Rabu, 9 Oktober 2013

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Bursa stages slightly recovery

Posted: 09 Oct 2013 07:19 PM PDT

Bursa Malaysia staged a slight recovery this morning, lifted by renewed buying interest amid positive sentiment, dealers said.

At 9.26am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 0.72 of a point better at 1,769.84, after opening unchanged at 1,769.12 points.

A dealer said sentiment improved following news that President Barack Obama will nominate Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chairwoman thumped worries over a partial government shutdown in the US.

Meanwhile, HwangDBS Vickers Research said the key FBM KLCI, which ended at its intra-day low of 1,769 points yesterday, could extend its sideways drift with a marginal downward bias today.

"Nonetheless, the benchmark index is expected to remain above its immediate support of 1,750-points level for the time being," it said in a note.

On the scoreboard, the Finance Index rose 19.5 points to 16,494.34, the Plantation Index increased 3.69 points to 8,350.9 but the Industrial Index slipped 3.23 points to 3,028.04.

The FBM Emas Index perked 7.56 points to 12,324.62, the FBM100 Index gained 6.27 points to 12,061.01, the FBM Ace earned 6.4 points to 5,396.6 and the FBM 70 up 13.1 points at 14,108.07.

Gainers led losers 213 to 102, with 172 counters were unchanged, 1,124 untraded and 16 others were suspended.

Volume amounted at 159.272 million shares worth RM76.046 million.

Among actives, MAS inched up half-a-sen to 34 sen, Sealink International rose 6.5 sen to 40.5 sen while The Media Shoppe was flat at 10 sen.

CIMB gained two sen to RM7.42 while both Axiata Group and Petronas Chemicals added one sen each to RM6.91 and RM6.90, respectively.

However, Maybank shed one sen to RM9.84 and Sime Darby lost three sen to RM9.41.-- Bernama

KLCI future open higher

Posted: 09 Oct 2013 07:22 PM PDT

The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) futures contract (FKLI) on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives opened higher, spurred by
recovered market sentiment.

At 9.52am, spot month October 2013 added 0.5 of a point to 1,774, November 2013 gained 1.5 points to 1,774.5 and December 2013 increased two points to 1,774.5.

However, March 2014 was untraded this morning and remained pegged at yesterday's settlement price of 1,770.5.

Turnover stood at 839 lots while open interest totalled 41,082 contracts.


The underlying FBM KLCI was 3.32 points better at 1,772.44 after 52 minutes of trading.-- Bernama
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Obama plans to meet with GOP lawmakers - Boston.com

Posted: 09 Oct 2013 08:58 AM PDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is making plans to talk with Republican lawmakers at the White House in the coming days as pressure builds on both sides to resolve their deadlock over the federal debt limit and the partial government shutdown.

With the shutdown in its ninth day Wednesday and a potential economy-shaking federal default edging ever closer, neither side was revealing clear signs of bending.

Amid the tough talk, though, there were hints of the possibility of a brief truce. There were indications that both sides might be open to a short-term extension of the $16.7 trillion borrowing limit and a temporary end to the shutdown, giving them more time to resolve their disputes.

Obama was to huddle with House Democrats Wednesday afternoon as both parties look for a way forward.

So far, the underlying standoff remains the same. Republicans demand talks on deficit reduction and Obama's 2010 health care law as the price for boosting the government's borrowing authority and returning civil servants to work. The president insists that Congress first end the shutdown and extend the debt limit before he will negotiate.

''Speaker Boehner could end this government shutdown today, an hour from now'' by letting the House vote to do so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

On Tuesday, Boehner told reporters he was not drawing ''lines in the sand.'' He sidestepped a question about whether he'd raise the debt limit and fund government for short periods by saying, ''I'm not going to get into a whole lot of speculation.''

Hours later, Obama used a White House news conference to say he ''absolutely'' would negotiate with Republicans on ''every item in the budget'' if Congress first sent him short-term measures halting the shutdown and the extending the debt limit.

''There's a crack there,'' Boehner said of the impasse late Tuesday, though he cautioned against optimism.

The White House said Obama would reach out to Boehner's House Republicans in the coming days with an invitation to the White House. He also intends to meet with senators of both parties, officials said.

A White House sit-down with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders last week yielded no progress. But the stakes are growing higher.

The financial world is flashing unmistakable signs that it fears Washington's twin battles could hurt the economy.

