Category: News

Upstream Online has a report on an increase in Iraqi oil reserves – Gulf Keystone raises Kurd reserves.

London listed Gulf Keystone Petroleum today raised its reserve estimate for the Shaikan find in Iraq’s Kurdish region to between 1.9 billion and 7.4 billion barrels.

“This discovery greatly reduces the geologic risks in the Sheikh Adi, Akri Bijeel and the Ber Bahr blocks, Gulf Keystone’s adjacent opportunities,” Dynamic Global Advisors said to the company in an evaluation report on the well. “The Shaikan discovery proves the presence of hydrocarbon source and migration in the area.”

Stuart Stanifrod continues his stream of posts on Iraqi oil, the latest being a look at the range of possible production profiles – Uncertainty Range for Iraqi Production. Also see Iraq Contract Negotiations Proceeding Steadily.

In thinking about how to synthesize all the key drivers of oil production/demand, it seems like the period between now and 2017 is of particular interest – the contracted-for plateau for the new contracts in Iraq is seven years out, and they are being signed over the next few months. Furthermore, if the meteoric rise in the Chinese car fleet were to continue, then it would reach the size of the US fleet somewhere around 2017.

So it seems of interest to try to construct uncertainty envelopes of some of the key variables and then try to fit them together into a range of reasonable overall scenarios.

Probably the largest uncertainty in the evolution of the global economy over that timeframe is the uncertainty about Iraqi oil production. In the graph above (click for a larger version), I give my subjective guesstimate of the 90% confidence interval, with a “Low Projection” for if things go very badly from the perspective of Iraqi oil production, and a “High Projection” if things go very well.

The reasoning behind the “High Projection” is as follows: the country in the past produced a maximum of 3.5mbd and likely doesn’t have much more capacity to produce and distribute/export the oil than that. The giant megaprojects in Iraq required for the al-Shahristani plan would take three years if they were in Saudi Arabia, so let’s allow four as the best case in Iraq, given it’s a much more difficult environment to operate in than Saudi Arabia, which has far more infrastructure and has been stable for a long time. So then the idea is that things continued to get fixed over the next couple of years up until the 3.5mbd level has been reached. Production plateaus out there for a while, until all the various elements of the al-Sharistani plan start to come together, and all projects hit their plateau together at the start of 2017. For lack of basis for making a more complex plan, I just linearly interpolated between these various constraints.

Hopefully, the reader will agree that it’s hard to imagine things going much better than that.

For the low projection, the assumption set is that the elections in March result in renewed civil war, that the US leaves despite the renewed unrest, and the country descends into increasing fighting, with only a small amount of oil exported intermittently. Obviously, the smooth estimates in my “Low Projection” above are just a general indication of what this might look like.

FX has added its name to the list of networks excited to add Coco to their late night lineup. Conan O’Brien could be headed to the basic cable network. if their parent network, FOX, fails to secure a deal with the ginger-headed funny guy, The Wrap has learned.

The current host of The Tonight Show is reportedly working on a deal that will seal his exit from NBC, the network he’s called home for 16 years, as early as this week.

Afghan Cabinet Problems
It looks as if President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet strategy is still in desperate need of repair. The majority of his Cabinet nominees have once again been rejected by the Afghan parliament, casting doubt on his ability to lead in the country’s fractious political environment. Also, let us not forget the fact that Karzai holds power through an election debacle—e.g., fraud—and that his opponent in the 2009 runoff election withdraw from the race because he did not think the contest could be fair under the existing corrupt system. —JCL The Guardian: The Afghan parliament dealt a further blow to the authority of President Hamid Karzai by rejecting 10 of his 17 new cabinet nominees. The vote today comes a fortnight after MPs turned down 70% of Karzai’s first cabinet choices. The 224 MPs did approve two key posts – Karzai’s former security adviser Zalmay Rasul was approved as foreign minister and Habibullah Ghalib as justice minister. But only one of three female nominees was approved – Amina Afzali, as work and social affairs minister. The two women proposed for the posts of public health and women’s affairs were rejected. Read more

It looks as if President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet strategy is still in desperate need of repair. The majority of his Cabinet nominees have once again been rejected by the Afghan parliament, casting doubt on his ability to lead in the country’s fractious political environment.

