World Markets Simplified

Sky gazers in parts of the world are up for a celestial treat on May 21 when an annular solar eclipse takes place, a rare event in which the sun will appear as a thin ring behind the moon. However, in India it will only be visible in the northeastern states.

An annual solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun, therefore only a part of the sun gets blocked. Hence the Sun appears like an annulus (ring), surrounding the outline of the Moon.

The next annular solar eclipse will occur after 18 years in June 2030.

"An annular eclipse of the Sun will occur May 21. The ending of the partial phase of the eclipse will be visible for a very short duration from northeast India after sunrise," said an official of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Other parts of India won't be able to watch the eclipse as it will be over before sunrise.

SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators & Educators) is taking an expedition of school students to Hong Kong to witness the annular solar eclipse, where it will be visible clearly.

"A total of 70 students from various schools are in Hong Kong to witness this rare celestial event," said C.B. Devgun, SPACE president, who is heading the tour.

He said the students will also participate in scientific activities and experiments, including contact timing measurement, a study of change in ambient temperature and lunar limb profile measurements.

"As the Sun won't be fully covered, you have to wear proper protection for your eyes even during the eclipse. You will also need a filter (ND filter or similar) for your camera to protect the sensor when taking pictures with telephoto/zoom lens," he said.

Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.

"This has been done under the directions of the Ministry of Information Technology. It's because of blasphemous content," said Mohammed Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

"They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content," he said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by many Muslims, who constitute the overwhelming majority in Pakistan.

PTA chairman Yaseen did not specify which users or messages had prompted the ban. The Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan said its members have been asked to block Twitter indefinitely, but no reason has been provided by the government.

Yaseen said the ban would be lifted after ongoing discussions between the Pakistan government and Twitter about the allegedly blasphemous material are resolved.

Officials from the Ministry of Information Technology and from Twitter were not immediately available for comment.

Twitter has become increasingly popular in Pakistan in recent years, its users including politicians and government officials.

People who have smoked a pack of cigarettes every day for at least 30 years should get advanced lung scans annually starting at age 55 to check for early evidence of cancer while it’s still treatable, researchers said.

Low-dose computerized tomography may cut the risk of dying from lung cancer by 20 percent, according to a report presented today at the American Thoracic Society International Conference and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. For every person diagnosed with lung cancer, there were 20 with suspicious findings that needed biopsies or other follow-up to rule out a malignancy, the researchers said.

The risk of cancer is great enough in heavy smokers 55 to 74 years old to justify annual CT scans, according to guidelines from the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Oncology based on the study results. They aren’t recommended for older and younger smokers, people who quit more than 15 years ago, patients with limited life expectancies or those who light up less frequently.

“Low-dose computed tomography screening may benefit individuals at an increased risk for lung cancer, but uncertainty exists about the potential harms,” said researchers led by Peter Bach, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Because most patients are diagnosed with advanced disease, there is renewed enthusiasm for the CT screening, “which is able to identify smaller nodules,” the researchers said.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death, killing an estimated 160,000 people in the U.S. each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

The link between illicit sex, money and power goes back as far as David and Bathsheba. This week has added several new names to the list of scandals at the top of the business world.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund late Wednesday amid allegations that he sexually assaulted a maid in a luxury Manhattan hotel.

Soon after the allegations surfaced, more whispers about Strauss-Kahn’s allegedly sexually predatory behaviour emerged.

Sir Fred Goodwin, once one of the most powerful bankers in Europe as head of Royal Bank of Scotland, was said in the British Parliament on Thursday to have used a super-injunction to cover up an extramarital affair with a female subordinate.

On Wednesday, German insurer Munich Re admitted it hired 20 prostitutes as a reward for around 100 of its top sales executives at a party hosted in Budapest in 2007.

The female sex workers reportedly were given arm bands and earned stamps on their forearm to keep track of the services they had to be paid for.

These companies and leaders are far from the first to have their names linked with sex scandals.

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in a Florida jail in 2008 for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.

Lord Browne famously quit as chief executive of BP in 2007 after lying in court about meeting his ex-partner, Jeff Chevalier, a Canadian former rent boy, through an escort website.

And James McDermott Jr, former chief executive and chairman of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods,
 spent five months in prison and was barred from the securities industry in 2000 after leaking stock tips to girlfriend Kathryn Gannon, also known as the porn star Marilyn Star.

Why do high-flying businessmen risk huge reputational damage through their sexual misadventures?

Robert Weiss, founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute and author of Why Men in Power Act Out, said of the Strauss-Kahn affair: “This latest scandal again raises questions about why some men in powerful positions often live out a double life one public and one private that involves impulsive and compulsive sexual behavior."

“Although a sense of strength and fearlessness and a near disregard of consequences can make for great, powerful leaders, problems come when these leaders do not acknowledge that they are human.”

“If their narcissism or egotism isn’t matched by a healthy dose of humility of what it means to be human…and they run on their intellect and don’t attend to their emotions on any level…then they are bound for trouble,” he added.

“People in powerful positions, such as Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn, often don’t make it a priority to care for themselves emotionally, and may start looking for a 'quick fix.'"

“People with money, power, and fame often have poor feedback networks. They are surrounded by people who are dependent on them for employment or security, which makes them reluctant to tell their ‘boss’ that they need to seek help.”

Peter Detwiler, former vice chairman of stock brokerage E.F. Hutton, and Robert West, former chairman of Tesoro Petroleum, got into hot water after soliciting a prostitute for the Trinidad & Tobago finance minister, in an attempt to influence policy in the Caribbean country.

Sexual misbehaviour, as many of these men have found, can cost more than just dignity.

In one of the most famous sexual harassment cases in the financial world, six female workers at Dresdner Kleinwort sued the bank for $1.4 billion in 2006. Allegations that male executives were entertaining clients at strip clubs and bringing prostitutes back to the office surfaced before the case was settled out of court.

The vast majority of sex scandals at the top of the business world involve powerful heterosexual men and women who are less economically powerful.

This is partly simply because there are fewer women in positions of power in this sphere, with women holding just 15.7 percent of board seats at Fortune500 companies in 2010.

Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber believes that high social status in men is often linked to difficulty controlling sexual impulses.

He wrote in an article for Psychology Today: "In the world of animal behaviour, when one sees high status, intense male-male competition, and a high sex drive, one is looking at the unmistakable handiwork of testosterone (and other "male" sex hormones).

"Testosterone also rises with competitive success for humans, and even with sexual intercourse so there is a positive feedback loop whereby prominent men acquire high testosterone levels along with increased social status.

"They are also more attractive to women who acquire status and power themselves through such pairings. It all adds up to an arrogant sense by male leaders that they can treat women as they please."

Tata Steel

Tata Steel Ltd. (TATA), India’s biggest producer, reported a worse-than-expected 90 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit as an escalating debt crisis in Europe lowered demand and prices in the steelmaker’s largest market.

Net income, including that of unit Tata Steel Europe Ltd., fell to 4.33 billion rupees ($79 million) in the three months ended March 31 from 41.8 billion rupees a year earlier, the Mumbai-based company said yesterday in a statement. The median profit estimate of 34 analysts in a Bloomberg survey was 8.81 billion rupees. Sales gained 1 percent to 338.6 billion rupees.

The gross domestic product in the 17-nation euro region stagnated in the last quarter, compared with the previous three months, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on May 15. Steel demand in the European Union will drop about 2.7 percent this year, Eurofer, the European steel industry lobby group, said on May 7.

Total costs rose 5 percent to 319.1 billion rupees in the quarter, while raw material expenses fell 5 percent to 102.2 billion rupees, the company said. Earnings from sources other than the main business fell 39 percent to 2.22 billion rupees, the company said. Net debt increased to 476.97 billion rupees as on March 31, compared with 466.6 billion rupees a year ago.

