A deadly Ebola outbreak in the central Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nine and infected 21, the UN-sponsored radio Okapi quoted the health minister as saying Thursday.
The DR Congo has been hit by Ebola outbreaks three times before. In 1976 the virus killed nearly 500 people on both sides of the country's border with Sudan.
It struck again in 1995, killing 245 people in the western province of Bandundu, and a further 26 cases were confirmed in 2007 in the Western Kasai province, after 187 people died from a host of diseases, including Ebola, malaria, typhoid and dysentery.
#1
the media will have too start acting like this is an epidemic of global proportions until they can think of a way too make the paleos look like choir boys
Ace footballer David Beckham's protection may turnout to be the biggest-ever security operation when he arrives in Dubai on Monday to make his debut for AC Milan, for top officials fear that he may be an ideal high-profile target for Muslim fanatics. Spies at the intelligence agency MI6 are afraid that al-Qaida may attack the United Arab Emirates any time.
Beckham will be making several public appearances before the January 6 friendly match against Hamburg. It's a huge headache. We are planning as if it is a state visit. Security measures could not be any higher, the Daily Star quoted one security source as saying.
We're used to stars coming to Dubai but what makes this different are the public appearances he will be making - autograph signings and training sessions. Fans want to meet him face-to-face and that poses a different kind of risk to what we normally see, the source added. Armed guards will be watching Beckham round the clock, and roads around the venues for his training may be sealed off. Even those allowed anywhere near Beckham would have to pass through airport-style scanning machines.
#1
Obama will empty out the American oil reserve as soon as he gets into office. There's no sense in keeping anything for emergencies, it might benefit America.
#4
While W. Bush filled the SPR to 100%, I wish he had also talked to some of his Texas oilmen friends to restock their shallower oilfields with cheap oil that could be quickly recovered.
Importantly, not above ground where it could be seized, but in out of the way fields that could sit idle for years with little notice.
#6
.5MT: I didn't say it was. However, that is just the SPR. Typically, crude oil is stored above ground en route to the refineries, and there is considerable capacity there as well.
However, in above ground storage it would still be easily snatchable by the government. So Texas oilmen would be better off by pumping it back underground where they could recover it with ease, but the government could not.
I am reminded of the story of a very profitable silver mine in old Mexico. The trouble was, that once the silver ore was refined at the mine, they had to transport it a considerable distance to where they could cash it in.
And the distance was covered with both banditos and corrupt local government officials with their banditos.
So the silver mine melted the silver into a giant ball with large handles, that had to be towed by a 40 mule team. When the banditos and local government showed up to steal the silver, the miners just abandoned the ball and went a safe distance away, until the banditos had given up in frustration.
Because they were the only people in the whole region who had a 40 mule team, and knew how to use it.
Posted by: Bunker Hill ||
12/27/2008 13:25 Comments ||
Top||
#8
The problems with putting the oil down into an old field are that: More than one company will generally have wells in those fields so there is no way to keep the oil under the well of the company that put it there. And secondly, if you pump it in at one spot, it is going to spread out. There is no guarantee you are going to be able to pump it all back out again.
#9
Oil goze into tanks, and back a few years... some got went into crude ponds. Pumping it back into the formation can lead to costly contamination, seepage, and other legal issues and problems as discussed by crosspatch.
KATHMANDU - Nepals crippling electricity shortage is set to worsen, with the Himalayan nation facing power cuts of 16 hours a day by mid-February, officials said on Friday, in a fresh blow to the Maoist-led government. Power generation has fallen because mountain snows are not melting fast enough in winter and river levels are low, hampering an economy which has not recovered from a decade-long civil war.
The government has declared a national power emergency, which it expects to last up to five years, and the electricity authority said daily power cuts would increase to 12 hours from nine hours from next week, and to 16 hours from mid-February. The situation will only worsen as we have no way to meet the demand, senior Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official Sher Singh Bhat said.
