Obama to grapple with waning influence at G20 (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama faces the delicate task of pushing European leaders to solve their debt crisis without appearing to lecture them at a summit of world economic powers this week.

Obama heads to France later on Wednesday to urge Europe to fix the long-running crisis that could send the already-weak U.S. economy into another recession.

The White House, which says Europe can solve the crisis on its own, is worried the Greek decision to hold a referendum over its 130 billion euro ($178 billion) bailout will unravel EU efforts to contain its sovereign debt crisis.

Obama is likely to be candid about his concerns when he meets French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Cannes.

But the president will need to tread carefully, given the United States is struggling to fix its own fiscal problems and has limited means to intervene in Europe even if it wanted to.

"We'll see if the president decides to grab this mantle and really drive the G20 discussion," said Heather Conley at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"European leaders and particularly European finance ministers have not been fully appreciative of U.S. advice and counsel on how to deal with the European crisis because of U.S. domestic challenges," she said.

William Galston, a former Clinton administration official, said the White House would be careful after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner irked some European ministers when he offered economic advice to Europe in mid-September.

"I think that (Obama) should make it clear that the United States is there to help and to cooperate ... How do we have the standing to lecture someone else?," said Galston, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

'BUFFERING STEPS'

The November 3-4 summit comes as Europe's efforts to stabilize the euro have been thrown back into chaos by Greece's announcement this week that it will hold a referendum on the austerity measures that the bailout requires.

Markets have tumbled on news of the Greek move that Sarkozy said "took the whole of Europe by surprise."

Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations said it may be possible for world leaders to find ways to calm markets, even if Europe's crisis takes time to fully resolve itself.

"You can still take steps to contain the uncertainty that is radiating outward from Athens. That will be the objective of the G20," Kupchan said.

European officials have petitioned Beijing to invest in their rescue fund. White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday any Chinese funding pledge would be "a sideshow."

"The focus here is a European problem that requires a European solution, for which the Europeans have the resources and capacity necessary," he said, stressing the United States could offer guidance based on its own experience with crises.

Experts said the sluggish U.S. economy and fragile environment in Europe meant emerging powers could have outsize influence at this G20.

"There will be a much greater emphasis on the need for coordinated efforts to prevent a contagion from spreading across the major economies," Kupchan said. "That necessarily means more reliance on China and other emerging powers to step up to the plate, because the United States and its European allies don't have the liquidity right now to calm nerves."

Still, U.S. officials dismissed the notion the Obama administration is fretting over a potential rise in clout for China if it steps in to help to Europe.

They noted that the United States pushed for the G20 to replace the G8 as the main global coordinating body precisely because the administration felt that big emerging economies should assume greater responsibilities in the global economy.

"The fact that China is stepping up and playing the role it needs to play -- why would that be a bad thing?" said one senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kupchan said the G20's creation "was meant to signify and symbolize the opening up of the inner circle to emerging powers."

Now, he said, "the leading economies of the Western world are coming with cups in hand, and in a quite weak position both economically and politically. That signifies how dramatically the world is changing and how quickly economic and political influence is shifting."

(Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak, Glenn Somerville and David Lawder)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111102/pl_nm/us_g20_usa_obama

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Sarkozy, Obama push for financial crisis solution

French President Nicholas Sarkozy greets President Barack Obama upon arriving at the G20 summit in Cannes, France, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

French President Nicholas Sarkozy greets President Barack Obama upon arriving at the G20 summit in Cannes, France, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President of the World Bank Robert Zoellick, left, shakes hands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy during arrivals for a G20 summit in Cannes, France on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. French President Nicolas Sarkozy will welcome Barack Obama of the U.S., Hu Jintao of China as well as the leaders of India, Brazil, Russia and the other members of the Group of 20 leading world economies in the city made famous by its annual film festival, but the event is far from the star turn the unpopular French leader had hoped to make six months before he faces a tough re-election vote. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Saudi Arabia's Finance Minister Ibrahim Alassaf, right, speaks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy during arrivals for a G20 summit in Cannes, France on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. French President Nicolas Sarkozy will welcome Barack Obama of the U.S., Hu Jintao of China as well as the leaders of India, Brazil, Russia and the other members of the Group of 20 leading world economies in the city made famous by its annual film festival, but the event is far from the star turn the unpopular French leader had hoped to make six months before he faces a tough re-election vote. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

