The closer (and smaller) we become capable of looking, the more solid the pedestal upon which Einstein stands.

What’s up in the restive oil region of Nigeria:

Controller of the Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND) in Bayelsa and Rivers states, Commander Ebi, yesterday, warned that militants would blow up the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC)’s Bonga Oil Field in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa state and other oil installations in the Niger-Delta region in the next few weeks if the Federal Government failed to swear-in ministerial nominee from the South-South, Mr. Godday Orubebe, who was left when others were inaugurated recently within a reasonable time.

Commander Ebi disclosed the planned onslaught while speaking with Saturday Vanguard on phone just as the national co-ordinator of the Movement for Peace and Sustainable Development for Niger-Delta Communities, Mr. Joseph Hitler called on the Federal Government to swear-in Orubebe to avert the plan by those he described as commercial militants to wreak fresh havoc in the region.

According to the MEND leader, “I am Commander Ebi, a militant controlling Bayelsa and Rivers states. Tell the Federal Government that they should swear in Orubebe who is from the Niger-Delta since President Umaru Yar’Adua have sworn-in others that were screened by the Senate, if not, we are going to make the Niger-Delta states to be ungovernable by destroying oil pipelines and oil installations. We will even go to the Bonga Field”.

[snip]

Speaking on behalf of the Movement for Peace and Sustainable Development for Niger-Delta Communities, Mr. Hitler asserted, “The exclusion of God-day Orubebe during the recent inauguration of ministers is what some commercial militants now want to use to start another trouble in the region, the federal government should avert this looming danger by swearing him in”. Article

Topically related:

Nigeria plans to alter terms at Royal Dutch Shell PLC`s (RDSA) deepwater Bonga field next year when the contract comes up for revision, a Nigerian oil official said Thursday.

Tony Chukwueke, head of Nigeria`s Department of Petroleum Resources, said that the Bonga concession — originally awarded under a production-sharing contract to Shell in 1993 and operated in partnership with Esso, a unit of ExxonMobil Corp., (XOM), Eni`s (E) Agip and France`s Total/Elf (TOT)– had a provision allowing for terms to be revised after 15 years if oil prices rose above $20 a barrel.

“The government is actually giving notice,” that the government will call upon that provision in 2008, Chukwueke told reporters on the sidelines of an oil conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Article

---

So go outside and look, already.

---

300 years — and phfft.

“The purer something is,” he said, “the dirtier it will become.” Article

Deferred, but not defunct.

An Italian judge on Wednesday extended the suspension of the abduction trial of 26 Americans charged in an alleged CIA operation until the country’s highest court rules on a government challenge that could scuttle the case.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling, expected early next year, also will indicate whether the kidnapping trial will be permitted to publicly air details of the U.S. extraordinary rendition program – moving terrorism suspects from country to country without public legal proceedings.

The suspects – all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents – are accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and Italian intelligence.

[snip]

Judge Oscar Magi said Wednesday that he could not continue with the hearings while the Constitutional Court debates the Italian government’s request to throw out the indictments against the Americans. The Milan trial had been suspended shortly after it opened in June, and Magi has now extended the suspension until March 12. Article

---

FYI: A roster of the top 25 documentary films.

---

Via the U.S. Air force, Alaska is now elephant-free.

---

All well and good if an aim is bony mice…

However, if in the market for a mouse-powered generator…

---

The first of a fraternity of two dies. May there never, ever be any more.

Also dead is the first in a furry sodality. May she not be the last.

“Pooty-poot” comes within a nanometer of crediting the disease.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned strongly Thursday against imposing new international sanctions on Iran, in words that appeared to be a response to newly announced U.S. measures to punish Tehran.

[snip]

“Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end by threatening sanctions or military action?” Putin asked. “Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation.” Article

---

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Gunmen in speedboats kidnapped six people from an oil vessel off Nigeria’s coast at dawn Friday, the second attack on petroleum workers this week, officials said.

The Polish, Filipino and Nigerian workers were seized from the Mystras, some 50 miles offshore, Italian energy giant Eni SpA said on its Web site. Another Nigerian worker was reported to have been wounded in the leg, the statement said.

The Mystras, used for production, storage and offloading crude oil, is capable of producing 80,000 barrels of oil per day. An Eni spokeswoman refused further comment. Article

---

FYI:

Al-Qaida sympathizers have unleashed a torrent of anger against Al-Jazeera television, accusing it of misrepresenting Osama bin Laden’s latest audiotape by airing excerpts in which he criticizes mistakes by insurgents in Iraq.

Users of a leading Islamic militant Web forum posted thousands of insults against the pan-Arab station for focusing on excerpts in which bin Laden criticizes insurgents, including his followers. Article

---

Pushing the boundary limits of the nuclear dripline.

Keeping up with doings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Nigeria’s Supreme Court on Thursday nullified the election in the oil-producing Niger Delta state of Rivers, the third major indictment of April’s vote this month.

The elections were meant to be a democratic milestone for Africa’s most populous country, but they were so marred by fraud and violence that international observers said they were “not credible”.

The Supreme Court ruled Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, who won the primaries for the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in December, was the lawfully elected governor of Rivers, not Celestine Omehia.

Omehia did not win the primary but his name replaced Amaechi’s on the ballot as the PDP candidate in the April 14 vote.

The ruling has the potential of sparking a fresh wave of trouble in Africa’s oil heartland, where politicians are backed by rival armed groups. Article

Also:

Nigeria’s pledge to review its relationship with major oil companies is likely to ring alarm bells among investors who fear soaring crude prices will tempt the government to demand a bigger profit share. Article

---

An achievement, with out doubt, but — cockroaches?

A Russian cockroach called Nadezhda (Hope) has given birth to the first creatures ever conceived in space, scientists in Voronezh, central Russia, said on Tuesday.

Nadezhda conceived during the Foton-M bio-satellite September 14-26 flight.

“We recently received the first batch of 33 cockroaches conceived in microgravity,” Dmitry Atyakshin said.

Though the newborn creatures already eat and drink respectively well, microgravity conditions may have had an impact on the natural darkening of their chitinous carapace, a part of a cockroach’s exoskeleton.

“Cockroaches are born with a transparent carapace, which gradually turns into brown, and the space cockroaches went darker earlier than usual,” the scientist explained, adding that final conclusions would only be able to drawn only after the second female had given birth. Article

---

Now there’s something you don’t hear or read everyday.

“We don’t hear a lot of complaints about glowing seafood, but then people rarely look at their shrimp and crab in the dark.” Article

Noted FYI:

Two American sailors were shot dead and one was critically wounded at the U.S. navy base in Bahrain, but there were no indications of a terrorist attack, the navy said on Monday.

The shootings took place at about 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), the navy said in a statement, adding that initial reports indicated the incident only involved U.S. military personnel.

“Two sailors were pronounced dead at the scene and the third was taken to local hospital for treatment. There are no indications of terrorism or a base intrusion,” the navy said.

The navy gave no explanation for the shootings, which took place in the base’s barracks, and said the names of the sailors were being withheld. Article

---

Imbalance for power.

Attempts to reduce US dependence on imported oil by adding more ethanol to its gas tanks are only driving up food prices while delivering moot energy benefits, a Canadian bank warned on Monday.

Corn prices have already jumped by 60 percent over the past two years as American ethanol producers expanded capacity, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets.

In 2008, food inflation would top five percent and the following year would approach seven percent, its highest level in more than 25 years, he said.

“This diversion of an ever-increasing share of the American corn crop from human consumption and livestock feed to energy production is putting steady and unrelenting pressure on food prices,” Rubin said in a statement.

“Soaring corn prices not only pass directly into animal feed costs and corn-based food prices like tortillas, but they are spilling over to other grain prices as farmers scramble to expand corn production at the expense of other crops,” he said. Article

---

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

All seven hostages seized by gunmen from an offshore Nigerian oilfield were released on Monday after two days in captivity, a state government spokesman said.

