US election: whoever wins on Tuesday, the impact will be profound | Jonathan Freedland

US election: whoever wins on Tuesday, the impact will be profound | Jonathan Freedland

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Why am I here? Do we actually find the true reason we are on earth?

I will go to India

Indian Map http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/chhatisgarh/chhatisgarh.htm

The hair trade's dirty secret

The hair trade's dirty secret

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Fidelity Investments

Financial rules of thumb are just that. If you follow them, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you've taken action — but they do not guarantee you'll get the results you desire. Still, in the savings game guideposts can be especially useful. A near-term target will help you get started, and that's half the battle. Fidelity Investments recently put together an age-based savings guideline with a range of savings goals. It's meant to prod individuals into action, which it might—if, that is, the firm's daunting assumptions don't discourage them first. Here are the guideposts: At age 35, you should have saved an amount equal to your annual salary. At age 45, you should have saved three times your annual salary. At 55, you should have five times your salary. When you retire at age 67, you should have eight times your annual pay. Others have tried to divine a finishing multiple of salary that ensures retirement happiness, and generally they are in line with Fidelity's target. Consultants Aon Hewitt set the goal at 11 times final pay (by age 65). What Fidelity ads to the discussion are benchmarks to hit along the way. Having near-term targets helps you stay on track—and to take steps to catch up while time is on your side. But there is nothing easy about hitting these targets. Fidelity assumes: You begin saving in a workplace retirement plan, such as a 401(k), at age 25. You save continuously and without interruption until age 67. You start by making an annual salary contribution equal to 6% of pay, and raise the figure by one percentage point each year until you are saving 12% of pay. Your employer matches you at 50 cents on the dollar up to 6% of pay and your portfolio grows 5.5% a year. Social Security is factored in. Your income grows 1.5 percentage points faster than inflation each year. These assumptions are reasonable in terms of building an illustrative savings model. But consider that almost no one starts saving at 25 and millions suffer some sort of job interruption over a 42-year career. This model also has you saving 12% of pay by age 32. A common rule of thumb is 10% and, again, most folks don't get serious about saving until they are in their 40s and 50s. (MORE: Smart-Phone Parental Controls are Nothing to LOL About) Meanwhile, you will need a healthy slug of stocks to earn 5.5% a year. Yet individuals have been net sellers of stock mutual funds for at least half a decade. Whether Social Security will be available when you retire is an open question. And many peoples' wages are going down—not up by more than the rate of inflation. Of course, it would be a mistake to extrapolate the experience of the crisis years indefinitely into the future. Still, this exercise points up the difficulty of reaching retirement security without an early start, or hyper-aggressive saving at midlife. No matter your age, at least now you can see where you stand–and what to do about it. Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/09/21/what-you-should-save-by-35-45-and-55-to-be-on-target/#ixzz2AcI46DUL

fertile gals spot snakes faster than women at other times of the menstrual cycle

Btw, the cute angry baby pic  I posted here, are not related to the news. I just want to post them because they are so cute, although they are angry :) Women who settle down with a stable guy instead of a sexy one might subconsciously struggle with that decision during their most fertile window of the month, a new study suggests. Just before ovulating, women with a more reliable long-term partner are more likely to have negative feelings about their beau than those paired with more sexually desirable men, the researchers found. "A woman evaluates her relationship differently at different times in her cycle, and her evaluation seems to be colored by how sexually attractive she perceives her partner to be," researcher Martie Haselton, a professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA, said in a statement. For the study, Haselton and UCLA doctoral student Christina Larson recruited 41 undergraduate women in long-term heterosexual relationships and tracked their menstrual cycles. The researchers also asked the participants questions about their partners aimed at determining how stable and sexually attractive the guys might be. For example, they asked, "How desirable do you think women find your partner as a short-term mate or casual sex partner, compared to most men?" Then at a high-fertility point (just before ovulation) and low-fertility point, the women were then asked about the quality of their relationship. Overall, the participants' commitment to and satisfaction with their relationships did not seem to change with fertility, the researchers found. But women with less sexually attractive partners seemed to feel less close to their beaus as they moved from their least fertile to most fertile period. Meanwhile, women matched with the most sexually attractive men seemed to experience the opposite effect. "Women with the really good, stable guy felt more distant at high-fertility periods than low-fertility periods," Haselton explained in a statement. "That isn't the case with women who were mated to particularly sexually attractive men. The closeness of their relationships got a boost just prior to ovulation." The researchers found the same trends when they repeated the experiment with 67 new participants. In this phase of the study, the researchers added a new questionnaire that had the women rate their partners' flaws, such as thoughtlessness, moodiness and childishness. Women paired with less sexually attractive guys were significantly more likely to find fault with their partners during the high-fertility period than the low-fertility period. [10 Odd Facts About the Female Body] The sometimes conflicting desires for stability and sexiness in a partner could come from mating strategies designed to benefit our female ancestors a long time ago, the researchers said. "Since our female ancestors couldn't directly examine a potential partner's genetic makeup, they had to base their decisions on physical manifestations of the presence of good genes and the absence of genetic mutations, which might include masculine features such as a deep voice, masculine face, dominant behavior and sexy looks," Haselton explained. But genes aren't everything. "In the reproductive arena, women probably evolved to desire men who could contribute both quality care and good genes," Haselton said. "The problem is that there is a limited number of potential mates who are high in both. So many women are forced to make trade-offs." The researchers say "Mr. Stable" need not worry too much as the apparent negative feelings during ovulation don't seem to affect long-term commitment. "Even when these women are feeling less positive about their relationship, they don't want to end it," Larson said in a statement. But the team is interested in whether the changes in behavior are apparent to guys. "We don't know if men are picking up on this behavior, but if they are, it must be confusing for them," Larson said. The study — which will be detailed in the November issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior — is the latest of many that have found a woman's fertile phase can cause subtle changes in her behavior. One suggested that ovulating women have more sexual fantasies, and another found they are more likely to prefer masculine guys when most fertile. A 2011 study even suggested that women are more likely to see Georgia O'Keeffe paintings as erotic during this fertile window. Oh yeah, and fertile gals spot snakes faster than women at other times of the menstrual cycle.

