Senate approves $60.4 billion Sandy aid bill

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion emergency spending aid package for victims of Hurricane Sandy that had been backed by Senate Democrats.

Democrats had to turn back Republican efforts to cut programs such as $150 million in fisheries aid that Republican lawmakers said was unrelated to the storm that hammered the East Coast late in October. The measure cleared the Senate on a 62-32 vote, with 12 Republicans supporting the bill. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., was the only Democrat to vote against the bill, but he later switched his vote to support the measure.

The bill faces uncertain prospects in the House, where GOP leaders appear reluctant to move quickly on a big spending bill in the final days of a lame duck session. Congress' attention is focused on talks over the so-called fiscal cliff of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts.

Sandy was blamed for at least 120 deaths and battered coastline areas from North Carolina to Maine. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were the hardest hit states and suffered high winds, flooding and storm surges. Sandy damaged or destroyed more than 72,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey. In New York, 305,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed and more than 265,000 businesses were affected.

Senate Republicans failed on an amendment for a smaller package of about $24 billion in aid for Sandy, which was the most costly natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and one of the worst storms ever in the Northeast.

House GOP leaders have not said how they plan to proceed. But House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky has said Congress should probably begin with a smaller aid package for immediate recovery needs and wait until more data can be collected about storm damage before approving additional money next year.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee and a leading House fiscal conservative, has criticized the Democratic bill as "packed with funding for unrelated items, such as commercial fisheries in American Samoa and roof repair of museums in Washington, D.C."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., urged House leaders to "put this bill on the floor quickly and allow a vote." If the House balks, Schumer said, the Senate bill provides "very good groundwork" for seeking Sandy aid next year.

The measure includes $11.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's chief disaster relief fund and $17 billion for community development block grants, much of which would help homeowners repair or replace their homes. Another $11.7 billion would help repair New York City's subways and other mass transit damage and protect them from future storms. Some $9.7 billion would go toward the government's flood insurance program. The Army Corps of Engineers would receive $5.3 billion to mitigate flood future risks and rebuild damaged projects.

Senate Republicans said much of the spending in the Democratic bill was for projects unrelated to Sandy, such as $150 million for fisheries disasters that could go to Alaska as well as Gulf Coast and New England states. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sought to strip the fisheries funding, but his amendment failed.

To court votes, Democrats last week broadened some of their bill's provisions to cover damage from Hurricane Isaac, which struck the Gulf Coast earlier this year. A provision was added to the $2.9 billion allotted to Army Corps of Engineers projects to reduce future flooding risks; the coverage area for that program will now include areas hit by Isaac in addition to Sandy. Democrats also shifted $400 million into a community development program for regions suffering disasters, beyond areas struck by Sandy.

A Coburn amendment to reduce the federal share of costs for the Army Corps of Engineer projects to reduce future flooding risks also failed.

Most of the money in the $60.4 billion bill ? $47.4 billion ? is for immediate help for victims and other recovery and rebuilding efforts. The aid is intended to help states rebuild public infrastructure like roads and tunnels, and help thousands of people displaced from their homes.

"It will actually put people to work in their own communities, rebuilding their own communities," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Coburn, two frequent critics of government spending, targeted what they called "questionable" spending in the Democratic bill, including $2 million for roof repairs at Smithsonian Institution museums and $58 million in subsidies for tree planting on private properties. A McCain amendment to strip the tree subsidies failed.

Republicans also criticized $13 billion in the Democratic bill for projects to protect against future storms, including fortifying mass transit systems in the Northeast. Republicans said however worthy such projects may be, they are not urgently needed and should be considered by Congress in the usual appropriations process next year.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that only about $9 billion of the $60.4 billion proposed by Democrats would be spent over the next nine months. The Democratic bill included many large infrastructure projects that often require years to complete, but Republicans said the CBO estimate of such drawn-out spending undercuts the urgency of the Democrats' aid package.