President Barack Obama is pictured with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a working lunch at the G20 Summit in Cannes, France, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, shakes hands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy during arrivals for a G20 summit in Cannes, France on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. French President Nicolas Sarkozy will welcome Barack Obama of the U.S., Hu Jintao of China as well as the leaders of India, Brazil, Russia and the other members of the Group of 20 leading world economies in the city made famous by its annual film festival, but the event is far from the star turn the unpopular French leader had hoped to make six months before he faces a tough re-election vote. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

CANNES, France (AP) ? Europe's debt drama dominated talks among leaders of the Group of 20 leading economies Thursday, with Greece's government facing potential collapse and European leaders admitting that the eurozone may face losing its weakest member.

U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and other world leaders began the formal G-20 summit after a morning packed with bilateral meetings and a hurriedly organized meeting of eurozone officials to respond to developments in Greece ? which risk fracturing Europe's common currency area and the EU itself.

President Barack Obama said the most important task at the G-20 summit is to resolve the European financial crisis and urged European Union leaders to flesh out details of their ambitious plan to rescue Greece and stabilize financial markets.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy scrambled to save the summit he's hosting from being hijacked by the tumult in Greece. Sarkozy said he and Obama agree the private sector should play a greater role in helping resolve the global financial crisis.

"We have found a common analysis to make the financial world contribute" to finding a solution to the crisis, Sarkozy told reporters after talks with the U.S. president. He said he welcomed Obama's "understanding on subjects such as a tax on financial transactions."

Sarkozy and some others in Europe have been pushing for a small tax on all financial transactions that could be used to help poor nations and reduce debts. The Obama administration and several leading economists are cool to the idea, favoring instead fees on the biggest banks.

Obama said he and Sarkozy discussed developments in Greece "and how we can work to help resolve that situation." Obama didn't give any details on what the U.S. might do in concert with its European allies.

"The United States will continue to be a partner with the Europeans to resolve these challenges," Obama said.

Sarkozy is also welcoming Hu Jintao of China as well as the leaders of India, Brazil, Russia and the other members of the G-20 in this city made famous by its annual film festival. But the event is far from the star turn the unpopular French leader had hoped to make six months before he faces a tough re-election vote.

European leaders held another round of emergency meetings Thursday morning about Greece, this time including officials from Spain and Italy ? two major eurozone members whose debts have rattled markets and who are seen as too big for Europe to bail out. The meeting dragged on much longer than expected.

All attention is on Greece, where the embattled Socialist government was on the point of imploding Thursday as a revolt against Prime Minister George Papandreou's planned referendum on the country's hard-won international bailout package gathered pace.

Papandreou shocked European leaders and world markets with the announcement of the referendum. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in a late night press conference Thursday that they see the vote as a Greek choice between staying in the 17-member club of countries that use the euro or getting out.

A "no" vote could be devastating. It could lead to a disorderly Greek default, topple fragile European banks and send the global economy back into recession ? and would threaten the cornerstone of European unity and decades of work toward integration on a continent wracked by centuries of war.

Sarkozy and other top EU officials have long held that it was unthinkable for Greece to quit the euro because it would be, Sarkozy has said, "a failure of Europe."

European leaders tried pocketbook pressure, saying they would not release euro8 billion in previously approved loans to Greece ? needed to pay government salaries and pensions ? until the referendum results are in.

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos broke ranks with his prime minister, saying "Greece's position within the euro area is a historic conquest of the country that cannot be put in doubt."

Venizelos said it was important for the next bailout installment to be disbursed "without any distractions or delay."

It's far from clear whether European leaders have worked out contingency plans for a Greek exit from the eurozone.

In case Greece does leave, "we are considering the issue of how we can ensure that no harm comes to our people in Germany, in Luxembourg, elsewhere in the eurozone," Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker told Germany's ZDF television Thursday.

A Greek euro exit would be "quite a disaster for the Greeks" but the rest of the eurozone would be able to swallow it, Deutsche Bank chief economist Thomas Mayer said, adding that it would "certainly weigh down very, very strongly the economic development" of the country.

"The country is small ... the banks, the financial markets have now adjusted to the idea that there will be a Greek debt restructuring. So we would survive this ? it would in the first place be bad for the Greeks." he said on Deutschlandfunk radio.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the G-20 leaders to turn their attention to other pressing world issues, too.

