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It is a palindrome that occurs once every 100 years and has inspired an onset of global mysticism. 11/11/11/11 or the…
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Atms
ATMs (Automated Teller Machines) advertising international bank settlement systems such as GlobalAccess, Cirrus, Maestro Plus and others are common in Hong Kong and Macau. On the mainland, ATMs that take international cards include branches of the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, where you can use Visa, MasterCard, Cirrus, Maestro, Plus and American Express (AmEx) to withdraw cash. The network largely applies to sizable towns and cities. Large airports such as Beijing Capital Airport, five-star hotels and some department stores have ATMs. Most other ATMs in China can only be used for withdrawing Renminbi in domestic accounts. The exchange rate on ATM withdrawals is similar to credit cards but there is a maximum daily withdrawal amount. If you plan on staying in China for a long period, it is advisable to open an account at a bank like the Bank of China with a nationwide network of ATMs.
For your nearest ATM, consult the ATM locator on www.international.visa.com/ps or on www.mastercard.com/cardholderservices/atm; both have comprehensive listings. For those without an ATM card or credit card, a PIN-activated Visa TravelMoney card (US 1-877-394 2247) will give you access to predeposited cash through the ATM network.
Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.
It also gave workers a mandate - quit smoking, curb obesity, or you'll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn't yet know by how much, but one thing's for certain - the unhealthy will pay more.
The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.
In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.
So now more employers are trying a different strategy - they're replacing the carrot with a stick and raising costs for workers who can't seem to lower their cholesterol or tackle obesity. They're also coming down hard on smokers. For example, discount store giant Wal-Mart says that starting in 2012 it will charge tobacco users higher premiums but also offer free smoking cessation programs.
Tobacco users consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than non-tobacco users, says Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which insures more than 1 million people, including family members. "The decisions aren't easy, but we need to balance costs and provide quality coverage."
For decades, workers - especially with large employers - have taken many health benefits for granted and until the past few years hardly noticed the price increases.
But the new policies could not only badly dent their take home pay and benefits but also reduce their freedom to behave as they want outside of work and make them resentful toward their employers. There are also fears the trend will hurt the lower-paid hardest as health costs can eat up a bigger slice of their disposable income and because they may not have much access to gyms and fresh food in their neighborhoods.
"It's not inherently wrong to hold people responsible," says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy organization on employment issues based in Princeton, New Jersey. "But it's a dangerous precedent," he says. "Everything you do in your personal private life affects your health."
Overall, the use of penalties is expected to climb in 2012 to almost 40 percent of large and mid-sized companies, up from 19 percent this year and only 8 percent in 2009, according to an October survey by consulting firm Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. The penalties include higher premiums and deductibles for individuals who failed to participate in health management activities as well as those who engaged in risky health behaviors such as smoking.
"Nothing else has worked to control health trends," says LuAnn Heinen, vice president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents large employers on health and benefits issues. "A financial incentive reduces that procrastination."
LACK OF JOBS
The weak economy is contributing to the change. Employers face higher health care costs - in part - because they're hiring fewer younger healthy workers and losing fewer more sickly senior employees.
The poor job market also means employers don't have to be as generous with these benefits to compete. They now expect workers to contribute to the solution just as they would to a 401(k) retirement plan, says Jim Winkler, a managing principal at consulting firm Aon Hewitt's health and benefits practice. "You're going to face consequences based on whether you've achieved or not," he says.
And those that don't are more likely to be punished. An Aon Hewitt survey released in June found that almost half of employers expect by 2016 to have programs that penalize workers "for not achieving specific health outcomes" such as lowering their weight, up from 10 percent in 2011
The programs have until now met little resistance in the courts. The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents workers from being discriminated against on the basis of health if they're in a group health insurance plan. But HIPAA also allows employers to offer wellness programs and to offer incentives of up to 20 percent of the cost for participation.
President Barack Obama's big health care reform, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will enable employers beginning in 2014 to bump that difference in premiums to 30 percent and potentially up to 50 percent.
