Global - Economy and Market
Italy's Monti in austerity race as IMF role eyed
ROME - Prime Minister Mario Monti faces a testing week seeking to shore up Italy's strained public finances, with an IMF mission expected in Rome and market pressure building to a point where outside help may be needed to stem a full-scale debt emergency.
China factory unrest flares as global economy slows
DONGGUAN, China - In factory towns across China's export powerhouse in the Pearl River Delta, a vicious cycle of slowing orders from the West and increasing wage pressures has led to a series of major strikes that could reverberate through the economy.
Europe's banks plan accounting tricks to look stronger
European banks are planning to change how they calculate risk-weighted assets to make it look like they have improved their financial conditions. Such a change could allow banks to avoid selling assets or new shares to meet new capital requirements.
China kicks off yuan trading vs Aussie, Canadian dollar
SHANGHAI - China's yuan started trading against the Australian dollar and Canadian dollar in the country's onshore forex market on Monday, the latest currency pairs to be introduced as part of Beijing's efforts to promote the use of its currency.
8:33am IST
China on track to be world's biggest online market by 2015
China will replace the U.S. as the world's biggest online market by 2015, a Boston Consulting Group report says. China will have more than $314 billion in online sales by that year, the report says. China Daily (Beijing) (23 Nov.)
Hungary: Moody's downgraded Hungary's government bond rating by one notch to Ba1, below investment grade, and the kept its outlook negative yesterday
Asian shares jump, euro firms amid Italy aid
TOKYO - Asian shares jumped and the euro firmed on Monday on hopes Europe will come up with some concrete steps this week toward activating a crucial euro zone bail-out fund and reports that the International Monetary Fund is considering helping Italy.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 1.6 percent, after slumping to its lowest level since early October on Friday to mark a fourth consecutive week of declines.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 gained 1.9 percent after hitting its lowest in two and a half years on Friday.
India - Economy and Market
RBI: opening up retail to help growth, curb inflation
CHANDIGARH - India's growth story is still "credible" and the move to open up the economy to global supermarket chains will help growth and control inflation, RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao said on Friday.
Rules stipulating that foreign supermarkets will have to source 30 percent of produce from smaller industries cannot be restricted to the Indian market, as this would violate World Trade Organisation guidelines, a senior official said.
India opens retail sector to foreign investment
The specific conditions linked to the approval are yet to be announced.However, citing an unnamed government official, Bloomberg has reported that these will
likely include two conditions: 1) large overseas retailers would be required to invest a minimum of USD100mn million in India; and 2) the stores would be allowed only in cities with at least 1 million inhabitants. The government will apparently also allow 100% foreign ownership of single brand retail operations, up from 51% earlier.
This is a major and welcome change that could have important implications for inflation going forward.
We think the liberalization measures could spur investment in food storage and transportation facilities that would reduce wastage and therefore frequent supply shortages that drive food price volatility. It is believed that
about 40% of India's fruit and vegetables rot before they are sold, for example. This has been a structural driver of food inflation that has partly kept WPI inflation elevated.
Therefore, if the move successfully results in improved storage facilities, this should provide some relief for the RBI in the future.
FX reserves at $308.624 bln as on Nov 18
MUMBAI - India's foreign exchange reserves fell to $308.624 billion on Nov. 18, from $314.339 billion in the previous week, the RBI said in its weekly statistical supplement on Friday.
Cabinet note on PSU cross-holdings soon
The finance ministry will move a cabinet proposal to allow government companies to acquire equity in other public sector units.
Foodgrain productivity up 8% at 1,921 kg/hectare in 2010-11
Foodgrain productivity rose by 8 per cent to 1,921 kg per hectare in 2010-11 crop year, Parliament was informed today.
The average growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of agriculture and allied sectors suffered a setback due to severe drought in many parts of the country during 2009-10 and drought/deficient rainfall in some states namely Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and East Uttar Pradesh in 2010-11
However, the GDP growth for agriculture sector touched 6.6 per cent in 2010-11 -- the highest growth rate achieved in last six years -- on account of the corrective actions taken by the government
Indian shares to open up; retailers, Reliance eyed
MUMBAI, Nov 28 - Indian shares are expected to start higher on Monday, supported by firmer Asian markets and hopes the government will push more reforms after liberalising foreign investment in the retail sector.
