A Kenya Airways passenger plane bound for Nairobi with 115 people on board crashed in southern Cameroon on Saturday shortly after take-off, the central African country's state radio said. The radio said the plane had crashed near Niete, south of the Cameroonian port town of Kribi and north of the border with Equatorial Guinea. It gave no further details. Kenya Airways earlier said it had lost contact with a 737-800 airliner bound for Nairobi shortly after it took off from Douala in Cameroon. The plane was carrying 106 passengers and nine crew, Kenya Airways Group Managing Director Titus Naikuni told a news conference in Nairobi.
The company said the Douala control tower had received the last message from the aircraft right after take-off. The plane had been due to land in Nairobi at 6.15am (3.15am GMT). An official at Douala airport said they had no information on the plane. Foreign diplomats in Cameroon said they had heard the Kenya Airways statement but had no further details.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under:
Amadou Toumani Toure, Mali's president, has been re-elected with an absolute majority in Sunday's election, according to official results. Provisional results announced on Thursday by the territorial administration ministry, which organised the election and collated the returns, showed Toure won 68.3 per cent of the valid votes. His closest rival, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, president of the national assembly and a former prime minister, trailed well behind with 18.59 per cent of the ballots. Voter turnout, traditionally low in Malian polls, was 36 per cent. Toure's campaign had previously claimed more than 70 per cent of votes while those backing Keita have already cried foul and pledged to challenge the outcome.
This article starring:
Amadou Toumani Toure
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under:
Syed Patel, a middle aged driver hailing from Gulbarga in the southern state of Karanataka, was the first Indian expatriate to receive a machine readable passport when the new system was introduced at the Consulate General of India yesterday. I am thrilled to have the passport that is machine readable as it will be free of errors and fraud, Patel told Arab News as he received his passport from Consul General Dr. Ausaf Sayeed. Yes, but does it have a religion column?
The new system was introduced in Riyadh in July last, more than a year after it was first introduced by any overseas Indian mission, in the UK, the consul general told a press conference later.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I am thrilled to have the passport that is machine readable as it will be free of errors and fraud,
Give the pakis two weeks.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2007 11:44 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Less.
An European company sold Pakistan a large quantity of the color shifting inks used in bank notes and passports. This was supposedly for Pak currency.
To date, not one Pak bank note uses this ink.
It is generally assumed that the ISI counterfeiting operation bought the lot.
Posted by: John Frum ||
05/06/2007 12:48 Comments ||
Top||
Note: Indian 700MW reactors are clones of the Canadian CANDU design.. pressurized heavy water reactors that use natural (non-enriched) Uranium as fuel and D2O (heavy water) as moderator and coolant. CANDU units can be refueled while operating and the hexagonal core design is ideal for "low burnup" of about 1/8th of the fuel at the edges. This doesn't disrupt the power flux and produces large amounts of weapons grade Plutonium. As a bonus to the weapons maker, Tritium builds up in the coolant water and can be extracted cheaply
Oh goodie: cheap electricity and plutonium too. Just what the Banglas need. We'll be reading stories from the new division of the RAB in a few years ...
Bangladesh has sought India's help for setting up a 600 MW nuclear power plant to meet its growing energy needs. "We have approached India for help to set up a nuclear power plant," said Hamid Khan, a senior scientist in the Atomic Energy Centre run by the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC).
The Bangladesh Government had earlier approached a European nation for supplying nuclear reactors but later chose India as it was "closer to home", he said. "Talks are on at the Government level," Khan told PTI.
The neighbouring country is facing a power shortfall of over 1,500 MW and hopes to meet the demand through alternative sources like atomic energy. Bangladesh's reserves of gas and coal have been its primary source of energy, but officials say these will run out within a few decades if they are used at the current rate. The BAEC hopes to generate at least 1,500 MW with nuclear plants it plans to build, Khan said.
Khan, who was here to attend a conference on "Accelerator and Low Level Radiation Safety", said Bangladesh was expecting to procure 600 MW light water reactors from India. "We chose India as it is closer to Bangladesh, both culturally and geographically. We will have help at hand nearer than any European country," he said.
Bangladesh has a nuclear programme that mostly caters to the requirements of the medical sector. Bangladesh had installed a three-megawatt research reactor at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Savar in 1986 for research and development activities and production of short-lived radio isotopes used in treating diseases like cancer.
It is understood to have finalised a site to build a 600 MW nuclear reactor that is expected to cost about $1billion. After the completion of the first reactor, another could be set up at the same site with the same power generation capacity.
Khan said, Bangladesh's hydro-power plants too were not generating power to their full capacity. With limited domestic fossil fuel reserves, nuclear power offered a proven and economically viable option for electricity generation, he said.
Bangladesh's first nuclear power project was conceived in 1961, when the country was East Pakistan, and a site was selected in Rooppur on the basis of internationally accepted criteria and local requirements. Both before and after Bangladesh's liberation, subsequent Governments approved the nuclear power project and a number of international suppliers submitted proposals but these could not be implemented reportedly due to lack of funds.
Posted by: John Frum ||
05/06/2007 12:18 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Any reason why India should help the Banglas? If they are too dumb to allow companies to drill for natural gas, why should they be entrusted with a reactor?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/06/2007 14:46 Comments ||
Top||
#2
India should build four or five new nuclear reactors in a horseshoe around Bangladesh, and wholesale power to the Bengalis. Bangladesh gets its power, but doesn't get any nuclear capability. India gets a means of control over Bangladesh should that nation become an islamic nation, with sharia laws and jihad. Bangladesh is broke and corrupt, and can't really afford nuke power plants. India is prosperous, and can - a perfect win-win situation.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/06/2007 21:59 Comments ||
Top||
Detained controversial businessman Giasuddin Al Mamun, a close friend of BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Tarique Rahman, yesterday confessed to a magistrate that Tarique and he were involved in the extortion of Tk 81 lakh from a businessman. He told the magistrate that he along with four others including Tarique, now in detention, had extorted Tk 81 lakh on different dates from Harun Ferdousi, managing director of Judge Distilleries Ltd. The three others are Babul Kazi, Enamul Hoque and Giasuddin Quaiyum, he said.
Mamun was placed on a four-day remand yesterday in connection with another case for extorting Tk 4.89 crore from the owner of construction firm 'Aclrcn', a sister concern of Reza Construction and Al-Amin Construction. Under heavy security, he was taken to the chamber of Metropolitan Magistrate Shamsul Alam around 2:30pm. The magistrate recorded his confessional statement for around four hours.
Of the Tk 81 lakh, Tarique took Tk 45 lakh, he took Tk 35 lakh and the three others shared Tk 1 lakh, Mamun said. Earlier, he had made confessional statements to another magistrate on different dates in connection with six other extortion cases filed with Gulshan, Kafrul, Shahbagh and Dhanmondi police stations.
In the case filed by Abu Shahed Sahel, coordinator of Aclrcl, with Gulshan Police station on Friday, he complained that Mamun had extorted Tk 4.89 crore from him on different dates in cash and cheque in 2004 to 2006. He could not dare to file any case against Mamun at that time fearing reprisal. And he has now lodged the case as the situation has changed, he said in the FIR.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under:
Fourteen members of the European Parliament have urged the caretaker government to lift the state of emergency immediately and arrange for a free and fair parliamentary election as soon as possible. As we knew it would, the pressure builds for the Banglas to do the wrong thing. They're confusing the form of democracy with the substance of liberty.
In a joint statement, the lawmakers from different member states also asked the security personnel to respect human rights and use force only when required. "As members of the European Parliament we are ready to support further enhanced cooperation with Bangladesh as a long lasting development partner, if the present government restores civil and political liberties and arranges as soon as possible for free and fair democratic elections under the presence of international observers which will include a delegation from our European Parliament," said the statement. The Daily Star received a copy of the statement yesterday.
About the ongoing state of emergency, the statement said: "for the sake of democracy, we urge the caretaker government of Bangladesh to urgently lift the state of emergency, which has been declared on January 11, 2007 and which, according to the Constitution, can run for a maximum of three months."
