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A farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes in India. In 2009, 17,638 farmers took their own life. Low yields, extremely reduced profits, and mounting debt make leading an agricultural life incredibly difficult.

When a disaster--like an infestation or drought--strikes, it can be the last straw. But a new technology platform that connects farmers to agricultural experts hopes to give farmers enough information to keep surviving.

Arun Pande of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Innovation Labs and his team are designing a system called mKrishi to make farming easier and less draining. By offering timely customized information--on everything from diseases that might endanger their crops to advice on when to spray pesticides and where to sell their crops--farmers’ lives can get a little easier.

The mKrishi works by giving farmers access to experts, and experts access to information about the farms. The experts are pulled from various agriculture related universities and companies that have partnered with mKrishi. The farmers are given mobile phones with built-in cameras and specialized software to send photos of their crops and queries to experts. Sensor networks and a weather station in the village provide relevant data that’s sent to a database. Experts can access farmer’s queries through a web application, factoring in the weather and sensor data and send replies through the expert console software, which the farmer receives as either a text or voice message.

The system also employs innovative predictive crop disease forecasting. Data from the sensors powers disease prediction models; if the risk index exceeds a certain threshold, it triggers the farmer’s phone automatically, warning them to take preventative measures. It’s an approach that won the team the MIT Technology Review Grand Challenge award this year.

Because of the huge number of variables involved, disease forecasting is not an exact science. But the team hopes that the mKrishi platform will lead to more accurate predictions, helping farmers save around 40% to 60% of their crops. “We expect preventive measures will reduce the cost of expensive pesticide once the disease is set in,” Pande tells Fast Company.

Currently, mKrishi has been installed in four villages in the western state of Maharashtra to help cotton, grape, potato, and soybean farmers. The initial results seem promising. “Farmers were able to practice precision farming,” says Pande. “Income increased due to increase in yield and reduction of pesticide usage.”

Satish Deshmukh, a farmer in Ganori village, in Maharashtra says that mKrishi’s pesticide advice helped him save approximately $150 on pesticide and labor charges. Manoj Chadurkar, a farmer in the Waifad village, says “Prices of soybean, cotton, cotton seed oil, cotton seed cake at nearby [markets] which were displayed on the cell phone helped me get good returns for my produce.”

The system’s success has spurred interest from the Grape Growers Association to extend the service to around 40,000 grape farmers in Maharashtra. Fertilizer manufacturers have expressed interest in connecting directly with farmers to reduce overall distribution costs and create brand awareness. Talks are on to conduct pilots for partners like NGOs, sugar companies, grape exporters, and cotton research agencies.

mKrishi is currently working on creating a robust wireless sensor node so that every farmer can afford to install one per acre of land, and Pande and his team hope their efforts will help make farming more efficient and appealing. “Today’s rural youth is aware of the prosperity in cities through print and television media," and they're moving away from the family farms, which are being sold off, Pande says. "This is creating a vicious cycle of reduction of farm land, fewer farmers to till the land, lower income from farms, migration of rural families to cities." mKrishi's goals are nothing short of creating a revolution in the rural market that ultimately encourages the next generation of farmers that their livelihood is not an impossible fight against nature.

( Source: Fast Company )

Below is our original report...

A graphic video of the corpse of a 13-year-old boy who appears to have been sexually and physically tortured by Syrian security officials has sparked international condemnation and riots across the country. The video (see still pic above) shows Hamza Ali al-Khatib, a resident of the southern village of Jiza, and appears to have been filmed by his family after they retrieved his corpse.

The torture that the prepubescent al-Khatib appears to have been subjected to is unimaginable. His penis was severed, body is covered in bullet holes and cigarette burns, chest is covered in a massive burn mark, neck broken, kneecaps shattered, and face covered in bruises from repeated punches. Al-Khatib was taken into custody while attending an anti-government protest.

