 New Zealanders registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as being in Jakarta to tell them of the situation and remind them to take care in the meantime.

MFAT said New Zealanders concerned about family members in Jakarta should try to make contact with them, and could also contact MFAT on (04) 439 8000, with as many contact details as possible.

A spokesman for New Zealand's dairy multinational Fonterra said it had confirmed none of its 140 staff in Indonesia were affected by the bombings.

South Jakarta police Colonel Firman Bundi says the bodies of the deceased have been taken to a hospital.