Employers do, however, also need to provide an alternative for workers who can't meet the goals. That could include producing a doctor's note to say it is medically very difficult, or even impossible, to achieve certain goals, says Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee School of Law. For example, a worker with asthma may not be able to participate in a company exercise program.
These wellness programs typically include a health risk assessment completed online, and on-site free medical screenings for things such as blood pressure, body mass index, and cholesterol.
The programs, while voluntary, often typically offer financial benefits - including lower insurance premiums, gift cards and employer contributions to health savings accounts. For example, workers at the railroad company Union Pacific get $100 in their health savings account for completing the health assessment, $100 if they don't use tobacco and $100 if they get an annual physical (tobacco users also can get the $100 if they participate in a tobacco cessation program).
INCENTIVE TO EXERCISE
Like Wal-Mart, more employers are coming down harder on individuals who have voluntarily identified themselves as tobacco users, often during their health risk assessment. As yet, very few employers identify smokers through on-site medical screenings.
Veridian, which until now has not charged its employees for healthcare premiums, says increases to its health care costs have been unsustainable, climbing 9 percent annually for the past three years. Earlier this year, it rolled out a wellness program and free screenings, which 90 percent of workers have now completed.
As it starts charging, it will provide discounts to those making progress as it "wants to reward those who have healthy lifestyles," says Renee Christoffer, senior vice president of administration for the credit union.
Mark Koppedryer, vice president of branches at Veridian, was one of the workers who participated in the screenings. The 37-year-old father of three initially participated to show his support but was shocked to find out that he had elevated blood pressure and cholesterol scores.
His colleague, Stacy Phillips, says she used the new wellness programs to exercise more. "I knew there needed to be a change in my life," says the 35-year-old, who has lost 40 pounds since January. "This made me more aware that at some time there would be a cost."
These changes come at a time when health insurance premiums are soaring. In 2011, the average-cost of an employer-provided family plan was more than $15,000, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. That's 31 percent higher than five years ago. And the number is expected to climb another 5-8 percent next year, according to various estimates.
In contrast, the giant medical and research center Cleveland Clinic, which employs about 40,000 people, has seen these costs grow by only 2 percent this year because it has implemented a comprehensive wellness program that has dramatically improved the health of many workers.
The effort began several years when it banned smoking at the medical center and then refused to hire smokers. It later recognized that having a gym and weight loss classes wasn't enough to get people to participate. It made these facilities and programs free and provided lower premiums to workers who maintained their health or improved it, typically with their doctor's help.
"You don't do this overnight," says Paul Terpeluk, Medical Director of Occupational Health at the Cleveland Clinic. You have to develop a program and change the culture, he said.
INTRUSIVE
But not all programs are as well constructed and effective, says Mark A. Rothstein, a lawyer and professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. The wellness programs may be well-intentioned, he says, but there's not strong empirical evidence that they work and getting a weekly call about your weight or smoking habits, which is offered by some programs, could be humiliating for participants.
"What might be seen as a question to one person may be an intrusion to another," he says. That's one reason that lower-paid janitors at his school participate but, "the professors on campus consider it a privacy tax so we don't get some stranger calling us about how much we weigh."
And there are also those that no matter how much they exercise or how healthy they eat can't lose weight or lower their blood pressure or body mass index. "There are thousands and thousands of people whose paycheck is being cut because of factors beyond their control," says Maltby from the National Workrights Institute.
The programs could be especially burdensome for low-income workers, who are more likely to fail health assessment tests and less likely to have access to gyms and healthier fresh produce, says Harald Schmidt - a research associate at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
"We want to use provisions to help people and not penalize people for factors beyond their control," Schmidt says. "Poorer people are often less healthy and this constitutes a potential double whammy. They are likely to face a higher burden in insurance premiums."
That's the case for Barbara Collins, a 35-year-old Wal-Mart employee - who lives in Placerville , California. She says she'll have to pay $127 every two weeks for health insurance next year, including a penalty of almost $25 because she's a smoker.
