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T-shirt choices

November 21st, 2008

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Remember that Alpha Xi Delta shirts are not just meant to be ornamental, so quality aspects are an important deciding factor when choosing where you can buy shirts. Buying something just for the heck of it is not your style, so, don’t succumb to it. Make a wise decision. Of course one may argue that such accessories for the most part are priced affordably so does finding a particular provider really matter since no one’s really going to fleece you. The answer is yes because you’re going to be mad if these Alpha Kappa Alpha shirts are not quality goods and keep fading or are simply not stylish enough.

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Financial crisis: Ford sells $540 million of Mazda stock

November 20th, 2008

Ford Motor Co. has said that it will sell 20 percent of Mazda tomorrow, reducing its holdings to 13 percent.mazda-stock Financial crisis: Ford sells $540 million of Mazda stock

The company is trying its best effort to pull itself from the financial crunch, which lashed the global economy recently.

Hiroshima-based Mazda will buy back up to a 6.9 percent stake for as much as 17.9 billion yen ($186 million), it said separately. The remainder of the shares will be bought by unidentified “strategic business partners.”

Ford, which rescued Mazda from bankruptcy 12 years ago, will raise cash from the sale as the
credit crunch makes borrowing more difficult.

Ford, along with GMAC LLC and Chrysler, has been shut out of the market for bonds backed by auto loans.

Ford’s last public sale of bonds backed by auto loans, a $5.3 billion offering on May 16, cost the automaker 47 times the interest it paid on a comparable sale a year earlier.

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“Big Three” more eager to get bailout

November 19th, 2008

Detroit’s Big Three auto makers are more eager to get $25 billion bailout.bailout “Big Three” more eager to get bailout

Democratic congressional leaders want to tap the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package for new loans to U.S. auto manufacturers and suppliers.

The debate comes as the financial situation for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC grows more precarious. GM has said it could run out of cash by year’s end without government aid.

President George W. Bush and GOP lawmakers instead propose diverting $25 billion in loans approved by Congress in September, designed to help auto manufacturers retool their factories.

The executives, along with the head of the United Auto Workers union, were making their case Tuesday at a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee.

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Scientists find prehistoric “nuclear family”

November 19th, 2008

A 4,600-year-old grave in Germany containing the remains of two adults and their children provides the earliest evidence that even prehistoric tribes attached importance to the family unit, researchers said on Monday.

The researchers used DNA analysis and other techniques to determine that the group buried facing each other — an unusual practice in Neolithic culture — consisted of a mother, father and their two sons aged 8-9 and 4-5 years.

“By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in a prehistoric context in Central Europe — to our knowledge the oldest authentic molecular genetic evidence so far,” Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide said in a statement.

“Their unity in death suggests a unity in life.”

The remains were found in graves that held a total of 13 people, all of whom had been interned simultaneously, Haak and colleagues reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Several were buried face-to-face, with arms and hands interlinked in many cases. The remains included children ranging from newborns up to 10 years of age, and adults of around 30 years or older.

Tests showed that many had suffered massive injuries, suggesting they were victims of a violent raid. One female had a stone projectile point embedded in her back and another had skull fractures.

“Our study of the Eulau individuals shows that their deaths were sudden and violent, apparent in lesions caused by stone axes and arrows, with evidence of attempts of some of the individuals to defend themselves from blows,” the researchers wrote.

An analysis of dental remains also offered up insight into Stone Age society and showed that the females came from different regions than the males and their children.

This is evidence that men sought partners from different regions to avoid inbreeding and that it was customary for women to move to the location of the males, the researchers said.

“Such traditions would have been important to avoid inbreeding and to forge kinship networks with other communities,” Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Bristol, who co-led the study, said in a statement.

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Ex-Test umpire Dickie Bird receives honorary degree

November 18th, 2008

Former Test cricket umpire Dickie Bird and retired chat show host Sir Michael Parkinson were conferred Honorary Doctors of Letters degrees by the University of Huddersfield in Yorkshire on Monday.

University Chancellor and former Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart bestowed the honours on Sir Michael and Bird after they donned mortar boards and gowns and joined 70 graduates in a parade through their beloved Barnsley led by a brass band.

It marked 60 years of friendship and achievement for Sir Michael and Bird after they first dreamed of their lives ahead on the boundary edge at Barnsley cricket club where they both played together.

