World's billionaires grew 50 percent richer in 2009

2009 will be remembered by millions of ordinary people as the year they lost their job, their house, or the prospect of an education. For the rich, however, it was a bonanza.

The world's billionaires saw their wealth grow by 50 percent last year, and their ranks swell to 1,011, from 793, according to the latest Forbes list of billionaires.

The combined net worth of these 1,011 individuals increased to $3.6 trillion, up $1.2 trillion from the year before. On average, each billionaire had his or her wealth increase by $500 million.

Four hundred and three billionaires reside in the United States. They constitute just 0.00014 percent of the country's total population, but control 8 percent of the national wealth. Each of these individuals holds over 300 million times more wealth than the average US resident.

The list included 21 hedge fund managers, who as a group more than made up for whatever losses they incurred in 2008. Some of them, including James Simons, John Arnold, and George Soros, raked in profits during both the collapse and the market recovery.

Topping the list of wealthiest hedge fund managers was John Paulson, at $32 billion. Paulson made billions in 2008 by betting that the housing market would collapse, and billions more through the stock market recovery of 2009.

Only one of the 21 hedge fund managers on last year's Forbes list fell off. This was Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group, who was arrested last year on charges of insider trading.

Hedge fund managers James Simons, John Arnold, and David Tepper got average returns of 62, 52, and 31 percent, respectively, between 2008 and 2010. David Tepper made $2.3 billion over the past year, while John Paulson's wealth grew by $6 billion.

The number of US billionaires grew to 403, up from 359 last year. The Asia-Pacific region had 234 billionaires, up from 130 the last year. Europe has 248 billionaires, despite having twice the population of the United States.

The 1,011 people on this list command a phenomenal amount of personal wealth. Their holdings are larger than the gross domestic products of every country besides China, Japan, and the United States. The wealth of the 403 US billionaires could more than cover the 2008 US federal deficit, with money left over for the states.

While the number of billionaires on the list is just short of the all-time high of 1,125 reached in 2008, it represents a phenomenal rebound. At this rate, the number of billionaires will once again hit record levels next year.

Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican telecommunications tycoon, moved up to the first position on the list at $53.5 billion, beating out Americans Bill Gates ($53 billion) and Warren Buffet ($47 billion). The wealth of all three men rose dramatically. Over the last several years Slim Helú made roughly $27 million a day compared with the average daily income of $16.50 for Mexican workers.

The rich in India and China gained among the most. "For the first time, mainland China has the most billionaires outside the US," Forbes said in its statement. "US citizens still dominate the ranks, but their grip is slipping."

The hedge fund managers and financiers on the list benefitted directly from the bank bailout, which transferred huge sums of public funds into the accounts of the largest financial companies. But the billionaires in every other industry were the indirect recipients the government's wealth transfer program also.

The Wall Street Journal, commenting on the figures, wrote, "How did the world's rich get so much richer? Stock markets.... In short, what the stock market had taketh, the stock market hath giveth back - -at least to the billionaires."

But the stock market recovery itself is no accident; it was the direct outcome of policies pursued by both US political parties. The bailout has been financed by a policy of fiscal austerity and high unemployment. The rapid increase in the wealth of the billionaires is the result of the impoverishment of tens of millions; it is the other face of mass unemployment, poverty, utility shutoffs, and foreclosures.

Aside from direct government handouts to the banks and super-rich, the major driver of the recovery of corporate profits - and thus the stock market - was productivity growth and corporate downsizing.

In 2009, the unemployment rate rose from 7.7 to 10 percent, three million jobs were lost, and wages fell dramatically. Millions of families lost their homes and became dislocated. But productivity, the amount of output that is produced from each hour of work, rose by 7 percent.

The money freed up through the destruction of social programs, higher employee output, and corporate restructuring has found its way into the pockets of the people on Forbes' list.

Israel indicts soldiers over Gaza

The Israeli military has indicted two of its soldiers for endangering the life of a Palestinian boy during the three-week war in Gaza more than a year ago.

The soldiers face charges for instructing the boy to open several bags suspected of being booby-trapped while searching a building in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza, the military said in a statement on Thursday.

The bags turned out to be harmless.

An Israeli military official said the soldiers could face up to three years in prison.

'Unrelated' to Goldstone

The army said it opened the investigation after the incident was brought to its attention by the United Nations, but emphasised it was "completely unrelated" to a report issued by UN investigator Richard Goldstone.

A team of UN investigators led by Goldstone said it found evidence that Israel and Hamas fighters committed war crimes during the conflict.

The two sides deny the accusations.

The UN General Assembly ordered Israel and Hamas to carry out investigations or face possible action from the US Security Council.

Israel has rejected the report and insists it is capable of investigating itself - a claim international human rights groups dismiss.

EU backs Goldstone

On Wednesday, the European Parliament backed the findings of the Goldstone report and urged its 27-member states to monitor Israeli and Palestinian probes into war crimes in Gaza.

It also urged Israel to immediately open its border crossing with the Gaza Strip to alleviate the worsening humanitarian crisis there.

The assembly is the second institution after the United Nations to back the report, with just over 50 per cent of politicians passing the resolution.

But the move was sharply criticised by Israel, which says it has opened 36 criminal investigations into complaints of improper conduct by its troops during the fighting in Gaza, much of which occurred in residential areas.

Last month a senior Israeli field officer involved in the war in Gaza was reprimanded over artillery shelling in a heavily populated area that hit a United Nations compound.

Some 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis, were killed in the offensive Israel launched in December 2008.

Could 'Goldilocks' planet be just right for life?

Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.

Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.

It's just right. Just like Earth.

"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.

Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?

Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.

"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harboring life.

Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.

But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."

The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.

The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview.

That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare.

Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.

With an estimated 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.

Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in the sweet spot in between, Vogt said.

With the star designated "a," its sixth planet is called Gliese 581g.

"It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's World."

The star Gliese 581 is a dwarf, about one-third the strength of our sun. Because of that, it can't be seen without a telescope from Earth, although it is in the Libra constellation, Vogt said.

But if you were standing on this new planet, you could easily see our sun, Butler said.

The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said.

"It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions," Vogt said.