World Business

DUBLIN, Ireland Shares in Ireland’s major biopharmaceutical company, Elan Corp. PLC, suffered their worst fall in more than three years Wednesday after a drug being developed to draw the sword Alzheimer’s Disease reported disappointing results.

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Elan shares plummeted over 27 percent to euro14.90 ($23.25) in morning trade on the Irish Stock Exchange, forcing the wider exponent into negative territory.

The drop followed Tuesday night’s unveiling of abounding phase-two results of bapineuzumab. Elan and U.S. biopharmaceutical giant Wyeth get been developing the drug in hopes it could become the in the beginning to reverse the brain-ravaging effects of Alzheimer’s, what one. afflicts more than 25 million the multitude worldwide.

Last month the companies said the medicine showed signs of working, but the full trial results indicated that the drug was inefficacious. in treating people who have the ApoE4 gene most commonly found in Alzheimer’s victims. Among those who lacked the gene, the drug did be obvious to slow down, admitting that not reverse, mental deterioration.

The detailed findings, presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Chicago, also linked practice of the drug to a wide range of potential side movables, including brain swelling, paranoia, anxiety, vomiting and extreme blood pressure.

Experts appeared divided on the results, but investors dumped Elan and Wyeth shares because the results were much in a less degree upbeat than the companies’ advance characterizations. Elan and Wyeth are even now pursuing a final-phase trial involving 4,000 Alzheimer’s victims.

Shares in Wyeth fell more than 7 percent Wednesday on Germany’s DAX characteristic in Frankfurt.

Wyeth is much less dependent on the performance of bapineuzumab than its smaller Irish associate, that is banking on delivering any Alzheimer’s breakthrough for its future growth.

Elan currently is pursuing seven trials of potential drugs for Alzheimer’s and two for multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease that attacks the nervous system.

The Dublin-based company nearly went bankrupt in 2002 following the failure of previous Alzheimer’s research and the discovery of loss-hiding accounting practices, and has battled red ink as antidote to the past six years.

But the company said last week it is within a year of returning to advancement acknowledgments to the success of Tysabri, an MS mix with drugs developed in affinity with U.S. drugmaker Biogen Idec Inc. and approved for sale in the U.S. and European markets in mid-2006.

The last age Elan’s shares fell in the way that sharply was in March 2005, after Tysabri was linked to three cases of a rare, deadly brain disease called PML and was withdrawn suddenly from U.S. sale. The drug returned to the market after extensive screening of Tysabri users raise no in addition PML cases.

The supermarket hold in bondage will expand its special finance arm into a full-service retail bank operating through its stores and online

by Sean Farrell

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Tesco is set to lance a full-on assault on Britain’s biggest banks after paying £950m to corrupt through Royal Bank of Scotland’s allotment of their personal finance join venture.

Britain’s biggest supermarket said it would launch current accounts and mortgages to transform Tesco Personal Finance’s (TPF) existing collection of products into a full-service retail bank selling through its stores and online.

Tesco underlined the seriousness of its intent by appointing its monetary theory director, Andrew Higginson, to the new job of chief executive of retailing services. The grocer’s shop giant has also hired Benny Higgins, the ex-RBS retail banking chief, to head the put in the bank with Iain Clink, who headed RBS’s cards business, joining as finance boss.

Mr Higginson’s task is to more than plait annual profits from services to £1bn from £400m during his tenure. Financial Services makes about half the profit at the services business, which also includes telecommunications and internet shopping.

Tesco believes it can use its customer base, brand and regard for regard to expand the function in Britain and international markets. Mr Higginson gave the “labyrinthine” charges upon the body banks’ current accounts as an example of how Tesco could offer natural products. “We don’t invent from that position. We can exist much more transparent on our pricing,” he related.

The reputations of Britain’s banks have taken a battering in novel years as consumer groups and watchdogs have attacked their charges and practices for overdrafts, at the eleventh hour credit card payments and protection insurance. They be under the necessity besides been hit by massive writedowns and losses from the global credit crunch, weakening their ability to lend.

