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Sunday, January 27, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
German business confidence up more than expected
BERLIN (AP) ? German business confidence has increased more than expected this month as hopes rise that Europe's largest economy will quickly put behind it a weak patch and benefit from an easing in the continent's financial turmoil, a closely watched survey showed Friday.
The Ifo institute's confidence index, a key indicator of where the German economy is headed, rose to 104.2 points in January from 102.4 in December.
The third consecutive increase lifted the index to its highest level since last June and was better than the reading of 103 points economists had predicted. Managers' view of their current situation improved somewhat and the outlook for the next half-year improved significantly.
In particular, Ifo said in a statement, "optimism is returning" in the important manufacturing sector. "The German economy made a promising start to the new year."
The German economy grew a modest 0.7 percent last year, and officials estimate it shrank by as much as 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three-month period.
But the country's central bank, the Bundesbank, said earlier this week that it is already showing signs of picking up as improving export hopes combine with a healthy, stable labor market to brighten the picture.
"The contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012 seems to be short-lived," with fears of a eurozone breakup receding and prospects improving for the U.S. and China, said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING in Brussels.
Timo Klein, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Frankfurt, said that "the dampening impact from the troubled economies in southern Europe remains a restraining factor but will not prevent a strengthening tendency of the German economy."
The latest Ifo reading indicates that, after the fourth-quarter contraction, the economy already has rebounded in the current quarter, Klein said. First-quarter growth would prevent Germany following several other eurozone countries into recession.
Ifo's survey is based on responses from about 7,000 companies in various business sectors. Earlier this week, a separate survey of investor confidence showed a much sharper than expected rise.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-business-confidence-more-expected-101508878--finance.html
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Recipe for vegetarian steamed dumplings with sweet-and-sour sauce
Whether or not Chinese New Year marks a major event in your life, it?s easy to love many of the foods associated with it.
Dumplings are a traditional choice for the holiday, which this year begins Feb. 10. And while there are seemingly endless variations on the simple theme of stuffing rounds of dough with something savory and delicious, the basic steamed dumpling is among my favourites. Not the least because it is incredibly weeknight friendly.
I always start by using purchased wonton skins as the dough. These skins, which are available in various shapes and sizes, are widely available, inexpensive, need no prep, cook quickly and are easy to work with.
For the filling, you can use virtually anything you like. Seasoned ground meats (pork, poultry or even beef all work quite nicely) are wonderful, especially when combined with diced vegetables, such as carrots and onion. The only trick is to make certain the ingredients aren?t watery, as this will ruin the texture of the dumplings.
If your filling contains many vegetables, it?s a good idea to give them a quick stir-fry before adding them to the mixture. This helps remove excess water. For smaller amounts of vegetables, this isn?t necessary. You?ll also want to opt for lean ground meats for the same reason.
For this dumpling recipe, I decided to go vegetarian and used purchased seasoned and baked tofu in the filling. If you?d rather use meat, substitute an equal amount of diced or ground meat and skip the food processing step. You?ll also need to steam for a bit longer (use an instant thermometer to check the progress and ensure you hit a safe cooking temperature).
For this recipe, I use a simple fold-and-pinch method of forming the dumplings. It requires no special equipment or skill. But if you make a lot of dumplings, consider getting a dumpling press sold for just a few dollars at Asian markets. These clamshell-style presses neatly fold and crimp the dumplings into attractive packets.
VEGETARIAN STEAMED DUMPLINGS WITH SWEET-AND-SOUR SAUCE
Seasoned baked tofu is sold with the other refrigerated Asian items, usually in the grocer?s produce section.
Start to finish: 45 minutes
Makes 48 dumplings
For the dumplings:
12 ounces seasoned baked tofu, cut into cubes
6 scallions, ends trimmed
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, leaves and stems
1/2 cup finely grated carrots
1 whole egg or 2 egg whites, beaten
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon hot sauce
12-ounce package 3-inch square wonton wrappers
For the sweet-and-sour sauce:
1/2 cup rice vinegar (cider vinegar can be substituted)
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons apricot jam
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
In a food processor, combine the tofu, scallions, garlic, cilantro, carrots, egg, hoisin, soy sauce, sesame oil and hot sauce. Pulse until the tofu is finely chopped, but not ground, about ten 1-second pulses.