Technology News –
Mid-sized IT cos go for buyouts
Mumbai-based software products and services provider Infrasoft Technologies has mandated three investment banks including Avendus Capital to look for acquisitions in the US in the range on $10-15 million. This comes on the heels of Infrasoft's acquisition of the financial services business of KPIT Cummins in October this year.
Cloud technology for instance has been a focus of many acquisitions in recent times with companies like Aditi Technologies and Vembu Technologies making acquisitions in the space.
Internet startup Flipkart and BPOs like EXL and Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) have also bought companies over the last few months. HGS in August acquired Canada-based customer relationship management company Online Support (OLS) for $78 million.
Dion Global Solutions, a software solutions provider for financial markets, today said it has acquired UK-based wealth management and stock broking software provider Investmaster Group for an undisclosed amount.
TK Kurien cleans up Wipro with elbow grease, puts it back on growth path
Its operational metrics show that vitality is returning, helped in no small part by TK Kurien, the man who took over as chief executive of the Bangalore based company nine months ago.
Volumes - a measure of the number of hours billed by software engineers - have jumped 6% in the three months to September compared with the well under 2% quarterly growth when Kurien took over. That was marginally behind larger rival TCS (6.3%) and ahead of Infosys (4.6%).
HTC CFO says plans to launch competitive phones in Feb
TAIPEI - Taiwanese smartphone company HTC Corp said it has confidence that new products to be launched at the Barcelona Mobile Conference next February would be more competititive and achieve better sales.
AT&T to offer bigger asset sale to save T-Mobile deal - Bloomberg
REUTERS - AT&T Inc is considering an offer to divest a significantly larger portion of assets than it had initially expected, in order to salvage its $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA, Bloomberg reported citing a person familiar with the plan.
There are all kinds of debt—as small as personal debt or as large as national debt. There's another type of debt as important as the rest—called Sovereign Debt. CNBC Explains.
What is sovereign debt?
It's debt guaranteed by a particular government, often called external debt.
What happens is this: In order to raise money, a government will issue bonds in a currency that is not the government's—and sells those bonds to foreign investors.
This is what makes the debt external, as purchasers are from outside the country.
The currency chosen for the sovereign debt is usually a strong one, in that its value is higher than other currencies.
Bonds, of course, are instruments of debt to be paid back at a certain time—that can be as long as ten years or as short as one year—with the original investment plus interest. Bonds issued by a government in a foreign currency are called sovereign bonds.
The money collected by the sale of the bonds can be used in any manner the issuing government wants. For instance, the funds can be used to spur job growth with spending on infrastructure projects. A government could also give the money to private companies or banks.
It's important to note, sovereign debt is technically owed by a government and not the citizens of the country issuing the sovereign bonds. It's not thenational debt.
However, in order to pay the sovereign debts, the government has to come up with the money in the foreign currency in which it sold the bonds. To get that money, the country could divert funds from internal spending, increase taxes, and/or induce cutbacks in social programs such as pensions.
© 2011 CNBC.com
Economist Paul Volcker was Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Reagan and Carter. But his name is becoming more well known for a part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It's called the Volcker rule, and CNBC explains.
What is the Volcker Rule?
The rule restricts U.S. banks, or an institution that owns a bank, from making certain kinds of speculative investments with their own money that could hurt their customers.
That includes any bank or credit union that is federally insured and accepts deposits, as well as traditional banks and investment firms likeGoldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—which are now bank holding companies.
The rule was proposed by Volcker as part of the the Dodd–Frank reform bill of 2010. Volcker was then the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama, a post he left in January 2011.
Volcker partly blamed the speculative investing by banks for helping create the financial crisis of 2007-2010. He felt the type of investing the banks were doing resulted in putting customers at great risk for financial losses through the trading.
To be specific, the rule prohibits banks from engaging in short-term trading of any security, derivatives and certain other financial instruments from a bank's own funds. And it prohibits owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with a hedge fund or private equity fund.
