Six in Ten Americans Breathe Dangerously Polluted Air
April 29th, 2010Via: CBC:
Six in 10 Americans — about 175 million people — are living in places where air pollution often reaches dangerous levels, despite progress in reducing particle pollution, the American Lung Association said in a report released this week.
The Los Angeles area had the nation’s worst ozone pollution.
The report examined fine particulate matter over 24-hour periods and as a year-round average. Bakersfield, Calif., had the worst short-term particle pollution, and the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area of Arizona had the worst year-round particle pollution.
The U.S. cities with the cleanest air were Fargo, N.D., Wahpeton, N.D., and Lincoln, Neb.
Guatemala: Unearthing a Massacre
April 29th, 2010Via: Global Post:
Archeologists this month meticulously unearthed the brittle, bare bones of what are thought to be at least 162 men, women and children killed by the Guatemalan army in 1982.
Stoic old folks watched intently for signs of brothers and sisters; kids asked about the heaps of femurs and broken craniums. There were gasps as the muddy clothing was extracted and documented — a boy’s athletic jersey, a girl’s yellow dress, an infant’s blouse.
Twenty-eight years ago, survivors couldn’t risk funerals or even discuss the crime. They couldn’t return to the frontier village of Las Dos Erres, which they had hacked out of the forest, planting crops and fruit trees in a back-breaking, doomed bid to rise from the peasantry. Entire families had been buried — some alive — in a dry well, mothers raped and hurled onto their wounded children below in about 18 hours of systematic savagery.
Now, after 16 years of investigation hindered by stonewalling in the courts, prosecutors, activists and victims are mounting a reinvigorated effort to bring to justice those who carried out the murders. It would be a landmark case in a country where hundreds of wartime massacres have gone unpunished. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a branch of the Organization of American States, in November ordered Guatemala to perform the exhumation and restart a long-stalled prosecution. Two members of the notorious Guatemalan special forces, the Kaibiles, are in jail, another is out on bail and 14 more are wanted.
Horribly representative of Guatemala’s civil war, the case offers unusually precise evidence supported by eyewitnesses. Two former Kaibiles, now in hiding for their own protection, have named their comrades in the attack. And a man who was orphaned in the rampage as a small boy then abducted and adopted by one of the attackers is ready to testify. He now lives outside the country, waiting for what he hopes will be his day in court.
…
The United States backed the regime in those Cold War years, but Americans were largely unaware of the carnage a country away from their southern border. Victoria Sanford, who has written extensively on Guatemalan war crimes, says victims there lacked the influential lobbying groups that brought U.S. attention to atrocities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The Catholic Church had been intimidated and U.S. aid to the regime was often covert or through proxy countries.
Globe Trotting High School for Budding iZombies Costs $88,000 Per Year, iPhone Included
April 29th, 2010Global competence? *chuckle* To me, this sounds more like, “How to wind up dead from a heart attack by age 25 and go broke while you’re at it.”
Lots of airline food, security screenings, polluted cities. Is part of global competence having to learn what the Chinese fascist regime doesn’t want people reading on the Internet when the students visit Beijing?
$88,000 per year.
Holy crap.
Via: Global Post:
A San Francisco-based high school, Think Global School (TGS), is about to launch an ambitious program that will take students around the globe, literally. By the time they graduate from the private non-profit high school, students will have lived in 12 different countries and experienced 12 different cultures, languages and histories. The students will also be information technology gurus, as advanced communication technology will be at the curriculum’s core.
The first year will take the students to Stockholm, then Sydney, Australia; Beijing, China; and Hong Kong. Year two will include Santiago, Chile; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Berlin, Germany. As juniors and seniors, the students will study in Vancouver, British Columbia; Barcelona, Spain; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Amman, Jordan; Bangalore, India; and finally Washington, D.C.
In Sweden, public high school Young Business Creatives, which specializes in global business education, will host TGS.
“A school that wants to educate the students for tomorrow’s world needs to actively open up to the rest of the world. YBC works ambitiously with 21st century skills, including creativity, information technology and what we call ‘global competence,'” said YBC founder Hans Renman. “To cooperate with TGS is an excellent way for us to work achieve that.”
A unique, digital educational social network will allow TGS students to connect with one another, their teachers, families, friends and inner-city partner classrooms in real time around the world.
“Technology will be integrated into daily life at school in a variety of ways,” said Mike Hourahine, chief technology officer at TGS. “Students will capture and share their experiences through the use of a social media system we have called Spot. Student blogging including video and pictures will be an important part of growth, reflection and assessment during their time at TGS. Spot also provides students and teachers with other social media tools, such as an internal Twitter-like system, social bookmarking, and profiles.”
The $88,000 annual tuition includes meals, living accommodation, electronic texts and health insurance as well as a MacBook and an iPhone, including all of the required software and support that makes it possible for the students to blog, vlog, text, tweet, chat and email about their experiences.
“Google apps for education, including gmail, Google docs and Google sites will round out an extensive online toolset for TGS,” Hourahine said The programs and documents are stored online, allowing students to access them from anywhere. “Their MacBook will be their central classroom library, collaboration and content creation tool, while their iPhone will serve as a video and picture camera, digital library and even a content creator when they are out exploring what the host city and country has to offer.”
U.S. Subpoenas New York Times Reporter Over Book on CIA
April 29th, 2010Via: New York Times:
The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
The author, James Risen, who is a reporter for The New York Times, received a subpoena on Monday requiring him to provide documents and to testify May 4 before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., about his sources for a chapter of his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration.” The chapter largely focuses on problems with a covert C.I.A. effort to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research.
Mr. Risen referred questions to his lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel L.L.P., who said that Mr. Risen would not comply with the demand and would ask a judge to quash the subpoena.
“He intends to honor his commitment of confidentiality to his source or sources,” Mr. Kurtzberg said. “We intend to fight this subpoena.”
The subpoena comes two weeks after the indictment of a former National Security Agency official on charges apparently arising from an investigation into a series of Baltimore Sun articles that exposed technical failings and cost overruns of several agency programs that cost billions of dollars.
Soviet Moon Rover Found After Four Decades
April 29th, 2010Via: Register:
A long-lost Soviet solar/nuclear robot buggy – mislaid in the early 1970s – has been found on the moon by a NASA survey satellite.
The vehicle in question is the Lunokhod 1 rover, which landed in the Mare Imbrium aboard the Luna 17 lander in 1970. During the fortnight-long lunar days the machine was able to prowl about on electric drive, topping up its batteries using the fliptop solar panel mounted above its tub-like main body. During the long, chilly nights the lid would shut and the systems inside the tub were kept alive by a Polonium-210 radioisotope powered heater.
Lunokhod 1 stayed in touch with Soviet ground controllers for no less than 11 months, prowling the moon even as the US astronauts of Apollo 14 and 15 were driving about elsewhere in their manned moon buggies. However the robot crawler eventually ceased communications, and the project was officially terminated on October 4, 1971.
…
A team of boffins in California, whose research involves measuring the Moon’s orbit with extreme precision in order to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, have long made use of other lunar reflectors left by the Apollo programme.
“We yearned to find Lunokhod-1,” says Professor Tom Murphy, head of the moon-gazer team. “It would provide the best leverage for understanding the liquid lunar core, and for producing an accurate estimate of the position of the center of the moon—which is of paramount importance in mapping out the orbit and putting Einstein’s gravity to a test,” he adds.
Salvation came last month, when NASA released a tranche of detailed orbital photos of the Mare Imbrium, taken by its new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite as it made repeated passes just 30 miles above the surface. With these, it was possible to finally get a decent idea where the lost Lunokhod and its parent lander were.
“The recent images and laser altimetry from LRO provided coordinates within 100 meters, and then we were in business,” says Murphy.
Using the 3.5m telescope at Apache Point in New Mexico, Murphy and his colleagues were able at last to get a laser reflection back from the missing moon-prowler, getting its range to within a centimetre. A second reading less than 30 minutes later gave another line of position and pinned the machine down to within 10 metres. In time, Murphy believes he can refine this down to within a centimetre.
“We got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our first try,” exults Murphy. “It’s got a lot to say after almost 40 years of silence.”