"They should first of all, as leaders of this global economy, and global world, look beyond the immediate concerns ? euro crisis ? there are so many issues. Billions of people are going hungry to bed, and there are hundreds of millions of people who are sick, who need support," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

"I'm concerned about this deteriorating international economic situation and therefore leaders should show unity of purpose, and they should get united," he said.

The G-20 leaders are slated to discuss food security, reform of the international monetary system and the volatility of commodity prices ? none of which is expected to get much attention or produce any solid conclusions at a summit so dominated by the European quagmire.

Anti-capitalist protesters have not been cowed by the European debt drama, and have staged demonstrations demanding a tax on all financial transactions, an end to tax havens and more aid for development.

___

Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Jamey Keaten in Cannes and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-03-EU-G20-Summit/id-af27d96db2784252ae7e23b200d9320a

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Secret To A Long, Healthy Life: Bike To The Store

Hajime Ando/Flickr

Putting the shopping bags in the bike basket rather than in the car trunk could deliver big health benefits.

What would you say to a cheap, easy way to stay slim, one that would help avoid serious illness and early death? How about if it made your neighbors healthier, too? It could be as simple as biking to the store.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin were wondering if getting people out of their cars just a wee bit would create measurable improvements in health. health. So they gathered up data sets on obesity, health effects of pollution, and air pollution caused by automobiles in 11 Midwestern cities, and did a mashup.

They found that if the Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike rather than by car, 1,100 deaths would be avoided each year, and $7 billion would be saved in reduced health-care costs. The trips were 2.5 miles one way; less than a 25-minute bike ride, the researchers figure.

The benefits were based on a presumed reduction in air pollution particulates and ozone, which increase the risk of heart attack, strokes, and asthma. They also factored in the health benefits of increased exercise, and applied that to the 31 million people living in the Upper Midwest.

?

The results were published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"We were conservative," says Jonathan Patz, a physician and co-author of the study, who heads the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The researchers figured that people in the Midwest would do errands by bike only in the best 124 days of weather each year. "It's only about 4 months worth of biking."

Still, the benefits were enough to still reap health benefits, even though a larger chunk of the year might be spent on the couch, watching the Packers and the Blackhawks on TV. And people who weren't biking benefited, because they were breathing in less car-generated pollution, which contributes to asthma and cardiovascular problems.

The study also didn't take into account the benefits of walking or taking mass transit for errands, which Patz says would also be good for one's health and reduce pollution. "Studies have shown that if you take mass transit, you'll get about 20 minutes of decent walking," he says. That's a topic for the next study, he adds.

Patz himself is a devoted bike commuter and shopper in Madison, which he says is a bike-friendly city. But when he was working in Baltimore, he quickly realized that the city was not set up for safe bike commuting. "I tried it about three times, and realized this could be very hazardous to my health."

Public policies that make cities safer for bicyclists and walkers would go a long way towards encouraging people to shift a bit of their daily two and fro away from cars, he adds. "There are so many win-wins. Better health, personal economics, and finally less greenhouse gases."

Count him as a scientist who's testing his theories firsthand.

Enlarge Jean Patz

When it comes to biking and health, Dr. Jonathan Patz practices what he preaches.

Jean Patz

When it comes to biking and health, Dr. Jonathan Patz practices what he preaches.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/11/02/141937325/secret-to-a-long-healthy-life-bike-to-the-store?ft=1&f=1007

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Wet Down: Warm, Wet Conditions on Ancient Mars May Have Been Confined to Subsurface

News | Space

Mars has plenty of minerals that suggest a watery past, but that does not mean that the Red Planet once looked like Earth

By John Matson ?| November 3, 2011?|

GROUND TRUTH: NASA's Opportunity rover is now investigating Endeavour Crater on Mars, where clay minerals have been detected from orbit. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

When Mars orbiters decades ago spotted valleys and other fluvial landforms on the surface of the Red Planet, a tantalizing idea came to the fore. Perhaps, planetary scientists ventured, ancient Mars was blanketed by a thick atmosphere that kept the planet much warmer and wetter than it is now, with flowing water, lakes and maybe even an ocean covering at least part of its surface. And if Mars had water some three billion to four billion years ago, they wondered, why not life?

