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Although the potential of the material is just starting to be understood, it has caught the attention of the world’s leading solar researchers, and several companies are already working to commercialize it.

The results, published online Wednesday in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, showed those who ate raw garlic at least twice a week cut the risk of lung cancer by 44 per cent, even if they were exposed to high-temperature cooking-oil fumes, which is thought to be another trigger for the disease.

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“These guys are pros,” says Jesper Koll, head of Japan equity research at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in Tokyo. “They’re acting like a proprietary trading desk at a major investment bank.”

In Japan, however, billions are for amateurs. With public debt more than 200 percent of GDP, the Japanese have long measured their red ink in hundreds of trillions of yen, at least until now. The Japanese crossed into uncharted fiscal territory Friday following news that the country’s gigantic national debt has for the first time just exceeded ¥1,000 trillion—in other words, more than one quadrillion. The country’s outstanding public debt, including borrowings, increased 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Finance announced, putting the national debt at a record ¥1,008.6 trillion ($10.46 trillion).

Expatriates giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies climbed to 1,131 in the three months through June from 189 in the year-earlier period, according to Federal Register figures published today. That brought the first-half total to 1,810 compared with 235 for the whole of 2008.

The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside, is searching for tax cheats in offshore centers, including Switzerland, as the government tries to curb the budget deficit. Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport.

“With the looming deadline for Fatca, more and more U.S. citizens are becoming aware that they have U.S. tax reporting obligations,” said Matthew Ledvina, a U.S. tax lawyer at Anaford AG in Zurich. “Once aware, they decide to renounce their U.S. citizenship.”

Fatca requires foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service information about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers, or held by foreign entities in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest. It was estimated to generate $8.7 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

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The additional compliance costs for companies to ensure that Americans they hire are filing the correct U.S. tax returns and asset-declaration forms are at least $5,000 per person, said Ledvina.

For individuals, the costs are also rising. Getting a mortgage or acquiring life insurance is becoming almost impossible for American citizens living overseas, Ledvina said.

The deadline for the retirement of Microsoft’s most successful operating system ever is eight months from tomorrow: April 8, 2014. That’s the day when the Redmond, Wash. company is to deliver the last XP security update.

The problem is that a significant chunk of the world’s PCs continue to run the aged OS, and with just months to go, a seemingly impossible task faces those users: Getting off the 12-year-old XP and onto something newer.

According to analytics company Net Applications, 37.2% of the globe’s personal computers ran Windows XP last month. If Microsoft’s estimate of 1.4 billion Windows PCs worldwide is accurate, XP’s share translates into nearly 570 million machines.

But while much digital ink has been spilled on the impending deadline — what one popular Windows blogger called a “coming Windows XP Apocalypse” on Tuesday — the truth is that some countries have a bigger headache than others.

In the U.S., for example, 16.4% of all personal computers ran Windows XP in July, or about one in six, Net Applications’ data showed.

But in China, where XP remains king, 72.1% of the country’s computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems. In any XP doomsday scenario, that means China is in a position four times more precarious than the U.S.

And it will get worse for China, not better, as the remaining eight months flip off the calendar.

If one assumes that recent trends in XP’s decline continue, then its share in the U.S. will drop to between 9.1% and 11.1% by April 2014 (depending on whether the forecast is based on the last three months or the last six months, respectively).

For Hide, the problems started when he gave up school.

“I started to blame myself and my parents also blamed me for not going to school. The pressure started to build up,” he says.

“Then, gradually, I became afraid to go out and fearful of meeting people. And then I couldn’t get out of my house.”

Gradually, Hide relinquished all communication with friends and eventually, his parents. To avoid seeing them he slept through the day and sat up all night, watching TV.

“I had all kinds of negative emotions inside me,” he says. “The desire to go outside, anger towards society and my parents, sadness about having this condition, fear about what would happen in the future, and jealousy towards the people who were leading normal lives.”

Hide had become “withdrawn” or hikikomori.

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Governor Rick Scott and the rest of Florida’s cabinet voted unanimously on Tuesday to allow dozens of unmarked graves found in woods near the school to be opened up. The decision comes after a team of researchers found evidence of almost 100 deaths at the institution.

“We are not exactly sure what happened there, but we know it was not good,” Florida attorney general Pam Bondi said during Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s something we as Floridians can’t ignore.”

The University of South Florida was commissioned to look into deaths at the Dozier School, in the panhandle city of Marianna after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced the presence of 31 grave sites in 2010.

A team of anthropologists and archaeologists found that 45 people had been buried on school grounds between 1914 and 1952, with 31 bodies sent elsewhere for burial. There were 22 more cases in which no burial site was listed.