Lao gov’t urges all parties to peacefully solve Libyan crisis

Cached:  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/25/c_13798188.htm

English.news.cn 2011-03-25 15:49:24

VIENTIANE, March 25 (Xinhua) — The Lao government expressed deeply concerned on Libyan situation, and urged all parties for peaceful solutions, Lao News Agency (KPL) reported on Friday.

A statement, released by the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is deeply concerned about military operations conducted towards Libya which have caused the loss of lives and property of Libyan people and affected peace and stability in the region.

Laos has urged all parties concerned to put an end to the operations and settle the problems by peaceful means on the basis of the United Nations Charter, international law and respect for the independence and sovereignty of states.

Nearly 100 civilians were reported to have been killed so far in air strikes launched by major Western powers on Libya, which started on March 19.

Lao assembly to ensure effective economic laws ahead of regional integration

Cached:  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/30/c_13805293.htm

English.news.cn 2011-03-30 15:09:06

VIENTIANE, March 30 (Xinhua) — Laos’ National Assembly (NA), the legislative body of the Lao government, will monitor economic law enforcement as the country integrates with the world community, aiming to solve problems for effective implementation of the laws over the next five years, local media reports said on Wednesday.

“I would like participants to pay attention to any contents of the laws they believe don’t coincide with the nation’s real situation and also problems which make enforcement of the laws difficult. This will provide the government with recommendations to amend the laws,” said Xaysomphone Phomvihane, NA Vice President.

The state-run Vientiane Times reported that the NA Economic, Planning and Finance Commission met Tuesday to review enforcement of the laws at a two-day conference held with support from USAID and the UN, which are providing technical assistance to the assembly for capacity building.

Xaysomphone said that the assembly would focus on performing its four main roles as a representative of the people and power of the state, a legislative body and to monitor the organization of legislative and judicial bodies over next five years, adding that NA members should take part in the development of laws to ensure that they meet the real situation of the country and enable effective implementation and enforcement.

He also said that as the major legislative body, the assembly would give priority to the consideration and approval of laws which will boost implementation of the 7th five-year National Socio-economic Development Plan and the integration of Laos into the world community, including becoming a member of the WTO.

ASEAN integration will force Laos to amend laws, regulations and procedures to facilitate the free flow of goods, human resources and capital as the region becomes a single market and production base.

Souvanhpheng Bounphanouvong, Deputy Head of the Economic, Planning and Finance Commission, said that the 9th Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party made a strong commitment to implementing the “four breakthrough steps”, one of which is to abolish laws, regulations and procedures which hinder productivity.

She said that the abolishment of obstacles for economic development would be made in parallel with integration of Laos into the world community, including membership of the WTO and joining the ASEAN Free Trade Area.

Economic laws cover issues such as taxation, state budgets, state asset management, investment promotion, state investments, forestry resources, agriculture, mineral resources and electricity.

Laos is now making a law on the operation of the nation’s stock market, one of the main tools to manage and oversee the stock market, which began trading in early January this year.

Editor: Yang Lina

 

• Lao gov’t urges all parties to peacefully solve Libyan crisis
• Laos official stresses importance of Laos-China relations in new leadership term

 

 

Body and mind: Romantic Breakups Cause Real Pain

Cached:  http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/03/29/romantic-breakups-cause-real-pain/

Published March 29, 2011

| LiveScience

Rejection quite literally hurts — the experience and the memory of getting dumped by a loved one trigger brain regions linked with physical sensations of pain, scientists find.

Around the world, people for centuries have used the same language — words like “hurt” and “pain” — to describe mental suffering as well as physical suffering, leading researchers to wonder if the sensations weren’t activating the same parts of the brain.

Speculatively, it makes sense that getting your heart broken could feel like something literally breaking. During the course of human evolution, rejection from a group could leave one extraordinarily vulnerable, researcher Edward Smith, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York, told LiveScience, “so that might be why this link evolved between rejection and pain, to make us want to avoid rejection.”

Past research had not found much to suggest rejection triggered pain areas in the brain. However, those studies had attempted to elicit feelings of rejection in test subjects by telling them they had been excluded from a computer game, for instance, or that anonymous feedback suggested a stranger did not like them — examples that might trigger only tepid feelings of rejection. “We wanted something bigger,” Smith said.

Smith and his colleagues put out fliers in Manhattan and online ads on Facebook and Craigslist looking for people who had been through an unwanted breakup of a romance in the last six months. As the brains of the 40 volunteers were scanned through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), half the time they looked at photos of their ex, and half the time they looked at photos of a friend. During both situations, participants were asked to focus on experiences they shared with the people in the pictures.

For comparison to their response to physical discomfort, the participants also had probes placed on their forearms that could get painfully hot.

The scientists found that parts of the brain linked with physical pain also lit up when individuals were remembering bad breakups.

“Rejection literally hurts,” Smith said.

The researchers are now looking at possible techniques for easing such mental suffering, including methods that therapists already use. “For instance, one piece of advice when thinking about rejection is to view experiences with an ex-partner as an outside person from a distance,” Smith said. “We want to see if this really does help at the level of the brain.”

Smith didn’t recommend taking an aspirin for such pain. “An hour later, you might just start thinking of that person again,” he said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Monday (March 28) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

* 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Brain
* 5 Painful Facts You Need to Know
* 10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction