The rand was sharply weaker in early as global markets went into full flight after US stocks had their worst day since 1987.

p Plink. Plink. Tink. One billion dollars of up-front investment and it all comes down to this: a slow but steady trickle of milky white pebbles dropping from a funnel into an acrylic jar. The jar is locked inside a glass case that's inside a vault that's inside the high-security Red Area of a prefab aluminum building on the Canadian tundra. Every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year, miners for the South African company De Beers blast 3,150 tons of rock mdash; enough to fill 80 trucks mdash; from under the earth near this aluminum building and feed it into crushers, scrubbers, sifters, and x-ray machines. It's a lot of effort for a little, but the little is a lot: the equivalent of two coffee mugs a day full of rough diamonds. /p p Running a diamond mine in the Arctic is a mind-boggling undertaking. "This is a camp in the middle of nowhere," says Peter Mooney, manager of the processing plant at Snap Lake, "and a bloody horrible winter's day in Africa is the nicest summer day here. The real problem with diamonds isn't even their scarcity," he says. "It's that getting them takes a lot of science and engineering and lots and lots of money." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" An aerial view shows the Snap Lake facility. br /emPhoto: Courtesy DeBeers/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Fipke doesn't work for De Beers mdash; they're competitors mdash; but the Snap Lake project, just like the ones at Ekati and Diavik, is part of the new era that Fipke created. The only way in is by air on company charter flights, except for six to 10 weeks in winter when ice road truckers mdash; just like on the History Channel show mdash; cart in fuel, mining machines and haul trucks, dormitories and parts for generators, conveyor belts, explosives. /p p On a 4,000-foot gravel runway, commuter planes and 737s trade approaches and takeoffs with C-130 Hercules flights full of cargo. After my ATR threads its way to the ground, a yellow school bus picks me up and drops me at a snaking series of linked prefab trailers containing sleeping quarters, offices, and a cafeteria. I fill out forms. I agree to be searched at any time. I agree not pick up any rocks from the ground, even the smallest pebble. Hundreds of closed-circuit cameras watch my every move. /p p Snap Lake is unusual mdash; instead of blowing straight up to the surface, the magma followed a crooked path through fissures in the surrounding granite. Snap Lake's kimberlite is a 9-foot-thick, 2.5-by-1.6-mile seam angling slightly downward. It's also about 200 feet under a lake that's frozen most of the year. So all of Snap Lake's mining is underground mdash; a cold, wet, black world of rising and falling tunnels constantly leaking water from the lake above. /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption"Snap Lake miners work under the lake. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em/div/div/div !-- close pic -- p The operation consumes 25,000 gallons of fuel a day mdash; and the work never stops. Miners drill holes in rock faces, insert explosives, and blow out over 1,500 tons of gray kimberlite per blast, twice a day. Trucks carry the ore to a large bin where it's stored. Then it's sent to a crusher that feeds the rock onto a mile-long conveyor belt that carries it to the surface, to the Blue Area, specifically a 5-story building of more crushers and sifters and shakers and screens and heavy liquid cyclone separators that pick out all the heavy ore. It's a roaring maze of steel grates and 60-foot staircases. /p p Eventually the conveyors pass into a more secure building-within-the-building, the Red Area. It's accessible only via a room the size of a closet; when the door behind me locks, cameras confirm that I'm alone. A green light tells me to proceed through zigzagging rooms that would be difficult to, say, kick a diamond through. /p p The ore passes down through another tower of sorters mdash; x-rays illuminate diamonds. A secondary (and secret) process uses lasers to further refine the stream. At the end of the line, past an 8-inch-thick steel door and a set of steel bars, is the vault itself, a small room with half a dozen cameras and a big, rectangular glass box shot with glove-lined holes, like an incubator for premature infants. Stones mdash; some the size of pin heads, others the size of gum balls mdash; drop into a jar. Sometimes five minutes pass with nary a gem, and then two or three tumble out at once. Over the course of a year, there will be 1.2 million carats. Some are opaque; some are as clear as glass. Of the 430 men and women working here, no more than 60 will ever see this vault mdash; or any diamonds. Ever. I slip my hands through the holes and into gloves, and pick up the biggest rock I see, a perfect 5-carat octahedral crystal three times older than the human species, formed during the age of the mastodons. A chunk of pure carbon, beautiful and banal. I ask how much it's worth. "Not allowed to say," Mooney says. "Put it this way: That's a hell of a lot of diamonds." