Rap Waliz

BRUSSELS – European Union regulators said Wednesday that Kraft Foods Inc. had put forward possible changes to its hostile 9.8 billion pound ($16.3 billion) takeover of Cadbury PLC to soothe antitrust worries.
The European Commission gave no details when it said it was extending a deadline by 10 working days — from Dec. 14 to Jan. 6 — to examine commitments made by Kraft, based in Northfield, Illinois.
By that date, the EU's executive must approve the deal or open an in-depth probe that would examine problems more closely.
London-based Cadbury, the maker of Dairy Milk chocolate and Dentyne gum, plans to publish its formal response to the Kraft deal on Dec. 14.
Kraft, the maker of Oreo cookies, Nabisco crackers and its namesake cheese, took its offer straight to shareholders of the British candy company on Friday. In doing so, it bypassed the Cadbury board, which had already rejected an almost identical offer last month as "derisory."

COPENHAGEN – Developing nations who face huge climate change burdens are demanding that wealthy nations shoulder more of the costs, as a leaked Danish document and fresh evidence of a hotter planet raised temperatures at the U.N. climate conference.
Negotiators on Wednesday were trying to bridge the difficult gaps among 192 nations and stem a growing chasm between rich and poor on the third day of the U.N. climate conference.
A key speaker will be U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, whose agency just gave President Barack Obama a new way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. Obama will join more than 100 national leaders converging on Copenhagen for the final days of bargaining late next week.
Jackson headlines a U.S.-sponsored meeting entitled "Taking Action at Home." The EPA determined Monday that scientific evidence clearly shows greenhouse gases are endangering Americans' health and must be regulated, either by Congress or by itself, the agency responsible for air pollution. That gave Obama a new way to regulate those gases without needing the approval of the U.S. Congress.
Meanwhile, small island nations, poor countries and those seeking money from the developed world to preserve their tropical forests were among those upset over competing draft texts attributed to Denmark and China outlining proposed outcomes for the historic Dec. 7-18 summit.
Some of the poorest nations feared too much of the burden to curb greenhouse gases is being hoisted onto their shoulders. They are seeking billions of dollars in aid from the wealthy countries to deal with climate change, which melts glaciers that raise sea levels worldwide, turns some regions drier and threatens food production.
Diplomats from developing countries and climate activists complained the Danish hosts pre-empted the negotiations with their draft proposal.
Lumumba Di-Aping of Sudan, the head of the 135-nation bloc of developing countries, said the $10 billion fast-track pledge from the U.S., European Union, Japan and other wealthy nations paled compared to the more than $1 trillion spent to rescue financial institutions.
"If this is the greatest risk that humanity faces, then how do you explain $10 billion — unless it is an inducement for some countries to accept the western-backed proposal?" he said. "Ten billion will not buy developing countries' citizens enough coffins."
The Danish draft proposal would allow rich countries to cut fewer emissions while poorer nations would face tougher limits on greenhouse gases and more conditions on money available to adapt.
"(It focuses) on pleasing the rich and powerful countries rather than serving the majority of states who are demanding a fair and ambitious solution," said Kim Carstensen of the environmental group WWF.
A sketchy counterproposal attributed to China would extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by an average 5 percent by 2012, compared with 1990 levels.
The Chinese text would incorporate specific new, deeper targets for the industrialized world for a further five to eight years. Developing countries, on the other hand, including China, would be covered by a separate agreement that envisions their taking actions to control emissions, but not in the same legally binding way. No targets would be specified for them.
Poorer nations believe the two-track approach would best preserve the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" recognized by the Kyoto treaty.
Such draft ideas are the usual grist early in such long, difficult international talks. These two proposals were not yet even recorded as official conference documents.
"It has no validity," key European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said, speaking of the Danish proposal. "It's only a piece of paper. The only texts that have validity here are those which people negotiated."
Earlier Tuesday, the U.N.'s weather agency unveiled data showing that this decade is on track to become the hottest since records began in 1850, with 2009 the fifth-warmest year ever. The second warmest decade was the 1990s.
Only the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average, the World Meteorological Organization said, though Alaska had the second-warmest July on record. In central Africa and southern Asia, this will probably be the warmest year, it said.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Find behind-the-scenes information, blog posts and discussion about the Copenhagen climate conference at http://www.facebook.com/theclimatepool, a Facebook page run by AP and an array of international news agencies. Follow coverage and blogging of the event on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/AP_ClimatePool.

