Arianespace says 2012 sales leapt by 30%

PARIS: The European space launch company Arianespace said Tuesday that its 2012 sales rose 30 per cent and forecast that it would dominate Russian and US rivals this year with a market share of more than 60 per cent.

Arianespace sales soared to more than 1.3 billion euros, and the company said that it already covered 60 per cent of the global market last year, bringing its order book to 4.0 billion euros, or three years' worth of activity.

This year, the company plans 12 launches with three different vehicles, the giant Ariane 5 rocket, the smaller Vega, and the Russian rocket Soyuz, up from 10 in 2012, chief executive Jean-Yves Le Gall told a press conference.

He called 2012 a "remarkable" year, noting that the company had launched seven Ariane 5 rockets to mark its 10th consecutive year without a failure, and had put a total of 75 tonnes of satellites into orbit.

Arianespace could even surpass 12 launches this year if one of its rivals is unable to honour their contracts, Le Gall noted, joking: "When they sign contracts we are the one that launches the satellites."

Competitors include the private US firm SpaceX, which developed its own launch vehicle over a period of 10 years and successfully delivered a payload last year to the International Space Station with its reusable Dragon launch vehicle.

The Russian rocket Proton has had a spotty launch record meanwhile, but its successor Angara is set for its first launch this year.

Elsewhere, the US-Russian company Sea Launch is in financial trouble, while Chinese rockets are not yet serious rivals for Arianespace.

The European group still depends on subsidies from countries that have backed it from the beginning, but Le Gall estimated that it needed a little more than 100 million euros last year, down from 125 million a year before, and 250 million 10 years earlier.

Ariane 5 is to be replaced by an Ariane 6 rocket, pending confirmation of that project next year. Arianespace forecasts that it would then be profitable without public aid.

- AFp/jc

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J&K likely to have fifth Kashmiri CS

SRINAGAR: Chief minister Omar Abdullah is learnt to have given his nod to senior-most Kashmiri IAS officer Iqbal Khanday taking over as the new chief secretary of Jammu & Kashmir following the posting of Madhav Lal as secretary, Union government. If appointed, Khanday, a 1978 batch IAS officer, would become fifth Kashmiri chief secretary of the state.

Lal, who has been secretary at the Centre, is likely to join the government by the end of January. Although two other 1978 batch IAS officers, including Anil Goswami and Pankaj Jain, are also in line, the Omar government has tacitly agreed on having a Kashmiri Muslim Iqbal Khanday as the chief secretary. The reasoning is this might help the ruling party in the run-up to the assembly elections in 2014.

If selected, Khanday will follow in the footsteps Vijay Bakaya, Sheikh Ghulam Rasool, Nasrullah and Noor Mohammad. According to sources, the Centre, too, has approved the name of Khanday for the post. Apparently, the tardy bureaucracy has not gone down well with both the Centre and the state government and Khanday's elevation could speed things up for Omar as he braces for tough elections.

Goswami and Jain are in Central deputation. Although Goswami, who is special secretary, home, is from Jammu, the National Conference government considers Khanday more of a key appointment.

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Menu Calorie Counts: How Accurate Are They?

They are supposed to help America's obesity problem: calorie counts boldly displayed on restaurant menus across the country and important information, considering Americans now eat one-third of their meals outside the home.

Two states and nine counties require them today, and by the middle of next year, a federal law is expected to force chain restaurants, convenience stores and vending machines nationwide to post calorie counts.

But how accurate are those numbers that so affect your waistline?

A 2011 study by Tufts University sampling food from 42 restaurants says it depends.

Fast food restaurants were the most accurate because of the uniform recipes and portions, but there were wide variations found in sit-down restaurants.

"We found that 20 percent of the foods we tested had 100 calories or more over what was stated on the menu," Lorien Urban, a postdoctoral associate in the energy metabolism lab at Tufts University and first author of the study, told ABC News. "We would consider that to be a considerable amount."

Urban explained that consuming an extra 100 calories per day can lead to an extra 10 pounds in one year.

Most concerning was that a majority of the errors Urban and her colleagues found were made on the diet side of the menu.

"These were the foods that people who are trying to manage their weight would gravitate towards and they may be getting more calories than they expect," she said.

ABC News sent producers in three cities that already require posting menu calories to major chains to do a sampling under the direction of a nationally known lab and found that more than half of the low-cal meals tested had more calories than listed on the menu.