Also, let us not forget the fact that Karzai holds power through an election debacle—e.g., fraud—and that his opponent in the 2009 runoff election withdraw from the race because he did not think the contest could be fair under the existing corrupt system. —JCL

The Guardian:

The Afghan parliament dealt a further blow to the authority of President Hamid Karzai by rejecting 10 of his 17 new cabinet nominees.

The vote today comes a fortnight after MPs turned down 70% of Karzai’s first cabinet choices.

The 224 MPs did approve two key posts – Karzai’s former security adviser Zalmay Rasul was approved as foreign minister and Habibullah Ghalib as justice minister.

But only one of three female nominees was approved – Amina Afzali, as work and social affairs minister. The two women proposed for the posts of public health and women’s affairs were rejected.

Read more

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The Australian may have the answer to why that good looking blonde you’ve been going out with gets so cranky – ‘Warlike’ blondes get what they want – study.

IT’S official – blondes do have more fun. According to a study by the University of California, that’s because blondes are more confident and aggressive, even displaying “warlike” tendancies to get their own way in life.

The study of 156 US students showed that because blondes believe they are more attractive to men than redheads or brunettes, they “feel more entitled” to getting their own way.

“What we did not expect to find was how much more warlike they are than their peers on campus,” study leader Aaron Sell told UK tabloid The Sun. “Many blondes exist in a kind of bubble where they have been treated better than other people for so long, they may not even realise they are treated like a princess.”

His research indicated that the more “special” people felt, judged by physical strength for men and looks for women, the more likely they were to get angry as a strategy to reach social goals.

Robert Kuttner: A Wake Up Call
How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more. Either way, the Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Will Scott Brown Ruin Republicans’ (Secret) Plan to Pass Obamacare?
It is now a given that if he wins a Massachusetts Senate seat on Tuesday, Scott Brown will destroy the Democrats’ plan to pass health care reform. But he will also destroy the Republicans’ not-so-secret plan to pass health care reform.

Death Penalty Opponents Wooing Conservatives
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Roy Brown seems like a rarity – a conservative who’s against the death penalty. But to Brown, a state senator and the…

Al Sharpton: Pat Robertson’s Haiti Comments ‘Un-Christian’
The Rev. Al Sharpton came to the Christ United Temple on Chicago’s South Side Sunday, asking churches to contribute to Haiti relief funds. Along the…

John O’Kane: Who’s the Enemy?
To convert a piece of wisdom from Martin Luther King, if we are to move toward the creation of a better democracy, and eventually produce the paths to reach the promised land, we need to face adversity.

We first covered Wahanda, a social network for people who use spas and other “wellness” products, way, way back in 2008 but they’ve been busy. After raising £1.5 million to become the ‘Amazon of wellness’ it’s now built the world’s biggest vertical database of health and beauty spas via their Yelp-like social network. Wahanda now has 10,000 venues listed globally (4,600 in the UK alone), while main competitor, the US-based SpaFinder has just over 6,000. Wahanda soft launched in the US in October 2009. Oh, by the way, the global spa economy is worth an estimated $60 billion.

Today Wahanda combines this database with the fashionable-but-profitable business model of group buying power with time-limited daily offers, along the lines of Groupon.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

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Selective memory? Former Bush official Hughes ignored Reid’s ties to Al Qaeda

On Meet the Press, public relations executive and former Bush administration official Karen Hughes argued that Northwest Airlines bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should not be tried in a criminal court — as “shoe bomber” Richard Reid was — because the “circumstances weren’t similar. He [Reid] was not sent here by Al Qaeda to engage in an act of war against our country.” However, Reid’s indictment explicitly tied him to Al Qaeda training camps; the FBI reportedly believed “an al Qaeda bomb maker” made Reid’s bomb; and, during his sentencing, Reid professed “allegiance” to Osama bin Laden before saying he was “at war” with the United States.

Hughes claims Abdulmutallab and Reid situations “weren’t similar” because Reid wasn’t “sent here by Al Qaeda”

From the January 17 broadcast of NBC’s Meet the Press:

HUGHES: I do think that President Obama has made some decisions that have been very ill-advised in the area of national security. For example, the decision to try the Christmas Day — the Al Qaeda operative who came here to engage in an act of war against our country on Christmas Day — in civilian courts is a mistake. He’s someone who was training in the training camps in Yemen. He might have knowledge of other pending attacks against our country. He should have been interrogated legally and designated as an enemy combatant and interrogated –

DAVID GREGORY (host): He did provide a good deal of information just being interrogated by existing methods.