Excess line insurance companies (aka Excess and Surplus) typically insure risks not covered by the standard lines market. They are broadly referred as being all insurance placed with non-admitted insurers. Non-admitted insurers are not licensed in the states where the risks are located. These companies have more flexibility and can react faster than standard insurance companies because they don't have the same regulations as standard insurance companies. State laws generally require insurance placed with surplus line agents and brokers to not be available through standard licensed insurers.

Advanced economies account for the bulk of global insurance. With premium income of $1,217 billion in 2004, North America was the most important region, followed by the EU (at $1,198 billion) and Japan (at $492 billion). The top four countries accounted for nearly two-thirds of premiums in 2004. The United States and Japan alone accounted for a half of world insurance premiums, much higher than their 7 percent share of the global population. Emerging markets accounted for over 85 percent of the world’s population but generated only 10 percent of premiums. The volume of UK insurance business totaled $295 billion in 2004 or 9.1 percent of global premiums.

Term Life Insurance

The Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System do not have a separate sound chip but both instead use digital logic integrated on the main CPU.

The June 2008 issue of Paste Magazine has an article on chiptune artist Jeremiah "Nullsleep" Johnson, and the included sampler CD features chiptune song "Local Hero" by Crazy Q.

Sound Chips

FREDERICK, Md. – More than 150 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the notorious Dred Scott decision affirming slavery, a Maryland city has erected a plaque to educate visitors about the decision and the local man who wrote it.
The bronze marker was dedicated Tuesday at Frederick city hall on a granite pedestal about eight feet from a bronze bust of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (TAW'nee). The one-time Frederick resident wrote the 1857 decision, which also held that freed slaves and their descendants could never be U.S. citizens. The case became a catalyst for the Civil War.
The plaque is a compromise between residents who wanted the Taney statue removed and those who believe it deserves the place of honor it has occupied for 77 years.

LOS ANGELES — Exactly 12 months ago, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were surprised to be greeted by throngs of eager fans of the novel "Twilight" at the premiere of the big-screen adaptation.
What a difference a year makes.
The actors unveiled the sequel — "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" — at the same location Monday night in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. But this time they knew what was coming.
"I'm not as scared as I was last year," said Stewart, despite a brief touch-and-go moment as she signed autographs. "At some point, the security guy said, 'This is very unsafe.' And I was like, 'Uh.' Other than that, everything was cool."
Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen in this latest adaptation of author Stephenie Meyer's popular series, said this year's crowd of thousands of screaming fans was larger than the 2008 turnout.
"And it seems different to me because we have done this world tour in the last week and it has just been unbelievable in every single city," he said. "It is about 10 times bigger than any other city in the world."
Some "twi-hards" __ as they call themselves __ arrived as early as Thursday afternoon to secure a place in line for tickets allowing them to watch the stars' arrivals on the red carpet. The 800 available tickets were all distributed by Monday morning, but the line still stretched for blocks well after lunchtime.
Nicole Zamora, 36, was sixth in line after getting to Westwood on Thursday afternoon. She and her three sisters wore "New Moon" T-shirts they'd made for the occasion and said they spent the weekend "reading, listening to the iPod and trying to sleep — anything to pass the time."
Christina Fuentes and four of her friends traveled from New Jersey for the "New Moon" premiere. The 24-year-old wore vampire teeth ("They just clip on," she said) and carried a homemade sign that read, "We flew in from NJ! We've been camping out for three days just to see you!" She pasted her airline boarding pass to the poster as proof.
Scores of other fans — mostly young women — crowded onto street corners near the Mann Village and Bruin theaters, site of the premiere. They sat on beach chairs, displayed homemade signs and wore T-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to either the handsome vampire played by Pattinson or his werewolf rival, Taylor Lautner.
Lautner, who rises to headliner status in "New Moon," said he was also amazed by Monday's fan response.
"It's the amount of passion," he said. "It's not normal."
___
Associated Press entertainment writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this story.

SHANGHAI – Five years after Tiger Woods first showed up in Shanghai, he is amazed that the HSBC Champions has grown so quickly into a World Golf Championship that has attracted its strongest field ever.
Maybe being a WGC event is what it will take for Woods to finally win.
The world's No. 1 player helped kick off the week Tuesday by hitting golf balls into the Shanghai River with three past champions — Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Y.E. Yang, who rallied to beat Woods at the PGA Championship this year.
Woods has won 16 of the 30 WGC events he has played. In his two trips to the HSBC Champions, he has been runner-up both times.
The $7 million tournament — the richest in Asia — begins Thursday at Sheshan Golf Club.