More than $2 billion in federal funds has been spent so far on relief efforts for 11 states and the District of Columbia. FEMA's disaster relief fund still has about $4.3 billion, and officials have said that is enough to pay for recovery efforts into early spring.

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, District of Columbia, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are receiving federal aid.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-approves-60-4-billion-sandy-aid-bill-000348278.html

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Record set in solar cell efficiency - with the light of a thousand suns

19 hrs.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy have created a solar cell that can convert 44 percent of sunlight hitting it into electrical energy, setting a new record for solar cell?efficiency. But it was only achieved by multiplying the power of the sun by nearly 1,000.

The ongoing research is being done at the III-V Multijunction Photovoltaics group at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where the previous record of 43.5 percent was set. So while it's not a huge leap in efficiency, it's still a record.

The researchers achieve these high efficiencies by stacking multiple "junctions" into a single solar cell, each of which absorbs light at a slightly different wavelength. The "III-IV" in the name refers to the fact that the elements used?come from the third and fifth columns of the periodic table.

A new material with many desirable properties was?discovered by accident (gallium arsenide diluted with nitrogen), but proved extremely difficult to manufacture. Researchers needed to use a technique called molecular beam epitaxy to minimize impurities in the material ? but no one in the world could do it.

Solar Junction, a company started by researchers from Stanford University, decided to take up the challenge. With a few million dollars in funding, Solar Junction and NREL managed to make the new process work. The result was the "SJ3" cell, which has been breaking records ever since.

The catch is that it's not like a traditional solar cell, which simply receives sunlight on its surface and creates a modest charge from the photons. The SJ3 cell requires the power of the sun to be multiplied by special lenses, creating a beam of light hundreds of times brighter than ordinary sunlight.

In this kind of system, the power is measured in "suns": A beam 10?times brighter than the sun would be described simply as 10 suns. And?the previous efficiency record was set by a lens system that created 415 suns. The latest record was set using 947 suns.

Naturally, one may wonder if such a design is practical ? after all, how often does the sun shine a thousand times brighter than normal? But the lenses actually take normal sunlight that might have hit in a diffuse way on normal cells and concentrate it onto the more efficient SJ3 cell. So in the end it's just using the same area of sunlight in a different way.

The NREL emphasized in the report describing the record that the SJ3 design can easily replace solar systems used in satellites and other space-bound machines ? but it's lighter and more efficient, reducing rocket load and allowing for more onboard electronics.

What's next? Tweaking the design to include a germanium layer used previously could raise efficiency as high as 50 percent ? definitely?a major landmark in solar power, if researchers?can achieve it, although applying it to everyday power needs is another project?altogether.

Information on other research being done by the NREL, including other forms of solar cells and systems, can be found at their webpage. More technical details about the SJ3 cell are in?the NREL article describing the record.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBCNews Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/record-set-solar-cell-efficiency-light-thousand-suns-1C7753189

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Asian stocks up ahead of U.S. fiscal cliff talks

BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets rose Friday, hours before President Barack Obama and key lawmakers were to meet at the White House to try to hammer out an 11th-hour budget compromise to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

Lawmakers have until Monday night to reach a deal before hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and deep cuts to government spending kick in. Such a drastic reshuffling of money could throw the U.S. into another recession, economists have warned.

However, failure to avoid the fiscal cliff doesn't necessarily mean tax increases and spending cuts would become permanent, since the new Congress could pass legislation canceling them retroactively after it begins its work next year.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index marched higher, hitting its highest level since March 20, 2011. The Tokyo benchmark rose 1 percent to 10,428.36. Export shares posted big gains as the country's currency continued to recoil against the dollar. Mazda Motor Corp. jumped 4.2 percent and Isuzu Motors Ltd. surged 4.3 percent. Nintendo Co. advanced 3.4 percent.

Investors have been cheering newly named Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his calls for more public works spending to reinvigorate the economy. He also wants the Bank of Japan to raise its inflation target from 1 to 2 percent to drag the country out of two decades of deflation, or steadily declining prices that have deadened economic activity.

But Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong, said he was skeptical that the new government's roadmap would prove effective in the long run.