One at a time, place 1 teaspoon of the mixture in the centre of each wonton wrapper. Dunk your fingers in water, then use them to wet the edges of the wrapper. Gather the edges of the wrapper over the filling, pinching them together to form a small bundle. Repeat with the remaining filling and wrappers.
In a large saute pan, bring about 1 inch of water to a boil. Set a bamboo or other steamer basket over the water, then lightly coat it with cooking spray.
Working in batches if necessary, arrange the dumplings in the steamer (they should not touch), then cover and steam for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the sweet-and-sour sauce. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the vinegar, brown sugar, jam, ketchup, soy sauce and hot sauce. Bring to a simmer. In a small glass, mix the cornstarch and water, then add to the saucepan. Simmer for another 2 minutes, or until slightly thickened.
Serve the dumplings with sweet-and-sour sauce on the side for dipping.
Nutrition information per dumpling: 50 calories; 10 calories from fat (20 per cent of total calories); 1 g fat (0 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 5 mg cholesterol; 9 g carbohydrate; 0 g fibre; 4 g sugar; 2 g protein; 135 mg sodium.
Source: http://o.canada.com/2013/01/25/recipe-for-vegetarian-steamed-dumplings-with-sweet-and-sour-sauce/
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H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online (Tax Year 2012)
No personal tax preparation software/website publisher has a range of offerings as broad as H&R Block, understandably. Industry veteran Intuit is a relative upstart compared to H&R Block, which has been providing tax services since 1955. The company employs more than 100,000 tax professionals worldwide and has prepared more than 550 million tax returns worldwide. This year, we've reviewed H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online .
H&R Block's digital presence is considerable. It has competed alongside Intuit and 2nd Story Software for years, first as a publisher of personal tax preparation software, and then as the host for matching websites. You can use these products entirely on your own, or you can ask questions along the way of H&R Block staff. You can prepare your return and then have a company representative review it, correct as necessary and sign it as the preparer of record.
And you can participate in a videoconference remotely with a representative, just as if you'd walked into a physical H&R Block office. Starting with the 2012 tax year, you will be able to do the latter on your iPad, and you can maintain a year-round conversation with H&R Block experts, even saving relevant documents to a personal portal as you acquire them, so that you don't have such a mad scramble at prep time.
Interpreting the Arcane
Like TurboTax?and TaxACT, H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online helps you complete your 1040 and its related forms and schedules in a fashion that's much easier and more understandable than sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of paper forms and a lot of apprehension.
Over the years, H&R Block has continued to hone its web-based version of an in-person sit-down with a company representative. The live interview that you do when you visit one of the company's offices translates well to the approach that all tax preparation websites take: They ask you questions and provide fields or checklists or other conventions for your answers, and then they drop those answers in the correct fields on the actual IRS forms and schedules.
When you've answered all of the questions about your federal return, the service can use that information to work on any state returns required. The website does all of the calculating, and it combs your return for errors and omissions, insisting on correct responses before it lets you print the return or file it electronically.
Navigation is simple and straightforward. You advance through the interview by clicking "Back" and "Next" buttons (but the latter doesn't work unless you've completed the current screen, a departure from what competitors allow). A series of buttons in the upper right corner takes you to a chronological, interactive index of the site's topics; a utility that produces a link to the appropriate form when you enter a topic (new in the online version); your "bookmarks" (a list of pages where you've indicated you're missing information); and site utilities.
Help From the Pros
All of the tax sites we reviewed this year try to do three things primarily: help you fill out your forms as completely and accurately as you can; try to lower your tax obligation as much as is legally possible; and move you through the preparation process as quickly and painlessly as it can. So H&R Block, like its competitors, begins by asking for personal information (names, Social Security numbers, etc.) and then presenting you with a comprehensive list of the issues that are addressed within the IRS Form 1040 and its accompanying forms and schedules (employment wages, investments, interest income, mortgage interest, medical expenses, etc.). You check the ones that apply to you, and the step-by-step interview process begins.
