Manatee rehab team members take a blood sample from a rescued manatee, exposed to Red Tide in Southwest Florida, during treatment at the David A. Straz Jr. Manatee Hospital at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo, Florida, March 13, 2013.

TAMPA, Florida | Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:59pm EDT

TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) - Virginia Edmonds, standing in shallow water, used her legs to slowly nudge an ailing young manatee to one side of a treatment pool. A half dozen other female members of a manatee rehabilitation team hovered close by - one with a syringe - waiting for the signal.

"OK!" Edmonds called, as the others jumped in and threw a mat over the manatee to try and hold it still.

The 545-pound (247-kg) mammal bucked, thrashed, rolled and tossed the women off before they could inject an antibiotic; just one minor challenge in an effort to rescue and treat members of this endangered species that are dying in record numbers from an algae bloom.

The so-called Red Tide algae bloom has killed a total of 181 manatees so far this year, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

That figure already surpasses the highest number of Red Tide manatee deaths on record - 151 in 1996 - and experts expect the number to keep rising through the spring.

"We'll probably have Red Tide victims several more months," said Dr. Larry Killmar, head of animal science and conservation at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo, which is home to the manatee rehab team.

So far 12 rescued manatees have been brought in for treatment from Red Tide poisoning.

"We're not even getting a chance to work on many of them," Killmar said of the large number of deaths. "If we can get them early enough, we can save them."

TOXINS IN THE WATER

The problem, Killmar and other experts note, was Florida's warm winter, which appears to have sparked an earlier-than- normal algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico along a 70-mile (112-km) swath of southwest Florida's coast, home to a large share of the state's estimated 5,000 manatees.

The naturally occurring algae that blooms into Red Tide carries toxins that are usually inhaled by manatees when they come up for air, typically every 20 minutes. But now they animals are also ingesting the toxins when they eat, after the Red Tide saturated sea grasses the manatees graze on, Killmar said.

The toxins spark seizures and paralyze the manatees, which struggle to breathe or surface for air - causing them to drown.

Most of the victims have been found in coastal rivers in the area of Fort Myers.

"Most are passed out when they come in," said Edmonds, the animal care manager of Florida mammals at Lowry Park Zoo. After they are brought in by a rescue team from the wildlife conservation commission, the manatees immediately receive an injection of the anti-toxin atropine and the first of three possible antibiotic injections.

For the past few weeks, staff members in the zoo's manatee hospital stood in shallow pool waters around the clock to help keep the manatees' heads above water.

"One woke up in 15 minutes," Edmonds said. Others take hours, possibly depending on the length of time they were exposed to Red Tide.

To make room for more critical care patients, two recovered manatees were sent to Sea World last week and three other Red Tide survivors are headed to Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park this week.

The animals cannot be released back into the wild until the Red Tide dissipates because they will migrate back to the same area and become sick once again.

Meanwhile, the others will stay at the zoo's manatee hospital with several other resident patients recovering from a mixture of ailments, including boat strikes, which are one of the biggest killers of manatees.

HELPING HANDS

They manatees will be monitored and continue to get follow-up antibiotic injections like the one Edmonds and her team were trying to administer to a feisty 2-year-old male manatee on Wednesday.

About 20 zoo spectators had gathered to watch the unexpected display, holding up cameras and placing toddlers on their shoulders to see.

"I want to help," 9-year-old Ben Arnett of Englewood, Florida, whispered to his brother, 11-year-old Josh, an aspiring marine biologist.

Normally it is against state law to touch, chase, harass and - in one recent notorious case that unleashed public outrage and brought criminal charges - to ride manatees. But now fast-thinking residents are playing a critical role in saving them - holding their heads above the water until rescuers arrive.

The state released a hotline number for residents to call if they see a distressed manatee. "If they didn't have people in the public trying to help," said Lee Ann Rottman, the zoo's animal curator, "those manatees wouldn't make it."

(Editing by David Adams, Eric Walsh and Dan Grebler)

View the original article here

Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center Bjorn Lomborg addresses the APEC CEO Summit in Singapore November 14, 2009.