The Telegraph quoted Sir Michael as saying of Bird: “He’s the nicest man in the world. He is one of those rare people you meet who what you see is what you get. He’s very much his own man. He’s not sophisticated and there’s not much gloss paint on him but he’s one of my closest friends. I’m his greatest admirer.”

Bird, the son of a miner, already has honorary degrees from Sheffield Hallam University and Leeds University.

He quipped: “One more and I will have as many as Nelson Mandela.”

He said of Sir Michael: “I have always been a tremendous admirer of Michael. We went our different ways, me in cricket and he on television, but we always kept in touch.

“This is a great honour and means so much to me. It is very special because this is my hometown and I still live here. It means a lot to me.”

The pair received their awards in Barnsley Town Hall after marching from the University’s Barnsley campus a few hundred yards away along watched by onlookers.

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Auto industry to cut 3 million jobs in U.S.

November 17th, 2008

America’s ailing auto fears 3 million job cut by next year. If three big car makers - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - are allowed to collapse, there’ll be great loss to the jobs.auto-industry-to-cut-3-million-jobs Auto industry to cut 3 million jobs in U.S.

According to the experts, so many US businesses depended on the Big Three for survival that allowing even one of the carmakers to fail would lead to tens of thousands of jobs losses nationwide.

David Cole, head of the Centre for Automotive Research (CAR), an influential Detroit think-tank, said that the immediate shock to the economy would be felt well beyond the Detroit companies, negatively impacting the US operations of international manufacturers and suppliers as well.

A bill to rescue GM, Chrysler and Ford with $25bn in emergency loans will be taken up in the Senate tomorrow.

Another expert, Patrick Anderson, chief executive of the Anderson Economic Group, a US consultancy, said failure of one carmaker would lead to between 60,000 and 80,0000 job losses nationwide.

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Bagan prevail 2-0 over JCT

November 17th, 2008

A 10-man Mohun Bagan displayed fine cohesion to account for JCT Mills, Phagwara, 2-0 in an I-League match here Sunday.

Both the goals came in the first half, with medio Ashfar Ahmed and striker Jose Barreto finding the target at the floodlit Salt Lake stadium.

Egged on by a 25,000-strong crowd, the hosts played well from the start and went ahead in the 14th minute when a James Singh cross from the right saw Ahmed, later adjudged man of the match, outpace Amandeep Singh and head into the net.

Keeping up the tempo, Bagan doubled the marjin at the stroke of the half hour from a penalty. A dangerous looking Barreto was pushed inside the box by Julius Akpele and the Brazilian made no mistake in converting the easiest of setpieces.

Bagan, however, fell a man short in the 43rd minute as Peter Odafe had to leave the field after receiving his second booking of the match for bringing down Jagpreet Singh. Earlier, he was shown the yellow card for an unfair tackle on Amandeep from behind.

However, the manpower shortage made no dent in Bagan’s domination as all three departments - backline, midfield and forwardline - functioned like a well-oiled machine for the rest of the match.

The strikers Barreto and kipper Bhaichung Bhutia both took a good amount of workload as they repeatedly came down to assist the medios, who also put up a good show.

JCT also got some chances, while the woodwork stood between them and the goal on one occasion.

It was in the 18th minute of the match that Brazilian Eduardo’s effort rebounded off the post and the Bagan camp breathed a sigh of relief.

Eduardo was again in the spotlight a minute before the half time break as he unleashed a rasping 40-yard free kick that was well saved by Bagan custodian Sangram Mukherjee.

Crossing over, a minute before the hour mark Balwant Singh had Mukherjee at his mercy, but his shot was saved by the goalkeeper. The rebound came to Sakhtar Singh who blew over.

After eight rounds, Bagan are on 12 points to move up to the fifth slot, while JCT remained on nine points to slip to the eighth place.

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Chanderpaul’s ton goes in vain as Pak take series

November 16th, 2008

A strong bowling display helped Pakistan beat the West Indies by 24 runs on Friday in the second one-day international, and also gave the team victory the three-match series.Batting first after winning the toss, Pakistan were all out for 232 in 49 overs, almost 40 runs short of the target they were hoping to set.

Despite a century by Shivnarine Chanderpaul (107 not out), the capacity crowd at the 20,000-seat Zayed Stadium, comprising mostly of Pakistan supporters, were not disappointed as the West Indies were bowled out for 208.

In the first match Wednesday, Pakistan by four wickets. The final match of the series is on Sunday.

