Nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen.
This young prodigy from Singapore is fluent in six programming languages, according to a BBC report this week, and his newest creation, an iPhone drawing game called Doodle Kids, has racked up over 4,000 downloads in just two weeks. He wrote it for his younger sisters, who love to draw.
Doodle Kids, which lets players sketch with their fingers on the iPhone's screen and shake it, Etch-A-Sketch-style, to clear, has already racked up a healthy three-and-a-half star rating on the App Store. One reviewer commented: "Awesome app!...Amazing that something like this was made by a 9 year old".
This young prodigy from Singapore is fluent in six programming languages, according to a BBC report this week, and his newest creation, an iPhone drawing game called Doodle Kids, has racked up over 4,000 downloads in just two weeks. He wrote it for his younger sisters, who love to draw.
Doodle Kids, which lets players sketch with their fingers on the iPhone's screen and shake it, Etch-A-Sketch-style, to clear, has already racked up a healthy three-and-a-half star rating on the App Store. One reviewer commented: "Awesome app!...Amazing that something like this was made by a 9 year old".
The Senate voted Wednesday night to give a tax break of up to $15,000 to homebuyers in hopes of revitalizing the housing industry, a victory for Republicans eager to leave their mark on a mammoth economic stimulus bill at the heart of President Barack Obama's recovery plan. The tax break was approved without dissent and came on a day in which Obama pushed back pointedly against Republican critics of the legislation even as he reached across party lines to consider a reduction in the spending it contains.
"Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential," Obama said as Senate Republicans stepped up their criticism of the bill's spending and pressed for additional tax cuts and relief for homeowners. He warned that failure to act quickly "will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession."
Democratic leaders have pledged to have legislation ready for Obama's signature by the end of next week.
While they concede privately they will have to accept some spending reductions along the way, conservative Republicans failed in their initial attempts to force deep cuts in the bill.
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who advanced the homebuyers tax break, said it was intended to help revive the housing industry, which has virtually collapsed in the wake of a credit crisis that began last fall.
The proposal would allow a tax credit of 10 percent of the value of new or existing residences, up to a $15,000 limit. Current law provides for a $7,500 tax break but only for first-time homebuyers.
Isakson's office said the proposal would cost the government an estimated $19 billion.
Democrats readily agreed to the proposal, although it may be changed or even deleted as the stimulus measure makes its way through Congress over the next 10 days or so.
Other GOP attempts to change the measure went down to defeat. The most sweeping of them, by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., failed on a mostly party-line vote of 36-61. It would have replaced the White House-backed legislation with a series of tax cuts on personal and business income and capital gains at the same time it made cuts passed during the Bush administration permanent.
"This bill needs to be cut down," Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on the Senate floor. He cited $524 million for a State Department program that he said envisions creating 388 jobs. "That comes to $1.35 million per job," he added.
After days of absorbing rhetorical attacks, Obama and Senate Democrats mounted a counteroffensive against Republicans who say tax cuts alone can cure the economy.
Obama said the criticisms he has heard "echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems."
"I reject those theories and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," said the president, who was elected with an Electoral College landslide last fall and enjoys high public approval ratings at the outset of his term.
Obama did not mention any Republicans by name, and most have signaled their support for varying amounts of new spending.
Even so, the president repeated his retort word for word in late afternoon, yet softened the partisan impact of his comments by meeting at the White House with senators often willing to cross party lines.
His first visitor was Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a moderate GOP lawmaker. Later he met with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
"I gave him a list of provisions" for possible deletion from the bill, Collins told reporters outside the White House. Among them were $8 billion to upgrade facilities and information technology at the State Department and funds for combatting a possible outbreak of pandemic flu and promoting cyber-security. The latter two items, she said, are "near and dear to her," but belong in routine legislation and not an economic stimulus measure.
Collins and Nelson have been working on a list of possible spending cuts totaling roughly $50 billion, although they have yet to make details public.
"Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential," Obama said as Senate Republicans stepped up their criticism of the bill's spending and pressed for additional tax cuts and relief for homeowners. He warned that failure to act quickly "will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession."
Democratic leaders have pledged to have legislation ready for Obama's signature by the end of next week.
While they concede privately they will have to accept some spending reductions along the way, conservative Republicans failed in their initial attempts to force deep cuts in the bill.
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who advanced the homebuyers tax break, said it was intended to help revive the housing industry, which has virtually collapsed in the wake of a credit crisis that began last fall.
The proposal would allow a tax credit of 10 percent of the value of new or existing residences, up to a $15,000 limit. Current law provides for a $7,500 tax break but only for first-time homebuyers.
Isakson's office said the proposal would cost the government an estimated $19 billion.
Democrats readily agreed to the proposal, although it may be changed or even deleted as the stimulus measure makes its way through Congress over the next 10 days or so.
Other GOP attempts to change the measure went down to defeat. The most sweeping of them, by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., failed on a mostly party-line vote of 36-61. It would have replaced the White House-backed legislation with a series of tax cuts on personal and business income and capital gains at the same time it made cuts passed during the Bush administration permanent.
"This bill needs to be cut down," Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on the Senate floor. He cited $524 million for a State Department program that he said envisions creating 388 jobs. "That comes to $1.35 million per job," he added.
After days of absorbing rhetorical attacks, Obama and Senate Democrats mounted a counteroffensive against Republicans who say tax cuts alone can cure the economy.
Obama said the criticisms he has heard "echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems."
"I reject those theories and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," said the president, who was elected with an Electoral College landslide last fall and enjoys high public approval ratings at the outset of his term.
Obama did not mention any Republicans by name, and most have signaled their support for varying amounts of new spending.
Even so, the president repeated his retort word for word in late afternoon, yet softened the partisan impact of his comments by meeting at the White House with senators often willing to cross party lines.
His first visitor was Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a moderate GOP lawmaker. Later he met with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
"I gave him a list of provisions" for possible deletion from the bill, Collins told reporters outside the White House. Among them were $8 billion to upgrade facilities and information technology at the State Department and funds for combatting a possible outbreak of pandemic flu and promoting cyber-security. The latter two items, she said, are "near and dear to her," but belong in routine legislation and not an economic stimulus measure.
Collins and Nelson have been working on a list of possible spending cuts totaling roughly $50 billion, although they have yet to make details public.
Australia launches massive stimulus package
Australia launched a 42 billion dollar (26 billion US) stimulus package Tuesday and slashed interest rates to a 45-year low in a bid to battle the global economic crisis, which has choked growth.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the massive stimulus package was aimed at nation building and supporting up to 90,000 jobs "in the face of the unfolding national and international economic emergency."
The government faced a "stark choice -- to act or fold its arms and let the free market rip," the centre-left Labor Party leader said. "The government has resolved to act and will continue to act."
The package includes spending of 28.8 billion Australian dollars on schools, housing and roads over four years, tax breaks for small businesses and cash handouts of 12.7 billion dollars to eligible workers, farmers and students.
Up to 950 dollars would be paid to workers earning 100,000 dollars or less, supporting up to 8.7 million individuals, the government said in a statement.
Similar amounts would be paid to single-income families, drought-affected farmers and others in need from March.
The government slashed its economic growth forecast by half, upped its estimate of job losses and warned the budget would plunge 22.5 billion dollars into deficit instead of achieving the 21.7 billion surplus predicted last May.
Gross domestic product growth is now expected to be 1.0 percent in 2008/09 and 0.75 percent the following year, compared with respective forecasts of 2.0 percent and 2.25 percent made just three months ago.
The unemployment rate is expected to surge to 7.0 percent in 2009/10 from 4.5 percent in December, the government said.
The latest stimulus package follows a pump-priming exercise in December which fed 10.4 billion dollars into the economy, targeting pensioners and others in a bid to boost consumer spending.
