Antioxidants May Boost Baby Making

There are people who swear by the effects of antioxidants for everything from anti-aging to protection from cancer – whether or not science supports these claims. Now, a new study found that the tiny molecules may even boost the chances of making a baby.

Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand reviewed 34 clinical trials that involved more than 2,500 couples undergoing infertility and subfertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization and sperm injections. The retrospective analysis found that men taking antioxidant supplements were more than four times more likely to get their partners pregnant than men who did not take the oral antioxidants. The antioxidants were associated with more than a five-fold higher rate of live births

"When trying to conceive as part of an assisted reproductive program, it may be advisable to encourage men to take oral antioxidant supplements to improve their partners' chances of becoming pregnant," said lead researcher Marian Showell of the University of Auckland in New Zealand in a press release.Is this reason to run to the health food store? Not so fast.

The researchers said further information is needed to confirm the findings. And some fertility doctors dismissed the study entirely, discouraging patients from putting all their eggs into the antioxidant basket.

Doctors Question Antioxidant Benefits

"To suggest that the use of antioxidants alone without correction of the primary cause of seminal dysfunction without treatment of the primary cause is not appropriate," said Dr. Lawrence Ross, professor of urology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Sherman Silber, director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis, had even stronger words.

"This is all trash," said Silber. "[Antioxidants] will not help. They will only delay while the wife's eggs get older. So, this will hurt rather than help by delaying IVF for a male treatment that does not work."

Not only did doctors find the results questionable, but other doctors found the study's methodology and numbers questionable. Of the 34 studies analyzed, not one had more than 1,000 study participants. Some trials had as few as 10 participants.

Beware of Kama Sutra virus

San Francisco: Sophos computer security firm has warned that hackers are spreading a nasty computer virus with a file promising a PowerPoint presentation of sexual positions from the Kama Sutra.

"Be careful what you do with that mouse," Graham Cluley of Sophos said in an online post. 


>"When you click on the file you do get to see a real PowerPoint presentation, but in the background a backdoor Trojan called Troj/Bckdr-RFM is installed which allows hackers to gain remote access to your computer." 

Once a computer is infected with the malicious software, the hacker can steal personal information and spy on users' activities or use the machine for nefarious deeds such as sending spam or attacking websites. 

In scant consolation, the booby-trapped file did present slides of more than a half dozen lovemaking techniques illustrated from the ancient Indian text, according to Cluley. 

Economic outlook: Five things that could happen in 2011

Did you see what happened? The Fed’s holdings topped $2 trillion for the first time ever. It took 95 years to get the Fed’s holdings to $600 billion. In the space of 3 years, it has added $1.4 trillion more. That’s something.

Extraordinary, no? Amazing, n’est-ce pas? Incredible, huh?

And yet, the feds expect this explosion of Fed assets to produce an ordinary firecracker of a recovery. They expect – or hope – that this fantastic increase in the base money supply of the US banking system will result in a rather run-of-the-mill rebound in the US economy.

RELATED: Top 10 investment trends to watch in 2011

The inflation rate (CPI) is only 1%…they think it will go to 2%. Long bond yields are expected to go up a little too – but not too much. Investor experts are predicting a 10% increase in stock prices in 2011. Almost every economist is talking about a “gradually strengthening recovery.” Unemployment is supposed to go down a little. House prices are expected to stabilize…and even rise.

In other words, an out-of-control monster of monetary inflation is expected to sire a pipsqueak of a recovery.

We’ve talked in the past about how nothing comes from nothing…and how you can’t produce real wealth with ersatz money. But what about this? Here we have the Fed doing something really big. Three times as big as anything they did in all the years since 1913.

And yet, economists expect nothing much to happen.

How likely is that? The feds don’t know what they are doing. They are juggling nuclear bombs…and testing runaway viruses on an unsuspecting population.

What might happen?

Here are some guesses:

1) It will create more speculative bubbles. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see oil go to $100 and above, for example. The Fed’s money is, so far, not making it into the real economy. But it is available to speculators. And speculators are betting that they can make more money in commodities than in US T-bills. So, keep an eye open. Most likely, you’ll see some bubbles in 2011.

2) Emerging market stocks could soar. Imagine that you’re ‘trading’ for Goldman Sachs. You can borrow dollars for nothing. What do you do with them? Invest them in the world’s fastest growing economies! If you’re lucky, you’ll get 10%…maybe 20% return – on someone else’s money. And if you’re unlucky? Who cares? It’s not your money. And you won’t go broke. The Fed will give you more money.

3) Gold to $1,500. Why not? The IMF just completed selling. China, India and other emerging economies are adding to their stash. Speculators are getting in on the biggest and most reliable bull market in the financial world. Heck, even individual investors are catching on.

