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It’s not like you needed those windows for light anyway, so why not give yourself a multi-million dollar view of the Golden Gate Bridge instead? The Winscape iPhone app controls the view you see out your windows—or, plasmas. More »

by Agence France-Presse

Photo courtesy of Sverrir Thor via FlickrREYKJAVIK – A huge cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano covered northern Europe on Thursday, forcing the closure of vast swaths of international airspace and the cancellation of thousands of flights.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southeast Iceland melted a 250-meter thick glacier around it, causing severe floods. More than 700 people were evacuated from their homes.

Ash from the second major eruption in Iceland in less than a month blew eastwards across the North Atlantic, closing major airports more than 1,000 miles (1,700 kilometers) away.

Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden all shut down their airspace because the ash was a threat to jet engines and visibility. There was also major disruption in France, Finland, Germany and Spain.

More than 300 flights out of London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports were cancelled, including transatlantic services.

Hundreds more were hit across Britain and the rest of northern Europe. Thousands of passengers were stranded at airports with no firm estimate of when flights could start again.

“The cloud of volcanic ash is now spread across the UK and continuing to travel south,” said the National Air Traffic Services, which manages British airspace.

“In line with international civil aviation policy, no flights other than agreed emergencies are currently permitted in UK controlled airspace,” it said, as it grounded all non-emergency flights until 6:00 GMT Friday.

British Airways said it would run no flights in or out of Britain until at least Friday morning. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport prepared beds and meals for stranded travellers.

The ash was drifting at an altitude of about 5.0-6.0 miles (8.0-10 kilometers) and could not been seen from the ground. But experts said it posed a major threat to air traffic.

In the past 20 years, there have been 80 recorded encounters between aircraft and volcanic clouds, causing the near-loss of two Boeing 747s with almost 500 people on board and damage to 20 other planes, experts said.

Thanks to the winds, however, Icelandic airports remained open.

“Flights to and from Iceland are still OK. The wind is blowing the ash to the east,” Hjordis Gudmundsdottir of the Icelandic Airport Authority told AFP.

“It’s amazing really,” she said.

The volcano on the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in southern Iceland erupted just after midnight on Wednesday.

Smoke from the top crater stacked more than 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) into the sky, meteorologists said. Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported that a 500-meter fissure had appeared at the top of the crater on Wednesday.

Lava melted the glacier, causing major flooding that forced the evacuation of between 700 and 800 people. Evacuees were being directed to Red Cross centers.

“We have two heavy floods coming out from the melting of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier,” police spokesman Roegnvaldur Olafsson told AFP from near the site of the eruption on Wednesday.

The eruption—in a remote area about 125 kilometers (75 miles) east of Reykjavik—was bigger than the blast at the nearby Fimmvorduhals volcano last month.

“It is very variable how long these eruptions last. Anywhere from a few days to over a year,” Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor in Iceland, told AFP.

“Judging from the intensity of this one, it could last a long time.”

“There were more than 250 meters (820 feet) of thick ice on top of the crater. That quickly melted, causing massive flooding which caused some damage yesterday,” Gudmundsson added.

Olafur Eggertsson, a farmer, told how his family had to abandon their livestock when they fled their property, which lies in the path of one of two large floods of melt water coming from the glacier.

“We heard a lot of noise and saw mud and soil suddenly rushing down from the mountain. Just 30 minutes later we had mud and soil and a giant flood running into our dyke above the farm,” Eggertsson told AFP.

“We have 200 animals on our farm: cows and sheep who are all inside now. It takes some time for the dykes to be destroyed and I don’t know yet if they are in danger, but we are extremely worried,” he said.

Last month, the first volcano eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823—and Iceland’s first since 2004—briefly forced 600 people from their homes in the same area.

That eruption at the Fimmvorduhals volcano, which gushed lava for weeks, ended Tuesday, experts said.