But recent mineralogical data have put a twist on that idea, according to a new study. For although Mars indeed seems to have passed through a warm, wet phase, the bulk of the action looks to have occurred in the crust, beneath a surface that remained mostly dry and frigid. In this scenario, Mars's valleys and lakebeds would have been shaped by ephemeral, episodic flows, rather than by long-lived bodies of water. But belowground the environment may have been very different?warm, watery and possibly even hospitable to life.

That is the thrust of a review article published in the November 3 issue of Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The study's authors examined how clay minerals, which form in the presence of liquid water and have been detected at sites all over Mars, came to exist on the surface. The evidence, the researchers argue, suggests that the clays formed belowground rather than in rocks near the surface exposed to liquid water, as they often do on Earth. The minerals would have been churned up to the surface by meteor impacts in the billions of years since their formation.

"The more information we saw, the more it looked like clays weren't forming in the way that they did on Earth," says lead study author Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "I think it's interesting that the warmer, wetter early Mars may be beneath the surface." In the first billion or so years of Mars's history, ample heat was available in the crust, due to extensive volcanism and bombardment by large impactors.

One line of evidence for subsurface clay formation comes from the chemical composition of those minerals, which closely resembles that of the volcanic rocks that reacted with water to form the clays. That similarity points to an enclosed system without much inflow or outflow of chemical elements due to flowing water or atmospheric exchange. "There hasn't been a lot of water moving in and out of the system, and if you're on the surface, it's hard to imagine how that would happen," Ehlmann notes. "The clays and the basalts are of similar chemical composition."

Another important point is that some of the clay minerals identified on Mars form in high-temperature environments of up to 400 degrees Celsius, indicating pockets of hydrothermal activity rather than open-air bodies of water as the source of the clays.

If the geochemical evidence for water on Mars indeed traces a hydrologic history dominated by subsurface activity, that would mean that the flows that carved valleys and floodplains on the Red Planet are mere outliers in the planet's watery past. "There's sort of a disconnect between the morphological evidence and the mineralogical evidence for water," Ehlmann says. The morphological features may have been carved by brief, episodic floods of melting ice during anomalously warm periods in Mars's unstable climate. "The evidence is consistent with the fact that those were very short in time," Ehlmann says.

Although Martian landforms suggestive of water have been recognized since the 1970s, that morphological evidence does not tell the whole story, says Raymond Arvidson, a planetary scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis who did not contribute to the new study. "What we're finding when you combine that with the mineralogical evidence is: 'Whoa. Take off your Earth-colored glasses,'" he says, "because this is a planet where there has been extensive water activity, but nowhere near as extensive as on Earth."

A cold, dry Martian exterior agrees well with some climate models for the planet, which struggle to reproduce a temperate paleoclimate. "We no longer, based on our modeling, believe in a warm, wet scenario for Mars," Robin Wordsworth, a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology (LMD) in Paris, said at a planetary science conference in France last month.

If Mars was once blanketed by a thicker atmosphere than it has today, the models indicate that it would indeed have been somewhat warmer. "In spite of that, we found that whatever the thickness of the atmosphere, the climate would have been too cold to sustain a long-term, Earth-like, warm and wet climate," says Wordsworth's LMD colleague Francois Forget. "Overall, our climate simulations point toward a cold early Mars where ice and snow would have played a major role," he says, with localized or episodic melts providing liquid water.

"The real Mars, I think, is beginning to stand up," Arvidson says. "Mars was occasionally warm on the surface and occasionally wet on the surface, but far more in the subsurface." Understanding where and when liquid water existed for long periods on Mars is the key to designing targeted searches for signs of past life on the Red Planet. "It will eventually lead us to the right place to see if Mars had the right stuff to sustain a habitable environment," Arvidson says.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=a18dcd4360c6d1de7ab3135a6c7d7204

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Simon Katich May Take Legal Advice Against Cricket Australia ...

By Sammy C

Former Australian opening batsman Simon Katich could be meeting a lawyer against the summons that he has received from Cricket Australia over his 'detrimental public comment'

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Nov 1, 2011 -

Simon Katich is not going to go down without a fight. According to media reports, Katich may be meeting his lawyer to decide on the future course of action after he was summoned by the Cricket Australia for a hearing for what they have described as a ?detrimental public comment?. This was in response to his comment that Michael Clarke had been implicitly responsible for his sacking.