Nepals many rivers cascading down from the Himalayas have the potential to generate up to 83,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, officials and experts say. But last week Bhat told Reuters the country generates only 336 MW of total capacity despite demand for 770 MW, which rises by 60 MW a year.
The government said it would give a seven-year tax exemption to private companies producing hydroelectric power by 2012. It will also import electricity from India and install diesel-run generators in the next two months. Building expensive new power plants is politically sensitive in Nepal, one of the worlds poorest nations.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/27/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
NOT too disimilar from CALIFORNIA reportedly ruing out of $$$ for normal Govt. operations come February or March 2009.
LUCKNOW: A mother of two young children has gone into hiding after her dissolute husband wagered her in a card game and lost.
Tumko hum juen mein haar gaye hain (I have lost you in the game of cards), was what Sokendra Kumar, a resident of Muzaffarnagar, told his wife when four men, who had won her showed up to collect their booty on December 19.
The woman raised an alarm and the neighbours rushed in to prevent the men from dragging her away. She told us about the whole thing, but by the time the picture was clear, the four, who had come to take her away, fled, Sharad Malik, a neighbour, told TOI on phone from Muzaffarnagar.
After the din had died down and with the backing of the neighbours, she went to the cops, who told her to buzz off. They scolded me saying that I should not bother them on trivial issues. For them it was too small a thing to intervene, the woman said.
Vijay Kumar, station officer, Thana Bhawan, confirmed the woman had approached him. It was found to be a false allegation and the issue was only limited to a domestic dispute and she went home, he said.
Residents of the area said thats when the woman went into hiding, fearing the men who had beaten her husband in the card game might show up again. Some of the neighbours know where she is, but she is too scared to go home fearing that her husbands friends might kidnap her, said another local resident on the condition of anonymity.
We owned some four bighas of ancestral land which we had given on batai (partnership) and used the earnings to get two square meals a day for the family of four, including his wife and their two sons, aged seven and four, said Sokendra Kumars mother, Shakuntala.
But he sold the land and squandered the money in gambling and drinking. He even sold all the utensils, she said.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/27/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
A family talking during a movie enraged a nearby viewer so badly that he shot the father in the arm.
Philadelphia police say James Joseph Cialella Jr, 29, shot the man after a brief altercation. Cialella was still inside the theater when police arrived.
Police arrested and charged him with attempted murder, aggravated assault, violation of uniform firearms act, possession of an instrument of a crime, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.
#1
Shooter will spend some time in jail and pay serious cash to a lawyer to avoid a longer stay.
On the other hand, I'd suspect the guy that got shot, along with most of those who saw this action take place, will be considerably more cognizant of their obligation to be quiet in movie theaters from now on.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/27/2008 10:22 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Theaters... I hates'em.
Posted by: John H. Dillinger ||
12/27/2008 10:38 Comments ||
Top||
#6
More 'proof' that guns need to be banned. Every time an irresponsible (or crazy) gun posessor does something like this it is another nail in the coffin of the Second Amendment.
#7
that's not proof, that's an idiot with a gun who got pissed off. I would rather keep my guns since we will soon be over run like Great Britain with muzzies who always seem too be able too find guns
#8
If he was in violation of the "uniform firearms act", he probably had an illegal gun. I think it's very rare for people carrying legal firearms to be involved in this kind of thing. Correct me if I'm wrong.
#9
Arm All at their own discretion, like Vermont (of all places!). This guy would have had to at least think twice in that he was almost guaranteed an armed response.
That's why the scare quotes, rabid. My point is that every time somebody does something bad with a gun the anti-gunners make political hay out of it. The fact that more laws should not have an effect on those already violating numerous gun laws does not apply to their 'logic'.
#12
Bad behavior by gun posessors is used as an excuse to ban guns. Banning guns buries the Second Amendment. Bad behavior by gun posessors is abused to bury the Second Amendment.
#15
VCRs and DVD players are the proverbial double-edged sword, sure you can avoid the jerks by watching at home, but when you do go to the movies too many people act like they're in their own freakin' living room.
