A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report. Read the full story
China and Russia try to control rain clouds and the Dutch use technology to keep low-lying inland areas from flooding, so why shouldn’t the United States be able to manipulate lightning? In an attempt to better understand one of nature’s most powerful processes, DARPA issued abroad agency announcement yesterday asking for ideas on how to best protect American personnel and resources from dangers and costs associated with lightning strikes. To wit:
Lightning causes more than $1B/year in direct damages to property in addition to the loss of lives, disruption of activities (for example, postponement of satellite launches) and their corresponding costs. A better understanding of the physics underlying lightning discharge, associated emissions, and related processes (for example, tribocharging in the clouds) may lead to revolutionary advances in the state of the art of lightning protection. Read the full story
NEW YORK – Brazil has recently generated positive headlines with its 2016 Olympic bid victory, as well as its increased economic and political visibility.
Based on current economic trends, it could be one of the world’s five biggest economies — along with China, the United States, India and Japan — by the middle of this century, according to The Economist.
Yet, the evidence of progress has been marred by the nation’s troubling crime statistics — and reports of unlawful methods employed by the security forces. Read the full story
Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so. Read the full story
Washington (CNN) — The United States won’t join its NATO allies and many other countries in formally banning landmines, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said during his midday briefing Tuesday.
“This administration undertook a policy review and we decided our landmine policy remains in effect,” Kelly said in response to a question. “We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention.” Read the full story
U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to China has a dirty little secret: cyberwarfare. It is an issue Beijing refuses to acknowledge exists, but it has the potential to torpedo military relations between the two nations. Almost every other conceivable area of disagreement between China and the U.S. will have been raised during Obama’s visit by one side or the other — even such highly sensitive issues as human rights and the unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang province. But even if U.S. officials try to raise the issue of what they believe is a constant and growing campaign by China to infiltrate U.S. networks, steal secrets and hone Beijing’s ability to wreak havoc in case of military conflict, the likelihood is that Chinese officials will simply deny that the problem exists, as they have done with great success in the past. From the American point of view, there’s unfortunately currently little Washington can do to change that state of affairs.
“At a fundamental level, the Chinese view cyberwar as an overt tool of national power in a very different way from the United States,” says James Mulvenon, a Washington-based specialist on the Chinese military. “The U.S. is still uncomfortable exercising that power, but the Chinese — and the Russians — are very comfortable with the deniability and using proxies, even though the actions of those proxies could have enormous strategic consequences.” Read the full story
MADRID — Spain wants EU naval forces to blockade three Somali ports used to launch pirate attacks against ships in the Indian Ocean, Defence Minister Carme Chacon said Wednesday.
She said Spain will call on European Union foreign and defence ministers to concentrate military efforts on blockading the ports at a meeting next Monday and Tuesday.
“We know that it is from these three ports that most, if not all, ‘mother ships’ used by pirates reach up to one thousand miles away from the coast — as they did yesterday — and carry out kidnappings far from the coast,” she told RNE public radio.
Chacon also said the pirate gangs “have ties to sophisticated law firms in London,” and she called for the international community to do more to track ransoms given to pirates to release hostages.
Several law firms in London, business capital of the world’s maritime industry, have handled piracy kidnap and ransom cases in recent years.
They help ship owners deal with the legal aspects of paying a ransom and engage private security contractors to negotiate with pirates and carry out the ransom drop.
Pirates on Monday launched their longest range hijack attempt to date by opening fire on the Hong Kong-flagged oil tanker BW Lion 1,000 nautical miles east of Mogadishu, the EU naval force in the region said.
The next day pirates attacked the Danish-flagged container ship Nelle Maersk, also some 1,000 nautical miles east of the Somali capital.
Both ships escaped their attackers but the incidents demonstrated how beefed-up security off the Somalia coast appears to be leading pirates to move deeper into the Indian Ocean and its shipping lanes linking Asia and Europe.
Chacon said the attacks so far from the Somalia coast were a “giant step” for the pirates who she said were becoming bolder.
The pirates usually use “mother ships” to sail hundreds of miles out to sea and then attack in small skiffs, sometimes using high-grade weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades.
“These are not romantic pirates which some may be led to imagine, they are authentic criminal organisations which are focused on kidnappings of all types merchant ships, fishing trawlers, ships belonging to the World Food Programme,” said Chacon.
The minister said Somali pirates were currently holding 12 boats and their crews hostage, including the Spanish trawler Alakrana which was seized with its 36 crew on October 2, as well as vessles from Britain, China and Malta.
The pirates are demanding four million dollars (2.6 million euros) ransom as well as the release of two suspected pirates who were detained a few days after the trawler was seized and brought to Spain to face trial.
The Spanish government has ruled out freeing the two suspects but Chacon said they could serve their sentence back in Somalia if found guilty of any crime.
A lawyer for one of the two detained suspected pirates, Javier Diaz Aparicio, told Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo he was trying to reach a plea bargain agreement with Spanish prosecutors.
In an interview with news radio Cadena Ser on Tuesday he suggested that his salary was being paid for by the interior ministry.
Though journalists, international affairs professionals, travel lovers, and international businessmen are already well aware that Brazil is the country to watch, there are still many gringos who aren’t tuned in to Brazil’s ascent or don’t quite understand the country’s importance. This list is for those gringos.
10. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s cultural capital (but not the national capital – that’s Brasília) is an excellent urban case study when learning about the developing world. It shares certain characteristics with other developing cities that provides many important lessons and a useful perspective on urban conflicts, like inequality, violent crime, and drug trafficking, as well as positive changes like a growing middle class, increased purchasing power of the average consumer and social movements. Read the full story
The United States Marine Corps will turn 234 on Tuesday and birthday celebrations will be taking place at bases stretching from the halls of Montezuma all the way to the shores of Tripoli.
