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EPA blocks California bid to limit greenhouse gases from cars - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 25 Dec 07
       
      this is exactly why i don't like big government. in my opinion the only reason bush signed this law is to be able to reject this lawsuit. each state has the right to regulate everything and everything within that state. on a national scale one vote does not matter. as the size of government goes down our voice is more important.
  • Bush administration blocked efforts by California and 17 other states today to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks
  • Stephen Johnson rejected California's request for a waiver from the federal government to impose tough tailpipe emissions standards.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • require automakers to cut greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, despite President Bush's rejection of mandatory national standards.
  • states represent nearly half the U.S. population
  • Johnson said Congress' passage of an energy bill this week that raises fuel economy standards for all cars and trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 made the state laws unnecessary
  • "It's important to put this in perspective - (the new law) applies to all 50 states," Johnson said. "Not 12 states, not 17 states, all 50 states. That is great from an environmental perspective."
  • Auto industry executives have argued
  • lead to a patchwork of laws.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been preparing for weeks to sue EPA to get the decision overturned
  • state did not specify how the reductions were to be accomplished
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 25 Dec 07
       
      leaving all options open for manugacturers
  • auto trade groups, manufacturers and dealers argued that the California statute conflicts with federal law
  • only practical way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase gas mileage, a subject regulated exclusively by the federal government.
  • Environmentalists described today's ruling as part of a long-standing effort by the Bush administration to stall action on climate change regulations.
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 25 Dec 07
       
      dumb environmentalists. bush doesn't care about stalling environmental issues, he wants to make money.
  • EPA was trying to minimize the media impact of the decision
  • press call to announce the decision was held at 6:30 p.m. EDT, long after the major broadcast networks finished work on their evening broadcasts.
5More

Iran still dangerous, Bush says - Los Angeles Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...-fg-bush5dec05,0,7020701.story
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • despite a new intelligence assessment concluding Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program
  • posed a danger and must stop enriching uranium.
  • hamper the U.S. campaign to win support for new economic sanctions.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • difficult to get Russia and China and the reluctant Europeans to go for tough sanctions,
  • Bush called the National Intelligence Estimate released Monday a "warning signal" and said it lent support to his unyielding approach to Iran.
16More

Climate change conference aims for pact by 2009 - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2007-12-15-climatetalks_N.htm
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • overcame bitter divisions on Saturday over how to fight global warming and agreed to reach a new deal by 2009
  • United States, facing angry criticism from other delegations, relenting in its opposition to a request from developing nations for more technological help fighting climate change.
  • does not commit countries to specific actions against global warming
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • sets an agenda and schedule for negotiators to find ways to reduce pollution and help poor countries adapt to environmental changes
  • speeding up the transfer of technology and financial assistance.
  • European Union to include specific emissions reduction targets for industrial nations
  • eliminated after the United States
  • targets should come at the end of the two-year negotiations, not the beginning
  • lead to widespread drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms.
  • lacked specific emissions targets and did not include strong commitments for rich countries to provide poorer ones with green technology.
  • embark on at least two years of talks to fashion a more effective and widely accepted successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol
  • more inclusive, effective successor to Kyoto, which commits 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5% between 2008 and 2012.
  • Bush has argued that the cuts required by Kyoto would hurt the U.S. economy
  • encouraged monitoring of technological transfer to make sure rich countries were meeting that need.
  • United States objected, calling for further talks
  • "If you are not willing to lead, then get out of the way!"
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EU joins WTO complaint against U.S. corn subsidies - International Herald Tribune - 0 views

www.iht.com/...wto.php
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • European Union, Australia, Argentina and Brazil have joined Canada in a complaint against the United States over what they claim are illegal government handouts to American corn growers
  • threatens a major commercial dispute at a time when global free trade talks remain stalled over agricultural tariffs and subsidies
  • United States is beginning debate on a new multibillion-dollar farm bill.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Canada lodged its complaint Jan. 8, claiming that some $9 billion paid out by the United States annually in export credit guarantees and other subsidies unfairly and illegally deflated international corn prices.
  • already has ruled that some cotton subsidies are illegal, and the administration of President George W. Bush has been coming under pressure to reform a number of its farm support programs.
  • challenged whether the billions of dollars in overall farm subsidies paid out by the U.S. government comply with international commerce rules.
  • U.S. subsidy levels for a number of years on farm products including wheat, sugar and soybeans were illegal
  • United States said it has offered cuts
  • largely artificial, addressing only permitted levels of government subsidies and failing to cut what Washington actually gives to its farmers.
  • 40 percent of global production and nearly 60 percent of all exports
12More

