16 June 2008
News and Comments - 06/16/08
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: What's News .
20 Comments so far...
Jesse Says:
16 June 2008 at 12:59 am.
Iran and North Korea may have bought nuclear missile blueprints
The discovery of designs for a compact nuclear bomb has raised fears that Iran and North Korea might have obtained blueprints enabling them to mount long-range strikes with nuclear-armed missiles.
Designs for a nuclear device small enough to fit on a ballistic missile were found on computers linked to the international smuggling ring that supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, a top US expert says.
“These advanced nuclear weapon designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world,” David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote in a report provided yesterday to The Washington Post.
The blueprints were among some 30,000 heavily encrypted documents found in 2006 on computers linked to the now-defunct smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s atomic weapons project.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4144317.ece
Cavetrollhead Says:
16 June 2008 at 2:00 am.
Ah that’s nice. Sweet dreams. (I think I’ll wet the bed tonight.)
Cavetrollhead Says:
16 June 2008 at 2:03 am.
AKANEZAWA, Japan — Honda Motor Co. has begun commercial production of its new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car, called the FCX Clarity.
The midsize four-seat sedan, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only wator vapor and none of the gases believed to be responsible for global warming.
Honda says the vehicle offers two times better fuel efficiency than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle.
The car will initially be available for lease starting July to a limited number of customers in southern California and then in Japan later this year.
One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of wider adoption of fuel cell vehicles is cost and the lack of hydrogen fueling stations.
Sharon Anderson Says:
16 June 2008 at 9:25 am.
Yesterday I heard part of a TV program about a talented young musician in North Korea who was severely repremanded for playing unauthorized music on the piano and who finally left the country because he wanted artistic freedom. A young woman guilty of a similar crime was interogated for years and even imprisoned. We take so much of our freedom for granted and have no idea what life could be like if we lose our liberty.
Matt Says:
16 June 2008 at 9:26 am.
Cave, maybe the outrage about oil will finally bring about enough pressure to break open the alternative fuel option with something better than biofuels. I’ve heard good things about hydrogen fuel. I’ve heard better about water.
Matt Says:
16 June 2008 at 9:30 am.
Oil futures shoot to a record near $140 a barrel on falling dollar, North Sea fire
NEW YORK (AP) — Crude oil futures hit a record near $140 a barrel Monday as investors shrugged off Saudi Arabia’s promise to boost production and instead focused on a weaker dollar. Retail gas prices rose to a record $4.08 a gallon.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery soared to a trading record of $139.89 before retreating to trade up $3.33 at $138.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Many investors buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar falls. Also, a weaker dollar makes oil less expensive to investors dealing in other currencies. Many analysts believe the dollar’s protracted decline is a major factor behind oil’s doubling in price over the past year.
Mac Says:
16 June 2008 at 9:34 am.
Sharon, that is something most Americans take for granted and I wish we would all wake up before it is to late.
Matt Says:
16 June 2008 at 9:45 am.
Iran withdraws $75 billion from Europe: report
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said.
Western powers are warning the Islamic Republic of more punitive measures if it rejects an incentives offer and presses on with sensitive nuclear work, but the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter is showing no sign of backing down.
“Part of Iran’s assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks,” Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying.
Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment on the report in Shahrvand-e Emrouz, a moderate weekly, which did not specify the time period for the withdrawals which it said were ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Benjamin Says:
16 June 2008 at 10:11 am.
Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches
The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is “an offence against God” and “wounds common religious feelings”.
Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had “turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business.”
Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, said: “Normally we read the script, but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough.” The Vatican fiercely condemned both the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version, which starred Tom Hanks as the Harvard professor Robert Langdon.
Hanks also stars in Angels & Demons which, like The Da Vinci Code, is directed by Ron Howard. Published before The Da Vinci Code — which suggested that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children — Angels & Demons revolves around a plot by a sinister elite known as The Illuminati to seize control of the papacy during a conclave to elect a new Pope.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4147839.ece
Angela Rogin Says:
16 June 2008 at 10:42 am.
You know I really never understood why people think it would destroy Christianity if Christ were married. I thought marriage was suppose to be a good thing. I like reading Dan Brown novels. People shouldn’t take them so seriously.
Matt Says:
16 June 2008 at 11:25 am.
Al-Sadr forms elite wing to fight US forces
Moqtada al-Sadr, the virulently anti-American militia leader, announced yesterday that he was forming a new, exclusive wing of his al-Mahdi Army to fight US forces, and that most of his supporters would now concentrate on civilian works.
