Story By: by NPR Staff

The Abraham Lincoln book tower stands 34 feet tall and 8 feet around in the lobby of the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, D.C. Click here to see the tower from the top down.

This President’s Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?

Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln’s importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet — that’s three and a half stories tall.

“It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him,” says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.

Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln — more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ.

Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close (click here to get a closer look) but the tower’s books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.

“There are books here for people of all ages,” says Tetreault. “There’s young people’s books, there’s an Abraham Lincoln stickers book, there’s an Abraham Lincoln coloring book. And then of course there’s all of the bestsellers: David Herbert Donald’s great book about Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals — all of these major scholars who’ve written about Abraham Lincoln, they’re all contained in this stack.”

The Haj — the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Makkah — is very much a growth industry. In 1932, 20,000 pilgrims made the symbolic journey, the fifth pillar of Islamic obligation. This year, the faithful will number more than 3 million. One of the striking aspects of this eye-opening exhibition at the British Museum is the way that the yearly mass migration invokes profound abstract geometries.

The anti-clockwise currents and eddies of human bodies around the great black stone of the Ka’aba, each pilgrim shuffling to complete the necessary devotional seven laps, is a gift to time-lapse photography. You come away with perfect cubes and the circular motion of a white-robed tide of humanity imprinted on your retina. The sight, even on film, of the weeping millions on the Plain of Arafat, every contour of the central mountain moving with bodies from across the globe, is perhaps the most powerful spectacle of the physical attraction of faith the world has to offer.

Every time a devotee turns to pray to Makkah, this sacred cartography is invoked. The concentric rings of orderly submission gesture to an all-powerful centripetal force. The Saudi artist Ahmad Mater Al Ziad makes the obvious but perfectly executed analogy of magnetism to describe this global force field. In one corner of the show, he has recreated his celebrated piece in which a black cube of magnet draws its attendant iron filings into Haj-like patterns of devotion on a sheet of white paper. Some of the chips of metal lie prostrate; others are held quivering upright.

Idris Khan, the young Birmingham-born artist, has created two similarly simple pieces. At the entrance to the old Reading Room, which houses the linear progression of the exhibition, he has placed 49 cubes of black marble, each face sandblasted with a Quranic verse.

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CNN’s Rey Rodriguez in Mexico City, journalist Victor Badillo in Monterrey and CNNMexico.com contributed to this report.

All tenders pertaining to projects, works and procurement by the government will soon be called for and accepted via the newly created portal www.tenderboard.gov.bh. This is expected to not only speed up the process and make it easier but also increase transparency, efficiency and productivity.

In a landmark step on the way to enhance eGovernance, Deputy Prime Minister HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, whos also Chairman of Supreme committee of Information and Communication Technology, yesterday launched the first phase of the eTendering System of the Tender Board.

During the pilot phase, the eTendering System will enable government entities to prepare the application documents online, upload them onto the website and allow their purchase by private sector suppliers and contractors. The remaining procedures will subsequently be completed as the conventional way for now.

The second phase which covers the full cycle of the process – from submission of offer applications, announcement of tender invitations, shortlisting of the interested bidders, acceptance and secure deposit of bids, culminating in evaluation of the offers and the award of the contract – will also be completed soon. Over 85 ministries and entities are subject to the law regulating government tenders and purchases, and around 2,000 tenders are annually processed, with the total annual value estimated in many millions of dinars.

The Tender Board portal that was also launched during the ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton in Manama yesterday, contains the rules, regulations and tender related data, in addition to news and activities. The portal would also feature live broadcast of the opening of tenders during the weekly meetings held every Thursday and includes additional features such as smartphone interaction interfaces and an advanced search engine. The eContent was revised to meet the public institutions websites standards set by the United Nations.

On the occasion, Housing Minister and Tender Board chairman Basim bin Yacob Alhamer said, the eTendering system will improve government performance and facilitate procedures related to government tenders and purchases. The system would be governed by the Tender Law and be under the supervision of the Tender Board, with a view to engaging the private sector in a more efficient way.

