European Space Agency have got photo of the asteroid Lutetia in the range of 280 million around Mars and Jupiter

BERLIN The European Space Agency has taken the closest look yet at asteroid Lutetia in an extraordinary quest some 280 million miles in outer space between Mars and Jupiter.The comet-chaser Rosetta transmitted its first pictures from the largest asteroid ever visited by a satellite Saturday night after it flew by Lutetia as close as 1,900 miles (3,200 kilometers), ESA said in Darmstadt, Germany.”These are fantastic and exciting pictures,” space agency scientist Rita Schulz said in a webcast presentation. She said it would take several weeks before all 400 pictures and all data from the high-precision instruments aboard Rosetta would come through to Earth.”I am a very happy man,” said ESA manager David Southwood. “It is a great day for European Science and for world science.”Though Lutetia was discovered some 150 years ago, for a long time it was little more than a point of light to those on Earth. Only recent high-resolution ground-based imaging has given a vague view of the asteroid, the agency said.”At the moment we know very little about it,” Schulz said.

Lutetia is believed to be 83.3 miles (134 kilometers) in diameter with a “pronounced elongation,” but scientists have been puzzled as to what type of asteroid it is – a “primitive” one containing carbon compounds or a metallic asteroid.”We are now going to get the details of this asteroid, which is very important,” Schulz said. “There will be a lot of science coming from that mission.”

Scientists hope to find in the information and images gathered by Rosetta clues to the history of comets and asteroids and of the solar system, Schulz said.For Rosetta, examining Lutetia and other asteroids is only a side event on its long journey to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – the mission’s destination, said project manager Gerhard Schwehm.Rosetta was launched in 2004 and is expected to reach its target in 2014.Though the wait is long, scientists are certain it is going to be worthwhile, Schwehm said.”We want to study the material out of which the planets formed,” he said. This is possible only close up, he said.(AP)

Stock prices fluctuated sharply, as they often do the day after a big slide. The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points

Stock prices fluctuated sharply, as they often do the day after a big slide. The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points in early afternoon trading, having been down as much as nearly 280 points earlier. Traders remained anxious amid questions about what caused Thursday’s sudden drop, which sent the stocks of several companies briefly to almost zero.The market looked past a surprisingly strong report on the U.S. jobs market and focused instead on Europe’s spreading debt crisis and Thursday’s plunge. The Dow was down nearly 1,000 points Thursday afternoon — its largest one-day drop — before recovering two-thirds of its losses.

In early afternoon trading the Dow fell 96.28, or 0.9 percent, to 10,424.04. It had been down as much as 279 in earlier trading, and at a few points recouped all its losses for the day before slipping again in the early afternoon.The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 11.56, or 1 percent, to 1,116.59, while the Nasdaq composite fell 32.70, or 1.4 percent, to 2,286.94.Falling stocks outpaced gainers two-to-one on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume was a heavy 1.1 billion shares.

Technology stocks were particularly hard hit following reports that Nokia Corp. was broadening its legal fight against rival cell phone maker Apple Inc. to include the iPad, Apple’s new hit product. Apple shares fell 2.6 percent in heavy trading.Meanwhile Europe’s debt problems again weighed on stocks. Germany’s parliament approved Berlin’s share of the rescue package after a boisterous debate. However, investors still fear that Greece may not make a May 19 deadline to make a debt repayment.

Investors’ concern goes far beyond Greece, the smallest economy in the European Union. A further loss of confidence in European government debt could have an impact on other weak countries like Portugal, potentially requiring another difficult bailout process. The debt crisis has already badly undermined Europe’s shared currency, the euro.

“You’re not concerned about the kid with the cold, but how he spreads it to the rest of the class,” said Len Blum, a managing partner at investment bank Westwood Capital. Blum noted that Greece’s debt problem could be similar to the subprime mortgage meltdown in the U.S., which quickly spread to other parts of the financial system.Friday’s trading left the Dow down about 4 percent for the week and barely in the black for the year. The S&P was also down about 5 percent, while the Nasdaq was off 6 percent. The S&P and Nasdaq were also both still positive for 2010.The week’s losses would put the market about halfway through what experts call a “correction,” usually defined as a drop of between 10 percent and 20 percent following a sustained rise.

Stocks have been on a nearly uninterrupted upward path since March of last year, when indexes hit 12-year lows. Analysts have been predicting a correction for months, only to see the market bounce back after brief periods of decline.Long-term market watchers actually welcome occasional pullbacks in the market, saying that gives investors opportunities to pick up shares at bargain prices.”A corrective phase is in play,” said Rob Lutts, president and chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management.

If he’s right, this correction would be far faster than the historical average. “We used to take weeks and months to do what we now do in days,” Lutts said.In economic news, the Labor Department reported that employers added 290,000 jobs last month, far more than expected and the biggest jump in four years. However the jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent from 9.7 percent as more people looked for work.

The big improvement in the jobs report brought some clarity to the biggest question remaining for the U.S. economy: When employers would start hiring again. Despite positive signs in manufacturing and housing, job creation has been lagging far behind other sectors of the economy, a worrisome point for economists. Friday’s report may help change that perception.”It’s a good-size number and it had a lot of breadth,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “There isn’t a double-dip out there. The employment situation suggests that we have a sustained economic recovery in the U.S. Companies are hiring people.”