Related Links:

Britain’s ‘Coed Darcy’ shows the value of sparkling new towns

What the green movement needs from the next Supreme Court justice

Great Barrier Reef oil spill hits renowned nature sanctuary

All credit to the Joy of Tech.

Melissa and Tammy Etheridge are the latest showbiz pair to call it quits in a month that has seen a bevy of celebrity splits.

A spokesperson for the “I Run For Life” hitmaker confirmed that the couple has ended their relationship after almost nine years together in a statement to PEOPLE Magazine on Thursday.

“Melissa and Tammy Etheridge are saddened to announce that they are now separated,” the singer’s rep told the mag. “We ask for consideration and respect for our family as we go through this difficult period.”

Melissa, 48, and Tammy, 35, exchanged vows in front of family and friends in Malibu in September 2003 and Tammy gave birth to the couple’s twins, son Miller Steven and daughter Johnnie Rose, in 2006.

Perhaps because we spend the vast majority of our lives in buildings or traveling between them, we often overlook the scale of building energy use and the associated impact on climate change. For example, in a 2007 national survey of 1,000 homeowners, almost 75% said that they believed their homes had no adverse environmental impact. The reality is quite different.

According to the Energy Information Agency, residential and commercial buildings together consume 41% of the energy, including 74% of the electricity, used in the United States. And of course, it also takes energy to make the materials necessary to construct and operate buildings (e.g., bricks, concrete, mechanical systems); to transport the materials; and to actually construct buildings. Despite widespread misperception, at least 45% of all energy used in the United States and Europe is consumed directly in buildings. The level of energy use and the resulting CO2 emissions associated with buildings are almost as high as that from transportation and industry combined. Thus, the built environment provides a powerful and necessary lever for fundamentally changing our patterns of resource and energy use and responding to the grave threat of climate change.

That’s an excerpt from a fact- and chart-filled new book, Greening Our Built World: costs, benefits and strategies (Island Press) by my long-time friend and former DOE colleague Gregory Kats.  Greg is director of climate change at Good Energies, a multi-billion dollar global clean energy investor, where he leads the firm’s investments in energy efficiency and green buildings. Greg is a founder of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). He is founding chair of the Energy and Atmosphere Technical Advisory Group for LEED, and was the principal advisor in developing Green Communities, the national green affordable housing design standard. Previously, Greg served as the director of financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Achieving the deep reductions in CO2 emissions that scientists tell us we must achieve to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change will require deep and relatively rapid reduction in energy use in buildings. This can only happen with a huge increase in building energy efficiency and a rapid increase in the use of renewable energy. Greening buildings provides a very cost effective way to achieve both objectives.

Green design is less expensive and more cost-effective than is generally realized. A shift to green design would increase investment in measures such as insulation and waste diversion, while cutting energy use and creating substantial additional employment. If green design were scaled up nationally, the employment, financial, and environmental benefits would be huge. A recent major study, published in Greening Our built World provides a detailed analysis of the financial and CO2 impact of a feasibly designed national transition to green design. Sponsored by the country’s largest real estate originations and groups such as the American institute of architects, the study provides a basis for calculating the potential for a transition to a green low carbon economy.

Such a transition would require a monumental shift in policy and an enormous financial, political, and technical challenge. The good news is that green buildings have the potential to cost-effectively drive deep reductions in the use of fossil fuels and in CO2 emissions. Such a strategy would also create large economic and social benefits.

The study built on a detailed analysis of cost effectiveness of green design to compare a business as usual scenario to a green design scenario. Developed with 100 architects over a 20 month period the study details the financial impact of greening 170 green buildings, including energy and water savings, health and productivity increases, and societal benefits such as lower energy prices from reductions in demand and CO2 emissions. The study then used this data to compare the net present value of a green design scenario compared with a business as usual scenario.  The findings demonstrate that the benefits of green building and green communities greatly outweigh the additional costs associated with high-performance design, materials, and technology.