VANCOUVER – More than 2,000 urine and blood samples will be tested during the Vancouver Olympics as part of a $16.4 million effort to catch drug cheats.
A state-of-the-art doping lab for the Feb. 12-28 Games was unveiled Wednesday at the Olympic speedskating oval in Richmond.
The 14,530-square-feet facility is a replica of the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab in Montreal. The building cost $8.9 million, with another $7.5 million for operations.
"This laboratory will utilize the finest techniques and methods available to detect the use of prohibited substances in blood and urine samples collected from athletes," lab director Dr. Christiane Ayotte said.
However, Ayotte acknowledged it will be impossible to catch all cheaters.
"We cannot say pure sport, pure games," she said. "We sure put in the best energy. I'm 100 percent confident that nobody can do better than what we are doing now, what we will be doing."
Besides standard testing, Vancouver anti-doping officials will conduct random and target testing based on intelligence.
Starting in January, 30 technicians will be working at the lab around the clock. Testing will begin on Feb. 4, when pre-competition urine and blood samples are taken.
Vancouver officials said it's likely the first time in Olympic history that a doping lab has been located within a secure sporting venue.
Nearly 500 trained volunteers will collect samples at the various sports venues in Vancouver and Whistler. Drivers will deliver the samples to the Richmond lab and deposit them through a slot, sending them directly into a refrigeration unit for processing.
Test results should be known within 72 hours.
About 2,000 samples will be taken from Olympic athletes, and 425 from athletes at the subsequent Paralympic Games. By comparison, 1,200 samples were tested during the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
After the games, the doping lab will be used to house a sports medicine center and sports science services.

PARIS (AFP) –
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday that Britain's refusal to join the euro currency would be a "problem" for Tony Blair's chances of becoming the first European Union president.

Sarkozy was reportedly one of the first EU leaders to put Blair's name forward in 2007.

The former prime minister has never officially declared himself a candidate but there has been a mounting controversy in recent months over his name.

Sarkozy said in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper that "it is too early to say" whether Blair would be a good candidate for the EU presidency, one of the key posts set up by the EU's Lisbon reform treaty.

"There will be a debate," Sarkozy said. "There are two ideas: should the president be strong and charismatic, or a president who is good at finding consensus and who organises the work?

"Personally I believe in a Europe that is politically strong and has a figurehead. But the fact that Britain is not in the euro remains a problem."

The Financial Times reported in June 2007 that Sarkozy had discussed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders the prospect of Blair becoming the first EU president.

While the Lisbon struggles to complete its ratification in all 27 EU members, some -- led by Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- have already indicated that Blair does not have a sufficiently pro-European profile for the president's job.

A bench is a piece of furniture, which mostly offers several persons seating. As a rule, benches are made of wood, but one can also find stone benches and benches made of synthetic materials. Many benches have arm rests. In public areas, benches are often donated by persons or associations, which may then be indicated on it, e.g. by a small copper plaque.

Various types of benches are specifically designed for and/or named after specific uses, such as a Bench (weight training) is used for fitness exercises, such as the bench press which is named after its use of a bench a Communion bench is not used as a seat Piano benches offer usually one person seating and are height adjustable. a spanking bench, such as a caning bench, is specifically designed for a spankee to lie upon, possibly strapped down, while submitting to paining of the posterior Swing seats are independently movable, suspended benches, used for play or as a relaxing porch swing. a courting bench (or kissing bench, or tête-à-tête): a two-seater with the seats pointing in opposite directions, thus almost facing each other. A friendship bench in a school playground is where a child can go when they want someone to talk to. The bench in a courtroom, behind which the judge is seated.

http://www.gardenbenches.net/

NEW YORK – Kate Gosselin says her estranged husband has withdrawn $230,000 from their joint bank account, leaving just $1,000 behind, and she can't pay her bills.
The reality TV personality appeared Monday on NBC's "Today" show and said she and her husband, Jon, did the show "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" as a way to pay the bills after their sextuplets were born. They already had twins.
She responded to her husband's allegations last week that their children wanted to stop filming for the show, which takes place mostly in their Pennsylvania home.
She said: "The things you hear him say on TV I have never heard from him. They don't even sound like his words."
Gosselin says she doesn't know what their children said to their father, but when she told them over the weekend that filming would stop, there was "wailing and sobbing."