HUGHES: Well, he could have, you say.

GREGORY: No, he was. He provided a lot of information so far.

HUGHES: I hope so. But again, I think it’s a mistake to take someone — we have to be very honest about what is at stake in this war against Al Qaeda.

JOHN PODESTA (CEO, Center for American Progress): That’s exactly what the Bush administration did with Mr. Reeves [sic], the shoe bomber, who was — in very similar circumstances, was traveling to the United States.

HUGHES: The circumstances weren’t similar. He was not sent here by Al Qaeda to engage in an act of war against our country. It was not a similar situation.

Reid indictment tied him to Al Qaeda training camps

Two of the counts against Reid said “[at] various times relevant to this count, Richard Colvin Reid received training from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.” On January 16, 2002, a grand jury indicted Reid on eight counts related to terrorism, including “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against a national of the United States,” and “attempted homicide of a national of the United States outside the United States.” For those two charges, the indictment states:

1. At all times relevant to this count brought under Title 18, United States Code, Chapter 113B–Terrorism, Al-Qaeda was a designated foreign terrorist organization pursuant to 8 U.S.C. §1189.

2. At various times relevant to this count, Richard Colvin Reid received training from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

FBI reportedly suspected Al Qaeda involvement in Reid’s attempted attack

NY Times: “Prosecutors said they found evidence that” Reid “had help” with constructing his bomb. In a January 31, 2003, article on Reid’s sentencing, The New York Times reported: “Although Mr. Reid told investigators that he had constructed the bombs himself from materials he bought in Europe, prosecutors said they found evidence that he had help. Among the evidence was a human hair in the bomb and a palm print on the paper used to make the detonator.”

 Mueller reportedly said FBI believed “an al Qaeda bomb maker” made Reid’s bomb. In a May 2002 speech before the National Association of District Attorneys, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III reportedly said that the FBI believed that ”an Al Qaeda bomb maker” made Reid’s shoe bomb.

During sentencing, Reid pledged “allegiance” to bin Laden and said he was “at war” with the U.S.

Reid: I “admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah.” According to CNN transcripts from Reid’s January 30, 2003, sentencing hearing, Reid said: “I further admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” and “I am at war with your country.” He added:

REID: With regards to what you said about killing innocent people, I will say one thing. Your government has killed 2 million children in Iraq. If you want to think about something, against 2 million, I don’t see no comparison.

Your government has sponsored the rape and torture of Muslims in the prisons of Egypt and Turkey and Syria and Jordan with their money and with their weapons. I don’t know, see what I done as being equal to rape and to torture, or to the deaths of the two million children in Iraq.

 Reid: “I am at war with your country.” Reid further stated:

REID: So, for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions. I am at war with your country. I’m at war with them not for personal reasons but because they have murdered more than, so many children and they have oppressed my religion and they have oppressed people for no reason except that they say we believe in Allah.

Here’s a case where English has it relatively easy. There’s been plenty of fuss over whether to retain actress or to use actor for females as well as males, whether to adopt new gender-neutral terms like chair and craft in place of chairman and craftsman, and so on. But most English words for social roles and titles are already linguistically gender-neutral: president, senator, minister, dean, secretary, teacher, boss, judge, lawyer, …

In languages like Italian and Spanish, in contrast, nearly all such words are specified for grammatical gender, and their grammatical gender is usually interpreted sexually. Furthermore, the option to create gender-neutral replacements is linguistically unavailable — the only practical alternatives are to use one gender (usually masculine) as the default for both sexes, or to coin a new word for the marked sexual category (as in English chairwoman or househusband).

This issue is discussed at length in Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli, “Rejecting the Derogatory ‘Feminine’”, IPS,  12/26/2009. And what I learned from this article is that Italian and Spanish have dealt with the issue in strikingly different ways.

When it comes to titles of importance, in Italian, you find yourself reading about “il ministro Mara Carfagna” – even if Carfagna, the minister of equality, is a woman. In contrast, in Spanish there is no option but ‘ministra’, ending in the feminine ‘a’.