Al-Khatib's death appears to have galvanized Syrians. The death and horrific torture of a 13-year-old child, spread via social media, has spawned protests by shocked ordinary citizens. While the sadistic interrogation and punishment methods used by state security and military services have been an open secret for quite some time, the Arab Spring has bought discontent against the al-Assad government into the open.

The video clip is playing out almost like a funeral of Emmett Till for the age of social media. In the Emmett Till case, an open casket funeral was used to demonstrate the brutalities of Southern racism. In this case, al-Khatib's family appears to be using their son's death to demonstrate the brutality of Syrian security services to a worldwide audience. While it is unlikely that al-Khatib would have been out in the streets protesting if not for the ongoing chaos of the Arab Spring, the torture methods that appear to have been used on him have been a routine part of the Syrian security arsenal for decades. The message, amplified by social media, appears to be resonating with Syrians.

In the city of Amouda, a mass rally of children shouting “We Are All Hamza!” marched through the streets on Tuesday, May 31 while also chanting slogans against the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Syria's government has already began damage control for the al-Khatib video. The official Syrian Arab News Agency released a long English-language feature claiming that al-Khatib's father absolved Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of all crimes, called him “gentle and kind” and then claimed the boy's injuries were the result of being shot by anti-government protesters. As for the rest of al-Khatib's extensive injuries that weren't bullet wounds? According to the official Syrian party line, the burn marks, severed penis, broken kneecaps, and snapped neck simply didn't exist.

Al-Khatib's injuries are consistent with a Human Rights Watch report on torture methods by Syrian security and intelligence services that was issued in April 2011.

The "Gulf Jash" is in the Indian Ocean on its way to the western state of Gujarat after Vietnam and Bangladesh turned it away, said Gopal Krishna of the group Toxic Watch Alliance.

The ship is laden with asbestos, toxic PCBs, fuel and chemical residues, according to Krishna, who said he has been tracking it since 2006, when its owner first started trying to find a place to dismantle it despite the hazardous materials onboard.

Indian authorities have said they are awaiting a report from the Gujarat government before making a decision on whether to allow it to enter Indian waters.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said Wednesday that he had asked the Gujarat government for a "factual report" on the position of the ship.

The ship's owner, U.S.-based Global Marketing System, could not immediately be reached for comment.

India has one of the world's largest industries for breaking down old ships and oil tankers, but like most countries it does not accept ships with toxic materials.

However, lax enforcement of laws mean ships with toxic materials are accepted for dismantling by unscrupulous contractors and tens of thousands of laborers, working with bare hands or minimal protection are exposed to deadly hazardous substances.

International and local environmental groups have for years urged Indian authorities to enforce laws to regulate the industry, in which ships are dismantled largely by hand.

Ritwick Dutta, a lawyer with NGO Shipbreaking Platform, an environment group that tracks toxic ships, says in India ships are dismantled close to the shore, without using cranes or heavy machinery.

"The ships are broken down by hand, their structures cut open" with blowtorches, he said.

In 2009, India banned the dismantling of an US-flagged cruise liner Platinum II at the ship-breaking yard in Alang in Gujarat after technical experts examined the ship and found evidence of asbestos and some radioactive substances in the hull.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Electronic Arts Inc. launched an online game download service called Origin on Friday, another sign that big video game publishers are betting on a future where they sell content directly to customers instead of through stores and online retailers.

Rival Activision Blizzard Inc. also announced plans this week to launch an online service for its "Call of Duty" games; that service is due later this year.

Origin, a new, expanded version of what was previously known as EA Store, has 150 games available to buy and download. Users can also pre-order limited-edition copies of upcoming titles such as "FIFA Soccer 12" and "Battlefield 3."

The PC game downloads generally cost the same as they would in a brick-and-mortar store.

Origin isn't the first game download service. Bellevue, Wash.-based Valve Corp. has a popular download engine at its game platform Steam, where customers can buy such games as Half-Life and Team Fortress.