The parliamentarians, however, appreciated the government's steps to fight corruption, restore order and reform the institutions, including political parties. "However, recent reports on systematic oppression and intimidation of party leaders under the emergency rules have caused serious concern. We recognise the responsibility of the caretaker government of Bangladesh to ensure law and order, but urge security personnel to respect human rights and use force only when necessary and in a proportionate manner," the statement added.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
There is a lot of interesting stuff at this site where a statistician analyses Australian weather data.
In a nutshell, daytime temperatures are increasing, which causes maximum and minimum temperatures to increase. Max and min temperatures are used by most scientists to 'measure' the amount of warming.
Seems obvious, but nighttime temperatures are not increasing, which means there is no net warming. Daytime heating is lost at night.
It looks very much like the whole Global Warming hysteria is based on biased data.
#5
No thanks DV, one blizzard per century is about all I can stand.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2007 12:03 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Don't be so sure. I've noticed here that in May it's warmer than 3 months ago. And it's predicted to get only warmer next month, with nighttime temps to rise also.
It's like rantburgers aren't reusing their toilet paper.
#7
Has anyone heard about the lining up of the galaxy, solar system, and earth's tilt completely changing on dec 21, 2012, this could also be a factor in changing of the climate, it's also when the maya calaendar is reset to 0 after 15,000 years.
#12
But it does support one of the theories. ANd provides another flaw with the 'conventional' "analysis".
even tho it doesn't have a worldwide computer model with so many variables...
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/06/2007 15:56 Comments ||
Top||
#13
#11 I've always suspected the truthfulness of "Global Warming." However, the earth IS flat!
Posted by: JohnQC 2007-05-06 15:54
Only on one side, John...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/06/2007 22:17 Comments ||
Top||
#14
PLanet X + Solar Flares + honeybees, etc. aside, since Year 2000 the greatest real-time, overt threat to earth has been very Very VERY V-E-R-Y CLOSE FLYBYS OF NEAR EARTH OBJECTS, to which the only response of the future OWG-Global MSM IS TO PLAY POLITIX AND HIDE THE FACT OF POTENTIAL COLLISION-CATACLYSMIC EVENTS FROM WE ORDINARY EARTHICANS. Nations will depend on the future OWG, and the future OWG will depend on ROSWELLIAN SPACE ALIENS to save us.
#2
The Mayor of Paris' 1st arrondissement, quoting police reports, stated that some cars were torched in front of polling stations. This information has been confirmed by police who did not want to disrupt election proceedings.
According to an other Paros official, at two thirds of Paris' 50 polling stations had their locked blocked with with glue, matches, cigarette butts, and bits of metal.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/06/2007 15:53 Comments ||
Top||
#9
There's nothing wrong with that woman's face that a 12 gauge at close range wouldn't cure.
Posted by: Mac ||
05/06/2007 16:21 Comments ||
Top||
#10
"Cleanup in aisle 9!"
I wish Sarko luck. But you don't need a crystal ball to know that the Tranzi/Muzzie alliance is going to generate nonstop misery for him. Let's hope he has the stones to send it back to them in spades....
#13
Twobyfour has given us mods at least a couple of 'french_election_babe' pics for tomorrow morning's posts ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2007 18:26 Comments ||
Top||
#14
Immediately, the French left are said to be looking for a scapegoat, at the same time that Hillary's campaign throws out their "Royal in France--Hillary in the US" campaign theme.
#16
I notice a clear generational difference in twobyfour's pictures. Interesting.
Without wishing to be too lurid or explicit, I'd wager it is Sarkosy's young female supporters that stand a far greater chance of being gang raped by rampaging Muslim youths.
I was going to comment about this over in the other thread but it is more appropriate here. Any promise of increased security for young French women must have driven them straight into the arms of Sarkosy. With the massive upswing in gang rapes, violent assaults upon women and similar such misogynistic horseshit by Muslims, one would think that this particular demographic was left without choice in how to vote. I hope that all French women eventually are able to "take back the night" from their Muslim oppressors.
PARIS: The French presidential campaign officially closed Friday with the Gaullist front-runner, Nicolas Sarkozy, looking ever more assured of winning Sunday and his Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, predicting street violence if he is elected. Her warning came after the two latest opinion polls suggested Sarkozy would beat her by a bigger margin than predicted a few days ago, before a combative debate on national television in which Sarkozy kept his cool under rhetorical fire from Royal.
"Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice," Royal told the radio station RTL.
"It is my responsibility today to warn people of the risk of his candidacy concerning the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country," she said, suggesting that unrest was especially likely in the volatile suburbs that were the site of rioting in 2005. B-b-but h-h-e's HUNGARIAN. He's not French enough. Of course, we weaselifoerous ones won't like it!
'Brutality' has been one of Sego's buzz words; she's been trying to hang it on Sarko the entire election.
Whoever wins, the 2007 election will go down in history as one that shook France's political landscape. Sarkozy built a united party machine on the right, and while Royal failed to paper over the large cracks in the Socialist party, the emergence of a strong centrist vote for François Bayrou, third-place finisher in the first round two weeks ago, helped change the left. It must now decide whether to jettison traditional socialism in favor of the more market-oriented social democracy embraced by the left elsewhere in Europe. Umm Mr. Blair, since you are retiring would you mind consulting? Continued on Page 49
#5
Phineth the Prolific6003 has an interesting observation. There has been lots of unrest in France and the "Fear" is that Sarkozy wont put up with that shit (ie. send in police/troops). In NY Rudy wanted to reduce crime, clean up downtown, and reduce welfare rolls. I still hear the crimes of doom from the left in NYC.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2007 11:49 Comments ||
Top||
#11
If Sarko prevails, I see some rioting, but tamped down by larger force presence. And more forces in reserve if necessary. But he'll play it cool for months to come while formulating his policies on how to deal with the Muslim horde. In the long term, look for mounting pressures on the Muslim hordes. Then, things may explode. But the retaliation will be well organized and swift.
#16
Yes, but the question if Titanic has already struck the iceberg.
One thing is certain, the boat's still at all engines ahead full, if not ramming speed. With a new captain entering the bridge, there's some remote hope for a change in course but the beturbaned berg still looms large.
#17
I really doubt sarko, the man whose "France of tomorrow" (France d'après) is the "France where the expression français de souche (ethnic french) has no use anymore" is the man to steer off the iceberg. Besides, in his first speech, he said he was a proponent of the mediterranean union (IE do with north africa and France and Spain and other Eurabia stubs what was done with the EU). This man will certainly be less of a pain in the *ss for you US people than yavcoub ben shiraq and his insane Arab Policy was, but he's no savior of France, I can tell you that. He may do so some good economically, but he's a gravedigger of that old dying country nonetheless, Mr. multiculti disguised as a rightwinger.
If Titanic had rammed the iceberg frontally she would have not sunk. She nearly avoided it but not complettely and this cuased the icerge puncting along her side and five watertight compartments beuing indundated. She could float with four compartments inundated but not with five.
#19
Monsieur JFM - I did some research on that topic - mostly from a History Channel program, and the answer is a little more complicated that that:
The disaster was caused by five failures - two failures in metallurgy, two in the arrogance of its designers, in addition to the one in arrogance of operation, which is generally known. Sort of a systems failure!
The best steel, in 1912, had a much higher sulfur content than the steels of today. The sulfur content made the steel brittle, and the icy-cold waters of the North Atlantic further aggravated that tendency. Steel rivets recovered from the recently-discovered shipwreck revealed the rivets were of poor quality, even for that time. The combination meant the damage from the collision with the iceberg was far more severe than it otherwise might have been.
The first arrogance of design was to leave the top of the bulkheads open. The watertight compartments were not really watertight! Since the ship was unsinkable, no one worried about several compartments being breached at once. As the bow of the ship sank, water flowed over the top of the bulkhead into the next compartment, flooding them all in cascade fashion, until the ship sank.
Most people are aware of the fourth failure the Captain so concerned with schedule performance on the ships maiden voyage that he plowed ahead in the fog, worrying about neither icebergs nor other ships. When these four failures were combined with the fifth the shortage of lifeboats the catastrophe became a full-fledged disaster.
Rantburg University - c'est magnifique!
P.S. I certainly hope your new president works out as well as folks here think!