Both options seem to make a lot of people unhappy. The article says that “In Italian, most women prefer the masculine titles, because the feminine version (when it exists) is considered ludicrous, even derogatory”. But

Politician Luisa Capelli, from L’Italia dei valori party (The Italy of Values), thinks that “leaving behind the supposed universal neutrality of the masculine form is an essential passage so that the feminine experience gets respect.”

“It is not true that these feminine forms (for positions of power) do not exist in Italian: there are plenty of examples from feminists, linguists and semiologists who have made a number of proposals,” says Capelli. “You can say ‘avvocata’ (lawyer) and ‘ministra’, but nobody does. Although many of us use those words, we are ignored. To change the symbolic order is hard work that requires a consensus based on the profound convictions of people.”

The Spanish, in contrast, have freely coined many feminine forms of terms for titles and roles, though some people think there need to be more of them:

This apparently dull issue of feminine titles jumped to the front pages recently, when Bibiana Aido, Spain’s Minister of Equality, used the word ‘miembra’ (member) in public.

What’s the big deal? The word doesn’t exist. Yet.

“In most personal nouns,” says [José Luis] Aliaga Jiménez [professor of Linguistics of the Universidad de Zaragoza], there is a correlation between grammatical gender and the referential meaning of ‘sex’. It is a culturally significant correlation… All nouns referred to a person end up with a gender variation, sooner or later. And it is in that context that the words ‘miembra’, ‘testiga’ (witness) emerge, since, following the common rule in Spanish, the final ‘a’ is interpreted as belonging to the feminine.”

‘Testigo’ and ‘miembro’ are so far exceptions to the common rule and have no official feminine variation.

And apparently there is resistence in Spanish to the use of masculine forms for  traditionally female jobs like azafato (“male flight attendant”), amo de casa (“househusband”) or niñero (“male nanny”).

In contrast to both Italian and Spanish, the trend in English-speaking countries seems to be to avoid pairs of gendered terms (e.g. chairman/chairwoman or actor/actress) in favor of a single neutral term, whether it’s a neologism (chair) or a term that previously had gendered associations (actor).  This apparently reflects the attitude attributed to Italians in the article’s opening sentence:

In Italian, most women prefer the masculine titles, because the feminine version (when it exists) is considered ludicrous, even derogatory.

But English ends up with a solution that’s largely gender-neutral, and this is not an option in languages like Italian and Spanish, because grammatical gender is too firmly established in noun morphology and in syntactic agreement phenomena.

The article’s way of explaining this involves an amusing misunderstanding (or malapropism):

Modern English lacks grammatical gender, whereas Indo-European languages, including Italian and Spanish, can distinguish between masculine and feminine.

Perhaps the state of linguistic education in Italy and Spain is just as bad as in the U.S.

[Hat tip: Randy McDonald]

The Rehabilitation Of Joseph McCarthy? Texas Textbooks Process Grinds On
In the home stretch of a process that will set Texas’ nationally influential history textbook standards, a liberal watchdog group is worried that the State Board of Education will try to push through changes to claim that communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been vindicated by history.

U.S. Embassy Guards Now Being Recruited On Craigslist
In what has got to be some kind of milestone in the privatization of government security functions, an Ohio firm has turned to online classifieds service Craigslist to recruit guards for the U.S. embassy in Brazil.

Contractors’ Attorney: Blackwater Is Scapegoating My Clients In Kabul Murder Case
A lawyer for the Blackwater contractors charged last week with killing two men in Kabul says his clients were thrown under the bus by a company desperate to preserve its standing with the Afghan government, after another shooting case in Iraq led to a crackdown on its operations in that country.

We’ve seen similar articles a few times in the past, but the NY Times has yet another story about how startup execs are less interested in going public than in the past, and suggests two key reasons:

1. The regulatory nightmare of going public, means that it’s all paperwork and lawyers, rather than focusing on growth, innovation and markets. Sarbanes-Oxley remains a key problem here.
2. For startup founders, it’s become a lot more tempting to just sell out to someone big — because it’s a lot easier, but can still earn you enough money to totally change your life.

Again, neither of these issues are all that new, but a decade ago, the focus for most startups was very much on building companies that could go public and standalone. Admittedly, in the dot com insanity, a ton of startups went public that had no business whatsoever being public standalone companies, but there’s reason to fear that we’ve gone too far in the other direction.

