National / International News

It's international quiz time on the Marketplace Morning Report. Stephan Richter, editor-in-chief of the online international affairs magazine, The Globalist, brings us the question below. 

Going back to 1892, which of the following institutions has seen the fewest changes in leadership?

a. The Catholic Church
b. IBM
c. The United States
d. General Electric
e. The United Kingdom

Scroll down to see the answer and click on the audio player above to hear more about leadership around the world. For full text version of this Globalist Quiz, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

d. General Electric. CEO Jeffrey Immelt is the company's ninth leader since 1892.

 

An investigation has begun into the crash of a private jet into a residential neighbourhood in the US state of Indiana.

Japanese architect Toyo Ito, who created London's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, wins this year's prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.

A police officer is injured as the PSNI are attacked with missiles and bottles during trouble linked to the loyalist flag protests in south Belfast.

Remember your high school science fair? Those rooms lined with volcanoes, toy robotics, and potato powered light bulbs? Now, put that science fair on steroids, and you get some impressive innovation such as oil-producing algae and new cancer treatments.

Click on the audio player above to hear a radio postcard from two of the 40 high school students from around the country that gathered in Washington D.C. recently to compete in the annual Intel Science Talent Search. See this years top 10 winners here.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has discovered a way to make desalination 100 times more efficient. And that could have a big impact on bringing clean drinking water to the developing world.

The process is called reverse osmosis, and the material used is graphene -- a lot like the stuff you smudge across paper with your pencil.

"This stuff is so thin and so strong, it's a remarkable compound, it is one atom thick," says Lockheed Martin senior engineer John Stetson. "If you have a piece of paper that represents the thickness of graphene, the closest similar membrane is about the height of a room."

The new material essentially acts as a sieve, allowing water to pass though while salts remain behind. Graphene could make for smaller, cheaper plants that turn salt water into drinking water, but it could also have uses in war zones as a portable water desalinator.

"Lockheed really is concerned with the broadest aspects of global security [and] maintaining safe environments and that includes water," says Stetson.

To hear about more graphene applications, click on the audio player above.

An attempt to rescue a cargo ship which ran aground off the Northumberland coast on Saturday is likely to be delayed by weather conditions, the RNLI says.

This week, Pennsylvania will introduce a bill that would legalize online gambling. Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey have passed similar laws, trying to increase tax revenues and close budget gaps.

Already, one casino in Atlantic City is trying to prepare players for online gaming.

In the center of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, there's a desk where hotel guests can put money in an electronic account, which allows them to leave the floor -- but not the gaming action. Guests can now gamble in their hotel rooms through the television.

On the fourteenth floor, John Forelli, who works in IT for the Borgata, holds a TV remote control. He enters two different passwords and selects a slots game from a menu screen.

"I’m going to do ‘start play,'" he says, over pirate-themed music followed by the sound of coins falling. "We did not rig this," he laughs. "We just won!"

But why would someone come to Atlantic City just to sit and gamble in their room?

Forelli admits that most people will still come to gamble in the casino. But he sees in-room gambling as an extra that might give the Borgata a slight edge over other hotels.

Borgata regular Lenore Natanni says she'll likely stick with her beloved penny slot machines down on the floor.

"I could sit here all night, which I have before," she says. "At the same machine. All night. I wasn’t even a bit tired."

But Natanni says her husband does head up to the room and maybe he’d play a bit more up there, if he hadn’t lost too much downstairs.

Those extra rounds would be extra dollars for the casino.

"Casinos are not in the gambling business," says I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School. 

Rather, it’s a volume business, he says. Moreover, gambling through the TV is a step toward gambling online. The Borgata wants guests to get comfortable with the technology so they’ll consider trying it from home when the casino launches an online site.

But like the newspaper business, casinos need to make sure they don’t simply move their existing customers online.

"On the Las Vegas strip, there are a many casinos that now make a majority of their revenues from non-gaming activities -- expensive restaurants, shows, and shopping," said Rose.

To quote a wise man from New Jersey: “Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”

Cyprus rescue breaks all the rules, says Robert Peston

A search of the River Foyle resumes for an 18-year-old man from the Republic of Ireland, after the body of a woman is found five days ago.

Hundreds of people gather to oppose plans for a new permanent traveller site at Gorseinon in Swansea.

Hospitals in Wales have been left nearly £9m in wills in the last three financial years, new figures show, which officials say can provide services not funded by the NHS.

David Hasselhoff has joined a campaign to stop bulldozers breaching the longest surviving remnant of the Berlin Wall.

The Health Secretary has backed a report calling on health professionals to tackle the social and economic causes of ill health - not just the medical.

A few decades ago, trees covered an estimated 50 percent of Afghanistan. Now, an official says that figure is just 2 percent. The main reason is the illegal harvesting and trade of timber. A visit to Kunar province, near the Pakistan border, reveals that many people, from top officials down, are involved.

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An 11-year-old boy is arrested after a 62-year-old man was taken to hospital following a house fire on Tyneside.

For years, the Army has effectively ignored the ban against women in combat, though it's still hard for them to receive full recognition for what they've achieved. "Battle-fatigued female soldiers" is a new and uneasy concept for American society.

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Because dust, mold and pests can trigger asthma attacks, addressing these triggers in the home can keep kids from winding up in the hospital. In the past seven years, the Community Asthma Initiative in Boston has counseled more than a thousand families on how to prevent attacks.

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Since dust, mold and pests can trigger asthma attacks, addressing these triggers in the home can keep kids from winding up in the hospital. In the last seven years, the Community Asthma Initiative in Boston has counseled more than a thousand families on how to prevent attacks.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Wales wing legend Shane Williams says Alun Wyn Jones is a Lions "dead cert" and a potential captain of Warren Gatland's squad.