Corruption in China : Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader

October 25, 2012 Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader By DAVID BARBOZA BEIJING — The mother of China's prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to tend pigs in one of Mao's political campaigns. And during childhood, "my family was extremely poor," the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said in a speech last year. But now 90, the prime minister's mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left poverty behind — she became outright rich, at least on paper, according to corporate and regulatory records. Just one investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show. The details of how Ms. Yang, a widow, accumulated such wealth are not known, or even if she was aware of the holdings in her name. But it happened after her son was elevated to China's ruling elite, first in 1998 as vice prime minister and then five years later as prime minister. Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, an investigation by The New York Times shows. A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister's relatives, some of whom have a knack for aggressive deal-making, including his wife, have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion. In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners. Untangling their financial holdings provides an unusually detailed look at how politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China's fast-growing economy. Unlike most new businesses in China, the family's ventures sometimes received financial backing from state-owned companies, including China Mobile, one of the country's biggest phone operators, the documents show. At other times, the ventures won support from some of Asia's richest tycoons. The Times found that Mr. Wen's relatives accumulated shares in banks, jewelers, tourist resorts, telecommunications companies and infrastructure projects, sometimes by using offshore entities. The holdings include a villa development project in Beijing; a tire factory in northern China; a company that helped build some of Beijing's Olympic stadiums, including the well-known "Bird's Nest"; and Ping An Insurance, one of the world's biggest financial services companies. As prime minister in an economy that remains heavily state-driven, Mr. Wen, who is best known for his simple ways and common touch, more importantly has broad authority over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes. Chinese companies cannot list their shares on a stock exchange without approval from agencies overseen by Mr. Wen, for example. He also has the power to influence investments in strategic sectors like energy and telecommunications. Because the Chinese government rarely makes its deliberations public, it is not known what role — if any — Mr. Wen, who is 70, has played in most policy or regulatory decisions. But in some cases, his relatives have sought to profit from opportunities made possible by those decisions. The prime minister's younger brother, for example, has a company that was awarded more than $30 million in government contracts and subsidies to handle wastewater treatment and medical waste disposal for some of China's biggest cities, according to estimates based on government records. The contracts were announced after Mr. Wen ordered tougher regulations on medical waste disposal in 2003 after the SARS outbreak. In 2004, after the State Council, a government body Mr. Wen presides over, exempted Ping An Insurance and other companies from rules that limited their scope, Ping An went on to raise $1.8 billion in an initial public offering of stock. Partnerships controlled by Mr. Wen's relatives — along with their friends and colleagues — made a fortune by investing in the company before the public offering. In 2007, the last year the stock holdings were disclosed in public documents, those partnerships held as much as $2.2 billion worth of Ping An stock, according to an accounting of the investments by The Times that was verified by outside auditors. Ping An's overall market value is now nearly $60 billion. Ping An said in a statement that the company did "not know the background of the entities behind our shareholders." The statement said, "Ping An has no means to know the intentions behind shareholders when they buy and sell our shares." While Communist Party regulations call for top officials to disclose their wealth and that of their immediate family members, no law or regulation prohibits relatives of even the most senior officials from becoming deal-makers or major investors — a loophole that effectively allows them to trade on their family name. Some Chinese argue that permitting the families of Communist Party leaders to profit from the country's long economic boom has been important to ensuring elite support for market-oriented reforms. Even so, the business dealings of Mr. Wen's relatives have sometimes been hidden in ways that suggest the relatives are eager to avoid public scrutiny, the records filed with Chinese regulatory authorities show. Their ownership stakes are often veiled by an intricate web of holdings as many as five steps removed from the operating companies, according to the review. In the case of Mr. Wen's mother, The Times calculated her stake in Ping An — valued at $120 million in 2007 — by examining public records and government-issued identity cards, and by following the ownership trail to three Chinese investment entities. The name recorded on his mother's shares was Taihong, a holding company registered in Tianjin, the prime minister's hometown. The apparent efforts to conceal the wealth reflect the highly charged politics surrounding the country's ruling elite, many of whom are also enormously wealthy but