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" Dumptrucks loaded with ore exit Snap Lake mine. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Diamond jewelry has never moved me. But suddenly, holding this stone, I can't help it. I want one. The gears in my mind whir. And it's as if Mooney can hear them. "People get very clever," he says, "and very determined. We haven't had any theft here yet, but we check the gloves for holes every day." I gently place the stone back in the pile. /p p Exiting requires an additional turn into a room with an x-ray machine and a glass wall. Under the gaze of a man who says, "Don't worry, I've seen it all," I strip to my underpants, place my clothes and shoes and socks through the x-ray machine. Open my mouth. Show behind my ears. Sit in a chair and show the bottoms of my feet. Stand and run my fingers under the band of my underpants. There's only one hiding place left, which happily they don't check. I'm cleared and allowed to dress. /pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d011f686205262c6951fc33685b9bb46:a8pvoY0DF4w6AiLCDaPAxt4vcEJtvr5wJESgvBmhZizGdIwUswHdfQNGT0WMrv4ojgA5yCeDKy7W3Q%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1735cba2b691243040d240890798faea:5NRFEhJtG%2F%2F8WaCMCuPS%2F4RjNqb89d3oWFzueVglFjn1wsAbytlpHHl8XzVTjtNg41BQd3NxQV9w'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:dc8729a9cfdd0557ca41dce4be2e075c:2CxMVa%2F06wsEm0VSsYE%2FCE1SkSz%2BXA1VhsMeuyIIPLpXdjBq3K9BXbQVcJ4ZOEwec2vUcRvFaVES'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:70ffb3fccb1fa0cdf92173d47ab87d7e:2M67At%2B4WlXawKkc8v5qSMyJqs1W%2BmVDtVF1w7XerfxYF1r%2Fc7E49pH6Pz6uWaHwwDnYF5Rlqbzi'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=1DnDqv"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=1DnDqv" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101284" height="1" width="1"/

Financial shares tumble again as quarterly results approach.

With the official announcement of a recession, the Dow Jones plummets nearly 700 points. Tech stocks Dell and Qualcomm, meanwhile, take a double-digit hit.

With the official announcement of a recession, the Dow Jones plummets nearly 700 points. Tech stocks Dell and Qualcomm, meanwhile, take a double-digit hit.

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Software and hardware prices tumble in run up to Christmas

pstrong1952:/strong It's front-page news when George Jorgensen Jr. is reborn as Christine Jorgensen, gaining international celebrity and notoriety as the first widely known person to undergo a successful sex-change operation./p pJorgensen, who grew up in the Bronx, in her words, a "frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games," was drafted into the Army just after World War II. Military service only reinforced Jorgensen's belief that she was, in fact, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jorgensen"a woman trapped inside a man's body/a./p pAfter receiving her discharge, Jorgensen returned home and first heard about "sex-reassignment surgery," which was being performed only in Sweden. (It was illegal almost everywhere else, including the United States.)/p pEncouraged, Jorgensen began taking female hormones on her own, then headed for Sweden. She never made it. Stopping in Denmark to visit relatives in Copenhagen, Jorgensen was introduced to Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon who specialized in the kind of surgery she was seeking. He agreed to take the case and put his patient on a href="http://www.transgenderzone.com/research/hrt.htm"hormone-replacement therapy/a as they prepared for surgery./p pSeveral surgeries were required, the first one consisting of castration, which was only carried out after permission was obtained from the Danish minister of justice./p pAt the time of Jorgensen's transformation, Hamburger did not give her an artificial vagina, so she remained "anatomically incorrect" for several years before undergoing a vaginoplasty in the United States./p pThe hormone therapy resulted in profound changes to Jorgensen's body. Fat was redistributed, and she began to take on the contours of a woman. Subsequent surgeries completed the process until she was ready to step into the spotlight./p pJorgensen's sex change, which may have been leaked to the press by Jorgensen herself, hit the headlines Dec. 1, creating an international sensation. "a href="http://www.christinejorgensen.org/MainPages/Home.html"Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty/a" screamed