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/06/2007 15:47 Comments ||
Top||
#20
A5089, you certainly know more about this man than we do. But you seem so pessimistic. If your instincts are correct, there is only one thing left for you..more prOn.
-the fact that at this time ships were not required to keep a radio watch 24 hours a day. There was ship in range but its radio operators had gone to bed... a quarter of an hour before Titanic's SOS. It was precisely the Titanic's sinking who led authorities to make mandatory the the keeping of a radio watch 24/day.
From distant memories it also led to the creation of an "iceberg watch"
Night binoculars had been forgotten so the watch failed to see the iceberg in time.
Sea was still. In normal conditions the breaking of waves aginst the iceberg would have allowed the watch seeing the iceberg in time.
But still the most decisive cause was that buy a stroke of bad luck/bad decision of the officer in chrgarge the sighting and reaction time were just a few seconds too slow to avoid the iceberg but still too fast since a frontal collision would have flooded only one or two compartments and Titanic would have easily survived. With hindsight we can tell that the officer in charge was right in reversing the enguines but wrong in trying to steer the ship.
BTW: both Tirtanic and his sistership the Olympic were much slower to turn than other ships of comparable size.
#22
Before Titanic's maiden voyage a magzin published an article about Titanic's safety features: the fac that the sealing of the compartments coukld be controlled electrically from the bridege "so in just seconds the ship could be made virtually unsinkable".
When disater struck captain, sealed the comprtamnts only to be told that the ship would still end sinking.
The movie is quite good on the technical aspects of the disaster, at least on what the crew and staff could know at the time (not for instance about steel's poor quality).
#23
I saw the movie, reluctantly, four months after its premiere. Even four months later, the theater was still about two thirds full. I wasn't going to fall for the stupid love story/didn't care about the stupid boat going down/didn't want to waste 3 hours/ etc etc.
I was sobbing at the end of the movie. I hadn't realized that the boat took at least an hour and a half to die. Watching the slow dawning of reality among the crew and passengers was heartwrenching.
(Parenthetically, a year or so before I saw the movie I toured Newport, Rhode Island, which used to be the summer home getaway of the New York aristocracy, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Mellons, Carnegies, etc. Our tour guide explained that Newport declined as a result of two factors: 1) the institution of the US income tax in 1911, and 2) all the owners of the big mansions were killed on the Titanic in 1912. The scene of the millionaires retiring to the lounge to die like gentlemen with a proper brandy in hand still haunts me.)
Anyway, good luck France, make sure you have enough lifeboats.
Thousands of Turks have gathered in two western cities in the third anti-government protest in a month amid a conflict over the role of religion in the country's politics. Saturday's protests in Canakkale and Manisa, near the Aegean coast, follow huge pro-secular rallies in Ankara and Istanbul attended by more than a million people.
Marchers called for Abdullah Gul, the presidential candidate of the ruling AK party, whose roots are in political Islam, to withdraw from the election. Many demonstrators carried Turkish flags and posters of Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder who insisted on a separation of religion and state. In Manisa, crowds shouted: "Turkey is secular and will remain secular. Count how many of us there are, Tayyip [Turkey's prime minister]."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under:
WASHINGTON, May 4 How does George W. Bush, a towel-snapping Texan who puts his feet on the coffee table, drinks water straight from the bottle and was once caught on tape talking with food in his mouth prepare for a state dinner with the queen? Aha! Finally! Evidence that perhaps one of the NYSlimes staff might hold W in a less-than-perfect light! We'll have to follow up and have them fired!
With tips from an etiquette guide, of course and a little gentle prodding from his wife. Apparently he doesn't quite need the cattle prod.
The White House is atwitter over the visit on Monday by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. This is the first visit by the queen since 1991, when Mr. Bushs father was president. White House aides say the state dinner in her honor is not only the social event of the year, but also of the entire Bush presidency. Good. Let's keep it that way.
It will be closely watched by the social elite for its collision of cultures Texas swagger meets British prim. Dinner attire is white tie and tails, the first and, perhaps, only white-tie affair of the Bush administration. The president was said to be none too keen on that, but bowed to a higher power, his wife. Probably agreed when they told him to think of the tie as just a very small table cloth tucked into his collar.