Real innovation depends on creative destruction, as newer startups come up and take over from the old legacy players. That’s where innovation really thrives. And, while I don’t think all great companies need to go public, it could be problematic if each great startup instead just sells out to the legacy players from the last generation. Those companies are often where new innovations go to die, rather than to thrive. This doesn’t mean we should go back to allowing just anyone to go public, but if we make it so difficult for good innovative companies to go public on their own that they’re forced to sell out to other companies, we definitely lose some of the creative destruction that has made Silicon Valley and the tech industry thrive in the past.

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While the BRICs steal the limelight and hype, the MAVINS are the less-appreciated yet massive growth stories of the world.

Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa are six nations uniquely positioned to benefit from global economic growth via their relative commodity advantages, yet at the same time offer enormous local market expansion opportunities as well.

Here we outline how investors might tap into these niche growth markets. In just the last few years, investing in the MAVINS has become far easier for the average investor.

How to invest in the MAVINS — >

We don’t have any kind of marketing relationship with any of the firms mentioned in this article. All ideas mentioned are just leads, everyone should do their own due diligence and all international investments contain substantial risk.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• BEFORE THE MAVINS: The Amazing Story Of The BRICs
• The Next BRICs: Six Surging Countries You Must Pay Attention To This Decade
• Joe Weisenthal Talks MAVINS On CNBC With Erin Burnett

Avatar Half-Tells a Story We Would All Prefer to Forget
The real story of what happened to Native Americans is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves.

The real story of what happened to Native Americans is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves.

Martin Luther King’s Legacy and Israel’s Future
King’s teachings can help us see Israel’s state violence in a new light that illuminates the deep, often unnoticed links between violence and irrational fear.

King's teachings can help us see Israel's state violence in a new light that illuminates the deep, often unnoticed links between violence and irrational fear.

Getting to the Bottom of Why "They" Want to Hurt Us
Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas broke through the terrorism boilerplate by asking "why."

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas broke through the terrorism boilerplate by asking "why."

Weekly Roundup: What We Missed
The week began with a ‘game-changer,’ so to speak, and a PR disaster for the Senate Majority Leader. This story, thankfully, fizzled out, but for the worst possible reason. The unspeakable tragedy in Haiti has, understandably, been the primary focus…


Majority leader – United States Senate – Senate – United States – Haiti

A Sobering Picture
[See a high-resolution version of the map here.] Yesterday, at my request, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that provides a thorough understanding of the state of the housing market at the end of June 2009. A…


Government Accountability Office – Government – Violence and Abuse – Elder – Finance

The Last Big Question: Will Health Care Reform Be Paid For By The Rich or the Middle Class?
There’s only one big remaining issue on health care reform: how to pay for it. The House wants a 5.4 percent surtax on couples earning at least $1 million in annual income. The Senate wants a 40 percent excise tax…


Health care – Senate – Excise – United States Senate – Health

Red Cross financial aid Scott Brown voted to kill now assisting Massachusetts relief efforts in Haiti.
State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the special U.S. Senate election Tuesday, voted against a bill to provide financial assistance to 9/11 rescue workers who had volunteered to rush to the site of the twin towers after the terrorist attack in 2001. The measure, which was opposed by only two other […]

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the special U.S. Senate election Tuesday, voted against a bill to provide financial assistance to 9/11 rescue workers who had volunteered to rush to the site of the twin towers after the terrorist attack in 2001. The measure, which was opposed by only two other legislators in addition to Brown, provided paid “leaves of absence for certain Red Cross employees participating in Red Cross emergencies.” Despite Brown’s efforts to kill the legislation, it passed along overwhelmingly bipartisan lines and is now helping to compensate Massachusetts Red Cross employees currently deploying to Haiti to provide emergency assistance after the devastating earthquake. Asked yesterday by ThinkProgress why he opposed the 2001 measure for rescue workers, Brown stated that he had his “own priorities first” at the time. As ThinkProgress reported, during the same period that Brown opposed the financial aid to 9/11 rescue workers, he sponsored a bill to provide a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in his district, and voted for across the board corporate tax subsidies.

