Scientists have made an important advance in their efforts to predict earthquakes, the journal Nature says.

A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California's San Andreas Fault.

The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day.

"If you had 10 hours' warning, from a practical point of view, you could evacuate populations, you could certainly get people out of buildings, you could get the fire department ready," said co-author Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington.

"Hurricane [warnings] give you an idea of what could be done," he told BBC News.

Speed measurements

The new work comes out of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (Safod) project which has been set up in Parkfield, a tiny rural town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

See the location of Safod

The town experiences small to moderate-sized quakes at regular intervals as the Pacific and North American tectonic plates grind against one another along the San Andreas Fault.

The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani crosses the San Andreas Fault

Safod has drilled two holes - a shallow pilot hole, and a deeper hole right into the heart of the shifting rocks. The idea has been to recover sub-surface material for study in the lab and to use instrumentation in the holes to observe changes in the rock over time.

In one experiment, the scientists used a piezoelectric device to generate seismic waves a kilometre down in one hole and then timed their arrival at a receiver seismometer in the other.

"What we're looking for are changes in the velocity that would correspond to changes in stress, and it has been hypothesised that such stress changes would precede seismic events and could be used as precursors," said Dr Silver, explaining that wave speed varies with stress due to cracks opening and closing in the rock.

"For a long time, people have been trying to do this. I think right now the technology has gotten better so we can measure this change more accurately."

'Just enough'

The team - which includes researchers from Rice University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - measured significant changes in seismic wave speed just before two small earthquakes.

Sensors must be placed deep below the surface to study quakes up close

In one instance, the signal was seen two hours before the quake; in the second, the change occurred 10 hours before the tremor.

The scientists tell Nature that the measurements are an encouraging sign that hold promise for the field of earthquake prediction.

"We are very encouraged by these pre-seismic signals and are planning a series of experiments to expand on them, so that we may further understand their timing and physical basis," said lead author Fenglin Niu of Rice University.

Referring to the 12 May Sichuan quake, which claimed thousands of lives, Dr Niu told the BBC: "What happened in China was that a lot of children were killed in school in their class; so if we can predict earthquakes even by a few minutes, we can help then to evacuate the classroom."

Sources : news.bbc.co.uk

World leaders have proclaimed a "shared vision" on climate change, but failed to bridge differences between rich and emerging nations on curbing emissions.

Concluding a summit in northern Japan, leaders from the G8 and developing countries said "deep cuts" in greenhouse gas emissions were needed.

China and other emerging powers declined to endorse specific targets.

The three-day summit on Hokkaido island also discussed Zimbabwe, and the global rise in food and energy prices.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called on the G8 to tackle the "interconnected challenges" of soaring food costs, development, and climate change.

On the third and final day of the summit, the G8 and eight developing countries issued a statement calling global warming "one of the great global challenges of our time".

 We, the leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities  

G8 statement on climate

Full text: Leaders' statement

C02 emissions by country

G8 summit: Key issues

But it stopped short of urging numerical targets reducing greenhouse emissions.

"Leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities," it said.

India and China dismissed the rich nations' call for them to halve emissions by 2050.

The BBC's Roger Harrabin at the summit says China felt that emerging economies were being implicitly asked to take responsibility for a problem caused mainly so far by the West.

'Criminal cabal'

On Tuesday, the G8 - which includes the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - restated its "vision" of halving harmful emissions by 2050.

But Mexico, Brazil, China, India and South Africa challenged developed countries to cut their greenhouse emissions by more than 80% by 2050.

Leading environmentalist R K Pachauri discusses the summit outcome

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said the G8 leaders had demonstrated they were serious about tackling climate change.

"It is the very first time ever that leaders of the major economies have got down to vigorous discussions on a broad range of climate-change-related issues, and I believe that the leaders have shown strong political will," he said.

On food and energy costs, Mr Fukuda said:

"The rising food and oil prices add to inflationary pressures, and will therefore raise serious challenges to growth and would have a serious impact on the most vulnerable."

During the summit, G8 leaders also called for UN sanctions against Zimbabwe's leadership, because of violence during the controversial re-election of President Robert Mugabe last month.

The US and the UK are pressing for a travel ban and assets freeze on Mr Mugabe and his senior allies, and an arms embargo.

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"There should be no safe haven and no hiding place for the criminal cabal that now make up the Mugabe regime," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said after the summit.

But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his government could veto the sanctions in a UN vote.

Mr Medvedev also said he was "deeply upset" by the missile defence agreement signed on Tuesday by the US and the Czech Republic.