NEW YORK | Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:58pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Danish economist who gained fame as a skeptic of risks posed by global warming but now calls for international efforts to deal with it said the European Union should not approve a proposal to boost the price of carbon permits because that would not reduce emissions globally.

"Propping the price of carbon permits is wrong," said Bjorn Lomborg, director of Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank, and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School. He said higher carbon prices would damage the EU economy and would not help to achieve any significant climate goals.

The price of European Union allowances for carbon emissions (EUAs) has tumbled about 60 percent in four months, as slowing industrial activity caused an excess of allowances.

But the benchmark contract rose more than 5 percent on Thursday to 3.70 euros a metric ton (1 metric ton = 1.102 tons), after the European Parliament signaled it favored a plan to prop up the price.

"The carbon price is low because we have had a big economic crisis so actually we are doing what the EU has promised to do, which is cutting the carbon emissions by 20 percent," Lomborg said. "Wanting a higher carbon price is wanting to cut more than 20 percent. It is just pushing the policy goal which seems a little bit arbitrary at best."

Lomborg spoke to Reuters late on Wednesday during an interview in New York during a U.S. trip to testify on climate policy before a Congressional panel. He has been named 'one of the 50 people who could save the world' by UK newspaper the Guardian and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

The EU considers current prices for carbon permits too low to drive investments in clean energy to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. It plans to withdraw allowances from the market temporarily, a move known as backloading.

Lomborg's 2001 best-seller 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' suggested that many warnings about the dangers of global warming were overdone. The book drew praise from industry groups and opponents of greenhouse gas emissions limits, and criticism from many environmental groups and climate scientists.

In a more recent book, "Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits," Lomborg called for a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions to fund $100 billion in new investment annually for clean energy development, climate engineering and infrastructure such as sea walls to deal with damage from rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

The economist, whose Copenhagen Consensus think tank studies ways for governments and philanthropists to spend aid and development money, agreed with economists who put the social cost of carbon at around $5 per metric ton.

"If you want to do it right you should get it at about $5 not 20 euros ($25.96) and also you should recognize it only really makes sense if you get the rest of the world on board," he said.

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said that while the 27-nation bloc is on track to meet its 2020 target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels, low carbon prices risk slowing investments needed to help meet the aim of cutting emissions at least 80 percent by 2050.

Last week, Hedegaard said that once the EU has reached agreement on a short-term fix to prop up prices, it is also likely to start work on overhauling the world's biggest carbon market.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH

The benchmark contract for European Union carbon futures surged as much as 20 percent on Thursday, after the European Parliament signaled its intention to back a plan to rescue the emissions trading system. The contract retreated from its session high to post a 5.6 percent daily.

The EU carbon permits system caps the emissions of more than 11,000 power stations, factories and airlines, which collectively are responsible for around 40 percent of the EU's greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet.

Lomborg says the EU should focus instead on different policies to help solve the environmental issue, because the lack of a global agreement simply moves emissions from regions regulated by a carbon scheme to those which are not subject to such regulation, an effect known as carbon leakage.

Almost 200 countries have pledged to strike a deal at the U.N. to cap emissions from 2020 but admit this falls short of what scientists say is required to prevent more floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

China, the world's biggest emitter, is testing several local carbon markets to rein its greenhouse gas output and expects to have a national scheme ready later this decade.

"All the EU has managed to do is to hurt its own economy a little bit, reduce its own emissions a little bit, shift most of the production to China and elsewhere and virtually no impact on a global level: that's a bad policy all around," Lomborg said, while also criticizing the validity of the proposed Chinese scheme.

He said the solution to climate change lies in boosting investment in research to make green technology cheaper, as this would incentivize everyone to switch from fossil fuels to carbon-free emissions.

"You should also realize that there is a very obvious alternative in the short run which is gas fracking. Through fracking the U.S. has reduced its carbon emissions twice as much as what the rest of the world has managed to do," Lomborg said.

"And where Europe is paying for it, the US consumers are making billion of dollars in cheaper gas prices."

U.S. natural gas production has soared and prices have fallen on the back of technological advances in fracking, which involves injecting water and chemicals to fracture rock formations and unlock deposits that are untappable by conventional means.

