Man sues Bank of America for ‘US$1,784 billion trillion’

Pedestrians walk past a Bank of America branch in New York. — Reuters pic

NEW YORK— Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service — really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest US bank and its board, demanding that "US$1,784 billion trillion" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional US$200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," US District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released on Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

"He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish wom[a]n,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that cheques have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Chin has experience with big numbers. He's the judge who sentenced Bernard Madoff to a 150-year prison sentence for what the government called a US$65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Bank of America Corp faces real legal problems, including New York Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo's threat to sue its chief executive and a judge's embarrassing rejection of a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yet the money Chiscolm wants could dwarf all the bank's other problems.

It's larger than a sextillion dollars, or a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Chiscolm's request is equivalent 1 followed by 22 digits.

The sum also dwarfs the world's 2008 gross domestic product of US$60 trillion, as estimated by the World Bank.

"These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale," said Sylvain Cappell, New York University's Silver Professor at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. "If he thinks Bank of America has branches on every planet in the cosmos, then it might start to make some sense."

Chin gave Chiscolm until Oct 23 to better explain the basis for his claims, or else see his complaint dismissed. — Reuters

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Malaysian students in Jakarta feel the heat

File picture of a demonstration calling for the banning of the Ahmadiyya sect in Jakarta in June 18, 2008. Malaysians in Jakarta have been harassed of late. — Reuters pic

JAKARTA— Some Malaysians studying in Indonesia are facing tough times because their teachers' attitudes have changed amid rising tensions between the two countries in recent weeks.

They told The Jakarta Globe newspaper that the ongoing claims in Indonesia that Malaysia has been trying to steal its cultural heritage have strained their lives.

They are worried about checks against Malaysians carried out on the streets by an Indonesian vigilante group recently.

The Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta has told the students to stay indoors to avoid being harassed, the daily reported yesterday.

A Malaysian medical student, Siti Nurhidayat Pazil, who has been studying for four years at University of Indonesia (UI), said: “When (lecturers) ask me to do something, they will say 'Hey Malay, can you finish this please?' They don't call me by my name.”

The two countries have been less than neighbourly lately, with both nations' armed forces flexing their muscles over a maritime border dispute in an area called Ambalat, off Borneo.

Long-festering issues, such as reports of Indonesian migrant workers being mistreated and claims of Malaysia robbing Indonesia of its heritage, are also hurting ties.

Hazwani Raffar, another UI medical student, said she is hurt when friends, neighbours and teachers ask her why Malaysia must steal Indonesian culture. “Don't they have questions to ask beside this?” she asks. “This is so harsh, even though some of my friends see it as a joke. Deep in my heart, I can't accept it.”

Hazwani also said she and her friends are afraid of “sweeping” — the roadblock set up by over-enthusiastic nationalists to harass Malaysians, The Jakarta Globe reported.

Early this month, anti-Malaysia group Benteng Demokrasi Rakyat (People's Democracy Defence) erected a roadblock in Central Jakarta and checked the identification cards of passers-by to screen for Malaysians. None was found.

The Benteng men carried sharpened bamboo sticks, which rang alarm bells in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has roundly condemned the group and has called for all Malaysian nationals here to be protected.

“The (Malaysian) Embassy tells us not to go out if it's not necessary,” Hazwani said, adding that she and her three friends leave home only to go to UI's campus in Central Jakarta.

But classmate Noraishah Abdul Aziz takes a different view. “I think all we need is discussion,” she said. “I always tell my Indonesian classmates that most Malaysians don't know about the claims of (cultural theft) published here.”

The students said they do not understand the allegations made about cultural theft because the two nations share the same ancestry — which brings with it similar cuisine, language and cultural traditions.

“It's sometimes better not to claim things, especially when similar cultures are involved,” Noraishah told the newspaper.

She cited the desire of Malaysia's Tourism Minister Datuk Ng Yen Yen to claim laksa as a Malaysian dish. “This will just create more tensions between us. Why can't we just share all similar things together without saying, 'This is yours and that is mine'?” she said. — The Straits Times

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India’s lunar mission finds water on the moon

NEW DELHI: India’s maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I has detected evidence of water across the lunar surface, scientists announced on Thursday.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) has confirmed the existence of water on the moon by analysing the data collected from Chandrayaan-I, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Thursday.

The M3, a NASA instrument onboard Chandrayaan-I, detected wavelengths of reflected light that would indicate a chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen in materials on the thin layer of upper soil.

The finding ends a four-decade long speculation on whether there is water on moon.

Scientists first claimed that water existed on moon about 40 years ago after they analysed rock samples brought to Earth as souvenirs by Apollo astronauts.

But they had doubts about the findings as the boxes in which the moon rocks were brought to Earth had leaked, contaminating the samples with air from the atmosphere.

Scientists believe that the water could have been formed due to the interaction of oxygen present in rocks and soil on moon with hydrogen in the form of protons emitted by the sun as a result of nuclear fusion.

As these protons hit the moon, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil material, and where free oxygen and hydrogen are together, there’s a high chance that trace amounts of water will be formed, said Larry Taylor from the University of Tennessee, who was among the M3 team of scientists.

The M3 instrument analysed how sunlight reflected off the lunar surface to identify water particles in which scientists observed elements of chemical bonding alike water.

However, the instrument can only see the very uppermost layers of the lunar soil -- perhaps to a few centimetres below the surface.

They studied the light that is reflected in different wavelengths of different minerals, and used those differences to know what is present in the thin layer of upper soil.

According to the scientists, it was water, previously theorised but not proven to exist.

Taylor and other M3 team members believe their findings will be of particular significance as mankind continues to plan for a return to the moon.

The lunar maps created by M3 could provide mission planners with prime locations for extraction of water from the lunar soil.

The findings will be published in this week’s online edition of the Science Express journal. -- Bernama

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