One of the biggest winners in the sweeping Democratic victories in Senate races this month was a woman whose name appeared on no ballot: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
With a low-key style that contrasts with some of the Senate’s camera hogs, Murray may be the most powerful senator a whole lot of people have never heard of outside of the two Washingtons where she lives and works.
LONDON: A 16-year-old girl is thought to have become the first person to speak from the House of Commons despatch box in the British parliament while wearing a hijab, The Times newspaper reported on Saturday.
Sumaiya Karim a biology, chemistry, history and maths student, was speaking as the Youth Parliament held its annual session in the lower house's chamber, where Britain's MPs gather.
Karim, from Wokingham, west of London, said: "Wearing the hijab was my own choice."
The Muslim hijab scarf covers the head and neck but leaves the face exposed.
British ministers and opposition shadow ministers stand at the despatch boxes when they address the Commons.
The democratically elected Youth Parliament members, aged 11 to 18, are elected to represent the views of young people in their area to government.
- AFP/xq
Manmohan Singh is expected to set January 1, 2013 as the launch date for the rollout when he meets his ministerial colleagues on Monday. The plan to transfer cash directly into bank accounts of beneficiaries instead of handing over subsidised foodgrains, fertilizer or fuel is aimed to not only check leakages from the system, but also empower consumers with the choices and ensure big savings for the cash-strapped government.
Compared to NREGA, the size and scale of the cash-transfer programme is several times the rural job guarantee scheme, with the government planning to transfer over Rs 4 lakh crore annually to the public, with each BPL (below poverty line) family getting over Rs 3,000 a month.
Sources said the PM is also planning to address the nation on the scheme in the coming days, explaining the ambitious plan that would be bigger than similar programmes around the world. The government, which accords high importance to the scheme, proposes to appoint a national coordinator to oversee the programme. It will also ensure its rapid scalability.
Singh on Monday will address a meeting of ministers in-charge of subsidies, pension and scholarships and there he will disclose the government intent to formally launch the programme on January 1. The programme would begin by covering 51 districts where the Aadhar card has a high penetration. By April 1 next year, 18 states will be covered.
A senior official said the Planning Commission has identified seven flagship programmes, including pensions and 22 scholarship schemes given by nine central ministries, for cash transfers, excluding those related to subsidies on food, fertilizer and fuel.
Ministries are being asked to digitize their databases of beneficiaries and link them with Aadhar, so that Aadhar-enabled bank accounts and Aadhar-enabled payment systems can function through what's being called the Aadhar Payment Bridge - essentially, a mechanism for giving cash cards to beneficiaries who don't have bank accounts.
According to latest estimates provided by the Department of Financial Services, by March 31, 2012 all banks will migrate to the core banking platform which will facilitate direct cash transfers. The plan is to cover all villages with a population of more than 5,000 with branches, and those with population of more than 2,000 with business correspondents. Seven states have committed to make electronic payments.
Times View
The government clearly believes that cash transfers can be a game-changer. In theory, they would indeed appear to be justified in this view. However, whether the practice lives up to the theory is what will ultimately determine how much of a game-changer this move is and whether the change is for the better or for worse. That is why it is important that the government acts as soon as possible to even out the more obvious glitches to smooth implementation of cash transfers, like a large proportion of the population having neither identification documents nor bank accounts. This is particularly true of the poorest sections, who really ought to be the main beneficiaries of the government's welfare programmes.
Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.
Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")
Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.
Staring at a Star
An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)
"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.
It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.
Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.
"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.
If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.
Coming Into Focus
The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.
"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.
"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.
Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.
Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.
The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.
Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)
And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.
The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.
Two people were shot outside a Walmart in Florida today, one of a rash of fights, robberies and other incidents that have cropped up on one of the most ballyhooed shopping days of the year.
The shooting took place at a Walmart in Tallahassee about 12:30 p.m., said Dave Northway, public information officer for the Tallahassee Police Department.
Investigators believe a scuffle over a parking space outside the store escalated into gunplay leaving two people shot.
The two victims, whose names and genders have not been released, were taken to a hospital with what are believed to be non-life threatening injuries.
Police are looking for a dark green Toyota Camry in connection with this case.
At a Walmart parking lot on Thanksgiving night in Covington, Wash., two people were run down by a driver police suspected of being intoxicated.
The 71-year-old driver was arrested on a vehicular assault charge after the incident, spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West of the Kings County Sheriff's Office said.