Both, Cricket Australia and Clarke had been angered by the suggestion with the captain pointing out that he wasn?t the selector when Katich was dropped. Clarke had also said that Katich wasn?t helping his own case of making it back to the squad by speaking out in the manner he did given that it affected the team harmony.

Now, with Katich being summoned by the board, he and his manager Robert Joske could be taking legal advice for the future course of action. Katich?s manager said that Katich did realise what he was going to endure afterwards.

Joske said that while Katich only spoke the truth, he was aware that he was going to be taking on the board.

Even former cricketers like Mike Whitney and Greg Matthews have come out in support of the former Australian opener and said that the player had the right to speak what he felt was true. Whitney also said that it will be unfair if Katich got penalised.

Clarke is fast acquiring a reputation of being in the middle of controversies concerning his teammates. Earlier, former teammate Andrew Symonds had admitted that his friendship with Clarke was over and that the two weren?t on talking terms at all.?

Poll

Who is wrong in the Katich-Clarke spat?

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Source: http://www.sbnation.com/cricket/2011/11/1/2529022/simon-katich-may-take-legal-advice-against-cricket-australia-summons

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Android powers ?just under half? the smartphones in the UK (Appolicious)

The Android operating system continues to take over the world, with a new report from The Guardian estimating just short of half the smartphones in the UK are running on Google?s operating system.

The Guardian reports that half the population of the UK owns a smartphone today, and in just 18 months half those smartphones have become Android phones, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. By comparison, Apple?s iPhone holds 18.5 percent of the smartphone market, while Research In Motion?s BlackBerry accounts for 22.5 percent and Nokia?s Symbian has fallen to around 6 percent. It?s a sharp decline for Nokia, which held 20 percent of the market a year ago. Apple?s share also fell pretty drastically, down from 33 percent last year. Those numbers don?t include the recent iPhone 4S sales, though, and are somewhat in line with the decline in sales Apple saw worldwide with the run-up to the release of its new handset.

The number of smartphones being sold in the UK is accelerating, and in fact the entire worldwide market is growing pretty rapidly. The Guardian report states that it?s likely the UK will see 90 percent smartphone ownership within the next two years, as carriers move away from feature phones that make them less money both through sales and data contracts. In the 12 weeks ending on Oct. 2, smartphones made up about 70 percent of all cellular phone sales in the UK.

The Guardian expects Android?s share of smartphones sold in the UK to continue to rise as Android takes control of the lower end of the market, selling phones made cheaply in China that will cost users almost nothing up front and will help the operating system to really grow. The expectation is that, on the backs of cheaper phones, Android could expand its hold on the market to as much as 70 percent. Meanwhile, Apple?s iPhone can?t stay ahead, largely because of its premium price.

Kantar also noted that among Android smartphone makers, HTC is in the lead in the UK with 45 of the sales during the last quarter. Samsung, the world-leading smartphone seller, is in second place and catching up fast with 38 percent of Android sales. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson?s share of Android sales dropped from 20.5 percent a year ago to 8.5 during the last quarter.

Kantar expects the next year to be an interesting one among Android manufacturers and carriers in the UK as lots of customers come to the end of two-year contracts and become eligible for upgrades. There will be plenty of vying for customers among all the companies, the firm expects, but it believes most customers will remain loyal to Android, about 62 percent. But loyalty among handset manufacturers is a lot lower, so it should an interesting year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/appolicious_rss/rss_appolicious_tc/http___www_androidapps_com_articles10089_android_powers_just_under_half_the_smartphones_in_the_uk/43461343/SIG=139b3hgvp/*http%3A//www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/10089-android-powers-just-under-half-the-smartphones-in-the-uk

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More Growth Equity, Please: Average Number Of Rounds Raised By Startups Up 27% Since 2008

In today's VC market, it's age before beauty. This is according to a new study released today by Shareholder Representative Services (SRS), the company that represents shareholder interests during the post-closing process in mergers and acquisitions deals. In other words, SRS is an independent advocate for shareholders that offers communications, accounting, and dispute resolution services to an impressive list of clients, which includes the likes of Accel, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Khosla, and more. (Basically, the list is a who's who of venture firms.) The study, which looks at the 196 transactions SRS was involved in between July 2010 and September 2011, identifies trends in these M&A deal terms: One of which is that startups are today raising significantly more outside financing before exit than they were three years ago.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/f9uaAJTpB8s/

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