Switching from coal to natural gas has been one of the main reasons for a big drop in America's carbon emissions from energy in the last few years but some environmental groups have taken a hard line against fracking, saying it has the potential to pollute drinking water supplies. ($1 = 0.7704 euros)

(Editing by David Gregorio)

View the original article here

1 of 3. Police block the traffic at M1-M7 highway outside of Budapest March 15, 2013, as heavy snow hits Hungary.

BUDAPEST | Fri Mar 15, 2013 2:43pm EDT

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary deployed tanks to reach thousands of motorists trapped in heavy snow on Friday in a sudden cold snap and high winds which also struck parts of the Balkans, Slovakia and Poland and have left at least four people dead.

Snow stranded people in cars, buses and trains through the night and conspired with strong winds to cut off dozens of towns and villages in Hungary. The situation was critical on the M1 motorway linking Budapest and Vienna where hundreds of cars and trucks got stranded in the snow, most of them for over 20 hours.

By 1730 GMT disaster units had rescued most people stranded in the snow, putting up 12,000 in temporary shelters until the weather improved, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a news conference.

He said 155 people were still out on the roads waiting for help, including one transplant patient in an ambulance whose life was in danger.

"The situation is particularly difficult and serious on the M1 motorway near the town of Babolna where there is a wall of snow, spanning 12 km (7 miles) with some gaps, and due to the strong winds even the deployment of helicopters is difficult," Orban said on his return from an EU meeting in Brussels.

A Reuters photographer travelling with a rescue convoy said high winds had caused snowdrifts on the motorway up to a meter (3 feet) high, with some cars totally buried.

Two people were killed in an accident on another Hungarian motorway on Thursday when dozens of cars collided. Tens of thousands of people were without power in the northeast of the country.

Government spokesman Andras Giro-Szasz got stranded in snow on a road overnight until a rescuer pulled his car out at 4.a.m, he told local Inforadio.

Many people took to Facebook to appeal for help.

NO ELECTRICITY

The government said it had sent out tanks and other military vehicles with caterpillar tracks to reach otherwise inaccessible areas and to pull vehicles out of snow drifts.

The weekend's premier league and second tier football fixtures were cancelled, with night-time temperatures expected to hit -5 to -15 degrees Celsius (23 to 5 Fahrenheit).

After a relatively mild winter for much of the region, almost 200,000 people in Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia were left shivering without electricity on Friday. Heavy rain hit parts of Serbia and Bosnia.

In Bulgaria, one woman was killed when scaffolding collapsed in high winds in the central town of Gabrovo, and a school was evacuated in the southern town of Krichim when wind tore off the roof.

To the south, in Kosovo, a 10-year-old girl drowned when a river burst its banks in heavy rain in the northern town of Skenderaj. Dozens of homes were flooded in the west of the country, a Reuters reporter said.

"The situation is alarming," Klina municipality spokeswoman Samije Gjergjaj told Reuters. She said some 300 people were stranded by 3-metre high floodwater.

"There's just one small boat evacuating these people," said Gjergjaj. "We're waiting for the state emergency services to help out."

Heavy snow also paralyzed parts of southeastern Poland, where police banned heavy lorries from entering the city of Rzeszow for fear they would get stuck.

In eastern Slovakia, snow stranded about 40 lorries on a highway in the High Tatras region. The army deployed hundreds of soldiers to help out and authorities appealed to people to avoid venturing out by car.

(Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina, Chris Borowski in Warsaw, Sam Cage in Sofia, Martin Santa in Bratislava, Daria Sito-Sucic and Maja Zuvela in Sarajevo; Writing by Matt Robinson in Belgrade; Editing by Pravin Char)

View the original article here

Sergei Filin, artistic director of Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, speaks to journalists as he leaves a hospital accompanied by his wife Maria (L) in Moscow February 4, 2013.

MOSCOW | Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:54am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Wednesday that an acid attack that severely injured the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director would not ruin the theatre's reputation.

Putin has not spoken publicly about the January 17 attack, which shocked many Russians, revealed discord in the theatre and left doctors fighting to save victim Sergei Filin's eyesight.

The Bolshoi "is an element of Russian culture. It is a social, cultural and simply Russian brand and this can hardly damage it", Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"The Bolshoi Theatre is a group of people, a mini-society," he said. Such problems can arise in any other society," he told journalists who asked about the attack and its aftermath.