Asked whether Tesco could take advantage of the banks’ woes, Mr Higginson said: “The growth of the bank while TPF has demonstrated there is a real zest for Tesco in this area. If we provide simple, easy-to-understand products for customers they be inclined buy them because they credence us and we see them right.”

He added TPF did not have exposure to corporate loans or the US housing market like its rivals.

TPF sells general insurance, savings products, credit cards and personal loans. It in like manner operates cash machines. RBS has contracts to provide the services for between two and seven years, after which Tesco could stay with RBS or switch to any other provider. But Mr Higginson said Tesco would probably call forth to “manufacture” some products itself. “The current account is one [product] we would look at very carefully. It is often at the heart of people’s relationship with their financial services provider.” TPF has not competed in mortgages because they have been unprofitable except will now look at the market, he said.

TPF was set up 11 years gone. RBS provided the products and sold them under the Tesco brand. Tesco began planning early last year to approach RBS with a witness to buying its ploughshare. When talks started, RBS was caught up in the believe crunch. Its judgment to sell was partly driven by dint of. capital needs. RBS will book a cash profit of from undivided place to another £500m from the sale.

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The Internet was in crisis. Its electronic “pipes” were clogged through new bandwidth-hogging software. Engineers faced a choice: Allow the Net to succumb to fatal gridlock or find a solution.

The year was 1987. About 35,000 people, in the main academics and some body of executive officers employees, used the Internet.

This story, of course, had a happy ending. The loosely knit Internet engineering community rallied to improve an automated premises “traffic cop” that prioritized applications and content needing “real time” delivery over those that would not suffer from delay. Their efforts unclogged the Internet and laid the foundation for what has become the greatest deregulatory prosperity story of entirely time.

The Internet has since weathered distinct in the same state crises. Each time, engineers, academics, software developers, Web infrastructure builders and others have worked together to fix the problems. Over the years, some groups be in actual possession of become more formalized

The Internet has flourished because it has operated under the principle that engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.

Today, a new challenge is upon us. Pipes are filling rapidly with “peer-to-peer” (”P2P”) file-sharing applications that crowd out other content and slow speeds for millions. Just as Napster produced each explosion of shared (largely pirated) score files in 1999, today’s P2P applications allow consumers to share movies. P2P providers store movies on users’ home-born and customary duty computers to avoid building huge “server farms” of giant computers for the sake of this bandwidth-intensive data. When consumers download these videos, they name attached thousands of computers from one side of to the other the Web to upload each of their small pieces. As a result, more consumers’ “last-mile” connections, especially connections into the bargain cable and wireless networks, get clogged. These electronic trade jams slow the Internet for most consumers, a majority of whom fare not employment P2P software to watch videos or surf the Web.

At peak times, 5 percent of Internet consumers are using 90 percent of the available bandwidth because of the P2P explosion. This flood of data has created a tyranny by a minority. Slower speeds pervert the quality of the utility that consumers be favored with paid for and ultimately subside America’s competitiveness globally.

While we at the Federal Communications Commission are trying to spur more competitive build-out of vital “extreme mile” facilities, especially fiber and wireless platforms, this congestion will not be resolved merely by erection fatter and faster pipes.

Last summer, a strange nongovernmental organization, the P4P Working Group, was formed to find a solution. The assemblage has already field-tested dramatically increased delivery speeds of P2P make easy over cable networks (up 235 percent) and other networks (up 898 percent in some cases). It is working with industry and consumers to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”

Such dynamic work is progressing without a government mandate or regulatory framework. Soon, however, that could change.

Since the fall, the FCC has been considering allegations filed by dint of. public-interest groups that cable actor Comcast violated FCC rules by “managing” or “interfering with” the upstream flow of certain P2P video applications, namely those of a company called BitTorrent. Comcast and BitTorrent settled their dispute in March.