"I'll cut back on cigarettes and hopefully eventually quit," says Collins, who earned $19,000 pretax, or about $730 every two weeks, last year. "Christmas will definitely be tight this year and for years to come if this lasts," she says. "Family vacations, there's no way I can afford that.".
(Reporting by Jilian Mincer in New York. Editing by Martin Howell in New York.)
Weekend media reports showed al-Qaida’s flag flying in central Benghazi, and noted that Libyan anti-aircraft missiles had been purchased by terror groups, but White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday the administration has not been surprised by news reports from Libya.
“I’m not aware of anything that has been reported that has surprised us out of Libya,” Carney said during a morning press briefing.
White House officials have not responded to The Daily Caller’s request for an explanation of Carney’s statement
Demographers say it took until 1804 for the world to reach its first billion people and a century more until it hit 2 billion in 1927. Soon the numbers began to cascade: 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1998.
The U.N. estimates the world population will reach 8 billion by 2025 and 10 billion by 2083. But the numbers could vary widely, depending on life expectancy, access to birth control, infant mortality rates and other factors.
In Uttar Pradesh, India — the most populous state in the world's second-most populous country — officials said they would appoint seven girls born Monday to symbolize the 7 billion.
India, which struggles with a deeply held preference for sons and a skewed sex ratio because of millions of aborted female fetuses, is using the day to highlight that issue.
"It would be a fitting moment if the 7 billionth baby is a girl born in rural India," said Dr. Madhu Gupta, a gynecologist. "It would help in bringing the global focus back on girls, who are subject to inequality and bias."
According to U.S. government estimates, India has 893 girls for every 1,000 boys at birth, compared with 955 girls per 1,000 boys in the United States.
Meanwhile, China, which at 1.34 billion people is the world's most populous nation, said it would stand by its one-child policy, a set of restrictions launched three decades ago limiting most urban families to one child and most rural families to two.
"Overpopulation remains one of the major challenges to social and economic development," Li Bin, director of the State Population and Family Planning Commission, told the official Xinhua News Agency. He said the population of China would hit 1.45 billion in 2020.
While the Beijing government says its strict family planning policy has helped propel the country's rapidly growing economy, it has also brought many problems.
Soon, demographers say, there won't be enough young Chinese to support its enormous elderly population. China, like India, also has a highly skewed sex ratio, with aid groups saying sex-selective abortions have resulted in an estimated 43 million fewer girls than there should be, given the overall population.
India, with 1.2 billion people, is expected to overtake China around 2030, when the Indian population reaches an estimated 1.6 billion.
Two Russian families whose daughters were switched at birth by accident have been awarded $100,000 (£62,000) each in court today.
Judges in Chelyabinsk, Russia, ordered the maternity home where the error took place a dozen years ago should pay out the money to the shattered families.
The two girls were born 15 minutes apart on the same day and the medical centre, located in the Ural Mountains, admitted that they had mixed up the identity labels of the pair of babies.
Countries around the world marked the world's population reaching 7 billion Monday with lavish ceremonies for newborn infants symbolizing the milestone and warnings that there may be too many humans for the planet's resources.
While demographers are unsure exactly when the world's population will reach the 7 billion mark, the U.N. is using Monday to symbolically mark the day. A string of festivities are being held worldwide, with a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.
The celebrations began in the Philippines, where baby Danica May Camacho was greeted with cheers and an explosion of photographers' flashbulbs at Manila's Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital. She arrived two minutes before midnight Sunday, but doctors say that was close enough to count for a Monday birthday.
The baby received a shower of gifts, from a chocolate cake marked "7B Philippines" to a gift certificate for shoes.
"She looks so lovely," the mother, Camille Galura, whispered as she cradled the 2.5-kilo (5.5-pound) baby, who was born about a month premature.
The baby was the second for Galura and her partner, Florante Camacho, a struggling driver who supports the family on a tiny salary.
Dr. Eric Tayag of the Philippines' Department of Health said later that the birth came with a warning.
"Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply," he said.
"We should really focus on the question of whether there will be food, clean water, shelter, education and a decent life for every child," he said. "If the answer is 'no,' it would be better for people to look at easing this population explosion."