reluctant to draw attention to their riches. When Bloomberg News reported in June that the extended family of Vice President Xi Jinping, set to become China's next president, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the Chinese government blocked access inside the country to the Bloomberg Web site. "In the senior leadership, there's no family that doesn't have these problems," said a former government colleague of Wen Jiabao who has known him for more than 20 years and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "His enemies are intentionally trying to smear him by letting this leak out." The Times presented its findings to the Chinese government for comment. The Foreign Ministry declined to respond to questions about the investments, the prime minister or his relatives. Members of Mr. Wen's family also declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Duan Weihong, a wealthy businesswoman whose company, Taihong, was the investment vehicle for the Ping An shares held by the prime minister's mother and other relatives, said the investments were actually her own. Ms. Duan, who comes from the prime minister's hometown and is a close friend of his wife, said ownership of the shares was listed in the names of Mr. Wen's relatives in an effort to conceal the size of Ms. Duan's own holdings. "When I invested in Ping An I didn't want to be written about," Ms. Duan said, "so I had my relatives find some other people to hold these shares for me." But it was an "accident," she said, that her company chose the relatives of the prime minister as the listed shareholders — a process that required registering their official ID numbers and obtaining their signatures. Until presented with the names of the investors by The Times, she said, she had no idea that they had selected the relatives of Wen Jiabao. The review of the corporate and regulatory records, which covers 1992 to 2012, found no holdings in Mr. Wen's name. And it was not possible to determine from the documents whether he recused himself from any decisions that might have affected his relatives' holdings, or whether they received preferential treatment on investments. For much of his tenure, Wen Jiabao has been at the center of rumors and conjecture about efforts by his relatives to profit from his position. Yet until the review by The Times, there has been no detailed accounting of the family's riches. His wife, Zhang Beili, is one of the country's leading authorities on jewelry and gemstones and is an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. By managing state diamond companies that were later privatized, The Times found, she helped her relatives parlay their minority stakes into a billion-dollar portfolio of insurance, technology and real estate ventures. The couple's only son sold a technology company he started to the family of Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, for $10 million, and used another investment vehicle to establish New Horizon Capital, now one of China's biggest private equity firms, with partners like the government of Singapore, according to records and interviews with bankers. The prime minister's younger brother, Wen Jiahong, controls $200 million in assets, including wastewater treatment plants and recycling businesses, the records show. As prime minister, Mr. Wen has staked out a position as a populist and a reformer, someone whom the state-run media has nicknamed "the People's Premier" and "Grandpa Wen" because of his frequent outings to meet ordinary people, especially in moments of crisis like natural disasters. While it is unclear how much the prime minister knows about his family's wealth, State Department documents released by the WikiLeaks organization in 2010 included a cable that suggested Mr. Wen was aware of his relatives' business dealings and unhappy about them. "Wen is disgusted with his family's activities, but is either unable or unwilling to curtail them," a Chinese-born executive working at an American company in Shanghai told American diplomats, according to the 2007 cable. China's 'Diamond Queen' It is no secret in China's elite circles that the prime minister's wife, Zhang Beili, is rich, and that she has helped control the nation's jewelry and gem trade. But her lucrative diamond businesses became an off-the-charts success only as her husband moved into the country's top leadership ranks, the review of corporate and regulatory records by The Times found. A geologist with an expertise in gemstones, Ms. Zhang is largely unknown among ordinary Chinese. She rarely travels with the prime minister or appears with him, and there are few official photographs of the couple together. And while people who have worked with her say she has a taste for jade and fine diamonds, they say she usually dresses modestly, does not exude glamour and prefers to wield influence behind the scenes, much like the relatives of other senior leaders. The State Department documents released by WikiLeaks included a suggestion that Mr. Wen had once considered divorcing Ms. Zhang because she had exploited their relationship in her diamond trades. Taiwanese television reported in 2007 that Ms. Zhang had bought a pair of jade earrings worth about $275,000 at a Beijing trade show, though the source — a Taiwanese trader — later backed off the claim and Chinese government censors moved swiftly to block coverage of the subject in China, according to news reports at the time. "Her business activities are known to everyone in the leadership," said one banker who worked with relatives of Wen Jiabao. The banker said it was not unusual for her office to call upon businesspeople. "And if you get that call, how can you say no?" Zhang Beili first gained influence in the 1990s, while working as a regulator at the Ministry of Geology. At