Old Home Remedies

Alaska’s Republican Senator Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term in office after a knife-edge race against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

The Democratic candidate led the Senate’s longest-serving Republican by 3,724 after Tuesday’s count, with only 2,500 overseas votes to be tallied.

If the Democrats win two more Senate seats they would be able to prevent the Republicans from blocking legislation.

Minnesota’s vote is due to be recounted while Georgia will hold a run-off vote.

The result means the balance of power in the Senate now favours the Democrats, says the BBC’s Jonathan Beale in Washington.

With 58 of the 100 seats, they are now just two short of the 60 needed to overcome filibusters – a tactic used by the Senate minority to prevent legislation from coming to a vote.

The vote tally from the last state finally came in on Wednesday, more than two weeks after election day – John McCain has won in the state of Missouri.

Nothing surprising about this. The state voted for Mr McCain’s Republican colleague George W Bush in 2000 and 2004.

But on the other hand, a pattern has been broken. Until this year, Missouri had voted for the winning candidate every year since 1956 – and, if you disregard 1956, from as far back as 1904.

So the Show-Me state is no longer America’s bellwether – the state that reflects the views of the nation as a whole.

Was 2008 a blip, or a sign that Missouri is no longer representative of the US?

World leaders have hailed the election of Senator Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Tuesday’s poll historic and said he and Mr Obama “share many values”.

Chinese President Hu Jintao said he looked forward to strengthening dialogue. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy said the poll had raised “enormous hope”.

Outgoing US President George W Bush said Mr Obama could count on “complete co-operation” during the transition.

The president-elect will take over the presidency in January.

Democratic officials quoted by the Associated Press news agency say Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel has been offered the job of Mr Obama’s White House chief-of-staff.

It is not known whether Mr Emanuel – a former aide in President Bill Clinton’s administration – has accepted.

Besides winning the presidency, the Democrats tightened their grip on Congress.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed both Mr Obama’s victory and her party’s gains, saying the American people had spoken out “loudly and clearly” for change.

Asian leaders welcomed the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States – as did the region’s financial markets.

Some regional leaders said Mr Obama’s victory in the US poll was the start of a new, more hopeful era.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the victory represented a message of hope not just for America, but for the rest of the world as well.

Many regional stock markets rose sharply on the news.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index initially increased by 5.2% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average jumped by 4.5%.

Indonesia’s pride

The Australian prime minister’s hope that Mr Obama’s victory would help solve pressing global problems was shared by other leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.

Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso said problems involving the world economy, terror and environment needed resolving.

Meanwhile Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: “Indonesia hopes the US can take concrete measures to settle the global economic crisis and the financial crisis in the United States.”

There was a special air of pride and celebration in Jakarta, reports the BBC’s Lucy Williamson – where Mr Obama spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, and many hope he will understand the Muslim world better as a result.

Hundreds of people joined an election countdown organised by the US embassy in Jakarta, and many others watched the results come in on television and radio.

Speaking in Japan at the start of his East Asia tour, US President Barack Obama signalled his intention to reach out to China.

“The United States does not seek to contain China,” Mr Obama said. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong and prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.”

The fact of China’s growing influence on the world stage is something President Obama is having to grapple with.

On Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the symbolic centre of the Chinese nation, people seemed sure this presidential visit will be different from previous ones.

“Because of the current economic crisis, the United States needs China’s co-operation in many areas,” said Mr Ma, who works in the shipping business.

“Previous US presidents came to China with an arrogant attitude, lecturing us. But with President Obama it’s different, he’s coming to China to seek our help.”

And 27-year-old Wang Xiongbin, who works in real estate, agreed: “After staging the Olympic Games and our 60th anniversary parade here, foreigners now see China as a strong power.

“Obama is definitely hoping to build better relations with China, trade-wise, diplomacy-wise, co-operation-wise. He’s definitely going to be softer than President Bush was.”

The UN has been criticised for stifling debate about net censorship after it disrupted a meeting of free-speech advocates in Egypt.

UN security demanded the removal of a poster promoting a book by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) during a session at the Internet Governance Forum in Egypt.

The poster mentioned internet censorship and China’s Great Firewall.

The UN has said that it had received complaints about the poster and that it had not been “pre-approved”.

“If we are not allowed to discuss topics such as internet censorship, surveillance and privacy at a forum on internet governance, then what is the point of the IGF?” Ron Deibert, co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative told BBC News.

‘Objections’

Professor Deibert said that he had been asked by the UN special rapporteur For Human Rights, who witnessed the removal, to send a formal letter of complaint.

Video of the event, posted to YouTube, show a UN security guard gathering up the poster from the floor and taking it away.

“No UN official was involved in throwing the poster on the floor,” a UN spokesperson said.

“Following repeated requests from the IGF Secretariat to remove the poster from the floor, a UN Security [guard] removed it from the floor and folded it undamaged. The organisers were told that they could pick it up anytime later that evening.”

The UN said they had received complaints about the poster from “delegates” and that it had not been “pre-approved for posting outside the allocated room”.

Part of the banner read: “internet censorship and surveillance are increasing in democratic countries as well as authoritarian states.