“All seven have been freed. They are in a government house,” said Ebimo Amungo, a spokesman for Bayelsa state government, where the kidnapping had taken place.

The four Nigerians, a Briton, a Russian and a Croat were all in good health.

[snip]

A spokesman for a prominent militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), claimed responsibility for the abduction.

However, industry and security sources said the claim did not ring true. It was more likely an attempt by a delta warlord to gain relevance with local authorities, they said. Article

---

Noted FYI:

The knock-out gas that special forces pumped into Moscow’s Dubrovka theater to end the hostage crisis five years ago sent baffled scientists scrambling in their laboratories in the United States and Europe.

Now, five years later, the verdict is in. The mysterious substance appears to have been an FSB-made version of carfentanyl, an artificial, opium-like substance that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and usually used to immobilize large animals. And, as it turns out, the gas wasn’t really a gas at all but an aerosol — tiny particles that float in the air.

[snip]

Doctors who treated the hostages have said they worked in the dark without knowing what substance had been released in the theater to end the 56-hour siege in the early morning of Oct. 26, 2002. Government officials, who initially described the substance as a gas, still treat its contents as a state secret.

But a first clue about its composition came shortly after the end of the crisis when then-Health Minister Yury Shevchenko said it was a derivative of fentanyl, an artificial opioid about 80 times more powerful than morphine. One of fentanyl’s most potent derivatives is carfentanyl, which is so powerful that a tiny drop can put down an elephant.

Russian and Western scientists who have examined former hostages said their findings point to carfentanyl as the mysterious substance. Lev Fyodorov, a former Soviet chemical weapons scientist who heads the Council for Chemical Security, an environmental group, said it was probably the Federal Security Service-developed narcotic more generally known by the code name Kolokol 1, or Bell 1. Article

---

A world turned upside-down.

Russia will create an organization to track and monitor human rights abuses in Europe and the US…. Source

---

The fuller the cup, the faster it drains.

Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly, researchers said on Monday.

Their study, published in the journal Neurology, tracked memory loss in a group of elderly people from New York City’s Bronx borough before they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another form of old-age dementia.

Every year of education delayed the accelerated memory decline that precedes dementia by about 2-1/2 months, according to the researchers at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

But once this memory loss began, the rate of decline unfolded 4 percent more quickly for each additional year of education, the researchers said.

Someone with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education, based on the findings.

[snip]

“An elderly person who starts to see memory loss might well deteriorate fairly rapidly, particularly if he or she has a high education or high IQ,” Charles Hall, a professor of epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

“And this is important to clinicians to know so they can advise their patients that things might well get very bad very fast, whereas in a lot of other people the decline is relatively gradual over a long period of time,” Hall added.

People with more years of formal education appear to have a greater “cognitive reserve,” Hall said, referring to the brain’s ability to keep working despite damage.

While better-educated people may be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s later than people with less education, it appears they have suffered brain damage but their “cognitive reserve” was able to hide and delay the effects, the researchers said.

The study started in the 1980s, tracking 488 people born from 1894 and 1908 and giving them periodic memory tests. The findings published on Monday were based on 117 of them who eventually developed Alzheimer’s or another dementia.

Most of the participants were followed until either death or diagnosis of dementia. Those diagnosed with dementia were followed for up to about 16 years, with an average of six years.

The study included people with postgraduate education as well as others with fewer than three years of elementary school. Hall noted that levels of education that people received varied much more in the early part of the 20th century than they do now. Article

---

Noted FYI:

Microsoft finally admitted defeat in its nine-year battle with the European Commission on Monday, agreeing to allow competitors access to technology that Brussels said would create more innovation in the software market.

The US software developer agreed to comply with the EU antitrust regulator’s finding that it was abusing its dominance, upheld by the European Court in 2004. The result would be lower prices and more choice for customers, the Commission said.

“I welcome the fact that Microsoft has finally undertaken concrete steps to ensure full compliance with the 2004 decision,” Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, said in Brussels. “It is regrettable that Microsoft has only complied after a considerable delay, two court decisions and the imposition of daily penalty payments.” Article

O what a tangled web we weave…

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called “black site” prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.

Lawyers from Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, including several former British residents, are calling on the committee to question US and British officials about the allegations. According to the organisation’s submission to the committee, the UK government is “potentially systematically complicit in the most serious crimes against humanity of disappearance, torture and prolonged incommunicado detention”.

Clive Stafford Smith, the charity’s legal director, said he was “absolutely and categorically certain” that prisoners have been held on the island. “If the foreign affairs committee approaches this thoroughly, they will get to the bottom of it,” he said.

Andrew Tyrie, Tory MP for Chichester and a campaigner against the CIA’s use of detention without trial, has also urged the committee to investigate. He said: “Time and time again the UK government has relied on US assurances on this issue, refusing to examine the truth of these allegations for themselves. It is high time our government took its head out of the sand and looked into these allegations.”

[snip]

The existence of the CIA’s black site prisons was acknowledged by President George Bush in September last year. He said al-Qaida suspects or members of the Taliban who “withhold information that could save American lives” have been taken “to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts”.

Mr Bush did not disclose the location of any prison, but suspicion that one may have been located on Diego Garcia, some 1,000 miles off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, has been building for years. The 2,000 islanders were expelled in the early 1970s after the British government struck a secret deal to lease the 37-mile long island to the US for use as an air and naval base. Any evidence uncovered by the foreign affairs committee pointing to the existence of a secret CIA prison on the island would be hugely embarrassing for ministers.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia to detain suspects. In May 2004 he said: “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq.” In December last year he repeated the claim: “They’re behind bars…we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

[snip]

A prison of some sort is known to exist on Diego Garcia: in 1984, a review by the US government’s general accounting office of construction work on the island reported that a “detention facility” had been completed the previous December. British ministers have also disclosed that a building on the island was redesignated as a prison after the September 11 attacks.

Last June Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who investigated the CIA’s use of European territory and air space during prisoner operations, concluded in a report to the Council of Europe that prisoners had been held on the island.

Mr Marty, who later told the European parliament that he had received help from senior CIA officers, reported: “We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees.”

One possibility which the foreign affairs committee may explore is that suspects have been held on a prison ship off the coast of Diego Garcia. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that he has heard from reliable sources that the US has held prisoners on ships in the Indian Ocean. There have also been second-hand accounts from detainees at Guantánamo of prisoners being held on US naval vessels. Article

---

Mm-hm. Too cozy by an order of magnitude.

US President George W. Bush certified Saudi Arabia as an anti-terrorism ally on Friday, weeks after a top US Treasury official sharply criticized the kingdom’s record.

[snip]

His memorandum came a little more than a month after the US Treasury undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, charged that Saudi Arabia has failed to prosecute the bankrollers of terrorist groups.

Levey, the undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told the US network ABC that not a single individual identified by the United States or the United Nations as a terror financier had been prosecuted by Saudi Arabia.

“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” Levey told the television network one day after the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Article

---

Noted from Nigeria’s oil region:

Shell Petroleum Development Company has reopened its Utorogu Gas Plant in Nigeria’s southern Delta state after shutting the plant last week due to a fire, The Punch newspaper reported Friday.

The plant’s shutdown resulted in the deferment of 300 million standard cubic feet of gas daily, and SPDC had to declare force majeure on gas supply to the national grid, as the fire damaged the 10-inch Utorogu-Ughelli gas pipeline that transports products from the plant.

Several people were reported killed and others were injured in the Oct. 12 fire while trying to steal condensate from the pipeline.

[snip]

In a related development, Shell said it has put out the last of the six fires on the Trans Niger Pipeline in Ogoniland in southern Rivers state.

It said the pipeline is a major facility that transports crude oil from SPDC’s and third party facilities to Bonny Terminal.