Club Membership Software

Computer software is so called to distinguish it from computer hardware, which encompasses the physical interconnections and devices required to store and execute (or run) the software. At the lowest level, software consists of a machine language specific to an individual processor. A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. Software is an ordered sequence of instructions for changing the state of the computer hardware in a particular sequence. It is usually written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for humans to use (closer to natural language) than machine language. High-level languages are compiled or interpreted into machine language object code. Software may also be written in an assembly language, essentially, a mnemonic representation of a machine language using a natural language alphabet. Assembly language must be assembled into object code via an assembler.

The term "software" was first used in this sense by John W. Tukey in 1958. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all computer programs. The theory that is the basis for most modern software was first proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.

NEW YORK – Three Americans won the Nobel prize in medicine on Monday for discovering how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide, work that has inspired experimental cancer therapies and may offer insights into aging.
The research by Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak revealed the workings of chromosome features called telomeres, which play an important role in the aging of cells.
It's the first time two women have shared in a single Nobel science prize. Over the years, a total of 10 women have won the prize in medicine.
Blackburn, 60, who holds U.S. and Australian citizenship, is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Greider, 48, is a professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
London-born Szostak, 56, is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Their work, done in the 1970s and 1980s, showed how features at the tips of chromosomes — telomeres (TEE-loh-meers) — can keep them from getting progressively shorter as cells divide. It's been compared to the way plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces keep the laces from fraying.
Blackburn and Greider discovered an enzyme, telomerase (teh-LAH-meh-race), that maintains the lengths of the telomeres. Later research has shown that telomerase is switched on in almost all cancers.
Telomerase is active before birth, when cells are dividing rapidly. By age 4 or 5 it's basically shut off in almost all cells. That means the telomeres degrade over time, leading those cells to age and eventually stop dividing. But scientists have shown that adding telomerase to human cells can extend their lifespan indefinitely.
Such research spurred speculation that telomerase might turn out to be a fountain of youth. But experts say that aging is more complicated than just changes in telomeres. Scientists are still studying what impact telomeres might have; perhaps they will reveal ways to ward off some aspects of aging, researchers say.
Still other work showed that telomerase helps cancer cells sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are trying to exploit that to produce new therapies, noted Jerry Shay of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
The farthest along is a vaccine-like approach, which trains the immune system to home in on telomerase as a way to identify and attack cancerous cells. Other approaches attempt to use it as a signal that activates a cell-killing virus, or to devise a drug to block the enzyme's effect, he said.
Shay said he believes some kind of telomerase-based cancer treatment will become available within four years.
Monday's prize "is totally well-deserved," Shay said. "These people were clearly the forerunners of what is now becoming a much stronger field that has lots of interesting questions, (and that is) likely to have a major importance in medicine in the future."
The prize includes $1.4 million, split among the three winners.
Szostak, meeting with reporters, joked that he might use the money to send his two elementary school-age children to college. "They might like that," he quipped.
As for his work on telomeres, Szostak decided "it was time to move on" to another field. His current research is focused on the origins of life.
At a news conference in San Francisco, Blackburn joked that she had gone through the five stages of happiness after the phone rang in the middle of the night. "I went through, `Where's the phone?' to disbelief to dazed to, 'I think it's sinking in now," to, `I'm just so happy.'"
Greider, in Baltimore, said she was telephoned just before 5 a.m. with the news that she had won.

"It's really very thrilling, it's something you can't expect," she told The Associated Press by telephone.

Later, she said the award was "really a tribute to curiosity-driven basic science."

Nobel judges say women are underrepresented in Nobel statistics because the award-winning research often dates back several decades to a time when science was dominated by men. Still, critics say the judges aren't looking hard enough for deserving women candidates.

The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later this week, while the economics award will be presented on Oct. 12.

____

Associated Press Writers Rodrique Ngowi in Boston, Sarah Brumfield and Alex Dominguez in Baltimore, Mary Hudetz in Phoenix, and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http://www.nobelprize.org

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
President Barack Obama will not meet the Dalai Lama during his five-day trip to the U.S. capital beginning on Monday, the first time in 18 years the exiled Tibetan leader has visited Washington without seeing the president.