the time, China's jewelry market was still in its infancy. While her husband was serving in China's main leadership compound, known as Zhongnanhai, Ms. Zhang was setting industry standards in the jewelry and gem trade. She helped create the National Gemstone Testing Center in Beijing, and the Shanghai Diamond Exchange, two of the industry's most powerful institutions. In a country where the state has long dominated the marketplace, jewelry regulators often decided which companies could set up diamond-processing factories, and which would gain entry to the retail jewelry market. State regulators even formulated rules that required diamond sellers to buy certificates of authenticity for any diamond sold in China, from the government-run testing center in Beijing, which Ms. Zhang managed. As a result, when executives from Cartier or De Beers visited China with hopes of selling diamonds and jewelry here, they often went to visit Ms. Zhang, who became known as China's "diamond queen." "She's the most important person there," said Gaetano Cavalieri, president of the World Jewelry Confederation in Switzerland. "She was bridging relations between partners — Chinese and foreign partners." As early as 1992, people who worked with Ms. Zhang said, she had begun to blur the line between government official and businesswoman. As head of the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, she began investing the state company's money in start-ups. And by the time her husband was named vice premier, in 1998, she was busy setting up business ventures with friends and relatives. The state company she ran invested in a group of affiliated diamond companies, according to public records. Many of them were run by Ms. Zhang's relatives — or colleagues who had worked with her at the National Gemstone Testing Center. In 1993, for instance, the state company Ms. Zhang ran helped found Beijing Diamond, a big jewelry retailer. A year later, one of her younger brothers, Zhang Jianming, and two of her government colleagues personally acquired 80 percent of the company, according to shareholder registers. Beijing Diamond invested in Shenzhen Diamond, which was controlled by her brother-in-law, Wen Jiahong, the prime minister's younger brother. Among the successful undertakings was Sino-Diamond, a venture financed by the state-owned China Mineral and Gem Corporation, which she headed. The company had business ties with a state-owned company managed by another brother, Zhang Jiankun, who worked as an official in Jiaxing, Ms. Zhang's hometown, in Zhejiang Province. In the summer of 1999, after securing agreements to import diamonds from Russia and South Africa, Sino-Diamond went public, raising $50 million on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The offering netted Ms. Zhang's family about $8 million, according to corporate filings. Although she was never listed as a shareholder, former colleagues and business partners say Ms. Zhang's early diamond partnerships were the nucleus of a larger portfolio of companies she would later help her family and colleagues gain a stake in. The Times found no indication that Wen Jiabao used his political clout to influence the diamond companies his relatives invested in. But former business partners said that the family's success in diamonds, and beyond, was often bolstered with financial backing from wealthy businessmen who sought to curry favor with the prime minister's family. "After Wen became prime minister, his wife sold off some of her diamond investments and moved into new things," said a Chinese executive who did business with the family. He asked not to be named because of fear of government retaliation. Corporate records show that beginning in the late 1990s, a series of rich businessmen took turns buying up large stakes in the diamond companies, often from relatives of Mr. Wen, and then helped them reinvest in other lucrative ventures, like real estate and finance. According to corporate records and interviews, the businessmen often supplied accountants and office space to investment partnerships partly controlled by the relatives. "When they formed companies," said one businessman who set up a company with members of the Wen family, "Ms. Zhang stayed in the background. That's how it worked." The Only Son Late one evening early this year, the prime minister's only son, Wen Yunsong, was in the cigar lounge at Xiu, an upscale bar and lounge at the Park Hyatt in Beijing. He was having cocktails as Beijing's nouveau riche gathered around, clutching designer bags and wearing expensive business suits, according to two guests who were present. In China, the children of senior leaders are widely believed to be in a class of their own. Known as "princelings," they often hold Ivy League degrees, get V.I.P. treatment, and are even offered preferred pricing on shares in hot stock offerings. They are also known as people who can get things done in China's heavily regulated marketplace, where the state controls access. And in recent years, few princelings have been as bold as the younger Mr. Wen, who goes by the English name Winston and is about 40 years old. A Times review of Winston Wen's investments, and interviews with people who have known him for years, show that his deal-making has been extensive and lucrative, even by the standards of his princeling peers. State-run giants like China Mobile have formed start-ups with him. In recent years, Winston Wen has been in talks with Hollywood studios about a financing deal. Concerned that China does not have an elite boarding school for Chinese students, he recently hired the headmasters of Choate and Hotchkiss in Connecticut to oversee the creation of a $150 million private school now being built in the Beijing suburbs. Winston Wen and his wife, moreover, have