I think Mrs. Bush is thrilled to have a white-tie dinner, and well leave it at that, Amy Zantzinger, the new White House social secretary, said on Friday as she arranged seating for 134 on a computerized screen behind her desk in the East Wing. Hmm. Given he's a Texan you'd think he'd just let it be every man for himself. Continued on Page 49
Real men don't drink water straight from the bottle. They drink it straight from the watering trough. If it's good enough for the horses, it oughta be good enough for you.
Senator Reid isnt much of a white-tail-at-dinner kind of a guy, his spokesman, Jim Manley, said.
More of a white-feather-in-the-mail guy. (Seriously, white tail?)
#5
Probably agreed when they told him to think of the tie as just a very small table cloth tucked into his collar.
Works for me.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2007 12:11 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Reminds me of the old western joke,
first build a big fire
second run in a steer
third shoot it
fourth cut off what you want
If formal, wear new jeans
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2007 12:16 Comments ||
Top||
#7
--For women, curtseying is acceptable, but not required. One does not shake the queens hand unless the queen offers hers first. --
#9
Nobody tell this to the Times, but way back in 1939, Our Hero FDR served ... hot dogs ... to King George VI and Queen (Mum) Elizabeth. Eleanor's mum was scandalized.
(If you go to the link, spare a few minutes to read some of the correspondence.)
#11
Good lord. The writer is impressively ignorant, not to mention breathlessly overcome by the very idea of the possibility of brushing up against the shadow that Royalty might cast in a mud puddle. Subjects courtesy, but Americans always shake hands. When the hostess, Mrs. Bush, picks up her fork, the guests may pick up theirs. When the hostess, Mrs. Bush, arranges her knife and fork on her plate to indicate to the waiters that she's finished, the guests will be finished, too. The queen fulfills this function only when she is the hostess, or when dining with her subjects. Having been properly brought up, she is no doubt aware of this.
And it's considered charming to invite the queen to one's country house, there serving local cuisine in an unceremonial, family setting. Or even a picnic on the grounds, so long as there are comfortable chairs for the older members of the party, who are no longer able to lounge comfortably on the ground. Fooey!
#12
Subjects courtesy, but Americans always shake hands.
I read somewhere once (was it here on RB?) that some European royal once said that the "problem" with Americans is they "look down but don't look up" in regards to social class. Except for the staff at the NYT, it seems to be a pretty well-placed observation.
AMMAN, Jordan - Jordans energy czar Khaled Al Shraydeh told the official Petra news agency on Saturday that the country is estimated to have 80,000 tons of uranium. He added that the countrys phosphate reserves also contain some 100,000 tons of uranium. But Al Shraydeh said that Jordan still needs to put in place the necessary legislation and build the manpower capacity needed to pursue nuclear technology.
Just for peaceful purposes, of course ...
In January, Jordans King Abdullah II announced his intentions to develop a nuclear energy program for peaceful purposes as a necessary alternative energy source to generate electricity and desalinate water. He told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei during his visit last month to Amman that his kingdom needed to diversify its sources of energy, especially with oil prices rising. Abdullah pledged that Jordan, which imports nearly all of its oil, would be a model in the peaceful development of nuclear energy.
Jordan joins the ranks of other regional countries, notably the Gulf Arab countries, Egypt and Turkey, who have all said they are studying the feasibility of building civilian programs for generating electricity with nuclear reactors.
While none of the Mideast nations expressing an interest in nuclear power has publicly cited U.S. allegations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons _ a charge Tehran denies _ some analysts think the announcements are intended to be a warning to the Iranians about the dangers of a regional arms race. Energy experts also say any significant Arab nuclear program would probably take years, and some are skeptical that cash-strapped countries like Egypt and Jordan have the resources for such facilities.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
#8
"Some say that bodily contact is the problem. It leads to special feelings that can lead to something forbidden," imam Senaid Kobilica told NRK public television in explanation.
Anyone who is so insatiable whereby they get all het up while playing a contact sport has repression issues that even Freud himself couldn't cure. The average Muslim male's susceptibility to inappropriate sexual conduct is not just pathetic, it is character flaw of such stupendous proportions that they automatically disqualify themselves from participating in polite society.