I was having an argument with a Left-wing friend. “The way I see it,” he said, “rules to govern diversity, they’re just a way of taking the rough edges off a society.” He looked at me, and I did wonder: how do you disagree with such an assertion? “The problem with your approach,” he continued, “is that you would leave the weakest people in society to find their own way.”
I don’t think that society should be smooth; and I don’t think that the laws protect the weak. But let’s assume he might have a point. All those laws and bizarre prosecutions: they’re only to take the rough edges away. I remembered that conversation when I read about a protest in a school in London. Pupils – sorry, “students” – were protesting because the school’s administrators had removed a vertical sheet from the multi-faith prayer and “quiet” room. Specifically, Muslim students were protesting, because they had erected the sheet in order to segregate the male and female pupils, lest they had to endure the apparently unacceptable insult of witnessing someone with a slightly different chromosomal disposition also in the act of prayer. Business student Kamil Alp said: “It’s very inappropriate if a man does it [prays] in the presence of a woman.”
How far we have come! Schools and colleges now have to set aside rooms for “faith” – for which, of course, read Islamic prayer – and what was once a common space in a college is now just another line in the sand being crossed, prostrate business student by prostrate business student. “I feel discriminated against,” added Kamil. The young man knows his stuff! And I know how he feels.
I remembered my conversation again when I read about Adrian Smith, a manager for a housing trust, punished severely by his employers – to the tune of a cut of £14,000 in his salary – because in the course of a private conversation on his Facebook page, he’d written – calmly, politely – that he could not support gay marriage. I don’t happen to agree with Mr Smith, but our theoretical disagreement pales into insignificance compared to the bullying retribution enacted on him by his employer, for the audacity of expressing a perfectly reasonable view. One of his employers said, “The Trust has an equal opportunities policy.” Case closed. Those equal opportunities policies exist to smooth away our rough edges, and Mr Smith will just have to take the smoothing with the rough.
These two cases, involving very different people (Mr Smith is plainly a good man; Mr Alp makes the news because he appears determined to promote divisions, both metaphorical and literal) illustrate what happens with these well-intentioned (let us be charitable: the alternative is too hideous to contemplate) laws. Mr Alp’s campaign – can you imagine being a timid student in his year? – serves too as a warning that we need greater care with the inspection of faith schools, whose number will surely rise following the Government’s campaign to expand the number of providers in the state education sector.
The spartan world of Martin Koolhoven’s sober, well-made World War II melodrama, “Winter in Wartime,” is a rustic blue-gray landscape of woods and snow-covered roads through which armed German soldiers roam in trucks. This handsome film, set in a village in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and shot in Lithuania, is an adaptation of a semiautobiographical 1972 novel by the Dutch author Jan Terlouw, who lived under German occupation for five years.
we're protesting corporate greed from behind our guy masks, while we tweet on our iphones! hold on a sec... i need to sip some of my starbucks mochaccino before i spill it.
Another answer lies in history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman's voice.
When automakers were first installing automated voice prompts in cars ("your door is ajar") decades ago, their consumer research found that people overwhelmingly preferred female voices to male ones, said Tim Bajarin, a Silicon Valley analyst and president of Creative Strategies Inc.
This may explain why in almost all GPS navigation systems on the market, the default voice is female. One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
"Cultural stereotypes run deep," said Nass, who details the BMW episode in his book.
How the afterlife informed Apple's design:
I remember sitting in his back yard in his garden one day, and he started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I don't. It's 50-50. But ever since I've had cancer I've been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more. Maybe that's because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated, somehow it just lives on." But then he paused for a second and he said, "Yeah but sometimes I think it's like an on-off switch. Click, and you're gone," he said. Paused again and said, "And that's why I don't put on-off switches on Apple devices."
How can you make an electric scooter even more green? Make it out of bamboo! The concept of using bamboo as a construction material for vehicles is starting to gain a foothold, and Antoine Fritsch of the French firm Fritsch-Durisotti has unveiled the T20 electric scooter, which features an eco-friendly bamboo frame.