The minister further said, the system has proved to be effective in reducing administrative costs, processing time and curtail procedural delays as storage, retrieval, tracking and securing of tender documents as well as bids would be much easier and faster. Additionally, it would increase the level of quality and transparency in the decision-making process, thus reducing complaints and disputes.

Through ease of access and higher credibility, the system would encourage more participation. It would also help to automate the work-flow, added Mr. Alhamer. The minister also declared that the board has already started utilising iPad applications and reducing paperwork, which resulted in saving of efforts and costs, in addition to enhancing the boards productivity.

eGovernment Authority Chief Executive Officer & Tender Board Member Mohammed Al Qaed said the initiative is a key step on the road to a robust, integrated tendering system covering the full cycle of the tendering process, starting from setting of specifications, evaluation, award of contract and settlement of financial transactions. Mr. Al Qaed also pointed out that an online tendering system for government tenders would also promote the position of the Kingdom as a hub for eCommerce.

In a related development, Tamkeen, the labour fund authority, announced the extension of its e-Tendering Training Programme with the aim of training an additional 550 business owners in the fundamentals of e-Tendering. The programme, done in cooperation with the Tender Board, is part of Tamkeens objective of delivering accessible business support services to enhance the productivity and growth of enterprises and individuals in Bahrain. The BD42,000 programme provides free training to business owners to become adept at using the Tender Boards e-procurement system, including how to register, receive notifications, submit bids, and tracking tenders through the e-Tendering Portal.

Tamkeen’s Chief Executive Mahmood Al Kooheji who was also present on the occasion said: The e-tendering platform is not only transparent, but it also levels the playing field amongst businesses to compete for open tenders. By demystifying the process behind it, we are enabling more business owners, particularly those of SMEs, to use such platforms and pursue previously untapped growth opportunities which expand their business. As of December 2011, 450 business owners had already benefited from the programme, and after this extension the total number of beneficiaries will be 1,000. The inauguration ceremony was attended by their Ministers and Undersecretaries, Tender Board and eGA management executives, along with representatives of companies and purchasing authorities and institutions, who will take part in the pilot phase of the service.

LONDON (Reuters) – Star European hedge fund managers including Crispin Odey and Pierre Lagrange were among the top performers in an upbeat January for the industry, as the European Central Bank’s cash boost for battered banks fuelled a stock market rally.

Shrugging off a disappointing 2011, in which the average hedge fund lost around 5 percent according to HFRI, managers profited from gains in most assets as investors bet a solution could be found for the euro zone’s deepening debt crisis.

“All markets were up in January, it was just a very good month all the way around,” said Lisa Corvese, managing director for global business strategy at hedge fund software group PerTrac, which looks closely at hedge fund performance.

“It doesn’t matter what market you were in, you’re up right now. It’s a rising tide.”

The average hedge fund gained 1.72 percent in January, according to Hedge Fund Research’s HFRX index, which measures global hedge fund performance, with equity funds among the best performers, gaining 2.07 percent.

In comparison, the euro zone’s blue-chip Euro STOXX 50 .STOXX50E gained 4.3 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 .FTSE rose 2 percent.

Funds were helped by a 10 percent rise in the European banking sector .SX7P, after the European Central Bank provided banks with 489 billion euros of ultra-cheap, long-term cash, with more expected at the end of this month.

Among the most high-profile winners was London-based Crispin Odey, whose Odey European fund is up 14 percent so far this year, with particularly strong performance coming in the past few days.

The fund, which fell 20 percent last year, has benefited from its bullish positioning on sectors such as banks and media and individual stocks such as Pendragon (PDG.L) and Sports Direct (SPD.L).

“Our stock selection has been good. It wasn’t a stockpicker’s year last year but we held our nerve,” Odey CEO David Stewart told Reuters.

“The deep value stuff we’ve always liked … is doing well,” he added. “We think stocks are cheaper than other assets.”

Lansdowne Partners, which manages around $16 billion as at last year and which has been bullish on banks such as Lloyds (LLOY.L), saw its flagship UK fund return 5.7 percent in January.