"This is not about the Bolshoi Theatre, it's about people."

A masked assailant splashed acid in the face of Filin, 42, as re returned home from the Bolshoi, causing severe burns and damaging his eyes.

A top dancer at the Bolshoi, Pavel Dmitrichenko, has been charged along with two alleged accomplices, and all three are being held in custody while the investigation continues.

Dmitrichenko, 29, confessed in a police video to organizing the attack but said in court that he did not intend Filin's assailant to use acid.

But about 300 performers at the Bolshoi wrote a letter urging Putin to order a new inquiry, saying they believe Dmitrichenko confessed due to police pressure.

Longtime Bolshoi Theatre director Anatoly Iksanov, meanwhile, has aired suspicions that Dmitrichenko was part of a wider conspiracy.

Some Russians have expressed shock over the attack on a senior figure at Russia's premiere cultural institution, but for others it only reinforced a negative impression of the theatre.

One of Filin's predecessors, Alexei Ratmansky, called the Bolshoi a "sewer" plagued by hangers-on, ticket scalpers and "half-crazed fans" in a Facebook posting after the attack.

Peskov said the Kremlin had not received the letter from the Bolshoi performers, but he suggested it would not be appropriate for the president to get involved.

"Putin is following the investigation, like everyone else, but ... this is not the prerogative of the president, it is the prerogative of the law enforcement organs, and they are working on it," he said.

Police released a statement on Wednesday saying that "the investigators are doing their work honestly."

"The Moscow police have deep respect for the work of the artists of the Bolshoi Theatre, respect their opinion and assure them that those who work in the police are also professionals in their field," it said.

(Reporting by Alexei Anishchuk; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Michael Roddy)

View the original article here

KANSAS CITY, Missouri | Fri Mar 15, 2013 10:13pm EDT

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Conservation officials in Missouri on Friday welcomed the federal charges filed this week against eight people accused of poaching paddlefish and selling their eggs as caviar.

A multi-year investigation into the poaching of the protected species culminated on Thursday in the indictment of eight people on charges they trafficked in fish and fish eggs taken illegally from Missouri lakes and streams, according to the federal complaint.

Missouri state law prohibits the transportation of paddlefish eggs that have been removed or extracted from a paddlefish carcass.

State law also prohibits the sale or purchase, or offer of sale or purchase, of paddlefish eggs and restricts the purchase of whole paddlefish.

The American paddlefish, also known as the "spoonbill," is one of the largest species of freshwater fish in North America, and has suffered severe population declines over the past century. Many states now list it as endangered, threatened or a species of special concern.

"It's a unique resource and we need to protect it," conservation department regional supervisor Nick Laposha said on Friday.

"The national and international popularity of Missouri paddlefish eggs as a source of caviar has grown dramatically in recent years," Larry Yamnitz, resource protection chief for the conservation department, said in a news release.

The eight men indicted were charged with violating the Lacey Act, a federal statute that prohibits trade in wildlife, fish and plants that have been taken and transported or sold in violation of state law.

The defendants face penalties of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count if convicted. They were charged in four separate indictments for offenses said to have occurred in 2011 and 2012.

(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Peter Cooney)

View the original article here

The Keystone Oil Pipeline is pictured under construction in North Dakota in this undated photograph released on January 18, 2012.

WASHINGTON/LEMONT, Illinois | Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:02pm EDT

WASHINGTON/LEMONT, Illinois (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers in both chambers of Congress said Friday they are moving forward with bills introduced this week to pluck the power of approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada's oil sands to Texas, from the hands of the Obama administration.

Republican Representative Lee Terry from Nebraska introduced a bipartisan bill on Friday to approve TransCanada Corp's 800,000 barrels per day pipeline, which has been held up in the review process for more than four years.

Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said he expects the House will vote on the bill by the end of May.

The House measure is a companion to a bipartisan bill introduced on Thursday by Senators John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, and Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat.

Hoeven said he believes the Senate bill currently has more than 50 votes of the 60 needed for passage in the 100-seat chamber, and said he expected the bill would easily get more supporters.

