BRUSSELS — This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday February 11 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 03:11 on February 11 2008. Jet aeroplane taking off at night The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines. The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as ‘blackmail’ and ‘troublesome’, and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington’s requirements. According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said. And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to […]
A seagoing glider that uses heat energy from the ocean to propel itself is the first ‘green’ robot to explore the undersea environment, U.S. researchers say. They said the glider had crisscrossed the 13,000-foot-deep Virgin Islands Basin between St. Thomas and St. Croix more than 20 times since it was launched in December. And it could keep going on its own for another six months, predicted the team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is on Cape Cod, and Webb Research, a company based in Falmouth, Mass. Green glider ‘Gliders can be put to work on tasks that humans wouldn’t want to do or cannot do because of time and cost concerns,’ Dave Fratantoni of Woods Hole said Thursday. ‘They can work around the clock in all weather conditions.’ Such a robot can carry sensors to measure temperature, salinity, and biological productivity. The glider surfaces from time to time to fix its positions using the Global Positioning System and to communicate via Iridium satellite to a laboratory on the shore. Most gliders rely on battery-powered motors and mechanical pumps, the researchers said. This one draws its energy from the differences in temperature between […]
Richard Mellon Scaife, billionaire bankroller of conservative crusades, spent heavily to expose Bill Clinton’s ‘Troopergate’ misbehavior. Now Scaife’s divorce from his second wife, Ritchie, is providing another unsavory saga-adultery! addiction! assault! dognapping!?!-as both parties let loose to V.F. Over many years, in the five households the couple shared, the wife hired scores of servants to help take care of her rich husband. Then, in 2005, she hired someone to tail him. Margaret Ritchie Rhea Battle Scaife (whose friends call her Ritchie) suspected Richard Mellon Scaife (whose friends call him Dick) of committing adultery, so she enlisted the services of an investigator. It was a private act that would have very public consequences. Richard Mellon Scaife is the best-known living member of Pittsburgh’s storied Mellon clan, whose eponymous bank made the family a 19th-century fortune, which grew steadily with diversified investments, including major coal, steel, and real-estate interests, and Gulf Oil Corporation. Scaife, who owns several newspapers, is a major backer of conservative causes; his political donations fueled the rise of the New Right and its moral crusade against Bill Clinton, making Scaife the central figure in Hillary Clinton’s ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’ In the 1990s, his gift of $1.8 million […]
In Eastern Colorado, the human tide ebbs. Cheyenne county, which had 3,700 inhabitants in 1930, now has just 1,900. And the drift away from the area seems to be speeding up. In the old county jail, which is now a museum, a photograph from 1910 shows a three-storey schoolhouse towering over the town of Cheyenne Wells. The new school is one storey high-yet it already seems too big. America as a whole is growing briskly. Between 2000 and 2006 its population swelled by 6.4%, according to the Census Bureau. Yet the expansion has passed many areas by. Two-fifths of all counties are shrinking (see map). In general, people are moving to places that are warm, mountainous or suburban. They are leaving many rural areas, with the most relentless decline in a broad band stretching from western Texas to North Dakota. In parts, the Great Plains are more sparsely populated now than they were in the late 19th century, when the government declared them to be deserted. A big reason is improvements in farming technology. Tractors in eastern Colorado do not resemble the vehicles that trundle around farms on the east coast and in Europe. They are many-wheeled monsters, […]
WASHINGTON — Like it or not, the nukes are coming. Driven by soaring energy demands, the high cost of gas and oil and worries about global warming, an expansion of peaceful nuclear power increasingly appears to be inevitable. ‘I believe very strongly that new nuclear plants will be built in the U.S. in the coming decades to address problems with respect to higher energy demand, high prices and global warming,” said Sudarshan Loyalka, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia. ‘I believe the nation has no other choice.” Even some environmentalists are swallowing their previous distaste for atomic energy and supporting the expansion of nuclear power in the United States. Some earlier foes now regard coal, the cheapest but dirtiest fuel, as worse for the environment than nukes. Many proposed coal plants are being canceled because of public opposition and mounting costs. In addition, there’s “a tremendous international movement toward nuclear energy,” said Dennis Spurgeon, the assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy. “It has gained a lot of momentum in the last couple of years.” According to Spurgeon, 31 countries are in the nuclear energy club and another 55 […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