Shell says it has repaired the section of the pipeline that was damaged at Bodo in Ogoni, Gokana Local government area of the state, adding that the pipeline has been the target of repeated sabotage attacks, with nine incidents recorded so far this year.

Since January 2006, armed militants in the Niger Delta have kidnapped more than 250 local and foreign oil workers and destroyed oil and gas pipelines and other facilities. Article

---

Fascinating journey into the truly unkown.

…Dr Woodward is set to form part of a team of scientists on a mission to explore one of the last unchartered corners of the Earth.

They plan to spend five months working in sub-zero temperatures beneath nearly 3.5km of ice at Lake Ellsworth in Antarctica.

[snip]

They hope to learn more about what can survive in the harsh conditions of glacial lakes. The 35-year-old, of Witton Gilbert, near Durham, said: “Scientists would love to know what is living in these lake environments, and what this might tell us about possible life in extraterrestrial environments such as the frozen moons of Jupiter.

“There is competition to be the first team to explore a subglacial lake. A team from Italy would like to explore Lake Concordia and a team from Russia plans to extract water from Lake Vostok, the largest sub-glacial lake identified.”

[snip]

Dr Woodward said: “It is vitally important to identify suitable drill sites, and then to plan to conduct the access experiments in an environmentally-friendly way so as not to risk contaminating such pristine and isolated environments.”

More than 150 subglacial lakes have been identified in Antarctica, cut off from the outside world by thick caps of ice.

Any lifeforms will have had to adapt to complete darkness, a lack of nutrients and crushing water pressures. Article

Noted FYI:

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday chastised the United States over its policy in Iraq and Iran, and announced “grandiose” military plans, including development of a new nuclear weapon. … Putin called the US intervention in Iraq a “dead end” and called on Washington to set a deadline for the withdrawal of troops.… Article

---

Inflating the balloon — no one can say at what point the inevitable pop will come, but no one can deny it will.

New York crude oil prices surpassed a record 90 dollars a barrel in after-hours trading Thursday following increased tensions between Turkey’s government and Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Traders said a weak US dollar and global supply jitters had also stoked the price surge.

The price gains in after-hours trading came after New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, had jumped 2.07 dollars to a record close of 89.47 dollars a barrel.

In electronic trade after the market close, the benchmark contract spiked to an all-time high of 90.02 dollars.

[snip]

Oil prices have pushed higher this week amid geopolitical angst related to the Turkey-Iraq border and a weakening dollar, which makes dollar-priced commodities such as oil cheaper for buyers with stronger currencies and therefore lifts crude demand.

The euro earlier hit a record high of 1.4310 dollars Thursday.

“The issue seems no longer to be whether oil will reach 100 dollars per barrel, but when,” said Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish.

[snip]

Alaron Trading analyst Phil Flynn predicted prices could go even higher.

“The next target should be roughly four dollars above that level, somewhere around 93 dollars a barrel,” he said.

“It’s hard to pick a top in a raging bull market but it’s possible that we are close. Volatility will be huge,” he said.

Analysts said traders were closely monitoring tensions between Turkey and Iraq.

Traders are also concerned about tight global energy supplies, particularly ahead of the northern hemisphere winter when demand for heating fuel peaks.

A weekly US snapshot on energy stockpiles Wednesday did little to allay such worries, traders said. Article

Related:

A sharp increase in the price of crude oil, which briefly hit $90 a barrel late Thursday in electronic trading, could start to hit consumers in their pocketbooks in the next few weeks. Among the effects:

• Prices at the pump, which have been flat for two months, are expected to rise shortly, perhaps by as much as 10 cents a gallon. GasPriceWatch.com reported a rise of 7 cents in the past two days, which increased the national average to $2.80 a gallon.
• Airline ticket prices could go up –- just before the peak holiday travel season –- to reflect an increase in the past two weeks of $8 a barrel or 20 cents a gallon on the world oil markets.
• Home heating oil, already at record highs, could keep rising for homeowners in the Northeast.

The economic effect of the latest surge in oil prices, which started to soar again this month, could be substantial. The rise could reduce consumer enthusiasm, particularly for lower-income Americans. Some economists think that if the price of crude oil closes at $90 or higher and stays there for a few weeks, businesses will start passing on their higher costs. Article

---

The twisting trvails of Adam M. Key vs. Reent University

More, from an interview with Mr.Key:

What’s the current state of play between you and Regent? The last we read, they were making you undergo this mental health evaluation.

The current state is that Regent has suspended me and banned me from campus pending a forced psychiatric evaluation, but only by a physician approved by them. This move is reminiscent of tactics used by Hitler and Stalin to discredit those who opposed them with legitimate arguments by declaring them insane.

Wow, so they pick the physician? Seems pretty dubious. But are you going to agree – what choice do you have?

That’s correct. Keep in mind, this is the same school that published law review articles relying on sources like Paul Cameron, the man kicked out of the American Psychological Association for deliberately falsifying data in order to further his cause. I would gladly consider an evaluation by a legitimate psychiatrist that is entirely unaffiliated with Regent.

However, as I have repeatedly emphasized, I will undergo this psychiatric exam after Regent forces Pat Robertson to undergo one. Truly, what’s crazier… disagreeing with the administration, or hearing voices that tell you about hurricanes that don’t happen, and the impending apocalypse?

[snip]

Okay, let me play devil’s advocate. It’s no secret that Regent is conservative, founded by Pat Robertson, etc. Why did you decide to go there, when there are so many other law schools?

I decided to go to Regent because, at the time I applied to law school in late 2005, it was the only ABA accredited Christian law school. Others schools like Pepperdine (which I also got into) and Baylor have religious affiliations, but are not “Christian law schools,” per se. I didn’t go there because of Pat Robertson, I went there because I wanted a legal education balanced with a Christian perspective. Instead, I’m getting an education in how evil so-called Christians can be to those who are different from them. Article

---

We pollute, nature decides.

Dioxin exposure has been shown elsewhere to lead to both higher cancer rates and the birth of more females.

Researchers at the IntrAmericas Centre for Environment and Health say their findings, released this month, confirm the phenomenon in Canada.

The study also reveals the health risks of living within 25km of sources of pollution - a greater distance than previously thought, they said.

Normally, 51 percent of births are boys and 49 percent are girls. But the ratio was reversed - with as few as 46 males born for every 54 females - in Canadian cities and towns where parents were exposed to pollutants from sources such as oil refineries, paper mills and metal smelters, according to the study.

“If you find an inverted sex ratio, and want to know what causes it, look for sources of dioxin,” said James Argo, a medical geographer who headed the study, which was published in a journal of the American Chemical Society.

“In every one of those cities where those industries are found, there was a higher probability of female births to male births,” Argo said in an interview.

Using birth data and an inventory of Canada’s pollution sources, the study also concluded that early exposure to dioxins - even at 25km away from the source - increased the risk of cancer later in life in a group of 20 000 people surveyed during the 1990s.

Previous studies that linked dioxins with cancer and a gender imbalance focused on smaller distances, usually about 5km, Argo said. Article

Going to forego (mostly) even cursory comments, as it is ye old scribe’s day off. Just a grouping of tidbits of info or stories found of interest enough to share.