As you go, H&R Block provides support for the challenging task. Some words and phrases within the site's interview questions are hyperlinked, and clicking on them opens a window containing a more complete explanation of what's needed there. Unlike in other sites, you can't click directly from there to get additional assistance, but a vertical pane to the right contains commonly-asked questions and answers about the current topic.
If that's not thorough enough for you, you can enter a search term in the box provided, which opens the Help Center. This window consists of a list of related help topics. There are often dozens of them, and they're not necessarily prioritized for general interest users?some are state-specific, and there's a lot of duplication. And many are answered in a sentence or two. You may have to do excessive clicking and reading to get your answer. Every other site offers more in-depth, easily-accessible, context-sensitive help.
When you click the "Go" button under "Need program help?" you're directed to a window that connects you to either a live chat session or a live phone call with an H&R Block support agent. This is for technical site support only. If you have a tax-related question, you only get one shot at a live chat, email and phone call, and then fees apply for each. This is in sharp contrast to TurboTax, which offers unlimited contact for free, and TaxACT, which charges $7.95 for unrestricted access. There's also online help and a community of users and experts asking and answering questions.
An Unusual Extra
H&R Block is making its huge stable of tax professionals available year-round now for ongoing support. It's giving customers their own private portal, where they can upload documentation for the current year's taxes. This is a great idea, and will be very helpful when prep time rolls around. The company will also provide tax law updates and advice from the pros on these individual sites.
H&R Block's online tax preparation sites have always been rated highly in our reviews. The variety of ways that you can interact with the company's experts is greater than what's offered by any competitor. But its online help tools pale in comparison to its competitors', and individualized tax help is prohibitively expensive.
If you've been using H&R Block At Home Deluxe or one of its sister sites (Free, Basic, and Premium) and you like it, there's no reason not to keep using it. It's an excellent site, backed up by the best-known name in tax preparation. But for the same price, you can get equally competent 1040 coverage with better onsite help and free remote access to tax experts through TurboTax Deluxe Online, our tax-prep Editors' Choice?the site I'll recommend this year to anyone who asks.
More Accouting and Tax Reviews:
??? H&R Block At Home Deluxe Online (Tax Year 2012)
??? Outright Plus
??? QuickBooks Premier Edition 2013
??? PayPal (for iPhone)
??? Pageonce (for Android)
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/US573KU_Y5s/0,2817,2414634,00.asp
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Friday, January 25, 2013
Dung beetles guided by Milky Way
24 January 2013
Last updated at 12:34 ET
They may be down in the dirt but it seems dung beetles also have their eyes on the stars.
Scientists have shown how the insects will use the Milky Way to orientate themselves as they roll their balls of muck along the ground.
Humans, birds and seals are all known to navigate by the stars. But this could be the first example of an insect doing so.
The study by Marie Dacke is reported in the journal Current Biology.
"The dung beetles are not necessarily rolling with the Milky Way or 90 degrees to it; they can go at any angle to this band of light in the sky. They use it as a reference," the Lund University, Sweden, researcher told BBC News.
Dung beetles like to run in straight lines. When they find a pile of droppings, they shape a small ball and start pushing it away to a safe distance where they can eat it, usually underground.
Getting a good bearing is important because unless the insect rolls a direct course, it risks turning back towards the dung pile where another beetle will almost certainly try to steal its prized ball.
Dr Dacke had previously shown that dung beetles were able to keep a straight line by taking cues from the Sun, the Moon, and even the pattern of polarised light formed around these light sources.
But it was the animals' capacity to maintain course even on clear Moonless nights that intrigued the researcher.
So the native South African took the insects (Scarabaeus satyrus) into the Johannesburg planetarium where she could control the type of star fields a beetle might see overhead.