The rule would require banks to create some sort of internal compliance program for making trades. Banks with major trading operations would have to report to federal agencies.
Banks made huge profits in the years leading up to the financial crisis on the type of trading the Volcker rule would stop—more than $15 billion by some estimates.
President Obama has come out in favor of the rule, as have many consumer groups.
What do critics say about the rule?
Banks say the rule would hurt their profits and cost banks additional money in attempting to comply with all of the rule’s details. Traders say their bonuses would be cut, as they would no longer be able to make commissions on certain trades.
The rule is also subject to many exemptions for trading, which some Volcker Rule supporters say are not stringent enough and banks say are too complex.
Is the Volcker Rule in place?
Not yet. The rule is still being worked on. The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Securities Exchange Commission did release a version of the rule on Oct. 11, 2011. It is 298 pages long.
Regulators have given the public until Jan. 13, 2012 to comment on the proposed draft of the rule.
Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill—which was signed into law in 2010—the final version of the Volcker rule will go into effect on July 21, 2012.
© 2011 CNBC.com
What is the Volcker Rule?
The rule restricts U.S. banks, or an institution that owns a bank, from making certain kinds of speculative investments with their own money that could hurt their customers.
That includes any bank or credit union that is federally insured and accepts deposits, as well as traditional banks and investment firms likeGoldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—which are now bank holding companies.
The rule was proposed by Volcker as part of the the Dodd–Frank reform bill of 2010. Volcker was then the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama, a post he left in January 2011.
Volcker partly blamed the speculative investing by banks for helping create the financial crisis of 2007-2010. He felt the type of investing the banks were doing resulted in putting customers at great risk for financial losses through the trading.
To be specific, the rule prohibits banks from engaging in short-term trading of any security, derivatives and certain other financial instruments from a bank's own funds. And it prohibits owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with a hedge fund or private equity fund.
The rule would require banks to create some sort of internal compliance program for making trades. Banks with major trading operations would have to report to federal agencies.
Banks made huge profits in the years leading up to the financial crisis on the type of trading the Volcker rule would stop—more than $15 billion by some estimates.
President Obama has come out in favor of the rule, as have many consumer groups.
What do critics say about the rule?
Banks say the rule would hurt their profits and cost banks additional money in attempting to comply with all of the rule’s details. Traders say their bonuses would be cut, as they would no longer be able to make commissions on certain trades.
The rule is also subject to many exemptions for trading, which some Volcker Rule supporters say are not stringent enough and banks say are too complex.
Is the Volcker Rule in place?
Not yet. The rule is still being worked on. The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Securities Exchange Commission did release a version of the rule on Oct. 11, 2011. It is 298 pages long.
Regulators have given the public until Jan. 13, 2012 to comment on the proposed draft of the rule.
Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill—which was signed into law in 2010—the final version of the Volcker rule will go into effect on July 21, 2012.
© 2011 CNBC.com
There aren't many tech fields that move faster than the cell phone world. Not only are the devices themselves designed to be disposable within two years, but the back-end technology powering the networks is constantly being upgraded.
That means the transition to the next generation of wireless communications is already under way. The latest is called 4G — and all of the carriers are peppering their marketing with the phrase. What many are failing to do, though, is explain what's so important about 4G and why consumers should care.
What is 4G — and how is it different from 3G?
4G is the fourth generation of phone data networks. The first generation (1G) made its debut in 1979 in Japan. The analog network, launched by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, was a breakthrough at the time, but it lacked range and required enormous battery power. (It was also incredibly insecure and allowed just about anyone with a little tech know-how to listen in on calls.)
The new Sprint HTC Evo 4G smartphone is displayed at the International CTIA Wireless 2010 convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center March 24, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CTIA is the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry.
2G made its debut in 1991 and introduced digital signals to cell phone technology. This added a layer of security to conversations and took up less bandwidth, meaning the batteries (and thus, the phones) could be smaller. During this time text messaging and email delivered to your phone became possible.
3G, the current standard, made its debut in 2001 – but no one really took notice until 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone. 3G allowed providers to simultaneously provide voice and data services. Also, people could watch video on their phones. But as smart phones gobbled up more bandwidth, the reliability of 3G became spotty.