#1:

…on October 2, 2007, Mohammad-Ali Khatibi, deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), in charge of the marketing announced that Iran has drastically lowered the use of the U.S. dollar in payment for its oil export by 15%. Khatibi was reported as saying that “Iran is selling about 85% of its oil in the non-dollar currencies,” nearly 65% in euro and soon 20% in yen. In July, the NIOC requested from its customers in Japan who import over 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil, to pay in yen. A switch in currency by Nippon Oil and other Japanese oil refiners to yen has helped Iran to achieve its goal of reducing its exposure to the dollar and as a result, in the period over the last two years it has avoided the loss emanating from the constant depreciation of the dollar. The switch from dollar to yen was not an easy decision for Japan to make, knowing that the U.S. applies all sorts of pressures on the world financial markets and threats against individual state apparatuses, wanting them to dump the idea and refrain from paying in currencies other than the dollar, although paying in their own national currency is naturally in their best interest. Article

---

#2:

The Russian defense budget has grown at double-digit rates for the last five years, albeit from a very low base. New investment has gone into the development of new strategic weapons, specifically the Topol-M, designed to defeat U.S. strategic defense systems, and the S-400 anti-missile system. Defense outlays for 2007 are at a post-Soviet high of $32.4 billion, rising 23 percent in the past year and four times expenditures of 2001. Source

---

#3:

The skeleton of what is believed to be a new dinosaur species - a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found - has been uncovered in Argentina, scientists said Monday.

Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian dinosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species of Titanosaur because of the unique structure of its neck. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for “giant” and “chief,” and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton’s excavation.

[snip]

“I’m pretty certain it’s a new species,” agreed Peter Mackovicky, associate curator for dinosaurs at Chicago’s Field Museum, who was not involved with the discovery. “I’ve seen some of the remains of Futalognkosaurus and it is truly gigantic.”

Calvo said the neck alone must have been 56 feet long, and by studying the vertebrae, they figured the tail probably measured 49 feet. The dinosaur reached over 43 feet tall, and the excavated spinal column weighed about 9 tons when excavated. One neck vertebra alone measured more than 3 feet high.

[snip]

Patagonia also was home to the other two largest dinosaur skeletons found to date - Argentinosaurus, at around 115 feet long, and Puertasaurus reuili, 115 feet to 131 feet long.

[snip]

North America’s dinosaurs don’t even compare in size, Mackovicky added in a phone interview. “Dinosaurs do get big here, but nothing near the proportions we see in South America.” Article

---

#4 — Maybe more than you cared to know about splashback and dribbling.

Somehow neglected to mention this little nugget from mid-September. That omission is hereby rectified.

The UN Declaration [on the rights of indigenous peoples] was adopted by a majority of 144 states in favour, 4 votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) and 11 abstentions (Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa and Ukraine). Article

---

What, if anything, happened (or was intended to happen) in the Syrian desert just gets murkier and murkier.

---

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Gunmen in Nigeria have kidnapped the mother of another lawmaker in southern Bayelsa state - days after the father of another parliamentarian was taken hostage, police said on Saturday.

“The old woman was abducted from her village in southern Ijaw council area late on Thursday. She is the mother of Honourable Delight Igali,” Bayelsa police spokesperson Iniobong Ibokette said.

“We will do everything within our power to secure her release,” he said.

The incident came four days after the 82-year-old father of parliamentarian Edowe Komonibo was seized from his home in Odi community.

That abduction came just days after that of Kara Nwile, the father of Charles Befii Nwile, the deputy speaker of the House of Assembly in neighbouring Rivers state.

[snip]

In the eighteen months leading up to June 2007, militant and criminal gangs in the Niger Delta concentrated on kidnapping foreigners, mostly oil workers, seizing some 200 of them in that period.

As companies stepped up security measures expatriates became ever harder to get.

Starting in July therefore, the gangs mostly switched to targeting the elderly parents and children of prominent Nigerians in the region, whilst continuing to seize foreigners when they could. Article

---

Some stories are not readily categorizable. This one is such.

In the annals of medical history, this could go down as one of the most effective but stomach-churning treatments ever devised.

Scientists seeking a cure for a deadly superbug have successfully treated patients using human faeces.

Trials in a Scottish hospital have shown patients suffering from the Clostridium difficile bug can be cured using ‘donor stool’ administered via a tube through the nose into their stomach.

[snip]

Doctors involved in the trials admit there are “obvious aesthetic problems” in the treatment, which involves patients ingesting a liquidised sample of faeces from a partner or close relative. Article

---

Noted FYI:

Throughout the month, people across the Middle East have rushed from mosques and flocked to coffeehouses each evening to catch “Bab el-Hara,” or “The Neighborhood Gate.” When the popular leader of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah gave a televised address last Friday, many of his supporters watched the soap instead.

During Ramadan, which ends this week, Muslims fast during the day and sit down for an elaborate meal in the evening. Those ancient traditions have spawned a modern one: the Ramadan soap opera. Arab satellite channels broadcast the programs each night, trying to hook families who have gathered to break their fast.

“The Neighborhood Gate” is this year’s hit, drawing millions of viewers - from poverty-stricken Gaza to the opulent cities of the Persian Gulf - with its nostalgic portrayal of the Middle East.

[snip]

The director of “The Neighborhood Gate,” Bassam al-Malla, said he intended to create nostalgia for “a world with values, honour, gallantry…and the revolutionary spirit.”

The formula is working so well that for many it has proven a stronger draw than the Mideast’s two standard preoccupations - religion and politics.

Imad Qadi, a preacher in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said more worshippers this year were hurrying home to watch the show instead of undertaking a lengthy evening prayer traditionally performed during Ramadan.

At one upscale restaurant in east Jerusalem, waiters hastily set up a large projector screen minutes before the show began one recent evening. Tables of Palestinian men and women faced the flickering screen to watch, hushing children and forcing waiters to duck under the projector as they served beer to Muslims unconcerned with Islam’s ban on alcohol.

Last Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised speech to mark Al-Quds Day, or Jerusalem day, in support of the Palestinians. But the speech was broadcast at the same time as “The Neighborhood Gate.” For many Palestinians, the choice was easy.

“I would prefer Hassan Nasrallah to anybody, but … I didn’t watch because ‘The Neighborhood Gate’ was on,” said barber Mutasem Nuwara as he watched the show and cut a customer’s hair simultaneously in his Ramallah barbershop.

Hezbollah’s TV station ran two episodes of the show the next day to compensate the loyal supporters who did tune in to watch Nasrallah speak. Article

---

Head-shaking tidbit, huh?

In 2004, nine times as many Wall Street investors earned in excess of $100 million as public company CEOs. In fact, the top 25 hedge fund managers combined appear to have earned more than all 500 S&P500 CEOs combined (both realized and estimated). Source

---

Charting an apparent emasculating outcome of — marriage.

A new study has demonstrated that married men have lower testosterone levels.

And, the study also found that even aloof spouses providing minimal parenting have much lower testosterone levels than single, unmarried men.

What’s more is that men with more than 1 wife have lower levels of testosterone than monogamously married men. Article

Too much still doesn’t smell right, specifically in this case regarding the how behind collections of soil samples as reported.

A top-secret report by the U.S. intelligence services says several North Korean scientists were injured in Israel’s strike in Syria last month, top Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland reported in the paper Sunday.

Some two weeks ago, British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that diplomats in North Korea and China believed a number of North Koreans had been killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.

In his article about the efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program, Hoagland said the site of the attack was a plutonium enrichment facility for the Syrian nuclear progam. According to Hoagland, Israel sent soil samples from the site and other evidence to the United States both before and after the strike on September 6. Hoagland’s report appears to corroborate details reported by the Sunday Times two weeks prior. Article

---

A skittish market looks to the obliterating of a magical barrier.

Global oil prices have more than doubled from around 30 dollars in 2003, and analysts say the forces pushing up prices show no signs of easing, with 100-dollar-a-barrel oil a possibility in 2008.

Oil prices have been hovering around 80 dollars a barrel in recent weeks after hitting all-time highs in New York and London. Tight supplies, geopolitical worries, storms and strong global economic growth have all contributed to high prices.

“The two arguments against 100-dollar oil, the ability of technology to raise new supply and the ability of prices to limit demand, are falling quickly by the wayside,” said Jeffrey Rubin, an economist at CIBC World Markets.