There should be no Second Amendment issues here -- everyone knows that an icepick in the base of the skull is the best way to mete out justice in a movie theatre.
Posted by: regular joe ||
12/27/2008 19:27 Comments ||
Top||
#16
I've found that a large drink in the lap will stop most talking. If you buy a large, most refills are free....
just saying
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/27/2008 20:05 Comments ||
Top||
For anyone with an interest in the starry skies and around 42 million dollars to spare, NASA may have an interesting proposition. The US space agency has announced it is selling three used space shuttles when they are retired in 2010, after 30 years of service.
Sadly for enthusiasts planning their own voyage of discovery, the orbiters will only be made available for display in museums and other educational institutes.
And potential buyers may have to move quickly. One of the three craft -- the most complex aircraft ever built which launches into space like a rocket before gliding back to Earth like a plane -- has already been earmarked for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
There the shuttle will join a wealth of exhibits held by the museum which mark the history of flight and space exploration, including a first successful motorized plane produced by the Wright brothers in 1903.
The two remaining craft, which were generally used to transport equipment into space, will be cleaned, decontaminated and stored in the Kennedy Space Center in Florida while new homes are found.
The 42-million dollar cost includes six million dollars to fly the shuttle to its new home piggybacked on a special Boeing 747, but not the costs of the final road transport. For those with a smaller budget, NASA is also selling engines found at the rear of the shuttles and which run on a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. They will cost around 400,000-800,000 dollars each, not including delivery.
The 37-metre long shuttle has carved a place into space history, helping to construct the orbiting International Space Station and to repair the Hubble space telescope. It must be kept in a covered and temperature-controlled area, NASA said.
Only six space shuttles were ever built. The prototype Enterprise never flew in space. Two were destroyed. Challenger exploded 73 seconds after its lift-off in 1986 killing seven astronauts on board. Columbia disintegrated as it returned to the Earth's atmosphere in 2003 also with seven astronauts on board.
Only three shuttles remain -- Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. They are due to make eight more flights to the ISS to finish construction and carry out the last maintenance mission on the Hubble.
According to the British daily The Guardian, the Science Museum in London has voiced interest in buying Endeavour, but reportedly only American organizations are being considered.
#1
CHALLENGER, when Reagan challenged the USSR = "Evil Empire", versus:
COLUMBIA, surname for the USA = NEW WORLD/CONUS-NORAM, blew up in her end leg after an otherwise highly successful GWOT = SHUTTLE SPACE MISSION, taking to their deaths international Astronauts representative of World Nations invol wid Dubya-USA in the GWOT + former GUAM resident Willy Mccool!?
#2
Collectively, the warning is that America may win most or all of the BATTLES, but in or near the end will lose THE WAR, TO SOCIALISM AND RADICAL ISLAMISM.
WHICH, WEIRDLY AND MYSTERIOUSLY BUT ONLY COINCIDENTALLY + PCORRECTLY DENIABLY, IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, TAINT IT!?
#8
Ummm... I was in DC a few years back and they had a shuttle at the Air and Spaces Annex at Dulles. Do you really need 2 shuttles in that mesuam, folks?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/27/2008 10:18 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Mike N-
The bird at NASM is Enterprise, which is pretty much an empty shell - after the flight test program ended, she became a parts source for the other shuttles, and a lot of her innards went to Endeavour when she was built. It was decided long ago that the Smithsonian would get one of the orbiters as well, so eventually the public could actually walk around in a spacecraft. I've also heard that the USAF Museum in Dayton OH is pushing hard to get one of the orbiters, which leaves only one available for purchase.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/27/2008 16:00 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A deadly Ebola outbreak in the central Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nine and infected 21, the UN-sponsored radio Okapi quoted the health minister as saying Thursday.
Ace footballer David Beckham's protection may turnout to be the biggest-ever security operation when he arrives in Dubai on Monday to make his debut for AC Milan, for top officials fear that he may be an ideal high-profile target for Muslim fanatics. Spies at the intelligence agency MI6 are afraid that al-Qaida may attack the United Arab Emirates any time.