4G further strengthens cell phone security and dramatically increases bandwidth. That means fewer dropped calls, significantly faster streaming and Web access, and more multimedia functionality.
© 2011 CNBC.com
What is Mark to market accounting?
From this video, you’ll understand:
The rationale behind mark-to-market accounting
How mark-to-market and fair value accounting differ from historical cost
Oren Etzioni writes articles about artificial intelligence for scholarly journals, is a renowned expert on data mining and gained fame when Microsoft paid $115 million for Farecast, an airline-ticket price predictor he founded.
Now, Professor Etzioni, who teaches computer science at the University of Washington, has directed his considerable intellect at the American ritual of shopping for bargains on Black Friday. After examining billions of prices of consumer electronics, he has decided to spend the busiest shopping day of the year scuba-diving in Bali.
Why? It is not until early December, Professor Etzioni’s research shows, that prices are likely to be the lowest for electronics, products that are among the biggest sellers on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
“The bottom line is, Black Friday is for the retailers to go from the red into the black,” he said. “It’s not really for people to get great deals on the most popular products.”
What the professor has determined with a complex computer algorithm for consumer electronics, others have found through less scientifically rigorous means for other products, including clothing and toys: despite all the ads that suggest otherwise, the lowest prices tend to come at other times of the year.
In the case of toys, stores actually offer the steepest discounts in the weeks immediately following Thanksgiving because they want to unload the inventory not swept up on Black Friday, said Dan de Grandpre, who has tracked deals for 15 years at Dealnews.com.
“Toys have a very short shelf life,” he said.
“On Dec. 26, they’re not really useful to retailers anymore, so they have to get rid of it and start slashing prices early in December.”
And it is a precise window of opportunity. In the week or so before Christmas, toy prices shoot back up, Mr. de Grandpre’s tracking shows, as last-minute shoppers come stampeding for Barbies and Lego sets and stores are less desperate “because they’ve been able to reduce their inventory.”
The added value Professor Etzioni brings to price discussions is the computer crunching of the trove of data provided by online prices—and specific recommendations about when to make a purchase.
Following the approach of Farecast, now part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the professor’s start-up company, Decide.com, studies current and historical prices, information about new models and rumors about new product introductions to figure out the best time to buy.
Type in the name of a product—a Soundcast SurroundCast speaker system, for instance. Decide.com will pull prices from around the Web, and tell you to buy or wait. In the SurroundCast case, it showed this week that prices were at $150 in early September and had now gone up to $160.
The verdict: wait. Decide.com said it was 96 percent confident that prices for the speaker system would drop within two weeks.
Introduced this summer, the Web site predicts prices for consumer electronics only, though Professor Etzioni says there are plans to expand to categories like cars and potentially even clothing in a couple of years. In the meantime, others are making educated guesses about when it is best to spend money on variety of products.
James C. Bieri, who heads a Detroit-based real estate firm that leases to retailers, has determined there are far better times than the Friday after Thanksgiving to make most apparel purchases. Many stores offer steep discounts on products other than clothing, he said, to get shoppers into their stores.
“They’re going to use apparel to get some of the margins back on the stuff they’re giving away,” he said. Better times to make apparel purchases include back-to-school and post-holiday clearance sales, and it is an area where coupons, friends-and-family discounts and the like are big money-savers.
Assuming fruitcake and candy canes still sound good after the holidays, sales of gourmet food and candy should be postponed until then, advised Brad Wilson, of BradsDeals.com, because prices drop drastically.
As for appliances, major retailers like Sears tend to discount those at the end of their fiscal quarters (Sears’s next quarter ends Jan. 31.) But Mr. de Grandpre said that this year, the deals in the weeks before Thanksgiving had been as good as he could remember, especially from retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot, and brands like LG and Samsung.
Retailers do discount smaller appliances on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “You’ll see small kitchen electronics under $20, sometimes under $10—blenders, toasters,” he said. “But it’s low-end, cheap Chinese knockoffs that are heavily discounted—often there’s a mail-in rebate hassle that goes with it—but it’s a very, very low price.”