With a range of 25 miles and a top speed of 22 miles per hour, the T20 offers a stylish option for zipping around town. Or it would, but sadly it's only a concept design — Fritsch-Durisotti has no intention of actually putting the scooters into mainstream production. The T20 is part of the firm's research to "investigate themes exploring changing behaviors related to sustainable development."
[via AutoBlogGreen]
Financial professionals make up 14 percent of the top 1 percent of American earners as of 2005, CNN Money reports. Executives and managers in other industries made up 31 percent of the elite. But medical professionals weren't far behind, at 15.7 percent. Although doctors make up a big chunk of the 1 percent, their wages have seen slower growth than those of financial workers and executives. You can find out more stats about the top 1 percent of earners here.
Who are the 1 percent?
By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney October 20, 2011: 10:40 AM ET
occupy wall street top 1 percent top 1%
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Think it takes a million bucks to make it into the Top 1% of American taxpayers?
Think again. In 2009, it took just $343,927 to join that elite group, according to newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been railing against the Top 1%, trying to raise anger and awareness of the growing economic gap between the rich and everybody else in America.
But just who are these fortunate folks at the top of the income ladder?
Well, there were just under 1.4 million households that qualified for entry. They earned nearly 17% of the nation's income and paid roughly 37% of its income tax.
Collectively, their adjusted gross income was $1.3 trillion. And while $343,927 was the minimum AGI to be included, on average, Top 1-percenters made $960,000.
Meet the Occupy Wall Street protesters
But the income threshold for this exclusive group changes every year, largely with the performance of the stock market, experts said.
In 2007, when times were good on Wall Street, one needed to have an adjusted gross income of more than $424,000 to get into the highest rank. But the stock market decline in recent years has helped lower that bar back to a level not seen since 2002.
"The further up you go, the wider swings you see," said Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union. "They have a great deal of wealth sunk into the markets, which can vary quite widely."
While much of the wealthy's income comes from capital gains on investments, bonuses on the job can also give people the needed boost.
Just what jobs are those?
Many workers in the securities industry in New York likely qualify for the Top 1%.
These folks, many of whom work only blocks from where protesters are gathering in Zuccotti Park, made an average salary of just over $311,000 in 2009, according to the state Comptroller's Office. (This figure does not take into account certain income, losses and deductions that make up adjusted gross income.)
A separate study found that financial professionals made up about 14% of the top rank in 2005.
Executives, managers and supervisors working outside of finance accounted for 31%, the largest share, according to an analysis by Jon Bakija of Williams College, Adam Cole of the Treasury Department and Bradley Heim of Indiana University. Medical professionals came in at 15.7%, while lawyers made up 8.4%.
Over time, the Top 1% has claimed a bigger share of the income pie. In 2007, they earned 22.8% of the nation's income, more than double the amount in 1986, according to IRS data. The recession has since brought that slice down to just under 17% for 2009.
While those at the top have seen their incomes soar over time, middle-class incomes have stagnated.
"The higher up the income distribution you go, the more your income rose and the larger the share of total income gains went to your group," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
But as corporate profits and productivity have increased, workers aren't reaping the benefits, said Edward Wolff, a New York University economics professor who specializes in income inequality. That's helping spark the movement, which has spread across the country.
"There is a lot of anger and it's for a very good reason," Wolff said. "If all of the income gain goes to the top, there's not much left to go to the rest of the people."
Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect timeframe for IRS income data. The most recent figures from the IRS are for 2009.
The announcement that Islamic sharia law will be the basis of legislation in newly liberated Libya has raised concerns, especially among women, despite Islamists insisting moderation will prevail.
Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Sunday, during his speech to the nation in Benghazi to formally declare the country's liberation from the ousted regime of Moammer Kadhafi, that sharia would be Libya's principal law.
"Any law that violates sharia is null and void legally," he said, citing as an example the law on marriage passed during the slain dictator's 42-year tenure that imposed restrictions on polygamy, which is permitted in Islam.
"The law of divorce and marriage... This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped," Abdel Jalil said.