Currently 12 to 15%% of all non residential construction is green. Based on growth in adoption and detailed cost benefits  analysis in a green scenario green could becomes standard practice for 95% of the new construction market by 2020, and for 75% of retrofits by 2030-reflecting the likelihood that some types of buildings will remain unlikely candidates for greening. The lag in greening retrofits reflects the fact that current green penetration of the retrofit market is far lower than the penetration of the new construction market. Buildings typically last 50 years or more. By contrast, an automobile fleet is replaced every 12 to 15 years. Not surprisingly, deep reductions in energy use in the building sector cannot be achieved quickly—and cannot be achieved by 2050 without a relatively rapid rate of comprehensive retrofits of existing buildings. Accordingly, the Green scenario assumes that comprehensive retrofits, whether as energy-efficiency retrofits or as part of greening, occur more frequently than in the BAU scenario.

The financial benefits of a shift to green design probably offer the single largest opportunity to both strengthen the economy and address the critical challenge of global warming.

Net Present Value of Benefits: Business and Usual Scenario versus Green Scenario

A sustained national commitment to green design would create tremendous financial, social, and environmental benefits. The costs of building green are far outweighed by the benefits, which include reduced energy and water costs, enhanced health and productivity, and broad societal benefits. Applying the cost-benefit findings from the study data set to our two scenarios shows that when compared with the BAU scenario, the Green scenario creates roughly one trillion dollars in net financial benefits. This reflects the fact that green buildings generate financial benefits that—as this book documents—are five to ten times as large as their green cost premium. Additional benefits that were not quantifiable include lowered dependence on energy imports, increased employment, and increased economic competitiveness.

Related Post:

• McKinsey must-read: U.S. can meet entire 2020 emissions target with efficiency and cogeneration while lowering the nation’s energy bill $700 billion!
• Building Commissioning: The Stealth Energy Efficiency Strategy
• Energy efficiency is THE core climate solution, Part 1: The biggest low-carbon resource by far

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is an electric car; although it has a 1.4 liter, four cylinder engine, this does not power the drive wheels. Instead, the engine is used to generate electricity, which powers the Volt’s electric motor when the batteries are depleted. Chevrolet claims an overall mileage rating of 230 MPG, which the EPA has yet to confirm.

The Volt was designed to have a “battery only” range of 40 miles, and pre-production units have achieved this goal. When the batteries run down, the 1.4 liter gasoline engine fires up to power the car’s electric motor. This gives the Volt a conventional car-like range of approximately 300 miles, making it useful for both daily commuting and vacation road trips.

Prospective buyers (and us media types) have been asking what kind of fuel economy the Volt would achieve when the batteries are depleted and the car is using gasoline to create electricity. Green Car Reports has received confirmation from the Volt’s chief engineer, Andrew Farah, that pre-production Volts are reaching the design goal of 50 MPG when powered (indirectly) by gasoline.

Personally, I can’t wait to drive the Volt, as I think it’s the start of a new chapter in automotive engineering. Using a gas or diesel motor to create electricity makes good sense – this is how diesel electric locomotives have been powered since the early part of the 20th century. As battery density improves, we’ll eventually be able to abandon the internal combustion motor altogether, but the Volt represents a practical bridge between available technology and future tech.

By the slimmest of margins, the Senate last night approved a measure waiving the pay-go rules for legislation extending the filling deadline for unemployment benefits (not to be confused with the creation of Tier V) until June. Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio) was the only Republican to vote in favor of the motion, which passed 60 to 40.

The procedural move sets the stage for full passage of the bill, which also extends COBRA health subsidies for unemployed workers and delays a scheduled pay cut for doctors treating Medicare patients.

A $9.2 billion proposal passed by the House last month would have extended the programs through May 5 — a proposal that Senate Democrats had tried to pass several weeks back. But Republican opposition — combined with Congress’ two-week spring break — delayed the vote long enough that Democratic leaders tweaked the proposal so that (1) the benefits are retroactive to April 5, when the original benefits expired, and (2) the extensions run an additional month (at twice the cost). Party leaders are hoping the wider window will allow them the time to pass an even longer-term extension of all these programs — something that will see them through November’s midterm elections.

