MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday accused the United States of trying to taint the legitimacy of next week’s Russian parliamentary elections by pressing a group of prominent independent election observers to abandon efforts to monitor the campaign. Mr. Putin contended that the monitors, who are deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, had halted plans to appraise the parliamentary balloting at the urging of the State Department in Washington. Mr. Putin’s statements in recent weeks have taken on an increasingly nationalistic tone as he has sought to muster support for his party in the elections on Sunday. Speaking to reporters on Monday in St. Petersburg, he once again criticized what he suggested was foreign meddling in Russia’s affairs. ‘According to information we have, it was again done at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department, and we will take this into account in our interstate relations with this country,’ he said. ‘Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal.’ If Russia maintains a robust military, Mr. Putin later added, ‘we will not allow anyone to poke their snotty nose into our affairs.’ […]
OSLO, Norway — Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by burning fossil fuels, hit a record high in the atmosphere in 2006, accelerating global warming, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday. But concentrations of methane, the number two heat-trapping gas, flattened out in a hint that Siberian permafrost is staying frozen despite some scientists’ fears that rising temperatures might trigger a runaway thaw. ‘In 2006, globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached their highest levels ever recorded,’ the WMO said. Carbon dioxide is the main gas from human activities blamed by the U.N. climate panel for stoking warming. The WMO said levels rose 0.53 percent from 2005 to 381.2 parts per million of the atmosphere, 36 percent above levels before the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century. Levels of nitrous oxide, the number three greenhouse gas produced by burning fuels and by industrial processes, also rose to a record with a 0.25 percent gain in 2006. Levels are 320 parts per billion, 19 percent above pre-industrial times. ‘Atmospheric growth rates in 2006 of these gases are consistent with recent years,’ the WMO said in a report. […]
The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday. Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by ‘clearing the decks’ with a ‘quick burst of violent action’ had led to ‘the worst of all worlds’. In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation. He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the ‘chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity’. Williams went beyond his previous critique of the conduct of the war on terror, saying the United States had lost the moral high ground since September 11. He urged it to launch a ‘generous and intelligent programme of aid directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarisation of their presence’. He went […]
DENVER – LCD and plasma TVs look nice in the store, but how well will they hold up once you get them home? Consumer Reports has good news after analyzing survey results covering almost 75,000 flat-screen TVs bought in the past three years. Overall only about 3 percent of the sets needed repair. Of the brands covered in the survey, the most reliable flat-screen TVs were Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Samsung, Toshiba, and JVC. Consumer Reports also looked at rear-projection sets. People are experiencing many more problems with those TVs. Also, with rear-projection sets, be prepared to replace the bulb. It’s not uncommon for the bulb to go out within the first year or two. Even so, Consumer Reports advises against buying an extended warranty. Its analysis shows that you’re likely to pay more for the warranty than you would for any cost of repair you might incur. And it’s not just TVs where Consumer Reports says an extended warranty isn’t worth it. Whether you’re buying a washing machine, a refrigerator, a treadmill, or a digital camera, Consumer Reports says skip an extended warranty.
Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang. The Boomerang Nebula, mankind ‘shortening the universe’s life’ Cosmologists claim by observing dark energy the universe has been nudged closer to its death But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years. They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably Schrodinger’s cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
