Oil spikes above $108 US

Oil prices briefly spiked to near $108 US per barrel Friday after a report that exports from Iran had tumbled this month.

Light sweet crude for May delivery closed higher by $1.52, at $106.87, after earlier jumping by as much as $2.90 to $108.25.

Iran, the world's third-largest oil exporter, has been locked in a high-stakes standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

The U.S. and Europe, who fear that it is building a weapon, are using financial sanctions to pressure Iran to open its facilities to inspection.

The report said Iran's shipments have tumbled by 300,000 barrels per day, or 14 per cent, in March. That would be a strong sign that the sanctions are starting to impact the country's oil industry.

The gain helped the commodities-weighted Toronto Stock Exchange. The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 103.85 points at 12,465.66

Loonie rebounds

The rise in oil — Canada's biggest commodity export — also caused the Canadian dollar to take a u-turn. After falling below parity for the first time since March 6 and losing as much as 0.83 of a cent, the loonie rebounded to close up a tenth of a cent at 100.13 cents US.

The Canadian dollar initially lost ground on signs of growing strength in the U.S. economy, which would be positive for the greenback, and concerns about slipping demand for commodities as China's economy slows, have helped push the loonie down.

The fall came despite data from Statistics Canada that found gasoline and food continued to push up inflation in February to 2.6 per cent, the second consecutive monthly increase.

Sustained higher inflation would suggest the Bank of Canada would raise intererest rates, exerting upward pressure on the loonie.

Core inflation — the underlying pressure on consumer goods, excluding volatile items such as energy and fresh foods — rose two notches to 2.3 per cent, above the Bank of Canada's two-per-cent target line.

But Emanuella Enenajor of CIBC World Markets said it's not clear yet whether Canada has entered a period of sustained higher prices

Although February's data represented the fastest pace of price increases since 2008, said Enenajor, "the rise in the ex-volatile rate could prove temporary, so the Bank of Canada will likely look through today's elevated reading — suggesting limited policy implications."

How Africa’s largest island was colonised by Asians

MADAGASCAR is renowned for its unusual animals, particularly its lemurs, a group of primates extinct elsewhere on the planet. Its human population, though, is equally unusual. The island was one of the last places on Earth to be settled, receiving its earliest migrants in the middle of the first millennium AD. Moreover, despite Madagascar’s proximity to Africa (400km, or 250 miles, at the closest point) those settlers have long been suspected of having arrived from the Malay Archipelago—modern Indonesia—more than 6,000km away.

There are three reasons for this suspicion. First, it has been recognised for centuries that the Malagasy language, though distinct, borrows a lot of words from Javanese, Malay and the tongues of Borneo and Sulawesi. Second, the islanders’ culture includes artefacts ranging from boats with outriggers to xylophones, and crops such as bananas and rice, that are (or, rather, were then) characteristically Asian, not African. And third, genetic evidence has linked the modern Malagasy with people living in eastern Indonesia as well as farther off in Melanesia and Oceania.

Now, Murray Cox of Massey University in New Zealand and his colleagues have put the matter beyond doubt by showing not only where the first settlers came from, but also how many of them there were. And the answer is surprisingly few. Though Dr Cox is unable, with the method he used, to work out how many men were in the original party, the number of women was 30.

He drew this conclusion, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, by sampling the DNA of 266 Malagasy people and comparing it with existing samples from 2,745 Indonesians. He concentrated on DNA from mitochondria. These are cellular components involved in energy production that are descended from bacteria which became symbiotic with humanity’s ancestors almost 2 billion years ago, and thus have their own genes. People inherit mitochondria only from their mothers, which is why only the female line of descent can be tracked using them.

The advantage of studying mitochondrial DNA is that it is not shuffled around by sex. Dr Cox and his colleagues were therefore able to make a statistical comparison of Indonesian and Malagasy mitochondrial genomes knowing that any changes which had occurred since they separated would be the result of rare mutations. These can be spotted and accounted for. Indeed, because they can be tracked they add to the information which can be extracted from a sample.

Having confirmed that Malagasy and Indonesian DNA separated about 1,200 years ago, which is statistically close to the date archaeologists suggest Madagascar was colonised, the team then asked their data how many women, drawn at random from the Malay Archipelago of that period, would have been needed to explain the variation in mitochondrial DNA in Madagascar. The answer was about 30.

That answer bears on a second question: was the colonisation of Madagascar a deliberate act or an accident? The first is possible. At the time, much of the Malay Archipelago was in the hands of the Srivijayan empire, an entity that could certainly have sent expeditions across the Indian Ocean, had it so willed. But there is no historical evidence that it did. In any case if it had, it is likely that a successful colonisation by one group would have been followed by others, as happened when Europeans discovered the Americas.

Most likely, then, the first Malagasy were accidental castaways, news of whose adventure never made it back home. But there is still a puzzle. Most ships’ crews are male. Though the number of men in the original party will remain obscure until an analysis like Dr Cox’s is done on the Y-chromosome of Malagasy men (Y-chromosomes include DNA passed exclusively down the male line in the way that mitochondrial DNA is passed down the female line), the presence of women on board a trading vessel would have been unusual. Unless, of course, the women themselves were the objects being traded. Possibly, then, Madagascar was colonised by an errant slave ship. Which would make its history even stranger than anyone had previously thought.

Angry Birds launches into space

IT’S HERE: Angry Birds Space features 60 levels, with more coming in the near future via free and paid in-app updates.

Angry Birds Space, one of the most hotly anticipated mobile phone apps of the year has blasted into this galaxy and is now available for iOS, Android, Mac and PC users.

“This is Rovio at its finest, and we are more than excited to bring Angry Birds Space to all our fans worldwide,” said Mikael Hed, chief executive officer of Rovio in a statement.

“This launch marks a huge step for us as a company, and our whole team and partners have really pulled together to bring out a fantastic array of exciting products and experiences. We hope that our fans will find all things Angry Birds Space as delightful as the Rovio family does.”

Angry Birds Space features 60 levels, with more coming in the near future via free and paid in-app updates.

The iOS and Android app is priced at 99 cents (RM3), the HD version for Tablets is US$ 2.99 (RM9) and the Mac version is US$ 4.99 (RM15). All are available now.

In other big app news, OMGPOP the maker of virally popular social drawing app Draw Something, has been acquired by social gaming platform Zynga for a reported US$ 210mil (RM630).

In November Rovio announced that its Angry Birds games had been downloaded a total of 500 million times across various platforms with users collectively spending 300 million minutes playing the game daily. – Relaxnews 2012

COG-622: IBM Cognos 10 BI Administrator

This is a pretty simple test, perhaps due to the simplicity of Cognos 10 BI administration? Not really, I think the exam is out-of-sync to the actual administration needs of Cognos 10. Too many theoretical questions and the test misses the more essential adminitrative aspects and not reflective of a milestone that only a seasoned administrator will achieve. OR, most likely, I'm just too over qualified for it ;-)

My study materials are:

Cognos 10 Hand Book
Cognos 10 Architecture and Deployment Guide
Cognos 10 Installation and Configuration Guide
Cognos 10 Administration and Security Guide
Few VMs to play with

I have also developed a 3 days Cognos 10 Administration Boot Camp training course with tons of learning slides and hands-on labs.