stakes in the technology industry and an electric company, as well as an indirect stake in Union Mobile Pay, the government-backed online payment platform — all while living in the prime minister's residence, in central Beijing, according to corporate records and people familiar with the family's investments. "He's not shy about using his influence to get things done," said one venture capitalist who regularly meets with Winston Wen. The younger Mr. Wen declined to comment. But in a telephone interview, his wife, Yang Xiaomeng, said her husband had been unfairly criticized for his business dealings. "Everything that has been written about him has been wrong," she said. "He's really not doing that much business anymore." Winston Wen was educated in Beijing and then earned an engineering degree from the Beijing Institute of Technology. He went abroad and earned a master's degree in engineering materials from the University of Windsor, in Canada, and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., just outside Chicago. When he returned to China in 2000, he helped set up three successful technology companies in five years, according to people familiar with those deals. Two of them were sold to Hong Kong businessmen, one to the family of Li Ka-shing, one of the wealthiest men in Asia. Winston Wen's earliest venture, an Internet data services provider called Unihub Global, was founded in 2000 with $2 million in start-up capital, according to Hong Kong and Beijing corporate filings. Financing came from a tight-knit group of relatives and his mother's former colleagues from government and the diamond trade, as well as an associate of Cheng Yu-tung, patriarch of Hong Kong's second-wealthiest family. The firm's earliest customers were state-owned brokerage houses and Ping An, in which the Wen family has held a large financial stake. He made an even bolder move in 2005, by pushing into private equity when he formed New Horizon Capital with a group of Chinese-born classmates from Northwestern. The firm quickly raised $100 million from investors, including SBI Holdings, a division of the Japanese group SoftBank, and Temasek, the Singapore government investment fund. Under Mr. Wen, New Horizon established itself as a leading private equity firm, investing in biotech, solar, wind and construction equipment makers. Since it began operations, the firm has returned about $430 million to investors, a fourfold profit, according to SBI Holdings. "Their first fund was dynamite," said Kathleen Ng, editor of Asia Private Equity Review, an industry publication in Hong Kong. "And that allowed them to raise a lot more money." Today, New Horizon has more than $2.5 billion under management. Some of Winston Wen's deal-making, though, has attracted unwanted attention for the prime minister. In 2010, when New Horizon acquired a 9 percent stake in a company called Sihuan Pharmaceuticals just two months before its public offering, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange said the late-stage investment violated its rules and forced the firm to return the stake. Still, New Horizon made a $46.5 million profit on the sale. Soon after, New Horizon announced that Winston Wen had handed over day-to-day operations and taken up a position at the China Satellite Communications Corporation, a state-owned company that has ties to the Chinese space program. He has since been named chairman. The Tycoons In the late 1990s, Duan Weihong was managing an office building and several other properties in Tianjin, the prime minister's hometown in northern China, through her property company, Taihong. She was in her 20s and had studied at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Around 2002, Ms. Duan went into business with several relatives of Wen Jiabao, transforming her property company into an investment vehicle of the same name. The company helped make Ms. Duan very wealthy. It is not known whether Ms. Duan, now 43, is related to the prime minister. In a series of interviews, she first said she did not know any members of the Wen family, but later described herself as a friend of the family and particularly close to Zhang Beili, the prime minister's wife. As happened to a handful of other Chinese entrepreneurs, Ms. Duan's fortunes soared as she teamed up with the relatives and their network of friends and colleagues, though she described her relationship with them involving the shares in Ping An as existing on paper only and having no financial component. Ms. Duan and other wealthy businesspeople — among them, six billionaires from across China — have been instrumental in getting multimillion-dollar ventures off the ground and, at crucial times, helping members of the Wen family set up investment vehicles to profit from them, according to investment bankers who have worked with all parties. Established in Tianjin, Taihong had spectacular returns. In 2002, the company paid about $65 million to acquire a 3 percent stake in Ping An before its initial public offering, according to corporate records and Ms. Duan's graduate school thesis. Five years later, those shares were worth $3.7 billion The company's Hong Kong affiliate, Great Ocean, also run by Ms. Duan, later formed a joint venture with the Beijing government and acquired a huge tract of land adjacent to Capital International Airport. Today, the site is home to a sprawling cargo and logistics center. Last year, Great Ocean sold its 53 percent stake in the project to a Singapore company for nearly $400 million. That deal and several other investments, in luxury hotels, Beijing villa developments and the Hong Kong-listed BBMG, one of China's largest building materials companies, have been instrumental to Ms. Duan's accumulation of riches, according to The Times's review of corporate records. The