Democrats are trying now to get an agreement from Republican leaders to pass the $18 billion bill today. Otherwise, they’ll have to slog through a series of cloture votes that could push the process into next week.

After the Senate passes the bill (whenever that is), it will return to the House, where leaders are expected to approve it quickly before sending it on to the White House for President Obama’s signature.

Hace poco desde Mazda anunciaban que el RX-8 dejaría de comercializarse en el mercado Español y ya se habían eliminado prácticamente todas las unidades en stock del modelo en España, pero parece que la noticia para los amantes de este deportivo es peor, puesto que también se irá del mercado Europeo.

¿La culpa? Las emisiones de su motor rotativo, parece que el conocido motor rotativo del RX-8 emite demasiado y no pasa la nueva norma sobre emisiones Euro 5 que está apunto de entrar en vigor, además de que Mazda no tendrá un sustituto hasta 2013. Es una pena porque tampoco llegará la renovación del modelo para el próximo año.

Como siempre es una cuestión de ventas, una modificación para adecuarse a los estándares europeos no sale rentable para las ventas que tiene este modelo en el viejo continente, como muestra tenemos las ventas del RX-8 en España el año 2009 que fueron de 25 unidades.

Vía | Autoblog en español

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has once again denied a request to consolidate and centralize all shoulder pain pump lawsuits, saying that despite the growing number of cases, there is not enough commonality to have the federal litigation transferred to one court for coordinated management. 

More than 100 shoulder pump chondrolysis suits have been filed in federal courts throughout the country against the manufacturers of disposable pain pumps, including I-Flow Corp., Stryker Corp., DJO, Inc., and other companies. They all involve similar allegations that the intra-articular use of pain pumps to deliver a combination of pain medications during the days after surgery can cause the progressive destruction of shoulder cartilage, causing new shoulder problems and potentially resulting in the need for shoulder replacement surgery.

Although the MDL panel rejected a similar motion to centralize the shoulder pump litigation in August 2008, when there were about 32 cases pending, a new motion was filed earlier this year, asking the panel to transfer the cases to one court for coordinated handling to avoid conflicting scheduling orders and rulings in the different courts where the cases are pending. However, the panel again rejected the request to establish a multidistrict litigation (MDL), saying the cases reflect lawsuits against a variety of different pain pumps made by a number of manufacturers using various different medications.

“Although the number of related actions has certainly grown, the issues that weighed against centralization in that earlier docket remain,” the panel explained in its decision. “An indeterminate number of different pain pumps made by different manufacturers are still at issue, as are different anesthetics made by different pharmaceutical companies.”

The panel said that individual issues of causation and liability are likely to overwhelm any efficiency that would be gained by consolidating the cases. The decision means that shoulder pump claims will proceed as individual cases, but some courts have consolidated small groups of cases.

The cases involve allegations that plaintiffs developed shoulder chondrolysis from the ambulatory pain pumps, which is a rare condition that involves the progressive loss of cartilage in the shoulder joint. Research has suggested that the intra-articular use of the pumps to deliver a combination of medications to manage pain after arthroscopic shoulder surgery, could cause this painful and debilitating condition. The cartilage damage is permanent, resulting in severe limitations on range of motion and use of the shoulder. In many cases, individuals who develop chondrolysis require a total shoulder replacement surgery.

The panel’s decision follows a January trial victory for plaintiff Matthew Beale against I-Flow Corp. An Oregon jury awarded Beale $4.75 million in a lawsuit that claimed that the On-Q Painbuster destroyed cartilage in his shoulder.

Earlier this month, it was reported that I-Flow settled five similar lawsuits as trial was set to begin, after it failed to get them dismissed by a federal judge in Ohio. The details of the settlements have not been disclosed.