Importantly, she put the beetles in a container with blackened walls to be sure the animals were not using information from landmarks on the horizon, which in the wild might be trees, for example.
The beetles performed best when confronted with a perfect starry sky projected on to the planetarium dome, but coped just as well when shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Dr Dacke thinks it is the bar more than the points of light that is important.
"These beetles have compound eyes," she told the BBC. "It's known that crabs, which also have compound eyes, can see a few of the brightest stars in the sky. Maybe the beetles can do this as well, but we don't know that yet; it's something we're looking at. However, when we show them just the bright stars in the sky, they get lost. So it's not them that the beetles are using to orientate themselves."
And indeed, in the field, Dr Dacke has seen beetles run in to trouble when the Milky Way briefly lies flat on the horizon at particular times of the year.
The question is how many other animals might use similar night-time navigation.
It has been suggested some frogs and even spiders are using stars for orientation. The Lund researcher is sure there will be many more creatures out there doing it; scientists just need to go look.
"I think night-flying moths and night-flying locusts could benefit from using a star compass similar to the one that the dung beetles are using," she said.
But for the time being, Dr Dacke is concentrating on the dung beetle. She is investigating the strange dance the creature does on top of its ball of muck. The hypothesis is that this behaviour marks the moment the beetle takes its bearings.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150721#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Pentagon: Budget crisis could hurt war effort
FILE - This Nov. 2, 2009, file photo shows Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter standing in front of a MRAP all terrain vehicle (M-ATV) at the Pentagon in Washington. The Afghan war effort eventually would be harmed by across-the-board budget cuts, even as the Obama administration intends to shield the military's combat mission from the reductions, Carter said Friday, Jan. 25, 2012. "There will be second-order effects on the war," Carter said in an interview in his office with a small group of reporters. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - This Nov. 2, 2009, file photo shows Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter standing in front of a MRAP all terrain vehicle (M-ATV) at the Pentagon in Washington. The Afghan war effort eventually would be harmed by across-the-board budget cuts, even as the Obama administration intends to shield the military's combat mission from the reductions, Carter said Friday, Jan. 25, 2012. "There will be second-order effects on the war," Carter said in an interview in his office with a small group of reporters. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Afghan war effort eventually would be harmed by across-the-board budget cuts, even as the Obama administration intends to shield the military's combat mission from the reductions, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Friday.
"There will be second-order effects on the war," Ashton Carter, the deputy defense secretary, said in an interview in his office with a small group of reporters. Deferred maintenance on weapons and other equipment, for example, will eventually erode the combat fitness of military units deploying to Afghanistan, he said.
The U.S. has about 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, with an undetermined number of withdrawals expected this year and in 2014.
The administration holds out hope that Congress will come up with a deficit-cutting mechanism to replace the across-the-board spending cuts due to take effect March 1, but Carter suggested that hopes are not high.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have repeatedly warned that the threatened defense cuts, amounting to about $50 billion this budget year, would hurt national security. Carter said he feared that the message has not been heard widely enough in Congress and across the country.
If the cuts take effect in March, hundreds of thousands of Pentagon civilian employees will face furloughs and reduced paychecks by April, Carter said. They would lose one day of work per week for the remainder of the budget year, which ends in September, he said.
"This is painful to us," Carter said.
The Pentagon has about 800,000 civilian employees; they have not yet been officially notified of furloughs. Carter said the furloughs would be expected to save $5 billion. No military positions will be cut, he said.
Carter said the Pentagon already is eliminating all 46,000 of its temporary civilian workers in anticipation of budget cuts.
Carter also disclosed that he will remain on the job as deputy defense secretary in President Barack Obama's second term. He said Obama had called him after nominating Chuck Hagel to be his next defense secretary, asking Carter to remain.
"I agreed to do that, and I'm enthusiastic about doing that," he said, adding that he believes Hagel will be a good Pentagon chief.
Carter had been mentioned as a possible Obama choice for energy secretary.
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Apple Says Fewer Illegal Teens Now Building Your iPads
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