U.S. Military May be Called On to Assist with Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico
April 29th, 2010Via: CNN:
The U.S. military may be called on to assist authorities scrambling to mitigate a potential environmental disaster posed by an oil spill expanding toward the Gulf Coast, the Coast Guard said Thursday.
In addition, another controlled burn of the oil slick may be conducted, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Erik Swanson said.
“We’re preparing as many resources as possible,” Swanson said, “and we’re considering many different options.”
Those options include bringing in the Department of Defense, he said. The military could be enlisted to drop or spray more dispersants on the oil, although specifics are still being developed, Swanson said.
Officials said late Wednesday the estimated amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from three underwater leaks after last week’s oil rig explosion has increased to as many as 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day — five times more than what was initially believed.
The cause of the explosion remains under investigation, and search efforts have been halted for 11 missing workers.
Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters late Wednesday that the increased estimate is based on analysis from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“This is not an exact science when you estimate the amount of oil,” Landry said, noting there are a lot of variables in calculating the rate of the spill.
“However, NOAA is telling me now that they prefer we use the 5,000 barrels [210,000 gallons] a day as an estimate of what has actually leaked from this well and will continue to leak until BP secures the source.”
Some 250,000 gallons of oily water has been collected from the scene, she said.
BP is the owner of the well, while Transocean Ltd. owns and operates the rig.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
April 29th, 2010Wow, there are some very kind people out there. Thank you.
CS £50
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Goldman Set to Settle SEC Fraud Case Soon
April 29th, 2010Maybe they’ll pass the hat around and collect some pocket lint before heading out for martinis.
Via: Reuters:
Goldman Sachs may soon settle its fraud case with the U.S. regulator, the New York Post reported on Thursday, opting to end a legal fight rather than endure a repeat of the public flogging it received this week.
The Post report, citing sources familiar with the matter, said Wall Street’s top investment bank was mulling closing the fraud case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to limit damage to its reputation.
Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for ‘War Crimes,’ According to Law Professor
April 29th, 2010Read the following book and let me know how many Americans have faced international tribunals for those atrocities:
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II by William Blum
Via: Wired:
The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday.
Harold Koh, the State Department’s top legal adviser, outlined the administration’s legal case for the robotic attacks last month. Now, some legal experts are taking turns to punch holes in Koh’s argument.
It’s part of an ongoing legal debate about the CIA and U.S. military’s lethal drone operations, which have escalated in recent months — and which have received some technological upgrades. Critics of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have argued that the campaign amounts to a program of targeted killing that may violate the laws of war.
In a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s national security and foreign affairs panel, several professors of national security law seemed open to that argument. But there are still plenty of caveats, and the risks to U.S. drone operators are at this point theoretical: Unless a judge in, say, Pakistan, wanted to issue a warrant, it doesn’t seem likely. But that’s just one of the possible legal hazards of robotic warfare.
Loyola Law School professor David Glazier, a former Navy surface warfare officer, said the pilots operating the drones from afar could — in theory — be hauled into court in the countries where the attacks occur. That’s because the CIA’s drone pilots aren’t combatants in a legal sense. “It is my opinion, as well as that of most other law-of-war scholars I know, that those who participate in hostilities without the combatant’s privilege do not violate the law of war by doing so, they simply gain no immunity from domestic laws,” he said.
“Under this view CIA drone pilots are liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths or property damage they cause,” Glazier continued. “But under the legal theories adopted by our government in prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, these CIA officers as well as any higher-level government officials who have authorized or directed their attacks are committing war crimes.”
The drones themselves are a lawful tool of war; “In fact, the ability of the drones to engage in a higher level of precision and to discriminate more carefully between military and civilian targets than has existed in the past actually suggests that they’re preferable to many older weapons,” Glazier added. But employing CIA personnel to carry out those armed attacks, he concluded, “clearly fall outside the scope of permissible conduct and ought to be reconsidered, particularly as the United States seeks to prosecute members of its adversaries for generally similar conduct.”
Humanoid Robot Mahru Mimics a Person’s Movements
April 29th, 2010Via: IEEE:
And Now: Japan Plans to Send Humanoid to the Moon by 2015


