China, hosting its first major energy summit over the weekend, urged top oil consumers to unite in the face of fluctuating global oil prices and maintain energy security. China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and India, which together use almost half of the world’s energy, agreed in a joint statement to strengthen co-operation in seeking energy alternatives, energy conservation and the sharing of information. The five consumer nations will also focus on diversifying energy sources, increase efficiency to reduce oil dependency, co-operate on strategic oil reserves, and encourage more investment in the industry to ensure sufficient supply. ‘We are trying to convey a rational and active signal to the world that its major oil consumers will strengthen co-operation in energy savings, increase efficiency, and seek oil alternatives,’ said Ma Kai, Minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Proposed by China, the first-ever meeting of energy ministers from the world’s leading oil consuming nations comes at a time of fluctuating prices and growing demand. Last year, the five countries consumed 45.2 per cent of the world’s oil production, Ma said. He said the five have shared interests and are confronted with common […]
Two large and influential Episcopal parishes in Virginia voted overwhelmingly today to leave the Episcopal Church and to affiliate with the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, a leader in a church-wide fight against homosexuality. Five smaller churches in Virginia also announced today that they had voted to secede, joining four others that already left and three more that are expected to announce their decisions soon. Some affiliated with archbishops in Uganda and other parts of Africa. The secessions could lead to battles over the churches’ property, although both sides say they wish to avoid legal fights. The move is also likely to escalate divisions in the worldwide Anglican Communion, a 77-million-member alliance in which the Episcopal Church is the American branch. The Rev. Martyn Minns, rector at one of the two large parishes, Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., said at a news conference: ‘A burden is being lifted. There are new possibilities breaking through.’ Clergy at some of these churches have criticized what they regarded as a leftward drift in the Episcopal Church for many years and saw the consecration of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003 as the last straw. Episcopal Church […]
JERUSALEM — After another day of escalating violence that included a mortar attack on the offices of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, an ambush on a convoy carrying the Palestinian foreign minister and an hour-long gun battle, Abbas’ Fatah party and the militant Islamic group Hamas late Sunday said they’d reached a cease-fire agreement. Another gun battle broke out in Gaza around midnight, however, and it isn’t clear whether a cease-fire can hold. If it does, the late night deal could help head off a Palestinian civil war, but it isn’t likely to end a six-month power struggle between Abbas, a secular moderate, and Hamas, a militant Islamic group that’s backed by Iran and Syria and doesn’t accept Israel’s right to exist. By calling for new elections, Abbas has raised the stakes in his clash with Hamas, leaving three possible outcomes: a new unity or technocratic government; new elections that could leave either his secular Fatah party or Hamas in charge; or civil war. A civil war or a Hamas election victory would destroy whatever faint hope remains that Palestinians and Israelis could resume negotiations on a permanent peace agreement. The Bush administration has been reluctant to […]
NASA’s climatologists have an enormous problem: when it comes to data on the atmosphere, they have too much of it. To help understand climate change, NASA has created its Earth Observing System (EOS), made up of a dozen satellites plus a host of weather balloons and ground-based sensors that collect data such as air temperatures, water-vapour densities and aerosol concentrations. Terabytes of such measurements have been streaming in each day, and the agency was quickly swamped with so much data that all it could do was dump it on disc drives. Now it has hit on a simple way to make that data accessible: software that superimposes it on the global 3D maps provided by Google Earth. Called iEarth, the NASA software scours EOS databanks for information and converts it into a file that can be viewed via Google Earth. Choosing a spot on the planet’s surface will prompt iEarth to display ground-based measurements for that location, as well as data relating to the atmosphere and space above it. ‘This is the first time we’ve been able to do multi-instrument atmospheric science,’ says Brian Wilson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who demonstrated a […]
Washington Thou Shalt not Murder. Thou Shalt Not Covet thy neighbor’s Wife. Thou Shalt not … Drink Bottled Water? Rooted in the notion that clean drinking water, like air, is a God-given resource that shouldn’t be packaged and sold, a fledgling campaign against the bottling of water has sprung up among people of faith. And though the campaign is at a relative trickle, and confined mostly to left-leaning religious groups, activists hope to build a broad-based coalition to carry the message that water should not be available only to those who can afford it. Cassandra Carmichael, director of eco-justice programs for the National Council of Churches, said she has noted an increasing number of religious groups that consider the bottling of water a wrongful — perhaps immoral — act. ‘We’re just beginning to recognize the issue as people of faith,’ Carmichael said. In October, the National Coalition of American Nuns, a progressive group representing 1,200 U.S. nuns, adopted a resolution asking members to refrain from purchasing bottled water unless necessary. Likewise, Presbyterians for Restoring Creation, a grass-roots group within the Presbyterian Church (USA), launched a campaign last May urging individuals to sign a pledge […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