Adding to the new measures, Australia's central bank slashed interest rates by one percentage point to a 45-year low of 3.25 percent Tuesday, the latest in a series of aggressive cuts.
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said the board had taken the stimulus package into account in making its decision.
"The combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies now in place will help to cushion the Australian economy from the contractionary forces coming from abroad," he said.
The International Monetary Fund predicted last week that the Australian economy would contract by 0.2 percent in 2009 if no further measures were taken.
Preparing the way for the budget deficit announcement, Rudd on Monday said the global economic crisis and China's slowdown would punch a 115-billion-dollar hole in tax receipts over the next four years.
Demand in China and other Asian countries for Australian resources such as coal and iron ore has underpinned an economic boom for a decade.
Trade unions welcomed the stimulus plan but said more needed to be done to protect jobs.
Some analysts said the government could be too optimistic in forecasting that Australia would avoid a recession.
"They're unrealistic on their growth numbers but politically it's unpalatable to come out and say we're in recession," JP Morgan chief economist Stephen Walters told Dow Jones Newswires.
Katie Dean, a senior economist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said the package may help avert a technical recession in the first half of 2009, but the long-term outlook was "still clouded".
See also at yahoo news
Australia launched a 42 billion dollar (26 billion US) stimulus package Tuesday and slashed interest rates to a 45-year low in a bid to battle the global economic crisis, which has choked growth.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the massive stimulus package was aimed at nation building and supporting up to 90,000 jobs "in the face of the unfolding national and international economic emergency."
The government faced a "stark choice -- to act or fold its arms and let the free market rip," the centre-left Labor Party leader said. "The government has resolved to act and will continue to act."
The package includes spending of 28.8 billion Australian dollars on schools, housing and roads over four years, tax breaks for small businesses and cash handouts of 12.7 billion dollars to eligible workers, farmers and students.
Up to 950 dollars would be paid to workers earning 100,000 dollars or less, supporting up to 8.7 million individuals, the government said in a statement.
Similar amounts would be paid to single-income families, drought-affected farmers and others in need from March.
The government slashed its economic growth forecast by half, upped its estimate of job losses and warned the budget would plunge 22.5 billion dollars into deficit instead of achieving the 21.7 billion surplus predicted last May.
Gross domestic product growth is now expected to be 1.0 percent in 2008/09 and 0.75 percent the following year, compared with respective forecasts of 2.0 percent and 2.25 percent made just three months ago.
The unemployment rate is expected to surge to 7.0 percent in 2009/10 from 4.5 percent in December, the government said.
The latest stimulus package follows a pump-priming exercise in December which fed 10.4 billion dollars into the economy, targeting pensioners and others in a bid to boost consumer spending.
Adding to the new measures, Australia's central bank slashed interest rates by one percentage point to a 45-year low of 3.25 percent Tuesday, the latest in a series of aggressive cuts.
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said the board had taken the stimulus package into account in making its decision.
"The combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies now in place will help to cushion the Australian economy from the contractionary forces coming from abroad," he said.
The International Monetary Fund predicted last week that the Australian economy would contract by 0.2 percent in 2009 if no further measures were taken.
Preparing the way for the budget deficit announcement, Rudd on Monday said the global economic crisis and China's slowdown would punch a 115-billion-dollar hole in tax receipts over the next four years.
Demand in China and other Asian countries for Australian resources such as coal and iron ore has underpinned an economic boom for a decade.
Trade unions welcomed the stimulus plan but said more needed to be done to protect jobs.
Some analysts said the government could be too optimistic in forecasting that Australia would avoid a recession.
"They're unrealistic on their growth numbers but politically it's unpalatable to come out and say we're in recession," JP Morgan chief economist Stephen Walters told Dow Jones Newswires.
Katie Dean, a senior economist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said the package may help avert a technical recession in the first half of 2009, but the long-term outlook was "still clouded".
See also at yahoo news
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