Tata Steel shares fell 1.5 percent to 399.95 rupees in Mumbai yesterday. The benchmark Sensitive Index rose 0.5 percent. The earnings were announced after the market closed.
Debt Crisis

Steel deliveries for the quarter fell 6.5 percent to 6.22 million tons, underlining “operational difficulties” and lower demand in Europe because of the continuing debt crisis, Karl- Ulrich Kohler, chief executive officer at Tata Steel Europe, said in a statement.

The company expects production from its European mills to stabilize from January after a new blast furnace at Port Talbot starts production, Kohler said yesterday at a media conference in Mumbai. Lower raw material prices will improve margins for the European business and coal shipments from Mozambique’s Benga project should start this month, Managing Director H.M. Nerurkar said at the conference.

Tata Steel plans to increase output by 1 million tons this fiscal year from its Jamshedpur plant expansion, Nerurakar said. The company is arranging funds for a new plant in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, group Chief Financial Officer Koushik Chatterjee told reporters yesterday in Mumbai.

Tata Steel expects to start the first phase of the annual 3.5 million ton factory in Odisha as early as October 2013, Nerurkar said on April 20.
Fund Growth

The steelmaker has $2.4 billion of cash and cash equivalent and a capital structure that will support its ability to fund growth, Chatterjee said. The company expects to maintain its 1:1 net debt to equity position, he said.

The Indian operations may see a bigger impact of higher railway freight and increase in mineral royalties in this fiscal year, Nerurkar said yesterday.

Hot-rolled steel coil, a benchmark product used in automobiles and buildings, declined 11 percent to $703.50 a ton in the first quarter, compared with $793.70 a year earlier, according to Steel Business Briefing’s global price index. Iron ore, a steelmaking ingredient, averaged 20 percent lower than a year earlier, while coking coal fell 18 percent.

Steel demand in India may rise 8 percent this fiscal year after the nation’s central bank cut interest rates to boost growth, G.K. Basak, executive secretary at the steel ministry’s joint plant committee, said in an April 13 interview.

Global steel use will rise 3.6 percent this year, less than last year’s 5.6 percent increase, as European demand contracts and Chinese use slows, the World Steel Association said on April 27.

Just sent dirty pictures of yourself to someone who's not your wife? Need to get rid of them quickly? There's an app for that.

Snapchat lets you control how long your sexts last before disappearing.

Think of it as a new age, pervy version of the self-destructing tapes Jim Phelps played on "Mission Impossible" (kids, IMDB that, it was a great show).

"With Snapchat, users can share a photo and it will disappear from the gallery anywhere between one to ten seconds," writes Digital Trends. You can control how long the picture is up, and after it's deleted, it's gone forever.

An added plus, if the receiver attempts to capture the picture to keep it, you will be alerted. "After that, it’s out of Snapchat’s hands; you two are a phone call away from a screamfest to get that dirty picture off their phone,” writes DT’s Natt Garun. “Maybe you still shouldn’t have sent it ... in the first place."

Think how this app might have saved the careers of Rep. Anthony Weiner and Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino! Imagine, Snapchat would have allowed them to stay on the job, sexting away, keeping America great.

Well...

Be warned. Snapchat's privacy policy states that it's possible for deleted sexts to not really be deleted. "We cannot guarantee that the message data will be deleted in every case...Messages, therefore, are sent at the risk of the user."

Holland may have abandoned its famously lucrative (and destructive) colonial trade hundreds of years ago, but the country is still a major exporter of one thing: bike culture. The country even has its own Dutch Cycling Embassy, which helps cities all over the world plan safer bike infrastructure. Sales of their famously durable commuting bikes have skyrocketed, and even the their legal system is bike-oriented: Dutch laws on driver responsibility are being used as a model by policy-makers here in the US. Basically, for cyclists, Holland is the Marcia to every other country’s Jan.

Facebook Acquires Karma
Because simply having the largest IPO in U.S. history isn't enough for Facebook, the social network also went shopping. The social gifting mobile app called Karma is announcing that it has been acquired by Facebook. The company's cofounders, including Lee Linden, one of Fast Company's Most Creative People of 2012, says that the app will continue to operate as is. Facebook's interest in Karma is probably due to its expertise in mobile, an area that the social network knows it must master and figure out how to monetize.

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