The cleric appeared to be trying to assert control over his sprawling, rag-tag army, accused of some of the worst death-squad atrocities in Iraq in recent years and which the Americans say has been partly coopted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “The resistance will be carried out exclusively by a special group which I will announce later,” said a statement by the Shia militia leader, who holds the junior clerical rank of hojatoleslam.
Al-Mahdi Army, which ruled swaths of Baghdad during the height of the capital’s civil war, has been in disarray in recent months, with many Iraqis blaming it for the horrific violence that has torn their society apart.
In March, Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister who once depended on the Sadr block’s support, launched an attack on the army in its Basra stronghold, while simultaneously fighting it with US backing in Sadr City, its Baghdad fiefdom.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article4134498.ece
CindyL. Says:
16 June 2008 at 1:02 pm.
Iraq is such a mess. We don’t have to only defeat the terrorists, we have to get all the factions together so when we leave there isn’t a civil war. I wish I could see how it could be done. Very sad.
Cavetrollhead Says:
16 June 2008 at 1:31 pm.
Matt,
The thing about oil is backward compatibility. There aren’t filling stations for hydrogen, and building them is not so easy as one might think. Hydrogen is EXTREMELY volatile and unstable- extremely dangerous to transport (and doesn’t do any good for the hundreds of millions of cars already on the road around the world.) Building the cars is the easy part. Supplying them with point of sale fuel is the real challenge. So we have to use oil for many years to come while the technology to provide FILLING STATIONS is developed.
Ethenol is a bust.
Natural gas- I don’t know- maybe closer than others.
But, we still need to drill in the gulf, drill in Alaska, liquefy coal, refine oil tar sands and shale, etc and sever our dependence on the colluding Opec. There is PLENTY of oil in the USAWe just need to provide an even, anti-collusion, playing field for oil production domestically.
Alternative fuels are not yet the answer, but it is still encouraging news to see that a hydrogen powered car is in production, maybe in a decade or two, hydrogen cars will “arrive.”
Concerned American Says:
16 June 2008 at 1:59 pm.
Matt and Cave, I think we need to explore sensible alternatives but it will take so long to get them running that while that is in the works, we have to drill Alaska etc. Peak oil is a complete lie. We have the biggest oil field in the world up in Alaska.
With what is happening to the corn crop this year, biofuels will be even a worse idea.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/america/16midwest.php
Flooding in the American Midwest threatens crops
NEWHALL, Iowa: Here, in some of the best soil in the world, the stunted stalks of Dave Timmerman’s newly planted corn are wilting in what sometimes look more like rice paddies than the plains, the sunshine glinting off of pools of collected water. Although time is running out, he has yet to plant all of his soybean crop because the waterlogged soil cannot support his footsteps, much less heavy machinery.
Timmerman’s small farm has been flooded four times in the past month by the Wildcat Creek, a tributary of the Cedar River which overflowed its banks at a record 31 feet last week, causing catastrophic damage in nearby Cedar Rapids and other eastern Iowa towns and farmsteads.
“In the lean years, we had beautiful crops but they weren’t worth much,” Timmerman said, surveying his farm, which his family has tended since his great-great-grandfather. “Now, with commodity prices sky high, mother nature is throwing us all these curve balls. I’m 42 years old and these are by far the poorest crops I’ve ever seen.”
And he added, “It’s going downhill by the day.”
T. Fan Says:
16 June 2008 at 3:31 pm.
I can’t believe what I am seeing with the destruction of property and crops in the midwest. We talked about things going down hill and Pharoah’s dream but to actually see things happening as if it were the hand of God is strange.
M.G. Says:
16 June 2008 at 5:07 pm.
The oil market is totally schizophrenic.
Entgegen Says:
16 June 2008 at 10:22 pm.
“…but to actually see things happening as if it were the hand of God is strange.”
What a swell guy…
Cavetrollhead Says:
16 June 2008 at 11:14 pm.
Well, if you believe in the Bible, you believe that God Does allow things to happen and even causes terrible things to happen. If your only perspective in earthly, it makes no sense, but if you perspective includes improving you and your family for the eternities, you can understand why God does it. I am not saying that God is doing it, but he certainly is letting it happen. The trick is how we respond.
E.E. Says:
17 June 2008 at 12:13 am.
Cave, my sentiments exactly. Noah’s flood had to seem so terrible but to leave those people on the earth in a society so sinful there was no hope for the children was worse than taking them to the other side. Paul wrote that those who died in the days of Noah were taught the gospel afterwards so there is a lot of good that is done after this life to help people. And the trials we go through in this life can be a blessing if we have the right attitude.
Cavetrollhead Says:
17 June 2008 at 1:28 am.
Right EE. Thanks
“if in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable.”
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