review also showed that over the past decade there have been nearly three dozen individual shareholders of Taihong, many of whom are either relatives of Wen Jiabao or former colleagues of his wife. The other wealthy entrepreneurs who have worked with the prime minister's relatives declined to comment for this article. Ms. Duan strongly denied having financial ties to the prime minister or his relatives and said she was only trying to avoid publicity by listing others as owning Ping An shares. "The money I invested in Ping An was completely my own," said Ms. Duan, who has served as a member of the Ping An board of supervisors. "Everything I did was legal." Another wealthy partner of the Wen relatives has been Cheng Yu-tung, who controls the Hong Kong conglomerate New World Development and is one of the richest men in Asia, worth about $15 billion, according to Forbes. In the 1990s, New World was seeking a foothold in mainland China for a sister company that specializes in high-end retail jewelry. The retail chain, Chow Tai Fook, opened its first store in China in 1998. Mr. Cheng and his associates invested in a diamond venture backed by the relatives of Mr. Wen and co-invested with them in an array of corporate entities, including Sino-Life, National Trust and Ping An, according to records and interviews with some of those involved. Those investments by Mr. Cheng are now worth at least $5 billion, according to the corporate filings. Chow Tai Fook, the jewelry chain, has also flourished. Today, China accounts for 60 percent of the chain's $4.2 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Cheng, 87, could not be reached for comment. Calls to New World Development were not returned. Fallout for Premier In the winter of 2007, just before he began his second term as prime minister, Wen Jiabao called for new measures to fight corruption, particularly among high-ranking officials. "Leaders at all levels of government should take the lead in the antigraft drive," he told a gathering of high-level party members in Beijing. "They should strictly ensure that their family members, friends and close subordinates do not abuse government influence." The speech was consistent with the prime minister's earlier drive to toughen disclosure rules for public servants, and to require senior officials to reveal their family assets. Whether Mr. Wen has made such disclosures for his own family is unclear, since the Communist Party does not release such information. Even so, many of the holdings found by The Times would not need to be disclosed under the rules since they are not held in the name of the prime minister's immediate family — his wife, son and daughter. Eighty percent of the $2.7 billion in assets identified in The Times's investigation and verified by the outside auditors were held by, among others, the prime minister's mother, his younger brother, two brothers-in-law, a sister-in-law, daughter-in-law and the parents of his son's wife, none of whom is subject to party disclosure rules. The total value of the relatives' stake in Ping An is based on calculations by The Times that were confirmed by the auditors. The total includes shares held by the relatives that were sold between 2004 and 2006, and the value of the remaining shares in late 2007, the last time the holdings were publicly disclosed. Legal experts said that determining the precise value of holdings in China could be difficult because there might be undisclosed side agreements about the true beneficiaries. "Complex corporate structures are not necessarily insidious," said Curtis J. Milhaupt, a Columbia University Law School professor who has studied China's corporate group structures. "But in a system like China's, where corporate ownership and political power are closely intertwined, shell companies magnify questions about who owns what and where the money came from." Among the investors in the Wen family ventures are longtime business associates, former colleagues and college classmates, including Yu Jianming, who attended Northwestern with Winston Wen, and Zhang Yuhong, a longtime colleague of Wen Jiahong, the prime minister's younger brother. The associates did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Revelations about the Wen family's wealth could weaken him politically. Next month, at the 18th Party Congress in Beijing, the Communist Party is expected to announce a new generation of leaders. But the selection process has already been marred by one of the worst political scandals in decades, the downfall of Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party boss, who was vying for a top position. In Beijing, Wen Jiabao is expected to step down as prime minister because he has reached retirement age. Political analysts say that even after leaving office he could remain a strong backstage political force. But documents showing that his relatives amassed a fortune during his tenure could diminish his standing, the analysts said. "This will affect whatever residual power Wen has," said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese leadership and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. The prime minister's supporters say he has not personally benefited from his extended family's business dealings, and may not even be knowledgeable about the extent of them. Last March, the prime minister hinted that he was at least aware of the persistent rumors about his relatives. During a nationally televised news conference in Beijing, he insisted that he had "never pursued personal gain" in public office. "I have the courage to face the people and to face history," he said in an emotional session. "There are people who will appreciate what I have done, but there are also people who will criticize me. Ultimately, history will have the final say."