Passing through the airport in Miami last week, we noticed a gold vending machine! We had heard they were around. But this was the first time we saw one. How surprising would it be if more and more ordinary people started imitating the rich, who’ve been buying gold for years? Suppose people realize that their central bank is now working against them…and that they have to maintain their own real money reserves? We could easily see gold over $1,500 in 2011.

4) US bond yields rise; the bond market begins to break down. It looked like it was beginning a week or two ago. Bonds were going down just as Ben Bernanke was trying to push them up. Sooner or later, it’s bound to happen. Investors must eventually realize that buying US debt is a dangerous proposition; the Fed is actively trying to reduce its value. And if there is one thing the Fed ought to be able to do it’s to undermine the value of US debt. After all, the feds control the currency it’s calibrated in.

5) In contrast to this bubbly and bodacious outlook is a not-insignificant risk that the whole shebang will blow up. US stocks could crash. Bubbles can explode. Unemployment, housing, sales, consumer price inflation – all could get worse. Then what? Then, the US dollar and US debt will go up!

Well, which is it, you’re probably wondering. Inflation or deflation? Boom or bust?

Our answer? Yes!

It’s all coming. If not in 2011, then…later.

Can't control supply of corruption: Jairam

NEW DELHI: Environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday made a veiled attack on corrupt practices in the corporate world saying, "I can control the demand for corruption but someone has to control the supply of corruption too. I cannot stop that." 

Ramesh was addressing the media after a closed-door interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on environmental governance and climate change. He made the remark in context of the number of companies found flouting green laws and his ministry's ability to check the violations. 

Clarifying that he was not on a witch-hunt of high profile violators, Ramesh said, "I am not sniffing around for a big guy to catch... my actions are not suo motu actions. My actions are in response to the representations I receive from different organisations." 

The minister held the first formal meeting with CII delegates since taking charge of the ministry in wake of sharp reactions from industry and his Cabinet colleagues on his strong action against violators and in implementation of green laws in cases like Vedanta, coal mining regulations and Adarsh. 

His purpose of meeting CII on Tuesday and slated meeting with Ficci on January 24 would be to "alleviate fears and concerns of industry that environment is becoming a constraint to industrial growth". 

Taking on critics within and outside the government who raise concerns about sacrificing economic growth at the alter of environmental regulations, Ramesh said, "I don't think animal spirits would be unleashed by giving up these laws." 

CII and Ficci will form an advisory panel, which will consult the ministry on a quarterly basis, he said.

New Age Corruption

In the last two years alone, we have seen ten or more major scams in India, each one outdoing the other.  The recent 2G scam is pegged at 176,000 Crores.  That’s 1,760,000,000,000 Rupees amounting to nearly 3% of our GDP.  Satyam scam was around 14,000 Crores while Common Wealth Games scam is at 70,000 Crores.   I was talking to some young people the other day and was telling them that in the early 1990s PV Narasimha Rao was embroiled in a 2 Crore scam.  They could not believe that a tiny amount of 2 Crore could actually result in a scam.    Even the much touted Bofors scam, because of which Rajiv Gandhi lost power in 1980s, was only 64 Crores.  So what happened to us as a nation in the last twenty years?  How did we go from mere 2 Crores to 176,000 Crores? 

I believe that we are witnessing a completely new set of rules being played out in the corrupt India (BTW, India proudly ranks 87^th in the world on the corruption index).  And unlike what many people think, I believe it is the younger generation, not the older generation, which is setting these new rules.  It is New Age corruption, which is vastly different from the old school.  The old school’s appetite was small, and therefore was content with small money and stored it as cash stuffed in pillows or deposited it as gold in some foreign accounts.  The new age is rapacious, they want to become the world’s richest, get hold of all vital natural resources of the country, and they route the money through legal methods like IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, to convert their black money into white money.

I discuss this New Age corruption through the following three trends. 

1. India is creating more wealth

India is creating more wealth than ever before.  It is creating wealth beyond the means and mechanisms of how our administrators and politicians are used to handling funds.   India is making money on an unprecedented level because of the reforms that have set in early 1990 by Manmohan Singh under PV Narasimha Rao.  That has resulted in entrepreneurs, companies, industries, financial institutions, creating mega wealth for this nation.  The treasury’s coffers are filled with loads of money, but our rulers and bureaucrats are incapable of using those funds for better use.  They lack the vision and it is clearly showing. 

Some of the ministers, babus, administrators are not used to handling this kind of money.  Most states send back the funds they receive for various schemes unspent.  Most of the social schemes send back the money to center unspent.   Right now, India allocates so much money to various schemes that most leaders who are given the mandate to spend this are not in a position to spend it wisely. 

