Avril Lavigne Files for Divorce

So much for her happy ending.

Avril Lavigne has filed for divorce from husband Deryck Whibley, according to TMZ.

According to the documents obtained by TMZ, Lavigne, 25, cited irreconcilable differences for the end of their three-year marriage. The “Complicated” and “My Happy Ending” singer lists their official separation as Sept. 4. Lavigne did not ask for spousal support and indicated she does not want to have to pay Whibley any money.

Avril Lavigne and Deryck Whibley split

“I am grateful for our time together, and I am grateful and blessed for our remaining friendship … Deryck and I are separating and moving forward on a positive note,” Lavigne said in a message posted last month on her Web site.
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Healthcare triumph gives way to heightened battle

Lawmakers, insurers and unions start scrambling to protect their interests before final House and Senate votes. Kicking things off is a full-page ad in which unions reject a tax on ‘Cadillac’ plans.

Reporting from Washington – The battle over healthcare entered a new, more frenzied stage Wednesday, as lawmakers and powerful interest groups jockeyed for advantage now that most believe some form of an overhaul will ultimately be signed into law.

The Senate Finance Committee’s passage Tuesday of a sweeping healthcare bill — with the support of all of its Democratic members, plus Republican Olympia J. Snowe of Maine — offered powerful evidence that a moderate legislative blueprint can command a majority in the Senate with at least token GOP support. Passage of a major bill by the House also is considered increasingly likely.

But that success has spawned a furious scramble among insurers, labor unions and others to protect their interests in the weeks before the House and Senate begin voting on their final healthcare bills. The maneuvering increasingly has turned into a zero-sum game among groups that for much of the year had appeared to work together to advance the healthcare overhaul. Now, any financial gain by one group will likely correspond to losses by the others.
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Paperweight

A lightweight battery that could be used to identify and track objects

MANY an engineer has dreamed of making a battery as light, thin and flexible as paper. Such a device would dramatically trim the weight and dimensions of whatever it powered. Now Albert Mihranyan of Uppsala University in Sweden and his colleagues have built a battery that is, in essence, made of paper. It is lightweight and slim, and although still unsuitable for everyday use, could be employed to trace products supplied to shops or baggage passing through airports.

Batteries work by electrochemistry. Each contains two electrodes (an anode and a cathode) immersed in an electrolyte. A lithium-ion battery, the sort that powers mobile phones and laptop computers, typically has an anode made of carbon, a cathode made of lithium cobalt oxide and an electrolyte of a lithium salt in an organic solvent. When the battery is being charged, electrons are pumped into the cathode. That forces lithium ions to move away from it and into the anode. When the battery is being used, drawing the current pulls the lithium ions out of the anode and back to the cathode.
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Slim pickings, no appetite

Constrained lenders and wary borrowers explain falling levels of credit in America

THE worst may be over for America’s financial markets, but they are still abnormal. Bill Dudley, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, captured the mood in a recent speech, bluntly titled “A bit better, but very far from best”. In a survey released this week, members of the National Association of Business Economics said markets would continue to drag on economic growth until at least mid-2010.

For many the big question is whether a lack of credit is holding back America’s nascent recovery. In a sign of easing conditions, usage of the Fed’s special liquidity facilities has fallen markedly and the central bank is gradually winding down its asset purchases. Securitisation markets are thawing, with volumes approaching pre-crisis levels in credit-card debt and car loans—though not in mortgages, which remain dependent on government support.

But at the same time the overall level of credit is dropping. Bank lending expanded in the thick of the crisis as companies tapped pre-agreed credit lines. But it has since fallen back sharply, from $7.14 trillion in May to $6.78 trillion in September, with the decline accelerating recently. Is this down to a reluctance to lend, or to borrow?
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Britain to send more troops to Afghanistan

LONDON, England (CNN) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown is increasing British troop levels in Afghanistan to 9,500 — an increase of 500, he announced Wednesday.

“We will now move further and faster with our strategy” of training Afghan forces to take responsibility for the country’s security, he said.

The British have the second-largest contingent in Afghanistan, after the United States, which has about 65,000 — including 31,800 operating as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.

Brown said the troop increase was contingent upon other countries also providing more boots on the ground, the Afghans stepping up their commitment to their own security, and the British troops being properly equipped.
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Wi-fi ‘to get a whole lot easier’

The world of wi-fi is to become a whole lot easier thanks to a major technology upgrade, says an industry group.

The Wi-Fi Alliance said it would soon finish work on a new specification called Wi-Fi Direct.

It will let wi-fi devices like phones and laptops connect to one another without joining a traditional network.

The Wi-Fi Alliance – whose members include Intel, Apple and Cisco – hopes devices with the new technology will be on the market by the middle of 2010.

Owners of devices without Wi-Fi Direct will be able to upgrade through a software download, says the technology consortium.

The Wi-Fi Alliance’s marketing director, Kelly Davis-Felner, told BBC News: “This is going to be a quick and convenient way to use wi-fi in future to print, synch, share and display.

“The consumer is going to experience this as a very easy-to-use mechanism that will be quite seamless.”
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Dow Jones breaks through 10,000

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped the 10,000 mark for the first time in a year.

World markets were boosted by the news that US bank JP Morgan Chase reported a better-than-expected profit in the July-to-September quarter.

The Dow closed up 144.8 at 10,015.86, its highest since October 2008.

But correspondents say the Dow is still far off its all time highs and the US economy has a long way to go before there is real recovery.

Earlier, European markets had also closed higher, with banking stocks leading the way up.

‘Largely psychological’

The BBC’s Michelle Fleury in New York says that a year ago major banks were struggling under the weight of huge credit losses and the US administration was doing its best to avoid an all out collapse of the financial system.
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The long climb

The world economy is recovering from financial disaster. But it will not return to normal as we know it, says Simon Cox

NEWPORT BEACH, California, is not a bad place to contemplate the future of the world economy. Its information office promises nine miles of pristine sand, fine dining for devoted epicureans and an atmosphere of laid-back sophistication. Yet students of economic turmoil will find their subject matter conveniently close to hand. California’s unemployment rate has doubled to 12.2% since the start of 2008. Saddled with the worst credit rating in the country, the “Golden State” is cutting spending on schools, prisons and health care for the elderly, as well as closing parks and laying off staff for three days a month. It will pay its workers a day late at the end of the fiscal year so that the expense will show up in next year’s budget. Financial shenanigans are not the sole province of the banking industry.

Newport Beach is also the home of Pimco, the biggest bond manager in the world, which handles $840 billion on behalf of pension funds, universities and other clients. In May the company held its annual “Secular Forum”, in which it tries to peer five years into the economic future. After two days of rumination, Pimco’s laid-back sophisticates concluded that the financial markets may well “revert to mean”, which is a statistician’s way of saying that what comes down must go up. But the next five years will not resemble the five preceding the crisis. Not every change wrought by the financial breakdown will be reversed. The world economy is fitfully getting back to normal, but it will be a “new normal”.
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Decline in Chinese trade slowing

Chinese official trade figures for September have suggested improvements in economies in the rest of the world.

Exports from the world’s third largest economy fell to $115.9bn (£73bn), which was down 15.2% from September 2008, but the smallest fall in nine months.

China’s $596bn stimulus package has helped prop up its economy, but it needs a global recovery to boost trade.

Imports fell 3.5% to $103bn, which was the smallest decline since imports began to slide in November 2008.

China’s trade surplus stood at $135.5bn (£85bn) for the first nine months of 2009, falling 26% compared with the same period a year ago, according to the General Administration of Customs.
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