Turning Water into Fuel - Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...0vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Turning Water into Fuel
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 25 Dec 07
       
      radiowaves bombard salt water creating oxygen and hydrogen. could enough radiowaves set the great salt lake aflame? the ocean?
  • inventor John Kanzius was already attempting
  • cure cancer with radio waves—when his device inadvertently
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • made saltwater catch fire.
  • potential for desalinization or cheap energy
  • cancer breakthrough is what he's really after
  • seed a person's cancerous cells with nanoscopic metal particles and blast them with radio waves, perhaps he could kill off the cancer while sparing healthy tissue
  • bombarding a saline-filled test tube with radio waves and bumped the tube
  • Kanzius struck a match. "The water lit like a propane flame,"
  • sodium chloride in the water may weaken the bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which are broken free by radio waves. It's these gas molecules that are igniting, he explains, not the liquid itself
  • reaction disappears once the radio waves stop
10More

NPR : Report: Iran Stopped Weapons Program in 2003 - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concludes that the country's efforts to build a nuclear weapon had ceased back in 2003
  • stark contrast to the dire warnings issued from the Bush administration
  • may be able to develop a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015 — but the country halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, and that it could acquire enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon after 2010, and possibly not until after 2015.
  • report's authors went on to say that Iran could likely be persuaded to abandon the program further.
  • conclusions were contained in a highly classified document, but its key judgments were declassified and released
  • "good news" that a dispute over Iran's nuclear program might be resolved without the use of force
  • said that the Bush administration had not sought to manipulate the information to help shape U.S. policy on Iran.
  • Hadley said that the intelligence community "assessed with high confidence that Iran currently was determined to develop nuclear weapons."
  • May 2005 report
11More

Behind Chavez's Defeat in Venezuela - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...gb2007123_114899.htm
shared by barnaby on 25 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Dec. 2, voters rejected Chavez's request to change the country's constitution to give him greater powers and allow him to serve as President for life.
  • pushing for more government control over the economy
  • growing discontent with Chavez's leadership
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • hand majority control of their local operations over to the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA
  • broke Chavez's string of more than a dozen electoral victories since 1998, rejecting 50.7% to 49.3% dozens of amendments to the 1999 constitution
  • Chavez acknowledged the outcome
  • would have expanded the presidential term of office to seven years, up from its current six years, while scrapping term limits.
  • ended the autonomy of the central bank and made it easier to seize private property.
  • overhauled the country's military, giving more power to a civilian reserve
  • cut the workweek by 25%.
  • the opposition may run into trouble if it interprets this victory as a mandate to push Chavez from office.
8More

BBC NEWS | Health | Single brain cell's power shown - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7151920.stm
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Single brain cell's power shown
  • There could be enough computing ability in just one brain cell to allow humans and animals to feel, a study suggests.
  • The brain has 100 billion neurons but scientists had thought they needed to join forces in larger networks to produce thoughts and sensations.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Dutch and German study, published in Nature, found that stimulating just one rat neuron could deliver the sensation of touch.
  • Dr Douglas Armstrong
  • in some creatures with simpler nervous systems, such as flies, a single neuron can play a more significant role.
  • Dr Douglas Armstrong, the deputy director of the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics
  • "The generally accepted model was that networks or arrays make decisions and that the influence of a single neuron is smaller - but this work and other recent studies support a more important role for the individual neuron.
5More

Medicare project pays doctors for saving money - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2007-12-22-medicare_N.htm
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Medicare project pays doctors for saving money
  • Doctors participating in a new Medicare experiment appear to have done the impossible — delivering better care and saving money at the same time.
  • Using electronic health records and other innovations, physicians at 10 large group practices helped thousands of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes take better care of themselves and, for some, avoid costly emergency-room visits and hospitalizations.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Their success is part of a four-year pilot program that tests whether an approach called "pay for performance" can slow the growth of the cash-hungry Medicare program while providing elderly and disabled patients with comprehensive, coordinated care they currently don't get.
  • As part of the pilot project, which ends in March 2009, physician practices get an annual bonus if they save at least 2% over what Medicare would have spent on patients outside the project.
5More

Hollow Earth May Be the Weirdest Theory of the World at OddOrama - 0 views

oddorama.com/...est-theory-in-and-of-the-world
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Hollow Earth May Be the Weirdest Theory of the World
  • So wait, what? The Earth … hollow? Yes, it’s an insane theory, and yes it is as fictitious as the fairy tales that gave rise to it, yet at the same time it can’t be directly disproved. Why? Because we have never actually dug more than about 15 miles below the surface of the Earth, so there is no 100% direct evidence the Earth is solid through an through! Does this mean Hollow Earth Theories could hold true? Sure, and Santa might actually drop by 6 billion houses a year on a sled pulled by a glorified pack of deer.
  • some people believe them even today.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • One self-identified scientist and explorer is currently trying to raise two million dollars to mount a mission where no man has ever gone before: through a polar ice cap and into a supposed ‘Inner Earth’ with its own oceans, continents and of course its own sun.
  • Early theorists held that there were a series of concentric spheres within the Earth
8More

w00t crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary | Oddly Enough | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSN1256278120071214 stupid
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - Cached
  • "w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary
  • "w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.
  • Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" -- typically spelled with two zeros -- reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • It's like saying "yay," the dictionary said.
  • "It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,"
  • Visitors to Merriam-Webster's Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers.
  • Runner-up was "facebook" as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.
  • Merriam-Webster President John Morse said "w00t" reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words.
6More

