CHENGDU, Tibet — For all its overwhelming force in the lonely mountain passes, where military convoys toil towards the clouds, or in the dark alleys of Chengdu’s Tibetan quarter, where soldiers stand watch, the sour tang of a debacle for China is in the air. Despite 20 years of iron-fisted security, huge investments and mass migration since the last Tibetan uprising, the roof of the world once again looks like a hostile place to most Chinese. The uneasy sense of psychological defeat emerged from interviews with Chinese citizens and soldiers in Sichuan province, a vast region that includes a swathe of the Tibetan plateau, over the past week. Almost without exception, people said they had lost faith in government propaganda and feared that Tibetans would turn to violence against China. ‘I believe they can never win their independence, because no big country backs them and they have no army,’ said a shop owner, ‘and I believe we cannot win their hearts.’ This might be the most politically damaging result of the Tibetan uprising for the Chinese government. Foreign condemnation is officially scorned as biased. But public opinion at home, although hard to measure, suggests that […]
Washington-based energy solutions company Innovatek Incorporated has begun testing of what it is being called a revolutionary microreactor that has the capability of steadily converting most liquid fuels into hydrogen. Each microreactor (pictured) weighs less than one pound and can be linked to other units to give the group a higher output of hydrogen fuel. Innovatek says it has developed connected systems that can produce one to 160 gallons of hydrogen per minute — an accomplishment that may lead to the technology’s introduction into the automotive realm. Within each unit there is a vast array of microchannels that convert, or as Innovatek calls it, reforms energy sources such as gasoline, diesel, vegetable oil, biodiesel, propane, and natural gas into hydrogen. Although numerous hydrogen-powered cars are in various stages of development from the world’s top automakers, the technology is still very young. There are many challenges that need to be overcome before vehicles powered by hydrogen can become viable, such as choosing the best renewable source of energy for the production of hydrogen, the lack of hydrogen refueling stations, and hydrogen’s unstable nature. But Innovatek’s microreactor solution may turn out to […]
Saudi Arabia is to retrain its 40,000 prayer leaders – also known as imams – in an effort to counter militant Islam. Details of the plan were revealed in the influential Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. The plan is part of a wider programme launched by the Saudi monarch a few years ago to encourage moderation and tolerance in Saudi society. The ministry of religious affairs and new centre for national dialogue will carry out the training, the paper said. The centre was created five years ago to disseminate a moderate interpretation of Islamic tradition. There is growing awareness in Saudi society that security measures alone are not enough to counter the threat of Islamic militancy. Scepticism Saudi clerics have long been accused of encouraging Saudi youth to join global jihad and of inciting hatred of non-Muslims. Nearly 1,000 imams have already been sacked over the past few years. The Saudi royal family has come under increasing pressure – mainly from Washington – to change religious textbooks and to rein in militant clerics. But critics are sceptical about whether such initiatives would work as long as the powerful, and ultraconservative, religious […]
Not to be heartless or anything, but let’s leave aside the dead babies. In international comparisons of health care, the infant mortality rate is a crucial indicator of a nation’s standing, and the United States’ position at No. 28, with seven per 1,000 live births-worse than Portugal, Greece, the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland and 23 other nations not exactly known for cutting-edge medical science-is a tragedy and an embarrassment. Much of the blame for this abysmal showing, however, goes to socioeconomic factors: poor, uninsured women failing to get prenatal care or engaging in behaviors (smoking, using illegal drugs, becoming pregnant as a teen) that put fetuses’ and babies’ lives at risk. You can look at 28th place and say, yes, it’s terrible, but it doesn’t apply to my part of the health-care system-the one for the non-poor insured. That, in a nutshell, is why support for health-care reform is fragile and shallow. Yes, many people of goodwill support extending coverage to the 47 million Americans who, according to the Census Bureau, had no insurance for all or part of 2006. An awful lot of the insured, though, worry that messing with the system to bring about universal coverage, even […]
JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books. One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent. The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis. ‘We were losing about 13,000 dropouts a year, but publishing reports that said we had graduation rate percentages in the mid-80s,’ Mr. Bounds said. ‘Mathematically, that just doesn’t work out.’ Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later. California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