"He will increase the deficit, print more money and try to spend out of the recession. If you print or borrow money, you give the economy a sense of false hope," he said. "It's like taking opium. You feel good but eventually you have to come down."

Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose less than 0.1 percent to 22,637.91, while South Korea's Kospi added 0.6 percent to 1,999. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5 percent to 4,671.30.

"The fiscal cliff seems to have lost its negative influence on global markets," said Lun. "Even if it falls into the fiscal cliff, you will only reduce the deficit by about $100 billion. In Chinese terms, it's like trying to douse a fire with a cup of water. They should do what Europe has done and try to impose austerity."

Markets got some lift from optimistic data out of the U.S. on Thursday and a statement from the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said in an interview that the worst of the debt crisis in the 17 European Union countries that use the euro appears to be over.

In the U.S., the average number of people seeking unemployment benefits over the past month fell to the lowest level since March 2008, a sign that the job market is healing.

Worries over U.S. budget negotiations sent Wall Street slightly lower on Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.1 percent to 13,096.31. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 0.1 percent to 1,418.10, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 0.1 percent to 2,985.91.

Benchmark oil for February delivery rose 41 cents to $91.28 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 11 cents to finish at $90.87 per barrel.

In currencies, the euro fell slightly to $1.3239 from $1.3240 late Thursday in New York. The dollar gained to 86.45 yen from 86.02 yen.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-stocks-ahead-us-fiscal-cliff-talks-035809449--finance.html

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Asian stocks up ahead of U.S. fiscal cliff talks

BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets rose Friday, hours before President Barack Obama and key lawmakers were to meet at the White House to try to hammer out an 11th-hour budget compromise to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

Lawmakers have until Monday night to reach a deal before hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and deep cuts to government spending kick in. Such a drastic reshuffling of money could throw the U.S. into another recession, economists have warned.

However, failure to avoid the fiscal cliff doesn't necessarily mean tax increases and spending cuts would become permanent, since the new Congress could pass legislation canceling them retroactively after it begins its work next year.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index marched higher, hitting its highest level since March 20, 2011. The Tokyo benchmark rose 1 percent to 10,428.36. Export shares posted big gains as the country's currency continued to recoil against the dollar. Mazda Motor Corp. jumped 4.2 percent and Isuzu Motors Ltd. surged 4.3 percent. Nintendo Co. advanced 3.4 percent.

Investors have been cheering newly named Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his calls for more public works spending to reinvigorate the economy. He also wants the Bank of Japan to raise its inflation target from 1 to 2 percent to drag the country out of two decades of deflation, or steadily declining prices that have deadened economic activity.

But Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong, said he was skeptical that the new government's roadmap would prove effective in the long run.

"He will increase the deficit, print more money and try to spend out of the recession. If you print or borrow money, you give the economy a sense of false hope," he said. "It's like taking opium. You feel good but eventually you have to come down."

Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose less than 0.1 percent to 22,637.91, while South Korea's Kospi added 0.6 percent to 1,999. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5 percent to 4,671.30.

"The fiscal cliff seems to have lost its negative influence on global markets," said Lun. "Even if it falls into the fiscal cliff, you will only reduce the deficit by about $100 billion. In Chinese terms, it's like trying to douse a fire with a cup of water. They should do what Europe has done and try to impose austerity."

Markets got some lift from optimistic data out of the U.S. on Thursday and a statement from the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said in an interview that the worst of the debt crisis in the 17 European Union countries that use the euro appears to be over.

In the U.S., the average number of people seeking unemployment benefits over the past month fell to the lowest level since March 2008, a sign that the job market is healing.

Worries over U.S. budget negotiations sent Wall Street slightly lower on Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.1 percent to 13,096.31. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 0.1 percent to 1,418.10, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 0.1 percent to 2,985.91.

Benchmark oil for February delivery rose 41 cents to $91.28 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 11 cents to finish at $90.87 per barrel.