The stock market declined again Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping nearly 160 points, or 1.1 percent. The International Monetary Fund trimmed its global and US growth forecasts through 2014, warning that failure to renew the debt limit would raise interest rates and potentially shove the American economy back into recession.

The Obama administration has said that unless Congress acts, it expects to have an estimated $30 billion in cash left by Oct. 17. That is pocket change for a government that can spend tens of billions more than that on busy days and $3.6 trillion a year.

Hitting that date without congressional action would risk an unprecedented federal default that would wound the economy and deal lasting harm to the government's ability to borrow money, many economists warn. Some Republicans have expressed doubt that the damage would be as severe.

In the House, Republicans were continuing their tactic of pushing through narrowly targeted bills — over Democratic objections — that would restart popular parts of the government.

On Wednesday, they planned votes on a measure financing death benefits to families of fallen US troops. Blaming the shutdown, the Pentagon has halted the $100,000 payments, usually made within three days of a death.

The stoppage of those payments drew the attention of Senate chaplain Barry Black, who in his prayer opening Wednesday's Senate session said, ''When our federal shutdown delays payments of death benefits to families of children dying in faraway battlefields, it's time for our lawmakers to say, 'Enough is enough.' ''

But an official of a conservative group that has pressed Republicans to try repealing Obama's health care law was unyielding Wednesday, saying that fight should continue.

''We should not fund the government until we address the president's unfair, unaffordable and unworkable law,'' Michael Needham, chief executive officer of Heritage Action for America, said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats introduced legislation letting the government borrow money through Dec. 31, 2014. It contained no spending cuts or other deficit-cutting steps many Republicans seek.Continued...

Computer chemists win Nobel prize - BBC News

Posted: 09 Oct 2013 09:55 AM PDT

WinnersThe work of Levitt, Karplus and Warshel has spawned a worldwide industry

The Nobel Prize in chemistry has gone to three scientists who "took the chemical experiment into cyberspace".

Michael Levitt, a British-US citizen of Stanford University; US-Austrian Martin Karplus of Strasbourg University; and US-Israeli Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California will share the prize.

The trio devised computer simulations to understand chemical processes.

In doing so, they laid the foundations for new kinds of pharmaceuticals.

Today, scientists routinely use modelling to understand how different biological molecules interact, to probe the mechanisms of disease and to design novel drugs.

"The Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2013 have made it possible to map the mysterious ways of chemistry by using computers," said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

"Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube.

"Detailed knowledge of chemical processes makes it possible to optimise catalysts, drugs and solar cells."

New medicines

Warshel told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone that he was "extremely happy" to be woken in the middle of the night in Los Angeles to find out he had won the prize.

"In short, what we developed is a way for computers to take the structure of a protein and then to eventually understand how exactly it does what it does," he told reporters.

Marinda Li Wu, president of the American Chemical Society, said the award was "very exciting".

"The winners have laid the groundwork for linking classic experimental science with theoretical science through computer models.

"The resulting insights are helping us develop new medicines; for example, their work is being used to determine how a drug could interact with a protein in the body to treat disease."

Martyn Poliakoff, vice-president of Britain's Royal Society, said the award was "important recognition" for a major advance in theoretical chemistry.

"Their novel approach combined both classical and quantum physics, and now enables us to understand how very large molecules react," he explained.

"This prize highlights the increasing role that theoretical and computational chemistry are playing in this area of science."

All three men spent varying periods at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Michael Levitt started his PhD at the Medical Research Council facility at the end of the 1960s.

Dr Richard Henderson, a current LMB scientist, said the trio's work was hugely important.

"They came at it from different angles but with a common goal," he told BBC News.

"They developed computer mathematical models for the forces that hold together mainly proteins, but other biological structures as well. They listed all the forces between atoms, and then they put these into one big computer program and set it running.

"In this way, they could simulate in the computer the behaviour of real proteins as they folded and unfolded, as they bind substrates and ligands.

"They were really the first people to push this field forward, and today it has become a worldwide industry."

Michael Levitt himself said this success was due in large part to the spectacular performance of modern computing: "I've told people that the silent partner in this prize is the incredible development in computer power.

"When we started this, no-one had any clue that computers were going to become so powerful; no-one knew about Moore's Law.

"This incredible increase in computer power has taken everybody by surprise, and I think this is one of the reasons why our field has become so important. And it's just going to get bigger and bigger."

LMBThe LMB, now on a new site in Cambridge, is a major draw for those wanting to tackle molecular biology
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