The two countries agreed to build a radar station near Prague, as part of America's planned defence shield.

Mr Medvedev rejected US assurances that the shield does not threaten Russia, and is meant to counter a threat from Iran.

"Russia isn't going to get hysterical but will be studying countermeasures," he said at the summit.

Sources : news.bbc.co.uk

If most of your national population live in rural areas and you are realistic enough to appreciate that dreams of creating enough jobs through industrialization are not likely to come true then you will sooner or later arrive at this question:

What is there that a small scale farmer can grow on approximately five acres of land that would enable him to provide for his family?

And at different times, we have seen a variety of cash crops offer the promise of an answer to this question.

Memories of coffee

Most spectacular was coffee in the mid-1970s.

Owing to a sudden frost in Brazil in 1975 which damaged millions of coffee trees in the plantations of the world's largest coffee producer, there was a monumental rise in coffee prices which lasted for years.

During that period, being a small scale coffee farmer ensured a better income than employment in most professions in Kenya.

Farmers who could barely afford shoes for their children a few years earlier were suddenly able to afford small cars.

Those who owned large coffee plantations became outright millionaires. Coffee was referred to locally as black gold.

But as production went up, prices went down

It was not only Kenyan coffee farmers who had overestimated the value of owning coffee trees. Vietnam increased its coffee production tenfold between 1980 and 2000.

Although it was plain enough that this windfall was purely accidental - and the result of climatic factors many thousands of miles away - the sudden prosperity of coffee farmers was seen as proof that small scale agriculture could indeed be a highly profitable venture, provided you had the right cash crop at the right time.

Kenyans have since then been devoutly searching for the next big thing in small scale agriculture.

We have had cashew nuts, macadamia nuts, vanilla, silk worms, eucalyptus trees for export to the treeless Middle East and many others - promoted at one time or another as the salvation of the Kenyan small scale farmer.

Domestic focus

Right now, the focus is on various crops said to have oil-bearing seeds which can be used to produce bio-diesel.

But so far, none of these have led to the sort of incomes witnessed in the glory days of the coffee boom.

Kenya's farmers are having to focus more on domestic needs

And with the recent increase in global food prices having made groceries more expensive, farmers are now more concerned with growing indigenous food crops to feed their families, than with exotic export crops which cannot be eaten if the international demand for these should collapse.

Indeed, the only small scale farmers in Kenya who have been able to regain the prosperity of the 1970s are coffee growers whose land happened to be near some urban centre.

Those living around Central Province, which is the most densely populated part of Kenya, benefited most from the pressure for new homes and demand for land.

In recent years, coffee trees have been uprooted in such areas and the farms subdivided and converted to residential plots which are then sold off at a huge profit.

So while the romance of the perfect crop lives on, the reality of economic survival - and the pragmatism it engenders - is never far away.

Sources : news.bbc.co.uk

Many developing countries are paying higher salaries to their state employees than they can afford and stunting economic growth in the process, a study by the Asian Development Bank shows.

"The higher the relative governments pay rates, the lesser the economic growth attained," the study of 19 Asian, African and Latin American countries said.

"The high relative government pay rates cost the country in terms of economic growth, while the higher employment share does not seem to have any economic growth impact," the Manila-based bank report said.

It said part of this could be due to "rent-seeking behaviour" such as minimum wages set above the competitive rate, wage adjustments getting ahead of actual productivity growth, and misguided attempts by politicians to increase employment or redistribute wealth.

"India stands out among the high-pay countries, as it has experienced one of the most pronounced increases in relative government pay rates in recent decades," the study said.

"The least favourable estimates identify Bangladesh as a country with one of the highest relative government pay rates," it said.

While listed as a high-paying country, Vietnam's pay rate has "fallen rapidly, and it may no longer be of concern."

It said economic rents embedded in government pay rates "reduce the affordability of government and reduce the coverage of public services essential to economic growth."

The resulting high government pay "leads to far less employment in government, and the creation of a group of unemployed labour in search of government employment," it added.

It said these countries "could raise their economic growth by reducing relative pay rates in government and using the budget savings to expand employment."

Sources : ET

Indians have emerged as second only to Americans as foreign employers of Britons. Tata’s JLR deal has moved India into becoming the UK’s second-highest foreign employer for 2007-08; Indians were responsible for almost one-fifth of all British jobs saved and created by foreigners in the country.