Apple fell $6.37, or 2.6 percent, to $239.88.Oil fell, and gold rose. The dollar was mostly lower against most currencies. The euro clawed back some ground against the dollar after several days of declines.European markets were broadly lower.The declines were deepest in France, where the CAC-40 index tumbled 4.6 percent. Germany’s DAX fell 3.3 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 2.6 percent. Japan’s Nikkei fell 3.1 percent.

17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.”I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11,” said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator.”In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we’ve probably seen.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to 6 months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.The fallout hit airlines’ shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 0.8 and 2.2 percent.The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.

“LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE”

The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.

“To lose that sum of money isn’t a very pleasant experience but it’s of limited commercial significance as well,” he told BBC TV. “A couple of days like this won’t matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that’s a different story.”The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.

Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.”We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say,” said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO’s aeronautical meteorology unit.

AIRSPACE CLOSED

Britain’s air traffic control body said all English airspace would be closed until 8 p.m. EDT on Friday although certain flights from Northern Ireland and Scottish airports were being allowed to take off until 1800 GMT.”When the experts give us the all-clear we’ll get the operation back up and running,” Paul Haskins, head of safety at National Air Traffic Service, told BBC radio.

There were no flights from London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which handles some 180,000 passengers a day, while officials at Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s second busiest, said flights would be suspended from 2 a.m. EDT.Around 2,000 people slept overnight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a spokeswoman said, adding they did not expect airspace in the Netherlands to reopen soon.

Eurocontrol said airspace was closed over Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of the Czech Republic, northern France including all Paris airports, and at airports in northern Germany, Austria and parts of Poland.

Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday’s funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.

However, as the ash plume drifted south over Europe, Irish officials said most of the airspace over Ireland had reopened.The air problems have proved a boon for rail companies. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding services if problems persisted.(Reuters)

U.S. sent two brothers Uighurs detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Switzerland

Beijing – China expressed anger and strong opposition Thursday after the U.S. sent two brothers Uighurs detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Switzerland. The announcement about the transfer of two Uighur men were delivered by the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday.

Beijing in the past demanded that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo were sent back to China. The U.S. government says can not do that because those people will face torture, and for several months to find countries willing to accept them. “We strongly reject U.S. measures to protect the suspects in a third country, and oppose any country that receives them,” said the spokesperson of China Foreign Ministry Qin Gang told a news conference.

“We have sent our strong protest to the countries concerned,” Qin added. The two people who moved to Switzerland it is Bahtiyar Arkin Mahmud and Mahmud, their lawyer said. The men were arrested by the U.S. government during the Afghanistan war, launched after the attacks, 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States.

Muslim Uighur people and a native of Xinjiang, far western China.

In the ethnic violence in July 2009, the Uighur people of China attacked the majority Han people in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s provincial capital, after falling to the streets to protest the attack on Uyghur workers at a factory in southern China in June that killed two Uighur men.

Beijing says, at least 197 people were killed in riots on July 5 in Urumqi between people and the Uighur minority group Enik dominant Han China. More than 1,600 people were also injured in the riot. Violence experienced by the Uighur people has led to a wave of protest marches in various cities of the world such as Ankara, Berlin, Canberra and Istanbul after the riots.

Uyghur people speak Turkish and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the most harsh criticism and calls asking what is happening in Xinjiang as “a kind of massacre”.

Uyghur people in exile claimed that China’s security forces to react too much for peaceful protest and to use deadly force. Eight million Uighur people, who have more contact with their neighbors in central Asia than with the Han people of China, amounted to less than half the population of Xinjiang. Together Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most vulnerable areas of politics and the two regions, the government of China tried to control religious life and culture growing promising economy and prosperity.

Beijing does not want to lose control of the region, which borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and has large oil reserves and is the largest natural gas producer in China. However, the minority population has long complained that China’s Han majority rake profits from government subsidies, while making local residents feel like outsiders in their own country.

Beijing says that the riots, the worst in the region in recent years, the work of separatist groups abroad, who want to create an independent region for the Muslim Uighur minority. The groups deny these violent and manage to say, the riots are the result of accumulated anger against the government policies and economic domination of Han China.(Reuters)

German Parliament at the end of last week approved the budget for 2010, with record levels of new loans

BERLIN German Parliament at the end of last week approved the budget for 2010, with record levels of new loans. This was done because the largest countries in Europe were trying to bounce back from last year’s recession the worst in six decades.As quoted by the AFP, Saturday (20/3/2010), 313 votes from MPs who agreed to 256 for the new budget. Where in the budget will be adan new debt worth 80.2 billion euros (USD108, 3 billion), which is two times the amount of loans obtained in Germany in 2009 and then.

Germany’s budget deficit this year is a maximum of twice as much as permitted by the EU fiscal rules, which increased to as much as six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of Germany which for 3.3 per cent in 2009.Although demiikian, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble insisted he will bring the German deficit back below the upper limit of three percent in 2013.

He said that if Germany fails to comply with the rules, then the Germans will collapse, along with their European single currency, the euro. The current budget must be approved by the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat.In 2009, the German economy experienced a contraction of five percent. Berlin hopes for the economy can grow as much as 1.4 percent this year.