That is true of most of the biggest deals on that Friday, he said. Because retailers want to impress shoppers with very low prices, the quality of the discounted items can be low.
For higher-end electronics, Mr. de Grandpre’s trends show, shoppers should wait until the week after Thanksgiving.
“Black Friday is about cheap stuff at cheap prices, and I mean cheap in every connotation of the word,” Mr. de Grandpre said. Manufacturers like Dell or HP will allow their cheap laptops to be discounted via retailers on that Friday, but they will reserve markdowns through their own sites for later.
“Their best promotions happen during Cyber Monday week,” he said, referring to the marketing name drummed up by online retailers for the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Did Decide.com agree with the laptop advice?
It did. A low-end Dell laptop had dropped to $249 at Amazon this week, and Decide said to buy it now. But for a more feature-heavy laptop, priced at $1,528 at Sears and $1,541 at PCNation, Decide said to wait, as it expected prices to stay flat or decline by up to $339 within two weeks.
On Friday, “there will be big sales, but are they big sale on the items you want?” Professor Etzioni said, over his remarkably clear cellphone connection from Bali. “Look at all the amazing volatility, and wait for the price drops.”
If some consumers insist on shopping on Friday, Professor Etzioni and Mr. de Grandpre have some suggestions. Movies, music and books are among the few categories that reach their lowest prices starting the week of Thanksgiving, Mr. de Grandpre said. And for online shoppers, the professor’s Decide.com could spot a good deal in a holiday special of smartphones for 1 cent from Amazon.
“Buy,” the Web site advised, “before prices rise.”
This story originally appeared in The New York Times
Ever heard of the phrase six degrees of separation?
The theory refers to the idea that every person is only six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth. In 1967, psychologist Stanley Milgram published his findings on 'six degrees' after conducting an experiment where 296 volunteers were asked to send a message via postcard through friends, and then friends of friends to a specific person in Boston. Well Facebook is making the degree of separation even smaller. The social media site has taken the concept and reduced it to just 4.74 degrees of separation. Over a one month period, researchers at Facebook and The University of Milan used algorithms that measured the connections between 721 of its users. According to a New York Times article, the algorithms calculate the average distance between any two people by computing a vast number of sample paths among Facebook users. They found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37. Therefore, the results confirmed that given any other person on Earth, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend. Of course, this depends on your definition of the word 'friend.' Some people say these connections between other people simply support the idea that Facebook's definition of 'friendship' is not the same as it is in the real world. At any rate, with the help of Facebook and social media in general, it has become a lot easier to reach people and make connections. Looks like the world just got a little bit smaller.
A nuclear-powered rover as big as a compact car is set to begin a nine-month journey to Mars this weekend to learn if the planet is or ever was suitable for life.
The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT) on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.
The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth.
"This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday.
The consensus of scientists after experiments by the twin Viking landers was that life did not exist on Mars. Two decades later, NASA embarked on a new strategy to find signs of past water on Mars, realizing the question of life could not be examined without a better understanding of the planet's environment.
"Everything we know about life and what makes a livable environment is peculiar to Earth," said astrobiologist Pamela Conrad of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a deputy lead scientist for the mission.
"What things look like on Mars are a function of not only the initial set of ingredients that Mars had when it was made, but the processes that have affected Mars," she said.
NEW MARS ROVER
Without a large enough moon to stabilize its tilt, Mars has undergone dramatic climate changes over the eons as its spin axis wobbled closer or farther from the sun.
The history of what happened on Mars during those times is chemically locked in its rocks, including whether liquid water and other ingredients believed necessary for life existed on the planet's surface, and if so, for how long.
In 2004, the golf cart-sized rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars' equator to tackle the question of water.
Their three-month missions grew to seven years, with Spirit succumbing to the harsh winter in the past year and Opportunity beginning a search in a new area filled with water-formed clays. Both rovers found signs that water mingled with rocks during Mars' past.
The new rover, nicknamed Curiosity, shifts the hunt to other elements key to life, particularly organics.
"One of the ingredients of life is water," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's astrobiology program. "We're now looking to see if we can find other conditions that are necessary for life by defining habitability or what does it take in the environment to support life."