Old habits die hard.  The politicians and the bureaucrats continue to steal the money.  In the beginning they stole less, but each year, the bureaucrats are setting newer and higher targets for their politicians, ready to craft the necessary paper work, thereby increasing the amount of money appropriated at exponential rates.  The net is widening.  More number of people are getting the share of the pie. If previous minister took 5000 crores, they would like to take 15,000 Crores for the new minister. 

The old school reacts only one way, the old way, by filling their pockets, their kin’s pockets, their friend’s pockets.  But they do it so haphazardly that no matter what they do, it eventually shows.  You just cannot fill your pockets with new money which is quite huge.  It’s too much money to be filled into one’s pockets.  Shibu Soren of Jharkhand, Lalu Yadav of Bihar and few others are examples of this.

In this vacuum of visionaries and leaders, come new set of leaders, the smarter ones.  Smart because they know how to steal the money without having to fill one’s pockets.

2. Scamsters have become smarter

New Age corruption plays by different rules now.  New Age corrupt do not just take cash in suitcases, they take a stake in your company, a percentage in the new venture, they take investments into a dummy venture, and so on.  They use the new liberalization policies to take corruption to a mega level, a level that no old school politician could have imagined. 

For example, in addition to liberalizing the economy India has also liberalized laws to allow people to take raw ore out of India.  That alone has created a set of new industry where the politician’s sons set up companies, get the required permissions to mine, and sell the ore to foreign companies.  The Chinese take satellite pictures and tell our politicians’ sons, ‘Hey, we want this hill and this hill, don’t do any preprocessing, don’t create any industry, just send the hill as it is’.  Our New Age entrepreneur even gets the dynamites from the same Chinese, blasts the hills to loosen the soil, and then hires the local people to come and carry the soil onto the nearby trucks.  These trucks then go the nearest port where a Chinese ship is waiting to gobble up the hill.  These ships take the ore to China, create a mega industry, provide employment to its people, create the metal, and then they export the metal to other countries, including India.  

India is witnessing a funny phenomenon. It would have been hilarious if it was happening on a magic show.  There is a hill today, that hill is no more tomorrow.  Hills are just being gobbled up and sent to foreign countries.  And no sustainable industry is being created in India because of this.  When Nehru and Tata set up steel plants, they created townships, like Jamshedpur or Bhilai.  Nowadays, the natural resources do not create industry or the townships.  It only fattens up the politicians so much that they are capable of buying entire electorate and entire assembly of MLAs.  Indian politicians and their sons must have looted this country of its natural ore in the last ten years more than what British looted in two hundred years.  We are setting a different record altogether here.

The New Age politicians make their sons industrialists first before allowing them to enter politics.  As industrialists, these sons use their father’s connections to usurp resources, grab lands, get better schemes, and then go onto convert black money to white money through fake acquisitions, write-offs, etc.   By the time the son is ready for politics, he already knows how to use the government funds and schemes to make mega wealth for himself.   Real estate, construction, energy, mining, are some of the areas where the new age corrupt have come to dominate. 

3. Being corrupt has become a virtue

The old school looked at money with guilt.  The older generation was guilty when they made excess money.  This is where the new age differs starkly with the old school.  The new age corrupt wear it as a badge displaying it as an Olympic medal.   They are not squeamish about it.  In fact, they participate in ostentatious display of their ill-gotten wealth, squandering it, buying new toys, palaces, spending money on birthday bashes. 

The competition is not between the corrupt and the honest anymore, the competition is between the corrupt themselves, outdoing each other, outsmarting each other, excelling over each other, coming up with various tricks and methods to bypass the system.  The winner is the one who has smartly outmaneuvered every other contender who wanted to appropriate this money. 

The new age youth is completely OK with making money through schemes like Harshad Mehta, or Telgi.  They think there is nothing wrong making money that way.  Like how Akshay Kumar says in Hera Pheri, ‘main paise yu banaunga, short cut tarikey se’, the youth is ready to use short cuts to make money.     

In a country, which confuses habits to values, corruption is not a bad thing, as long as you continue to visit Tirupati every year, put your feet at Sai Baba, and shun meat and alcohol in the public.  You are considered virtuous based on your dietary habits.

The combination of these three trends, that India is making money on an unprecedented level, that the new age politicians and their sons are smarter and have found mechanisms to usurp wealth with mega appetite, that the new generation is completely OK with cheating to make money, are some of the reasons why we see such big scams today.   What we have seen is only the tip of the iceberg.  We are only seeing scams where scamsters were just inefficient and foolish.  There are so many other scams which are not exposed because the scamsters there are quite smart.   There is a good chance that those scams will never be exposed

Why Srikrishna Committee thinks Telangana is NOT Backward?