The female victim, whose identity has yet to be released, was pinned beneath the driver's Mercury SUV until being rescued by the fire department. She was flown to Harborview Medical Center, where she was listed in serious condition, West said.
The male victim was also taken to Harborview Medical Center, where, West said, he was listed in good condition.
Shoppers Descend on Black Friday Deals
Tensions were high at the entrances as people lined up outside stores, waiting for the doors to open.
At a San Antonio, Texas, Sears, one man argued with customers and even punched one in order to get to the front of the line, prompting a man with a concealed carry permit to pull a gun, said Matthew Porter, public information officer of the San Antonio Police Department.
"It was a little chaotic. People were exiting the store," Porter said. "Fortunately for us, officers responded quickly and were able to ease the commotion."
The man who allegedly caused the altercation fled the scene and remains at large, Porter said. The shopper who pulled the gun will not face charges, he said, because of his concealed carry permit.
One man was treated at the scene for injuries sustained when people rushed out of the store, Porter said.
PHOTOS: Black Friday Shoppers Hit Stores
The crush of shoppers in the middle of the night were prey once again this year for thieves, who hid out in parking lots.
In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a woman said a man pulled a gun on her just as she exited her car to go inside a Best Buy store. The thief made off with $200, according to a police report.
In Maryland, 14-year-old boy told police he was robbed of his Thanksgiving night purchases by five men in the parking lot of a Bed Bath and Beyond store early this morning, the Baltimore Sun reported.
And in Massachusetts, Kmart employees tried to locate a shopper over the intercom after a 2-year-old was reported to be alone in a car, ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV reported.
Police arrived to break into the car and remove the child. The boy's caretaker, his mother's boyfriend, denied the incident took place, according to the station, and was not arrested.
ABC News' Candace Smith contributed to this report
Politicians tasked with negotiating a deal next month to avoid the “fiscal cliff” can be thankful that their talks are taking place immediately after a clarifying national election that laid out exactly how the public wants Washington to deal with debt and deficits.
Or not.
TOKYO: In next month's general election, politicians -- nearly all of them men -- will make promises on what they will do to fix Japan's economic morass. Very few of them will even mention women.
The country's problems are well known: more older people are living longer as the workforce that supports them gets smaller. The result is rising welfare costs and a shrinking tax base.
An influx of immigrants would boost the number of workers, but Japan has little appetite for migration on a European scale.
Observers say the answer lies within: get more of the nation's women to work.
Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said last month that women could rescue Japan's chronically underperforming economy if more of them had jobs.
A Goldman Sachs report in 2010 estimated that Japan's GDP could jump by a staggering 15 per cent if female participation (currently 60 per cent) in the workforce was to match that of men (80 per cent).
The report says seven out of 10 women leave the workforce after their first child. And only 65 per cent of women with a college-level education work.
Women across the board make only 60 per cent of what men make, according to labour ministry data, in part due to a larger number of part-time workers.
Although for some women, staying at home is a positive choice they have made, commentators say for others it is a lack of opportunities.
Japan is ranked 101 out of 135 countries in the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual Global Gender Gap Report, down three places from last year. Its neighbour China is at 69th.
"The gender issue is really ignored in Japan," said Kaori Sasaki, president and CEO of consulting firm ewoman.
"Japan was strong for five, six decades after World War II because a certain group of men occupied top positions in the fields of economy, media and politics," she said.
"These boys' network shared the same values and made decisions unopposed."
But its failure to adapt to the challenges of the last 20 years means Japan has stood still.
Japanese government data shows women account for 1.2 per cent of executives at 3,600 listed companies.
Sasaki said Japanese men need to realise the effort to close the gender gap is no longer a rights issue.
"This is a management and growth strategy," she said adding scandal-hit companies -- including Olympus, which hid US$1.7 billion of losses and Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant -- would have been better at dealing with their disasters if they had a more diverse senior management.
"When you try to manage crisis, create products or design services, diversity really counts," she said.
Saadia Zahidi, the WEF's head of gender parity and human capital agreed.
"How is the innovation going to happen if you have the same people in exactly the same situation as in the past? So where are the new ideas going to come from?" she said at the launch of a special taskforce in Tokyo Thursday.
Masahiro Yamada, professor of family sociology at Tokyo's Chuo University, says it's not just a case of Japan needing women if it is going to do things better.
Rather he says, it needs women to become workers -- and realise the financial gain that this entails -- just to survive.
"Unless more women work and get their own incomes, they cannot start a family," Yamada said.
"Without women joining the workforce, the government's tax revenue won't pick up" because the population will continue to shrink, he said.