Marine Air Corps Station Yuma, however, got the party started a few days earlier by holding a formal ceremony at the base’s parade field on Friday morning.
“Happy 234th birthday. And most of you don’t look a day over 18,” MCAS Yuma Commanding Officer Col. Mark Werth said during the celebration. Read the full story
Nigeria’s space agency is no joke. It has launched satellites and aims to put Africans into space.
LONDON, U.K. — Recently I received an email labeled “Strictly Confidential” from Dr. Bakare Tunde, who said he was astronautics project manager at Nigeria’s space agency. He also told me he was the cousin of the first African in space, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde, and that this poor intrepid astronaut had been stranded on a secret Soviet military station ever since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990.
“He is in good humor,” read the email, “but wants to come home.” No wonder he was keen to hurtle back earthwards, Tunde told me his cousin had accumulated almost $15 million in pay. For the price of my bank account details, I could claim 20 percent and fly the brave chap home to collect my portion of the earnings and transfer the rest on to him like the good space-supporter that I was.
This classic 419 scam is indeed far-fetched but one aspect of it is true.
Nigeria really does have a space agency. The west African nation’s National Space Research and Development Agency is already celebrating its 10th anniversary. And as America and Europe’s space agencies set their sights on joint exploration of Mars, Nigeria has big plans of its own: It wants to send a Nigerian up into space in 2015, making Nigeria home to the first black African astronaut.
Sitting across from Gerald Okeke, it’s hard to fathom that the quietly spoken fellow might one day fly beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Okeke, 28, is one of 27 Nigerian engineers being trained how to design and build an earth observation satellite in the U.K., at private British company Surrey Satellites Technology in Guildford, southeast of London. We are sitting in the canteen of the spacecraft-mad company, from whose ceilings dangle silver starburst lights and whose rubbish bins are shaped like shiny rockets.
“There is much to learn but we are coping,” says Okeke, whose father was also a scientist. “It’s a big challenge. Talking about space in Africa is kind of a new field but it’s a very big opportunity for us to explore.”
He says it would be an honor to be picked as Africa’s first black space sailor — who must be aged 27 to 37 at the time of lift-off and whose selection will begin next year ahead of four years of training. Okeke has already spent several years studying in the U.K., which he says is challenging. “The weather can be trouble and we try to cope with the food even though it’s not what we eat in Nigeria,” said Okeke.
His is not the only sacrifice in an expensive and widely questioned mission. Nigeria spends $20 million a year on its space program, in a country in which for every thousand children born, 137 will die before they are five years old. A collapse in the value of Nigeria’s naira currency — in part attributable to the global downturn — has meant the costs of its payments in U.S. dollars have also rocketed by a third.
“Even in the U.S. some people are opposed to the space program so we are not surprised this happens here,” says Seidu Onailo Mohammed, CEO of the Nigerian space agency. “But we want to assess the problems that have devastated this land. We need to monitor our environment, assess problems of flooding, deforestation — all this can only be done if we have a viable space program. Plus after so many years it’s a good idea to think of an astronaut.”
The country jetted up a $13 million earth observation satellite, made in the U.K. and launched from Russia, in 2003. A much more expensive communications satellite, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched from China in 2007. It failed within 18 months but a replacement is due to be propelled into space by 2011, paid for by insurance.
But still the Nigerian agency wants more money. The government believes it will all pay off in the end.
Already the earth observation satellite has taken some pretty impressive snaps including pictures of poppy growing in Afghanistan, the state of cyclone damage after Myanmar’s authorities restricted access to international rescue teams in 2008 and, closer to home, identifying the whereabouts of illegal tankers parking far out at sea to steal Nigeria’s oil supplies.
Nigeria has managed to sell about 1,000 of its satellite images and hopes over the course of each satellite’s lifetime such data sales will cover the costs of manufacture and operation.
“We are bringing down space to apply it on the ground,” says Francis Chizea, Director of the Nigerian space agency. “It’s going to be very very important for the economy. We can map the wetlands and advise on areas very good for rice production; monitor desertification in the north; find the best place to locate dams; assess the environmental impact of oil drilling; locate oil spills and track movements on the border.”
It’s all been made possible by a new approach to space science that has let developing nations in on the extra-terrestrial act.
“We’ve been able to shrink a satellite from a double-decker bus down to the size of a TV set,” says Martin Sweeting, the British founder of Surrey Satellites Technology, a radio fanatic as a child who decided space shouldn’t be the privilege of the rich nations. “It’s now possible for an African country to have its own satellite for $10 to $15 million. It can yield real benefits at the right price.”
South Africa, Algeria and Egypt are all marshaling their own satellite facilities, so there’s no question Africa’s scientists are reaching for the stars.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Friday that Israel must prepare for a protracted struggle against a damning United Nations report on its winter offensive in Gaza, after the UN’s Human Rights Council endorsed the report. Read the full story
The Palestinian Authority would not oppose the prosecution of Hamas militants on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, Israel Radio on Saturday quoted the PA’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as saying. Read the full story
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading Read the full story
Would you believe that the tallest bridge in France reaches higher than the Eiffel tower, or that a single dam in China can hold back 1.4 trillion cubic feet or water? Each of the projects depicted here has set at least one world record for its height, scale, daring or ingenuity. From Venice to Boston, Egypt to England, here are seven amazing engineering wonders of the modern world. Know of others? Add to the list below! Read the full story
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – The Group of 20 is set to become the premier coordinating body on global economic issues, reflecting a new world economic order in which emerging market countries like China are much more relevant, according to a draft communique. Read the full story
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