“Gone are Big Oil’s smug assurances that their technical prowess will untap huge hitherto undiscovered reserves of cheap crude. What we hear instead through the voice of the US National Petroleum Council are warnings of depletion and steadily rising prices.” Article

---

Lost and found Hooke papers from birth of modern science to go online.

Old world open bigotry in Sacramento — and beyond.

---

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Soldiers from the Joint Task Force on Friday, stormed Abaara Etche, a community in Etche Local Government of Rivers State, and freed an expatriate oil worker, Mr. David Ward.

The soldiers also arrested 10 suspected militants in the compound where the expatriate was held, during a raid, which began at 12 am and lasted till 4am. Suspected militants at Mgbuoba abducted Ward, who is the Project Manager of Hydro Dive, a Port Harcourt-based oil servicing company, on August 10.

A source told our correspondent that the troops raided Abaara Etche following an intelligence report that militants were still keeping the Briton there.

The JTF’s spokesman, Major Sagir Musa, in a statement said Ward had during the 55 days of his captivity, been moved to different places.…

[snip]

In a telephone interview with our correspondent, the Managing Director of Hydro Dive, Mr. David Ross, confirmed the release of Ward, saying that he was in a fairly good state of health. He said although the abduction was a terrible blow to the company, Hydro Drive would not suspend its operations in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, suspected militants on Friday stormed Bane community in Khana Local Government Area and abducted Chief Lawrence Nwile, the 70 year-old father of the Deputy Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Charles Nwile. A source in the community said the hoodlums invaded the community around 1am and went straight to the compound of the lawmaker’s father. Article

---

Everything old is new again: Not only shining some light on a dim recess of history, but more than germane to the ongoing and current role of torture and tortuous techniques.

The Vatican is to publish a book which is expected to shed light on the demise of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order from the Middle Ages.

The book is based on a document known as the Chinon parchment, found in the Vatican Secret Archives six years ago after years of being incorrectly filed.

The document is a record of the heresy hearings of the Templars before Pope Clement V in the 14th Century.

The official who found the paper says it exonerates the knights entirely.

Prof Barbara Frale, who stumbled across the parchment by mistake, says that it lays bare the rituals and ceremonies over which the Templars were accused of heresy.

In the hearings before Clement V, the knights reportedly admitted spitting on the cross, denying Jesus and kissing the lower back of the man proposing them during initiation ceremonies.

However, many of the confessions were obtained under torture and knights later recanted or tried to claim that their initiation ceremony merely mimicked the humiliation the knights would suffer if they fell into the hands of the Muslim leader Saladin.

The leader of the order, Jacques de Moley, was one of those who confessed to heresy, but later recanted.

He was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, the same year that the Pope dissolved the order.

However, according to Prof Frale, study of the document shows that the knights were not heretics as had been believed for 700 years. Article

---

Working on taking troops out of the equation of war.

Sitting high in the cab of the hulking lime-green TerraMax truck, a driver can be excused for instinctively grabbing the steering wheel.

There’s no need. TerraMax is a self-driving vehicle, a prototype designed to navigate and obey traffic rules - all while the people inside, if there are any, do anything but drive.

[snip]

Congress has mandated that one in three ground combat vehicles be self-driving by 2015. The idea is to free personnel for nondriving tasks such as reading maps, scanning for roadside bombs or scouting for the enemy - and to be able to deploy vehicles altogether unoccupied. Article

---

Perhaps not so vestigial after all.

Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.

[snip]

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix’s job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

[snip]

Five scientists not connected with the research said that the Duke theory makes sense and raises interesting questions.

The idea “seems by far the most likely” explanation for the function of the appendix, said Brandeis University biochemistry professor Douglas Theobald. “It makes evolutionary sense.” Article

HARDY LITTLE BUGGERS

“For the first time ever, animals are now being exposed to an unmitigated space environment, with both vacuum conditions and cosmic radiation,” says the ecologist Ingemar Jönsson, a researcher at Kristianstad University in Sweden.

One of the aims of sending the tiny tardigrades into space is to find out whether they can cope with the rugged conditions in space, which has previously been predicted but never tested.

Tardigrades are one of the most tolerant animals on earth when it comes to dehydration and radiation, a characteristic that would be required in order to survive a trip through space. But the project is also part of research into the fundamental physiology of the tardigrade, primarily of the mechanisms that underlie their ability to withstand desiccation.

The project, named TARDIS, has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to be one of ten European projects being given the opportunity to carry out scientific experiments in a true space environment. Article

---

THAWED FROM MULTI-MILLENNIAL SLEEP

Antarctica’s Dry Valleys are among the most desolate places on the planet. Here, no plants cling to the slopes, no small mammals scurry among the scree. The freeze-dried landscapes, with their rocks chiselled by the wind, seem utterly lifeless. When Captain Scott first chanced upon their craggy peaks and troughs in 1905, he labelled them the “valleys of the dead”.

Now, a little more than a hundred years on from Scott’s exhibition, US scientists have discovered that the icy landscapes may not be so barren after all. Microbiologists from New Jersey have chanced upon tiny frozen organisms that have remained alive for millions of years, embedded in some of the oldest ice on the planet.

Dr Kay Bidle of Rutgers University, who was part of the research team, extracted DNA and bacteria from ice found barely metres beneath the surface of a Dry Valleys glacier, and, remarkably, claims to have grown the bacteria in a lab. “This is by far the oldest ice in which we have found encased microbes, cultured them and formed a growth,” he says.

[snip]

Braving the barren hills, where footsteps made 50 years ago can still be seen, the researchers took samples that ranged in age from 100,000 to eight million years. Drilling deep beneath the shifting surface of an ice floe, they dredged up frozen material that, when scrutinised under a microscope, left them stunned. Not only could they see microscopic bacteria that they could extract, but these enduring creatures were from the most ancient ice samples.

Once the bacteria were extracted and fed in a laboratory, they began to multiply. While the number of organisms found in the 100,000-year-old ice doubled in size every seven days, those from the eight million-year-old ice grew much more slowly. Dr Bidle says that the “young stuff grew really fast”, but the older colony doubled in size only every two months, suggesting that over time, the bacteria’s DNA , which controls its reproduction, had been damaged.

[snip]

The scientific community has heralded the discovery as “significant”, but the team’s conclusions might disappoint science-fiction buffs. There will be no global pandemic – or at least there shouldn’t be. The scientists say that while extremely old bacteria will be released into the world’s oceans as a result of global warming, it is not a “cause for concern”. Dr Bidle says that marine bacteria and viruses are less harmful to human health than those found on land. “Clearly this melting has happened many times over the Earth’s history,” he says. “We didn’t find any pathogens. What we found were organisms closely related to common environmental bacteria.”

[snip]

Whenever the ice caps melt they inject a huge amount of genetic material into the oceans. Bacteria can incorporate external DNA into their own genetic material – through a process known as “lateral transmission”– and if they are good genes they can help the bugs survive. If they are not, they won’t. “[Lateral transmission] can be advantageous or it can be deleterious. This is one of main ways in which microbes get new data,” Bidle says. “It’s up to natural selection to sort that out.” In other words, the thawing of Antarctic ice could fast-track the microbes’ evolution. Article

SINGLE PACKET POTENTIAL

A veritable quantum leap, to ye old scribe’s mind as significant as the first time the letter ‘A’ was successfully displayed on a monitor.

Two major steps toward putting quantum computers into real practice — sending a photon signal on demand from a qubit onto wires and transmitting the signal to a second, distant qubit — have been brought about by a team of scientists at Yale.…

[snip]

The first breakthrough reported is the ability to produce on demand — and control — single, discrete microwave photons as the carriers of encoded quantum information. While microwave energy is used in cell phones and ovens, their sources do not produce just one photon. This new system creates a certainty of producing individual photons.