In currencies, the euro fell slightly to $1.3239 from $1.3240 late Thursday in New York. The dollar gained to 86.45 yen from 86.02 yen.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-stocks-ahead-us-fiscal-cliff-talks-035809449--finance.html

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China court orders Apple to pay in rights dispute

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2012 photo, Chinese people line up to enter a newly-opened Apple Store in Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. A Chinese court has ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan ($165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies who say unlicensed copies of their work were distributed through Apple's online store. The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 that Apple violated the writers' copyrights by allowing applications containing their work to be distributed through its App Store, according to an official who answered the phone at the court and said he was the judge in the case. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2012 photo, Chinese people line up to enter a newly-opened Apple Store in Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. A Chinese court has ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan ($165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies who say unlicensed copies of their work were distributed through Apple's online store. The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 that Apple violated the writers' copyrights by allowing applications containing their work to be distributed through its App Store, according to an official who answered the phone at the court and said he was the judge in the case. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

(AP) ? A Chinese court has ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan ($165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies who say unlicensed copies of their work were distributed through Apple's online store.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled Thursday that Apple violated the writers' copyrights by allowing applications containing their work to be distributed through its App Store, according to an official who answered the phone at the court and said he was the judge in the case. He refused to give his name, as is common among Chinese officials.

The award was less than the 12 million yuan ($1.9 million) sought by the authors. The case grouped together eight lawsuits filed by them and their publishers.

An Apple spokeswoman, Carolyn Wu, said the company's managers "take copyright infringement complaints very seriously." She declined to say whether the company would appeal.

Unlicensed copying of books, music, software and other products is widespread in China despite repeated government promises to stamp out violations.

Apple's agreement with application developers requires them to confirm they have obtained rights to material distributed through the company's App Store.

"We're always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights," Wu said.

The Chinese writers said they saw applications containing unlicensed versions of their books last year.

In November, a court ordered Apple to pay 520,000 yuan ($84,000) to the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House for copyright infringement in a separate case. Apple is appealing, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

In the latest case, the Beijing court awarded 605,000 yuan ($97,500) to one company and 21,500 yuan ($3,450) to the second, according to the court official.

The biggest individual judgment went to writer Han Ailian, who was awarded 186,000 yuan ($30,000).

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-12-28-China-Apple/id-ace33064bf344c98bbf970a35a2b030a

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SurModics Recruits New Finance Head - Zacks.com

SurModics, Inc. (SRDX - Analyst Report), a provider of surface modification and drug delivery technologies to the healthcare industry, recently revealed that it has appointed Andy LaFrence as the chief financial officer (CFO) and Vice President of finance. He will take over the reins effective February 12, 2013. LaFrence will replace Timothy Arens, the current interim CFO at SurModics.

Going forward, Timothy Arens will assume responsibility as the Vice President of corporate development and strategy. He will be responsible for framing strategies and assessing growth opportunities for the Medical Device and In Vitro Diagnostics segments at Surmodics. We note that SurModics currently operates through these two divisions.

The new CFO will be responsible for leading the entire financial activities at SurModics. His will be in charge of activities, such as controlling, financial planning and analysis, treasury, tax, audit and investor relations.

LaFrence, a certified public accountant, brings with him more than 20 years of experience to SurModics pertaining to finance and capital markets. LaFrence has donned many important roles in his illustrious career. Previously, he was the CFO of CNS Therapeutics (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Covidien plc (COV - Analyst Report)). Prior to that, he acted as an audit partner at KPMG, where he concentrated on supporting public and private, high-growth medical technology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology entities.

Taking into account LaFrence?s vast experience in the finance and capital markets, he can easily be labeled as a veteran in that field. LaFrence?s comprehensive sector know-how and expertise is expected to be beneficial to SurModics.

We have a long-term Neutral recommendation on SurModics. Also, it holds a short-term Zacks #3 Rank (Hold). However, Quidel Corporation (QDEL - Snapshot Report), which operates in the same industry as SurModics, appears to be better- positioned. The stock carries a Zacks #2 Rank (Buy).

Source: http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/89331/surmodics-recruits-new-finance-head

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