Despite this settlement, some are calling for the FCC to method that Comcast’s actions were illegal and should be punished. Others contend that the FCC has no enforceable rules that lay upon to like situations and that the issue should be addressed from one side a rule-making proceeding, by an opportunity for public comment, or through congressional legislation. We have examined the arguments on both sides and are poised to decide the matter this week. But regardless of what that predominant stipulates, the number printed of what constitutes appropriate Internet network management will be debated for some time.

Our Internet economy is the strongest in the nature. It got that way not by ruling power fiat further because interested parties worked into junction toward a common goal. As a worldwide network of networks, the Internet is the ultimate “wiki” environment

If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a antecedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. Another concern is that as an institution, the FCC is incapable of deciding any issue in the nanoseconds that make up Internet time. And asking government to make these decisions could mean that every few years the landed estate rules would vary based on election results. The Internet might grind to a halt in such a climate. It would certainly die of clogged arteries if network owners had to seek government permission before serving their customers by thrifty surges of information move along easily.

A improved in health model would allow collaborative groups to go on to do what they have done for years. If they can’t reach an agreement

Sometimes shining sunlight on issues produces amazingly beneficial furniture, and the public-interest groups that raised the BitTorrent matter should subsist praised for doing in such a manner. Yet before venturing into the unknown, we should remember affair President Clinton said in 1997: “Governments should encourage toil self-regulation wherever appropriate and support the efforts of private-sector organizations to … facilitate the successful operation of the Internet.” What we do, or don’t chouse, will affect tomorrow’s networks. Let’s stick end what works and encourage collaboration over disposition.

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I didn’t have space in today’s imprint story to have a portion an update on Microsoft’s translation efforts, which have been in the market — quietly — as antidote to nearly a year. The Microsoft Translator group is somewhat unexampled in that it’s still part of the Microsoft Research team, even though it’s a live product. That’s also why it was on display at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit yesterday.

Microsoft is going up against the established online translator — Babel Fish, which Yahoo owns — and Google Translate.

Lane Rau, marketing manager for Microsoft Translator, demonstrated a side-by-side Web serving-boy translator that could be separately useful to people with familiarity, but not total comfort, in one more language. The “bilingual viewer” shows an first Web boy-servant on one half of the screen and a translated version on the other half. Holding the peer cursor besides a block of text highlights it on both pages for a like reason you can declare similar the translated text with the original.

I’ve played around with Babel Fish and Google Translate a bit to see if they have power to do the similar. If they can, it wasn’t obvious to me.

Another behold of Microsoft Translator shows the translated page in full and provides the commencement body in a small box when you hover the cursor over a text block.

It looks like a great tool for people learning a strange speech, and Rau said the service does get used that way.

But the contemplate of the bilingual viewer is to make machine translation usable now, even as researchers continue to improve it.

“You can represent since resembling sentence by proposition,” Rau said. “So, what that means is whether or not there is an misapprehension, for example my fame is Lane and that could be translated for example street in another language … you have power to go, oh, that was a name, so that’s why that mistake happened. And you can actually understand it a lot better.”

Microsoft is refining what’s called statistical instrument of force translation. It starts with millions of parallel sentences in tongue pairs gathered in a database. When a new sentence is entered against translation, the system looks through the database to select the most probable meaning or grammatical composition.

“It takes a ton of data — millions of sentences in parallel,” Rau uttered.

The crew is relying on its huge archive of professionally translated software documentation and also exploring other sources such as World Health Organization translations, she said.

Statistical machine translation differs from rule-based translation, which relies on exhaustive sets of rules for each power, manually entered by humans. Babel Fish uses rule-based change in the seat of a disease, powered by Systran, a French company.

Microsoft Translator also uses Systran as being standard, non-technical translations in some languages, Rau said. “We’re actually working without ceasing replacing that right now,” she added.

Systran was previously used by means of Google Translate, but according to private reports that surfaced last fall, Google switched off Systran and was using its own statistical instrument translation.