[snip]

“In this work we demonstrate only the first half of quantum communication on a chip — quantum information efficiently transferred from a stationary quantum bit to a photon or ‘flying qubit,’” says Schoelkopf. “However, for on-chip quantum communication to become a reality, we need to be able to transfer information from the photon back to a qubit.”

This is exactly what the researchers go on to report in the second breakthrough. Postdoctoral associate Johannes Majer and graduate student Jerry Chow, lead co-authors of the second paper, added a second qubit and used the photon to transfer a quantum state from one qubit to another. This was possible because the microwave photon could be guided on wires — similarly to the way fiber optics can guide visible light — and carried directly to the target qubit. “A novel feature of this experiment is that the photon used is only virtual,” said Majer and Chow, “winking into existence for only the briefest instant before disappearing.” Article

FALLING UP

A recent experiment conducted by physicists at University of Bristol in the United Kingdom has shown that liquid drops can defy gravity. Droplets of liquid on an inclined plate that is shaken up and down can travel uphill rather than sliding down. In fact, if the plate vibrates at the right rate, the droplets will always travel counter-intuitively up the incline. Article

---

GERMS IN SPA-A-ACE

Space flight has been shown to have a profound impact on human physiology as the body adapts to zero-gravity environments. Now, a new study led by researchers from ASU’s Biodesign Institute has shown that the tiniest passengers flown in space – microbes – can be equally affected by space flight, making them more infectious pathogens.

[snip]

Compared to bacteria that remained on Earth, the space-traveling salmonella had changed expression of 167 genes. After the flight, animal virulence studies showed that bacteria that were flown in space were almost three times as likely to cause disease when compared with control bacteria grown on the ground.

The study discovered that an important regulatory protein, Hfq, may be a key molecule responsible for the increased virulence caused by space flight.

“Hfq is a protein that binds to and regulates a number of regulatory RNAs – which, in turn, control gene expression,” Nickerson says. “Our studies suggest that there may be a role for these regulatory RNAs in the cellular response to the physical and mechanical forces found in space flight, which are relevant to conditions that cells encounter here on Earth during the normal course of their life cycles.”

These results have important implications for human health, since salmonella (and other gut-related bacterial pathogens) are a leading cause of food-borne illness and infectious disease, especially in the developing world. Nickerson’s group further highlights Hfq as a potential therapeutic target, since no vaccine exists for salmonella food-borne infections in humans.

In addition, the space flight studies could shed new light on why salmonella has become increasingly resistant to antibiotic treatment.

“We also studied the morphology of the bacteria in response to space flight, and the change that we observed is consistent with what looks like formation of a biofilm,” Nickerson says. “The ground grown samples did not show biofilm formation. Biofilms are associated with increased pathogenicity, because the immune system can’t clear the bacteria effectively – and antibiotics don’t treat them effectively.” Article

---

INVASION OF THE BODY

The Romans suffered fom lead; we moderns churn out so many more choices of detriment.

The old joke was: Americans eat so many preservatives, our corpses will never rot. Now, it turns out they won’t burn either. Americans’ bodies have the world’s highest concentration of the flame retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE)—10 to 40 times higher than Europeans—and our chemical burden is doubling every 3 to 5 years.

[snip]

“What is in commercial products is getting into the environment,” says EPA scientist Linda Birnbaum, “and what’s in the environment is getting into wildlife and people.”

Because the EPA does not require labeling, you are unlikely to know which, if any, PDBEs are in the mattress your baby sleeps on, the couch you potato on and the electronic equipment you surf the web with.

Nor the risks. Despite the chemical’s ubiquity and 30-year history, the EPA says, “Our toxicology database [on PBDEs] is inadequate to truly understand the risk.”

That stance serves the $2.9 billion flame retardant industry—an industry that shreds logic by arguing simultaneously that the effects on humans are unknown and that exposures are too low to cause concern.

But evidence of the danger is piling up.…

The three main types—penta-, octa- and deca-BDEs—are named for the number of bromine atoms. Penta and octa are now widely recognized as dangerous. After the European Union, Canada and a few U.S. states banned them, U.S. manufacturers saw the handwriting on the wall, and perhaps the lawsuits in the wings, and ceased production as of 2005.

Recycled materials, like carpet and drapery backing, as well as items produced before the phase-out, may contain as much as 30 percent penta or octa. According to Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News, since the 2004 E.U. ban, foreign sources are dumping “significant amounts” of octa- and penta-laden products in the United States.

The United States still manufactures deca-BDE and uses it in electronics, upholstery and textiles, despite its status as a likely carcinogen and its ability to break down into dioxin-like molecules.

“Some [Americans] have concentrations [of deca] not dissimilar to amounts in animals that cause cancer of the thyroid and liver,” says Birnbaum. Article

Related:

An unpublicized agreement signed at last month’s Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit at Montebello puts Canada on course for a single North American regime for regulating industrial chemicals, says a study being released today.

That would almost certainly lead to weaker Canadian controls over hazardous chemicals in the future, says study author Bruce Campbell, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think-tank.

The unpublicized agreement, titled Regulatory Co-operation in the Area of Chemicals, appears on the American government’s SPP website, but not on Canadian government sites.

[snip]

“The signs are disturbing,” Mr. Campbell said, arguing that greater harmonization means Canada will come under pressure to adopt weaker U.S. standards for the regulation of chemicals.

“Given the power realities in North America, a single voice means, essentially, a U.S. voice.”

[snip]

While the NACC report did not explicitly call for a relaxation of Canadian standards, Mr. Campbell’s study observes that “it’s safe to assume that, given past practice, the chemical industry is not carrying the flag for stricter regulations.”

[snip]

According to Mr. Campbell, Canada’s regime for regulating industrial chemicals currently falls somewhere between the U.S. framework and the European system, known as REACH, widely considered to be the strongest.

REACH, which came into effect June 1, will test and regulate about 30,000 chemicals that until now have been largely unregulated. It applies the precautionary principle — which advocates erring on the side of caution — and shifts the burden of establishing that chemicals are safe to industry.

In May 2006, representatives of 9,000 Environmental Protection Agency scientists publicly slammed the U.S. agency for approving a group of pesticides despite evidence they harm the central nervous systems of fetuses and babies.

The Bush administration has also strongly opposed the REACH program, describing it as an illegal barrier to trade and threatening to lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organization. Article

Smells like a propaganda stink coming out of Cheney’s office. Period.

Divisions have appeared again in US President George W. Bush’s administration over a North Korean nuclear disarmament deal amid leaked US intelligence citing alleged atomic links between the Stalinist state and Syria.

As North Korea moves to declare and disable its nuclear weapons program under a six-party deal, reports in the New York Times and Washington Post have suggested Pyongyang may be helping US arch rival Syria build a nuclear weapons facility.

The reports, citing unnamed sources, were based on intelligence information supposedly from Israel’s flyover and apparent raid last week on targets inside Syria.

The information could have been provided by hawks within the Bush administration who are against the rapidly-progressing deal with North Korea, some experts said.

They questioned the timing of the reports, coming just ahead of key six-party talks among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia, where Pyongyang is widely expected to agree to declare and disable its nuclear arsenal by the end of 2007.

“There is supposed to be an effort by some officials to torpedo the North Korea nuclear deal by portraying North Korea as a ‘proliferator,’” said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert, who was once a key advisor to Congress.

He likened the reports to those that surfaced in the run up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 during which officials provided apparently incorrect intelligence information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

[snip]

The Syrian nuclear program has been around for 40 years, Cirincione said.

“It is a basic research program built around a tiny 30 kilowatt reactor that produced a few isotopes and neutrons. It is no where near a program for nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel,” he said.

Over a dozen countries have helped Syria develop its nuclear program, including Belgium, Germany, Russia, China and even the United States, by way of training of scientists, he said.

“If North Korea gave them anything short of nuclear weapons, it’s of little consequence,” Cirincione said. Article

---

Almost a classic ‘good news, bad news’ scenario. But ye old scribe would measure the material good as far outweighing the potential bad.