The spacecraft, which is designed to last two years, is outfitted with 10 tools to analyze one particularly alluring site on Mars called Gale Crater. The site is a 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide basin that has a layered mountain of deposits stretching 3 miles above its floor, twice as tall as the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon.
Scientists do not know how the mound formed but suspect it is the eroded remains of sediment that once completely filled the crater.
SKY CRANE DELIVERY
Curiosity's toolkit includes a robotic arm with a drill, onboard chemistry labs to analyze powdered samples and a laser that can pulverize rock and soil samples from a distance of 20 feet away.
If all goes as planned, Curiosity will be lowered to the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012 by a new landing system called a sky crane. Previously, NASA used airbags or thruster jets to cushion a probe's touchdown on Mars but the 1,980-pound (900-kilogram) Curiosity needed a beefier system.
"There are a lot of people who look at that and say, 'What are you thinking?'" Theisinger said. "We put together a test program that successfully validated that from a design standpoint it will work. If something decides to break at that point in time, we're in trouble but we've done everything we can think of to do."
The rover, which is twice as long and about three times heavier than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, also needed more power for driving at night and operating its science instruments.
Instead of solar power, Curiosity is equipped with a plutonium battery that generates electricity from the heat of radioactive decay.
Similar systems have been used since the earliest days of the space program, including the Apollo moon missions, the Voyager and Viking probes and more recently in the Cassini spacecraft now circling Saturn and NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons mission.
Radiation monitors have been installed through the area around the Cape Canaveral launch site in case of an accident, though the device has been designed to withstand impacts and explosions, said Randall Scott, director of NASA's radiological control center at the Kennedy Space Center.
Meteorologists were predicting good weather for Saturday's launch. Earth and Mars will be favorably aligned for launch until December 18.
The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT) on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.
The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth.
"This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday.
The consensus of scientists after experiments by the twin Viking landers was that life did not exist on Mars. Two decades later, NASA embarked on a new strategy to find signs of past water on Mars, realizing the question of life could not be examined without a better understanding of the planet's environment.
"Everything we know about life and what makes a livable environment is peculiar to Earth," said astrobiologist Pamela Conrad of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a deputy lead scientist for the mission.
"What things look like on Mars are a function of not only the initial set of ingredients that Mars had when it was made, but the processes that have affected Mars," she said.
NEW MARS ROVER
Without a large enough moon to stabilize its tilt, Mars has undergone dramatic climate changes over the eons as its spin axis wobbled closer or farther from the sun.
The history of what happened on Mars during those times is chemically locked in its rocks, including whether liquid water and other ingredients believed necessary for life existed on the planet's surface, and if so, for how long.
In 2004, the golf cart-sized rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars' equator to tackle the question of water.
Their three-month missions grew to seven years, with Spirit succumbing to the harsh winter in the past year and Opportunity beginning a search in a new area filled with water-formed clays. Both rovers found signs that water mingled with rocks during Mars' past.
The new rover, nicknamed Curiosity, shifts the hunt to other elements key to life, particularly organics.
"One of the ingredients of life is water," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's astrobiology program. "We're now looking to see if we can find other conditions that are necessary for life by defining habitability or what does it take in the environment to support life."
The spacecraft, which is designed to last two years, is outfitted with 10 tools to analyze one particularly alluring site on Mars called Gale Crater. The site is a 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide basin that has a layered mountain of deposits stretching 3 miles above its floor, twice as tall as the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon.
Scientists do not know how the mound formed but suspect it is the eroded remains of sediment that once completely filled the crater.
SKY CRANE DELIVERY
Curiosity's toolkit includes a robotic arm with a drill, onboard chemistry labs to analyze powdered samples and a laser that can pulverize rock and soil samples from a distance of 20 feet away.
If all goes as planned, Curiosity will be lowered to the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012 by a new landing system called a sky crane. Previously, NASA used airbags or thruster jets to cushion a probe's touchdown on Mars but the 1,980-pound (900-kilogram) Curiosity needed a beefier system.
"There are a lot of people who look at that and say, 'What are you thinking?'" Theisinger said. "We put together a test program that successfully validated that from a design standpoint it will work. If something decides to break at that point in time, we're in trouble but we've done everything we can think of to do."
