Nadeau

Euler’s Identity: Mathematical crop circle

It is perhaps little known that the beautiful county of Wiltshire, famed for Stonehenge and the white horses carved into its hills, is the most active area for crop circles in the world, with nearly 70 appearing in its fields in 2009.

It is unsurprising then, that the appearance of a phenomenally complex 300ft design carved into an expanse of rape seed on a Wiltshire hillside has caused excitement. But it's not just the eye-pleasing shape which has drawn attention to it. The intersected concentric pattern has been decoded by experts as a “tantalising approximation” of a mathematical formula called Euler’s Identity (e ^ ( i * Pi ) + 1 = 0), widely thought be the most beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world.
The Independent/UK

Little hope left when Catholic banks go bust

This past weekend, the Bank of Spain took over the operations of CajaSur, a savings bank run by the Catholic Church in Cordoba, in southern Spain. The bank, which lost €596 million in 2009, was undone by the collapse in construction and property values. It had some €2.2 billion in outstanding bad loans, according to reports.

The bank is relatively small, but investors fear that its condition is symptomatic of broader problems in the Spanish banking system. Four other savings banks reported a merger, under pressure from the government in Madrid, which has given the “cajas” until the end of June to apply for help from a rescue fund.

In a note May 24, Santiago Lopez, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, commented that the seizure of CajaSur “may raise concerns for the financial system, for the sovereign risk profile and for the economy in general.”

The Wall Street Journal cited the remarks of Hans Redeker, chief currencies analyst at French bank BNP Paribas: “This is not about Greece any more… It’s about the European currency union and how it's kept together.”

The New York Times quoted the global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, Marc Chandler, to the same effect. Chandler wrote in a note, “If there was a doubt about it, there isn’t any more… The European debt crisis is not simply a Greek phenomenon.” Ben Potter at IG Markets referred to concerns “that European banks—notably those in Spain—may be staring into something of an abyss.”
WSWS

Alaotra grebe gone: 6th Great Extinction underway

One more step in what scientists are increasingly referring to as the Sixth Great Extinction is announced today: the disappearance of yet another bird species. The vanishing of the Alaotra grebe of Madagascar is formally notified this morning by the global conservation partnership BirdLife International – and it marks a small but ominous step in the biological process which seems likely to dominate the 21st century.

Researchers now recognise five earlier cataclysmic events in the earth's prehistory when most species on the planet died out, the last being the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 65 million years ago, which may have been caused by a giant meteorite striking the earth, and which saw the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

But the rate at which species are now disappearing makes many biologists consider we are living in a sixth major extinction comparable in scale to the others – except that this one has been caused by humans. In essence, we are driving plants and animals over the abyss faster than new species can evolve.
The Independent/UK

US secretly readies for new wars in Near East

Issued in September 2009, the order calls for the creation of a network of covert task forces and intelligence-gathering units which will “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” any target within any country designated by the US military. These forces will carry out clandestine operations which “cannot or will not be accomplished” through other military means.

Once inside the targeted country, US forces will also “prepare the environment” for full-scale military assaults. In addition to military personnel, the Times reports, Petraeus’s order enlists “foreign businesspeople, academics or others” in “persistent situational awareness” efforts—in other words, in spying.
WSWS