His comments have provoked criticism and calls for restraint both in Libya and in Europe, amid fears that the Arab Spring may give rise to a potentially intolerant Islamist resurgence.
Many Libyans awaiting Sunday's historic speech expressed surprise at the decision by the National Transitional Council leader to mention the role of sharia law in the new country before addressing such important issues as security and education.
"It's shocking and insulting to state, after thousands of Libyans have paid for freedom with their lives, that the priority of the new leadership is to allow men to marry in secret," said Rim, 40, a Libyan feminist who requested anonymity.
"We did not slay Goliath so that we now live under the Inquisition," she told AFP.
In his speech, Abdel Jalil also announced the introduction of Islamic banking in Libya in keeping with sharia which prohibits the earning of interest, or riba in Arabic, that is considered a form of usury.
Adelrahman al-Shatr, one of the founders of the centre-right Party of National Solidarity, launched just last week, said it was premature for the NTC leader to speak about the policies of the new state.
"It is a subject that should be discussed with the different political groups and with the Libyan people," he said.
"These declarations create feelings of pain and bitterness among women who sacrificed so many martyrs," in the eight-month battle against Kadhafi loyalists, he added.
"By abolishing the marriage law, women lose the right to keep the family home if they divorce. It is a disaster for Libyan women."
Western leaders also responded swiftly to Abdel Jalil's comments, with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton saying on Monday Libya's introduction of sharia law must respect human rights and democratic principles.
Abdel Jalil, a respected former justice minister of Kadhafi who distanced himself from the old regime, is seen as a pious man and a Sufi follower of Islam who is at odds with extremism.
He has already said that the new Libya would not adopt any extremist ideology, and sought to reassure the international community by stating on Monday that Libyans were moderate Muslims.
Nevertheless, Libya's Islamists are a rising force in the country's political arena, some of whom, such as Abdelhakim Belhaj, the founder of the Al-Qaeda linked but now-disbanded Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), are expected to hold prominent positions.
After suffering decades of persecution by Kadhafi, they are also working hard to present themselves as proponents of tolerant, democratic values and policies.
"The rules and laws (in new Libya) should take Islam as a basic reference," Islamist leader Sheikh Ali Sallabi, a supporter of Belhaj, told AFP.
He insisted that freedom, justice, equality and respect for human dignity should be enshrined in the new constitution, along with the peaceful rotation of power.
"We believe in the rights of others to show their programmes to the people, and to let the people decide," said Sallabi, who was jailed for eight years during the 1980s in Tripoli's notorious Abu Salim prison.
"We also believe in the freedom of the press and the right to self expression. We believe that our religion accommodates these rights," he added.
Libya's interim prime minister said he was resigning on Saturday and urged new leaders to seize a "very limited opportunity" and resolve rivalries now surfacing after Muammar Gaddafi's death.
With regional differences emerging about what to do with Gaddafi's still unburied body, the formal end to the war and the carve-up of power, Libya's outgoing premier said the coming days posed a crucial test of resolve for the new men in power.
Mahmoud Jibril said he would step down later on Saturday, after seven months as prime minister of the Western-backed rebel government now that the legal declaration of "liberation" was expected on Sunday following Gaddafi's killing on Thursday.
But in a parting shot at an international business forum in Jordan, he warned Libyans to avoid in-fighting if Libyans were to keep to a plan to hold their first free election next year.
Leaders required "resolve," he said, "in the next few days."
In Misrata, the curious and the relieved filed for a second day through a market cold store to view the body of Gaddafi, whose surprise capture and killing in his hometown of Sirte sparked joy - and renewed jockeying for postwar influence.
Visitors wore surgical masks against the stench, an image that may trouble some Muslims, for whom swift burial is a holy duty - even if few Libyans share the unease among their Western allies over what some believe was a summary execution.
Jibril said progress for Libya would need great resolution, both by interim leaders on the National Transitional Council and by six million war-weary people: "First," he said, "What kind of resolve the NTC will show in the next few days?