In November 2009, the FDA required manufacturers of the pumps and the local anesthetics used with the devices to add new warnings about the risk of chondrolysis from should pain pumps. The recent warnings were designed to alert healthcare professionals that the use of pain pumps following shoulder surgery to infuse medication directly into the joint increases the risk of chondrolysis, particularly involving the shoulder.

Denise Gellene wrote:

We heard in the past week from key experts who shared their views on the funding climate and the potential of emerging computational technologies. Our recap follows.

—Histogen said its Hair Stimulating Complex produced “statistically significant” new hair growth after one year among the 24 balding patients who participated in a clinical trial conducted in Honduras.

—Avalon Ventures, one of the few San Diego venture capital firms still investing in early-stage life sciences companies, is talking about raising a ninth fund, Luke reported. He chatted with principals Jay Lichter and Kevin Kinsella about the investing climate.

—San Diego is well-positioned to play a significant role in advancing computational biology, said Paul A. Rejto, director of computational biology in oncology research at Pfizer. He discussed the technology and its potential impact on drug development in a Q&A.

—San Diego has all the ingredients to become the number one biomedical informatics center in the country, said UC San Diego’s Lucila Ohno-Machado, director of biomedical informatics at the medical school. She discussed the technology with me in a Q&A.

—Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego-based drug developer, has raised an initial round of $1.5 million in financing. The investors included Golden Seeds, Life Science Angels, and Tech Coast Angels.

—AltheaDx, a San Diego-based developer of molecular diagnostics, closed its $6 million Series A round of funding. The funds will support development of diagnostics that predict whether a drug is safe for certain people.

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Genocea Biosciences, the Cambridge, MA-based developer of vaccines, said today it has been granted $2.7 million to work on discovering a new malaria vaccine. The grant is from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command as part of a research collaboration with the Naval Medical Research Center. Genocea will use its technology to find target antigens for a vaccine, while the Naval Medical Research Center will contribute their expertise in developing sub-unit vaccine formulations.

by Debra Eschmeyer

FLOTUS with the mostest: Michelle Obama addessses the Obesity Summit. When
President Obama established a “Presidential
task force on childhood obesity” in
February, Grist’s Tom Laskawy wondered whether our nation’s first federal food policy council had quietly
sprung into being. In a food policy council, the key stakeholders of a
region’s food system come together to assess the current food situation
and envision ways it might be improved. Food policy councils are a
growing phenomenon at the state and municipal level, but such a thing
had never existed before at the national level. Does it now?

Well,
last week I had the honor of attending the new task force’s White
House Childhood Obesity Summit,  and it certainly had the flavors
of a food policy council: an array of food-policy players across
agencies gathered to discuss a key symptom of a food system gone off the
rails: childhood obesity.

The task
force was charged with developing and submitting to the President in 90
days an interagency plan
that “details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and
outlines an action plan.” As part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign, the
task force is engaging both public and private sectors with the primary
goal of helping children become more active and eat healthier within a
generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a
healthy weight.

Feeding our children better may look at first
glance like a softball issue for the first lady; but the Ms. Obama is
actually in the opening stages of what looks like a long and complicated
fight. but as Time put it:

If this sounds like a political fight, well,
it is. Michelle Obama may be tilling nonpartisan ground with her
vegetable garden and child-obesity program, but food has long been
political. From soda taxes to corn subsidies, food is about health care
costs, environmentalism, education, agriculture and class.

Which is why such heavy hitters from the
latter departments are involved in the President’s Task Force on
Childhood Obesity and all spoke on Friday at the White House’s Childhood
Obesity Summit, including Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle,  Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Office of Management and
Budget Director Peter Orszag,
Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
Kathleen Merrigan, and
Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes.

The lead pitcher to
Let’s Move!, Michelle Obama, provided the welcoming
remarks for this historic event. She declared:  “This gathering has
never happened before at the White House. It’s one where we’re bringing
together teachers and child advocates, doctors and nurses, business
leaders, public servants, researchers and health experts to talk about
one of the most serious and difficult problems facing our kids today,
and that is the epidemic of childhood obesity in this country.”