A woman priest from Norway's Lutheran state church, who was part of the Christian team, said that barring women from the pitch would be discrimination.
As GK duly noted, the light bulb has come on. Get a clue you moronic Norskies. These Neanderthals seek to drag you back a thousand years in time. Now do something about it before even more of your women are raped and beaten.
New proof that cold fusion works could fuel additional interest in generating power from low energy nuclear reactions
Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream -- a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing, but so far unattainable.
However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (Spawar) in San Diego throws cold water on skeptics of cold fusion. Appearing in the respected journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein among its distinguished authors, the article claims that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LERN) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community.
Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials.
Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The researchers have offered plastic films called CR-39 detectors as evidence that charged particles have emerging from their reaction experiments.
The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough, an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field.
#3
Actually, at a very small level, they may be right.
It is very easy to create extremely high temperature and pressure over a tiny area, naturally. It was discovered that the mantis shrimp can create a tiny cavitation bubble to attack its prey, with as much as 1,500 Newtons force and several thousand degrees Kelvin temperature, for example. (Discovered by the Office of Naval Research, a cousin to SPAWAR).
If you could make such a powerful, or even more powerful event at an even smaller level, it might be enough to force a fusion event, releasing enough energy to be detectable.
While I doubt this could be used to produce a large quantity of energy, it could still be useful in producing a small amount of energy for a small system, like a micro-battery.
#4
Step right up Gents, got your Cold Fusion futures right here $1200 the dozen, comes with it's own Carbon Credit. If that's too steep for you I still got a couple of Phish Carbureators, yep, that's right 200 miles per the gallon. Only 12 left, my minion found them on the last southbouth LA streetcar. Come on folks, it's real!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/06/2007 11:47 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Sol, the largest fusion producer for 4.3 light years, is said to be looking into the prospective new technology in order to relieve the solar-system wide global warming problem.
#7
Me too, AP. I hear there's a boatload of the stuff up there.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/06/2007 19:50 Comments ||
Top||
#8
It was discovered that the mantis shrimp can create a tiny cavitation bubble to attack its prey, with as much as 1,500 Newtons force and several thousand degrees Kelvin temperature, for example.
Similar micro-cavitation has been found to be responsible for gouging out minute nicks in submarine and ship propeller edges. This increases their drag and noisiness, bad for both but especially so for submarines.
I hear there's a boatload of the stuff up there.
Rumor has it that H3 deposits have the Chinese all het up to go lunar.
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 Kenya Airways passenger plane bound for Nairobi with 115 people on board crashed in southern Cameroon on Saturday shortly after take-off, the central African country's state radio said. The radio said the plane had crashed near Niete, south of the Cameroonian port town of Kribi and north of the border with Equatorial Guinea. It gave no further details. Kenya Airways earlier said it had lost contact with a 737-800 airliner bound for Nairobi shortly after it took off from Douala in Cameroon. The plane was carrying 106 passengers and nine crew, Kenya Airways Group Managing Director Titus Naikuni told a news conference in Nairobi.
Syed Patel, a middle aged driver hailing from Gulbarga in the southern state of Karanataka, was the first Indian expatriate to receive a machine readable passport when the new system was introduced at the Consulate General of India yesterday. I am thrilled to have the passport that is machine readable as it will be free of errors and fraud, Patel told Arab News as he received his passport from Consul General Dr. Ausaf Sayeed.
Thousands of Turks have gathered in two western cities in the third anti-government protest in a month amid a conflict over the role of religion in the country's politics. Saturday's protests in Canakkale and Manisa, near the Aegean coast, follow huge pro-secular rallies in Ankara and Istanbul attended by more than a million people. 
AMMAN, Jordan - Jordans energy czar Khaled Al Shraydeh told the official Petra news agency on Saturday that the country is estimated to have 80,000 tons of uranium. He added that the countrys phosphate reserves also contain some 100,000 tons of uranium. But Al Shraydeh said that Jordan still needs to put in place the necessary legislation and build the manpower capacity needed to pursue nuclear technology.