If lawmakers don't force Obama's hand early, the president is expected to make a decision around August or later, after the State Department finalizes an environmental assessment of the project.

The Keystone decision is one of the first big tests for Obama in his second term on energy and environmental issues.

Proponents say the decision will show whether Obama supports the North American energy boom and the jobs it creates.

Opponents from environmental groups say it will show whether Obama is sincere in his promises to take steps to curb climate change.

The pipeline will carry crude oil from Canada's oil sands, a type of oil production environmental groups argue could accelerate climate change.

About 20 people holding soggy protest signs stood in the rain outside the compound housing the research laboratory near Chicago where Obama gave his first energy speech of his second term on Friday.

The White House has steadfastly declined to comment on the approval process, but on Friday a spokesman sought to downplay the importance of the decision.

"There have been thousands of miles of pipelines that have been built while President Obama has been in office, and I think the point is, is that it hasn't necessarily had a significant impact one way or the other on addressing climate change," spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Earnest said there was "no question" that targeted investments to spur production of green energy or cut oil consumption would be more meaningful in the long term to cutting climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Obama on Friday proposed a $2 billion, 10-year research fund for cars and trucks that run on fuel other than gasoline.

"It's going to require some significant investments like the investments that we're talking about today for us to make progress on this," he said.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Peter Galloway and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

NEW YORK | Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:00pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rare bronzes, contemporary masterpieces, museum-quality furniture and antiquities dating back more than 3,000 years are among thousands of art objects hitting the auction block in New York next week during Christie's and Sotheby's Asia week sales.

The four days of auctions, estimated to take in anywhere from $74 million to $106 million, begin on Tuesday with Sotheby's sales of contemporary Indian art and Chinese ceramics and art, and Christie's Indian and Southeast Asian sale, which includes some of its higher-priced works.

The semi-annual sales of Asian works of art have become an important driver in the global market, with strong activity in recent years. But a recent report found art spending by Chinese collectors fell 24 percent last year because of slowing economic growth and a lack of availability of top-quality works.

"Just as we've seen in the overall market, we're seeing a focus on quality" within Asian art collecting, Christie's international director of Asian art, Hugo Weihe, told Reuters.

"And there's a deeper level of scholarship now, so we have been selective in what we offer," he said.

This season, Christie's has more extensive offerings, with eight sales over four days expected to take in between $44 million and $62 million. Sotheby's four auctions over three days should total from $30 million to $44 million.

Among highlights is a towering, Tibetan bronze figure of a bodhisattva from around the ninth or 10th century that reaches nearly 4 feet and is expected to fetch about $2.5 million at Christie's.

"Buddhist art in general has become an increasingly big focus," Weihe said.

"The old collection pieces have become incredibly desirable, especially for Chinese collectors who are seeking to acquire these cultural objects back."

Sotheby's sales include its first private collection of Indian art in over a decade, consigned by the owner, Amrita Jhaveri.

Featuring Sayed Haider Raza's 1982 canvas "Rajasthan I," estimated to fetch $600,000 to $800,000, and an untitled Tyeb Mehta work expected to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million, the sales proceeds will underwrite a project at New Delhi's Khoj International Artists' Association.

At its classical Chinese paintings sale, Tang Dai's "Stream-Laced Mountain After Snow" is likely to fetch about $500,000.

Top offerings at Christie's include a 12th/11th century B.C. Chinese bronze ritual wine vessel ($800,000 to $1.2 million), and a 17th/18th century painters table nearly 15 feet long, which is expected to fetch as much as $2 million.

Officials said another top lot, a large-scale, intricate Tibetan Buddha painting estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, would likely sell for much more, given the results for a similar work last year and interest generated by the previously unseen work.

Sales of Japanese and Korean art, jade carvings, Chinese snuff bottles and rare porcelain round out the auctions.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

View the original article here

WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 15, 2013 4:30pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. environmental regulators will likely delay finalizing rules to limit carbon emissions from new power plants, a measure that has been one of President Barack Obama's top strategies to fight climate change, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The rules were proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nearly a year ago. They are expected to be revised to set a separate standard for coal-fired plants, as opposed to natural-gas-fired plants, the newspaper said.