A lack of childcare makes returning to work difficult for many women; nursery places are at a premium and in any case only usually available during the day.
For some women, the problem is the incompatibility of family life and Japan's famously long hours, where after-work socialising is almost compulsory.
There are pockets of change, says Hodaka Yamaguchi, 38, whose Tokyo-based IT employer is more sympathetic than many to the needs of its female workforce.
Yamaguchi gave birth to a baby girl in 2009 and came back to a promotion after a 15-month maternity leave. She said her productivity has not fallen despite the fact she is now working six-hour days.
"In this company, working women are well protected," she said.
Her company allows parents of either sex to take a total of up to six years parental leave -- well beyond the 18 months of maternity leave allowed by law.
Although anything above the statutory period is unpaid, the employee's job is guaranteed.
Ewoman's Sasaki agrees that things are better than they were, but problems still remain.
"Many young working women say they no longer feel the glass ceiling," she said. "But I tell them it's still there. It just moved up."
- AFP/xq
The Congress had asked its MPs to be present in the House on the grounds that important business was scheduled to come up for discussion. However, demanding introduction of Telangana bill in House, MPs Manda Jagannadham , Madhu Yaskhi Goud, Gutha Sukhender Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, G Vivekananda and S Rajaiah boycotted the proceedings and staged a dharna at the entrance of the Parliament House.
The MPs displayed placards carrying slogans 'Delay is the denial of Telangana' , 'The delay caused the death of 600 youths' , etc. The Congress, however, ignored the dharna. No emissary came forward to persuade the MPs to attend the House. Only RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav walked up to the Telangana MPs and expressed his solidarity .
The MPs are said to be aware that the party high command is cool to their demand, but still wanted to stage a vocal protest before deciding their next course of action, which could include quitting the party and floating their own forum .
"We will continue to defy the whip including with reference to any no-confidence motion that could come up in Parliament until the Congress makes a positive statement on Telangana ," Nagarkurnool MP Manda Jagannadham said. "If necessary, we would enter the House and disrupt the proceedings," he added.
Expressing displeasure at the inordinate delay on the part of the Congress in taking a decision on Telangana , Jagannadham said that the very survival of the party in the region is at stake in view of its dillydallying .
He accused the party of getting influenced by Seemandhra leaders, unmindful of the damage being done to the party in Telangana .
People in Telangana would not be satisfied with ministerial berths and packages, he said.
"Nothing short of a separate state will save the party in the region. Once it becomes clear that the Congress is backing out on its promise, the party will disappear from the region," he cautioned.
Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.
Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")
Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.
Staring at a Star
An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)
"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.
It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.
Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.
"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.
If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.
Coming Into Focus
The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.
"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.
"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.
Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.
Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.
The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.
Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)
And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.
The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.
With earlier-than-ever deals and 147 million people expected to hit the stores this holiday weekend, retailers such as Best Buy are taking extra steps to avoid the Black Friday shopper chaos -- and inevitable news stories -- of the past.
Best Buy officials said they've been prepping for the madness for days.
The retailer has created color-coded maps, moved merchandise around to ease congestion and held a dry run so that its employees can get practice.
"[We want to] get people in safely and out safely," said Jay Buchanan, a Best Buy employee. The goal is to get them "through the lines quick, fast and in a hurry so they can get what they need."
In Bloomington, Minn., the Mall of America extended its ban on young people younger than 16 shopping without an adult during the weekend evenings to Black Friday.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images
At the Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, Calif., security planned to place barricades at the mall entrance to control the crowds and officials planned to double the number of security officers.
In Los Angeles, the police were putting hundreds of extra officers on foot, on horseback and in the air to monitor shopping crowds.
"It seems like Black Friday's become bigger and bigger as the years have gone by," said Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith. "What we've seen across the country are huge problems with crowds. They just forget about everyday courtesy and sometimes go nuts."
According to today's news reports, though, things were already getting out of hand.
When a south Sacramento, Calif., K-Mart opened its doors at 6 a.m. today, a shopper in a line of people that had formed nearly two hours earlier reportedly threatened to stab the people around him.
And at two K-Marts in Indianapolis, police officers were called in after fights broke out among shoppers trying to score vouchers for a 32-inch plasma TV going for less than $200.
"When you have large crowds of people, control is the most important thing," Steve Reed, a security officer at the Arden Fair Mall, told ABC News affiliate News 10. "You want them [customers] to be able to get in the mall without getting trampled and having issues of any kind happening to them. That's really important for us."
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