Bush repudiates criticisms that Obama is ?politicizing? Haiti: ?I don?t know what they?re talking about.?
Last week following the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh controversially said that President Obama was politicizing the disaster by trying to boost his credibility with the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” Fox News host Glenn Beck also said that Obama was “dividing the nation” by reacting “so […]

Last week following the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh controversially said that President Obama was politicizing the disaster by trying to boost his credibility with the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” Fox News host Glenn Beck also said that Obama was “dividing the nation” by reacting “so rapidly to Haiti.” Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked President Bush about these criticisms (without specifically mentioning either Limbaugh or Beck). Bush rejected their characterizations:

GREGORY: In some circles, the President’s been criticized for politicizing this disaster. Do you think that’s fair?

BUSH: I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve been briefed by the President about the response. And as I said in my opening comment, I appreciate the President’s quick response to this disaster.

Watch it:

Televangelist Pat Robertson has also been receiving a significant negative backlash to his remarks that Haiti’s earthquake was a result of the country’s “pact to the devil” many years ago. As the earthquake has brought out the “fundamental goodness” in many Haitians who are helping to rebuild their country, many religious leaders are incensed by Robertson’s remarks. “I get mad when I hear that Haiti is somehow being punished,” said Arsene Jasmin, head of Haitian outreach for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. “It’s unacceptable and wrong.”

>> Cookware and Tools on Marketplace

Restaurant supply stores are the places you go when you want both good quality and good value. It used to be that you had to go to a physical place like the Bowery to find stores like this, but more and more of them are broadening their scope and offering their wares online. The list below is just a beginning; add your recommendations for great restaurant supply stores in the comments.

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Obama’s first year: ‘High hopes and deferred dreams’ for black Americans
Adapted from A Day Late and A Dollar Short: High Hopes and Deferred Dreams in Obama’s ‘Post-racial’ America, published this month by John Wiley and Sons.

Obama invokes health-care ‘progress’ in speech honoring MLK
President Obama called on the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunday in making what could be seen as a veiled plea for pragmatism on his health-care overhaul, saying that the civil rights leader never chose to forsake progress for a theoretical ideal that was out of reach at the time.

Fewer Americans think Obama has advanced race relations, poll shows
Soaring expectations about the effect of the first black president on U.S. race relations have collided with a more mundane reality, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Green Building of the week from Inhabitat is this Italian roof – Stunning Solar Roof Rises Over Perugia, Italy.

At first glance it may look like a cyber-robotic monster is eating the historical district of this lovely Italian city, but in reality it’s the roof of a new energy-generating walkway in Perugia, Italy. The ‘Energy Roof’, designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au is powered by both the wind and the sun and serves as the canopy of a gallery that explores important archeological sites around the city. …

The Energy Roof is self-sufficient and is powered by both the wind and the sun. The west wing of the canopy is covered in transparent solar cells, which are oriented to optimize energy production. The east wing captures the wind and generates energy through five wind turbines placed within the structure of the canopy. It is certainly a crazy looking architectural addition to the city, but it’s really quite creative and serves as an example for other cities to incorporate renewable energy generation into architectural icons and urban scultpures.

Blimps are now seeing the light with the newest zeppelin with a technological twist being developed at an institute in France. Christened as the Aerolabe, this air ship is solar powered and kisses and hugs the environment with its green, clean and eco-friendly strategy. The vessel is designed by painter and sculptor Gaspard Schlumberger and is juiced up using solar energy. It also has a twist with the use of wings to assist flying. This design could pave the way for a clean and energy efficient mode to air transport and promises a zero carbon footprint. This blimp would cost around three and a half million Euros and will need engines that are energy efficient and consume lesser energy than contemporary one’s. So let’s wait and watch as this environment friendly blimp raises its clean and green head in the sky showing us the way for cleaner air transport in the future.

[Treehugger]

The ABC has a report on the impact of the coal seam gas boom in Queensland – Mining boom expected to place strain on infrastructure.

A central Queensland council says it will have to boost local infrastructure to meet the needs of an expected mining boom over the next decade.

The Queensland Resources Council estimates more than 18,000 new jobs will be created in the coal seam, gas and LNG industries and another 23,000 in the minerals sector by 2020.

Mayor of the Rockhampton Regional Council Brad Carter says local infrastructure needs to be improved to cater for an influx of workers.