Most users still find plenty to fault with machine metastasis, be it statistical or rules-based.

Both Microsoft and Google see major benefits in the statistical road.

“It takes a long time to develop a good enough database of rules,” Rau said. “The nice thing about statistical translation is, once we get to that attribute level — we’re working adhering that upright now — it actually can tarry to improve and you can scale it across many more languages because you don’t have to regard the humans typing in manually different rules.”

Right now, Microsoft Translator offers about a twelve language pairs.

The company hasn’t conferred much marketing around its offering yet, focusing instead on improving the quality and integrating it into other products, such as Live Search. “We’re working on integrating it into Office,” Rau said.

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/07/microsoft_translator_quietly_making_progress_in_ma.html

At the British Motor Show, Honda unveils its low-emission horse concept, the OSM

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One of the big attention grabbers at the 2008 British International Motor Show is Honda’s low-emission sportscar dubbed OSM (for Open Study Model). The open top two seater design aloud of the company’s R&D facility in Offenbach, Germany, is being shown alongside the CR-Z sports hybrid which was unveiled at Tokyo last year and the Honda Honda FCX Clarity that is being produced in Japan and available in the US under a lease plan. While a version of the CR-Z has been confirmed for production, in that place are no plans to bring the OSM online anytime soon.

There is no detail on exactly in what state the car would achieve its low-emissions claim, with the emphasis attached showing that green cars Clean-Car-Wars Oct-07 can also be sexy according to Andreas Sittel, Project Leader for OSM: “There is no judgment for what cause a car that’s more environmentally friendly have power to’t look great too — and be sporty and pleasantry to drive.” On this projection we have to agree—the balanced design matches smoothly sculpted exterior lines with a minimalist interior, blending the two with jesuitical features like the extended door panels that constitute a border for the document panel and the merging of the cabin space and the rear body panel.

The lighting layout furthermore strengthens the fluid design language—the headlights sweep in the educate to almost touch the roll forward arches and a continuous red tail light stretches transversely the rear with a second, smaller lamp sitting in a central position above the Honda shield of office.

The exterior garble is a a one-off depict called Mystic Pearl and the blue and white interior theme featuring leather trim without interruption as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but colors is also reflected in the small instrumentation panel, by information presented in bright blue on a black background. Driver controls feature a centrally-mounted semi-sequential gear-shift plus wheel mounted paddle-shift levers and a button (red of course) start feature.

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The Newsweek piece sneered that while Obama and John Kennedy spoke to more than 100,000 people, Reagan spoke to a a great deal of smaller congregation, "only about 20,000," and they were outnumbered by leftist protesters the night in the sight of. They recalled, "Even more of Reagan's aides were embarrassed by the 'tear down this wall' line, thinking it was too provocative or grandiose." Newsweek would grant only that "Reagan understood stagecraft," and communism's fall "made his wrangling prescient."

In other words, the Gipper was a showboat who got lucky.

This is nothing more than Newsweek's continuing campaign to rewrite history. Back in 1987, Newsweek was not foreseeing. They came to bury Reagan's speech as a desperate gesture of a crumbling lame-duck presidency ruined by Iran-contra. Their story on his supplant began: "Ronald Reagan wasn't the only lame duck at the economic summit in Venice last week, and he wasn't the only kindred leader to bow off when the proceedings turned soporous."

Newsweek chronicled Reagan's woes, then declared how but Mikhail Gorbachev could restore luster to the old man: "It is the ultimate paradox of Reagan's lifelong opposition to wholly things communist that a U.S.-Soviet arms agreement and a third summit with Gorbachev offer the best, and perhaps endure, hope for reinvigorating his presidency." They proverb Reagan with a foolish career of "opposition to all things communist" bending course to Gorbachev while his savior, and painted Gorbachev during the time that to a greater degree persuasive and attractive to Europe. The magazine geniuses at the time seemed to venerate Gorby as on the supposition that he were … Barack Obama.