In the past five years, Indian employers have saved and created a total of 33,515 jobs for Britons, rising from an almost non-existent base of 892 in 2003-2004. While still lagging behind major investors like the US, Germany, or Japan, India has now emerged as an employer of significance for Britons — and growing thousand fold every year, according to the latest annual data released by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the government department responsible for UK’s inward and outward investments.

UK, like every other European economy, promotes inward foreign investment with a focus on protecting and creating local jobs. While UK does not calculate FDI flows, preferring to use FDI stock figures, the total value of Indian direct investment into Britain is expected to jump 166% for calendar year ended 2007, to $4 billion.

India, as an inward investor into the UK, saved and created 19,672 British jobs this year with 75 new projects, while the US employed 29,809 with 478 new projects. Even as inward investments by countries like the US, France and Canada have seen a downward trend in 2007-08 — though absolute numbers are still much higher — growth in inbound investment came from countries like Ireland, Germany, India and China.

Brian Shaw, author of the UKTI’s annual report, told ET: “Indian inward investment into the UK is broadening and deepening; we’re seeing an increased interest in sectors like creative industries and entertainment, from Bollywood, advanced engineering, life sciences, and financial services.” This move marks a trend that’s moving away from traditional sectors like ICT. The latest FDI stock figures — for calendar year 2007 — will be released in October, and India’s stock levels are expected to increase to $4 billion, according to UKTI.

However, in terms of value, India’s share of UK’s inbound investment is still minuscule. The most recent global stock figure, announced by UNCTAD for UK till the end of calendar year 2006, shows that total FDI stock into the UK was $1.135 trillion, with India’s share pegged at $1.5 billion.

Foreign secretary David Miliband said: “The UK has a global reach and our investment pipelines are spread across the world. Once again, the US remains our biggest investor; but we have also increased investment from a range of key countries, including high-growth markets like India and China and Ireland.”

In terms of new projects for 2007-08, while the US grabs a lion’s share of 30%, India’s share at 4.8% compares reasonably with countries like France (5.5%), Japan (6.5%), Germany (6.4%) and China (3.6%). The UK government has identified India and China as high-growth FDI focus areas, and is keenly wooing both regions to invest in UK.

It is hard to know how far the global financial crisis still has to run, with the extent of further credit losses dependent on what happens to the U.S. housing sector, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday.
"What is sure is that the consequences for the real (economy) sector of the financial crisis are still in front of us," Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund's managing director, said in an interview.
Speaking on the sidelines of the annual Group of Eight summit in northern Japan, Strauss-Kahn restated the IMF's view that the yuan is undervalued.
He said the fund's board would meet in about six weeks' time to determine whether the exchange rate was in fact fundamentally misaligned. He said the dollar is close to its medium-term equilibrium value when measured against a basket of currencies even if, on a bilateral basis, it might currently appear to be slightly on the weak side against the euro.

Sources : ET

So what if the Kohinoor diamond - once the ultimate symbol of Indian wealth and power - now resides with the Queen of England?

On Wednesday evening, icons of British luxury, Jaguar and Land Rover, passed into Indian hands for £1.15 billion ($2.3 billion).

(Watch: Tata acquires Jaguar, Land Rover)

The event was marked by a clinical note issued by Tata Motors from its headquarters in Mumbai. The irony of it all wasn't lost in either India or the UK.

With $104 billion, India is now the second largest source of foreign investment into Britain. And it took a company from a former colony to come to the rescue of a beleaguered British brand.

In contrast to the high drama that preceded Tata Steel's acquisition of Corus last year, this transaction was a relatively tame affair.

Soon after Ford Motor Company - American owners of the brands for the last 18 years - put the brands on the block, the Tatas, Mahindra & Mahindra and Jacques Nasser, former CEO of Ford, expressed interest.

Mahindra and Nasser backed out after Ford and worker unions at the company indicated they were comfortable with the Tatas. What followed after that was only the wrangling over detail.

For instance, Ford Motor Finance will continue to finance buyers across the world looking at acquiring Jaguar or Land Rover products for the next 12 months.

Then there is the fact that Ford will continue to supply key technology and components to both brands for some time to come.

In a hurriedly organized conference call, Ravi Kant, MD, Tata Motors said the existing management at Jaguar and Land Rover would be retained.

And that Geoff Polites, the current CEO at both companies, has agreed to continue in his existing role. He also reiterated there would be no job cuts at the manufacturing facilities in the UK and that it would be business as usual.

But motoring analysts remain sceptical of Tata Motors' ability to restore the brands to their former glory.

(Taken from TOI-27-03-2008)