EA said Origin will be accessible on mobile devices and PCs and will let users create friend lists and import their Facebook contacts.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

8) Palms Hotel, Hugh Hefner Suite

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Price per night: $40,000+

Size: 9,000+ square feet

Features: There’s room for 250 visitors at this two-floor bachelor pad featuring an 8-foot round rotating bed with mirrored ceiling, the Playboy Jacuzzi pool with a glass wall overlooking the Strip, poker table, media room, terrace, private glass elevator, pop-up plasma TVs, and a private gym with sauna/spa treatment room.

9) President Wilson Hotel, Royal Penthouse Suite

Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Price per night: $65,000 +

Size: 5,511 square feet

Features: One of the world's largest hotels suites (though Hef’s got this one beat), the eighth floor of the President Wilson Hotel features 12 rooms, 12 bathrooms, a billiards table, a grand piano, a gym, a private elevator, and a private terrace.

( Source: CNBC )

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1. Sony has been hit with yet another hack attack, this time targeting its Pictures website. Hackers LulzSec say they pulled off a standard SQL injection, and managed to gain access to one million passwords of the sites users, which were stored in plain text files allegedly. The hack was intended to expose Sony's "disgraceful" security, and Sony's now busily investigating the claims and its security setups...again.

2. Google's Gmail phishing scam apparently targeted people who work at the White House as well as other government figures, according to new reports. No official messages were compromised, the administration has promised, but the hackers--still being reported as originating in China, despite China's protestations--were most likely hoping to glean information about official business of government from private user email accounts.

3. Facebook has struck back against the ownership lawsuit filed by Paul Ceglia, alleging that Ceglia fabricated evidence to support his claims. Facebook has supplied "real" emails, pulled from Harvard's server archives, that relate to the business deals between Mark Zuckerberg and Ceglia, and they show a different relationship to the alleged deal by Ceglia. Facebook's legal team is even saying Ceglia was involved in land sales scams.

4. Adobe's CEO, speaking at the AllThingsD conference, has revealed that there is no "war" with Apple, and it's all about different business models--a very different story to Steve Jobs' allegations about Flash's ill performance and security. Unable to defend accusations that Flash doesn't work well on Android devices (one key sales pitch for Google's smartphone web experience versus the iPhone) Shantanu Narayen still suggested Android tablets will soon overtake the iPad.

5. The U.S. Senate is considering a new proposal that would end the free ride ecommerce has enjoyed in much of the nation in terms of collecting sales tax. The exemption was initially allowed to protect the fledgling online economy, but now that web-stores are established there's a feeling that sales tax should be collected. The main "target" is most likely Amazon, which has been rattling its saber in a few states that tried to independently enforce sales tax collection.

Life apparently is very different for Pamela Anderson than it is for Renee Zellweger.

It's not what you're thinking. It's all about their names.

My last name begins with a "W".

As a kid, I was usually at the back of the class, last in line, given opportunities only after everyone else had a chance.

As an adult, does that make me more eager to buy stuff?

Maybe.

The Journal of Consumer Research has published a study which claims that the further back in the alphabet the first letter of your last name is, the faster you make purchasing decisions. It's because you feel denied. Cupcakes run out in kindergarten before you got one? You spend THE REST OF YOUR LIFE MAKING SURE YOU GET A CUPCAKE!

The news could be very helpful for marketers.

"Society does not treat all names equal," say authors Kurt Carlson and Jacqueline Conard in what they call the Last Name Effect. "Many organizations (e.g., elementary and middle schools) rely on alphabetical order of surnames to determine the order in which children access various opportunities." Kids forced to wait hate it. They grow up vowing never to miss another opportunity again.

The authors conducted studies to try to prove this theory. In one, MBA students were sent emails offering four free tickets to a top-ranked women's basketball game. Students whose names were in the back half of the alphabet responded on average in 19 minutes, six minutes faster than those whose names start in the front half. (I wonder how quickly they would've responded if it had been a men's basketball game, just sayin').