The administration had been expected to tackle emissions from existing power plants, which are responsible for a much larger volume of U.S. emissions, up to 40 percent, after finalizing the rules on new plants.

An administration official said the report was not accurate because the EPA was still working on the rule. The official did say that sifting through the massive volume of comments was time-consuming.

According to the EPA's regulatory tracker, the so-called greenhouse gas "New Source Performance Standard" for new power plants was projected to be finalized by the end of this month.

But EPA Administrator nominee Gina McCarthy, who was in charge of EPA rules as assistant administrator for the agency's office for air and radiation, hinted last month that finalizing the proposal may take extra time since it had received nearly 2 million comments on the rules.

McCarthy will face a Senate confirmation hearing in April, Capitol Hill sources said, and is expected to get pushback from lawmakers from states that are heavily reliant on coal.

The EPA proposal says new plants can emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, a standard that effectively blocks construction of new coal-fired plants.

David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and air program, said he has no evidence that the EPA plans to weaken the current proposal but warned that a deadline to finalize the rule is less than one month away.

"If they don't meet the deadline, environmental organizations will start taking the legal steps to get a court to force the deadline," he said.

He added that the EPA holds regular, informal consultations with various stakeholders including green groups and electric utilities to hear proposals for setting an emissions standard from existing power plants.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by John Wallace and Dale Hudson)

View the original article here

NEW DELHI | Thu Mar 14, 2013 4:08am EDT

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Shazaf Fatima Haider was always interested in how it happened. How strangers met in contrived settings, were expected to like each other and get married.

Eventually, the 30-year-old teacher from Karachi saw the funny side of arranged marriages and cultural backgrounds in Pakistan and decided it was the perfect subject for her debut novel, "How It Happened."

The book, recently launched in India and Pakistan, is the story of Dadi, the matriarch of the Bandian family in Karachi, and her quest to find the perfect Shia Muslim groom for her granddaughter Zeba. Told from the point of view of Zeba's younger sibling Saleha, the novel explores how negotiating ancient marriage traditions in the 21st century could stretch a family to the end of its tether.

Haider spoke with Reuters about her book, Pakistani culture and writing.

Q: How much of "How It Happened" is inspired by real life?

A: Well, some of it was inspired by what I saw around me. I grew up listening to stories of my mother's home town in India and so the fictional town of "Bhakuraj" was born as this vital, bizarre place full of eccentric people. My grandparents died before I was born and I yearned to have a grandmother to be the kind of force that Dadi in "How It Happened" was to Saleha, so I think the yearning gave birth to the narrator and the grandmother, who are my two favourite characters in the novel. Soon after, the Bandians were born and they are quite unlike my actual family. After that, the story took shape and the rest is what is in the pages before you.

Q: Tell us a bit about your research for the novel.

A: No research, what you read is what popped up in my head. I was always very interested in what men and women went through in the process of arranged marriages and had been at the listening end of many a rant by an irate person of eligible age and status. I also had a few suitors grace my drawing room with their presence and I witnessed their discomfort with considerable amusement. And then, one day my friend called me and told me that a prospective mum-in-law had told her that she was interested in my friend because she was an American citizen (her son wanted a passport-holder) I thought, what a perfect subject-matter for satire. So off I went to write and out came "How It Happened".

Q: Did your family know that you were writing the novel?

A: It was a secret. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish it, or that it wouldn't be good enough. One of my closest friends, Sameer Khan, was my only reader and critic - he was a med student but he still read each chapter I wrote and gave detailed feedback. The book wouldn't have been written without his constant encouragement.

Q: Sectarian violence is threatening Pakistan's stability at the moment. The Shia-Sunni rivalry is also a dominant thread in the novel. Do you see things changing any time soon?

A: Oh things are changing, of course, but it's different for different families. Never make the mistake that what is happening on the political scene is a representative of what the ordinary citizen thinks or wants -- people desire unity, peace and stability, not violence and bloodshed. In my family specifically, the Shia-Sunni thing isn't such a big deal any more -- many Zebas have come before us. But I know that some other families would like to stick together with the same religious flock.

Q: Through this novel, what is it that you wanted to say about marriages and cultural backgrounds in Pakistan? Was a humorous novel your first choice?