The idea of using nuclear-powered desalination plants is becoming popular in the Middle East and North Africa, where tension over water rights has gone on for millennia, but it is controversial, and without significant foreign assistance it may turn out to be a mirage.

During a visit to Libya by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in late July, the leaders signed a memorandum of understanding that would allow French nuclear-giant Areva to build a nuclear power plant there.

Libya hopes to use the electricity generated by nuclear power for water desalination, a hope echoed in many countries in the region. Egypt has said it will pursue a similar scheme, as have Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Japan and Kazakhstan already have working nuclear-powered desalination plants.

The Middle East, like much of the rest of the world, is increasingly in need of fresh water. About 60 percent of the roughly 7,500 traditionally powered desalination plants can be found in the Middle East. In fact, Saudi Arabia holds about a quarter of the world’s desalination capacity, according to the International Desalination Association, and it provides 70 percent of the country’s drinking water.

Removing enough salt from seawater to make it usable for irrigation and drinking takes a tremendous amount of energy. It is highly dependent on the method of purification used, as well as the salinity of the water — seawater takes much more energy than slightly brackish water — but on average it takes between 2.8 and 9.8 megawatts of energy to produce 100,000 cubic meters of drinkable water per day, according to a presentation on nuclear desalination by Ron Faibish of the Argonne National Laboratory, the largest research laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.

[snip]

There are several technologies for desalinizing water, and thermal distillation, which is the most conventional and most common in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, is also responsible for producing the highest rate of greenhouse gases, according the WWF.

With these disadvantages in mind, governments and businesses have been looking for alternatives to hydrocarbon-powered desalination plants. Australia has been using energy from a wind farm near Perth to power a large desalination plant that provides 17 percent of the city’s freshwater supply.

Solar power is also being considered, but the scale for such technologies is inadequate for much of North Africa and the Middle East. A project in Spain hopes to develop a plant with the capacity to produce 50 cubic meters per day. Saudi Arabia’s current daily production is 3 million cubic meters.

Using nuclear power for desalination has some very powerful backers. Not only do private industry giants such as Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Areva, which controls France’s nuclear sector, hope to build in North Africa and the Middle East, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has thrown its weight behind the idea as well with its Nuclear Desalination Project, which facilitates nuclear desalination projects worldwide. Article

---

More than a gaffe.

A German archbishop has sparked controversy by calling some modern art “degenerate” - a term used by the Nazi regime in its persecution of artists.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, was speaking as the Church inaugurated its Kolumba art museum.

Cardinal Meisner warned that when art became estranged from worship, culture became degenerate.

The cardinal had not intended to pay tribute to “old ideologies”, a spokesman said.

The BBC’s Marianne Landzettel says this was no off-the-cuff remark by the cardinal, delivered in a sermon in Cologne Cathedral, but was precisely scripted.

She says the phrase degenerate art - “entartete Kunst” - in German has only one connotation: that of Nazi Germany and the persecution of artists, the banning of paintings and the burning of books.

“Entartete Kunst” was the name of an exhibition of works organised by the Nazis in 1937 in Munich as a warning to the German people. Article

---

Amazing graphene.

---

Sailors’ (and resource exploration’s) delight, fragile ecosystem’s warning.

It has been the dream of mariners since the 15th century but now new satellite images reveal the legendary Northwest Passage across the Arctic Ocean has opened up fully because of melting sea ice.

European Space Agency pictures show the ice has shrunk to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, clearing a long-sought but historically impassable route between Europe and Asia. A shipping route linking the Atlantic and the Pacific would be a cheaper alternative to the Panama Canal because of the shorter distances involved.

It was only in 1906, after a three-year expedition, that Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen proved the route was navigable.

Since then only specialised ice-breaking ships have been able to force their way through. Article

COSMIC CANNIBALISM

MIT astronomers are co-discoverers of what NASA calls one of the most bizarre objects in space: a star “skeleton” of very low mass that is orbiting and being slowly consumed by a pulsar, or remains of a second massive star, that is itself spinning faster than a kitchen blender.

A NASA team led by Hans Krimm and Craig Markwardt at Goddard Space Flight Center and an MIT team led by Deepto Chakrabarty, an associate professor of physics in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, describe the overall system (known as SWIFT J1756.9-2508) in an article accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“While we already know of several cases of pulsars that have consumed or vaporized most of the mass in their companion star, SWIFT J1756.9 [the system’s abbreviation] is possibly the most extreme example,” said Chakrabarty.

[snip]

The companion object was found to orbit the pulsar every 54.7 minutes at an average distance of only about 230,000 miles (slightly less than the Earth-Moon distance). It has what astronomers consider to be a very low mass: about seven times that of Jupiter. For comparison, the sun is over 1000 times more massive than Jupiter.

“This object is merely the skeleton of a star,” says Markwardt. “The pulsar has eaten away the star’s outer envelope, and all the remains is its helium-rich core.” Article

Summaries here and here and here.

The Iraqi cabinet decided to stop bearing the cost of bodyguards assigned to protect members of the parliament, the official spokesman for the Iraqi government said on Tuesday.

“The cabinet decided during session held last Thursday to call off the deputies’ bodyguards and to assign 20 bodyguards for each MP in return for 10 million dinars,” Ali al-Dabagh told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Article

---

On again, off again ‘government.’

The political movement loyal to anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Tuesday it may pull out of Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite coalition unless the government improves security and makes political progress. “We are thinking seriously of withdrawing from the United Iraqi Alliance if the failure in the political process continues and if the government does not provide security and services for the citizens,” spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi said.

If Sadr’s supporters withdrew they would leave Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s alliance with just 83 seats in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament, but he would still be able to muster a small majority with support from Kurdish parties.

[snip]

Addressing parliament on Monday, Maliki acknowledged that the term “national unity government”, used to describe his cabinet, had lost its meaning. Article

---

Although this killing was not in Najaf, it marks somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-dozen Sistani aides assassinated in just the past few months, as clear a symbol of Shi’a-on’-Shi’a open war as can be.

An official source from Basra provincial council said on Tuesday unknown gunmen killed an aide to the top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani after storming his house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Article

---

In a word, trapped.

UN refugee agency staff visiting the Syrian-Iraq border have found the crossing point virtually empty following the introduction of new visa restrictions that the Syrian government is imposing on almost all Iraqis wishing to enter Syria.

The visit to the border on Monday was the first time in months, if not years, that UNHCR staff have found almost no one waiting. Iraqis, with the exception of certain professional categories, are now required to apply for a visa at the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad.

“The regulations effectively mean there is no longer a safe place outside for Iraqis fleeing persecution and violence. An estimated 2,000 Iraqis flee their homes daily inside the country, so we are increasingly concerned about their fate as their options for safety are reduced,” said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond.

[snip]

It is too early to evaluate whether Syria is making exceptions to this visa policy on humanitarian grounds for people fleeing violence and persecution.

The Syrian Embassy in Baghdad is located in the district of Al Mansour, an area which continues to see frequent sectarian violence. Iraqis have told UNHCR that their lives will be at risk if they are obliged to visit this district to obtain a visa. Article

---

Keeping up with the charges:

A Marine officer accused of failing to investigate Iraqi civilian deaths in Haditha rejected a plea deal under which his charges would have been dismissed in exchange for an admission that he covered up the killings, his attorney said Monday.

First Lt. Andrew Grayson is one of four Camp Pendleton officers who were charged with dereliction of duty on suspicion that they failed to probe the Nov. 19, 2005, assault that left 24 Iraqis dead.

[snip]

The deal would have required Grayson to make a statement at a special, nonjudicial hearing admitting that he tried to cover up the killings, Casas said. Typically, such admissions can result in a letter of reprimand or lost pay and effectively end a Marine’s career.

Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, the government’s lead prosecutor in the case, discussed a potential deal with Grayson, Casas said. Sullivan, reached for comment at his Camp Pendleton office, said military regulations prohibit him from discussing the case.

Four enlisted Marines were originally charged with murder, and four officers were charged with failing to investigate. So far, charges have been dismissed against two of the enlisted Marines and one officer. Article

SLIP-SLIDING AWAY

The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.

Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low.

The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat yesterday: “We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year.”

[snip]

Dr Corell, director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington, said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report were based on data two years old. The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, he said, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines.

He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and “seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them.”

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier “to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.”

The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.

Veli Kallio, a Finnish scientist, said the quakes were triggered because ice had broken away after being fused to the rock for hundreds of years. The quakes were not vast - on a magnitude of 1 to 3 - but had never happened before in north-west Greenland and showed potential for the entire ice sheet to collapse. Article

A whole raft of stories which demonstrate the rationality of treating “terrorism” as a criminal and police matter, not primarily or exclusively as a military one.

#1:

Prosecutors arrested three men and are searching for five more suspects who are accused of planning “massive” terrorist attacks. Investigators suggested that US military facilities in Germany could have been the targets.

German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said the three men arrested Tuesday were two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim, all in their 20s. The men are being held on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and preparing a bomb attack.

Harms said the men were members of the Islamic Jihad Union, which has its origins in Uzbekistan. The three suspects attended a militant training camp in Pakistan last year, she said at a press conference Wednesday in Karlsruhe.

Prosecutors also said investigators were still looking for another five suspects.

[snip]

Jörg Ziercke, head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), said the Islamic Jihad Union had ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network and that the men accused of planning the attacks in Germany were “driven by a hatred of US citizens.”

Ziercke said security forces decided to move in on the suspects Tuesday when it became clear the three had begun creating bombs. Harms added that the suspects were taken into custody before making a functioning explosive.

[snip]

Refering to the terror suspects’ aims, Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told journalists in Berlin: “There were no concrete targets.”

“But the German police are speculating that Frankfurt airport was one of these targets,” he added.

Harms also did not specify the exact targets of the planned terror attacks, but said US military facilities in Germany were to have been hit. The suspects were apparently planning to detonate a series of car bombs simultaneously, she said.

“As possible targets … the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans with a view to detonating explosives loaded in cars and killing or injuring many people,” Harms said.

Earlier Wednesday, SWR public radio had reported that the US military base at Ramstein was a possible target.

US military authorities at the Ramstein air base, one of the largest US military facilities in Europe, could not confirm those speculations.

Ziercke said over 300 police officers had been monitoring the suspects over six months, and that it was one of the largest police operations of its kind in Germany. Article

Related stories here and here and here

#2:

The trial of four young Muslims charged with planning terrorist bombings in Denmark or abroad began here Wednesday and is due to last more than two months, court officials said. The four men were charged in March of acquiring chemicals and laboratory instruments to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, often used by suicide bombers.…It was the third time in two years that Danish police conducted operations resulting in arrests on suspicion of terrorism. Article

#3:

Three men have been indicted on charges connected with an attack on an Oslo synagogue or plotting to attack the U.S. or Israeli embassies in the Norwegian capital, the national prosecutor said Tuesday.

All charges related to the cases were dropped against a fourth man, said prosecutor Kristine Rise. He had been identified in earlier court rulings as 29-year-old Mohammed Adnan Nabi.

[snip]

The charges were in part based on recordings from an electronic bug police planted in one suspect’s car, in which some suspects allegedly discussed blowing up the embassies. Article

#4:

The same day that German authorities foiled a “massive” attack with the arrest of three Islamic extremists allegedly planning to bomb US military facilities in Germany, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini in Brussels unveiled a new package of proposals to tackle terrorism.

“All sources indicate that the threat of new terrorist attacks continues to be high,” Frattini said. “There is no room for complacency or letting our guard down.”

Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Frattini stressed that it was crucial to “strike the right balance between the fundamental right to security of citizens, which is first, right to life, and the other fundamental rights of individuals, including privacy and procedural rights.” Article

---

Hmm. First impression is that there is more here than is being let on.

Seven Iranian policemen were killed in an overnight clash with bandits in Kermanshah province bordering Iraq, the ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Two bandits and a passenger in a passing car were also killed in the fighting, ISNA said.

It said police had not yet identified the gunmen, but quoted one official as saying they were “definitely related to anti-revolutionary groups.”

Kermanshah, which has a large Iranian Kurdish population, lies south of the province of Kurdistan, where there have been occasional clashes with separatist guerrillas. Smugglers of fuel and other contraband operate in the area. Article

---

Pay no attention to the demonstrated instability and unrest.

Yeah, right.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe berated foreign diplomats on Wednesday over what he said were excessive concerns voiced by their countries about insecurity in the oil-producing Niger Delta.

More than 200 foreigners, including a three-year-old girl, have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta since the start of last year. Most were released unharmed in exchange for money, although one British hostage died in a botched rescue attempt.

An American, a Dutchman and a Belgian were murdered in the delta in separate incidents, and a Syrian died of an illness while in the hands of hostage takers.

“In recent times, some foreign countries have issued travel advisories to their nationals against visiting Nigeria, ostensibly on account of the situation in the Niger Delta,” Maduekwe told foreign diplomats at a meeting he summoned.

“The criminal actions of a few fortune seekers in the region do not warrant the designation of Nigeria as a perilous environment,” he said.

[snip]

In Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers state, dozens of people were killed last month in street battles involving rival gangs and troops. On Sunday, a Dutchman was found dead in the city with a note on his body accusing him of taking $50,000 (25,000 pounds) to import cars and failing to deliver. Article

---

Wiping out irreplaceable heritage in the name of ’salvation.’

As poverty deepened in Nigeria from the mid-1980s, Pentecostal Christian church membership surged. The new faithful found comfort in preachers such as evangelist Uma Ukpai who promised that material success was next to godliness. He has boasted of overseeing the destruction of more than 100 shrines in one district in December 2005 alone.

Achina is typical of towns and villages in the ethnic Igbo-dominated Christian belt of southeastern Nigeria where this new Christian fundamentalism is evident. The old gods are being linked to the devil, and preachers are urging not only their rejection, but their destruction.

The Ezeokolo, the main shrine of Achina – a community of mainly farmers and traders in Nigeria’s rain forest belt – has been repeatedly looted of its carved god figures. While no one has been caught, suspects range from people acting on Christian impulses to treasure thieves.

Recently, a village civic association volunteered to build a house to keep burglars away from a giant wooden gong decorated with carved male, female and snake figures. The gong in the market square is reputed to be more than 400 years old, and in decades past was sounded in times of emergency.

“We feared it may be stolen or destroyed like so many of our traditional cultural symbols,” said Chuma Ezenwa, a Lagos-based lawyer.

Ukpai, the evangelist, tells followers the artifacts bear “curses and covenants” linked to the gods they represent.

“Since the curses and covenants do not automatically disappear when we repent, Rev. Dr. Uma Ukpai is a man called by God for the total liberation of mankind,” he says on his website, claiming to have the spiritual backing of Jesus to break the curses. Article

---

The last inhabitant of limbo.

Hassan Almrei strolls from his cell wearing a pressed cream shirt, dress pants and polished black shoes. If not for the barbed wire behind him, the 33-year-old Syrian could be on his way to a corporate board meeting, not an interview with a journalist as the remaining detainee in a prison dubbed “Guantanamo North.”

Almrei has fought a series of public and legal battles to get to this point. Over the six years of his detention he has stopped eating, sometimes for weeks at a time, to pressure the government to grant him privileges like wearing a watch, or stopping the daily strip searches.

“I don’t think I should have to go through nine or 10 hunger strikes while I’m in prison to know what time it is, to have shoes