At least Newsweek in 1987 (but not in 2008) chronicled what Reagan told the pro-Soviet protesters in that place at the end of his speech: "I wonder on the supposition that they have ever asked themselves that suppose that they should have the kind of direction they apparently seek, no one would ever have existence ingenious to answer what they're doing again."

But Reagan's rhetorical daring in his time marks why Obama's Berlin remarks sounded so phony. He declared: "People of the world — look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and relation proved that in that place is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one. … If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we be able to be upon the feet by the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to keep a grudge against instead of hope."

No adoring anchorman dared to ask: Who, precisely, Sen. Obama, is the "we" who won a battle of ideas against communism? Who was the "we" who dared to insist that liberty was the superior ideal, that "Freedom is the victor," and to demand that the walls of Soviet tyranny should fall? It was not America as a whole. It was certainly not Europe as a aggregate. To publicly declare such a bold wish on the side of an end to the Soviet empire, to denounce the Berlin Wall as a "scar" across Berlin, and a "gash of mailed wire, concrete, dog runs and palladium towers" was seen by the international left, and the Democrats, and the press body of troops here at home as undiplomatic saber-rattling. It was, to cite the Hillary Clintons of the world, "cowboy diplomacy."

Barack Obama is some arrogant pretender to a throne he has not earned. He wanted to stand at the Brandenburg Gate like Reagan, grasping desperately for a chance to look presidential. But he hasn't in any way demonstrated Reagan's resolve against America's enemies. Instead, this power-hungry newbie has stood in about seven different places in the last four years on the primary controversy of our time.

In 2002, he hostile the Iraq fighting from the pews of his America-deserved-9/11 church. In 2004, he stood staunchly and very temporarily by the agency of John Kerry's ballot for war. In 2006, he calculated that the most good way to win the Democratic nomination was to play kissy-kissy with Code Pink and channel MoveOn.org's demand that the president acknowledge the whole of was depraved in Iraq. Now, having defeated all those Democratic suckers who voted for war, he's developing yet another position, that the luck of the swell means that he didn't have to be right about the swell or anything else, that the country is now ready for a brisk withdrawal of forces.

Ronald Reagan was willing to endure each entire career being mocked by the press and the political intelligentsia for standing firmly in one bunker of a war of ideas. Barack Obama has demonstrated only person cause, one creative he consistently believes in. Its name is Barack Obama.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

Previous: Barack's No Reagan
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From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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OPPENHEIMER CUTS ESTIMATES FOR MERRILL LYNCH

Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney says Merrill Lynch (MER) announced $8.5 billion equity raise and “efficient sale of U.S. ABS CDOs” that would reduce its CDO exposure by $11.1 billion.

She says while MER has significantly diluted existing shareholders, she applauds this lientery of assets in the same manner with an attempt to divide its losses, focus on stabilizing its platform, and righting the franchise towards growth.

Whitney notes MER’s standard stop sells at premium to book value, but thinks the stock getting closer to fairly valued levels as now the hardest work is behind the company. She widens her 2008 loss per share view to $10.50 from $8.37 loss (vs. $6.75 consensus loss estimate); she cuts 2009 EPS to $1.27 from $1.75 (vs. $3.66 consensus). She keeps underperform opinion on the shares.

CITIGROUP UPGRADES TO AMGEN BUY FROM HOLD

Citigroup analyst Yaron Werber says Amgen’s (AMGN) $1.14 second quarter EPS topped his $1.09 valuation and consensus $1.01 without interruption able revenues.

Werber says the company’s bullish comments on the take part through quarter results have given him conviction that denosumab (dmab) Phase 3 data will subsist competitive with generic alendronate as it offers equivalent efficacy, whole side effect profile, advantage convenience/tolerability, and unusual mode of action. He notes full data will have being presented in September. He says dmab could be a blockbuster ($3-$5 billion globally in osteoporosis, $2-$4 billion in cancer) when launched in the first moiety of 2010; this could lift AMGN’s long-term growth rate as the rely of the pharma perseverance is maturing.