2012 US election : Why Are States So Red and Blue?

Why Are States So Red and Blue? By STEVEN PINKER Regardless of who wins the presidential election, we already know now how most of the electoral map will be colored, which will be close to the way it has been colored for decades. Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality. But why do ideology and geography cluster so predictably? Why, if you know a person's position on gay marriage, can you predict that he or she will want to increase the military budget and decrease the tax rate, and is more likely to hail from Wyoming or Georgia than from Minnesota or Vermont? To be sure, some of these affinities may spring from coalitions of convenience. Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972. But there may also be coherent mindsets beneath the diverse opinions that hang together in right-wing and left-wing belief systems. Political philosophers have long known that the ideologies are rooted in different conceptions of human nature - a conflict of visions so fundamental as to align opinions on dozens of issues that would seem to have nothing in common. Conservative thinkers like the economist Thomas Sowell and the Times columnist David Brooks have noted that the political right has a Tragic Vision of human nature, in which people are permanently limited in morality, knowledge and reason. Human beings are perennially tempted by aggression, which can be prevented only by the deterrence of a strong military, of citizens resolved to defend themselves and of the prospect of harsh criminal punishment. No central planner is wise or knowledgeable enough to manage an entire economy, which is better left to the invisible hand of the market, in which intelligence is distributed across a network of hundreds of millions of individuals implicitly transmitting information about scarcity and abundance through the prices they negotiate. Humanity is always in danger of backsliding into barbarism, so we should respect customs in sexuality, religion and public propriety, even if no one can articulate their rationale, because they are time-tested workarounds for our innate shortcomings. The left, in contrast, has a Utopian Vision, which emphasizes the malleability of human nature, puts customs under the microscope, articulates rational plans for a better society and seeks to implement them through public institutions. Cognitive scientists have recently enriched this theory with details of how the right-left divide is implemented in people's cognitive and moral intuitions. The linguist George Lakoff suggests that the political right conceives of society as a family ruled by a strict father, whereas the left thinks of it as a family guided by a nurturant parent. The metaphors may be corollaries of the tragic and utopian visions, since different parenting practices are called for depending on whether you think of children as noble savages or as nasty, brutish and short. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt notes that rightists and leftists invest their moral intuitions in different sets of concerns: conservatives place a premium on deference to authority, conformity to norms and the purity and sanctity of the body; liberals restrict theirs to fairness, the provision of care and the avoidance of harm. Once again, the difference may flow from the clashing conceptions of human nature. If individuals are inherently flawed, their behavior must be restrained by custom, authority and sacred values.  If they are capable of wisdom and reason, they can determine for themselves what is fair, harmful or hurtful. But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don't explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a "culture of honor." Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. It can be seen in their laws (like capital punishment and a stand-your-ground right to self-defense), in their customs (like paddling children in schools and volunteering for military service), even in their physiological reactions to trivial insults. Admittedly, it's hard to believe that today's Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors.  But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy. All societies must deal with the dilemma famously pointed out by Hobbes: in the absence of government, people are tempted to attack one another out of greed, fear and vengeance. European societies, over the centuries, solved this problem as their kings imposed law and order on a medieval patchwork of fiefs ravaged by feuding knights. The happy result was a thirty-fivefold reduction in their homicide rate from the Middle Ages to the present. Once the monarchs pacified the people, the people then had to rein in the monarchs, who had been keeping the peace with arbitrary edicts and gruesome public torture-executions. Beginning in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, governments were forced to implement democratic procedures, humanitarian reforms and the protection of human rights. When the first American settlers fanned out from the coasts and other settled areas, they found themselves in anarchy all over again. The historian David Courtwright has shown that there is considerable truth to the cinematic clichés of the Wild West and the mountainous South of Davy Crocket, Daniel Boone and the Hatfields and McCoys. The nearest sheriff might be 90 miles away, and a man had to defend himself with firearms and a reputation for toughness. In the all-male enclaves of cattle and mining towns, young men besotted with honor and alcohol constantly challenged one another's mettle and responded to these challenges, pushing rates of violence through the roof. Another cliché of the cowboy movies also had an element of historical truth. As more women moved west, they worked to end the lifestyle of brawling, boozing and whoring they found there, joining forces with the officials in charge of the rowdy settlements. They found a natural ally in the church, with its co-ed membership, norms of temperance and Sunday morning discipline.  By the time the government consolidated its control over the West (and recall that the "closing of the frontier," marking the end of American anarchy, took place just more than a century ago), the norms of self-defense through masculine honor, and the restraint of ruffianism by women and church, had taken root. But then why, once stable government did arrive, did it not lay claim to the monopoly on violence that is the very definition of government? The historian Pieter Spierenburg has suggested that "democracy came too soon to America," namely, before the government had disarmed its citizens. Since American governance was more or less democratic from the start, the people could choose not to cede to it the safeguarding of their personal safety but to keep it as their prerogative. The unhappy result of this vigilante justice is that American homicide rates are far higher than those of Europe, and those of the South higher than those of the North. If this history is right, the American political divide may have arisen not so much from different conceptions of human nature as from differences in how best to tame it. The North and coasts are extensions of Europe and continued the government-driven civilizing process that had been gathering momentum since the Middle Ages. The South and West preserved the culture of honor that emerged in the anarchic territories of the growing country, tempered by their own civilizing forces of churches, families and temperance. Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined."