In total 24 food samples from four sit-down restaurants and one McDonald's were collected and the results were surprising.

McDonald's did the best. Its Big Mac Meal (posted: 930) and its Premium Chicken Sandwich (posted: 400) tested 30 calories below the menu posting.

But the sit-down restaurants had results sometimes wildly different than advertised.

In all, only one calorie count was accurate -- a Skinnylicious chicken salad sandwich from the Cheesecake Factory.

Eleven meals had more calories than on the menu and 10 had fewer calories. Some were over by only 40 calories; another was over by as much as 420 calories, again at the Cheesecake Factory: This time an order of the fish and chips dinner.

Urban said that fast food restaurants tended to be more accurate than sit-down because of the formulaic preparation that fast food restaurants use.

"Things are arriving already packaged into the restaurants and it's just a matter of warming it up and serving it to the consumer," she said. "A sit-down restaurant, things are being prepared on [the] spot [and] by chance some extra butter gets into the pan."

That can change the calorie amount.

All the restaurants and their trade association say that most calorie counts are as accurate as possible and tested extensively to make sure.

They conceded that there are variations, mostly due to portion size and individual restaurant preparation, and that the menus warn actual calories may vary.

What can you do? Take control of what is put on top of the entree by asking for everything fattening -- such as cheeses, sauces or dressings -- on the side.

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U.S. may default on its debt a half-month earlier than expected, new analysis shows

The U.S. government may default on its debt as soon as Feb. 15, a half-month earlier than widely expected, according to a new analysis adding urgency to the debate over how to raise the federal debt ceiling.

The analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center says that the government will be unable to pay all its bills starting sometime between Feb. 15 and March 1.

The government hit the $16.4 trillion statutory debt limit on Dec. 31 , but the Treasury Department is able to undertake a number of accounting schemes to delay when the government runs into funding problems.

The Treasury has said that the accounting schemes, known as “extraordinary measures,” ordinarily would forestall default for about the first two months of the year, though officials were clear that they could not pinpoint a precise date because of an unusual amount of uncertainty around federal finances.

“Our numbers show that we have less time to solve this problem than many realize,” Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in a statement. “It will be difficult for Treasury to get beyond the March 1 date in our judgment.”

The fast-approaching deadline to raise the debt limit is likely to be Washington’s next fiscal battleground. Republicans say they plan to use the occasion to demand deep federal spending cuts, with House Speaker John A. Boehner insisting on a dollar reduction in federal spending for every dollar increase in the nation’s borrowing limit.

But the White House says President Obama will not negotiate this point, since the debt ceiling represents a limit to obligations that Congress already has promised to pay.

“What he will not do — as he has made clear — is negotiate with Congress over Congress’s sole responsibility to pay the bills that Congress has already incurred,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Monday. “Nobody forced Congress to rack up the bills that it incurred. And it is an abdication of responsibility to say that we’re going to let the country default and cause global economic calamity simply because we’re not getting what we want in terms of our ideological agenda.”

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s debt-limit deadline is based on several assumptions, two of which conceivably could change the calendar.

One is that the confusion around end-of-year tax policy could lead to delays in the filing of taxes and refunds, throwing a curveball into projections about the nation’s finances.

The other is the overall pace of economic growth; faster growth tends to lift tax receipts.

If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by the deadline, the White House has said that the nation likely would default. In a previous episode — in the summer of 2011 — officials determined that the best course would be to withhold all of a given day’s federal payments until enough money became available to pay them.

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Samsung tips record Q4 profit of US$8.3b

SEOUL: South Korea's Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it expected to post a record operating profit of 8.8 trillion won ($8.3 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The predicted operating profit for October-December represents an 89 per cent rise from a year earlier, and would beat the record of 8.1 trillion won set in the previous quarter.

Samsung, the world's largest technology firm by revenue, was giving earnings guidance before announcing official results later this month.

Fourth-quarter sales were estimated at 56 trillion won, up 18.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to the company, which did not provide figures for each of its business divisions.

Samsung, also the world's leading smartphone and memory chip maker, did not disclose its net profit estimate.

For Samsung, 2012 was a watershed year that saw it take a giant bite out of Apple Inc as it carved out a dominant position in the global mobile computing market.

Having ended Nokia's 14-year rule as the world's top cell phone manufacturer, Samsung saw its share of the lucrative smartphone market surge to 31.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, up from just 3.3 per cent in late 2009.