Obama instead intends to wait until after his November summit with Chinese leader Hu Jintao before meeting the Dalai Lama, possibly sometime in December, officials said.

The decision to break precedent and delay any meeting was conveyed to the Dalai Lama last month when Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and State Department Undersecretary Maria Otero traveled to Dharamsala, India, to explain the administration's approach on Tibet.

"The administration, I think, is aware it is breaking a precedent ... but clearly they have their reasons for that and he (the Dalai Lama) agreed with the decision that was made," said Kate Saunders, a spokeswoman for the Tibetan Buddhist leader.

Saunders said the Dalai Lama and the Obama administration had agreed to a meeting after the U.S.-Chinese summit. The session is "likely to be before the end of the year, probably in December," she said.

U.S. officials would only say a meeting would take place soon after the summit.

China sent its troops into Tibet in 1950 and the Dalai Lama fled to India a few years later to establish a government in exile. Negotiations between China and the Dalai Lama's envoys were suspended last year, provoking violence in Tibet.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that the Obama administration, in an effort to gain favor with China, put pressure on Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between Obama and the Dalai Lama until after the summit.

DALAI LAMA AGREES

Saunders said the Dalai Lama actually agreed with the Obama administration's decision and believed it was important the United States and China develop a good relationship.

The Dalai Lama believes "it is important for it to be strong, it's important for it to be cooperative," she said.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "We have made clear that the president absolutely intends to meet the Dalai Lama."

"President Obama has long been a strong and consistent supporter of greater cultural, linguistic and religious rights and autonomy for the Tibetan people," the official added.

"The administration is actively working to encourage a resumption of dialogue between the Chinese government and Dalai Lama's representatives in the hopes of making substantive and enduring progress," he said.

Asked if the decision not to meet the Dalai Lama signaled a change in U.S. policy toward China and Tibet, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: "I wouldn't necessarily read ... anything into the decision beyond what it is."

Kelly said the administration wanted to engage China as an important global player but would not "downplay" disagreements over human rights, religious freedom and freedom of expression.

He said Otero, the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs who was named last week as special coordinator on Tibetan issues, would meet with the Dalai Lama during his visit to Washington.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
U.S. schools are doing a little better to limit the amount of junk food students can buy in vending machines or elsewhere, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

The CDC's survey of middle- and high-school principals in 40 U.S. states found that the number of schools limiting carbonated soft drinks was a median of 63 percent in 2008. That compared to 38 percent in 2006.

A median of nearly 44 percent limited sports drinks, compared to 28 percent in 2006, the survey showed.

"Schools should implement nutrition standards that provide students with healthy choices throughout the school day and throughout the school campus," the CDC wrote in an e-mailed update, available at http://www.cdc.gov/schoolhealthprofiles.

The CDC estimates that 16 percent of U.S. children and young adults aged 2 to 19 are obese. Obesity raises the risk for heart disease, diabetes and asthma and obese children are very likely to remain obese as adults.

Federal and state governments have asked schools to help control how much access students have to junk food that can add calories without boosting nutrition. In the United States, such issues are often controlled by local school boards.

"From 2004 to 2009, the number of states with nutrition standards for foods outside of school meal programs increased from six to 27," the CDC report reads.

"Despite these improvements, greater efforts are needed to ensure that all foods and beverages offered or sold outside of school meal programs meet nutrition standards," it added.

The CDC survey found large variations from one state to another in controlling junk food access in public schools.

"For example, in Connecticut, Hawaii, and Maine, in more than 80 percent of schools, students could not purchase candy and salty snacks in 2008; however, this was true in only 18.2 percent of schools in Utah," the report reads.

About one-third of U.S. adults over age 20 are obese and another one-third are considered overweight. Adult obesity rates have increased dramatically over the past two decades.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the U.S. government on medical and health matters, says Americans should eat at least nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and at least three servings of whole grains and notes that people who eat this much will have little room left for sugar or fatty foods without overeating.

The Institute last month also said local governments should consider zoning laws to limit access to junk food near schools.

The American Heart Association now recommends that U.S. adults eat less than one soft drink's worth of sugar a day.

"We know that states with laws regulating the competitive food environment are doing well and those that are holding schools accountable are doing better," American Heart Association President Dr. Clyde Yancy said in a statement.

"Strong public policy initiatives could close the gap in areas that have yet to improve nutrition standards and minimize access to these less healthy food and beverage options."

(Editing by Paul Simao)