Swiss banks: WikiLeaks unlikely to release data soon

LONDON: WikiLeaks is unlikely anytime soon to make public material provided to it this week by Swiss bank whistleblower Rudolf Elmer , according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and sources close to Elmer. 

At a London news conference on Monday, Elmer, former chief of the office of the Julius Baer Bank in the Cayman Islands, handed to Assange what he said were two discs containing information on about 2,000 offshore banking clients. 

Assange said WikiLeaks would treat the information provided by Elmer like "all other information" the website received, which would include public revelations. However, he said, before any of the material is released, "it could be weeks. It could be longer." 

Assange indicated WikiLeaks and possibly media organizations would review Elmer's material before making it public. He said this would take at least "a couple of weeks." 

Two sources familiar with the material said it was dense and not self-explanatory. One of the sources said the material contained a handful of names that might be recognizable. 

Even in cases where names seemed familiar, the source said, there is no way to be sure from the material supplied to WikiLeaks of the identities of account holders and further investigation would have to be done to confirm the account holders' identity. 

Jack Blum, a former Congressional investigator and Washington lawyer who has been advising Elmer, said Elmer would not be releasing any names or corporate names from the data cache because the account data outlined financial "structures" which are "difficult to figure out what is going on." 

Blum also cautioned that even if account holders' identities can be confirmed, this does not constitute evidence that such people are engaged in offshore tax evasion. 

Blum said government investigators would be in the best position to confirm the identities of people involved in transactions documented by Elmer's material. 

Sources close to Elmer said some, if not most, of the material in his cache had been made available to government investigators in countries whose identities remain unknown. 

Assange said WikiLeaks might hand over some of the material to Britain's Serious Fraud Office. 

Elmer, who was fired by Julius Baer in 2002, is due to go on trial in Switzerland on Wednesday for breaching bank secrecy. The bank has accused Elmer of pursuing a vendetta against the company. 

Elmer and his lawyer maintain the Swiss prosecution is unfair because the material he allegedly leaked -- including some material on alleged offshore tax evasion abuses published by WikiLeaks -- originated in the Cayman Islands, where Swiss authorities arguably lack jurisdiction. 

Man Rescued After 16 Hours Buried Under Mud

A Brazilian man has had a remarkable escape after being buried in mudslides under his house for 16 hours.

Union Cabinet reshuffle today, new faces likely

New Delhi, Jan 19 (IANS) In the first-ever reshuffle of the 19-month-old United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-II government scheduled for today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to induct some new faces and send out some Congress ministers for party work.

The oaths of office and secrecy would be administered to the new ministers at 5 p.m. at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, official sources told IANS.

However, the official notification and invitation for the function is yet to be issued, the sources added.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi Tuesday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for nearly two hours to finalise the reshuffle of the union council of ministers.

How key ministries have performed in UPA-II

While there were different versions in the political circles about the nature of the reshuffle, it was clear that the 'big four' in the cabinet - Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Home Minister P. Chidmabaram and External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna - will retain their portfolios.

The sources said that while DMK is likely to get a berth in place of former communications minister A. Raja, Trinamool Congress is also expected to get an additional ministership.

While Sharad Pawar's portfolios of agriculture and food, consumer affairs and public distribution are likely to be split, the party may be compensated either by elevation of Minister of State for Civil Aviation (Independent Charge) Praful Patel to the cabinet or allotment of another portfolio.

Minority Affairs Minister and former Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Salman Khurshid's elevation to cabinet rank appears almost certain as the party prepares to woo larger sections in the most populous state which goes to polls in 2012.

Khurshid may be given law portfolio with M. Veerappa Moily shifted to human resource development which is currently with Kapil Sibal, who also holds the communications and science and technology portfolio.

From West Bengal, which goes to polls in May, Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay is likely to be inducted.

From Kerala, K.C. Venugopal may find a place in the ministry. Venugopal is seen as a replacement from the Nair community for Shashi Tharoor, who had to resign last year in the wake of Kochi-Indian Premier League row.

From the DMK, the choice may be between former ministers T.R.Baalu or T.K.S. Elangovan.

From the agitation-hit Telangana region, former Andhra Pradesh Congress chief Keshava Rao may be inducted.

Among the other names doing the rounds are Congress spokespersons Manish Tewari and Jayanthi Natarajan, party's chief whip in Lok Sabha Paban Singh Ghatowar and former minister Suresh Pachouri.

If there is a major reshuffle, several ministers including Kantilal Bhuria, Virbhadra Singh, B.K. Handique and Vilasrao Deshmukh may be drafted for party work. Sports Minister M.S. Gill may also be shifted.

Today's induction of new ministers will be followed by a reshuffle of portfolios.

The cabinet reshuffle will be followed by the constitution of a new Congress Working Committee which will include many of the ministers moved out.