It extended its lead over main rival Apple as the top maker of smartphones worldwide, according to research firm IHS iSuppli, which gave Samsung 28 per cent of the market in 2012, up from 20 per cent the previous year.

Apple's share rose to 20 per cent in 2012 from 19 per cent, IHS said.

While Apple continues to rely mainly on its iPhone series, Samsung produces dozens of smartphone models every year that address all segments of the market, from the high-end to the low-end.

- AFP/ac

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Activists seek action against Asaram Bapu for his comments on Delhi gang-rape incident

NEW DELHI: Asaram Bapu ran into a hail of protests from his comments on anti-rape laws with activists demanding that religious and political leaders be held accountable for their statements.

Coming amid a statement of what they called "sexist" and "misogynic" remarks from the political class, Asaram's statement infuriated the activists for whom he had so far been a distant figure. The so-called guru, hardly a stranger to controversies, had said that the victim of the Delhi gang-rape could have saved herself by addressing her violators as bhaiyya and beseeching for mercy.

He aggravated the provocation on Monday by claiming that an "anti-men" campaign had taken hold following the Delhi gang-rape incident, and that a new anti-rape law enacted in such a climate will be prone to be similarly misused as anti-dowry laws and SC and ST Act.

AIDWA's Sudha Sundaraman condemned the godman's statement terming it as injustice of the worst kind and advocating strong punishment against leaders making irresponsible statements. " The statements made are highly objectionable, regressive and anti-women. Such people should be called to question. This is further victimization of the victim and deeply insulting to women."

The strong sentiment was echoed by the Centre for Social Research's Ranjana Kumari who said that such "irresponsible and ridiculous statements were responsible for encouraging rapists." "Such people should be socially boycotted. It is these people who are responsible in society for creating misogynist values," she said.

Activist lawyer Vrinda Grover was also ourtaged, contending that Asaram Bapu was far removed from the reality, and represented those who were scared of women empowerment. "What he is saying is that women must beg for her life and not fight back. Reports said that the victim expressed a will to live. That is a huge paradigm shift from those victims of sexual assault who would like to kill themselves out of shame. People like him are scared that women are now asserting themselves," she said.

Social scientist Imitaz Ahmad also reacted angrily to the Asaram's utterances. "The Delhi rape case has become an occasion for whosoever to say whatever they feel like. A rapist is not going to go into the niceties of the act. Nor by calling him brother will stop him in the act. Somewhere deep down there's a moral, ethical and social decay in our society. We need to re-think our moral structures and values if we want to get over this".

Reacting in a similar vein, Ayesha Kidwai, an academic, said : "The statement is appalling. The thing we have to understand about competitive sexism as evident from such statements of religious leaders is that they are uncomfortable with the questions women have raised recently. What he has said goes beyond sexual assault; it is a tawdry attempt at putting the blame back on the victim.

Lawyer Kirti Singh said, " It is obvious the way they treated the victim that the rapists did not have any human consideration. It was a sexual assault of the worst kind with brutal beatings. You do get these kind of statements on a victim's conduct or clothing. But this one is really far-fetched."

Parties close ranks to condemn Asaram Bapu

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Primitive and Peculiar Mammal May Be Hiding Out in Australia

It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.

Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.

The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.

(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)

Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.

(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)

“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”

John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.

With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).

As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.

Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.

No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.

As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.

This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”

Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.

Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”

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Colo. Suspect Bought Ticket 12 Days Before Shooting

Accused Aurora movie theater gunman James Holmes bought his movie ticket 12 days before the shooting, it was revealed in court today during the emotional first day of a preliminary hearing.

Aurora Police Department homicide detective Matthew Ingui testified that there is no video surveillance of the actual shooting, but there are several photos of Holmes checking into the theater kiosk with his cellphone. He scanned his phone three times.

Surveillance footage shown in court for the first time also showed Holmes lingering by the concession stand for about three minutes before entering theater nine dressed in dark pants, a light colored shirt and a skull cap. He would later be caught wearing a bullet proof vest and a gas mask.

Another video showed the lobby the moment theater staff heard shots ring out. Some of them ducked behind counters as people started streaming out of the front door.

Ingui also testified about the positions of the bodies in the theater, strewn across seats and aisles.

Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.

Holmes is accused of killing 12 people and wounding dozens more in the movie theater massacre.

Earlier in the day, two veteran police officers broke down on the stand, with one officer choking up when he described finding the body of a 6-year-old girl inside the theater.