He raises $4.27 2008 EPS estimate to $4.42, $4.51 for 2009 to $4.67; and $50 price target to $75.

MERRILL DOWNGRADES HARMONIC TO NEUTRAL FROM BUY

Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya says Harmonic’s (HLIT) second quarter sales of $89.3 million grew 25% year-over-year, above his $89.2 million and the Street’s $87.4 million estimates, absolutely on strength in cable brim upgrades. But he notes satellite sales declined 44% quarter-to-quarter, which HLIT attributed to lumpiness.

Arya says lower pecuniary income, slightly higher operating expense drove EPS to $0.16, $0.01 in the lower regions his and Street expectations. He notes $175-$185 a thousand thousand second half sales direction is in the under world his and Street’s $188 million forecast, and implies negligible 1%-2% h/h sales growth. Also notes company’s 15%-17% second half EBIT forecast implies no incremental leverage from the first half.

He cuts $0.72 pro forma 2008 EPS estimate to $0.66 and $0.55 for 2009 to $0.54. He cuts $11 price target to $10.

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Comcast reported a tripling of its free cash flow - a measurement of trap ready money the company prefers, largely appropriate to a drop in capital cost as a slowdown in U.S. homebuilding meant that it spent less expanding its cable systems to new communities.

While that spending slowdown contributed to weaker video subscriber growth, analysts said Comcast was winning market share from phone competitors including AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N).

"Free cash proceed was better than we expected and that was in some measure due to the fewer customer adds, so they didn't incur costs of adding new subscribers," uttered Tom Eagan, algebraist at Collins Stewart.

Shares in Comcast rose $1.08 cents to $20.26. Shares of Time Warner Cable (TWC.N) also rose 4 percent, while Cablevision (CVC.N) shares rose 4.8 percent

Comcast, which has 24.6 million subscribers, said it added 278,000 high speed Internet subscribers and 500,000 phone subscribers in the second quarter. Seven analysts polled by Reuters had in succession average forecast Comcast to add 327,000 new Internet subscribers and 579,000 new phone subs.

Comcast Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke told analysts steady a conversation invite that Comcast's faster Internet access speeds are helping to win over phone association DSL customers as they want to watch added online video.

Burke said the company is besides on target to add further than 2 million phone subscribers by the end of the year. It generally has 5.6 million, making it the fourth largest U.S. phone provider.

Comcast lost 138,000 basic video subscribers during the quarter while analysts had on average been expecting the company to lose 129,000 such customers.

The cable company added 320,000 digital video subscribers, while the analysts had expected Comcast to add together around 450,000.

Net improve in the second separate into parts rose to $632 million, or 21 cents a share, from $588 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier, Comcast said on Wednesday.

Revenue rose 11 percent to $8.553 billion.

Wall Street expected Comcast to post revenue of $8.574 billion and per-share utility of 22 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

The Philadelphia-based company posted a 216 percent rise in free cash flow to $1.163 billion.

Comcast spent smaller quantity on buying new digital TV set top boxes than a year ago, when it bought a significant amount to of fresh boxes ahead of a U.S. regulatory deadline to adopt a different set-top box.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney)

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A spate of problems at French nuclear facilities stir long-simmering fears and cast a pall covering global nuclear giant Areva

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View of the cooling towers of the French nuclear cyclops Areva Tricastin nuclear plant taken on July 17, 2008 in Bollene, southern France. AFP PHOTO / FRED DUFOUR (Photo regard should read FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

by Matt Mabe

France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear plants, more than any country in the world, and its largely unblemished footstep record is often cited as evidence that nuclear gift can be safe and efficient. But newly come problems at French nuclear facilities have shaken confidence in the industry, just as French nuclear giant Areva (CEPFI.PA) is joining the state in pushing for a global nuclear power revival.

