Crews ‘overpower Somali pirates’

About 40 Egyptian fishermen have escaped from their Somali pirate captors near the northern town of Las Qorey, reports from the region say.

A wounded pirate, found on a beach with machete wounds, said the crew attacked him and his colleagues with tools and then seized their weapons.

He said that at least two pirates died before the crew sailed towards waters patrolled by international navies.

The two fishing vessels were captured four months ago.

They were taken along with an Italian tug boat, which was recently freed after a ransom was paid.
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As important as Darwin

In praise of astronomy, the most revolutionary of sciences

FOUR hundred years ago our understanding of the universe changed for ever. On August 25th 1609 an Italian mathematician called Galileo Galilei demonstrated his newly constructed telescope to the merchants of Venice. Shortly afterwards he turned it on the skies. He saw mountains casting shadows on the moon and realised this body was a world, like the Earth, endowed with complicated terrain. He saw the moons of Jupiter—objects that circled another heavenly body in direct disobedience of the church’s teaching. He saw the moonlike phases of Venus, indicating that this planet circled the sun, not the Earth, in even greater disobedience of the priests. He saw sunspots, demonstrating that the sun itself was not the perfect orb demanded by the Greek cosmology that had been adopted by the church. But he also saw something else, a thing that is often now forgotten. He saw that the Milky Way, that cloudy streak across the sky, is made of stars.
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The Burmese road to ruin

Once a model for Myanmar’s generals of successful autocracy, Indonesia now has even more to teach them

IF THERE was ever a role model for Than Shwe, Myanmar’s vicious, nutty, reclusive “senior general”, it was Suharto, Indonesia’s late kleptocrat. Suharto was the senior general who had everything. His fabulous wealth made the greedy Burmese generals look like paupers. His children parcelled out the economy as if it were the family vegetable plot. Feted rather than shunned, he was dubbed “father of development” by his fan club, and even many foreigners agreed: development banks needed him more than he needed them. And he held power for 32 years. No wonder the Burmese junta gazed admiringly at Indonesia.
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The next blue planet

The race is on to discover a second Earth

IN 1995, when Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva detected the first exoplanet (a planet that orbits a star other than the sun) he started a race that has gained pace ever since. Some 360 such planets have now been detected, but none is exactly equivalent to the Earth.

The closest so far is Gliese 581c, which was discovered in 2007 by Dr Mayor’s colleague, Stéphane Udry. It is both rocky and orbits its parent star at a distance where liquid water could reasonably be expected to exist. However, since its parent star is a red dwarf—a far smaller and fainter object than the sun—that orbit is, in fact, much smaller that the Earth’s around the sun. That, in turn, suggests Gliese 581c is likely to be tidally locked to its orbital period, so that one side of the planet always faces the star and the other never does. Having half a planet in permanent daylight and the other half in permanent darkness does not sound like a good recipe for life.
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Law of easy money

A 300-year-old example of quantitative easing

“IF FIVE hundred millions of paper had been of such advantage, five hundred millions additional would be of still greater advantage.” So Charles Mackay, author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, described the “quantitative easing” tactics of the French regent and his economic adviser, John Law, at the time of the Mississippi bubble in the early 18th century. The Mississippi scheme was a precursor of modern attempts to reflate the economy with unorthodox monetary policies. It is hard not to be struck by parallels with recent events.

Law was a brilliant mathematician who used his understanding of probability to help his gambling habit. Escaping from his native Scotland after killing a rival in a duel, he made friends with the Duke of Orleans, the regent of the young king Louis XV.

The finances of the French government were in a terrible mess. Louis XIV had spent much of his long reign fighting expensive wars. Tax collection was in the hands of various agents, who were more concerned with enriching themselves than the state. Not only was the monarchy struggling to pay the interest on its debt, there was also a credit crunch in the form of a shortage of the gold and silver coins needed to fund economic activity.
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Unwired

As more people ditch landline phones for mobiles, America’s regulators need to respond.

IF YOU want to save money, cut the cord. In these difficult times ever more Americans are heeding this advice and dropping their telephone landlines in favour of mobile phones. Despite some of the flakiest mobile-network coverage in the developed world, one in four households has now gone mobile-only. At current rates the last landline in America will be disconnected sometime in 2025.

Good. Mobile phones offer individuals more freedom. Yet confronted by the inexorable march of progress, America’s telecoms regulators have failed to respond. In many ways the landline network is still an essential utility. Maintaining landline networks provides thousands of jobs (the landline operators support more pensioners than even the car industry does). Landlines are the platform for many public services, such as emergency response. And taxes on landlines are the basis of the complex system of subsidies to ensure universal service, meaning an affordable phone line for all.
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An astonishing rebound

Asia’s emerging economies are leading the way out of recession; now they must make their recovery last

IT NEVER pays to underestimate the bounciness of Asia’s emerging economies. After the region’s financial crisis of 1997-98, and again after the dotcom bust in 2001, outsiders predicted a lengthy period on the floor—only for the tigers to spring back rapidly. Earlier this year it was argued that such export-dependent economies could not revive until customers in the rich world did. The West still looks weak, with many economies contracting in the second quarter, and even if America begins to grow in the second half of this year, consumer spending looks sickly. Yet Asian economies, increasingly decoupled from Western shopping habits, are growing fast.
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Women’s boxing gains Olympic spot

Women boxers will have the chance to fight for gold at the 2012 Olympics.

International Olympic Committee chiefs voted on Thursday to lift the barrier to the last all-male summer sport.

Three women’s weight classes will be added to the Olympic programme for 2012 Games in London, with one of the 11 men’s classes dropped to make room.

“Women’s boxing has come on a tremendous amount in the last five years and it was time to include them,” said IOC president Jacques Rogge.
Women will fight at flyweight (48-51kg), lightweight (56-60kg) and middleweight (69-75kg).
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I4i says not out to destroy Microsoft Word

The chairman of the company that has won a landmark injunction against Microsoft says his goal is not to see Microsoft Word pulled from store shelves.

In fact, I4i Chairman Loudon Owen said he is one of the hundreds of millions of people who uses Word and the other Microsoft Office tools every day.

“We’re not seeking to stop Microsoft’s business and we’re not seeking to interfere with all the users of Word out there,” Owen said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. He added that this week’s ruling orders an injunction only against Word shipping in a form that uses I4i’s custom XML technology.
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Judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word

A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of its premier products, in its current form due to patent infringement.

Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML,” according to a statement released by attorneys for the plantiff, i4i.

Microsoft said it was disappointed in the ruling and that it would appeal the verdict.
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