the banner of Jorgensen's hometown citeNew York Daily News/cite./p pIn fact, Jorgensen was not the first person to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. During the rollicking Weimar period, German doctors performed the surgery on at least two patients. The difference, in Jorgensen's case, was that she underwent hormone-replacement therapy in conjunction with the surgery. The earlier surgeries were strictly cut-and-paste./p pAlthough Jorgensen complained frequently about the jackals of the press, she did become something of a publicity hound and took most of the tasteless remarks with good grace, laughing off jokes such as, "Christine Jorgensen went abroad and came back a broad."/p pShe turned to acting and became a nightclub singer as well, performing, predictably, "I Enjoy Being a Girl."/p pBut a href="http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hptjorg,0,5016969.story"Christine Jorgensen's world/a was not an enlightened one, particularly when it came to transgenderism. She paid the cost for this lack of sophistication. A first announced engagement fell through, and a second one failed as well, when the state of New York refused to issue the couple a marriage license. Her intended husband also lost his job when the marriage plans became known./p pShe later traveled the lecture circuit, talking about her experiences and advocating for the nascent transgender cause./p pJorgensen died of cancer in 1989, a few weeks short of age 63./p pemSource: Various/em/pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:14726c86094f4373cbca8810b6e79f33:b7jmRB9jZN4YWmznJDVr6I%2B1zgDTrzHoGC4tEFrkywRpB%2FUmLqOcGv15ZNgQ9s5j9pKaT0e6rSJpXA%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:bd0bbd369af0fcfea13494f6df17b4dd:%2BDUqftxaEQ%2FMHeptxg5c1ofDq4eZGF8%2BAlnlMcjbttllEPF9xuPMUGvM7F6XrinqjrOcMAMumkRk'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:0ed93506faca6921d4c1edf3d719820a:HR%2F1Vsk8DZUpx6dvPHX1fxT9XAvh3QY%2BK0kbabwLXk0xLf%2B9Y1YNWla6YpAZPi2NEVs2mlbCXTt1'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:ec9e3c9c1f5bc8dc764fc4a2433a3669:IQZceNCcjchpTA%2FSsxs6mYCfc5HVkPN4%2Ba70W9wc1Upg3uUQolFxmC5VzPOWHpR9wpxRjSZ7fvVS'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=da901f6e9c26abd817c2896893b7253dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=da901f6e9c26abd817c2896893b7253dp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=da901f6e9c26abd817c2896893b7253d" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=0gJF1i"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=0gJF1i" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/470931597" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/17804?ns=guardianpageName=Society%3A+Charities+lose+faith+and+hope+as+funding+crisis+leaves+them+with+%26pound%3B2.3bn+black+holech=Societyc3=The+Guardianc4=Voluntary+sector+%28Society%29%2CRecession+%28UK%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CMoney%2CSociety%2CUK+newsc5=Society+Weekly%2CPersonal+Finance%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CSocial+Care+Societyc6=Robert+Booth%2CPatrick+Butlerc7=2008_12_01c8=1126633c9=articlec10=GUc11=Societyc12=Voluntary+sectorc13=c14=h2=GU%2FSociety%2FVoluntary+sector" width="1" height="1" //divpCharities are facing a multi-billion pound black hole in their finances as companies withdraw sponsorship and individuals cancel standing orders as the economic downturn bites, according to an authoritative study published today. /ppA survey of 362 charities by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Institute of Fundraising and the Charity Finance Directors' Group reveals that charity incomes are expected to fall in real terms and costs to rise. PwC estimates that the shortfall could reach pound;2.3bn next year as the UK heads towards recession./ppThe forecast is the clearest sign yet of the crisis facing the charitable sector as a result of the credit crunch and has been met with warnings that charity services - often aimed at helping victims of financial hardship - will be curtailed, and some may even collapse./ppThe squeeze has already seen the value of corporate donations tumble. The British Red Cross was forced to cancel its winter gala ball beside the Thames this month as it could not find a corporate sponsor for an event which usually raises pound;500,000. Shelter, the housing charity, lost pound;400,000 in the space of six weeks this autumn when corporate sponsors, including the nationalised mortgage lender Bradford Bingley, cancelled donations./ppCharity chief executives will now press ministers further to release a pound;500m emergency fund to help see them through the slump. "There is no doubt that over the coming year we will see charities fail," said Stephen Bubb, director of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. "We need help to help the victims of this recession."