After
Mrs. Obama made brief welcoming remarks, Barnes, the domestic-policy
advisor, took over. Barnes chairs the obesity task force, and said it
was time for “all hands on deck” as the task force focuses on its report
for the President.

Joining the ranks
of the 75 students who are Michelle Obama’s most critical stakeholders in her Let’s Move! campaign, I was fortunate
enough to be on deck and participate as a representative for the National Farm to School Network at
this meeting and make the point that connecting schools to their
surrounding farmers is critical; it advances all four
of the objectives laid out by the Administration:

(a)
Ensuring access to healthy, affordable food;
(b) Increasing physical
activity in schools and communities;
(c) Providing healthier food in
schools; and
(d) Empowering parents with information and tools to
make good choices for themselves and their families.

Four break-out groups convened separately for the
topics a-d above ,and we were tasked with identifying 3 to 5 of the
best ideas to present to the writers of the roadmap to a healthier generation.
I was assigned to Kevin Concannon’s breakout: using schools for improving nutrition for American children.
We were asked to consider the nutritional quality of school meals,
necessary changes to the school environment, and infrastructure that
would lead to key benchmarks and actions.

Our group dove right into lively discussion with
two enthusiastic food service directors, Tony Geraci of Baltimore City Schools,
and Tim Cipriano of New
Haven Public Schools, showcasing what does work: farm to school.  In
sum, the recommendations coming out of our group included:

1)
Need for strong national standards for ALL food in schools: meals,
snacks, competitive, etc.
2) Enhance and ramp up professional
training for all those involved in putting food on the tray: food
service, custodians, and all adults in the school
3) Rethink business of meal production and its
delivery: kids involved in preparing food, local procurement, schools
gardens, etc. Find funding for this. We need to rethink the business of
meal production and its delivery with programs such as Farm to School.
Some of the most fortunate schools have gardens and Farm to School
programs. We need to break down the myths of USDA regulations: it is ok to source locally and it is ok to have a garden. The CNR
includes funding for Farm to School nationally.”
4) Nutrition
education needs to happen across all classrooms (again citing farm to
school)—classroom for nutrition education, but also using cafeteria as
educational opportunity for a teachable moment
5) Integrate
incentives to make positive change happen

We
then re-convened with the full gathering and shared our small-group
results. My full notes are available here (PDF).

I left with Michelle Obama’s concluding words running
through my head: “What we have done is start a national conversation. 
But we need your help to propel that conversation into a national
response.”

This
administration has continually opened doors for civil society
participation in the discourse of creating a healthier generation. There
was an opportunity for public comment, a kid-only Town Hall at the
White House, and this child obesity meeting at the White House. Do you
have something to tell the President’s Task Force on Childhood Obesity?
Build more playgrounds? Reform school lunch? if so, send your comments
to LetsMove[at]who[dot]eop[dot]gov.

When I returned from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, I
received this message from my sister, a mother of three, who juggles a
full time job and a family calendar of activities that makes your eyes
glaze over: “In honor of you today fighting childhood obesity, I’ll make
sure Grant eats an apple and plays outside before we let him on the Wii.” If all parents would make
that commitment, Michelle Obama would be one step closer to succeeding
in the goal of her Let’s Move! initiative.

Related Links:

Egger’s Head: School lunches

Americans eat more processed food than, well, anyone

Why even the childless should care about school lunch

In an apparent reference to the sex abuse crisis, Pope Benedict said Thursday that it was time for the Catholic Church to do penance for its sins.

While the Vatican has not released the pope’s entire homily from a mass with the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, reported that Benedict said Christians have often avoided the word penance, since it seems too harsh.

“Now, under the attacks of the world that speak to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace, and we see that it’s necessary to do penance, to recognize what’s wrong in our life,” Benedict said.

“The suffering of penance, that is, of purification and transformation, that suffering is a grace, because it’s renewal; it’s the work of divine mercy,” he said.

