COPENHAGEN — Denmark aims to increase its use of renewable energy to 20 percent of its overall energy mix by the end of 2011, up from 15 percent today, the government said Friday. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s liberal-conservative government, along with most other parliamentary parties, agreed late Thursday on the new target, the Climate and Energy Ministry said in a statement. ‘With its new energy agreement, Denmark takes the (global) lead in terms of offensive efforts’ to increase the use of renewable energy, Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard said in the statement. The deal was reached less than a month after the European Commission set a renewable energy target for Denmark at 30 percent by 2020 as part of an EU-wide scheme aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuel. The Danish agreement calls for better subsidies for developing energy from wind, biomass and biogas, and for two new wind parks to be built off the Scandinavian country’s coast by 2012. Cars running on hydrogen fuel will be exempt from taxes while the tax-free status of electric cars will be extended until 2012, according to the statement. ‘The creation of a stable framework […]
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.- Magnets have been touted for their healing properties since ancient Greece. Magnetic therapy is still widely used today as an alternative method for treating a number of conditions, from arthritis to depression, but there hasn’t been scientific proof that magnets can heal. Lack of regulation and widespread public acceptance have turned magnetic therapy into a $5 billion world market. Hopeful consumers buy bracelets, knee braces, shoe inserts, mattresses, and other products that are embedded with magnets based on anecdotal evidence, hoping for a non-invasive and drug-free cure to what ails them. ‘The FDA regulates specific claims of medical efficacy, but in general static magnetic fields are viewed as safe,’ notes Thomas Skalak, professor and chair of biomedical engineering at U.Va. Skalak has been carefully studying magnets for a number of years in order to develop real scientific evidence about the effectiveness of magnetic therapy. Skalak’s lab leads the field in the area of microcirculation research-the study of blood flow through the body’s tiniest blood vessels. With a five-year, $875,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Skalak and Cassandra Morris, former Ph.D. […]
ROCK ISLAND, Ill.-Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out. Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war’s largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand. The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors’ pockets, records show. Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Rock Island sentenced the Army official, Chief Warrant Officer Peleti ‘Pete’ Peleti Jr., to 28 months in prison for taking bribes. One Middle Eastern subcontractor treated him to a trip […]
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army has turned to private contractors to supply translators and analysts for Arabic and other languages in Iraq as well as other regional states. The military has launched a five-year project meant to embed thousands of Iraqi translators into U.S. ground force units in Iraq. The prime beneficiary of the project has been Global Linguist Solutions, based in Falls Church, Va. GLS, a joint venture of DynCorp International and McNeil Technologies, which has won a contract with a maximum value of $4.6 billion through 2013. The contract, awarded by U.S. Intelligence and Security Command, called for the recruitment of up to 7,000 translators from Iraq and the United States. Under the program, GLS would employ up to 6,000 locally-hired translators and up to 1,000 U. S. citizens with security clearances who are native speakers of languages spoken in Iraq. DynCorp has billions of dollars worth of security contracts with the State Department, particularly in bolstering the protection of U.S. embassy personnel. McNeil recruits and deploys linguists, including in Iraq. This was the third time GLS has won such an army contract. The last contract to GLS was awarded in December 2007 […]
SWEETWATER, Tex. - The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way. ‘That’s just money you’re hearing,’ he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently. Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines. Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy. ‘I have the same feelings about wind,’ Mr. Pickens said in an interview, ‘as I had about the best oil field I ever found.’ He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