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Immigrants bring in fresh ideas, more vigour: Lord Paul

November 15th, 2008

Immigrants bring in “fresh ideas, more vigour and much greater desire for success”, NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul said, favouring investment in immigrant communities on a “long-term basis”. “Investment in the immigrant communities has to be looked at on a more long-term basis and not a short-term basis to suit some short-term results,” Lord Paul said while participating in a debate on immigration at the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee yesterday.

“Otherwise we are in the same situation as the financial community which has been looking for short-term results — and look at where that has got us. Short-termism is always dangerous,” he said.

Lord Paul, himself a member of the panel which was discussing a report on immigration, said “I believe everyone on the Committee agreed on the contribution to the workplace and the economic benefits that the immigrant community has brought to this country.” “Immigrants bring fresh ideas, more vigour and much greater desire for success.

This is natural because in order to be a success in a new country, one has to work at least 25 per cent harder to be counted at par,” he said adding, “I know this from my personal experience and 40 years of hard work.” Lord Paul said there was no bigger example of the benefits of immigrants than the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential elections.

“He was not elected because he was an immigrant. He was elected because he brought new hope to the people of the United States and to the world.

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Images captured of 4 planets outside solar system

November 15th, 2008

Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. 4-planets-outside-solar-system-300x224 Images captured of 4 planets outside solar system

The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away - three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.

None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable.

It’s only a matter of time before “we get a dot that’s blue and Earthlike,” said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He led one of the two teams of photographers.

“It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and potentially life out there,” he said.

Macintosh’s team used two ground-based telescopes, while the second team relied on photos from the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to gather images of the exoplanets - planets that don’t circle our sun. The research from both teams was published in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science.

In the past 13 years, scientists have discovered more than 300 planets outside our solar system, but they have done so indirectly, by measuring changes in gravity, speed or light around stars.

NASA’s space sciences chief Ed Weiler said the actual photos are important. He compared it to a hunt for elusive elephants: “For years we’ve been hearing the elephants, finding the tracks, seeing the trees knocked down by them, but we’ve never been able to snap a picture. Now we have a picture.”

In a news conference Thursday, Weiler said this fulfills the last of the major goals that NASA had for the Hubble telescope before it launched in 1990: “This is an 18 1/2-year dream come true.”

There are disputes about whether these are the first exoplanet photos. Others have made earlier claims, but those pictures haven’t been confirmed as planets or universally accepted yet. The photos released Thursday are being published in a scientifically prominent journal, but that still hasn’t convinced all the experts. Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Harvard exoplanet hunter Lisa Kaltenegger both said more study is needed to confirm these photos are proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars.

MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, at the NASA press conference, said earlier planetary claims “are in a gray area.” But these discoveries, “everybody would agree is a planet,” said Seager, who was not part of either planet-finding team.

The Hubble team this spring compared a 2006 photo to one of the same body taken by Hubble in 2004. The scientists used that to show that the object orbited a star and was part of a massive red dust ring which is usually associated with planets - making it less likely to be a dwarf star.

Macintosh’s team used ground-based telescopes to spot three other planets orbiting a different star. That makes it less likely they are a pack of brown dwarf stars.

The planet discovered by Hubble is one of the smallest exoplanets found yet. It’s somewhere between the size of Neptune and three times bigger than Jupiter. And it may have a Saturn-like ring.

It circles the star Fomalhaut, pronounced FUM-al-HUT, which is Arabic for “mouth of the fish.” It’s in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and is relatively close by - a mere 148 trillion miles away, practically a next-door neighbor by galactic standards. The planet’s temperature is around 260 degrees, but that’s cool by comparison to other exoplanets.

The planet is only about 200 million years old, a baby compared to the more than 4 billion-year-old planets in our solar system. That’s important to astronomers because they can study what Earth and planets in our solar system may have been like in their infancy, said Paul Kalas at the University of California, Berkeley. Kalas led the team using Hubble to discover Fomalhaut’s planet.

One big reason the picture looks fuzzy is that the star Fomalhaut is 100 million times brighter than its planet.

The team led by Macintosh at Lawrence Livermore found its planets a little earlier, spotting the first one in 2007, but taking extra time to confirm the trio of planets circling a star in the Pegasus constellation. The star is about 767 trillion miles away, but visible with binoculars. It’s called HR 8799, and the three planets orbiting it are seven to 10 times larger than Jupiter, Macintosh said.

“I’ve been doing this for eight years and after eight years we get three at once,” he said.

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