CAIRO — The Arab League summit that concluded in Riyadh Thursday reaffirmed the body’s peace offer to Israel, but it hardly suggested the sort of ‘bold outreach’ to the Jewish State for which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been lobbying. Indeed, the summit appeared to reveal a yawning gap between the outlooks of the U.S. and its key Arab ally, summit host Saudi Arabia. Although on her latest Middle East shuttle she managed to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to agree on holding regular meetings, Rice’s efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace are looking more like crisis management than visionary deal-making. She had hesitated to spell out exactly what she meant by ‘bold outreach,’ but had urged the Arab leaders heading for Riyadh to not merely to endorse a formula for peace - the Arab League’s Beirut initiative, first adopted in 2002, calls for full peace and normalization of relations if Israel withdraws from Arab lands occupied in 1967 - but also to provide a mechanism through which Arabs and Israelis could begin discussing the formula. ‘Regional states,’ she said, ‘should participate actively in diplomacy to advance the achievement of peace.’ […]
The ribbon was cut on the World’s largest continguous solar plant on 27th April 2006 in Germany. Construction on the 40 million euro (US million) photovoltaic installation started August 2005. This plant demonstrates new standards in cost-efficiency for solar power. Using the master-slave inverter concept developed by Shell, the plant delivers the optimized energy output. Also, flexible installation technology-such as the use of either aluminum, wood or steel racks depending on material prices and the foundation on either concrete or piles-optimizes the costs. And if solar is viable in Germany, just imagine the efficiencies possible where the sun really shines! Pocking receives an average of 1121 KWh/m2-year. 62,500 modules in 6 parallel linked units deliver power from earth’s closest star to the houses of 3300 Germans via energy company E.on. That’s a total of about 16,5 km (10 miles) of solar panels mounted on a former military grounds at Pocking, near Passau in Bavaria. The installation saves 10,000 tons of CO2 yearly-the equivalent of 1,000 hectares of woodlands. Solar plants are the new skyscrapers. Last year Shell opened the formerly ‘world’s largest’ solar power plant near Leipzig, producing only 5 MW. The Shell solar plant in Pocking will […]
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California on Friday overturned the Bush administration’s revised rules for management of the country’s 155 national forests, saying that the federal Forest Service violated the basic laws ensuring that forest ecosystems have environmental safeguards. The rules, issued in early 2005, cut back on requirements for environmental reviews and safeguards for wildlife, and limited public participation in the development of management plans for individual forests. Instead, they broadened the power of forest managers to decide whether mines, logging operations, cellphone towers or other development would be appropriate uses of forest land. In the ruling Friday, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton of Federal District Court in San Francisco said the Forest Service had violated several laws when it changed the rules forest managers must follow when making decisions, and did so without consulting the public or considering environmental impact. The judge issued an injunction forbidding the service from using the rules to make decisions about the national forests and grasslands, which cover 8 percent of the country. Judge Hamilton said she could not determine if the rules were environmentally benign, as the Forest Service argued, or if endangered species would be unaffected, […]
MINNEAPOLIS — Six Muslim men removed from a plane last fall after being accused of suspicious behavior are suing not only the airline but the passengers who complained-a move some fear could discourage travelers from speaking up when they see something unusual. The civil rights lawsuit, filed earlier this month, has so alarmed some lawyers that they are offering to defend the unnamed ‘John Doe’ passengers free of charge. They say it is vital that the flying public be able to report suspicious behavior without fear of being dragged into court. ‘When you drive up the road towards the airport, there’s a big road sign that says, `Report suspicious behavior,” said Gerry Nolting, a Minneapolis lawyer. ‘There’s no disclaimer that adds, `But beware if you do that, you might get sued.” The six imams were taken off a Phoenix-bound US Airways flight on Nov. 20 while returning home from a conference of Islamic clerics in Minneapolis. Other passengers had gotten nervous when the men were seen praying and chanting in Arabic as they waited to board. Some passengers also said that the men spoke of Saddam Hussein and cursed the United States; that they requested seat […]
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other’s privacy-ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs. Police this month raided an utterly ordinary-looking red-brick house on the block and broke up a pot-growing operation with 680 plants arrayed under bright lights. ‘You’d never know from the outside. I guess that’s the idea,’ said Doug Augis, who lives with his pregnant wife and a toddler in Coldwater Creek. ‘That doesn’t give you a really good feeling.’ Around the country, investigators are increasingly seeing suburban homes in middle-class and well-to-do neighborhoods turned into indoor marijuana farms. Typically investigators find an empty home, save a mattress, a couple of chairs, some snacks in the fridge and an elaborate setup of soil-free growing trays. Grow houses have been a problem for years in California and Canada, but investigators are now seeing scores of them in the South and New England. In the past six weeks alone, more than 70 have been uncovered in northern Georgia-nearly 10 times last year’s total for the entire state. Only one was busted in 2005. Indoor pot […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
