The swine flu virus has reached 160 countries and could infect two billion people within the next two years, the World Health Organization has said. A senior WHO official, Keiji Fukuda, said the virus was still in its early stages and would continue to spread for some time. Mr Fukuda said work on a vaccine was intensifying but safety could not be compromised by rushing the process. The virus is thought to have killed almost 800 people in recent months. Mr Fukuda, the WHO’s Assistant Director General for Health Security, said the agency had been reporting only laboratory-confirmed cases, but that this was always going to be ‘only a subset of the total number of cases’. ‘Even if we have hundreds of thousands of cases or a few millions of cases, we’re relatively early in the pandemic,’ he told the Associated Press news agency. ‘One of the things that is relatively clear is that we will continue to see spread of the virus; even though we are now three to four months into the pandemic, this is still pretty early into the overall period,’ he said. Mr Fukuda said the WHO estimates two […]
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be ‘disastrous’ for Texas. Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as ‘Obama Care.’ But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a ‘number’ of states might resist the federal health mandate. ‘I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying ‘no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare,’ Perry said. ‘So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.’ Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, has made defiance of Washington a hallmark of his state administration as well as his emerging re-election campaign against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary. Earlier this year, Perry refused […]
If David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club’s top lawyer, believed the Waxman-Markey bill making its way through Congress was going to become law, he would be losing a lot of sleep. ‘But let me tell you, I’ve been sleeping 10 hours a night since I got here,’ Bookbinder quipped Thursday at the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court Conference in Monterey. He and four lawyers discussed a slew of possible law enforcement aspects of climate change legislation at the annual gathering of federal judges and court officials from the Western United States. ‘This is the most complex piece of legislation in the history of our country, which may make it the most complex piece of legislation in human history,’ Bookbinder said. The Waxman-Markey bill, a cap-and-trade plan to reduce global warming and to promote energy efficiency and renewability, is also known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act. It passed the House of Representatives in June and will likely come before the U.S. Senate after its August recess. If the bill dies in the Senate, Bookbinder said, it will be the third cap-and-trade bill to meet its end there. But if Waxman-Markey or a similar […]
John S. Barry, the man ‘who masterminded the spread of WD-40,’ as The New York Times puts it, has died at age 84. The product he promoted is more popular than an iPod. WD-40 can be found in 4 out of 5 American households, the company claims. Its ingredients are a secret, and it has generated its share of myths and strange applications over the years. Barry didn’t invent the stuff. ‘Norm Larsen, founder of Rocket Chemical Company, is considered the original founder of WD-40,’ according to wd40.com. Larsen aimed to develop a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for use in the aerospace industry. He succeeded at the goal, Water Displacement, on the 40th attempt, hence the name. ‘Convair, an aerospace contractor, first used WD-40 to protect the outer skin of the Atlas Missile from rust and corrosion,’ according to the web site. A few years later the company made an aerosol spray version and the rest, as they say, is history. WD-40 does not contain fish oil, contrary to a popular myth, nor does it contain silicone, kerosene, water, wax, graphite, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). And WD-40 won’t cure arthritis, despite another odd […]
Move over T. Boone Pickens, your grand Texas wind farm dreams have been overtaken by energy start-up Baryonyx, which has won bids for three land leases–two offshore, and one in the Texas Panhandle–to build data centers in Texas powered by massive wind farms. When complete, Baryonyx claims that the coastal projects, set to be built on sites that are each over 19,000 acres, will be the biggest offshore wind farms in the country. The offshore farms will each produce at least 750 megawatts of power and use turbines that produce up to five megawatts each. In addition to powering its data centers, Baronyx plans to give excess electricity to the Texas General Land Office, which will then sell off the power to cities, schools, and prisons. All money from the sales will go into the Texas Permanent School Fund–a fund that generates cash for state public schools. Over the course of its 30-year lease, Baryonyx is expected to provide at least $338 million to the fund. Baryonyx doesn’t know how any turbines it will install, but the company estimates that construction will begin in two to three years. Don’t hold your breath. The whole reason T. Boone Pickens […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