The rover, which is twice as long and about three times heavier than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, also needed more power for driving at night and operating its science instruments.
Instead of solar power, Curiosity is equipped with a plutonium battery that generates electricity from the heat of radioactive decay.
Similar systems have been used since the earliest days of the space program, including the Apollo moon missions, the Voyager and Viking probes and more recently in the Cassini spacecraft now circling Saturn and NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons mission.
Radiation monitors have been installed through the area around the Cape Canaveral launch site in case of an accident, though the device has been designed to withstand impacts and explosions, said Randall Scott, director of NASA's radiological control center at the Kennedy Space Center.
Meteorologists were predicting good weather for Saturday's launch. Earth and Mars will be favorably aligned for launch until December 18.
While Black Friday is not necessarily the best day of the year to shop, it is still the most ritualistic shopping "holiday" with several stores opening at 12 a.m. Friday (or even earlier) with limited-time deals. An estimated 152 million Americans will be taking part in the retail festivities Friday and during the weekend, up from 138 million last year. If you're thinking of hitting the mall -- instead of watching various TV show marathons like me -- here's a handy list of the who's who of Black Fridayand their featured door-busters. Keep in mind that on Black Friday, it's first-come, first-served, so some of these deals will go away once the item is sold out. (Also keep in mind that stores want you to feel pressure to buy. But it's not a good deal if you purchase something you don't need just because the price looks good.)
Walmart
For the first time, Walmart will be kicking off its in-store specials at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving and plans to scatter its offers. The following deals will kick off the event:
Xbox360 4GB with Kinect Console: $199.96 plus a $50 Walmart gift card
DVDs starting at $1.96
6V or 12V Ride-Ons (e.g., Jeep Wrangler, X Games ATV or Barbie Jeep): $99 each
Barbie, Disney Princess or Bratz branded Fashion Dolls: $5 each
Paula Deen 20-Piece Cookware Set: $86.44
Starting at midnight:
Emerson 32" LCD TV (31.5" diagonal screen size): $188
LG Blu-ray Player: $49
Kodak C1450 14 MP Camera: $49
8GB iPod Touch: $195
Samsung 51" Plasma TV (50.7" diagonal screen size): $498
Starting at 8 a.m. Friday:
Goodyear Tires starting at $59
Vizio 42" 3D LED Wi-Fi HDTV (42.0" diagonal screen size 1080p): $598
Buy any smartphone (except Apple iPhone) with a contract and get a $100 Walmart gift card
Macy's
For the first time, stores will open at midnight Thanksgiving. Deals include:
50% off Sharper Image iPhone/iPod docking stations
$19.99 Rampage boots
Justin Beiber limited-edition holiday fragrance set (includes eau de parfum spray and Bieber's holiday CD)
With any $65 fragrance purchase, get a free digital camera
Best Buy
The following deals start at midnight Thanksgiving:
Sharp 42" Class LCD 1080p HDTV $199.99
Samsung laptop with Intel Pentium Processor 15.6" Display, 4GB memory $299.99
Toshiba Wi-Fi Ready Blu-Ray Player $39.99
Seasons 1-3 of Mad Men on BluRay - $9 each
250GB Xbox 360 console with Fable III and Halo Reach -$200
MacBook Pros and iMacs - $60 to $200 off
H&M
H&M stores open at 5 a.m. on Black Friday. Deals include:
Dresses and sweaters from $5
Pants and kids' jackets from $10
Outerwear from $20
Toys R Us
The toy giant plans to open its doors earlier than competitors, at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving.
Sylvania 7-inch tablet PC for $79
40% off Optimus Prime Transformer for $47.99
50% off Leap Pad Leapster systems
$50 gift card with iPod Touch purchase
Target
All Black Friday deals start at midnight on Thanksgiving.
Philips 9" Dual-Screen DVD Player $99
Amazon Kindle 3G $85
Acer 10.1 Netbook for $157
Various movies and TV shows on DVD for $3.99
Element 40" 60HZ 1080p LCD HDTV for $265
$40 Target gift card with purchase of 8GB iPod Touch for $195
$15 Target gift card with purchase of 8GB iPod Nano for $129
Sam's Club
These prices will be valid for members in stores November 25 starting at 5 a.m.