/ppDemand for services which deal with homelessness and mental illness has grown at the same time as a fifth of charities report increased cancellations of direct debits by individual donors - often a bedrock of income. Of the charities surveyed, 71% said they expected corporate donations to fall or stay static over the next year, and a fifth of those feared they could lose at least 15% of corporate income. Some reported declines of up to 50% already./ppAfter a decade of strong growth in revenues, the value of legacies and wills - which account for a third of the income of UK charities - has also plunged, and the charities' investment income has collapsed in line with the equity markets. According to the survey, the only growth looks set to come from charity shops, as bargain hunters turn to second hand goods. Even that is threatened by a lack of goods to sell, as some would-be donors try to raise extra cash by selling their bric-a-brac online./ppThis afternoon a group of 27 charities which have lost pound;46m in investments in Icelandic banks will lobby a creditors meeting for the release of their frozen assets. Among them are Cats Protection and the children's hospice Naomi House, which together invested pound;16.9m with Kaupthing Singer Friedlander./pp"In all but a technicality the recession is upon us and the economic climate is looking bleak," said Keith Hickey, chief executive of the Charity Finance Directors Group. "The one certainty is that our beneficiaries will need us more than ever. We must respond to this demand by ensuring that our charities are strongly led and able to ensure that we make the maximum possible use of resources."/ppThe crunch has come at a difficult time for Shelter, which offers advice on mortgage problems, homelessness, keeping warm and coping with rent arrears. Banking donors, who account for a third of corporate donations across the sector, pulled the plug on sponsorship deals as a rise in repossessions precipitated a 20% increase in demand for services. It had already laid off 30 staff./pp"If the situation worsens there will be an impact on our services," said Adam Sampson, Shelter's chief executive. "It is the speed with which it has happened which has made it very difficult to adjust. We have to plan for a significant proportion of our loyal donors not being able to afford their five pounds a month standing order payments."/ppDonations from the rich and legacies have slumped, according to the survey. Of charities polled, 86% expected legacies to either decline further or remain static over the coming year./pp"Giving from rich individuals, which had been flagged up as the next big thing, has gone down the pan," Mark Astarita, director of fundraising at British Red Cross, said. "The bulk of the value of legacies is in property and shares, and their value has plummeted. We have predicted a 20% decline next year." That would wipe more than pound;3m off the charity's pound;100m annual income./ppOverall, however, the British Red Cross, believes its income will grow modestly next year, largely from monthly direct debit donations gathered through face-to-face fundraising./pp"It is going to be tough, but it is not all doom and gloom," he said. "We are watching our individual donations closely and there is no detectable change."/ph2Short of funds/h2pWith more than two-thirds of charity bosses believing corporate donations will fall or stay static in the next year, charities which rely on this stream of income will be under pressure./ppThe strongMoney Advice Trust/strong, which provides free advice for individuals struggling with debts, relied on corporate donations for 65% of its pound;7.3m annual income in 2006-07. Five high street banks each gave it more than pound;500,000 in that year, including Royal Bank of Scotland, now nationalised./ppThe strongPrince's Trust/strong depends on the commercial largesse for around a fifth of its pound;22.5m fundraising income./ppstrongBreast Cancer Care/strong depended on corporate donations for 52.6% of its income, strongBreakthrough Breast Cancer/strong, for 16.6% and the strongRoyal Opera House/strong for 16.1%./ppThe crisis-hit UK financial sector accounts for around one third of UK charities' income from corporate donors. Figures from financial information group strongCaritas Data/strong show RBS gave pound;57m in cash and kind last year, Barclays pound;52.4m and HSBC pound;50.7m./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/voluntarysector"Voluntary sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/926Ypjk1CSQjwUdlv-98U_M_fs4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/926Ypjk1CSQjwUdlv-98U_M_fs4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p