Pope Benedict has come under increasing pressure to speak out about the sex abuse crisis in the Church, and especially in his native Germany. His most extensive comments came last month in a letter to the Catholics of Ireland.

Benedict marks five years as pope on April 19.

Hoping to shimmey your waist down to 27 inches in time for swimsuit season?

Yep, there’s a DVD for that.

Robin Antin founded The Pussycat Dolls as a burlesque dance troupe more than 15 years ago, now the choreographer is helping fans channel their “Inner Doll” with a new workout DVD based on the group’s explosive dance moves.

I’ve all but given up on getting rid of these thunder thighs, but there might still be hope for some of you. Feel free to check out a demo of some of Robin’s patented exercises in this video snippet from Thursday’s CBS Early Show.

By minnesotachris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzO_D8TjvKw

Every month, magazines pick out the best and hottest faces to feature as their cover story something that is by no means limited to gaming publications. But when it comes to games, no one has played

Filed under: Motorsports, Government/Legal

Smugglers are, by nature, a crafty bunch. Slaves to the market forces of supply and demand, drug runners risk liberty and limb to pedal their life-ruining wares around the world. Doing so requires a healthy helping of creativity, so it should come as no surprise that an Ibiza-based drug ring tried to use a fake Paris-Dakar support truck to move vast sums of drugs from Argentina to the Spanish port of Bilbao.

The intrepid smugglers bought a truck, gave it a race livery and a crew, complete with matching uniforms, and shipped the whole thing to a farm that was situated close to the Paris-Dakar course. Here’s where it gets fun. They then proceeded to pack hidden compartments with 814 kilos of cocaine, 15,000 ecstasy tablets, 4.5 kilos of hashish and $64,000 in cold hard cash. Evidently that wasn’t enough to bribe the authorities when the whole thing returned to Bilbao, though, as the operation got pinched by the man.

A total of seven people have been detained in connection with the attempted smuggling plot, and if authorities can get any of the charges to stick, you can bet they won’t be seeing daylight for a long, long time.

[Source: FoxSports – sub. req. | Image: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty]

Report: Dakar imposters busted with 800+ kilos of cocaine in faux rally truck originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last month I wrote a blog on how companies are using technology to green their products.  In that blog, I was raving about the green virtues of “100% compostable packaging.” The blog generated some interest. However, one of the commenters, Alexa, posed some interesting questions regarding the ability of this packaging to actually decompose if it ended up in a landfill instead of a composter. “Without the regular turning of soil and a heated environment that composting provides, will it break down?”

Well, I didn’t have the answer to her question. So I contacted my friends in EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery. I was surprised to find out that the fact that a product is classified as “biodegradable or compostable” doesn’t make it 100% green. These so-called compostable or biodegradable products “are only good for the environment when composted” emphasized my colleagues. By sending these materials to a landfill, they will not automatically breakdown. The right conditions have to exist for them to decompose. In fact, the very nature of landfills prevents the vast majority of compostable products from decomposing. The reality is that these landfills are virtually “dry tombs” and they are designed specifically to protect the materials deposited in them from coming in contact with air, water, ground water and sunlight. If these compostable products start to break down and decompose in a landfill, they will remain trapped in place possibly producing methane gas and leachate. They will not magically disappear.

So, for those individuals interested in making these compostable materials live up to their green name, I would recommend visiting the following websites on reducing and recycling organic waste and composting for additional ways to make them truly green.

So, while green packaging still has benefits, the best thing to do for the environment is to not create the waste in the first place. In spite of our best efforts, when waste is created, the next best options for our finances and the environment will be to reuse it, recycle it or compost it! Have a green day.

About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Communications Task Force. Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

I guess you could call me a Japanophile. I love learning about Japanese cuisine, and I eagerly collect Japanese kitchen items. I became enamored with bento boxes a while ago, and now I have three different styles of bento boxes that serve various purposes. What they all have in common is that they are convenient, easy to clean, and fun.

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