Microsoft Xbox 360 250GB Holiday Bundle for $199
Sony PlayStation 3 160GB Entertainment Bundle for $239
LG 42" 120Hz 1080p LED-Backlit LCD HDTV for $578
Lowe's
The home improvement giant is advertising its Black Friday offers via its "Black Friday Throwdown" on Facebook.
allen + roth Ladder Shelf for $65
Skil 10" Miter Saw for $69
Kobalt 227-Piece Socket Wrench Set for $99.98
Char-Griller Duo Gas and Charcoal Grill for $199
Walmart
For the first time, Walmart will be kicking off its in-store specials at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving and plans to scatter its offers. The following deals will kick off the event:
Xbox360 4GB with Kinect Console: $199.96 plus a $50 Walmart gift card
DVDs starting at $1.96
6V or 12V Ride-Ons (e.g., Jeep Wrangler, X Games ATV or Barbie Jeep): $99 each
Barbie, Disney Princess or Bratz branded Fashion Dolls: $5 each
Paula Deen 20-Piece Cookware Set: $86.44
Starting at midnight:
Emerson 32" LCD TV (31.5" diagonal screen size): $188
LG Blu-ray Player: $49
Kodak C1450 14 MP Camera: $49
8GB iPod Touch: $195
Samsung 51" Plasma TV (50.7" diagonal screen size): $498
Starting at 8 a.m. Friday:
Goodyear Tires starting at $59
Vizio 42" 3D LED Wi-Fi HDTV (42.0" diagonal screen size 1080p): $598
Buy any smartphone (except Apple iPhone) with a contract and get a $100 Walmart gift card
Macy's
For the first time, stores will open at midnight Thanksgiving. Deals include:
50% off Sharper Image iPhone/iPod docking stations
$19.99 Rampage boots
Justin Beiber limited-edition holiday fragrance set (includes eau de parfum spray and Bieber's holiday CD)
With any $65 fragrance purchase, get a free digital camera
Best Buy
The following deals start at midnight Thanksgiving:
Sharp 42" Class LCD 1080p HDTV $199.99
Samsung laptop with Intel Pentium Processor 15.6" Display, 4GB memory $299.99
Toshiba Wi-Fi Ready Blu-Ray Player $39.99
Seasons 1-3 of Mad Men on BluRay - $9 each
250GB Xbox 360 console with Fable III and Halo Reach -$200
MacBook Pros and iMacs - $60 to $200 off
H&M
H&M stores open at 5 a.m. on Black Friday. Deals include:
Dresses and sweaters from $5
Pants and kids' jackets from $10
Outerwear from $20
Toys R Us
The toy giant plans to open its doors earlier than competitors, at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving.
Sylvania 7-inch tablet PC for $79
40% off Optimus Prime Transformer for $47.99
50% off Leap Pad Leapster systems
$50 gift card with iPod Touch purchase
Target
All Black Friday deals start at midnight on Thanksgiving.
Philips 9" Dual-Screen DVD Player $99
Amazon Kindle 3G $85
Acer 10.1 Netbook for $157
Various movies and TV shows on DVD for $3.99
Element 40" 60HZ 1080p LCD HDTV for $265
$40 Target gift card with purchase of 8GB iPod Touch for $195
$15 Target gift card with purchase of 8GB iPod Nano for $129
Sam's Club
These prices will be valid for members in stores November 25 starting at 5 a.m.
Microsoft Xbox 360 250GB Holiday Bundle for $199
Sony PlayStation 3 160GB Entertainment Bundle for $239
LG 42" 120Hz 1080p LED-Backlit LCD HDTV for $578
Lowe's
The home improvement giant is advertising its Black Friday offers via its "Black Friday Throwdown" on Facebook.
allen + roth Ladder Shelf for $65
Skil 10" Miter Saw for $69
Kobalt 227-Piece Socket Wrench Set for $99.98
Char-Griller Duo Gas and Charcoal Grill for $199