Sgt. Gerald Jonsgaard needed a moment to compose himself as he described finding the little girl, Veronica Moser Sullivan, in the blood splattered theater.

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An officer felt for a pulse and thought Veronica was still alive, Jonsgaard said, but the officer then realized he was feeling his own pulse.

The officers wiped away tears as they described the horror they found inside of theater nine.

Officer Justin Grizzle recounted seeing bodies lying motionless on the floor, surrounded by so much blood he nearly slipped and fell.

Grizzle, a former paramedic, says ambulances had not yet made it to the theater, so he began loading victims into his patrol car and driving to the hospital.

"I knew I needed to get them to the hospital now, " Grizzle said, tearing up. "I didn't want anyone else to die."

Grizzle drove six victims in four trips, saying that by the end there was so much blood in his patrol car he could hear it "sloshing around."

An officer who took the stand earlier today described Holmes as "relaxed" and "detached" when police confronted him just moments after the shooting stopped.

The first two officers to testify today described responding to the theater and spotting Holmes standing by his car at the rear of the theater on July 20, 2012. He allegedly opened fire in the crowded theater during the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

Officer Jason Oviatt said he first thought Holmes was a cop because he was wearing a gas mask and helmet, but as he got closer realized he was not an officer and held Holmes at gunpoint.

Throughout the search and arrest, Holmes was extremely compliant, the officer said.

"He was very, very relaxed," Oviatt said. "These were not normal reactions to anything. He seemed very detached from it all."

Oviatt said Holmes had extremely dilated pupils and smelled badly when he was arrested.

Officer Aaron Blue testified that Holmes volunteered that he had four guns and that there were "improvised explosive devices" in his apartment and that they would go off if the police triggered them.

Holmes was dressed for the court hearing in a red jumpsuit and has brown hair and a full beard. He did not show any reaction when the officers pointed him out in the courtroom.

This is the most important court hearing in the case so far, essentially a mini-trial as prosecutors present witness testimony and evidence -- some never before heard -- to outline their case against the former neuroscience student.

The hearing at the Arapahoe County District Court could last all week. At the end, Judge William Sylvester will decide whether the case will go to trial.

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Obama to nominate Chuck Hagel for defense secretary

President Obama plans to nominate former senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and Vietnam veteran, to be secretary of defense, according to a person close to the process and a senior administration official.

The White House informed the Hagel camp over the weekend that Obama intends to announce the nomination Monday.

Hagel’s successful nomination would add a well-known Republican to the president’s second-term Cabinet at a time when he is looking to better bridge the partisan divide, particularly after a bitter election campaign.

But the expected nomination has drawn sharp criticism in recent weeks, particularly from Republicans, who have questioned Hagel’s commitment to Israel’s security.

The choice sets up a confirmation fight of the sort that Obama appeared unwilling to have over Susan E. Rice, his preferred pick for secretary of state. Rice pulled out of consideration for that job last month after facing sharp Republican criticism about her characterization of the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

In an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called Hagel’s selection an “in-your-face nomination.”

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Hagel’s record would be given a fair shake in the Senate if he is nominated. McConnell stopped short of saying whether he would support his former colleague.

“He’s certainly been outspoken in foreign policy and defense over the years,” McConnell said on ABC’s “This Week.” He added: “The question we’ll be answering, if he’s the nominee, is: Do his views make sense for that particular job? I think he ought to be given a fair hearing, like any other nominee. And he will be.”

The Hagel nomination will begin what White House officials have said will probably be a busy week of announcements about who will fill Obama’s second-term Cabinet and senior staff positions.

The president returned Sunday from a curtailed holiday in Hawaii and will begin making final personnel decisions that were delayed by the year-end negotiations with Congress over taxes and spending cuts.

Foreign-policy tussle

Despite the opposition to a Hagel nomination that has arisen on Capitol Hill, a senior administration official said Sunday that the White House expects him to receive the support of Democrats, as well as many Republicans who served with him.

“Having a name floated and having one officially put forward are two different things,” the official said.

Hagel, who was twice awarded the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in Vietnam, served in the U.S. Senate for two terms, ending in 2009.

He was an outspoken and often-independent voice as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, breaking with many in his party to sharply criticize the management of the Iraq war after he initially supported the U.S.-led invasion.

“A lot of Republican opposition is rooted in the fact that he left his party on Iraq,” the senior administration official said. “And we think it will be very hard for Republicans to stand up and be able to say that they oppose someone who was against a war that most Americans think was a horrible idea.”

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