The results were repeated in another study which offered free wine and $5 to students of legal drinking age in exchange for taking part in a survey. But in addition to students in the M-Z group replying faster than the A-L group, a large number of A-L's didn't even bother to reply. Getting a freebie was no big deal.

"Children with surnames that begin with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet enjoy privileged treatment," the authors write. "They are at the beginning of lines, they sit in the front of the class, and they often get first choice when opportunities arise." This apparently has lifelong implications.

So, by this reasoning, Pam Anderson figures if she misses one opportunity, another will come along. Renee Zellweger, however, is terrified there will be no second chances. "For marketers, this raises the important question of whether those late in the alphabet will be more likely to respond to a limited time offer."

Which brings me back to...me. As a "W", I generally make up my mind very quickly to buy something. My husband is the opposite. He is patient. He can walk away.

What does his last name start with? A? G? L?

No. He's a "W", too.

Maybe he's an exception to the Last Name Effect, but it turns out he is right in line with an earlier study called the "Name-Letter Effect". That research found people choose things which have a similar spelling to their own last names, including "one's choice of spouse." Bingo. The Hubbanator and I share four letters in our last names. Perhaps marketers should pay attention to "effect" as well. Still waiting for Wells Fargo to pitch me. Or a fund specializing in oil wells. Water wells. Wales. Walls. Shells. Hells bells.

Greece step forward towards getting a bail out help from Europe and might get it  in early July following further talks in the next few weeks on Athens' economic programme, the EU, ECB and IMF said on Friday.

The Greek government will create an independently managed privatization agency, they said in a joint statement.

The statement concluded a one-month inspection of Greece by European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank officials.

Greece had achieved significant progress but fiscal and structural reforms had to be stepped up, the statement said. The Greek government was committed to an ambitious medium-term budget plan, they added. Greek liquidity remains tight but policies are in place to ensure it is adequate for banks, they said.

Aid for Greece needs to be approved by euro zone finance ministers and the IMF's executive board before it can be released to Greece.

( Source: Reuters )

CPRX has a very low burn rate compared to most biotechs; management has been conservative and made substantial purchases of this stock. The 52-week high is $1.54 and with volume picking up and the shares only about 30 cents away from that level, it looks like these shares could be ready to make new highs soon. The chart for this stock looks good as well, with the 50-day moving above the 200-day moving average, the chart shows a new golden cross formation, which often indicates the start of a new upward trend.

Catalyst has some big players invested in its stock. Federated Investors owns nearly 12% of this company and FMR, LLC (Fidelity) owns about 6%. Late last year, Catalyst began a $10 million clinical trial, the majority of which (about $7.2 million) is being paid by the government. The trial is for CPP-109, "Vigabatrin," to treat cocaine addiction. The company also has CP-115, which it says "has the potential to address a broad range of diseases affecting the central nervous system beyond addiction, such as adult epilepsy and infantile spasms." What intrigues me most about this is the following portion:

In 2010, Reckitt Benckiser's Suboxone(R) and Subutex(R) became the first addiction drugs to achieve "blockbuster" status with combined U.S. sales of over $1 billion. Recognition of this milestone, along with the looming "patent cliff" faced by the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, has increased the number of companies interested in discussions about partnering opportunities for CPP-109 and CPP-115. While no definitive partnering agreements have been entered into to date, Catalyst's goal is to make significant progress on this front before the end of 2011.

An agreement to partner with a major pharmaceutical company would potentially send this stock soaring from current levels. CPP-109 has been granted fast track status by the FDA for the treatment of cocaine addiction, which indicates that the FDA has recognized that CPP-109 is intended for the treatment of a serious or life-threatening condition for which there is no effective treatment and which demonstrates the potential to address unmet medical needs. With a market cap of only about $24 million and the potential to bring a blockbuster drug to market, it would not be surprising to see a major company takeover CPRX or announce a major partnership agreement, which is one of the company goals for 2011.