“The first generation of controls, typified by China’s ‘Great Firewall’, are being replaced by more sophisticated techniques that go beyond mere denial of information.”

Mr Deibert said that he asked “repeatedly” to see “rules or regulations governing this act”.

“They did not give us any, only referring to the ‘objections of a member state’,” he told BBC News.

The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run.

It has signed a four-page “affirmation of commitments” with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.

Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann – drawing criticism from other countries and groups.

The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.

“It’s a beautifully historic day,” Rod Beckstrom, Icann’s head, told BBC News.

The European Commission, which has long been critical of Icann’s alliance with the US government, welcomed the new deal.

“Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that Icann’s decisions…will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone’s interests,” said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information society and media.

‘Global system’

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is a not-for-profit private sector corporation – set up by the US government – to oversee critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name system. Top level domains include .com and .uk.

Since its inception in 1998, it has periodically signed accords – known collectively as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) – with the US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

These papers meant that the US government was responsible for reviewing the work of the body.

These have now been abandoned in favour of the new “affirmation of commitments”, a brief document which turns the review process over to the global “internet community”.

“Under the JPA, Icann staff would conduct reviews and hand them over to the US government,” explained Mr Beckstrom.

“Now we submit those reviews to the world and post them publically for all to comment.”

In addition, independent review panels – including representatives of foreign governments – would specifically oversee Icann’s work in three specific areas: security, competition and accountability.

The US will retain a permanent seat on the accountability panel.

Mr Beckstrom said the decision to break away from the US government in all other areas had been made “over the last year and a half”.

“Stakeholders told us that the JPA should not be renewed and that it wasn’t appropriate for it to be renewed,” he told BBC News.

“It is also recognition by the US government that the internet is a global system.”

The internet began as a research project by the US military, known as Arpanet.

Users of scripts other than that in which English is written will soon have web addresses in their own language.

The net regulator Icann has invited countries to ask for “internationalised domain names” in non-Latin characters.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced their intentions to apply for the first Arabic domains.

Countries can also apply for domains in other scripts, such as Chinese. The first official international web addresses are expected in 2010.

“The IDN [International Domain Names] program will encompass close to one hundred thousand characters, opening up the internet to billions of potential users around the globe,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

The regulator has described the introduction of IDNs as the “biggest change” to the net “since it was invented 40 years ago”.

“Over half the internet users around the world don’t use a Latin-based script as their native language,” said Icann president Rod Beckstrom.

“IDNs are about making the internet more global and accessible for everyone.”

He said Icann had “already received six applications from around the world for three different scripts.

These included a bid from Egypt’s bid for .misr, meaning Egypt in Arabic, and one from Russia.

Plans for IDNs were approved at a meeting in June 2008. However, it has taken until now to make sure that the translation system needed to make it work functions correctly.

The changes have been made to the net’s Domain Name System, which acts like a phone book, translating easily understood domain names such as bbc.co.uk into strings of computer readable numbers known as IP addresses.

The tweaks will allow this system to recognise and translate the non-Latin characters.

Some countries, such as China and Thailand, have already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language.

However, these were not internationally approved and do not necessarily work on all computers.

Icann has now invited registrations from countries to apply for internationalised country codes, such as .uk or .us.

It said that people will be able to apply for an entire web address at a later date through the body which wins the right to control a nation’s internationalised country-code.

China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world.

Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.

It has taken the top slot from another US machine, nicknamed Roadrunner.

The IBM computer is owned by the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and was the first machine to push through the petaflop barrier.

It is currently able to run at 1.042 petaflops and uses the powerful “cell” chip designed for the PlayStation 3.

It is used to monitor the US nuclear stockpile, as well as conduct research into astronomy, genomics and climate change.

The Top 500 list is dominated by machines in the US, which is home to 277 of ranked systems. It has eight of the top 10 machines.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world’s fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops.

The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

A woman pregnant with a rare form of conjoined twins plans to press ahead with the pregnancy.

Mother-to-be Lisa Chamberlain had a scan last week which showed her embryo had two heads and one body – making them dicephalus twins.

Leading experts said the twins’ chances of survival are exceedingly slim at best and advised termination.

But the 25-year-old from Portsmouth is reported to be a staunch Catholic who is opposed to abortion.

Ms Chamberlain decided against this after talking over the matter with partner Mike Pedace, 32.
Ms Chamberlain told the Sun: “To me, my twins are a gift from God and we’re determined to give them a chance of life.”

The twins were diagnosed after the former RSPCA worker was taken into the city’s St Mary’s Hospital on Wednesday with back pain. She had become pregnant in December.

The Sun reports that after the scan results appeared, Ms Chamberlain said doctors and nurses “kept asking each other if they were babies who were close together – or ’something else’.

“Then the emergency obstetrician was called and he took over. He said my babies only had one body and were joined very high up,” she told the paper.

She added: “Some might think my twins are strange, but to me they’re just special. Everything happens for a reason. Mike and I have spent over seven years trying to have children and we might not get another go.” CONJOINED TWINS
Conjoined twins are extremely rare, occurring in as few as one in every 200,000 births
They are created just a few days after they are conceived – most likely by the incomplete splitting of the fertilised egg
Most are stillborn, and a proportion of those who are born alive do not survive long afterwards