Wall of Shame and Wen Jiabao

'Wall of shame' symbolises China's corruption woes By Martin Patience BBC News, Beijing via http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19843176 It is China's wall of shame - dozens of portraits of officials jailed for corruption in recent years. They are all painted in a rosy pink, the colour of China's 100 yuan bill as a symbol of corruption, and hang on the wall of a small studio in Beijing. The artist, Zhang Bingjian, says he began the project three years ago after watching a report on Chinese state TV about officials taking bribes. He said he was angered about the level of corruption. "Without money in China, you are going to have a problem," he said. "People have lost faith. They don't believe in anything but money. Money talks here." 1,600 portraits Mr Zhang employs several assistants, who scour the internet looking for cases when officials have been jailed for corruption. Since the project began, Mr Zhang says he has commissioned over 1,600 portraits, and there appears to be no end in sight. China's next generation of leaders will start assuming power at the 18th Party Congress next month. Continue reading the main story "Start Quote It's impossible to tackle corruption within the system without having independent bodies" Willy Lam China analyst Growing public anger over official corruption will pose one of their greatest challenges during the next decade. The scale of the problem is stunning. Last year, the People's Bank of China mistakenly released a report on its website which was then quickly taken down. The report said that between 16,000 and 18,000 government officials and employees of state-owned enterprises had smuggled more than $120bn (£75bn) overseas between the mid-1990s and 2008. That works out to more than $6m per official. Earlier this year, Premier Wen Jiabao warned that corruption was the greatest threat to the rule of the Communist Party. The Chinese public read headlines about anti-corruption campaigns almost every day. Last month Bo Xilai, the politician at the heart of China's biggest political scandal in years, was expelled from the Communist Party. Among the charges he faces are that he took "huge" bribes. But many Chinese see these types of cases as more to do with political infighting than actually about corruption. Public accountability The portraits have a rosy pink hue, which is the colour of China's 100 yuan bill Increasingly however Chinese internet users are playing an active role. In August, an official was photographed smiling at the scene of a fatal bus accident. Bloggers were infuriated by what they saw as his callousness and started investigating. Pictures of him were posted at various functions and meetings wearing expensive watches - too expensive to be bought on an official salary. The authorities later announced that he had been sacked. While low-level and mid-level officials are often fair game, the finances of top leaders and their families are strictly off-limits to the Chinese media, apart from in a few high-profile cases. In a system where officials are only accountable to the party and not to the public, it is very hard to see how corruption can be rooted out. "It's impossible to tackle corruption within the system without having independent bodies," said Hong-Kong-based China analyst, Willy Lam. "Top officials have stopped investigations and refuse calls for other senior officials to publish the assets of their families." 'No choice' Lu Siyuan, 5, wants to attend a good state school in Beijing Many of the thousands of incidents of unrest in China every month have their roots in corruption - such as land deals by local officials. Mr Lam believes that unless China's leaders make meaningful political reforms, they will face "rising social unrest". In a society where corruption is rife, many Chinese have come to accept it as part of daily life. They know they will often have to pay bribes to get good medical treatment or win lawsuits in the courts. Chen Wei wants her five-year-old son, Lu Siyuan, to go to a good state school in Beijing. But in order to ensure a place for him, she says that she would have to pay more than $10,000 in bribes to education officials. "This is the cost we face," she said. "We have no choice." Like many here, Ms Chen wants China's new generation of leaders to tackle corruption. If they do not, they will be storing up trouble for the future.

At societie,pacific place,jkt


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The lost art of letter-writing

The lost art of letter-writing

http://gu.com/p/3ba8n

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Perception

http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1651415

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Obama and Romney's Family

Obama calls Romney ‘all over the map’ in foreign policy debate

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/blogs/obama-presses-national-security-debate-advantage-calls-romney-024036925--election.html?.b=index&.ts=1350975624&.intl=US&.lang=en

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mainan tradisional Sunda

egrang, kelom batok, rorodaan, engkle/sondah, sorodot gaplok, perepet jengkol, gatrik, gasing, bedil jepret, dan sumpit.

Quote

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice. -Spinoza

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"Nothing bugs Robert Kovacik"

did u see the cockroach?

Grandson of Kim Jong Il talks about school, life outside North Korea

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/blogs/sideshow/grandson-kim-jong-il-talks-school-life-outside-193355523.html?.b=index&.ts=1350750871&.intl=US&.lang=en

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Who is responsible for disenchantment – the media or politicians?