The fund, run by Stuart Roden and Peter Davies, made millions shorting banks during the financial crisis but lost around 20 percent in 2011.

Pierre Lagrange, the long-haired Belgian who navigated 2011′s choppy markets to return 7.2 percent over the year, made 4.7 percent in GLG’s European long-short hedge fund in January, according to a source familiar with the matter.

GLG, part of Man Group (EMG.L), the world’s biggest listed hedge fund manager, also saw gains of 4.2 percent in John White’s Alpha Select fund and 3.9 percent in its Emerging Markets fund.

And CQS’s Australian founder Michael Hintze returned around 9 percent in his multi-strategy Directional Opportunities fund for the month to January 27, said a source familiar with the situation. CQS declined to comment.

Elsewhere, CapeView Capital, which was launched by Theo Phanos and which focuses on credit and equity opportunities, saw its flagship European credit fund rise close to 3 percent to January 27, said an investor who had seen the figures.

However, some hedge funds were hurt by their defensive positioning in rising markets.

Marshall Wace’s $450 million Global Opportunities fund, an equity long-short fund with an emerging markets bias, fell 4.19 percent during the month.

The portfolio, managed by Fehim Sever, gained 27.5 percent last year as one of 2011′s strongest performers.

(Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by David Cowell)

Story By: by Michelle Andrews

The latest subject in standardized tests for kids: cholesterol.

Does it help or hurt children to know they have high cholesterol? We’re about to find out.

New guidelines from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute say every child should be screened for high cholesterol once between the ages of 9 and 11 and again between 17 and 21.

Intended primarily as a way to identify the 1 in 500 kids who have a genetic predisposition to dangerously high cholesterol levels called familial hypercholesterolemia, universal screening will also identify millions more whose cholesterol levels are a little high but who aren’t likely to develop premature heart disease.

For those kids, being labeled a child with high cholesterol could have psychological side effects, says Matthew Gillman, director of the obesity prevention program and a professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School. He co-authored a recent article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that looked at the pros and cons of universal screening.

Obsessing about the results is one potential con. “You tell an 11-year-old that his cholesterol is high, and the parents get overly concerned about that,” Gillman says. “And then they may spend an inordinate amount of time on that, and it may overtake their lives.”

Meanwhile, the heart health benefits of widespread screening are uncertain. The effect of high cholesterol is cumulative over time, and reducing cholesterol levels in children appears to delay hardening of the arteries, at least in those with familial hypercholesterolemia. But it’s unknown whether long-term treatment of kids with only moderately high cholesterol will reduce their risk of heart disease or death.

Research into the psychological effect on children of labeling them with a medical condition is scant, says Gillman. But there are other examples in medicine that have demonstrated that telling people they’ve got something can have a negative effect.

For example, in a group of men with high blood pressure, researchers told half of them that they had hypertension and left the others in the dark. Result? “The anxiety levels were higher in those who were told,” he says.

Since the recommended treatment for most kids with only moderately elevated cholesterol would be to eat better and exercise more, it’s not clear that there’s an advantage in sticking a label on them. “You could argue that everyone should get the same lifestyle interventions anyway,” says Gillman.

Dubai: Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan, who plays a spy in his latest film Agent Vinod, put his speeding skills to test on Saturday as he took a blazing red Ferrari for a spin around the Belhasa Driving Centre.

"Agent Vinod is a spy-action film and there are many car-chases so I asked my director if we could have a flashy car in that too," said Khan in an exclusive interaction with Gulf News. The actor was in town to promote his much-anticipated Rs50 crore venture that releases on March 22 in the UAE.

He added that he took several lessons to master the art of making car-chase sequence look authentic on-screen.

"Apart from learning how to drive cars and bikes fast, I learnt how to jump off high buildings too," said Khan, who went as far as Vietnam to learn martial arts in preparation for his stunt-filled role. Billed as Bollywood’s answer to James Bond, Khan impressed upon the press that his film is not inspired by any Western blockbuster.

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