A: I didn't want to write a didactic novel and I hope I haven't. Humour was the natural choice because it's such a bizarre arrangement, getting strangers to meet in contrived settings and expecting them to like each other. Even animals have difficulty with breeding in captivity! I hope people will read the book and have a good laugh. Because to survive this system with grace, a good sense of humour is vital.

Q: Which is your favourite compliment yet for "How It Happened"?

A: I was very happy to learn that my male readers were enjoying it as much as my female readers. The cover seems to imply that women are the primary audience for this novel, but don't men suffer the rigours of the arranged marriage? One of them tweeted to me and said that he had loved it and that I rocked. And I think he rocked for saying that."

Q: What next after "How It Happened"? Is there scope for a sequel or a novel about education in Pakistan?

A: I am half-way through my second novel but I realize that I'm going to have to change the tone of the story completely which involves a complete re-write. It has nothing to do with "How It Happened". There is certainly scope for a sequel, though I'm not sure I want to visit the world of the Bandians any further. I've lived with them intimately and enjoyed my time with them. It's time for them to go their way and for me to go mine.

Q: Any advice for aspiring writers?

A: Submit as much as you write. Don't reject your own work when there are a thousand other people, agents and publishing houses to do that for you. And don't think your words are sacred - they are not - be open to changing tone or voice or anything such to serve the cause of your story telling. Don't show your work to everyone because everyone will have a different idea of what constitutes good writing. Find that one person whose opinion you trust and show your work to them.

(Reporting by Tony Tharakan; Editing by)

View the original article here

A job seeker (R) meets with a prospective employer at a career fair in New York City, October 24, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:11am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, offering hope the sluggish labor market recovery may have picked up a step.

Initial claims for state jobless aid dropped 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 341,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims figure was revised to show 2,000 more applications were received than previously reported.

Last week's drop in claims exceeded economists' expectations for only a 6,000 decline and pushed first-time filings down to the lower end of their range for this year.

"It does seem as if claims are trending down a bit. We think payroll growth will pick up this year and this sort of gradual downtrend in claims seems consistent with that," said Sam Coffin, an economist at UBS in New York.

But some economists said a blizzard that slammed the East Coast late last week and difficulties smoothing out the data for seasonal fluctuations could have artificially depressed claims.

While they were encouraged by the decline, they urged caution against reading too much into the data.

"Claims may not be giving a reliable signal about the labor market," said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

A Labor Department analyst said claims for Illinois and Connecticut, one of the states hardest hit by the snowstorm, had been estimated. He said given that most claims are filed online, the blizzard appeared to have little effect on the broader data.

U.S. financial market were little moved by the data as investors focused on news the euro zone economy slipped deeper into recession in the fourth quarter. Stocks on Wall Street were little changed, while the dollar and U.S. Treasury debt prices rose.

LAYOFFS HAVE EBBED

The data offered more evidence that U.S. companies are no longer aggressively laying off workers. However, they still appear to be in no hurry to step-up hiring against the backdrop of still lackluster demand.

The economy has struggled to grow much more than 2 percent since the 2007-09 recession ended, and the jobless rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 7.9 percent in January.

High unemployment prompted the Federal Reserve last year to launch an open-ended bond buying program that it said it would keep up until it saw a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market.

It also has committed to hold interest rates near zero until unemployment reaches 6.5 percent, provided inflation does not threaten to push over 2.5 percent.

Job gains averaged 181,000 per month in 2012, far less than the at least 250,000 that economists say is needed to significantly reduce the ranks of unemployed.

"The rate of job losses has slowed in early 2013, which is consistent with a modest pickup in net job creation," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.

"Our projection for 2013 is that the average pace of job growth will be around 175,000 per month and we judge this drop in claims to be broadly consistent with this forecast."

Last week, the four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of labor market trends, rose 1,500 to 352,500. The average had approached a five-year low in the prior week.

The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped 130,000 to 3.11 million in the week ended February 2.

That was the lowest level since July 2008 and could be a function of people either securing jobs or simply exhausting their benefits. So-called continuing claims had hovered around 3.2 million since late November.

(Editing by Andrea Ricci and Tim Ahmann)

View the original article here