None of the incidents involved radioactive leaks from nuclear reactors, but even so they stirred lingering public concerns over the close custody of infinitesimal energy. The timing couldn’t be worse, given that nuclear power is just now reemerging from decades of derogation after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. Faced with rising oil prices and concerns over carbon emissions, countries from the U.S. to Britain to Germany are reviving dormant nuclear programs or rethinking long-standing anti-nuclear policies (BusinessWeek.com, 7/11/08).

The embarrassment started July 7, at the time uranium leaked from a nuclear waste management plant hie through an Areva subsidiary approximate to the southeastern French town of Tricastin. The leak, which occurred when a storage reservoir overflowed, involved unenriched uranium, which is only slightly radioactive. Although authorities said there was no serious risk, they barred fishing and swimming in a nearby river and advised some limited residents not to drink plug take in water. The vegetable manager was fired.

Then, in succession July 18, Areva said it discovered enriched uranium seeping from a broken pipe at a nuclear fuel processing site in Romans-sur-Isère, about 60 miles (100 km) from Tricastin. The same day, utility company Electricité de France (EDF.PA) related 15 employees had been exposed to low levels of radiation at a nuclear found in the Rhône Valley toward the south of Lyon. And attached July 23, EDF said 100 employees at its nuclear plant in Tricastin, what one. is withdraw from the Areva facility, had been exposed to low-level radiation. EDF said none of its employees faced serious health risks.

"All the facts, if you put them together, show that there is a real problem in safety and refuge from radioactivity," says Bruno Chareyron, a nuclear physicist at the Research & Independent Information Commission on Radioactivity, a French nonprofit group created subsequent the 1986 Chernobyl accident to provide the public with every independent assessment of the country’s nuclear operations. "It’s really frightening."

The tidings comes at an inopportune time for France’s nuclear industry. Days before the July 7 leak, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced plans to start interpretation of the country’s 60th nuclear plant, the second in a new formation of pressurized-water reactors that France also hopes to build worldwide (BusinessWeek, 7/24/08). "More than ever, nuclear power is an industrial art of the future and an indispensable energy source," Sarkozy said at the July 3 advertisement of the project.

The incidents also cast a pall over Areva, the global No. 1 nuclear energy fellowship, whose shares get fallen 5.8% because mid-July. Areva provides nuclear fuel and waste transactions services to utilities worldwide. The government-controlled association also has secured billions in contracts to build reactors in China and other countries, and it plans to bid on construction of a planned new generation of U.S. reactors as abundantly (BusinessWeek, 6/26/08).

Because the recent incidents at Areva’s French facilities involved fuel processing and waste method of treating, rather than live reactors, they’ll probable have no impact attached the company’s efforts to be received licenses to form reactors in the U.S., a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission tells BusinessWeek.

Still, the notoriety has clearly upset the public and embarrassed Areva, whose safety record has been one of its strongest selling points. At a July 18 press conference in Tricastin, Chief Executive Anne Lauvergeon reiterated that the leaks had caused no public freedom from disease risk. But, she said, "I am truly sorry for all the badger this has caused."

A cut closely by survey arrange IFOP, published July 21 in the newspaper Le Monde, showed that 81% of respondents considered the Tricastin leak "serious" and that 70% didn’t trust the government to alert the notorious to nuclear health risks.

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo now has ordered security inspections at all 58 currently operating nuclear plants, although industry experts say like reviews are common after even minor incidents. Authorities say none of the recent events rated more than Level 1 on the 1 to 7 scale used to measure the severity of nuclear incidents. An average of 120 in the same state events occur in France each year, the government says.

Despite the controversy, France is likely to keep finding buyers for its nuclear exports, as more countries seek alternatives to expensive, polluting fossil fuels. Holger Rogner, an economist at the International Atomic Energy Agency, expects the recent incidents to hold "negligible" effects on nuclear’s renewed global momentum.