"And the other thing depends mainly on the Libyan people - whether they differentiate between the past and the future."
He added: "I am counting on them to look ahead and remember the kind of agony they went through in the last 42 years.
"We need to seize this very limited opportunity."
"LIBERATION"
The formal declaration of an end to war and of "liberation" from Gaddafi's rule was expected to be made by NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil on Sunday in the eastern city of Benghazi, the seat of the revolt inspired by the fall of autocrats in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt.
There have been several delays to the announcement. It will set a clock ticking on a plan for a new government and constitutional assembly leading to full democracy in 2013.
Jibril reaffirmed the plan was for elections to the body that will draft a constitution to be held in eight months.
Gaddafi's body remained in Misrata, bearing wounds assumed to have been inflicted by fighters from the city who hauled him from a drain in his hometown Sirte. A field commander in Misrata worried that trouble was brewing:
"The fear now is what is going to happen next," he said, speaking to Reuters privately, as ordinary Libyans, some taking pictures for family albums, filed in under armed guard to see for themselves that the man they feared was truly dead.
"There is going to be regional in-fighting. You have Zintan and Misrata on one side and then Benghazi and the east," the guerrilla said. "There is in-fighting even inside the army."
DIVISIONS
Comparisons with Iraq after Saddam Hussein are tempered by the absence of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide which ravaged that country. However, as in Iraq, there are vast energy resources at stake and international powers keen to exploit them.
Regional enmities thrive, as well as differences between Islamists and secularists and among those who once served Gaddafi - like NTC head Abdel Jalil - and others. There is also ethnic tension between Arabs and Berbers.
Gaddafi's surviving family, in exile, have asked that his body and that of his son Mo'tassim be handed over to tribal kinsmen from Sirte. NTC officials said they were trying to arrange a secret resting place to avoid loyalist supporters making it a shrine.
Unlike on Friday, Gaddafi's body was covered by a blanket that left only his head exposed, hiding bruises on his torso and scratch marks on his chest that had earlier been visible.
A Reuters reporter who viewed the body said Gaddafi's head had been turned to the left. That hid a bullethole that earlier could be seen on the left side of his face.
SUMMARY EXECUTION?
Gaddafi's family and international human rights groups have urged an inquiry into how Gaddafi, 69, was killed, since gory cellphone video footage showed him alive but being beaten and taunted by his captors. Jibril said on the day that Gaddafi was killed in "crossfire" in an ambulance taking him to hospital.
But an ambulance driver in Sirte told Reuters Gaddafi was already dead by the time he picked him up, and a local military commander in Misrata said "over-enthusiastic" fighters had taken matters into their own hands:
"We wanted to keep him alive. But the young guys...," he told Reuters. "Things went out of control."
The International Criminal Court at The Hague had wanted to try Gaddafi for war crimes and may yet be able to try his son Saif al-Islam if he is found. NTC officials believe he escaped from the last redoubt in Sirte, after French jets had scattered a convoy of dozens of vehicles trying to flee with his father.
Intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man wanted by the ICC, managed to reach Niger, officials have said.
Libyans also want to try some of the old guard at home.
Despite the qualms of some abroad, few compatriots are troubled by Gaddafi's bloody end, captured in clips of cellphone video broadcast around the world.
"People in the West don't understand the agony and pain that the people went through during the past 42 years," said Jibril, who added he felt "reborn" when he heard the news.
Abdulatif, a pilot, who came to see the body in Misrata, asked: "What would he tell the mother whose children were killed or the girls who were raped? If he lived and was killed a thousand times that would still only be a trifle."
Nonetheless, some Libyans have expressed unease at the way Gaddafi's body has been treated - Muslim custom dictates it should have been buried by sundown on Thursday - and at other matters of religion and respect for the dead.
Gaddafi's daughter Aisha, her mother and two of her brothers fled to Algeria after the fall of Tripoli. Aisha gave birth on the day she arrived.
The government in Algiers has angered the NTC by refusing to send them back. But an Algerian newspaper on Saturday quoted official sources saying that, following the death of the head of the family, they might now reconsider.