San Jose Mercury News - Microsoft OKs open-source license - 0 views

www.mercurynews.com/...ci_7776956
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - No Cached
  • Microsoft OKs open-source license
  • Microsoft, whose software powers about 95 percent of the world's personal computers, reached an agreement on licensing terms that will allow open-source products to connect to the Windows operating system.
  • Microsoft will license proprietary information on how Windows shares files and printers with the non-profit Protocol Freedom Information Foundation, which will make the data available to open-source developers working on a file and printing system called Samba.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The agreement will "allow Samba to create, use and distribute implementations of all the protocols" to allow so- called workgroup servers to connect with Windows, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said in a statement Thursday.
  • The company in October gave in to European Union demands to license the protocol data.
  • Samba said in a statement that the agreement involves a one-time fee of 10,000 euros ($14,350). The protocol data will be held "in confidence" by Samba. The agreement allows source code to be published "without further restrictions," Samba said.
1More

SKoreans clone cats that glow in the dark: officials - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news116662903.html
shared by sirgabrial on 24 Dec 07 - Cached
  • SKoreans clone cats that glow in the dark: officials
23More

Cocaine supply down sharply, U.S. officials say - Los Angeles Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...me-drugs3oct03,1,3729037.story
shared by barnaby on 18 Oct 07 - Cached
  • Cocaine supply down sharply, U.S. officials say
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 18 Oct 07
       
      DEA claims that cocaine supply is down causing prices to rise. coming at a time when Bush administration is due to ask for an increase in funding. (claims have been inflated by officials)(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/504/yes_the_drug_war_really_is_still_failing)
  • sharply reduce the availability of cocaine in 37 American cities
  • report released Tuesday by federal anti-narcotics officials.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • highest levels in nearly two decades
  • cost of cocaine increasing 24%, from $95.89 to $118.70
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 18 Oct 07
       
      retail or street price of pure gram of cocaine only increased 15 per cent, from $145.42 to $166.90.
  • six-month period ending in June
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 18 Oct 07
       
      according to DEA official website they analyzed 11,586 domestic cocaine purchases recorded in STRIDE* since April 2005 (but only reported Dec 06 to Jul 07)
  • Bush administration prepares to ask Congress for an aid package of nearly $1 billion
  • director of the White House drug policy office, said at a news conference in San Diego that the multibillion-dollar anti-drug effort appears to be causing major disruptions in trafficking routes from Colombia to the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • thousands of troops and federal agents have failed to quell drug violence
  • U.S. government's war on cocaine
  • intercepting the drugs
  • eradicating coca cultivation
  • production has increased in recent years
  • seizures have gone up
  • growing demand in Europe
  • cash seizures in Mexico and Colombia have been turning up larger amounts of Euros
  • crackdowns and cartel wars in the past have produced similar price spikes, only to be followed by increased drug supplies as new groups take over
  • "My fear is even if Mexico is quite successful at taking down the Sinaloa, Gulf and Tijuana cartels, something is going to replace them. That's been the history of the drug war," Isacson said.
  • always claims a victory before they ask for money
  • All the money that went to fighting drugs in Colombia, an equal amount should be spent fighting usage in America," Farr said
12More

Cats That Glow - 0 views

news.wired.com/...SKOREA_GLOWING_CATS
shared by sirgabrial on 17 Dec 07 - Cached
  • SKorean Scientists Clone Cats That Glow
  • South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said.
  • Turkish Angora cats
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in dark.
  • One died at birth, but the two others survived
  • Scientists from Gyeongsang National University and Sunchon National University took skin cells from a cat and inserted the fluorescent gene into them before transplanting the genetically modified cells into eggs.
  • The development means other genes can also be inserted in the course of cloning, pa >
  • paving the way for producing lab cats with genetic diseases
  • including those of humans, to help develop new treatments,
  • "Cats have similar genes to those of humans," said veterinary professor Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University.
  • "People with genetic disorders usually have to receive treatment throughout their lives that is very hard on them," Kato said.
  • "If these results can help to make their lives easier, then I think it's a wonderful thing."
9More

Attackers chop off man's 'magic' leg - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...INDIA_SEVERED_LEG stupid
shared by sirgabrial on 17 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Attackers chop off man's 'magic' leg
  • Two men attacked an 80-year-old, self-proclaimed holy man in southern India and chopped off his right leg, apparently believing it had magical powers, police said Thursday.
  • Yanadi Kondaiah, who claimed that those who touched his leg would be cured of illness or have wishes granted, was hospitalized in serious condition after the attack Tuesday, said R. Ravindranath Reddy, a senior police officer.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • "We are looking for the miscreants as well as the leg,"
  • remote area 340 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.
  • "This seems to be a case of superstition. The two people might have taken away the leg hoping to benefit from its magical powers,"
  • Kondaiah told police that two men offered him a drink as thanks for previously helping them with his magical touch.
  • After he passed out drunk, the men chopped off the leg below the knee with a sickle and left him to die
  • passing villagers found him and took him to a hospital.
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