But after three largely trouble-free decades, France’s nuclear industry may now regard to focus in addition on public relations at home. "For us it’s a good surprise," says Frédéric Marillier, a spokesman for Greenpeace France, a longtime assiduousness critic. "It’s the first time that there has been so much attention shown in France."

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Until three years ago, there was no 911 emergency service in India. Ramalinga Raju, chairman and go to the bottom of Satyam Computer, one of the country’s largest IT outsourcing firms, decided to change that. He settled up the Emergency Medical Research Institute in Hyderabad and started piloting an emergency service, using the dial numbers 108. Now, EMRI is serving 147 million people in three states. Raju plans on eventually covering the undivided country. So far, the government handles 90% of the costs and Raju covers the rest.

EMRI provides the communications system, a call center filled with tri-lingual operators (English, Hindi, local language) and consulting doctors, ambulances, drivers, and EMTs. Here’s Kumar Gulla, 24, one of the EMTs in Hyderabad.

Inside the call center you give audience to a regular babble of voices. This one, serving the entire state of Andhra Pradesh, gets 60,000 calls a day.

When a call comes in, the operators take down information and gather up a map of the yard to pinpoint which ambulance is closest. They dispatch the ambulance and have power to track its progress using GPS. In Hydrabad, there are 15 to 20 ambulances operating at a opportunity—meaning those few are serving a population of more than 6 million. It keeps them busy.

We headed out into the city to obtain an ambulance. The plan was to ride along on a dub. It took a in which case to connect through one, since they’re constantly moving. We became ambulance chasers.

Finally we connected through EMT Kumar and his driver partner Krishna Gandamalla, pictured below, in the neighborhood of Amberpet. They had just returned from an attempted murder call. The victim, a young man, had been stabbed in the stomach and was phlebotomy profusely. Kumar bandaged him and started one IV space of time Krishna high-tailed it for the hospital.

We milled surrounding at a police station where the ambulance was parked shooting the breeze with a assign places to of officers who had gathered to plan for the Bonalu festival, a pray-for-harvest honor, that was to begin the next day. In recent days, a line of bombs had gone most distant in Indian cities, and there was a lot of house about bombs in Hyderabad. Finally, Kumar got a call on his cell phone. A woman was suffering extreme ventral pain at a pharmacy nearby. We jumped into the ambulance and took off. She was less than a kilometer not present. She clutched her stomach as men guided her to the van where she lay down on a gurney.

The woman asked to be taken to a government hospital verily though it was potentially 30 minutes away—because it would be free. That’s just though she may have a burst excursus. We took off on a wild ride through Hyderabad’s rain-soaked rush hour exchange. The Indian drivers typically mass of people their cars into every space serviceable—ignoring travel lanes and trade laws. Also, they’re not accustomed to ambulances, and many persons don’t know that you’re supposed to get out of the way when an ambulance wants to get from one side. So Krishna steered with his as it should be hand while holding a microphone in his left (which he also used to shuffle gears) and shouted through the PA system at drivers ahead of us, ordering them to get out of the room for passing. “Emergency! Please sir! Move faster!” We dodged a small keep company of buffalo and swerved round an ox pulling a cart piled with hay. “Side, be one’s will! Ambulance!” He called out the numbers of the cars that were especially lingering to move to the side. Some cars totally ignored him. Other moved out of the habitual method quickly. Amazingly, we got to the hospital in just 15 minutes, and Krishna and Kumar rushed the contented inside.

Inside, we base a dozen or so people lying in continuance gurneys waiting to be admitted. The place was worn out and dingy, with yellowed walls and a grimy marble floor. Nurses clustered around a desk talking on landline telephones. There was none of the frantic action you see on the TV show ER. Which was a bad affix one’s signature to, I think. Our patient took her place in queue—a small, moaning woman in a purple sari.

Later, I got a form an image of inside the ER at Gandhi Hospital, one of the largest government hospitals in Hyderabad. Pretty bare bones.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/globespotting/archives/2008/07/travel_blogue_d_3.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_bangaloretigers